JACK F. MATLOCK JR., a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era and as ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, is Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Matlock began his lifelong study of the Soviet Union in the early 1950S and joined the State Department as a Soviet analyst in 1956, subsequently serving in various capacities in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. From 1983 to 1986, he was senior director of European and Soviet Affairs for the National Security Council, and was named by Ronald Reagan ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1987. Journal Editor Edward C. Pease interviewed him in early August at his home in Connecticut.