Moscow Summit (1988)
Reagan–Gorbachev Moscow Summit begins
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Asked in Red Square whether the Soviet Union was still an evil empire, Reagan answered that he had been talking about another time and another era.
29 May 1988: the fourth summit
On 29 May 1988, President Ronald Reagan arrived in Moscow and joined Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev for the opening ceremony. The Moscow meetings ran through 2 June.
It was their fourth summit in three years, after Geneva in 1985, Reykjavík in 1986 and Washington in 1987. Talks covered arms control, human rights and humanitarian issues, regional conflicts and bilateral relations.
1 June: the exchange in St. Vladimir's Hall
Reagan and Gorbachev exchanged the instruments of ratification for the INF Treaty in the Grand Kremlin Palace. The treaty had been signed in Washington in December 1987; this exchange brought it into force.
The U.S. Senate had approved ratification immediately before Reagan's trip. Reagan noted at the ceremony that inspection teams were already residing in each other's countries.
What else came out of it
The summit produced an agreement requiring advance notification of ICBM and submarine-launched ballistic-missile launches, plus several bilateral cooperation agreements.
On START, the sides recorded common ground — including ceilings of 1,600 strategic delivery systems and 6,000 warheads — while acknowledging important work remained. Shultz and Shevardnadze were instructed to continue in Geneva.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes, 1 issue open
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- A Reagan Library retrospective timeline labels the broader presidential trip May 29–June 3, but the contemporaneous joint statement and the State Department's presidential-travel record date the Moscow summit May 29–June 2. Reagan was in London and then returned to Washington on June 3.
- May 29 is the summit's opening date. The INF ratification exchange—the summit's principal completed arms-control act—occurred on June 1.
Checked against
- Office of the Historian: Reagan's travel to Russia
- Foreign Relations of the United States: Moscow Summit editorial note
- Joint Statement Following the Soviet–United States Summit Meeting in Moscow
- Reagan Library: Remarks at the exchange of INF ratification documents
- Arms Control Association: INF Treaty at a Glance