XX. Meeting of the PCC, Budapest, 10-11 June 1986
Editorial Note 

Fifteen months since Gorbachev's assumption of power, the meeting showed how radically the Soviet policy had begun to change but not yet the consequences of the change.

The PCC met under the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, about which Gorbachev felt compelled to report in detail to the assembled leaders. By impressing upon them what a boundless catastrophe a nuclear war in Europe would be, the disaster had poured cold water on the heads of the Warsaw Pact's military planners. In drawing the obvious conclusion that, at the very least, its exercises ought to be more realistic, Jaruzelski pertinently observed that "no one should have the idea that in a nuclear war it would be possible to drink coffee in Paris in 4-5 days."

In announcing Soviet intent to promote a "new quality of relations" within the alliance, Gorbachev proclaimed that "it was not necessary that all initiatives originate with the Soviet Union." The initiatives that did originate with it, particularly the proposal for proportional (rather than across-the-board) reductions of conventional armaments nevertheless encountered the usual Romanian opposition, resulting in familiar bickering about the text of the public declaration that the PCC would issue. During the discussion, Gorbachev proved more inclined to compromise than had his predecessors.

In a preview of things to come, the Soviet leader acquainted his audience with what he described an unprecedented meeting he had called at the Soviet foreign ministry, a bastion of "old thinking," in trying to bring in political fresh air. He was not specific about the structural reorganization he envisaged, although the emphasis he placed on the ministry's future European role was suggestive of a departure from Soviet global ambitions. The announced creation of a special department for arms control and disarmament-analogous to the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency-indicated Gorbachev's top priority in foreign and security policy.

Suggestive of East Germany's ambition to take a leading role in the Warsaw Pact, Honecker positioned himself as something of the Soviet bloc's foremost expert on relations with West Germany as well as a champion of his country's new "special relations" with its main enemy. He took it upon himself to warn his colleagues against leaving West Germany "outside" the common "European house" that Gorbachev was intent to build. Confiding in his colleagues his hope that the West German social democrats (SPD) would soon get to power, he praised what he said was the "good work" he had been doing "almost daily" with them as well as with other "forces left of the CDU," the current ruling party.

Gorbachev's speech struck notes that had been previously unheard of. Entirely new in the Soviet political discourse was his insistence on avoiding "unattainable goals," such as isolating the United States or dividing the West-thus far the two defining features of Soviet policy-or trying to convert the West to "our faith." Nothing less than a "deep change of the entire system of interstate relations" was Gorbachev's proclaimed goal that would put relations with adversaries on a stable basis and achieve cooperation with them.

The meeting was emblematic of the high degree of confidence that Gorbachev and other communist leaders initially placed in his new foreign and security policy as well as in the transformation of the Warsaw Pact into a true partnership. Some of them-most obviously Honecker-tended to regard the drastic changes he set into motion as evidence of newly found strength rather than of weakness. There was no premonition of the alliance's approaching catastrophe.

Vojtech Mastny