mo4ch:>Reagan was ‘theatrical’ and ‘eager to please’: Diplomacy secrets from Gorbachev’s interpreter | Mo4ch News

During his career, Pavel Palazhchenko interpreted some of the most sensitive meetings of the late Cold War era. Speaking to RT’s Sophie & Co., he shares his experience of translating the words of the world’s most powerful leaders.“The initial process is earning the trust,” Palazhchenko said of the beginning of his six-year stint as an interpreter for the Soviet Union’s leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in 1985.“Inevitably, you become closer.”Palazhchenko translated during a series of US-Soviet summits held in the late 1980s and witnessed first-hand the growing personal relationships between leaders such as Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan.These took longer to grow due to their “very different background,” the translator said, while Shevardnadze’s personal relationship with his US counterpart George Shultz took off almost immediately.“Despite the problems and obstacles” of the late 1980s which included spy scandals and military tensions, Gorb…