They’re Called ‘the Only True Revolutionaries’ : Thatcher and Gorbachev: the Attraction of Opposites

One of the more remarkable dialogues in the history of statecraft will resume here tonight when the world’s top Communist, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, arrives for two days of talks with Britain’s Conservative “Iron Lady,” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

While they stand on opposite sides of the ideological divide, the two are “the only true revolutionary leaders in the modern world,” a senior European diplomat told his dinner guests the other night.

Both have been described as “conviction politicians.” But the affinity between the grocer’s daughter from a provincial, middle England market town and the ambitious son of a Ukrainian peasant goes deeper than their shared determination to revitalize their respective countries.

Personal Chemistry

Soviet and British sources alike who were present at one or more of their three previous meetings describe a powerful personal chemistry between them.

“Flirts Among Equals: The Misha and Maggie Show,” is how London’s Daily Mail characterized the relationship.

“The rapport between them was almost immediate,” said a senior Soviet diplomat who participated in their first meeting in December, 1984, when Gorbachev was still three months away from taking over the top Kremlin job. “This surprised us. We didn’t know Gorbachev well at that time--he was still largely involved with agriculture and party work, not foreign affairs. And for one of our officials to be so direct with a foreign leader was very, very unusual.

“But she responded immediately to his candor,” the diplomat continued. “The rapport just grew. . . . I think he admired her boldness and her determination. Such a conservative society! Such a conservative leader! But that day she was so bound and determined to bring change that she really compelled our respect.”

Qualities Recognized

Thatcher described that first meeting in an interview published in Pravda, the Communist party daily, last week: “I will never forget it. . . . One recognized (in Gorbachev) a kind of unique person, a strong personality, and we had the kind of discussion which is really quite rare between politicians.”

After that meeting, Thatcher declared: “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.”

A British source intimately involved in Thatcher’s subsequent visit to Moscow in 1987 recalls how the prime minister kept an embassy full of prominent Soviet luncheon guests waiting for nearly 90 minutes as her meeting with Gorbachev went long over schedule. When she finally arrived, she only stayed for about 20 minutes before returning to the Kremlin.

“She just couldn’t wait” to continue her talks with the Soviet leader, the British official said.

Both ‘Genuine Radicals’

“They’re both genuine radicals,” this source added. “Both are in the business of change. They’re both impatient. They’re both dogged--their reaction to an obstacle or a setback is to try harder. . . . They both love an argument. Sometimes with them I think the enjoyment of the argument transcends the differences of opinion. . . . Certainly they have respect for each other.”

There is no question that the two have deep differences over many international questions. While Gorbachev wants to see market forces play a bigger role in his country’s economy, his views are in no danger of being mistaken for unbridled Thatcherism.

The Soviet leader urges movement toward a nuclear-free world; Thatcher, whom Pravda first dubbed “the Iron Lady,” considers this vision a chimera.

“Her attachment to nuclear deterrence gets in Gorbachev’s way,” and it’s potentially a growing problem in their relationship, said a senior British source.

During their upcoming round of talks, Thatcher is expected to press Gorbachev to “come clean” on Soviet stockpiles of chemical weapons, as well as defending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s proposed program of modernizing short-range nuclear weapons.

Those acknowledged differences aside, however, officials who have witnessed them say Thatcher-Gorbachev arguments have a theatrical quality about them as well. Both leaders are accomplished actors, capable of bullying, then buttering-up without skipping a beat.

‘She Gave Him a Hard Time’

In his book, “Mrs. Thatcher’s Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era,” political commentator Peter Jenkins writes of the 1987 trip that Thatcher “treated (Gorbachev), it seems, pretty much as she was accustomed to treat anyone else. She gave him a hard time. ‘At moments I thought he was going to throw us out,’ said an aide, ‘but then one or the other would laugh and break the tension.’

“ ‘Oh, aren’t I awful?’ she would say.’

Gorbachev is a table pounder and finger pointer. “He’s very good at feigning anger or feigning impatience,” said a British diplomat who has watched him closely.

An aide described Thatcher as resembling one of his aging aunts, with “the sometimes annoying, if necessary, habit of repeating her point over and over ad nauseum.” She also stares intently into her interlocutor’s eyes--”the more important the point, the more intense the eye contact,” as another British source put it.

“Both are extremely quick in seeing where a line of argument is going,” this source added. “And as a result of that, both are prone to interrupt. This makes it hell for the interpreters!”

Both flattery and formality have been notably absent in Thatcher-Gorbachev meetings. “We have always got on well together because we are very, very direct,” Thatcher once told a British Broadcasting Corp. interviewer.

As to their sometimes aggressive debates, she commented: “You have to have arguments--passionate arguments. When you feel very strongly about things, you naturally raise your voice and put more passion into your tone.”

Popular in Both Nations

A Thatcher aide described both leaders as “dedicated political tacticians” rather than visionaries. And whatever their respective political problems at home, poll results indicate that the tactics of each are at least popular in the homeland of the other.

After a survey of 200,000 readers, the Soviet newspaper Literary Gazette recently declared Thatcher “woman of the year” for 1988. And here in Britain, a Gallup poll published over the weekend shows that British voters are now about evenly split as to whether Gorbachev’s Soviet Union or the United States is the more likely to keep the peace.