Ron and Gorby Remember the Good Old Days
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and former President Ronald Reagan toasted the old days today, recalling how they attacked the Cold War together at their first summit five years ago.
Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, stayed away from the Moscow reunion with Reagan and his wife, Nancy. The Soviet leader said she was ill. The two women had a strained relationship during Reagan and Gorbachev’s five summits between 1985 and 1988.
Reagan, in the Soviet Union as Gorbachev’s personal guest, toasted the leader of the country he once called the “evil empire” during a luncheon at the home of U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock.
Reagan said he and Gorbachev had reminisced at a meeting Monday in the Kremlin about their first summit at Geneva in 1985, when they sat by a roaring fire and decided to warm up the frigid superpower relationship.
“Who would have thought that the warmth of that fireplace in Geneva would melt the ice of the Cold War,” Reagan said.
Gorbachev, in his toast, said trust on both sides had enabled them to change an adversarial relationship that had existed for decades.
“I welcome Reagan as a man who did a lot to make relations with our country the way they are now,” he said.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
