Edward L. Rowny
excellent speech. It was full of imagery and reinforced our basic values. I sent
Tony Dolan an "attaboy" note congratulating him on the speech.
On the plane to Helsinki, Tony was crestfallen. "Look what they've done to the
speech," he said. The State Department edited out passages about the church bells
which could still ring in Helsinki. Their reasoning was that it made odious
comparisons between the Finns and Soviets over the lack of religious freedom in
the Soviet Union. That was, of course, what the speech was intended to do.
Moreover, they struck out the word "totalitarian, saying it put Gorbachev in the
same class as Hitler. Although Dolan was familiar with Jeanne Kirkpatrick's
"authoritarian" vs "totalitarian" arguments, he felt he was using the right word.
But Dolan had written the famous "evil empire" speech, and the State Department
action officers knew they had him in a vulnerable position.
I decided to weigh in. Not able to get to see Secretary Schultz, I wrote him a note.
I said he obviously hadn't seen the original speech. If he had, I added, I thought
he would have left it intact. To my pleasant surprise, either because of my
intervention or for some other reasons, the President gave the speech as Dolan had
drafted it. It was a great speech.
I was pleased to see James Billington on the plane ride to Helsinki. Billington, an
eminent Russian scholar, had written T h e Icon and the A x e a seminal work which
explained the czars' dual use of religion and force. Reagan was availing himself
of some of the best minds in the U.S. to help him use the best arguments-and the
right words-in appealing to the basic cultural and historical wellsprings of the
Russians.
When the summit opened, Reagan led off, as we expected, with human rights.
Although Shevardnadze had been rather passive when Schultz raised human rights
at their meetings, Gorbachev now took the offensive. When Reagan spoke about
political prisoners, Gorbachev talked about the "inhumanity" of capital punishment.
When Reagan spoke about the inability of Soviets freely to leave the Soviet Union,
Gorbachev brought up the Mexicans' inability to freely enter the United States.
Gorbachev suggested that Reagan give him a catalog of"humanitarian problems"
in the United States and he would in return provide a similar catalog to Reagan.
They could then, he said, work together on the combined list. Reagan was for
once speechless. He was outraged at this blatant attempt to establish moral
equivalence.
Reagan shifted to regional matters. He brought up the entire range of issues,
including Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, Ethiopia, Angola, and Central America.
Gorbachev's response amounted to a great deal of circumlocution and double t a l k .
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