CNN Cold War Set 2_07of14_Freeze 1977-1981
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00In 1976, the United States celebrates 200 years of independence and freedom.
00:21A vigorous Jimmy Carter was heading for the presidency.
00:30The Soviet Union, too, displayed pride in its achievements under the aging Leonid Brezhnev.
00:37Both leaders promised to reduce East-West tensions.
00:42But within four years, the promises had turned to anger and mistrust.
00:48The Cold War was far from over.
01:18Washington, D.C., January the 20th, 1977.
01:35I believe the future's going to be very bright for all of us.
01:38Your partners of mine, together, I'm sure we'll reach for greatness, and we'll never
01:45disappoint the people who put their trust in us.
01:48Thank you.
01:49Have a good time.
01:50We'll be seeing you tomorrow, a lot of you.
01:52President Carter aimed to restore self-confidence at home and American leadership abroad.
01:59Jimmy Carter was a completely fresh face.
02:02He was, in essence, an outsider.
02:05Nationally, most people had never heard of him.
02:08Jimmy who?
02:09Jimmy Carter.
02:10Jimmy who?
02:11I don't know who he is.
02:12Jimmy Carter's a basketball player, isn't he?
02:13Jimmy Carter's a basketball player, isn't he?
02:15He would say things like, I will never lie to you.
02:20I believe in God.
02:22I have always been faithful to my wife.
02:25Now, in Washington, you can imagine the reaction was jaded and disbelieving and contemptuous.
02:38But people liked this very much.
02:40They wanted someone who was fresh and someone who was new and someone who was unsullied
02:46by the traumas and problems and corrosion of the past.
02:57In his relations with the Soviet Union, the new president wanted to promote respect for
03:01human rights and to press for major nuclear arms cuts.
03:05And we will move this year a step toward our ultimate goal, the elimination of all
03:14nuclear weapons from this earth.
03:20President Ford and the Soviets had made an interim agreement on nuclear arms cuts at
03:24Vladivostok in November 1974.
03:29The agreement established common ceilings for strategic arsenals.
03:35President Ford's successor, Jimmy Carter, wanted to go much further.
03:40Brezhnev would be urged to put the arms race into reverse.
03:45Uncertain of Carter, Brezhnev reaffirmed his faith in detente.
03:50I, on behalf of the party and all the people, declare that our country will never be on
04:01the path of aggression, will never raise a sword against other nations.
04:14Carter sent Cyrus Vance, his Secretary of State, to Moscow with a set of proposals.
04:22One called for radical cuts in strategic arsenals, well below the Vladivostok levels.
04:29Vance had given Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin a preview of Carter's aims.
04:35The morning we departed for Europe, Vance met with Dobrynin and, in effect, gave him
04:43the details of the proposal that he would present to Mr. Gromyko a few days hence.
04:51Dobrynin said what he had said to us all along, it's Vladivostok, marginal cuts, or nothing.
05:02The Soviets bluntly rejected the American initiative.
05:10Our position was very simple.
05:12We thought everything had been agreed in Vladivostok.
05:17What he was suggesting was to make bigger, more drastic cuts, which we knew would take
05:22a very long time.
05:24And in retrospect, I can say that President Brezhnev was quite proud of the limited agreement
05:31that he had concluded in Vladivostok.
05:34And to have a new American president come in and say that is not good enough, let's
05:37do much more, and do it quite rapidly, took him by surprise.
05:44At home, Carter and Vance promoted the Moscow talks as a positive move.
05:49We're glad to have you back.
05:51Thanks, Mr. President.
05:52I think, on the whole, the trip was not only useful, but very necessary.
05:58It's interesting that Mr. Gromyko agrees with that conclusion.
06:03And I do not believe, contrary to what appeared in one of the papers today, that there were
06:08any miscalculations.
06:10We were very well prepared for what came up.
06:15And I think, on the whole, as I've said, it was a very useful and necessary trip.
06:21Other aides were less confident.
06:23The Vance mission was a big disappointment to us.
06:26The Russians adopted a very intransigent attitude.
06:30And that was a disappointment to those who thought that perhaps we could start the new
06:34administration, the Carter administration, with some wide-ranging agreement with the
06:39Russians.
