Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [282]
Later that morning I saw Mr Kâ dâ r. He had only four more years left in power. But he was still vigorous and very much in charge. He was a square-faced, large-boned, healthy complexioned man with an air of easy authority and an apparently reasonable frame of mind in discussion. He did not rely, as so many other communist leaders did, on serried ranks of advisers and we were accompanied only by interpreters.
The main message I tried to get across was that the West and President Reagan personally were genuinely seeking disarmament. What we wanted was to preserve our own security, but at a lower level of weaponry, particularly nuclear weaponry. I told Mr Kâdâr that I knew from President Reagan, who was a close friend, just how personally hurt he had been by an earlier response to an attempt to get a better understanding with the Soviet Union. I recalled the tone in which President Reagan had spoken, when the two of us were walking in the garden of the United States Embassy in Paris, about a personal letter he had written in his own hand to President Brezhnev telling him of America’s desire for peace. He awaited the reply eagerly. It took a long time to come. And when it did, it consisted of just the standard, official typed letter, short and dismissive. Since then, I added, President Reagan had indeed been increasing the military strength of the United States but he wanted relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact improved.
I went on to try to gain a clearer picture from Mr Kâdâr of the situation in the USSR. He told me about the personalities of the Soviet leaders he had known: as he put it ‘the Russians are individuals too’. Khrushchev was impulsive. Mr Kádár had told him that he was like an old Bolshevik — instead of saying ‘Good Morning’, he tended to punch you in the stomach. Brezhnev he described as very emotional. Andropov was different again. He described him as very tough and calculating, but someone who was capable of listening. He confirmed that Andropov was ill, but said that he was mentally intact and never stopped working. He also told me that his condition was improving but that the Hungarians were crossing their fingers for him. He added that the Soviet leadership was becoming stronger and younger people were entering it, that they wanted peace and were prepared to have talks about it. Of course, this picture of life in the Kremlin could hardly be taken at face value, given Mr Ká dá r’s long association with Mr Andropov. And given that Andropov died six days later, what he told me about the latter’s health was either wildly optimistic or a diplomatic lie. But his insights were interesting nonetheless.
So too was my first experience of what life in a communist country was like for ordinary people. On Saturday morning I visited Budapest’s large central covered market, talked to stall holders and shoppers and bought honey, pimentos and spices. Huge friendly crowds gathered, in spite of the intense cold. The market was better stocked than I imagined it would be. But what remains in my mind even to this day was the warm, even passionate, welcome from the crowd of shoppers. It was not just that I was a western head of government that evoked this, but my reputation as a strong anti-communist political leader — a reputation further burnished internationally by the Falklands War two years before and even by the Soviet attacks on me as the Iron Lady.