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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## UNCLASSIFIED FOUO ## Document 2 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database Page 29 weapon of inflammatory propaganda on the air. It is typical for aspirants to world domination to rely on miraculous weapons. It is, however, well known how they usually have ended. ## 227. Bovin (IZVESTIYA, 5 Nov 82) 228. Now let us allow the skeptic to have his say. He is bound to ask: Are we not overestimating our own strength? Can international security and international cooperation seriously be expected when the world is divided into opposing sociopolitical systems? Is the "Reagan phenomenon" an accident? The questions are not farfetched. The difficulties are indeed huge. Militarism and aggressiveness are inherent in imperialism. We do not choose our partners; fate, history hands them to us. 229. All that is true. Nonetheless, the hope is realistic. The hope is realistic because the forces advocating that detente get a "second wind" represent a real, weighty factor in world politics. The Soviet Union is a mighty power. People across the Atlantic cannot help but take this into account--whatever team is assembled in the White House, it is still not a suicide team. The socialist community and the communist and workers' parties are with us. Dozens of nonaligned states advocate detente and disarmament and oppose the division of the world into military-political blocs. The antinuclear, antivar movement is gaining unprecedented scope and its social and political spectrum is becoming increasingly broad. . . 230. I repeat, we would like to reach agreement, even with Reagan. What if this does not happen? We will wait. ## 231. Shishlin (Soviet domestic radio, 21 Nov 82) 232. Actions for the benefit of peace would carry a lot more weight than conciliatory words. If we were to see a real shift in the American position at the talks that are being held on strategic armaments, on European armaments, on conventional armaments in Central Europe--that would surely be more substantial than the words spoken by the American statesmen. So the situation remains pretty difficult. . . . ## 233. PRAVDA editorial (PRAVDA, 21 Nov 82) 234. Judging by international reactions, Andropov's meetings with foreign delegations gave new impetus to people's hopes for the maintenance and development of the detente process. The Soviet Union is always ready for honest, equal, and mutually advantageous cooperation with any state which wishes it, particularly with the United States. Normal, or better still, friendly Soviet-American relations would accord with the interests of both peoples and of
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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.