Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003290400
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NIKKI FINKE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: CHEVY CHASE, MD. LENGTH: Long
That simple question summed up world reaction to the Feb. 9 marriage between a granddaughter of a Cold War president and a top Soviet space scientist who advises Kremlin leaders.
Five weeks after the ceremony, sitting in the suburban Washington, D.C., office they share, newlyweds Susan Eisenhower and Roald Sagdeyev can recall that interview and laugh out loud. But they also vividly remember that it was not a laughing matter at the time.
"Here we are about to go down the aisle the next day," the 38-year-old Eisenhower says, "and this reporter from [the liberal newspaper] Moscow News is telling us, `Don't you know that they send people into internal exile for this? Or, even worse, to the gulag permanently?' "
In fact, that specter had been haunting the pair for months. While many Soviet-American romances have encountered official disapproval - or worse - over the years, never before had such a prominent East-West couple had so much to lose by falling in love.
"It was a very painful road just to get here," says Eisenhower, an international businesswoman and philanthropist. "It all looks very easy now. But we were both all too familiar with how discouraging the track record was. . . . The big question was: How substantial has the change of attitude been? It's never been tested, really."
She did not feel as if she had received the answer even when President Bush and former President Nixon both called to offer their congratulations. Or even when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, through Politburo members, gave tacit approval of the union. Or even when one of their wedding presents was a chunk of the Berlin Wall.
No, not until their wedding announcement ended up on the society pages of U.S. newspapers, instead of in news bulletins, did Eisenhower begin to believe that the phrase "and they lived happily ever after" might apply to them.
"A year ago, I would have thought of it as science fiction," says Sagdeyev, 57, a lifelong Communist Party member and former director of the Soviet Union's Space Research Institute. "But it is, after all, a scientist's job to work toward reality."
And the reality is that the Eisenhower-Sagdeyev union is a remarkable symbol of the new warmth in East-West relations today, and living proof of Dwight Eisenhower's belief in the power of personal diplomacy to develop better understanding between the two superpowers.
They are The Glasnost Couple. But say that to their faces, and, suddenly, they grow shy.
They are sitting side by side. Their eyes lock on each other.
"It feels like just us to us," the wife says softly.
The husband nods.
Dmitri Simes, Soviet emigre and senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, agrees that the Eisenhower-Sagdeyev union - the third marriage for her, the second for him - is "clearly an affair of the heart."
"By standing the heat from both the U.S. and Soviets," he says, "their marriage has already passed the test of fire."
Until the mid-1980s, love across the Iron Curtain was as painful as getting smacked in the face with a sheet of steel. Since the onset of the Cold War, the Kremlin has blatantly violated international human rights accords by subjecting certain Soviet citizens whose only crime was marrying Americans to state-imposed separation from their spouses.
Most often, the official reason given was that the Soviet spouses had some special knowledge of national security matters. All too often, the simple act of marrying an American would cause a Soviet to lose his job. In one case, a computer programmer was demoted to amusement park guard; in another, a biologist became a menial laborer. Other spouses felt compelled to give up their professional positions in the hope that it might improve their chances of getting permission to leave the Soviet Union.
In 1985, however, the policy finally began to ease, thanks to some pre-summit maneuvering before former President Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Switzerland.
But until the day they were married, Eisenhower and Sagdeyev had to consider the "worst-case scenario," she says. "After all, they used to have pretty swift solutions. And Roald's a nuclear scientist. He's not a theater director."
Both Eisenhower and Sagdeyev were well aware that, in the past, people in their position usually had only two options: defecting or becoming refuseniks. Sagdeyev states firmly that he "never" considered defecting. ("And I just wouldn't even let it come up for discussion," says Eisenhower.)
Within the realm of remaining possibilities was that this widely respected member of the Congress of People's Deputies and Academy of Sciences could be stripped of his positions, refused travel privileges, even scorned by his countrymen.
Eisenhower did not know whether marrying a Soviet would subject her to negative public opinion, as if she were somehow disgracing the Eisenhower name.
Although those concerns now appear groundless, "when they started out, they couldn't be sure of that," says Simes. "This is a man and woman who both took considerable chances and demonstrated considerable courage."
by CNB