Ronald Reagan: Good Chemistry

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Yes, he answers, he'd heard the great chorus of bells ringing especially for him from the Danilov Monastery, a spiritual island in the embrace of Moscow. There he had summoned all his stagecraft to read lines from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "The secret of the pacifying Russian countryside . . . is in the churches . . ."

"George Shultz told me about Red Square," the President confides over the phone. "I wanted to see it. I asked the General Secretary if he could take me by for a look, and when we went there we had that little walk. I was very impressed by the size and expanse of the square. And there were several groups of people out there, and we stopped to talk with them. Here, too, they were so warm and enthusiastic, just like all the others I had met in the city."

But why hadn't he asked to go see the body of Lenin in the tomb on Red Square? He was so close. "The tomb is only open four days," Reagan says. "And the line was so long we did not want to interrupt it." The voice of Dutch Reagan seems to grow a little tentative. Was there an ideological limit to photo opportunities he would allow in this Kremlin pilgrimage? Was there a deal with his host, spoken or not, that Lenin and Reagan should lie and stand apart? Reagan doesn't say.

That Reagan believes Gorbachev is far removed from Lenin is plain. The friendship with Gorbachev, he admits, is real. "There is good chemistry between us," Reagan says. "I think progress has been made by us. I think that through this succession of summits there is a much better understanding. I think we made gains this time."

There is something so personal about this summit, the President explains. Systems may be brutish, bureaucrats may fail. But men can sometimes transcend all that, transcend even the forces of history that seem destined to keep them apart. The idea that he would ever go to Moscow was only a dim possibility until he met Gorbachev. Then it sprang to life in an intimate inkling.

At their Geneva summit in 1985, Reagan recalls, "we went down to the pool house which I had prepared and we sat in front of the open fire and talked. On the way back, I turned to him and said, 'You've never been to our country. I'd like you to see it.' And he said, 'All right. I'll go to Washington for a summit. But then let's have another one in Moscow and you can see our country.' When we went back and told the others about two summits they nearly fell out of their chairs. That was the first time I really had a feeling that I would see Moscow."

From then it was only a matter of time before Reagan would be face to face with Lenin's legacy. He and Nancy entered the Kremlin on a red carpet that led up a grand staircase toward St. George's Hall. Reagan looked up and the whole world seemed filled by the huge and powerful painting of Lenin addressing the Communist Youth League in 1920. Reagan never missed a step. "I sort of expected him to be there," Reagan says. "I knew I was going to see a lot of Lenin."