Perfect Summitry?

MONDAY, December 7, 1987; 12 noon; Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Standing under a red umbrella torn to shreds, Phyllis Schlafly, president of the conservative, anti-feminist Eagle Forum, just finished explaining that the umbrella "demonstrates the nuclear umbrella that is not." She added, "The first job of government is to protect us from the international bad guys that might fire weapons at us."

On the 46th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the eve of the signing of the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) treaty by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Schlafly and a handful of supporters came to Washington to push for the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly called Star Wars. She said to the small crowd gathered, "Here we are, absolutely defenseless against a surprise attack ... We don't want a nuclear Pearl Harbor."

The chants of "Peace through strength" were beginning to wear out and the semi-melodious strains of "God Bless America" were just drifting off into the bitterly cold Washington air when an onlooker shouted, "We can blow up the world 30 times over with our nuclear weapons! You can only be dead once!" Betty Enfield from New York started telling everyone who would listen, "We can't have a strong nation when millions of people are hungry ... If Reagan really has a heart, he must look at his own country and see that it needs new priorities."

A woman with a sign saying "Peace in Jesus' Name" joined in on the side of anti-nuclear peace. Before a dozen words were out of her mouth, a cadre of shouting College Republicans was in her face, accusing her of not caring about children in Afghanistan, the most helpless victims of Soviet violence.

A young woman cornered her and said, "I want you to know that Jesus Christ is my personal savior, too. Jesus Christ never said not to protect your own country!" She added that "SDI doesn't hurt anybody."

"What do you think should be our responsibility to the hungry, whose numbers have increased as more and more money is poured into weapons?" I asked the young woman later.

"I feel that our first responsibility to the American people is to defend them, not feed and house them. That's why we have capitalism and free enterprise -- so they can feed themselves." The world according to Laura Graves of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

FROM THE EDGE of the park came another demonstration. Carrying hundreds of black balloons commemorating victims of Russian repression in Ukraine, scores of Ukrainians marched behind a banner toward the SDI rally and the White House. Fearing escalated conflict, the police tried to intervene.

Several tense moments went by before someone from the pro-SDI ranks realized that they were actually sympathetic with the Ukrainians -- they were all against the Russians. Helen Marie Taylor, shouting "I was a U.S. representative to the U.N.," jumped in front of the Ukrainian march and yelled, "The Soviet Union is the greatest colonial power in the world today!" As TV cameras swung toward Taylor, a white-haired Ukrainian woman grabbed her by the arm and quietly said, "You're blocking our banner. Move away please, they can't see our banner."

On the margins, Arkadoi Lirtsman, a Soviet Jewish emigre who lives in New York, held a large sign with pictures of family members still in the Soviet Union, demanding that the Soviet government let them emigrate to the United States. And kneeling on the curb facing the White House, in humble precision, three orange-robed Buddhist monks quietly chanted and beat on peace drums, keeping a vigil they had begun a week before and would maintain throughout the summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

A woman wearing a garbage bag covered with signs over a fur coat started shouting, accusing Reagan of selling out with the INF treaty. Betty accused him of fueling terror by supporting the contras in Nicaragua.

"You think Gorbachev is better?" shouted a Ukrainian.

"She's absolutely right," said somebody else.

"It's all better than nuclear war," said "Peace in Jesus' Name." There was a moment of silence.

Then a College Republican shouted, "Don't put down America, put down the Soviets!" The Ukrainians started chanting, "Russian butchers, go to hell!" It wasn't long before they too started singing "God Bless America." The police were still trying to separate everybody.

Leaning against his bike on the edge of the crowd, a young man -- a beekeeper from Delaware -- held a sign that read "December 8, 1987: John Lennon Lived and Died for this Day." I missed the connection until he told me that the INF treaty would be signed on the anniversary of Lennon's death. "And do you remember what his favorite song was?" he asked.

I remembered. And I suppose it could be said of everyone in the park that day that, in their own contradictory and often belligerent ways, all they were saying was give peace a chance.

