“The key is freedom…”
- Ronald Reagan, May 31, 1988
Accentuate the Positive
What a moment. Beneath a statue of
Lenin, he became the first American president
to speak directly to the Soviet people in
Moscow. It was twenty-five years ago on May
31, 1988. That President Reagan would have
such a rare opportunity after calling their
country “an evil empire” and describing them as
the “focus of evil in the modern world” made
the speech even more groundbreaking. Better
yet, the Soviets had invited him to their
complicated corner of the world. They invited
the American president previously
characterized as a “warmonger” and lambasted
by the Soviet newspaper Pravda more often
than Adolph Hitler. They invited our wise 40th
President who knew how to set the past aside.
He saw a greater opportunity. He was bigger
than the small stuff. He grabbed the brass ring
and delivered a speech that set their hearts on
fire.
After all, in May 1988, this would be the
fourth summit with the Soviets, the occasion to
celebrate the ratification of the INF treaty
which eliminated an entire class of nuclear
weapons. Bravo! Essentially, the summit demonstrated that the United States and the
Soviet Union were finally shedding the shroud of the Cold War.
Historians, fixated on Reagan as the Great Communicator, often overlook the skills
of Reagan the Negotiator. When asked what it was like to deal with Gorbachev, the
President once said, “It was easier than dealing with Jack Warner.” 1 Leading with an affable
smile and abundant charm, Reagan entered into negotiations with Gorbachev using a
“trust, but verify” approach. And he discovered something different in the new Soviet
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leader’s style. Instead of threatening to bury the United States, Gorbachev seemed like a
reasonable man, “someone you could do business with” as British Prime Minister Lady
Thatcher described him. He embraced the ideas of perestroika (openness) and glasnost
(reform) and asked the President and First Lady to join him in Moscow. Seizing the historic
opportunity, the 40th President decided to accentuate the positive. He accepted his
“friend’s” invitation. According to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, Reagan “saw a summit
on Soviet soil as a unique opportunity to make the case for democracy and freedom.” And
so he did.
Even the New York Times labeled it Reagan’s “finest oratorical hour.”
“It is the right to dream— to follow your dream or stick to your conscience,
even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.”
Ronald Reagan, May 31, 1988
For three months before the visit, plans for the summit were carefully
choreographed. The idea was to create a summit scenario that would resemble an
American political campaign, with a strong emphasis on visual impressions and on the
emotional impact the President would make as he went out among the Soviet people.
At the same time, the Soviets were determined to put on a show for the Americans.
Buildings across from the Kremlin painted in fresh pastel colors. Streets repaved. Bridges
steam cleaned. Flowers planted along the boulevards. When strolling down the streets,
Reagan was “swept away by the warmth” of the Russian people until, passing by the Arbat,
he became stunned by the KGB’s rough treatment of the crowd.
His challenges at Moscow St. University were several. First, he sought gently to
critique the Soviet system and provide support for Gorbachev’s program. In order to make
his point, he relied on ideas and not dogma, focusing on what we share, how we are alike,
and how to become an example of freedom and democracy in a changing Soviet Union. He
became freedom’s advocate.
Presenting a firm yet indirect indictment of totalitarian regimes in general—and by
implication of the Soviet Union—Reagan emphasized that, “Freedom is the recognition that
no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth but that
every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been
put here for a reason and has something to offer.” He added that democracy is “less a
system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive.” It was a
“system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the
important things in life.”
In a reference to the American technological revolution, President Reagan explained
that it came about because of “freedom of thought, freedom of information, [and] freedom
of communication.” It was this freedom that had enabled “one of the largest personal
computer firms in the United States to be started by two college students, no older than
you, in the garage behind their home.” Where once totalitarianism was on the rise, now free
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markets were becoming “the model for growth,” and democracy was becoming the
“standard by which governments are measured.”
In America, President Reagan said, freedom was “something of a national pastime,”
citing the upcoming presidential election with thirteen major candidates in the two major
parties and the free press with its 1,000 television stations, 8,500 radio stations and 1,700
newspapers, “each one an independent, private enterprise, fiercely independent of the
Government.”
“Your generation is living in one of the most exciting, hopeful times in Soviet history.
It is a time when the first breath of freedom stirs the air.”
Ronald Reagan, May 31, 1988
But freedom was more than the economic successes of free enterprise or the
individual liberties called out in the Bill of Rights. It was an ideal. “Freedom is the right to
question and to change established ways of doing things,” President Reagan said.
Yet you can’t please everybody. Staunch conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Jr.
described Reagan’s retreat from his characterization of the U.S.S.R. as an evil empire as
“what Orwell called vaporization.” Buckley continued his rant, saying, “To greet the Soviet
Union as if it were no longer evil is on the order of changing our entire position toward
Adolf Hitler.” George Will was equally harsh: “But how wildly wrong he is about what is
happening in Moscow. Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West—actual
disarmament will follow—by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political
philosophy. Reagan blandly says that Gorbachev has just ‘come along.’ How is it that the
Soviet Union suddenly fell into the hands of such a pleasant fellow? Hey, good things
happen to nice people.”
Criticism aside, the President continued in the same vein of thought. The final
implication of his inspiring remarks was that the Soviet Union still lacked the freedoms and
democratic rights found in the West. For example, after defending the free market, Reagan
bravely noted that lacking the chance to learn from their own failures was “why it was so
hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions
of individuals working day and night to make their dreams come true.”
Closing, he suggested that it was time for Americans and the citizens of the Soviet
Union to become friends.
“In this Moscow spring…we may be allowed that hope: that freedom, like the
fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoy’s grave, will blossom forth at last in the rich
fertile soil of your people and your culture. We may be allowed to hope that the
marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising, ringing through, leading to a new
world of reconciliation, friendship, and peace.”
Ronald Reagan, May 31, 1988
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When President Reagan returned home he mused about his Moscow odyssey by
saying that he felt as though he had “dropped into a grand historical moment.” Thatcher
believed the summit would “encourage the course of history for years to come” and would
“enlarge freedom the world over.”
“God bless America,” Thatcher said upon concluding her thoughts.
We agree. God bless America.
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Jack Warner was the president and driving force behind Warner Brothers studios. When Ronald Reagan was
president of the Screen Actors Guild, he found himself across the negotiating table for countless hours with his
former boss. When Reagan ran for Governor of California in 1966, Warner said: “No, no, you have it all wrong. It’s
Jimmy Stewart for Governor and Ronald Reagan for Best Friend.”
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