278 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
restrictions on the Initiative. Gorbachëv had tried to tempt Reagan
in Reykjavik with an elastic definition of ‘laboratory’ research. The
Americans were now exploring whether the Kremlin might agree to
stretch the permissible zone to the heavens. But when National Secur-
ity Adviser Powell pressed Ambassador Dubinin for a response, he got
nowhere. The Soviet leadership’s approach was to express hostility
to the Initiative while declining to seek any practical compromise or to
enter a dispute.^21
The Americans were pleased about the slackening of Soviet com-
bativeness about Reagan’s project. They remained implacable about the
Krasnoyarsk radar station. The USSR’s negotiators were slow to recog-
nize how badly this was affecting talks. On 25 November 1986 CIA
Deputy Director Robert Gates gave a blistering analysis. Belatedly the
danger was appreciated in Moscow, where a background paper was
prepared for the party leadership. The main finding was embarrassing
for the Kremlin: namely that the station did indeed breach the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed in 1972.^22
The Politburo’s original idea had been to build the station at
Norilsk in the Russian far north with the aim of closing the gap in the
USSR’s early-warning system against an American nuclear attack. But
to construct a station in the frozen wastes was prohibitively expensive.
It was also calculated that transport to the site would be restricted to
the summer months and would have to be undertaken along the
rivers, so Krasnoyarsk was chosen instead. According to Georgi Korn-
ienko, the military commanders wanted Norilsk but the politicians
overruled them.^23 This was not how Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Deti-
nov remembered things. Detinov claimed that Ustinov had presented
the Krasnoyarsk project to the Politburo expressly on behalf of the
Defence Ministry and the General Staff. Ustinov spoke with confi-
dence that it would be feasible to deceive the world about the station’s
true functions. But as soon as Andropov denounced Reagan’s Strategic
Defense Initiative as a breach of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,
the Americans made open objection to the Krasnoyarsk project.^24
The Soviet response was that the station was intended to deal with
threats from outer space rather than to prevent a US missiles offensive.
The Americans never believed this – and they were right.^25
Shevardnadze knew how much the matter was undermining his
efforts in talks with the Americans; he also recognized that Soviet
leaders did themselves no favours by constantly denying that the
Warsaw Pact had more troops in Europe than NATO.^26 His arguments