One of the strongest Soviet statements on the Reagan challenge, including the economic assault in particular, was offered in a January 27 article by two Soviet academics who held high posts in the military. Titled, “Imperialism’s Economic Aggression,” the article’s coauthors were listed as “Doctor of Economic Sciences professor Major General A. Gurov and Candidate of Economic Sciences Lieutenant Colonel V. Martynenko.” It was published in Krasnaya Zvezda. 22
The United States, assured the authors, had “in point of fact, already mounted an economic, ideological, and psychological war against the USSR and the other socialist community countries.” Among other tactics, they cited “the unprecedented arms race mounted by Washington.” “The economic war,” they wrote, “is very closely linked to the arms race.” “[T]the Soviet Union and the other socialist community countries,” warned Gurov and Martynenko, “cannot close their eyes to the fact that Washington has declared a ‘crusade’ against socialism as a social system.” They zeroed in on the economic assault:
Economic warfare occupies a very important place in the “crusade” against socialism. Its strategic aims are directly linked, first with attempts to interfere in the socialist countries’ internal affairs and with the desire to undermine their economies. Second, the schemes of economic warfare are very closely interwoven with plans to achieve military superiority, since it is precisely the economy that is the material basis of defense. Third, imperialism’s aggressive foreign economic actions are accompanied by corresponding acts of subversion in the political and spiritual spheres aimed at liquidating the socialist social systems.
The intensity of the economic war is increasing at a very high rate…. The United States has taken on the role of “commander in chief ” in this war. The Reagan administration spent several years preparing its allies for it and directing the elaboration of a “united approach” to economic relations with the East. This was one of the chief issues at the conferences of leaders of the capitalist “Seven” in Ottawa (1981), Versailles (1982), and Williamsburg (1983).
This assessment by comrades Gurov and Martynenko was unerringly correct. With exactness, the authors spelled out precisely what the Reagan administration was doing, laying out details numbing in their surprising accuracy. Their only mistake was believing the USSR and Soviet bloc—amid its alleged “deepening fraternal cooperation” and “unbreakable cohesion,” as they put it—would survive Reagan’s assault.23
The reality was that Moscow was on its heels, and bitter at Reagan’s success. The Soviet leadership was particularly enraged that Reagan, who had been low in the polls through much of 1982 and 1983 because of the recession, was now unexpectedly resurgent. The Soviets wanted Reagan to lose in November so badly that it hurt, and it seemed that they were about to be solicited from the most unlikely of places—from no less than the U.S. Senate.
THE TED KENNEDY FACTOR
It was during the 1984 campaign season that, according to a high-level Soviet document, Moscow almost got help from an unlikely corner in its attempt to defeat Reagan. If what Soviet documents allege actually transpired, it would no doubt prove to be the most fascinating aspect of the 1984 presidential race—one which was known by only a handful of people at the very top of the Soviet leadership and, as a result, never made America’s newspapers or nightly news broadcasts. If it had, it would have been the major story of the 1984 campaign.
During his first three years in office, and particularly since the spring of 1983, Ronald Reagan had pushed a plan to deploy intermediate-range nuclear forces (INFs), also known as Pershing IIs, in Western Europe. His goal was to prompt the Soviets to remove their medium-range nuclear missiles from Eastern Europe. He told Yuri Andropov that if the Kremlin removed its missiles, there would be no need for the United States to deploy INFs. Reagan called this the zero-zero option: he wanted both sides to slash INFs to zero levels. If Andropov would not agree to do this, Reagan would ask NATO to deploy INFs.
Opposition to this policy was ferocious, with the Soviet propaganda machine dubbing Reagan a nuclear warmonger and labeling him a belligerent who wanted to plant missiles on the soil of Western nations that never hosted such weapons. In addition, the Western nuclear freeze movement gave the Kremlin a vocal ally extending from London to Bonn to New York. The nuclear freezers led massive protests and assailed Reagan in the harshest terms. The international left was convinced that Ronald Reagan was dragging the world to nuclear Armageddon. Freezers like Dr. Helen Caldicott of Physicians for Social Responsibility and certain Catholic bishops feared Reagan might blow up the world.24
Ultimately, Andropov refused Reagan’s offer, which was actually rooted in proposals made in the late 1970s by West Germany’s Helmut Schmidt and President Jimmy Carter. Defying all odds, Reagan’s team persuaded leaders like West Germany’s Helmut Kohl and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher to accept INF deployments. Through 1984, the missiles were deployed, and the left was incensed.
Reagan ideas like the INFs, as well as SDI and many others, infuriated most liberals, including Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-MA), who, according to a highly sensitive KGB document, was motivated to do something quite unusual. Indeed, the most intriguing opposition to Reagan’s nuclear policies has sat for decades in the Soviet archives.25 If the details of the document (see Appendix) are accurate, Ted Kennedy may have pursued an extraordinary partnership with Yuri Andropov.
Back in 1983, specifically on May 14, 1983, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov had sent a message of “Special Importance” with the highest classification to Yuri Andropov. The subject head to the letter read: “Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov.” It began: “On 9–10 May of this year, Senator Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to…Andropov.” The Tunney referred to in the letter was former Senator John V. Tunney (D-CA), who served in the U.S. Senate from 1971 to 1977. Defeated in 1976, Tunney was a private citizen in 1983.26
For Tunney to serve as Kennedy’s liaison would not be a surprise, since Tunney and Kennedy were close. They had been law school roommates at the University of Virginia and often went sailing and mountain climbing together after law school. Tunney named his first child after Ted Kennedy, who is his son’s godfather.27 Along with their former wives, they rode on Kennedy’s yacht together. They frequented the same social circles and shared many of the same friends. Remarkably, Tunney was said to somehow even share Kennedy’s Hyannisport accent, even though he was not a native of the area. They were so close that Tunney once feared, “I didn’t want to go through the rest of [life] being known as Teddy Kennedy’s friend.”28
After Tunney had been friends with the Kennedy family for a while, he even got the chance to meet Ted’s famous big brother. When Tunney first considered running for Congress, John F. Kennedy himself—who, unlike Ted, was a fierce anti-Communist—advised Tunney to ditch his middle name, Varick, the name used by his friends and family since childhood. It sounded too Russian, said Jack the Cold Warrior—Tunney might strike the electorate as a Communist.29