Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008
From: "W. George Krasnow " <president92@gmail.com>
Subject: Suzanne Massie talks on Ronald Reagan's views on Russians
"Ronald Reagan's legacy in regard to Russia was largely destroyed, certainly during the past eight years," said Suzanne Massie in an allusion to the Republican presidency that likes to claim that legacy. She did so during her presentation ,"Reagan's Evolving Views on Russians and their Relevance Today," at Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C. on December 1, 2008.
An expert on Russian culture and the author of best-selling books, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, as well as other books dealing with Russia's history and culture, Massie was born in New York city in the family of a Swiss diplomat. Educated at Vassar College and the Sorbonne, she was a fellow of the Harvard Russian Research Center. Fluent in Russian, French, and English, she reminisced about the years of 1984-1988 when she was an adviser to President Reagan.
She met Reagan for the first time in January 1984, before she travelled to the USSR on a back channel mission to explore whether Soviet leaders would be willing to resume talks on the lapsed cultural exchange.
Her mission was so successful and Reagan invited her again. "Since then I met the president 21 more times, and had three private lunches with him and Mrs. Reagan," says Massie. Some of his advisers were jealous of her easy access to the White House and wondered what she and the president talked about. When the media would ask her, her standard answer was "About Russian culture." "Culture" was the cover word for all-important art of intercultural communication that has become indispensable in global politics.
During those intercultural encounters, Massie educated Reagan about something that the majority of American Sovietologists ignored. For instance, in spite of the official atheism, one third of Soviet people were not afraid to admit that they regarded themselves Orthodox Christians. "The 50 million Christians was three times as many as the Communist Party members", remarked Massie and added: "Now, twenty years later, two thirds of the Russians regard themselves Orthodox Christians."
Massie attaches singular importance to the influence of Orthodox Christianity on the character of the Russian people even when they chafed under communism and their religious beliefs were distorted. According to her, Reagan, as a "deeply religious man who did not wear his convictions on his sleeve," eagerly absorbed her instruction. It helped him later, in his encounters to treat Gorbachev with greater respect and openness. Massie revealed that it was she who introduced Reagan to the Russian expression "Trust, but verify" that he loved to use. She also taught him to pronounce it properly in Russian: "doveryai no proveryai".
At a time when the predominantly liberal US mass media routinely associated the adjective "Soviet" with things positive and "Russian" with the negative ("Soviet sputniks" and "Soviet doctors" versus "Russian tanks" and "Russian aggression"), Reagan understood the difference and issued an executive order not to confuse the two.
Although he had once called the USSR "the Evil Empire," Reagan treated Soviet leaders as individuals and was always courteous with them. Massie approvingly quoted the words of Senator John Danforth who as an Episcopal priest officiated at Reagan's funeral service in 2004 “ Reagan never turned an adversary into an enemy”.
Massie does not claim that she knew Reagan very well or that hers was the only influence on him in regard to Russia. After all, in spite of his acting career, he was the "most reserved, reclusive and even mysterious man always prone to shut up like a clam." And he always made his decisions himself, in the deep recesses of his mind. Once, before his meeting with Gorbachev in Reykjavík in 1986, Massie gathered her courage to ask Reagan what he most wanted from the Russians. "I want to get rid of those nuclear weapons—every one" Reagan replied.
These great achievements of Reagan's presidency, says Massie, were based on his ability to think "out of a box." That ability certainly helped him to match Gorbachev in mutual efforts to end the Cold War.
Has Reagan's legacy been followed? Massie asked turning to the relevance of Reagan's views for today. No, it has not. The nuclear arms race has not been squashed and it threatens to escalate again. NATO has expanded geographically and functionally. The August war in the Caucasus unleashed hysteria of Russia bashing both in US government and the media. Without denying worrisome authoritarian trends or mistakes on the part of new Russian leaders, Massie believes that it was basically our fault that "we have managed to bring out the worst from Russians." Instead of thinking, like Reagan, "out of a box," his successors have boxed themselves into the mold of cold war thinking.
Does Ms Massie have an advice to President-Elect Barack Obama? She surely does. "Take bold steps, like Reagan, to chart a new foreign policy course toward Russia. Stop Russia bashing. Stop lecturing new Russian leaders. Stop looking into their eyes only to find the KGB writ large in them." As to the Secretary Designate of U.S. Department of State, Hillary Clinton,Ms Massie has a very special advice: Learn quickly how to properly pronounce the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's name. That remark was met with a rousing applause in the audience.
Reported by W. George Krasnow
President, RAGA
www.raga.org.