272 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
it might be unrealistic to invite him to America).^89 When Akhromeev
as Chief of the USSR General Staff accepted the invitation of his oppo-
site number Admiral William J. Crowe to visit Oklahoma City, he was
visibly moved at receiving the present of a Native American feathered
headdress.^90 The Americans continued to break down the traditions of
restraint and mistrust. State Department official Richard Schifter
asked Anatoli Adamishin to dinner at his home. Schifter gossiped
about being pleased about his colleague Roz Ridgway’s departure from
office and her replacement by Raymond Seitz. He disclosed various
titbits about the internal tensions inside the American administration.
He made no objection when Adamishin described America’s policy
on Afghanistan as absurd. Adamishin’s surprise was matched by his
delight at the experience.^91
Things also changed more widely in society in the USSR. Chebri-
kov had recognized that Gorbachëv’s political reforms would disallow
the KGB from following its old ways of handling society. Speaking to
the Party Congress in February 1986, he emphasized how the Ameri-
can special services were exploiting the expanded channels of inter-
national communication to penetrate Soviet institutions and steal state
secrets. He highlighted attempts to disseminate anticommunist ideas
through Western radio broadcasts. He noted the campaign against the
leadership’s policy on human rights.^92
Just a few months later, people could hardly believe their ears
when they span the dials on their radio sets. The jamming of foreign
broadcasts had become an embarrassment to Gorbachëv as the date of
the Reykjavik summit drew near. The Secretariat’s Ligachëv and the
KGB’s Chebrikov assented to allowing Voice of America, the BBC,
Radio Peking and Radio Korea. Ligachëv and Chebrikov were not
against jamming in principle but rather aimed to concentrate their
facilities on operations against the radio services they most objected to
- Radio Freedom, Radio Free Europe, Voice of Israel and Deutsche
We l l e.^93 By May 1987 the Soviet administration had permanently
stopped jamming Voice of America.^94 The Politburo was also coming
to the conclusion that the restrictions on foreign travel caused damage
to the USSR’s basic interests. Shevardnadze noted how many innova-
tive ideas had entered the USSR through Soviet citizens who had
travelled abroad. The USSR could only benefit from widening the
channels of international contact.^95 At last in November 1988 the deci-
sion was made that every citizen had the right to emigrate so long as
they were not in possession of state secrets.^96