The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

new understanding flashed through my mind: these were the real aristo- crats, professional Soviet diplomats who would never stoop to clean toi- lets or lug refrigerators up narrow stairwells. They had mirror-imaged us, not for a moment grasping that Americans are always ready to roll up their sleeves and do what is necessary to get the job done.” The Spring Thaw As springtime approached, the U.S. government finally responded to the situation. The Defense Department was first, sending a half-dozen Army drivers to chauffeur the ambassador and drive our trucks (until then, first Arthur Hartman and, later, Jack Matlock had been driving them- selves in an armored Opel sedan). The first contractors appeared in April. Heat was restored to the chancery and new telecommunications equipment was installed. Metaphorically speaking, another historic thaw was tak- ing place, in the relationship between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. So even though we still had no FSNs and only a hand- ful of contractors, we began hosting congressional and other high-level delegations each month, starting in the summer of 1987 and culminating in the Moscow sum- mit of May 1988. As the summit date approached, a sud- denly cooperative UpDK (the agency that had provided FSNs for the embassy) sent workers swarming over Spaso House and the exterior of the chancery to repair, clean and paint. The summit delegation numbered over 1,000, accompanied by over 1,000 journalists, outnumbering us eight to one — but we handled them. The thaw had practical consequences, for though there was no chance of Foreign Service Nationals coming back in the near term, UpDK and UpIP became somewhat more cooperative. As Jim Schumaker observes: “It turned out that Moscow’s decision to withdraw our FSNs had been just as much a shock to our Leningrad Diplomatic Agency counterparts as it had been to us. ... A few people F O C U S 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 7 No Soviet FSNs ever returned.