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.
“Cooper”9 pages
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Page 23 182. First of all, they can shed light on political views and intentions. In this light the "noises" from Washington are almost unambiguous: They indicate a desire to accelerate the arms race in every possible way and to secure military superiority, a wish to switch relations with the USSR and the other socialist countries onto the road of confrontation and power struggle, to rule according to whim the fate of the countries that have liberated themselves from colonialism, to dictate unceremoniously to the allies. The very fact 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. 183. 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. 184. Leonid Zamyatin, chief of the CPSU Central Committee International Information Department (Soviet television, 16 May 81) 185. On many questions the foreign policy concept of the new Reagan Administration has already been formulated. . . . 186. 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. 187. 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
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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.