Word: brezhnevs
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...Brezhnev's keynote address, delivered in the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses, lasted more than five hours. Listening intently were some 5,000 Soviet delegates and hundreds of foreign guests, including Cuba's Fidel Castro (who sported the only full beard in the hall), North Viet Nam's Le Duan, Italy's Communist Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer and his Portuguese counterpart, Alvaro Cunhal. Brezhnev's speech seemed carefully crafted to convey a double message. While it extolled the benefits of détente-of which Brezhnev has been Moscow's principal architect...
...Moscow's relations with the U.S. He praised them for having turned "for the better" and talked about "good prospects in the future." He then expressed his determination to solve disputes between the superpowers by "peaceful political means" rather than by "force, threats or saber rattling." But Brezhnev also boasted of recent Soviet gains and American setbacks: Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia and Angola. He further declared Moscow's right to support "the struggle of other peoples for freedom and progress...
State Department officials insisted that the Brezhnev statement was in line with the long-held Kremlin view that détente does not diminish "ideological competition" with the capitalist West. But some experts interpreted his definition of détente as a repudiation of a basic principle enunciated in the 1972 Moscow summit. There the U.S. and U.S.S.R. vowed not to seek "unilateral advantages" against each other. Says a Munich-based Kremlinologist: "The Soviet Union is taking on the role of a world gendarme and is using its advantage wherever a vacuum is created by the withdrawal...
China came in for harsh treatment. In some of the strongest language from Moscow in years, Brezhnev blasted Peking for "frantic attempts to torpedo détente, to obstruct disarmament, to breed suspicion and hostility between states, to provoke a world...
Addressing himself to Russia's domestic economic problems (TIME, March 1), Brezhnev blamed poor weather for much of the Soviet Union's disappointing harvest last year. He also heaped scorn on apparatchiks in charge of food and consumer-goods production. Said he: "Our central planning and administrative organizations have shown insufficient concern for the light [consumer], food and service industries." As examples of poor-quality products, he specifically cited shoes, fabrics, clothing, housewares and furniture...