Dupes

by Paul Kengor

  Somehow, the fact that Ronald Reagan made such observations about Soviet Communism made them unpalatable and unbelievable. Surely Reagan could not have meant what he said, an astonished press corps reported. The lead story on the front page of the New York Times the next day insisted that Reagan's description of Soviet intentions was “historically debatable.”16 In the Washington Post the lead headline declared, “Reagan Voices a Tone on Relations Far Harsher Than His Predecessors.”17 In an editorial the Post lamented the “indiscriminate quality of some of the things being said.” The new president was “moving roughly, perhaps too roughly.” The Post warned that “approaching international political relations strictly on the basis of a nation's supposed moral character invites a crusade in place of the Carter administration's approach.” Worst of all, this sudden “good-vs.-evil approach risks missing what legitimate opportunity for honorable accommodation there may be.”18 Even George Kennan would become a staunch Reagan critic, with the sort of harsh language he once aimed at the Kremlin now being directed toward the Oval Office. Kennan said that the Soviet leadership expected nothing but a “total, blind, and almost deadly hostility” from Reagan and his administration.19

  In the ensuing weeks, America's leading journalists—perplexed and offended—repeatedly pressed the new president for clarification. And so Reagan would make the simple point again and again, saying of the Soviet leadership: “They don't subscribe to our sense of morality. They don't believe in an afterlife; they don't believe in a God or a religion. And the only morality they recognize, therefore, is what will advance the cause of socialism.”20

  This was too much for Walter Cronkite, the grand old anchor at CBS. Cronkite got the opportunity to confront Reagan during a March 3 interview. He told Reagan that the president's views seemed too “hard line toward the Soviet Union,” adding that “there are some who … feel that you might have overdone the rhetoric a little bit in laying into the Soviet leadership as being liars and thieves, et cetera.”21

  Reagan did not back down. He explained himself again, telling Cronkite, in a gentle manner: “Well, now, let's recap.” The president noted that he had merely responded truthfully to a question from a reporter about “Soviet aims.” On that, said Reagan, “I don't have to offer my opinion. They [the Soviets] have told us where they're going again and again. They have told us their goal is the Marxian philosophy of world revolution and a single, one-world Communist state, and that they're dedicated to that.” The president harkened back to the Soviet version of morality: “Remember their ideology is without God, without our idea of morality in a religious sense.” The onetime dupe told Cronkite that Americans would be “naïve” not to understand this.

  The president then repeated almost verbatim what he had said at the press conference, reaffirming his view that the Soviets “resort to lying or stealing or cheating or even murder if it furthers their cause.… We have to keep that in mind when we deal with them.”

  Cronkite, however, seemed befuddled and bothered. He described Reagan's words against the Kremlin as “name-calling,” and expressed concern that this would make “it more difficult” to sit down with Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership. Reagan disagreed, saying that, to the contrary, Brezhnev had already “suggested having a summit meeting since I said that.”

  That response from Reagan is very telling: he understood that certain words, uttered from the bully pulpit of the American presidency, could have an immeasurable impact. He pursued a “peace through strength” approach to bring the Soviet Union to the negotiating table. For Reagan, that strength included the power of rhetoric; he used words as weapons, quite apart from missiles and tanks and rifles. So, for Reagan, Brezhnev's (perceived) positive response to his harsh language was early vindication of the constructive effect of strong words. Reagan's many critics never appreciated or even understood this tactic during his presidency.

  While countless journalists at the time were vigorously disputing Reagan's descriptions of Soviet thinking, a few oddball members of the mainstream media did pause to investigate the merits of his claims. Time magazine, for instance, did a little homework on Lenin and determined that Reagan had accurately characterized the Soviet understanding of morality. Time cited Lenin's famous 1920 speech before the All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, in which the Bolshevik leader said: “We repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. Everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.”22

  Pravda Erupts

  Still, the vast majority of American journalists were not so charitably inclined to the new president. Nor were the Soviets, who sensed a major propaganda opportunity with Reagan's unapologetic statements about Soviet expansionism and immorality.

  As is evident from Soviet media archives, the USSR fired back in full force: in TASS, which was the official state news agency, and the twin newspapers Pravda and Izvestia. The USSR, of course, had no free press, meaning that “news sources” were instead propaganda arms of the Communist state. Many if not most of the “reporters” were either KGB staff or completely loyal to the dictatorial arm of the state.

  Pravda returned Reagan's salvo with a five-hundred-word analysis of the president's first press conference.23 Pravda, which in Russian means “Truth,” lambasted Reagan's “deliberate distortions” of Soviet policy and accused the new president of wanting to launch a “new Cold War.” Moscow commonly leveled this accusation at Reagan, insisting that there was no longer a Cold War—thanks to détente—but instead only aggressive attempts to rekindle one by a saber-rattling Reagan.

  Pravda also accused Reagan of speaking in an “unseemly manner about some kind of ‘insidiousness’ in the Soviet Union's policy, which allegedly has the goal of ‘creating a one-world socialist or communist state.’” Like the American Left, the Soviet media acted incredulous, refusing to concede this penchant for expansionism. Pravda criticized Reagan for an “inability to understand the meaning of the changes that are taking place in the world”—that is, the changes born of détente and the Soviet Union's successful exporting of its “liberating” ideology into the Third World. “These changes,” said Pravda, “spring from the striving of the peoples for national liberation, independence and economic social progress.” Such had been the “liberating” spirit thriving in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba, and other Soviet-friendly nations.

  A companion statement was published in Izvestia.24 Izvestia, which in Russian means “News,” decried Reagan's “relapse into the Cold War” during his first press conference, particularly his “blatantly” absurd “allegation” of a Soviet desire for world revolution. Vladimir Lenin, Izvestia informed readers, had been an apostle of peace: “Is there any need to recall that Lenin, back at the dawn of Soviet power, advanced the principle of peaceful coexistence as a fundamental principle of Soviet policy?” Moreover, insisted Izvestia, this Leninist peace principle had been “repeatedly and resolutely” reaffirmed at “the CPSU's Congresses, which have come out in favor of détente and of the improvement—in particular—of Soviet-American relations.” Sadly, it was Reagan who was poisoning this well of good intentions by advancing “a completely absurd anti-Soviet cock-and-bull story.”

  The Soviet spin was now clear, in bold print—of which these are only two of several examples25—merely days after Reagan's first press conference. And as the Soviet media gleefully reported, the American press was already taking the same angle in opposing Reagan. The Izvestia piece highlighted reactions from the Washington Post and Reuters: “After the new president's press conference, the WashingtonPost carried a story saying that, with respect to the Soviet Union, Reagan ‘set a tone that was very much different from that of the Republican and Democratic administrations of the 1960s and 1970s.’ Reuters reported that it has been 25 years since Washington
has heard such candid cold-war statements.”

  There was hope in the Soviet media—hope that the non-Communist liberal press would likewise hammer Reagan.

  Here again, for the Communists, dupes would be imperative. For victory in this latest propaganda campaign, the non-Communists needed to be brought along. And as usual, the American Left provided Moscow with a target-rich environment for dupes.

  An American Counter-response

  Fortunately for the Kremlin, liberal American journalists seemed to relish the opportunity to contest Reagan's anti-Communist claims. They were not Communists, of course, but they shared the Soviets’ revulsion of expressive anti-Commu-nism. More than that, Reagan was a Republican who stood between the Democrats and the White House. Thus, many journalists shared the Soviets’ desire to embarrass the president.

  Consequently, some members of the Reagan administration created an internal counter-response team to deal with the double assault from Soviet Communists and liberal American journalists. An unofficial team within the Reagan administration tasked itself with verifying Soviet quotations cited by Reagan, in order to be able to defend the president against charges leveled by the American media and by Soviet propagandists. This group worked primarily out of the United States Information Agency (USIA).

  USIA ended up working a form of “public diplomacy” for the Reagan administration that has been neglected in histories of the Reagan administration and the Cold War.26 The agency was headed by old Reagan friend Charlie Wick, who worked closely with Ambassador Gil Robinson, among others. The unofficial front man for handling the Soviet quotes Reagan cited was Herb Romerstein, America's top expert on everything Communist. As a former Communist himself, Romerstein knew his Marxism-Leninism and could be called upon at any moment to certify the authenticity of certain quotes.

  Other members of the Reagan administration outside of USIA helped support the president's strategic use of strong rhetoric against the USSR. One of those figures was top Reagan aide and confidant Bill Clark, who headed the National Security Council in 1982 and 1983, and was the single most important Reagan adviser in the effort to take down the Soviet Union.27 Clark worked closely with Ambassador Robinson at USIA. Another Reagan administration official, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, reached out to Clark. A fascinating letter from Abrams to Clark, which today sits in Clark's private boxes at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, illustrates the degree to which Reagan officials came to the president's defense when he was attacked for revealing the true nature of Soviet Communism.

  Abrams, who dealt with Latin American affairs at the State Department, was a Harvard J.D. who was long accustomed to confronting vicious, and often specious, charges from the Left. In a typed letter dated March 10, 1983—not coincidentally, two days after President Reagan called the USSR an “evil empire,” for which he was being derided—Abrams began, “Dear Bill: Press people may well ask on what basis the President says that the communists have no morality, so herewith are two useful quotes from Lenin which can be used as backing for the President's statements.”28 With full citations from the Selected Works of Lenin, Abrams passed along the source for the most commonly contested Lenin quote used by Reagan, “We repudiate all morality … ,” as well as a Lenin gem that Reagan had not yet employed: “We have never rejected terror on principle, nor can we do so. Terror is a form of military operation that may be usefully applied.”29

  Abrams, who had worked for Clark at the State Department, knew that Clark was closer to Reagan than any other White House figure, including in terms of shared perception of the Communist threat. Abrams knew that Bill Clark would hold on to the letter, which he did.30

  In short, the president's defenders were arming themselves behind the scenes. They were forced to do so, as the American and Soviet media were lining up the cannons, with the same anti-Communist target in their sights.

  “Nikolai” Lenin

  One such cannon bore Lenin's name—or at least a variation on his name. Early in the Reagan administration the American media ripped into the president over his alleged misuse of Lenin's first name: Reagan occasionally (not regularly) called Vladimir Lenin “Nikolai” Lenin. The very top liberal newspapers rushed to accord this supposed mistake the status of grave infraction and comical dimwittedness.

  For example, on January 22, 1983, the Washington Post, one of the two leading newspapers in America, took Reagan to task for his supposedly embarrassing ignorance of things Soviet in a piece titled “Pseudo-Nym and Pseudo-History.”31 The news story was prompted by Reagan's press conference two days earlier, in which the president had again cited nasty comments made by Lenin.32 The piece called out Reagan for making two (alleged) errors: referring to the Bolshevik godfather as “Nikolai” Lenin, and claiming that Lenin “said that promises ‘are like pie crust, made to be broken.’”

  In fact, neither was an error.

  First, the question of Lenin's first name: “Nikolai” was, in point of fact, a name that Lenin used. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym “Nikolai Lenin.” The American Communist press frequently published the Bolshevik as “Nikolai” (or “Nicolai”) Lenin. This was certainly the case in the early 1920s with organs of the American Communist Party, such as Communist Labor, published by the Communist Labor Party of America.33 The same went in other Western countries. The Communist Party of Great Britain published some of Lenin's most famous works under the name “Nikolai Lenin.” The British Communists listed “Nikolai Lenin” as the author of, for example, “Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; this was the case in both the first and second editions, in 1920 and 1928, respectively.34 (See pages 380–81.)

  Apparently, this elementary fact—known to the supposedly ill-informed Ronald Reagan—was unknown to the Washington Post. The Post reporter wrote that according to “the Soviet embassy and several Soviet scholars, to use ‘Nikolai’ as Lenin's first name is a recurrent error, common to conservatives, that annoys the Soviets to no end. In fact, the Nikolai problem was ‘the biggest complaint’ from the Soviets during a U.S.-Soviet project that for more than two years tried to remove some of the more glaring errors and propaganda from textbooks of the two countries.”35 The article quoted Dr. Stuart D. Goldman, Soviet affairs analyst at the Congressional Research Service, who maintained, “It's an error which seemed to appear frequently, although not invariably, in the rhetoric and writings of people hostile to Lenin. Historically, it's generally been found in the writings on the right.”

  The Washington Post’s questioning of the “pie crust” remark was even more off the mark. The remark was indeed real—taken from Lenin's Collected Works, the standard, go-to guide for such quotations.36 Reagan had cited Lenin to underscore the fact that Lenin brazenly lied about many things, especially diplomatic agreements. The Bolshevik leader was notorious for trampling on agreements, and even boasted about it. Many old-time Democrats had condemned Lenin for this behavior, from Woodrow Wilson and his State Department to Harry Truman.37 Reagan's feelings about the Bolsheviks were mild compared to those of a young Winston Churchill, who (long before he was prime minister) described the Bolsheviks as “ferocious baboons” who had created a “most destructive” and “most degrading” tyranny. Churchill told the cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George that Lenin and Trotsky should be captured and hanged, and that the prime minister “might as well legalize sodomy as recognize the Bolsheviks.”38

  The Washington Post article wrapped up by criticizing the general thrust of Reagan's understanding of Lenin. To buttress the point, the Post offered a quote from a dubious confirming source: a member of the Soviet embassy. This would seem an odd choice for attestation. Certainly, the Soviet embassy had as much bias on the issue as did the president.

  The Post’s skepticism of Reagan's understanding of Marxism-Leninism was not confined to this one story or even this reporter. The Post’s White House correspondent, Lou Cannon, who became effectively the first major Reagan biographer, also derided Reagan for supposed
ly misidentifying Lenin. Generally, summed up Cannon, “I reached the conclusion that Reagan was wonderful about Jack Benny and worthless on the subject of Lenin.”39

  Cannon's conclusion fit the mainstream press's caricature of Reagan: the “B-movie actor”–turned–conservative president was fine commenting on movies like Bedtime for Bonzo but useless on historical knowledge.

  Gorbachev on Lenin

  While the American media frequently attacked President Reagan for supposedly inaccurate claims about Lenin, the same press exhibited a total lack of alarm over the truly outrageous remarks on Lenin by Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet leader, a darling of the American media in the 1980s, did not make a mistake or two; he was responsible for a litany of errors and dangerous misunderstandings. Of course, the American press, which generally portrayed Gorbachev as intellectually superior to Reagan, never deigned to doubt the Soviet leader.

  Gorbachev idolized Lenin, an adoration he made embarrassingly clear. He considered Lenin his ideological mentor and hero, invoking him with reverence in his public statements and writings, including in his bestselling 1987 book Perestroika, the definitive Gorbachev statement to the world. In one of his prayerful ruminations on Lenin in Perestroika, Gorbachev gushed:

  The works of Lenin and his ideals of socialism remained for us an inexhaustible source of dialectal creative thought, theoretical wealth and political sagacity. His very image is an undying example of lofty moral strength, all-round spiritual culture and selfless devotion to the cause of the people and to socialism. Lenin lives on in the minds and hearts of millions of people.… Turning to Lenin has greatly stimulated the Party and society in their search to find explanations and answers to the questions that have arisen.