110 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Secretary. Acquaintance with him and his potential remained rather
faint. In 1983 he had headed a Soviet agricultural delegation to Canada
and become acquainted with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who laid
aside time for unscheduled meetings and gained an early measure of
the man’s potential.^48 In June 1984 Gorbachëv led the Soviet mourners
at Enrico Berlinguer’s funeral. The crowds of two million supporters of
the Italian Communist Party made an impact on him. He tacitly
rejected Moscow’s contempt for Eurocommunism, telling party official
Anatoli Chernyaev: ‘Such a party mustn’t be tossed aside.’^49 Chants
of ‘Gorbachëv, Gorbachëv, Gorbachëv!’ greeted him at the graveside.
Italy’s press treated him as Chernenko’s crown prince.^50
Even the British Prime Minister began to take an interest. While
relishing her notoriety in Kremlin circles, Thatcher recognized the
dangers of world politics and wanted to resume ‘dialogue’ with Soviet
leaders.^51 She had held seminars about the USSR with specialists in the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then with a group of academ-
ics including some leading ‘Sovietologists’. These confidential sessions
began to persuade her that the Soviet leadership was capable of under-
taking reforms. She was even willing to test the waters with Chernenko.
On the trip to Moscow for Andropov’s funeral, her behaviour bor-
dered on the flirtatious in conversation with the new General Secretary
- one witness recorded that if a table had not separated them, she
might have thrown herself into Chernenko’s embrace.^52 She had been
on ebullient form. She called for the generation of leaders who had
lived through the Second World War to prevent another global war.
She wanted more talks and more trade between the USSR and the
West; she insisted that ideological differences should not be allowed to
trump the need for an agreement on disarmament.^53
It was not the British Prime Minister but France’s President
Mitterrand who took the next initiative, when he paid a state visit to
Moscow in June 1984. He refused to hold back in his critique of the
USSR but told Chernenko to his face – his pale and stricken face – that
the Kremlin had only itself to blame for the arrival of Pershing-2s in
Western Europe. While SS-20s remained in Eastern Europe, this peril-
ous confrontation would persist. Mitterrand also protested about the
treatment of dissenter Andrei Sakharov. At the official dinner Polit-
buro member Geidar Aliev, in a loud stage whisper, exclaimed: ‘It
would be better if Giscard d’Estaing had been re-elected.’ Gorbachëv
arrived late for the occasion, pleading that he had had to attend a
meeting on agriculture in Azerbaijan. Mitterrand tried flattery by