IN THE FIVE DAYS surrounding the summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, people from every corner of the nation and the globe got the chance to speak their peace. For almost a week, Washington turned into the staging ground for causes daring and droll, tragic and troublesome, profound and preposterous. While newsprint and airwaves were filled with reports of the official summit, little was said of the thousands of people who came to the capital bearing their pieces of the truth and creating an exotic mosaic celebrating freedom of speech.

To get a feel for what strange things were in the wind that week, all one had to do was walk up 16th Street from the White House and see the Soviet flag waving in all its glory from the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel -- right there between the Stars and Stripes and the flag of the District of Columbia. A portent that all was not as usual in capital-town, the flag prompted one local news anchor to say, "If Rip Van Winkle had been asleep for many years and had just woken up, he would have said Joe McCarthy was right."

The Marriott Hotel changed the sign on its restaurant to "Cafe Glasnost." A pointed suggestion was made to the International Union of Electrical Workers, located across the street from the Soviet Embassy, to remove a large Solidarity banner that had flown there since the beginning of Poland's Solidarity union movement, to avoid offending the visiting Soviet guests. The union, however, refused.

Local radio stations played classical Russian music and the "Tass Top 20" from the Soviet Union. The Washington Post ran a daily feature called "While You're Here, Comrade": a variety of local citizens, all photographed in "Gorbachev Tour '87" T-shirts bearing a picture of the general secretary, offered suggestions on places he ought to see while in town. The offerings ranged from a car dealership to a Civil War battlefield to the World Wrestling Federation's heavyweight championship fight between Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy.

Famous Duke Zeibert's restaurant promised to serve free Russian borscht during the summit if things went well. When asked "Why not caviar?" Mr. Zeibert replied, "Well, let's not go too far." Another restaurant was not so hospitable to the Soviet visit, offering on its menu such specials as Chernobyl Chili ("It melts your mouth") and 007 Korean Sushi.

Local reporters bombarded the public with summit opinions from everyone imaginable. Washington was the place to be if you wanted to know what the hairdresser to former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole thought of it all.

A Capitol Hill lobbyist's main concern was that the summit would tie up traffic. It did.

Concrete barricades went up across streets surrounding the Soviet Embassy, creating a security zone and traffic madness. They were part of the largest security extravaganza the city has ever seen. Even sewer covers in the area were sealed shut. Police, Secret Service agents, and members of the Soviet KGB formed their own roving version of a peace shield around the general secretary, while "countersnipers" were poised on downtown roofs.

No one seemed unaffected by the summit. Women from Washington's "red-light district," just a couple of blocks from the Soviet Embassy, complained that the only men roaming the streets were police officers. One officer explained to a prostitute that it was important to create "a wholesome image" for the Soviets. "It wasn't this bad when the pope was in town," she responded. Another said that they could tolerate the change for a week: "After all, it's for world peace."

LAFAYETTE PARK BECAME the site of the unofficial summit. Beginning three days before the Gorbachevs arrived in town, the park began hosting a variety of groups espousing causes all along the political spectrum.

On Saturday, December 5, the proponents of disarmament had their day in the park. A spirit of goodwill and friendship toward the people of the Soviet Union dominated the rally, sponsored by groups such as SANE/FREEZE, National Rainbow Coalition, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Clergy and Laity Concerned, and New Jewish Agenda.

Members of a Soviet delegation, including Genrikh Borovik, president of the official Soviet Peace Committee, were honored. Women parliamentarians and peace activists from all over the globe, participants in "Women for a Meaningful Summit," expressed their wish that women might be at the world's negotiating tables. And young people from many countries brought more than 200,000 letters from children expressing their hopes for peace.

The event was called "A Bridge to Peace," and a highlight of the afternoon occurred when participants joined hands and made a "human bridge" from the White House to the Soviet Embassy. A similar bridge was being formed at the same time in the Soviet capital from the Supreme Soviet to the United States Embassy. So many people showed up to form the bridge in Washington that the line was double in places. A child shivering from the cold asked, "How long do we have to stand here holding hands?" And when it was passed down the line a few moments later that the bridge could be dismantled, someone said, "Oh, do we have world peace?"

