Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency report, dated 1 June 1984 and marked unclassified for official use only, reviews how Soviet leaders and media treated President Reagan from November 1980 through May 1984. It finds that Moscow twice moderated its rhetoric to test prospects for better relations, and that attacks became the most abusive in two decades after the South Korean airliner shootdown. The report compiles authoritative Soviet statements and midlevel and routine media commentary as a baseline for analysts.
“Harder”1 page
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Document 1 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database practice. 265. TASS report on President Reagan's 29 January press conference (Pravda, 31 Jan 81) 266. Referring to the Soviet Union's policy, the U.S. President permitted a number of premeditated distortions in his assessment of the aims and character of the USSR's international activities. He said, in particular, that up to now detente has been a one-way street which the Soviet Union has used for the achievement of its own aims, and that detente is more favorable to the Soviet Union than to the United States. . . . 267. In an unworthy manner Reagan went on to talk about some sort of insidiousness in the Soviet Union's policy which allegedly aims to establish a worldwide socialist or communist state. . . . 268. Concerning one of the important problems, the SALT II treaty, the President committed obvious distortions of the treaty's essence. 269. Anichkin (Soviet domestic radio, 6 Feb 81) 270. On the whole President Reagan [at his press conference on 29 January] said nothing new in comparison with what he said during the election campaign. He attributed to the Soviet Union designs to establish world domination and to set up a worldwide socialist or communist state. Then he declared that the Soviet Union is using detente for its own ends and has allegedly turned it into a one-way street. All of this is untrue. . . . 271. It is one thing when minor politicians are talking in this spirit; it is another when such words are being pronounced by the President. After all, it is a question of the deliberate distortion of Soviet policy. . . . 272. In the words of The Washington Post, Reagan had adopted a tone which is very strikingly different from the Republican and Democratic administrations of the 60's and 70's. The President, the same newspaper writes, spoke of the Soviet Union in terms that recall the most difficult times of the cold war. 273. "I. Aleksandrov," pseudonym used in officially inspired articles (Pravda, 25 Mar 81) 274. Regretfully, from their very first public statements and practical steps the leaders of the new U.S. Government appear to be bent not on rectifying but on multiplying the errors of the previous administration, on facilitating not a lessening of international tension but its growth. . . .
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 56 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.