When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited the Twin Cities on June 3, 1990, it represented a coup for local political and business leaders — namely Gov. Rudy Perpich, who had requested that Gorbachev stop in Minnesota on his way to California, and William C. Norris, founder of Control Data Corp.
Gorbachev had just concluded a three-day summit in Washington with President George H.W. Bush. One signed agreement called for the elimination of most chemical weapons in both nations' arsenals. "The world has waited long enough. The Cold War must end," Bush said at the joint news conference.
In fact, it's been so long it's easy to forget how dramatic the events of late 1989 and 1990 were. The Berlin Wall had fallen during the November preceding Gorbachev's visit. The Soviet Union itself would dissolve in December 1991, a collapse that future Russian President Vladimir Putin would describe in 2005 as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century. But June 1990 was all about optimism.
A post-Cold War era of cooperation among the U.S. and Russia found concrete meaning in Gorbachev's brief visit to the Twin Cities that chilly June day. The visit was postcard-perfect, including the long motorcade that featured several iconic Russian-made ZIL limousines. Gorbachev shook hands with regular Minnesotans, and his wife, Raisa, visited a "typical" American family in south Minneapolis.
Importantly, the Soviet leader visited the Bloomington headquarters of Control Data. The company was in the process of selling several super computers (valued about $32 million) to the Soviet Union for the expressed purpose of nuclear power plant operations and safety. The Chernobyl disaster four years earlier had highlighted the archaic nature of most Soviet-era technology as well as the promise of commercial ties between the two nations.
There were some bright spots in bilateral trade in the 1990s, but the two nations never achieved the close economic or political relationship that many expected. Boris Yeltsin presided over a decade of austerity, falling life expectancies, high inflation and industrial stagnation in Russia, all of which paved the way for Putin's rise to power in 2000. Fast-forward to June 2021, and the state of U.S.-Russian relations are as cold as they were in the mid-1980s.
The Biden administration has issued executive orders sanctioning some 30 Russian individuals and technology companies for involvement in election interference in the United States. Russia responded in turn by expelling several diplomats and preventing Russian citizens from working in the U.S. embassy as consular staff. The most recent Biden administration order allows the U.S. Treasury Department to sanction a broad range of individuals and sectors in the Russian economy.
And across the globe, Russia and the U.S. do not see eye-to-eye on a broad spectrum of issues, from the future of the Assad regime in Syria to Iran's role in the Gulf region to Ukraine and now access to the Arctic as global temperatures rise.
