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instincts were of less importance, I believe that without trusting his instincts he would not have
been able to go as far as he did. Another important factor in building his rapport with Reagan and
other Western leaders was his healthy respect for people elected through a democratic process. I
remember how in Geneva, when one of his advisers began to over-eagerly criticize Reagan,
Gorbachev said rather curtly that Reagan was the elected President of the United States and we
had to deal with him.
The relationship between the two men was of course often bumpy and had its ups and downs.
But it was always respectful and equal. The assertion of some Russian scholars, such as Dr.
Anatoly Utkin of the USA and Canada Institute, and of Vladislav Zubok in this book that Soviet
leaders developed some kind of psychological dependence on their US counterparts and
therefore became almost subservient to them, is based entirely on selective out-of-context
quoting of literature. As someone who was present during practically all their substantive talks, I
believe it is groundless; this is also the view of my State Department colleagues who shared my
interpretation duties and with whom I subsequently discussed the matter.
The product both of the human rapport and of the new political direction was trust, which
gradually became a significant factor in US-Soviet relations. Surprisingly to some observers, the
idea of trust has now been revived in the relationship of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin,
and both presidents have run into some criticism for being ―naive.‖ But trust is not the same as
blind faith. While the latter is something no statesman can afford, the former is indispensable to
relations between civilized nations.
The new thinking in the Soviet Union, reciprocated by the West's willingness to engage and
negotiate, and the gradually emerging trust in relations between the leaders of the great powers
set the stage for a new relationship between the world's major power centers. In this new context,
many of the things that seemed all-important at the height of the Cold War gradually lost their
value. This ―devaluation‖ concerned the importance of ideology in international relations, third
world alliances, and the value of the nuclear arsenals conceived and built in a confrontational
environment.
In his paper, Professor Georgiy I. Mirsky recalls a conference at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in 1987, convened at Shevardnadze's initiative in order to give voice to non-MFA
thinkers on foreign policy issues. It was an eye-opener for many in the ministry and one of the
first times that the concept of deideologizing international relations was discussed openly and
favorably. In such a context, the struggle for influence in the third world no longer appeared to