THE SOVIET PACKAGE UNTIED 237one asked to go abroad for three months, permission was granted for
only four weeks. Was it really a disaster if people decided not to return
to the Soviet Union? He said it was better for the USSR to be rid of its
‘riff raff ’. The dissidents Orlov and Shcharanski had been freed from
captivity in February 1986 and permitted to emigrate, and no damage
ensued for Soviet state security.^6 Shevardnadze put Adamishin in
charge of renewing policy on human rights and told him to ignore the
predictable resistance of the KGB. At the same time he told Grinevski
to conduct the talks in Stockholm without yielding to the demands of
the military lobby. The General Staff and the Defence Ministry were
no longer to determine the agenda. He asked Adamishin and Grinevski
to act as battering rams in the cause of reform in foreign policy.^7
On 19 December 1986 Gorbachëv met with Shevardnadze and his
ministry’s leading officials. Southern Africa, Lebanon and Nicaragua
came up for discussion. Then Gorbachëv focused on the American
factor: ‘The present administration of the USA is the most reactionary
as well as the most unpredictable. As such it is making a crude mis-
take.’ He lamented America’s weakness for military ‘adventures’, citing
the recent examples of Libya and Grenada. While holding back from
any overreaction, he hoped to exploit the situation politically. Shevard-
nadze agreed; he warned against any simplistic understanding of
current foreign leaders. He stressed that Thatcher was in a strong
political position after benefiting from ‘a wave of chauvinism’ in the
United Kingdom. He stressed the need to keep an eye on Gary Hart, a
leading contender to become the Democratic candidate in the 1988
US presidential election.^8 Gorbachëv had welcomed Hart to Moscow a
few days earlier.^9 Nobody could say who was going to win the presi-
dency, and the Soviet leadership had to keep itself ready for
everything.^10 Nevertheless Gorbachëv remained in a quandary. While
taking a certain pleasure from the signs of disarray in the American
administration, he still could not answer the question for himself:
‘What does America really want?’^11
Analytical papers were prepared for the Big Five, and there was
speculation that Reagan might find it difficult to hold on to his
entrenched position as his pile of domestic political problems grew.^12
Soviet officials had orders to make enquiries, and yet clarity was diffi-
cult to obtain. Arthur Hartman, America’s Ambassador to the USSR,
explained that the ‘zero option’ proposal had always referred only to
certain categories of nuclear weapons and not to all of them.^13 When
the Soviet Foreign Trade Minister talked to former President Nixon in