88. See: Yuri Zhukov, “Choice,” Pravda, December 17, 1984, 6, published as “Zhukov on Reagan Administration’s USSR Policy,” in FBIS, FBIS-19-DEC-84, December 19, 1984, AA1–3.
89. Valentin Falin, “Fact and Fancy,” Izvestia, April 10, 1985, 5, published as “Izvestia’s Falin Muses on SDI Issue, Part 1,” in FBIS, FBIS-15-APR-85, April 15, 1985, AA3–5.
90. Yuri Gudkov, “False Promises and the Nuclear Reality,” New Times, September 1985, 3–5, published as “U.S. Strategic Doctrine Encourages Arms Escalation,” in FBISFBIS OCT-85, October 7, 1985, AA5–10.
91. TASS statement by Vladimir Matyash, October 16, 1985, published as “Reagan Uses ‘Clever Tricks’ to Explain SDI,” in FBIS, FBIS-16-OCT-85, October 16, 1985, AA5. 92. Moscow Domestic Service statement by Boris Adrianov, October 23, 1985, published as “Commentator Sees ‘Nothing Defensive’ About SDI,” in FBIS, FBIS-28-OCT-85, October 28, 1985, AA1–2.
93. In one case before his first summit meeting with Gorbachev in Geneva, he sat for a testy interview with Soviet journalists. They asked the president about “star wars”—how and why he was seeking to deploy offensive missiles in space. Reagan struggled to explain the unfortunate origins of the term—not citing Kennedy by name—how “our press picked it up,” and the subsequent “misconception” it conveyed. “We’re not talking about star wars at all,” he objected. “We’re talking about seeing if there isn’t a defensive weapon that does not kill people.” The Soviet reporters were incredulous; after all, they had gotten the term from Reagan’s own American media which, the Soviets surely surmised, was certainly more objective on the matter than Reagan. See Reagan, “Remarks in an Interview With Representatives of Soviet News Organizations, Together With Written Responses to Questions,” October 31, 1985. 94. The minutes from this session of the May 31, 1983 Politburo meeting in Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War.
95. Quoted in “Inefficiencies hamper Soviet energy plans,” Baltimore Sun, August 13, 1983. 96. Data provided by Roger Robinson. Interview with Roger Robinson, June 6, 2005. This is consistent with figures published by Peter Schweizer, who has estimated the loss at $7–15 billion per year, and the figures cited by Richard Pipes, who lists data projecting annual losses of $10 billion.
97. Pipes, Vixi, 158.
98. Among examples not quoted in this chapter, see Reagan, “Remarks at the Annual Washington Conference of the American Legion,” February 22, 1983; and Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a World Affairs Council Luncheon,” Los Angeles, California, October 28, 1988.
99. This was much more frequent than references to most other countries. 100. Reagan, “Remarks to Polish Americans,” Chicago, Illinois, June 23, 1983. 101. Reagan, “Statement on the Third Anniversary of Solidarity,” June 23, 1983. 102. Reagan, “Remarks at a Ceremony Marking the Annual Observance of Captive Nations Week,” July 19, 1983.
103. In August 1984, he found himself celebrating the annual Polish festival in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he quoted John Paul II: “Freedom is given to man by God as a measure of his dignity…. As children of God, we cannot be slaves”—a quote he repeated at a White House luncheon marking the fortieth anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Reagan, “Remarks at a White House Luncheon Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising,” August 17, 1984; and Reagan, “Remarks at a Polish Festival,” Doylestown, Pennsylvania, September 9, 1984. 104. Aleksandr Bovin, “A Face Not a Policy,” Izvestia, January 10, 1982, 5, published as “Bovin on U.S. Poland Policy,” in FBIS, FBIS-SOV-10-JAN-82, January 10, 1982, F5. Additionally, Vitaly Korionov, in a January 1984 Pravda piece titled, “Production Line of Crimes and Hypocrisy,” listed a cornucopia of Reagan efforts intended to sustain Solidarity and subvert Polish Communism. Korionov lamented: “As a result of the measures taken by Poland’s leadership, the situation in the country began to stabilize, but people in Washington decided that this contradicted their ‘vital interests’ and gave additional instructions for launching a new campaign under the changed circumstances.” He said that Washington’s goal was to “push in every possible way the thesis about the desirability of the notorious Solidarity.” Vitaly Korionov, “Production Line of Crimes and Hypocrisy,” Pravda, January 10, 1984, published as “‘Unprecedented Wave’ of Lies Seen in U.S.,” in FBIS, FBIS-SOV-13-JAN-84, January 13, 1984, A4. Reagan continued to express that desirability by both covert and overt means. On the overt side, he offered more statements of camaraderie with the Polish people.
