The 1986 Soviet-American summit in Reykjavik

The article is devoted to one of the most important summits at the highest level at the end of the Cold War. During the implementation of the renewed Soviet international policy of New Thinking, the American side was apprehensive about taking reciprocal steps aimed at breaking the bipolar structure of the world. Many obstacles had to be overcome by both the USSR and the USA: mutual distrust that had been developing for several decades, insufficient coordination within the administrations of diplomatic missions, loud statements by independent American media, contradictory situations in the intelligence services, etc. The author of the article pays attention to the espionage scandal that took place on the eve of the upcoming meeting, which significantly slowed down the negotiation process. She has studied in detail the documentary materials of the US State Archive of National Security, which provided an opportunity to cover the events of 1986 in a more multifaceted and accurate way. The article contains references to the publication of US intelligence reports to the president, as well as a personal letter from Mikhail Gorbachev to R. Reagan, which is known to the Russian scientific world only as recorded from Gorbachev’s words. An analysis of the 1986 Reykjavik meeting is based on English-language documents as well as archival video materials from the Reagan Presidential Library. Memoirs of eyewitnesses of the summit made it possible to trace the historical and psychological aspects of the negotiations. The author used the personal diary of President R. Reagan and the complete edition of the memoirs of Secretary of State J. Schultz, which have not yet been translated into Russian, that made it possible to give a more accurate picture of the motives and fears of the White House on the eve of the Soviet-American meeting in 1986.