An international children's delegation carried bouquets of roses to the Soviet Embassy as an expression of their hopes for a future free of nuclear weapons. The children were invited in, given chocolates and soft drinks, and greeted by top-ranking Soviet officials who listened as they talked about world peace.

A few blocks south, another children's delegation arrived at the White House with a rose-laden red wagon bearing a "nuclear-free zone" sticker. They found only a cold shoulder from a security guard who tossed their flowers into an official White House garbage can. Score one for glasnost, and strike one for freedom of speech in America.

The day was filled with ironies and contradictions. In the midst of a spirit of celebration and accomplishment claimed by the peace activists stood a woman with a sign that read "2,000 Down, 48,000 To Go." She offered a sobering reminder that destroying 2,000 medium-range nuclear missiles leaves us far from a nuclear-free world. Another sign said simply "It isn't INuF."

The warm spirit that flowed from the rally's platform evaporated backstage as aggressive American reporters hurled questions at Genrikh Borovik about Soviet domination of Afghanistan and repression of Soviet Jews. Borovik dodged and implied that reports of such abuses are essentially pieces of a disinformation campaign in the United States. He threw back at reporters the fact that in the United States there is homelessness and unemployment, realities that he claimed are virtually non-existent in the Soviet Union.

That scene -- of hostile U.S. reporters ignoring their own country's sins and aggressions, challenging a Soviet official trying to defend the indefensible -- would be repeated many times through the week. That brief exchange reflected the hypocritical cloud that hung over both sides throughout the summit.

THE DAY AFTER Genrikh Borovik was honored onstage in Washington, a Soviet Peace Committee rally in Moscow in support of the summit was used to disrupt a demonstration by "refuseniks," people denied permission to emigrate, most of them Jews. More than two dozen refuseniks never made it to the demonstration, having been detained by Soviet police. Bands of young men infiltrated their demonstration, damaged television equipment, and harassed Western journalists; Cable News Network correspondent Peter Arnett was dragged from the park and held by police for four hours.

The refusenik demonstration in Moscow took place on the same day that more than 200,000 people gathered in Washington to press for an end to the repression of Soviet Jews and a change in Soviet emigration policy. Jewish communities throughout the country mobilized for the huge demonstration.

Echoing Moses' ancient appeal to Pharaoh with the cry "Let My People Go," they marched down Constitution Avenue to a rally on the Mall. Signs were in abundance, many bearing names and pictures of particular refuseniks among the estimated 385,000 appealing for permission to leave the Soviet Union. The crowd was addressed by a variety of speakers, from well-known refusenik Natan Scharansky, who spent nine years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, and Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, to National Council of Churches General Secretary Rev. Arie R. Brouwer and Vice President George Bush.

As the thousands streamed through Lafayette Park on their way to the march, a much smaller crowd demonstrated there. One sign held there read, "Trust the Soviets? Ask the Afghans." But they did not have to be asked, as anyone within earshot got the Afghans' message loud and clear. Shouts of "Death to Communism," "Death to Gorbachev," and "Long live the freedom fighters" filled the air.

Two children held a poster called "Disarmament Soviet-style," picturing other Afghan children without arms. Literature passed out at the rally explained Soviet use of "toy bombs," bombs built inside dolls and pens that are picked up by children and intended to scare their parents into giving up their struggle for independence from the Soviet Union.

A homeless man who spends his days in the park sat nearby on a bench and took all this in. "So, what does all this summit business make you feel?" I asked him. His response: "I think we should send our mayor and the entire city administration to Siberia."

Three blocks away, Lillie Smith, a 62-year-old Los Angeles native who has been homeless for eight years, set up a folding chair on the sidewalk. She came to Washington with the message, "Russia is telling the truth about social justice in America."

