Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What stymied the talks this time were again relatively minor issues. Both sides, for example, had previously agreed that the number of MlRVs (multiple warheads) on each type of intercontinental ballistic missile would be frozen at the quantity already tested. That meant a maximum of ten for the Soviet monster SS-18. But last December the U.S. detected the Soviets testing an SS-18 in a way that suggested that the missile might soon have the capacity to carry twelve warheads. Since the MIRV freeze is an important selling point in the upcoming battle for SALT II ratification, the Carter...
...black-ruled neighbors would react favorably to such a call. Like many other African leaders, Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda denounced the election; he also hinted that if South Africa entered into a military alliance with the new Salisbury government, he would be obliged to seek new Soviet and Chinese arms in an effort to stop Rhodesian attacks on the guerrilla camps in his country...
...winds of Russia's winter blew very little that was good for the Soviet Union this year. The Central Statistical Administration of the U.S.S.R. last week released its figures on the performance of the Soviet economy in the first three months of 1979, and they were bleak. The coldest winter in 75 years sent temperatures plummeting to -45° C in Moscow suburbs and severely damaged pipes, power lines, railway beds, trucks and roads across the country. Never a strong point of the Soviet economy, transportation became a major national problem as a late spring delayed necessary repairs...
Officially, the National Economic Plan was 99.7% fulfilled in the first quarter, but that figure is misleading. The Statistical Administration listed the output of 57 products that are basic to the Soviet economy, and 23 were down from the same period in 1978. Such industrial necessities as steel, chemicals, fertilizer, cement, nonferrous metals and forest products were below last year's production levels; such dietary staples as milk, vegetable oil and butter were also produced in smaller quantities...
More than foul weather is behind the slump. Experts on the Soviet economy point out that it has been slowing down for several years. Since 1976, which marked the start of the tenth Five Year Plan, annual growth has averaged 3.9% a year; in the first years of the decade, the average was 6%. The country now faces a serious labor shortage in industrialized areas, productivity has been sagging, and Soviet planners have yet to cope with serious management problems. Says Dimitri Simes, director of Soviet studies at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies: "The Soviets...