Word: sovietize
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Gorbachev had another idea. Within hours of the U.S. announcement, he declared the Soviet Union would launch a five-month moratorium on nuclear testing. It would begin on Aug. 6, the 40th anniversary of the atom-bomb detonation over Hiroshima, and would be extended indefinitely if Washington joined in. The U.S. rejected the offer. For one thing, Shultz noted as he arrived in Helsinki, the Soviets had proclaimed such a unilateral moratorium before, in the late '50s and early '60s, and then had abruptly begun what he described as "the largest nuclear-testing program ever undertaken." Nonetheless, the Gorbachev proposal...
...three-day conference, the 266 participants would see Soviet p.r. skills raised to new heights. Not that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union broke fresh ground on issues of substance; neither side departed from long-held positions on disarmament, human rights and various regional conflicts. But both Shultz and Shevardnadze seemed intent on moderating superpower rhetoric, even as each side blamed the other for weakening the Helsinki Accords, once considered a milestone of détente (see box). In their private conversations, they moved easily into a rapport that, as a senior Administration official later put it, "expressed the will...
...gave his maiden speech to the conferees. He read his 25-minute address woodenly and slowly, raising his eyes to his audience only four times. His tone was quiet and moderate, but in terms of content the speech could easily have been written by his unbending predecessor, Gromyko, now Soviet President. Pleading for a return to détente, Shevardnadze launched into a predictable litany of accusations against the U.S. for deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, for "violating" Strategic Arms Limitation treaties and for pushing ahead with the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, "by whatever...
Shultz devoted the bulk of his 20-minute speech to another familiar topic: U.S. displeasure with Moscow's human rights record. He named 22 Soviet citizens victimized by Moscow over the past decade. Among them were Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov, Physicist Yuri Orlov, Dissident Anatoli Shcharansky and more obscure citizens like Yuri Balovlenkov, whose "crime" was to marry a U.S. citizen...
Beneath the surface, however, both speeches stressed the need for cooperation by the superpowers. "We will have to obtain peace," said Shevardnadze. "The U.S. and the Soviet Union have an opportunity to help build a more secure world," said Shultz...