105. Ibid.
106. Unfortunately for Bovin, his writings were widely judged by Pols as dishonest and shameless. Generally speaking, it was Soviet talk of human rights in Poland that was considered a hypocritical farce by the Polish people. Contrary to Bovin’s writings, a majority of the Polish people felt that Ronald Reagan understood their human rights concerns far better than the Soviets did, and they recognized that the Soviets’ so-called sympathy for human rights was nothing more than a cruel joke. As Krakow native Joseph Dudek put it, “I feel that few people understood the Communists with the exception of Reagan.” (Source: Interview with Joseph Dudek.)
107. Ibid.
108. Interview with Wladyslaw Kaludzinski, October 31, 2005, translated by Tomasz Pompowski.
109. May 1983 poll in a chapter by Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “Communist Regimes’ Psychological Warfare Against Their Socities: The Case of Poland,” in Janos Radvanyi, ed., Psychological Operations and Political Warfare in Long-Term Strategic Planning (New York: Praeger, 1990), 103.
110. Edmund Morris, Dutch, 492; and William P. Clark, “President Reagan and the Wall,” Address to the Council of National Policy, San Francisco, California, March 2000, 11.
111. John Barletta, Riding With Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch (New York: Citadel Press, 2005), 52.
112. Reagan’s handwritten draft of the September 1, 1983 KAL statement is on file at the Reagan Library.
113. The last quote is cited in Hedrick Smith, “Reagan’s Crucial Year,” New York Times, October 16, 1983.
114. Reagan, “Remarks at the Annual Pulaski Day Banquet,” New York, NY, September 25, 1983.
115. Ibid.
8. Quoted in “D-Day in Grenada,” Time, November 7, 1983; and Morris, Dutch, 501. 9. Figure is based on 58,000 dead from July 1959 through April 1975, which is a very broad time frame.
10. Quoted in Richard Harwood, “Tidy U.S. War Ends: ‘We Blew Them Away,’” Washington Post, November 6, 1983.
11. Reagan, An American Life, 454.
12. Data provided in Meese, With Reagan, 219.
13. Ibid., 220–21. Numbers provided.
14. It is greatly unappreciated how seldom the tough-talking Reagan chose to use force. For instance, he deployed troops in combat far fewer times than Bill Clinton, not to mention other presidents. In the few cases where he used force, action was fast and decisive, largely successful, and usually a morale booster (another example was the bombing of Moammar Kaddafi in Libya in April 1986). Charles W. Dunn notes that this rapid, rare use of force allowed Reagan to avoid liberal criticism over the use of excessive force in the battle against Communism. He chose prudently, selecting spots that were eminently doable. See Charles W. Dunn, The Scarlet Thread of Scandal (Lanham, MD: Rowman-Littlefield, 2000), 150. Judiciousness in the use of force had long been Reagan’s inclination. In a May 1968 speech, he spoke of one of his favorite presidents: “Eisenhower understood the authority as well as the limitations of force in international politics; he was not afraid to make it count in a world where force still settles the fate of nations.” “Speech to Republican State Central Committee Finance Dinner,” Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel, Cleveland, May 22, 1968. Speech filed at Reagan Library, “RWR—Speeches and Articles (1968),” vertical files.