31. REAGAN’S WINDOW OF DEPARTURE
DEPARTURE
On 1 June 1988 Gorbachëv bade farewell to the Reagans at Vnukovo
airport. At the Politburo’s next session he declared:
Our forecast has been fully realized; once again it’s been proved
that a principled and constructive policy based on realism is the
only correct one. This alone can bring results. And the President
showed himself a realist here. He managed to see the processes
that we have happening on the political plane. While he was in
Washington he announced that it was necessary to study the cul-
ture of the people. At that time, however, he was looking at us
through an artificially wrought conception of the rights of man.
The Americans in the days of his visit spent whole days looking
on their [TV] screens at our life, at ordinary Soviet people.^1His colleagues liked what they heard. He himself had always voiced
the hope that the USSR might gain a breathing space for its necessary
self-modernization. The signing of his first big treaty appeared to
validate the advantages of his perestroika.
Later in the month Gorbachëv addressed a special Party Confer-
ence where he took pride in what had been achieved with Reagan. His
main purpose, though, was to further the cause of internal political
reform. He had it in mind to break the shackles of the one-party state
by compelling party officials to submit themselves to the disciplines of
election. Nobody was to hold on to his post without the possibility
of challenge. Gorbachëv’s other big reform was a proposal to change
the entire Soviet constitution. At its core would be a parliament known
as the Congress of People’s Deputies. Out of 2,250 seats, only 400
would be reserved for communist party and other public organiza-
tions. The rest would be available for anyone to contest, and Gorbachëv
let it be known that party officials would have to take part in them in