Thatcher and Gorbachev - NYTimes.com On the evening of March 31, 1987, viewers in the Soviet Union turned on their TV sets and watched (I'd bet no one turned it off) an astonishing spectacle. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, concluding a visit to Moscow, was pitted against three of the state-controlled media's most polished propagandists. For 50 minutes, she tied them in knots, shifting between firm diplomacy and patient, school-marmish exposition, with - whenever one of the interviewers tried to interrupt - flashes of Trunchbull discipline. Even by the standards of the day - Mikhail Gorbachev's cascade of glasnost, the thawing of the Cold War - the Thatcher interview was amazing. She articulated a peace-through-strength line on nuclear and conventional arms control, disclosing along the way facts that Soviet viewers had never read or heard in their media about their own arsenals. A transcript is here. She heaped praise on Gorbachev but, at a time when Gorbachev and President Reagan were indulging in talk about a world without nuclear weapons, Thatcher explained to viewers the European view that only nuclear deterrence had sustained 40 years of peace. The interview ran uncut. Afterwards Georgi Arbatov, director of Moscow's Institute for U.S.A. and Canada Studies and a favorite Kremlin apologist, groused to a British reporter that, by comparison with Thatcher, President Reagan seemed "more forward-looking and more realistic." But Russians, who have an unwise taste for authoritarians, liked Thatcher's take-no-guff style. The mutual, and mutually advantageous, admiration society of Thatcher and Gorbachev was one of the more essential curiosities of the late Cold War. Thatcher, whose anti-communist credentials were unquestioned, was the first important Western leader to suggest that Gorbachev sincerely wanted to fix his miserable country, and that to do it would entail halting the exorbitant arms race with the West. As early as 1984, she famously announced, after meeting the new Soviet leader, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together. It took a while, but Thatcher's endorsement won Gorbachev important credibility in Washington and other western capitals, which ultimately contributed to a defusing of lethal tensions and the liberation of Moscow's empire. In turn, Thatcher's early recognition that Gorbachev was for real helped her at home by enhancing her reputation as a European leader and a steely global pragmatist. In fact, Thatcher often seemed to have an easier rapport with Gorbachev than she did with President Reagan. According to Richard Aldous's 2012 history "Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship," she considered her American ally unreliable - especially after he failed to back her war in the Falklands -and a bit of a fantasist for his dreamy and, in her view, dangerous notion of a nuclear-free world. Some of Reagan's people found Thatcher imperious. Nowadays the one who is going on television to challenge Kremlin autocracy is Gorbachev. At 82, unwell and reportedly in some danger of following Thatcher into history, Gorbachev is largely without honor in his own land. Many Russians, including the current rulers, blame his liberating policies for the collapse of the Soviet Union, its empire, its prestige (and its illusions.) But he is still admired beyond Russia's borders. In one TV interview a few weeks ago he described the regime of Vladimir Putin as replete with "thieves and corrupt officials" and said, "I'm often accused of giving away Central and Eastern Europe. But who did I give it to? I gave Poland, for example, back to the Poles. Who else does it belong to? You didn't hear that interview on Moscow TV. When Gorbachev wants glasnost these days, he's more likely to look to the BBC.