Word: leonide
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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From former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to current president Leonid I. Brezhnev, Soviet foreign policy has not changed significantly, Bush declared, saying that the Afghanistan invasion was a "logical extension of policies designed to create a change in the world power balance...
...Kremlin's concern over the fierce new challenge inside Afghanistan was apparent in a policy pronouncement made last week by Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. Accusing Washington of "hysterics" and of "circulating the lie about the war of the Russians against the Afghan people," Brezhnev reiterated Moscow's claim that it had been invited into the country under the terms of a Soviet-Afghan treaty. Said the Soviet President: "The U.S. loudly demands the withdrawal of Soviet troops but in fact is doing everything to put off this possibility; it is continuing to build up its interference...
...interviews with an American journalist, and the officials had carefully rehearsed their opening thoughts. Baltabai Yusupov, an Uzbek newspaper editor in Tashkent, even introduced what he called "strictly my own personal opinion" by noting for the record: "Of course, I personally agree entirely with the position expressed by Comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev in Pravda." Last month the Soviet President justified the invasion as a defense of Afghanistan against intervention by the forces of "imperialism...
Quite clearly, though, a possible China connection for the Afghan rebels is the one that most bothers the Kremlin. In talks with French National Assembly President Jacques Chaban-Delmas in Moscow last month, President Leonid Brezhnev bearishly declared that the Soviets would not hesitate to launch a preemptive strike against Chinese missile-launching facilities-if the U.S. even helped the People's Republic build up its strategic arsenal...
...Soviet citizen, deprived though he is of information about the world and of the benefits of Western Kremlinology, understands this perfectly well. Illiterate Afghan herdsmen are equally on target when they burn portraits of Marx and Lenin, instead of accepting the tale that their country was occupied simply because Leonid Brezhnev happened to be ailing...