All eyes were on Moscow on this date in 1985 when world leaders gathered for the funeral of the late Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko.  More important for Western leaders, however, was the fact the gathering in the USSR allowed them to take measure of the new Soviet boss, a relatively young man (by Soviet standards) named Mikhail Gorbachev.Canada’s Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, had a 45-minute private meeting with the new General Secretary.  “We sat across from each other in the Catherine Hall at the Great Kremlin Palace,” Mulroney recalled in his memoirs. “I was indeed a long way from Baie Comeau.”Prime Minister Mulroney also made a diary entry about the meeting. “Gorbachev is indeed an impressive individual,” the Prime Minister wrote, while still in Moscow. “He is at home in this room in the Kremlin and his confidence shows.  He began by thanking me for coming all this way, speaking about his regard for Canada, his trip to our country, commercial relations, etc. I thanked him and pointed out that while Canada was not a superpower, we were not without influence, and were deeply hopeful that genuine progress would be made at Geneva (the site of arms reduction talks with the USSR and the USA).”The events in Moscow were also a chance for Mulroney, who had taken office only six months before, to hold private discussions with fellow G7 leaders from Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and with American Vice President George Bush. Few could have predicted that only six years later, the Soviet Union would be dissolved and the Cold War over.caption id="attachment_543376" align="alignleft" width="595" Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mikhail Gobachev, the last President of the USSR/captionArthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.