Sitting next to a sign that read "Even a sparrow does not fall from the sky without God noticing, but here in America, elderly women and children die on the streets without anyone paying attention," she stated her conviction that homelessness is a violation of human rights. "We always say that the true measure of a society is how it treats the old and the young," she continued. "By that standard, America can be called an Evil Empire, too."

Lillie Smith then posed from her folding chair at 16th and K the question that none in more comfortable chairs dared to raise during all the summit deliberations: "How can human rights in Russia be on the agenda and homelessness in America not be?"

FAR FROM THE LOUD SCENE at Lafayette Park that Sunday afternoon was the quiet sanctuary of the Episcopal Washington Cathedral. There prominent U.S. and Soviet church leaders led a service of worship conducted in both English and Russian. Similar services for peace and special Masses were scheduled to take place at Leningrad's Trinity Cathedral and other churches in the Soviet Union.

Processing through the Washington Cathedral, some in robes and headpieces that reflected a Christian tradition about to celebrate its 1,000th anniversary, the Soviet Orthodox, Baptist, Armenian Apostolic, and Evangelical Lutheran Church leaders offered their presence and prayers in support of peaceful relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Sponsored by the National Council of Churches and the cathedral, the service marked the beginning of a prayer vigil that was maintained for the duration of the summit. Said Rev. Arie R. Brouwer, "We pray constantly for peace, but on this occasion it is important for the world to know and especially for our political leaders to know that American and Soviet Christians are praying together."

Across town at a Russian Orthodox Church, prayers were focused on Christians persecuted in the Soviet Union. Of particular concern was a priest familiar to the congregation who has been imprisoned for 12 years.

On Monday morning the U.S. and Soviet church leaders released to the press a letter to be delivered to General Secretary Gorbachev and President Reagan. The statement offered a promise that the churches of the Soviet Union and the United States would continue building bonds together in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood and called on Gorbachev and Reagan to press on to agreement on a comprehensive nuclear test ban, steadfast action toward the elimination of both long-range and tactical nuclear weapons, and a commitment to leave outer space for peaceful enterprises.

BACK AT LAFAYETTE PARK that afternoon, the Ukrainians eventually got their rally under way as the pro-SDI forces scattered. Fifty million Ukrainians make up the largest national minority in the U.S.S.R., and advocates of national independence and human rights are harshly persecuted.

In addition to decrying the treatment of political prisoners, the Ukrainians protested the suppression of Ukrainian churches. Ukraine is the only Soviet republic whose national churches were forcibly liquidated by the KGB and remain legally banned. That reality is tragically ironic in light of the fact that, despite the claim of Russian churches on the upcoming millennium of Christianity, it was actually the Ukrainian people who accepted Christianity in 988, according to rally literature.

Some mention was made of the ecological effects of the Chernobyl disaster, which took place on Ukrainian soil, but even greater attention was given to the forced famine of 1932-33. Under Stalin's "collectivize or starve" agricultural policy, seven million Ukrainians starved to death, according to rally organizers.

The number of activities in downtown Washington on Tuesday was rivaled only by the number of pages in the treaty signed that day. Fundamentalist evangelists took to loudspeakers and urged Reagan and Gorbachev to abandon their talks and leave the future to their savior. Islamic fundamentalists, members of the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan, clashed with members of the Afghan Revolutionary Movement over opposing attitudes toward Mohammed Zahir Shah, the deposed Afghan king; 17 arrests were made. On the sidewalk in front of the White House, hundreds of Afghans chanted, "Die for freedom, kill for freedom."

A block from the Soviet Embassy, the squealing cry of the shofar, or ram's horn, signaled the start of civil disobedience by supporters of Soviet Jewry. "Deliver my soul from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue," read New York Rabbi Avraham Weiss from Psalm 120, interpreting it as a commentary on Gorbachev's glasnost. Fifteen protesters, many wearing business suits and blue-and-white prayer shawls, were taken by bus to the D.C. jail.

