Soviet Public Treatment of President Reagan Since November 1980

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

## UNCLASSIFIED FOUO

## Document 2 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database

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7. In the aftermath of the shooting down of the Korean airliner last September Moscow gave what is almost surely the most abusive Soviet treatment of an American President at least since Brezhnev became CPSU general secretary in 1964. Moscow has reduced the sharpness of its criticism only marginally since then in its routine propaganda. The leadership, on the other hand, a more sensitive indicator of changes in approach, has offered one significant indication of a desire to lower the decibel level of its polemics directed against the President: Andropov's 25 January PRAVDA interview, responding to President Reagan's 16 January speech expressing interest in U.S.-Soviet dialogue, avoided stridency while expressing Moscow's unaltered assessment of U.S. policy.

8. Within this broad chronological framework, the attached Soviet leadership statements and media commentaries reveal the varied treatment accorded to President Reagan and his Administration by three different elements in the Soviet Union at three different levels of authority--the leadership itself, political commentators with close ties to the leadership, and the routine media commentators. The pattern of behavior of each of these groups is distinctive:

9. o While obviously authorizing media attacks on the President, the leadership until 1983 conspicuously avoided direct personal attacks on the President. Even in Brezhnev's most strident criticism of U.S. policy, such as in his 27 October 1982 speech to a meeting of Soviet military leaders, he attacked U.S. "ruling circles," "Washington," and "the line of the United States and those who follow it" without naming President Reagan. The Soviet leadership broke this pattern in the wake of charges by the President and other Administration officials that the Soviet Union had deliberately and knowingly shot down a passenger airliner last September. Andropov's January PRAVDA interview suggests that the Kremlin prefers the more moderate role traditionally assumed by the Soviet political leadership, according to which the top Soviet leader, at the very least, stands aloof from the excesses of the polemical fray.

10. o Well-connected political commentators, such as Aleksandr Bovin, Georgiy Arbatov, Vadim Zagladin, and Nikolay Shishlin, have been less restrained in discussing the President's responsibility for the U.S. policies they have so sharply condemned. They have also been the most sensitive indicator of changing perceptions about the direction of U.S.-Soviet relations. It was in the comments of these officials about the Administration that fluctuations in Soviet expectations for U.S.-Soviet cooperation were most clearly registered.

11. o Routine commentary has been the least sensitive barometer of changes in the atmosphere for U.S.-Soviet relations. When President