Word: brezhnevs
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...last week, as the President's words were reported, misreported and exaggerated, they detonated on the other side of the Atlantic. Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev seized upon Reagan's remarks to try to show that the U.S. was willing to use weapons that would inevitably bring on the holocaust. Said Brezhnev...
During the furor over President Reagan's remarks, Leonid Zamyatin, a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and an adviser to President and Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, met in Moscow with TIME Moscow Bureau Chief Erik Amfitheatrof and TIME editors. At one point he speciously compared the presence of 85,000 Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan with the approximately 400 American military advisers in Egypt. But he mainly talked about the threat of nuclear war, angrily denying the validity of Reagan's comment that the Soviets believe a nuclear war would be "winnable. "Excerpts...
...limited nuclear war. Secretary Brezhnev has just declared that the Soviet Union has no intention of [being the first to use] nuclear weapons. That rules out a pre-emptive strike. Why shouldn't the U.S. respond with a similar statement? Such a statement would do much to calm the very tense atmosphere and allay fear. None of us will be forgiven if nuclear weapons are ever used. We rule out the possibility of limited nuclear war. In a nuclear war, whether supposedly limited or unlimited, it will be difficult to tell the victor from the vanquished...
...Reagan's statement that the Soviets think a nuclear war might be winnable. Please convey this to your President. He appears, as Secretary Brezhnev says, to be confused by his advisers when he claims that among themselves the Soviet leaders are considering a first strike against the U.S. Privately or publicly, they have never said any such thing. They are saying that all measures must be taken to prevent nuclear war. There exists a fear of nuclear confrontation here and in Europe, and it has been heightened by your President's statement that Europe might become a battlefield...
Throughout the postwar years the big leaders have had, according to former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, a code of civility. For all his tough words about U.S. foreign policy, Brezhnev has never personally savaged an American President. Lyndon Johnson once heard that his Undersecretary of State, George Ball, had disparaged Charles de Gaulle. L.B.J. called Ball up and told...