266 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
dynamism and is inspired by the idea of changing over to demo-
cratic principles. And strictly speaking, it’s mainly this that has
interested everybody everywhere in our contacts with people.^54Gorbachëv was aware that America would try to squeeze further
concessions out of him. The Strategic Defense Initiative was not his
only cause for concern. He also worried about the USSR’s reliance on
American grain imports and, like his predecessors, feared that the
White House could wield this as a political weapon. (Vice President
Bush remonstrated that no American administration had ever con-
templated such behaviour.)^55 To Gorbachëv’s mind, Soviet communism
was misunderstood abroad. He noted that the American political right
thought Soviet leaders were abandoning communist principles out of
recognition of the USSR’s internal weaknesses. America’s liberals, on
the other hand, envisaged Gorbachëv as trying to ‘save socialism’ just
as F. D. Roosevelt had saved capitalism in the 1930s. Though Gor-
bachëv rejected both ways of interpreting perestroika, he omitted to
explain where he thought the fault lines lay.^56 The Soviet leadership
continued to characterize America as a country pervaded by discrim-
ination based on class and race. Shevardnadze assured Shultz that the
USSR’s workers were free to go on strike. Shultz replied that trade
unions in Moscow had to follow the dictates of the government’s plan
for production – and this was not Shultz’s idea of freedom. He also
denied that ethnic and racial obstacles were insurmountable in
America; he pointed out that Colin Powell, Reagan’s National Security
Adviser from November 1987, was black.^57
Gorbachëv and Shevardnadze remained loyal to Marxist-Leninist
doctrines in the first three years of perestroika. They aspired to
improving, not demolishing, the foundations of the Soviet order.
Gorbachëv’s experience of foreign countries had failed to erode this
passionate commitment. On his Canadian trip in 1983 he had learned
that the farmers there relied on state subsidies, and this appeared to
leave him with a lasting scepticism about the merits of a market econ-
omy.^58 At the Politburo on 26 July 1986, Gorbachëv called on comrades
to stop being apologetic about the record of respect for human rights
in the USSR. The truth, he claimed, was that Soviet people enjoyed
protections that were unavailable under capitalism. He called for a
reaffirmation of the values of the October Revolution.^59
The KGB, as Gorbachëv recognized, was a poor source for infor-
mation and guidance about American politics. Although it had