The prince: a master translator who influenced a major treaty.

AuthorAndres, Janet
PositionAlexis Obolensky

Editor's Note:

On July 14, President Putin announced that Russia was withdrawing from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. The terms of the Treaty require 150 days notice for withdrawal, and the parties have already met in Vienna (where it was signed in 1990) to discuss differences; a Russian spokesman said they have not closed the door on CFE.

We are pleased to present a timely article by the political counselor of the U.S. delegation to the NATO-Warsaw Pact negotiations that produced the CFE Treaty, a major arms control agreement concluded in the waning days of the Cold War. She gives us some of the fascinating background to these talks, including the important role of State Department master translator Alexis Obolensky. She calls this exiled White Russian prince a linguist of amazing ability as well as an eccentric and an original who was sometimes irritating but never dull.--Ed.

Vienna, 1990

We didn't know then that in just a little over a year the Soviet Union itself would dissolve, but we could see that the sun was clearly setting on its East European empire--a development that gratified us as Cold Warriors but worried us as negotiators. Since 1973, NATO and the Warsaw Pact had been trying to put together an agreement in Vienna that would reduce and limit conventional forces in Europe. Throughout the long deep-freeze years of East-West confrontation, the sides met religiously to talk at one another but little progress was made. Then, in the mid-1980s, along came Gorbachev, perestroika, and glasnost, and between 1987 and early 1989, a mandate for a new conventional arms control forum to replace the old Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks (MBFR) was hammered out.

The Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) was opened in March, 1989, by foreign ministers, including the new U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker. (Those who like acronyms will note that we might have referred to these as the CAFE talks, but despite the whimsical allure--we were, after all, in Vienna--it was feared such a label would call into question the seriousness and dynamism of the new forum.) Even during the mandate talks there had been rumblings of independence on the eastern side, fomented by Hungary, and it was obvious that if we wanted to take advantage of the structure and discipline afforded by a bloc-to-bloc negotiation, we would have to move at a much faster pace than we had during MBFR.

-The events of that momentous year, 1989, played out not only at the negotiating table but also in the streets of Vienna. First came the Hungarians as Budapest began to ease open its border with Austria. These poor relations of the Habsburg Reich were interested not so much in marveling at the stunning palaces, gardens, and museums of the old imperial capital, but rather headed straight for the main shopping district where they clogged the streets and scarfed up vast quantities of TVs, VCRs, and other consumer goods so long denied them. (A favorite quip at the time was "the empire strikes back.") The Czechs and Slovaks came next, and finally, East Germans who had their government's permission to go to Hungary on vacation but who then...

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