Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency report, dated 3 February 1984, reviews how Soviet leaders, well-connected commentators and routine media treated President Reagan from November 1980 onward. It finds that Moscow twice softened its line: once after the 1980 election and again when Andropov came to power. After the Korean airliner was shot down, Soviet treatment of Reagan became the most abusive in years. Attached excerpts include a Yakovlev article claiming Reagan believes in flying saucers.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Document 2 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database pursue a "tough policy," in other words, they will act from a "position of strength." We will see how all this will appear in practice. 165. TASS report on President Reagan's 29 January press conference (PRAVDA, 31 Jan 81) 166. 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. . . . 167. 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. . . . 168. Referring to a most important problem, the SALT II treaty, the President permitted obvious misinterpretations [perederzhki] of the treaty's essence. He alleged that in its present form the treaty would lead not to strategic arms limitation but to their buildup. He called for the holding of new negotiations. However, it followed from Reagan's statement that the principal function of such negotiations will not be the discussion of conditions for limiting the arms race, but the linking of this problem to other questions which are not relevant to this topic. ## 169. Anichkin (Soviet domestic radio, 6 Feb 81) 170. 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. . . . 171. 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... 172. In the words of the WASHINGTON POST, Reagan had adopted a tone which is very strikingly different form 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.
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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. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.