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by Pavel Palazhchenko. Mr. Palazhchenko participated in all US-Soviet Summit talks leading to the end of the Cold War. He translated key 1-1 meetings between Presidents Reagan and Bush with the leaders of the U.S.S.R., including breakthroughs on nuclear disarmament. Mr. Palazhchenko is the author of “My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter.” 

I don’t really like lyricisms, pretty phrases, but to describe what occurred 27 years ago, in the autumn of 1991, one could use the words of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the surface of the Moon: “A giant leap for mankind”. I had the opportunity to participate in reaching the agreement that rescued humanity from huge hoards of tactical nuclear weapons. An agreement that was achieved without any “tug of war”, or years of negotiations, or political games. 

I remember clearly how it began. On the morning of September 27th, the Office of the President of the U.S.S.R. received a phone call from the U.S. Embassy, with the message that Jim Collins, the chargé d'affaires, would like to deliver a letter from President Bush to President Gorbachev, and to do so as soon as possible. Collins only added that the letter concerns nuclear disarmament.  

One hour later A.S. Chernyaev, the head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Office of the Soviet President, met Collins. He came with an aide, I accompanied Chernyaev. Without preamble and unnecessary words Collins gave Chernyaev the text of the letter. A quick scan of the text was enough to recognize that the subject matter concerned an unprecedented step. 

On that day Gorbachev was conducting talks with Egyptian President Mubarak. My translation of Bush’s letter was shown to him in a break between the negotiations and their official lunch. He asked Chernyaev to “urgently assemble military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, and to discuss”. We began calling on government offices. Shaposhnikov, the Minister of Defense, was not available, so the recently appointed Chief of General Staff Lobov and General Ladygin, the Head of the Treaty and Legal Department, arrived. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was represented by V.P. Karpov, Deputy Minister, with whom I was well acquainted through joint work.  

For ten-fifteen minutes they read and re-read the text, made notes. The scale of Bush’s initiative was quite impressive. In short, it concerned the elimination of the entire arsenal of American ground-based tactical nuclear weapons, including those that were deployed abroad; the decommissioning of the tactical nuclear arms of surface ships and attack submarines (some of them would be destroyed, some - centralized at storage sites); the removal from combat duty of strategic bombers and ICBMs, which were to be destroyed according to the START I treaty that was signed two months prior; and the termination of a number of modernization programs for American strategic nuclear weapons. For the first time the American President responded to the call of the U.S.S.R. to include the “Tomahawk” sea-based cruise missiles in the process of nuclear disarmament. Bush also proposed to mutually abandon ICBMs with multiple reentry vehicle payloads. All other steps were taken unilaterally, at the same time Bush wrote that he was counting on similar steps by the U.S.S.R. 

“What do you think?” - Chernyaev asked those gathered. Anatoliy Sergeevich always spoke succinctly with military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, and he expected short and clear answers. But the interlocutors were silent. Silence hung over the room for a while, and Ladygin finally said: 

“If this happens, then the strategic parity, as we know it, would seize to exist.” 

That statement sounded strange. The Bush initiative involved primarily tactical nuclear weapons; the only proposal for strategic offensive arms, which our military had always considered unacceptable, concerned the elimination of ICBMs with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). But that was not put forward as a condition, which I whispered to Chernyaev. 

Chernyaev was visibly upset. With a sigh, he asked: 

“Tell me, do you think that the Americans are proposing this in order to harm us, or because they want to reduce the nuclear danger?” 

Silence fell again. Finally, Karpov said: 

“I think it’s the second.” 

I knew Victor Pavlovich from different sides and at different moments. But at this moment I was proud of him. Without further ado, he said what needed to be said. 

As the Americans later revealed, they began the development of this initiative immediately after the coup. For obvious reasons, they were very worried about the problem of tactical nuclear weapons in the republics - how securely they were controlled and what would happen if they find themselves in the hands of independent states. This alarm had not yet covered strategic nuclear weapons - the Americans assumed that in any scenario the issue of their "centralization" would be determined (as it turned out later, they were wrong - this issue was not resolved in Belovezhskaya Pushcha). And perhaps the most important thing for them was that they were counting on similar reciprocal steps by the U.S.S.R. 

