By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Recently declassified documents reveal that former President Ronald Reagan tried to convert Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Christianity as the two worked toward ending the Cold War.
According to a report appearing on CathNews.com, the claim appears in a new biography of Reagan, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the Cold War by James Mann.
Relying mostly on declassified notes by aides who were present at meetings between the two leaders, Mann says Reagan made the attempt during a series of summits with Gorbachev from 1985 to 1988. Reagan was convinced Gorbachev could change the Soviet system and thought the key to this turnaround might be religion.
During their fourth summit meeting in 1988, the two men had been discussing religious tolerance when Reagan suddenly changed the subject from repression of religion to belief in God. Aides who were present during the meeting said Reagan reassured Gorbachev that “if word got out that this was even being discussed, the President would deny he had said anything about it.”
According to the notes, when asked about his beliefs, Mr.Gorbachev told Reagan that “he, himself, had been baptised, but he was not now a believer, and that reflected a certain evolution of Soviet society.”
Reagan then launched into one of his trademark stories about the widow of a young World War II soldier, who “was lying in a shell hole at midnight, awaiting an order to attack”.
“He had never been a believer, because he had been told God did not exist,” Reagan said. “But as he looked up at the stars he voiced a prayer hoping that, if he died in battle, God would accept him. That piece of paper was found on the body of a young Russian soldier who was killed in that battle.”
Mann says Mr Gorbachev “tried to switch the subject” to greater co-operation in space, “but the president wasn’t to be diverted.”
Mann writes: “According to the transcript, Reagan told Mr Gorbachev that space was in the direction of heaven, but not as close to heaven as some other things that they had been discussing.”
He told the Soviet leader that his own son, Ron, did not believe in God and “there was one thing he had long yearned to do for his atheist son: he wanted to serve his son the perfect gourmet dinner, to have him enjoy the meal, and then to ask him if he believed there was a cook.”
Rudolf Perina, who was then the director of Soviet affairs on the National Security Council, told Mann in a 2005 interview that “Reagan thought he could convert Mr Gorbachev, or make him see the light”.
An attempt by a US president to convert a foreign leader is not unprecedented.
According to Mann, nine years earlier, Reagan’s predecessor Jimmy Carter had stunned his aides when he asked the South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee about his religious beliefs and then told Park: “I would like you to know about Christ.”
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