The idea of a nuclear-free Arctic, the first point of Gorbachev’s speech, was not a new one. A formal Soviet proposal had been made in 1958 by then Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, and similar ideas had become popular in the following decades, especially in specific governments and organizations in Nordic countries. Gorbachev had seen these countries as potentially being more responsive to his “new political thinking” and towards the shift toward East-West dialogue, coming off the heels of the Reykjavik Summit of 1986, which Gorbachev would explicitly refer to as a watershed for more peaceful Cold War politics in the Murmansk speech.