Documents / FOIA release

Soviet Public Treatment of President Reagan

Central Intelligence Agency · 1984-06-01 · 56 pages · text by GLM-OCR

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.

  • p. 3 …in Soviet expectations regarding U.S.-Soviet cooperation. 18. + Routine media commentary has been the least…
  • p. 5 …one reasonable road--peaceful coexistence, mutually advantageous cooperation. 41. But there are also such statesmen in…
  • p. 7 …on confrontation; not on peaceful mutually beneficial cooperation, but on the use of trade to military…
  • p. 11 …They wish lasting peace and mutually beneficial cooperation. 91. Andropov, speech at CPSU Central Committee plenum…
  • p. 18 …to a policy of peace and international cooperation. 151. Andropov, interview (Pravda, 25 Jan 84) 152…
  • p. 19 …for it a policy of peace and cooperation. 161. Ustinov, article for Armed Forces Day (Pravda…
  • p. 26 …the arms race, and development of international cooperation. . . 209. President Konstantin Chernenko, speech at dinner for…
  • p. 38 …agreements in trade and scientific-technical cooperation, agreements signed by the Government of the United States…
  • p. 41 …Are we not overestimating our own strength? Can international security and international cooperation seriously be expected…
  • p. 42 …The Soviet Union is always ready for honest, equal, and mutually advantageous cooperation with any state…
  • p. 44 …climate of mutual trust, mutual understanding and cooperation in the world. 345. Valentin Zorin, Soviet television…
  • p. 46 …rapid demolition of the structure of international cooperation built by the efforts of many countries on…

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Document 1 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database

that the people who have come to power in the United States talk at length and insistently of these desires and intentions cannot be left out of account. The fact must be viewed as an objective reality. But another fact remains no less a reality--the fact that intentions and wishes alone are not enough to constitute a policy. Politics has been and will remain the art of the possible. And the possibilities, the realities of the modern world certainly do not leave a great deal of room for the imperial ambitions which people in Washington are today going on about with new force.

283. The question whether the new U.S. Administration has formulated its foreign policy should be left open, I think. Some may hope that it has not been formulated yet, others may think differently. It is clear, however, that the continuation of the existing situation would itself pose grave dangers, particularly the attempts to transform bombastic propaganda slogans into practical policy premises. All this is dangerous not only for other countries but also for the United States itself and for its national interests, which need more than ever before a realistic, sober analysis.

284. Leonid Zamyatin, chief of the CPSU Central Committee International Information Department (Soviet television, 16 May 81)

285. On many questions the foreign policy concept of the new Reagan Administration has already been formulated. . . .

286. On the basis of speeches, although at times you could say they are quite saturated with anti-Soviet rhetoric, and on the basis of documents which have already been published, it can be definitely concluded that the new U.S. Administration has chosen a sharp whipping up of the arms race as its course. The new Administration considers that opposition to the Soviet Union--as its leaders, the leaders of the United States, say--in the economic, political, and other fields is its main foreign policy concept. Besides, they maintain that this opposition must be on a global scale.

287. Reagan recently said: I do not wish to live in a world where the Soviet Union is first. What does this mean? If these words of Reagan's are translated into another language--into the language of politics from everyday language--this means that the United States has chosen military supremacy over the Soviet Union as its political concept; that it is rejecting the policy of peaceful coexistence, the policy of detente; and that it is making a stake on sharply raising the military presence of the United States in various parts of the world, including along the perimeter of Soviet borders. It is also attempting, by increasing its military potential, to put pressure on the Soviet Union.

288. Arbatov (Soviet television, 31 Oct 81)

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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.