A robed Presbyterian minister wandered through Lafayette Park carrying a "sacred peace dove" in a gold cage, while another man roamed around in a bear costume, calling himself "the Russian bear." Members of the New Hampshire Conservative Union were there with a 10-foot Trojan horse, explaining, "The Russians come bearing gifts, but the gifts are loaded."

As twilight descended, a group assembled with lanterns, flashlights, and candles. Their rally, according to organizers, was intended to "enlighten Gorbachev as to the deprivation of religious, national and human rights to the people in Soviet-occupied Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and other captive nations."

Signs bore names of people killed or imprisoned under Soviet occupation. Speakers decried the "Stalin-Hitler pact that carved up the world into Soviet gulags" after World War II.

Wandering among the crowd was a mustachioed man in a derby and a black morning coat carrying a large black umbrella. In a badly faked British accent, this supporter of extremist Lyndon LaRouche explained that he was Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister accused of appeasing Hitler. Asked his opinion of the INF treaty, he replied, "I sold out Czechoslovakia in Munich in 1938; today Reagan's selling out Western Europe."

It was definitely time for me to leave my four-day vigil in the park. As I walked across Pennsylvania Avenue, I considered the spectrum of causes that had erupted in five days and said to myself, "I guess everybody has their cause this week." I was just finishing this thought when I came upon a front driveway entrance to the White House. Limousines of all varieties were pulling up to the security checkpoint, on their way to the state dinner in honor of the Gorbachevs.

A small crowd of people had gathered to watch the spectacle, hoping, I suppose, to catch a glimpse of someone famous. Suddenly, out of the crowd, a young man stepped forward, shoved his face through the open window of a limousine, and yelled, "Put air bags in all GM cars! Air bags in all American cars!"

"Excuse me, but could you explain to me what that was all about?" I asked him as soon as a White House security guard finished lecturing him.

"You mean you don't recognize Roger Smith, chairman of the board of General Motors?"

No, I hadn't recognized Roger. I guess everybody had their cause that week.

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING, we would be treated to all the pomp and pageantry and puff one would expect around a meeting between a Soviet general secretary and a U.S. president. News reporters tried to keep us on the edge of our seats with questions like, "Will they carry umbrellas?" as we waited for Gorbachev and Reagan to emerge for their goodbyes in the pouring rain. They told us that Gorbachev takes his tea with milk and that the Gorbachevs ordered videotapes of Platoon and Ghostbusters to help them unwind at the Soviet Embassy.

We were treated to such spectacles as Ronald Reagan, presider over the largest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history, offering Mikhail Gorbachev gold cuff links emblazoned with the biblical image of sword being beaten into plowshare. We watched the Great and Greater Communicators play the media to the hilt during signings and ceremonies and dialogues and dinners.

When it was all over, what impact did it really have on the world? In Moscow, twin boys born at Maternity Clinic Number 5 during the signing of the INF treaty were named Mikhail and Ronald. In West Germany, Defense Minister Manfred Woerner, who promised in 1983 that he would crawl the 240 miles from his hometown to Bonn if the Soviets ever agreed to scrap their medium-range missiles, got off easy by deciding instead to play soccer in the kneepads he was given for the crawl.

Back in Washington, the Soviets bought up high-top sneakers and Bruce Springsteen albums in droves, while members of the KGB and the D.C. police force exchanged coins and cigarettes. On Mars, word has not yet arrived that the Soviets are proposing a joint U.S.-Soviet trek there by 2001.

Gorbachev did not decide to pull out of Afghanistan, free the captive nations, and let the Jews emigrate. And Reagan did not decide to view homelessness as a human rights issue, stop funding the contras, and halt Star Wars research. An important and unprecedented step was taken in the agreement to destroy medium-range nuclear missiles; but their dismantling is merely a slight drop in the proverbial bucketload of nuclear weapons that arm the planet.