06:40It became clear that this would be much more difficult.
06:43I think most of us on the American side knew the fat was in the world publicity fire.
06:50That here, the Carter administration had gone to Moscow with new hopes, new dreams to limit
06:57the nuclear arms race, and had failed.
07:03That it meant somehow we didn't understand the Soviets, that the Carter team was inept,
07:11and that we would not be able to manage Soviet-American relations.
07:17So this was to be a deep stab wound.
07:24Carter proposed a 3% increase in the American defense budget.
07:31But those who saw detente as a trap demanded not parity, but nuclear superiority.
07:37There was a strong view that detente was not working, that the United States was becoming
07:44progressively weaker, the Soviet Union not only progressively stronger in relationship
07:50to the United States and the West, but also more aggressive.
08:20The Soviets were still pouring resources into their military buildup.
08:30Huge deposits of oil and natural gas in Siberia had insulated the Soviet Union from the oil
08:36price rises which had caused recession in the West.
08:42Oil earned the Soviet Union much-needed hard currency.
08:49The Soviet people were constantly told that their country was thriving and able to match
08:53the West in everything.
09:19In reality, defense expenditure was draining the civilian economy.
09:27By 1977, the geriatric Leonid Brezhnev was no longer in full control.
09:36The doctors began to limit the time he was allowed to work.
09:41His eyesight was going.
09:43We had to change the font of his typewriter to the largest one possible.
09:47At that time, the whole central running of the state was in disarray.
09:55Each member of the Politburo began to work in his own interests and in the interests
10:00of the section of the economy he represented.
10:09Beyond the Kremlin, ordinary Russians were increasingly apathetic.
10:15Living standards were poor.
10:19Communist idealism had evaporated.
10:24Everyday life was drab.
10:31Detente had not changed the Soviet Union's repressive ways.
10:35The pressure to respect human rights increased East-West tensions.
10:41In 1975, Brezhnev, Ford and 33 other leaders had signed the Helsinki Declaration.
10:48For the first time, the West had a powerful political weapon to defend the cause of human
10:53rights behind the Iron Curtain.
10:59Thanks to the Helsinki Accord, which the Soviets saw as just a piece of paper, the attention
11:04of the world media turned to our cause.
11:09Eventually the American Congress was dealing with it.
11:13Heads of state were dealing with it.
11:18It started influencing the whole character of relations between East and West.
11:24I was very convinced before I became president that basic human rights, equality of opportunity,
11:32the end of abuse by governments of their people was a basic principle on which the
11:40United States should be an acknowledged champion.
11:47We said to the president, we are not going to let you put pressure on us.
11:53This is an internal matter.
11:57We are not going to discuss the subject with you.
12:02I was deeply committed to human rights.
12:04I felt this was important.
12:06But I will not hide the fact that I also thought that there was some instrumental utility in
12:12our pursuit of human rights vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.
12:16And raising the issue of human rights pointed to one of the fundamental weaknesses of the
12:21Soviet system, namely that it was a system based on oppression.
12:28In Czechoslovakia, dissidents secretly drew up Charter 77, a human rights document that
12:34was smuggled to the West.
12:40The signatories were persecuted.
12:42Many were imprisoned, including playwright Vaclav Havel.
12:48After house arrest, Havel made a clandestine recording.
12:52That special house what you see now, it isn't a dream of Corbusier, but I think more a dream
13:03of George Orwell, because it is a house of police which it built three months ago.
13:10And the whole day, every day, they leave inside and they follow all my steps and everything
13:18that I do in my country house.
13:22Sometimes they are here also during the night, but mainly only during the day.
13:32They are my new neighbours.
13:39Even as he walked his dog, police kept close.
13:43Yet he had a sense of freedom and achievement.
13:49I know from my experience collecting signatures for the Charter how tortuous it was for people
13:54till they decided to sign.
13:57When they did sign, they found themselves in a state of euphoria.
14:02It was a community of free people in the middle of an unfree society.
14:10They had a feeling of harmony with themselves.
14:17Human rights activists in the Communist bloc set up Helsinki watch committees to monitor
14:22and publicise human rights abuse.
