The Republic of Malta, a tiny country in the heart of the Mediterranean, remained neutral throughout the Cold War and was not attached to any country.
A place like this is the best place for the United States and the Soviet Union to negotiate.
Seryosha followed Gorbachev to Malta as an attaché to attend the upcoming US-Soviet summit here, along with Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and Gorbachev's most trusted aide, Yakovlev.
The main topic of this summit meeting was to end the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and turn hostility into peace.
In fact, there was nothing to do with Seryosha here, but Gorbachev still brought Seryosha here, and he hoped that Seryosha would find an opportunity to secretly contact the US side to see if he could get some funds from the United States.
Because by March next year, the Soviet Union will have a large debt that will be due, and this debt can literally kill the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev's only hope now is to take on new debts and pay off old debts.
But in the event that the funds were not in place and the problem of defaulting on the debt arose, then the Soviet Union would not have been able to secure funds from the international community.
It is impossible for a country without credit to borrow money.
Gorbachev was full of expectations for Seryosha, but Seryosha had no clue.
A country's debt is not a small amount.
Add to this the fact that the revenues of the Soviet treasury have been decreasing over the years, and it is a fool's dream to repay the debts by relying on the Soviet Union's own hematopoietic capacity.
Seryosha now has a lot of money on hand, but it still has to be used to create new jobs for the Soviet Union, and if it is used to pay off debts, it will not be able to accommodate the million-dollar withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe.
So Seryosha had to find another way to find another solution to the problem of the Soviet national debt.
Although it seems feasible to use oil and other resources to pay off the debts of the Soviet Union, there are very few countries that can accept this plan.
At the moment it seems that West Germany may accept this condition, because if the two Germany want to achieve reunification, the attitude of the Soviet Union is crucial, and in order to obtain the consent of the Soviet Union, it will have to be exchanged for the conditions that the Soviet Union is interested in.
Debt relief is absolutely necessary, and Seryosha will be able to knock another one out of the hands of the Germans.
But West Germany had to take the initiative to negotiate these things with the Soviet Union, otherwise it would not be possible to sit on the ground and raise prices.
However, at this summit, although the Soviet Union asked the United States for help, Seryosha felt that the United States was actually more eager to reach a reconciliation agreement.
After all, the Malta conference was the best opportunity in decades, and the United States must have really hoped that the Soviet Union would be able to completely remove the dangerous torrent of medium-range missiles and steel deployed on its western border.
Before the formal talks, Seryosha found an opportunity to communicate with Shevardnadze, and the topic of the meeting should be the Soviet Union's deployment of troops in Eastern Europe and the issue of medium-range missiles on the western border.
Seryosha did not want Gorbachev to give in on this issue all at once, even if there was a process of withdrawing troops and destroying missiles that had already been deployed.
At the very least, the Americans must not be allowed to talk white, and the Soviets will have to do it.
Seryosha hoped that the issue of the withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe would be resolved in batches, and that the corresponding countries would bear most of the costs for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
For Seryosha's suggestion.
Shevardnadze still agrees very much, and Shevardnadze is well aware of the weight of the burden on Seryosha's shoulders now, so after communicating with Seryosha, Shevardnadze immediately suggested to Gorbachev that Seryosha be placed in the position of the main person in charge of negotiations with the United States.
The first meeting did not talk about anything substantive, the two sides were only expressing their own positions, which had been confirmed to each other several times before the meeting, but reporters all over the world were concerned about the meeting between Gorbachev and Bush.
Judging from the current situation, although the two sides have serious differences on some major issues, they still agree on the basic viewpoint of ending the confrontation.
So the key to the summit is the next talks.
Gorbachev and Bush with their respective aides discussed the Soviet Union's reduction of nuclear weapons and intermediate-range missiles behind closed doors.
This time it's a battle of real money.
Seryosha sat in the corner, listening to Gorbachev's concessions, little by little.
Gorbachev's concessions were so great that the Americans never mentioned what kind of specific support they would give to the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and Seryosha saw very clearly that the American promises were vague, while the Soviet promises were real.
Seryosha could not stand it any longer, and his sudden speech interrupted the conversation between Gorbachev and Bush.
"Mr.
President, I would like to interrupt your conversation, I would like to ask you a question, do you know what year our country was first founded?"
Seryosha's sudden voice made everyone present look at him, but Seryosha's face did not change and his heart did not beat.
Gorbachev didn't know what kind of medicine was sold in Seryosha's gourd, but Bush politely answered the question.
"It's 1922, this young gentleman" "December 30, 1922, to be exact, two days before 1923, and a year later, in January 1924, we lost our great leader, Comrade Lenin.
Do you know what the Soviet Union was like at that time?"
President Bush replied in a very graceful manner, and the secretary of state beside him had already handed him a small note, telling him that it was Ulyanov, the Soviet minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation and a popular man close to Gorbachev.
"At that time, the Russian Empire had fallen apart, divided into six countries: the Soviet Union, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and we had just pacified the White Army at home, but lost a large part of the territory in the war with Poland, and the 700,000 Polish troops led by Pilsudski defeated the 2.3 million Soviet Red Army.
On top of that, newly independent Finland and Romania are constantly encroaching on our territory on the border.
I think the difficulties we faced when we were founded were much more difficult than the American Revolutionary War."
"Well, Minister Ulyanov, we are here to discuss the Cold War issues, and I don't think your topic will be of much help to our negotiations today, and if I have time in private, I will be happy to ask you about history."
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President Bush said impatiently.
"Mr.
President, compared with the difficulties faced by Comrade Stalin at the beginning, what is this setback that our Soviet Union has encountered today?"
heard Seryosha mention Stalin, and the room fell silent again. t1706231537: