Dupes

  18. “Sizing Up the Kremlin,” Washington Post, February 1, 1981.

  19. See Lee Congdon, George Kennan: A Writing Life (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008), 114.

  20. “On Soviet Morality,” Time, February 16, 1981, 17.

  21. Reagan, “Excerpts from an Interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS News,” March 3, 1981.

  22. “On Soviet Morality,” 17. This version of the quotation doesn't match Time’s to the exact letter, but is nearly identical, differing only because of translations. For this version of the quote, see V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31: April–December 1920 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 291. Another reporter who came to see that Reagan's statements on Lenin were correct was Washington Post White House correspondent Lou Cannon, who affirmed the accuracy of Reagan's account in his first biography of the fortieth president. See Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 241–42.

  23. “R. Reagan's Press Conference,” Pravda, January 31, 1981, 5.

  24. S. Kondrashov, “This Is a New Beginning?” Izvestia, February 1, 1981, 5.

  25. Among others strictly from Soviet print media, there was a TASS statement carried on page 4 of both Izvestia and Pravda on February 3, 1981, plus columns such as: N. Prokofiev, “Rejoinder to the Point,” Pravda, February 5, 1981, 5; and Yuri Rudnev, “Washington's Dishonorable Game,” Sovetskaya Rossia, February 5, 1981, 1.

  26. I've written about this in Paul Kengor, The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 194–95.

  27. I know this well, as Clark's biographer. See Kengor, The Judge.

  28. Letter, Elliott Abrams to Bill Clark, March 10, 1983. A photocopy of the letter is in my possession.

  29. Abrams cited the source as “V. I. Lenin, 1901. From the essay: ’Where to Begin’ Selected Works, vol. 2 page 17.”

  30. In fact, Clark put a copy in his own files for delivering his own speeches. He scribbled in the upper right corner of the letter, “Save (speech file materials).”

  31. Joanne Omang, “Pseudo-Nym and Pseudo-History,” Washington Post, January 22, 1983.

  32. Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session with Reporters on the Second Anniversary of the Inauguration of the President,” January 20, 1983, Presidential Documents.

  33. For example: Nicolai Lenin, “The Tactics of the Communists,” Communist Labor, February 25, 1920, vol. 2, no. 3, 2.

  34. For both, the publisher was the London-based Communist Party of Great Britain.

  35. Omang, “Pseudo-Nym and Pseudo-History.”

  36. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 439–42. Lenin stated this in a piece published in Za Pravdu, No. 8, October 12, 1913. (Za Pravdu was, in effect, an early version of Pravda, as Lenin was attempting to transition the paper from its Vienna roots into Bolshevik Russia during the revolution.) Lenin apparently said it in regard to David Lloyd George's Labour Government in Britain. Lenin wrote: “And the promises of reform … does not the English proverb say that promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken?” If there was a valid criticism of Reagan, or anyone, using this quote, it was that Lenin applied it to British thinking. Of course, that point was not raised at all; the criticism of Reagan was that Lenin allegedly never made the statement. The criticism was not that Reagan had quoted Lenin out of context, but that he had cited a “Lenin quote” that was not actually a Lenin quote. Over time, after 1913, the quote came to be applied to Lenin's thinking, given Lenin's penchant for happily, candidly breaking agreements. The quote is Lenin's quote, and it was an accurate representation of both his thinking and his behavior.

  37. This is common knowledge regarding Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks generally. Woodrow Wilson's State Department complained that the Bolshevik “spokesmen say that they sign agreements with no intention of keeping them.” See Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, “Note of State Department on Polish Situation,” Public Papers of President Woodrow Wilson, August 10, 1920, vol. 18, 8866. George Kennan focused on the Soviet tendency to break signed agreements in his 1947 “Long Telegram,” where, as noted, Kennan said that Bolshevik betrayal was so common that any document with a Soviet signature should be interpreted in the spirit of caveat emptor. President Harry Truman complained about this tendency openly and colorfully, as has been well recorded. Reagan would have begun hearing and learning about it in the 1940s, when he (as a Truman Democrat) took a strong interest in the Cold War that was erupting all around him. I can say with absolute certainty that Reagan learned more about it in the late 1960s when he read a book by Laurence W. Beilenson called The Treaty Trap: A History of the Performance of Political Treaties by the United States and European Nations (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1969), which was a historical analysis of the Soviets’ penchant for breaking diplomatic agreements. The book greatly influenced Reagan, who remarked on and recommended it quite often, including in print. The book sat in Reagan's personal library. He and Beilenson became friends and corresponded very frequently—including in the 1980s—as attested by the letters on file at the Reagan Library.

  38. Quoted in Paul Johnson, Modern Times (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992), 73–74.

  39. Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, 110.

  40. Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 25, 45, 145.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid., 32, 48–49.

  43. Ibid., 145.

  44. See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31: April–December 1920 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 291. See also “On Soviet Morality,” 17.

  45. The document is today located in the Central Committee Archives of the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, it was featured as one of several interesting documents presented in an Archives Exhibit at the Library of Congress.

  46. Nor did it mention another disputed phrase where Reagan attacked the “Ten Commandments” of Lenin. This is one that seemed vulnerable, and indeed questionable. Perhaps the lack of mention meant that it was not so vulnerable or questionable. I cannot resolve this phrase or the reason the Soviets did not mention it.

  47. The exact dates of when Reagan said this in September 1985 were contested by Raymond Garthoff in the footnotes of his book The Great Transition, specifically footnote 8 on page 9. I will not argue with Garthoff here, but it appears that Reagan made the “overripe fruit” statement twice between roughly September 9 (to a group of college students) and also on September 18 to ABC's Ted Koppel. See David Hoffman, “Inside the White House: Lessons from the President,” Washington Post, September 12, 1985, A21.

  48. Karl E. Meyer, “The Elusive Lenin: Where Ronald Reagan Read of the Plot to Conquer America,” New York Times, October 8, 1985, A30.

  49. The way this was handled in Meyer's piece is odd. Meyer traced the Nazi link to both Arbatov and Cooke, since Cooke was discussing the “overripe fruit” line with Arbatov on Arbatov's TV show. Meyer said that Cooke had once exposed the line as Nazi propaganda. It is impossible for me to say whether Cooke or the Soviets first exposed the line as a Nazi plant. I would expect the Soviets to have attempted that connection, given their long history of tracing their own vicious deeds to the Nazis, including the Katyn Wood massacre. Either way, the Soviets claimed throughout the 1980s that the line was begun by the Nazis.

  50. Meyer, “The Elusive Lenin.”

  51. Herb Romerstein says that the quote has been traced to Trotsky's collection of Lenin remarks. Source: Discussions and e-mails with Herb Romerstein, who in the 1980s checked this quote, along with many others.

  52. Benson recalled this in a speech at Brigham Young University in October 1966. Audio clips of the speech, including this passage, can be found on several websites and appear on YouTube. The correct citation for the Benson speech (which is cited incorrectly on many websites) is “Our Immediate Responsibility,” October 25, 1966, a “Devotional Address” at Brigham Young University, posted at the BYU website.
Khrushchev's memoirs confirm the time he spent with Benson on September 16, 1959. See Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Statesman, 1953–64, vol. 3 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2007), 187.

  53. Again, as referenced earlier in this book, V. I. Lenin's “Letter to American Workers” was written August 20, 1918, and published in Pravda, August 22, 1918. See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 28 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 62–75.

  54. Lenin in November 1918: “The facts of world history have shown that the conversion of our Russian revolution into a socialist revolution was not an adventure but a necessity, for there was no other choice. Anglo-French and American imperialism will inevitably strangle the independence and freedom of Russia unless world-wide socialist revolution, unless world-wide Bolshevism, conquers.” Quoted in Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, 395.

  55. This is a well-known fact regarding Buckley and National Review. For a current source, see Lee Edwards, William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2010), 56, 80–82.

  56. Of all of these authors, Beilenson in particular detailed these many Soviet quotes and how they reflected the USSR's and its leaders’ poor character and inability to be trusted in things like diplomatic agreements. Reagan was a big fan of Beilenson's book, referencing it and recommending it very frequently, maybe more than any other book on the Soviets. See Beilenson, The Treaty Trap.

  57. On this, see Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan, 75–77. Also, I wrote the content for the Reagan Ranch museum exhibit that lists the authors that Reagan read, based on the books that rested on the shelves (marked up with annotations) of the Reagan ranch home. I have not only seen but even handled and turned the pages of the books Reagan kept at the ranch; titles by these authors were among those on those shelves. Yet more books sat on the shelves at the Reagan home in Bel Air, California, which my colleague Lee Edwards observed during an interview with Reagan in the 1960s. Edwards, too, saw these and other authors.

  58. “Rhee Cautions On Reds’ Aims,” Washington Post, June 26, 1955, A8.

  59. This story was relayed to me several times by Herb Romerstein, who also confirmed this print version.

  60. On the monolithic media: This was an era before conservative talk radio, FoxNews, and the Internet, when the political Left almost completely dominated the American media.

  61. “Vulgar” was a common adjective used by the Soviet media against Reagan. For a quoted example, see endnote 65 below referring to the June 18, 1987, broadcast of the Studio 9 program.

  62. Trofimenko in Hofstra Conference, 144.

  63. Commentary by Valentin Zorin, Moscow Domestic Service, February 16, 1976, printed as “Reagan Making Détente a ‘Football Game,’” in FBIS, February 27, 1976, B5–6.

  64. Valentin Falin, “Interview? No, a Program,” Izvestia, June 21, 1985, 4, printed as “Falin Sees Reagan's Words, Deeds at Variance,” in FBIS, June 27, 1985, A5–6.

  65. Studio 9, June 18, 1987, transcript printed as “Studio 9 Participants Discuss Reagan's Recent Speeches,” in FBIS, June 19, 1987, A1–10. “What Reagan is saying is simply political vulgarity,” yelled Arbatov. “Political vulgarity!” Falin derided Reagan's request as “frantic demagoguery” and “plain blackmail, blackmail by an American cowboy.” To Zorin and the boys, the wall was a “strictly defensive” measure, an overture of peace, intended to preserve prosperity and tranquility in Europe.

  66. On Zorin on Reagan and Poland, see Valentin Zorin, “Moscow Viewpoint,” December 27, 1981, published as “Zorin Commentary,” in FBIS, December 30, 1981, F3–5. On Zorin on Reagan and Grenada, see Valentin Zorin speaking through Moscow Domestic Service, January 13, 1984, transcript printed as “’International Situation: Questions & Answers,’” in FBIS, January 16, 1984, CC8–9. See also Kengor, The Crusader, 194.

  67. The transcript is available at the official online repository for the Reagan Presidential Documents, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/052088j.htm.

  68. Meyer, “The Elusive Lenin.”

  69. Reagan, “Interview with Soviet Television Journalists Valentin Zorin and Boris Kalyagin, May 20, 1988,” Presidential Papers, 1988, 667. In general, Reagan performed extremely effectively in this interview. Anyone who believes he was a dummy who couldn't hold his own without a script or teleprompter should turn to pages 665–70 of the 1988 Presidential Papers and read more from the transcript of this interview.

  70. Garry Wills, Reagan's America: Innocents at Home (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 342, 523n.

  71. I was required to read the book in two different courses in graduate school, and found it among suggested readings on the syllabus of several additional courses.

  72. Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1994), 9n.

  73. Mark Green and Gail MacColl, Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).

  74. I cover these in Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan, 249–62. Most of the quotes that follow in this section were used in that treatment.

  75. See Peter Robinson, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (New York: ReganBooks, 2003). Robinson was the Reagan speechwriter who wrote the Brandenburg Gate speech.

  76. Dolan said that among the items that most bothered staff were passages on abortion, another issue from which Reagan never backed down. See Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, 274.

  77. See Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan, x–xi, 244–49.

  78. Anthony Lewis, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” New York Times, March 10, 1983.

  79. Richard Cohen, “Convictions,” Washington Post, May 26, 1983, C1.

  80. Editorial, “Reverend Reagan,” The New Republic, April 4, 1983.

  81. March 11, 1983, statement from TASS in English, “TASS Criticism,” printed in FBIS, March 14, 1983, A2–3.

  82. The Commager quote has been widely quoted. Among recent sources, see Charles Krauthammer, “Reluctant Cold Warriors,” Washington Post, November 12, 1999, A35; and Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), 475.

  83. Tip O'Neill, July 1984 Democratic National Convention. A LexisNexis search yielded only one reference to the quote—a June 8, 1998, column in Jewish World Review by columnist Don Feder of the Boston Herald. Source for quote: Don Phillips, “O'Neill: Mondale Must Attack ‘Cold, Mean’ Reagan,” UPI, July 19, 1984.

  84. Through TASS, Andropov and the Soviet leadership compared Reagan to Hitler. They did this often in their propaganda. See Cannon, The Role of a Lifetime, 275, 666; and “Men of the Year: Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov,” Time, January 2, 1984.

  85. “Moscow Terms Speech ‘Bellicose,’” Facts on File, March 1983, 164.

  86. March 9, 1983, statement from TASS in English, “Reagan Orlando Speech Reflects U.S. ’Militarism,’” printed in FBIS, March 10, 1983, A1–2.

  87. “TASS Criticism,” FBIS, March 14, 1983.

  88. “Rhetoric from the Cold War Era,” Pravda, March 10, 1983, 5. Printed in The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, April 6, 1983, 19–20.

  89. Manki Ponomarev, “The United States: Policy with No Future,” Krasnaya Zvezda, March 8, 1987, 3, reprinted as “Army Paper on Links Between Reagan, ’Truman Doctrine,’” in FBIS, March 13, 1987, A6–8.

  90. “Rhetoric from the Cold War Era.”

  91. March 13, 1983, transcript from Moscow Domestic Television Service, “Geramisov Denunciation,” printed in FBIS, March 14, 1983, A2.

  92. Georgi Arbatov, “The U.S.—Will There Be Changes?” Pravda, March 17, 1983. Printed in “Arbatov Assails US ’Propaganda Tricks,’” The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol. 35, no. 11, April 13, 1983, 4.

  93. Sharansky, Fear No Evil (New York: PublicAffairs, 1998), 245, 334, 341, 362.

  94. Sharansky is quoted in Noonan, When Character Was King, 213–14.

  95. By the time of the March 1983 speech, Buk
ovsky had been released to the West. He was frequently consulted by Reagan speechwriters, including Dolan, Mark Palmer (State Department), and John Lenczowski (National Security Council). Interview with Vladimir Bukovsky, March 5, 2003.

  96. Jan Winiecki, “Poland Under Communism,” presentation at Grove City College, March 6, 2002.

  97. This is a very brief sample of the millions languishing behind the Iron Curtain who heartily endorsed Reagan's phrase, and are free to say so only today, from everyday Soviet citizens to politicians, available and eager to talk to any scholar or journalist willing to consult them. For more examples, see Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan, 259–69.

  98. Kozyrev on ABC News, This Week with David Brinkley, August 25, 1991. From ABC News, Brinkley transcript no. 513, 7.

  99. Tarasenko said this during a February 25–27, 1993, conference at Princeton University. See William C. Wohlforth, ed., Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 20.