In 1948, a collegiate Jack Matlock, Jr., registered for the first Russian classes ever offered at Duke University. His fascination with Russia arose largely out of his avid interest in its literature and history, and he knew early on that the connection he forged with Russia would last throughout his life-and indeed it has. A half century after he first became captivated as a youth by the works of Dostoevsky, Matlock would help bring an end to the Cold War as the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.
"I came to Duke in '46, just as World War II had finished the year before," said Matlock in an interview Thursday afternoon prior to a speech he delivered on campus. "The Soviet Union loomed very large, the Cold War began almost immediately-and yet very few people knew much about it.... So not only I got fascinated, I decided that, well, this is really the way I want to spend my career-trying to make sense out of this enigma and mystery, as Churchill had called it."
After a distinguished 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service-including four tours of duty in the Soviet Union culminating in his ambassadorship from 1987 to 1991-Matlock, 67, is now the George F. Kennan Professor at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study. Although retired from the foreign service, Matlock still directs a keen eye toward Russia; he offered his insight on the future of U.S.-Russian relations at a packed Love Auditorium in the Levine Science Research Center.
The presence of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry had dominated foreign policy for nearly all of Matlock's diplomatic service, making it understandable that he still takes pause to recall the momentous end of the Cold War.
"By all odds, watching the way the Cold War ended and helping that happen, I would say, was the fulfillment of my whole career," he said. "It had dominated U.S. foreign policy, U.S. society for decades and to bring it to a successful conclusion-that is, keeping our values, ending it and potentially ending the waste that was inevitable in any arms race-I think was very satisfying. I'm one who thinks it was absolutely necessary for us to react as we did. We had to undergo an arms race, we had to confront the Soviet Union in the form that it had taken in the late '40s."
Yet Matlock does not evaluate the Cold War's end in any sort of zero-sum game terms; rather, he asserts, the end was mutually beneficial for both the United States and the Soviet Union.
"I think we ended the Cold War in a way that everyone won," he said. "I think that when President [George] Bush said, 'We won the Cold War,' this was campaign rhetoric. We all won the Cold War, and I think that I did contribute somehow to a policy which would allow us to end it, but under terms that were not detrimental to the Soviet Union."
While ambassador, Matlock witnessed firsthand three successive watershed events in the Soviet Union that fundamentally altered and reshaped the entire geopolitical arena: the end of the Cold War, the end of Communist rule in the Soviet Union and, finally, the end of the Soviet Union itself.
This last historical moment prompted Matlock's acclaimed 1995 book, "Autopsy on an Empire," which examines the causes behind the Soviet Union's collapse. He points to both the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev-for whom Matlock said he has "great respect" despite his "certain blindspots"-and the "trauma of transition" to a market economy as key factors in the Soviet Union's demise in 1991.
"I knew that when I came back from the Soviet Union, I would be known as a former ambassador-it really didn't occur to me that I would come back as a former ambassador to a former country and that I would have to be replaced by 15 ambassadors," he joked in his speech.
Matlock described himself as a "hardliner" toward the Communist system in the Soviet Union but "sympathetic" toward its people. The difference, he emphasized, is crucial.
"During the Soviet system, I was a hardliner, meaning that as long as they were doing things absolutely outrageous or against our interests, I thought we had to confront it," he explained. "Not apologize for it, not compromise it, but confront it and bring pressure to bear on them.... I really feel very strongly that Communism was an evil system, it was an evil empire. It was not one that we could have smashed directly.... It had to be done by a combination of pressure and inducement-without the pressure, the inducement wouldn't work, but without the inducement, the pressure wouldn't have worked.... Though [Communism] was an evil empire, it was not an empire of evil people."
Matlock is highly regarded both for the thoughtfulness and the affability he demonstrated during a diplomatic career that spanned five decades and eight presidents. Fluent in Russian and German, but also proficient in French, Czech and Swahili, Matlock's work took him all the way from Vienna to Munich to Zanzibar. Yet it is his primary work in U.S.-Soviet affairs that has earned him the most recognition.
Matlock landed his first post in Moscow in 1961, during which time he reported on Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. As special assistant to the president for national security affairs, and senior director for European and Soviet affairs on the National Security Council Staff, from 1983 until 1986, Matlock was instrumental in preparing President Ronald Reagan for negotiations with Gorbachev, including the historic summits in Geneva and Reykjavik.
In 1987, Reagan appointed Matlock U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and, in 1989, the newly inaugurated President Bush asked Matlock to remain at his post. Matlock enjoyed a good personal and professional relationship with both presidents and was able to work effectively with both, despite their widely different leadership styles.
"Reagan was more the charismatic leader who really didn't focus on the details and didn't know them well," Matlock observed. "Whereas Bush knew the details very well-was every bit a foreign policy specialist-but was more a manager than a leader in personality."
Matlock described how he used the Soviet media to personalize his ambassadorship for the Soviet people and establish a genuine rapport with them. In so doing, Matlock hoped to dispel any Soviet misperceptions of the United States and its motives.
"[The Soviet people] didn't want to discuss how many warheads there should be or the next START agreement," he said. "What they wanted to discuss was, 'How did you get interested in Russia?' 'How is it you speak Russian?' 'What do you think of our writers?' 'What's your favorite 19th century writer?'.... The idea was that this is something you can't fake. I knew that I was interested in the country and, in many ways, loved the country-and I could show that.... I thought I could help the process by undermining the old propaganda that we are a threat. In public affairs, that was my main thrust."
Matlock insists that communism in Russia is dead and, therefore, should no longer be viewed as a threat to the United States. Matlock believes that a U.S. partnership with Russia is vital for both nations to achieve their policy goals and for compelling geopolitical reasons, such as the peace processes in the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia.
"The political and economic power are no longer concentrated in one point [in Russia], which was the problem with the Communist leadership," Matlock concluded in his speech. "Nothing is inevitable. Russia is not destined to be an imperial power again, regardless of what the Kissingers and Brzezinskis say. I hope we will not be too distracted with the ghosts of the past and will be able to look at the future clearly."
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