Meanwhile, Collins communicated that Bush would like to talk on the phone with Gorbachev, before making a televised address, in which he planned to announce the American steps. We immediately began arranging the call. Later, Chernyaev recalled that the military "sketched all kinds of quibbles and questions." But even before the conversation with Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev decided to create a commission headed by I.S. Silaev, who then served as acting Prime Minister (the cabinet had been dissolved after the coup), to prepare a response to the American steps. In addition to the heads of departments, A.N. Yakovlev was included into this commission.  

The telephone conversation took place in the evening, Moscow time (in America, the working day was just beginning). Gorbachev started, it seemed to me, somewhat cautiously, welcomed Bush’s initiative, and then began to ask the questions, which were "outlined" by the military. Bush, as usual, was ready to talk, and he had the answers. They finished on a positive note. "I see," said Gorbachev, "that this is a major initiative of the President of the U.S.A., and I have already ordered the creation of a commission to prepare our response." 

The response, agreed with all departments, was prepared in one week - by October 5th. Gorbachev announced it in a speech on television, having informed Bush of this content in advance. Some measures were mirrored (the elimination of nuclear warheads of tactical missiles, the removal from combat duty of the strategic offensive weapons that were to be reduced), others - “specifically ours” (the elimination of atomic mines that the Americans had long abandoned), some - by inviting the U.S. to similar steps (accelerating the process of reducing strategic offensive arms, a moratorium on nuclear tests — the 

Americans agreed with the first, and - not immediately - with the second). The answer was strong, very worthy. 

How many nuclear weapons were eliminated as a result of these mutual unilateral measures? According to the U.S.A., on their part - more than 4 thousand. We had more of this kind made, so, I suppose, more was destroyed. Russia, as far as I know, did not provide official data, but the military said in the early 2000s that all reductions were implemented. 

Mutual unilateral measures are criticized from time to time. Firstly, because of their lack of control, and secondly, possible reversibility. But from the point of view of what was achieved as a result of this breakthrough, this, in my opinion, is chicanery. In any case, since 2007, the parties have not made any claims to each other regarding the implementation of the measures announced back then. Although it must be admitted that these types of weapons are not prohibited, and who knows what can happen in the current heated atmosphere. 

But the fact remains. Without lengthy, exhausting negotiations (it took nine years to prepare the START I Treaty), agreements were reached that liberated humanity from several thousand “atomic bombs” accumulated during the Cold War years. A really giant leap. And although I do not think that something like this is possible now, in the future this experience will certainly come in handy. 

Watch President George H.W. Bush present this initiative, which resulted in the elimination of ~8,000 Russian and American Nukes and de-escalation of Nuclear postures

In November of 1983 a British spy had an urgent warning that reached the Prime Minister - Margaret Thatcher. Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, KGB’s London Station Chief, who was also in the service of the MI6, had insight from the Kremlin: the Russians believed that a nuclear strike on their territory was imminent[1]. British Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong briefed Thatcher that secret information coming from the top echelons in Moscow "shows the concern of the Soviet Union over a possible NATO surprise attack mounted under cover of exercises". The Kremlin gave instructions for aircraft in East Germany and Poland to be fitted with nuclear weapons. In addition, SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear missiles, capable of hitting targets in most of Europe in under 10 minutes, were placed on heightened alert, while Soviet submarines carrying nuclear ballistic missiles were sent under the Arctic ice so that they could avoid detection. Further, the Soviets' response did not appear to be an exercise because it "took place over a major Soviet holiday[2], it had the form of actual military activity and alerts, not just war-gaming, and it was limited geographically to the area, central Europe, covered by the NATO exercise which the Soviet Union was monitoring". Thatcher was so concerned by how close things had come to nuclear war that she ordered British officials to “urgently consider how to approach the Americans on the question of possible Soviet misapprehensions about a surprise NATO attack.” The British Prime Minister realized the causality – she was directly involved in Codename “Able Archer 83”.

6 months after Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States, in May of 1981, during a closed-session meeting of senior KGB officers and Soviet leaders, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov stated their belief that the United States was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR. To combat this threat, Andropov announced that the KGB and the GRU (military foreign intelligence) would begin Operation RYaN. РЯН was a Russian acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение). Operation RYaN became the largest and most comprehensive peacetime intelligence-gathering operation in Soviet history. Agents abroad were charged with monitoring the figures who would decide to launch a nuclear attack, the service and technical personnel who would implement the attack, and the facilities from which the attack could originate. It is possible that the goal of Operation RYaN was to discover the first intent of a nuclear attack - and then preempt it.

Gordievsky, who became the highest-ranking KGB official ever to defect, attributed the impetus for the implementation of Operation RYaN to "a potentially lethal combination of Reaganite rhetoric and Soviet paranoia." According to the CIA, a Czechoslovak intelligence officer—who worked closely with the KGB on RYaN "noted that his counterparts were obsessed with the historical parallel between 1941 (when Nazi Germany launched “blitzkrieg” – a surprise attack that devastated most of the Soviet military and civilian infrastructure located in Europe) and 1983. He believed this feeling was almost visceral, not intellectual, and deeply affected Soviet thinking."

The leaders in the Kremlin believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan could push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history" – the words the American President used in his speech to the British House of Commons in June of 1982. In March of 1983, during what became known as the “Evil Empire” speech, Reagan made the case for deploying NATO nuclear-armed missiles in Western Europe as a response to the Soviets installing new nuclear-armed missiles in Eastern Europe. A few days later the leader of the United States publicly announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, which the media called “Reagan’s Star Wars”.

Codename “Able Archer 83” was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the US military attaining simulated DEFCON 1 nuclear attack. Coordinated from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) headquarters, it involved NATO forces throughout Western Europe, beginning on November 7 and lasting for five days. The 1983 exercise introduced several new elements not seen in previous years, including a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, and the participation of heads of government. This increase in realism, combined with deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo and military to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike. A KGB telegram described one likely scenario:

“In view of the fact that the measures involved in State Orange [a phase in “Able Archer”; a nuclear attack within 36 hours] have to be carried out with the utmost secrecy (under the guise of maneuvers, training, etc.) in the shortest possible time, without disclosing the content of operational plans, it is highly probable that the battle alarm system may be used to prepare a surprise RYaN [nuclear attack] in peacetime”.

According to a 2013 analysis by the National Security Archive: 

“The Able Archer controversy has featured numerous descriptions of the exercise as so "routine" that it could not have alarmed the Soviet military and political leadership. Today's posting reveals multiple non-routine elements, including: a 170-flight, radio-silent air lift of 19,000 US soldiers to Europe, the shifting of commands from "Permanent War Headquarters to the Alternate War Headquarters," the practice of "new nuclear weapons release procedures," including consultations with cells in Washington and London, and the "sensitive, political issue" of numerous "slips of the tongue" in which B-52 sorties were referred to as nuclear "strikes." These variations, seen through "the fog of nuclear exercises," did in fact match official Soviet intelligence-defined indicators for "possible operations by the USA and its allies on British territory in preparation for RYaN"—the KGB code name for a feared Western nuclear missile attack.”

Upon learning that U.S. nuclear activity mirrored its hypothesized first strike activity, the Moscow Centre sent its residencies a flash telegram on November 8 or 9 (Gordievsky cannot recall which), incorrectly reporting an alert on American bases and frantically asking for further information regarding an American first strike. The alert precisely coincided with the seven- to ten-day period estimated between NATO's preliminary decision and an actual strike. This was the peak of the war scare. Lt. Gen. Leonard H. Perroots is credited with the decision not to place NATO forces on increased alert despite increased Soviet readiness, thereby reducing the possibility of a nuclear exchange. Soviet fears of the attack ended as the Able Archer exercise finished on November 11. 

