“Reagan’s advisor,” who told how the West betrayed Gorbachev, was not really an adviser

Suzanne Massie has never been an adviser to Reagan or an employee of the State Department. She is a historian, author of the famous book on Russian culture, The Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, and has worked at the Harvard Center for Russian Studies. Before negotiations with Gorbachev, Reagan consulted with her several times. It is believed that it was she who taught the president the Russian proverb “trust but verify”, which he sported during the negotiations. In the curriculum vitae on her own website it saysthat she met Reagan 21 times. But her cooperation with the White House is limited to these consultations. Once she sent a letter to Reagan with a proposal to appoint her as ambassador to the USSR, but was refused – as she believes, on the grounds that the post had already been taken.

In the press, you can find references to Massy as “the woman who stopped the Cold War,” but the idea of ​​some special significance of her personality is based mainly on what she herself told about herself. In 2013, her memoir was published entitled “Trust but Verify. Reagan, Russia and me. ” True, it is impossible to verify the information presented there. In particular, she approvesthat since 1984 she served as an unofficial emissary of the White House and through her the parties exchanged delicate information – for example, when Reagan’s son Ron Jr. was not given a Soviet visa, she found out that it was revenge for showing the television series America about how the USSR is occupying the United States.

But one way or another, Massy, ​​as an invited consultant from the outside, most likely could not be aware of the gentlemen’s agreements between the United States and the USSR that were not recorded on paper, so her statement of deception can hardly be anything more than her personal opinion. Gorbachev himself considers NATO enlargement was a major strategic mistake of the West, but approvesthat there was no deception, betrayal or violation of a promise, and he called the betrayal version a myth, to which the press had a hand.

In May 2021, Massy turned to Vladimir Putin with a request to grant her Russian citizenship; press secretary Dmitry Peskov answeredthat this is possible subject to the usual procedures. To what extent is her statement connected with this, which in content practically coincides with a fragment from Putin’s article, published in June in a German newspaper The time, unknown.