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT thing that happened related to perceptions. Both American and Soviet citizens seem to be coming to an understanding that they have been victims of their own country's propaganda. U.S. propaganda has played up all that is militant, oppressive, and austere about Soviet society. Soviets have received a steady diet of our nation's aggressiveness in Vietnam, Grenada, and Nicaragua, as well as frequent pictures of homelessness, urban poverty, the farm crisis, and the exploitation of women. There is truth in much of what has been seen by both sides, but the picture was never complete, and the composite always fed the worst stereotypes and fueled enmity between our nations.

In the days around the summit, much was done to portray the citizens of the other country in human terms. Radio shows featured Soviet and American children. Eleven-year-old Star Rowe from San Francisco said that before she visited the Soviet Union, her friends told her, "If you go there, they'll kill you." But she learned during her visit that "we're all humans." When asked about the differences between the two countries, a Soviet girl on the same show said, "We have food without chemicals," and Star chimed in, "Yes, and I'm kind of used to chemicals." They finished the show singing a Russian folk song and "Yankee Doodle" together.

ABC's "Capital to Capital" linked up Moscow and Washington through live television. It was reported that the Soviets liked the commercials better than the show itself. A cordless power screwdriver, British Sterling Cologne, and Northwest Orient Airlines (which promises to get you from a tomato field to Bloomingdale's in a snap) were all advertised, along with a somewhat steamy scene from "General Hospital." One Soviet's response: "Just where is General Hospital?"

A D.C. television news reporter was even sent to the Soviet Union during the summit. He sent frequent reports on everyday life from such places as a farmhouse in Ukraine and a subway in Moscow. The summit seemed to open up an unprecedented look into each other's societies.

The Gorbachevs and their delegation received a hero's welcome in the U.S. capital, and they left a warm and favorable impression. It was frequently noted that Gorbachev invoked the help of God as he arrived on U.S. soil and never once banged a shoe while he was here.

The Soviet leader was personable and witty and had the kind of smile Bruce Babbitt would give his eyeteeth for. He received the kind of adulation usually reserved for rock stars. Something serious has happened in America's perception to offer such an honor to the Darth Vader of the erstwhile Evil Empire.

In terms of perceptions, the summit didn't hurt Ronald Reagan either. Suffering from a tarnished and weak image in light of the Iran-Contra scandal, failed Supreme Court nominations, staff resignations, and last fall's stock market crash, Reagan needed a PR victory. Polls show that the Soviet people have even forgiven Reagan for his off-hand remark in 1984 about bombing Russia, which had convinced them the United States was led by a madman bent on war.

Gorbachev almost threatened his own popularity with his press-conference-without-end. But by then the charm seemed untarnishable. When he made an unscheduled stop on Connecticut Avenue on his last day in Washington (throwing security agents into a panic), crowds flocked around him. People were heard saying, "I touched him!" and "He looked right at me!"

SUCH ADULATION MUST BE hard for Ida Nudel to watch. Known as the "guardian angel of prisoners of conscience," Nudel repeatedly advocated for the rights of imprisoned Jewish activists while she was in the Soviet Union. She was eventually arrested by the KGB and sentenced to four years of exile in Siberia, a year of which was spent in a male barracks.

When gray-haired Nudel, who was eventually given permission to leave the Soviet Union last October, watched a motorcade of Soviet limousines scream by in downtown Washington, she said softly, "They are so fearful." That same day a building scheduled to hold a human rights seminar in Moscow, organized by the Press Club Glasnost, was closed down by Soviet authorities.

More contradictions. More ironies. The whole picture cannot be found at the negotiating table or on Connecticut Avenue or in Lafayette Park. Part of the picture is in all these places.

History was made in the signing of the INF treaty at Abraham Lincoln's desk. But history was made elsewhere that week as well. Women and children and church leaders and activists and beekeepers demonstrated that peace is not solely the business of two powerful white men.

In the parade of causes and sentiments that rang through Washington the second week of December and fought for expression in Moscow, parts of the whole picture came into focus. What seemed to come clearest is that the work and prayers and hope will continue, until peace is not merely a photo opportunity but a way of life.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.