Historians such as Thomas Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive, and Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College, have since argued that Able Archer 83 was one of the times when the world has come closest to nuclear war. Paul Dibb, a former director of the Australian Joint Intelligence Organization, suggested that the 1983 exercise posed a more substantial threat than the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Able Archer could have triggered the ultimate unintended catastrophe, and with prompt nuclear strike capacities on both the US and Soviet sides, orders of magnitude greater than in 1962".

By the end of 1983 the U.S. President was a changed man. Some historians, including Beth A. Fischer in her book “The Reagan Reversal”, point to“Able Archer 83” as profoundly affecting President Reagan and his turn from a policy of confrontation towards the Soviet Union to a policy of rapprochement. The thoughts of Reagan and those around him provide important insight upon the nuclear scare and its subsequent ripples. 

In October 1983, nearly 3 million people across western Europe protested nuclear missile deployments and demanded an end to the arms race. On the 10th, just over a month before “Able Archer 83”, President Reagan viewed a television film about a portion of America being destroyed by a nuclear attack - “The Day After”. In his diary, the president wrote that the movie "left me greatly depressed".

Later in October, Reagan attended a Pentagon briefing on nuclear war. During his first two years in office, he had refused to take part in such briefings, feeling it irrelevant to rehearse a nuclear apocalypse; finally, he consented to the Pentagon official requests. According to officials present, the briefing "chastened" Reagan. According to the then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, "[Reagan] had a very deep revulsion to the whole idea of nuclear weapons ... These war games brought home to anybody the fantastically horrible events that would surround such a scenario." Reagan described the briefing in his own words: "A most sobering experience with Caspar Weinberger and Gen. Vesseyin the Situation Room, a briefing on our complete plan in the event of a nuclear attack." 

These two glimpses of nuclear war primed Reagan for “Able Archer 83”, giving him a very specific picture of what would occur had the situation further developed. After receiving intelligence reports from sources, including Gordievsky, it was clear that the Soviets were unnerved. Reagan wrote:

“We had many contingency plans for responding to a nuclear attack. But everything would happen so fast that I wondered how much planning or reason could be applied in such a crisis... Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?”

Further, in his memoirs, Reagan, without specifically mentioning “Able Archer 83”, wrote of a 1983 realization:

“Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did...During my first years in Washington, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike...Well, if that was the case, I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us."

Thankfully, Ronald Reagan made it his mission to end the Cold War – which he accomplished.

According to the memoirs of the then Secretary of State George Schultz, in December of 1983 Reagan was thinking anew about his dream of eliminating all nuclear weapons. “This is his instinct and his belief,” Schultz told his aides at the State Department. “The President has noticed that no one pays any attention to him in spite of the fact that he speaks about this idea publicly and privately.” 

"My dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth", said the 40th President of the United States, during his Address to the Nation and other countries on U.S.-Soviet relations, in January of 1984. In this speech he stated: “We do not threaten the Soviet Union”, and stressed “dialogue”, “constructive cooperation” and “peaceful competition”.

Further, Reagan said: “Above all … people don't make wars. People want to raise their children in a world without fear and without war. They want to have some of the good things over and above bare subsistence that make life worth living. They want to work at some craft, trade, or profession that gives them satisfaction and a sense of worth. Their common interests cross all borders. If the Soviet Government wants peace, then there will be peace. Together we can strengthen peace, reduce the level of arms, and know in doing so that we have helped fulfill the hopes and dreams of those we represent and, indeed, of people everywhere. Let us begin now.”

President Reagan engaged Mikhail Gorbachev and began discussing nuclear disarmament face-to-face with the Russian leader during their Geneva Summit in 1985. 

By 1987 the two leaders signed the INF Treaty, which eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (310–620 mi) (short-range) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). By May 1991, 2,692 missiles were eliminated, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.

Hopefully current leaders in the White House and the Kremlin can learn from the greats who came before them and take steps to deescalating the very dangerous situation that we find ourselves in today.
   

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/02/nato-war-game-nuclear-disaster 

[2] During the Cold War the running joke during the Superbowl Sunday broadcasts was that “if the Russkies want to get us – now’s the time, since everyone is glued to their TVs”. November 7th was Revolution Day in the USSR.