14:27Close links with the Western media were forged by dissidents such as physicist Andrei Sakharov.
14:33We are a small group of people who allowed themselves to say what they think.
14:43We are not a political party that is running for power.
14:48We are a moral and ethical opposition to the existing government,
14:55which is striving for reform, not some kind of revolutionary change.
15:02Systematically intimidated, dissidents ended up in KGB prisons.
15:12The threat was that their criticism of the Communist Party and the socialist way of life
15:18would become a platform for attacking the regime.
15:27It could turn into an organised political force.
15:34That was what we were afraid of.
15:47The Jews were a distinctive group among the dissidents.
15:50They claimed the right to leave the Soviet Union,
15:53but many were refused exit visas and became known as refuseniks.
16:06Those who campaigned for their rights were often punished with long prison sentences
16:10in forced labour camps along with other political activists.
16:20One refusenik imprisoned in Latvia was Yakov Raskin.
16:28The whole territory was surrounded by armed guards with dogs.
16:33The door would open and we would be split up into work groups, five people in each group.
16:40Soon in a few seconds we had to jump into those trucks and it was like a closed cage inside.
16:47I could see people outside in the streets.
16:53Everyone was getting on with life and I was jealous of them all.
16:58I was envying them and my heart was aching.
17:09Another way of silencing Soviet dissidents was to label them insane and put them in mental hospitals.
17:17Mind control drugs were used to make them recant.
17:24They would tie us up for long periods.
17:28They gave us handfuls of drugs three times a day so the body couldn't stand it anymore.
17:37I was dumb for two years.
17:40I couldn't speak.
17:42My whole mouth and jaw were paralysed.
17:46My tongue was swollen.
17:47My arms and legs were shaking.
17:51I was dribbling.
17:52I couldn't eat.
17:54I couldn't unclench my teeth to force the food into my mouth.
18:01The doctors who exposed the psychiatric abuse to the West risked imprisonment.
18:08Dr Anatoly Karyagin was jailed for 12 years.
18:14I said to myself, I can't be silent when people are kept in psychiatric hospitals for their political beliefs.
18:22We can't live on our knees like slaves when they do these things.
18:31In prison Karyagin refused to admit any wrongdoing.
18:41They tried to break my will.
18:45In January they opened all the doors, letting in the cold air.
18:50They poured cold water on me.
18:53My body came out in huge pimples.
19:00They put a bowl of hot water next to me and said, wash yourself.
19:03I just lay there next to that hot water because I was protesting.
19:09It was like having food put in front of you on a hunger strike.
19:19In 1978, the prominent refusenik Anatoly Sharansky was sentenced to 13 years for espionage and treason.
19:28Outside the court, supporters who included Andrei Sakharov defiantly publicized Sharansky's case to the Western media.
19:41The KGB and the police looked on.
19:56When there were protests and when material was published in the Western press about violations of human rights, there was indignation.
20:08The KGB reaction was, those wicked people have penetrated our defenses and published information in the West.
20:16Punish them.
20:23The Sharansky trial triggered forceful protests in the West.
20:31The fate of political prisoners became a key issue in American politics.
20:37The trials which began yesterday in the Soviet Union have serious implications for the future relations between the United States and the USSR.
20:47The United States Congress and the Helsinki Watch Committees monitored Soviet behavior.
20:56But I'm not at all a specialist in regard to military matters.
21:02But I do not trust the Soviet government.
21:06The evidence of human rights abuse inflamed anti-Soviet feeling in America.
21:21Moscow and Washington were clashing over human rights.
21:26They were updating their arsenals.
21:29Yet they stepped up negotiations for a new arms limitation treaty, SALT II.
21:40Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was deploying its new medium range nuclear missiles, the SS-20s.
21:47They were targeted on Western Europe.
21:53The decision to deploy the SS-20s was made in total secrecy.
21:57Even our intelligence didn't know about it.
22:00The military-industrial complex was out of control, including the army.
22:05We in intelligence learned about it from Western sources.
22:11The SS-20 missiles alarmed the NATO allies, particularly the West Germans.
22:17With a range of 3,000 miles, these missiles could hit their capitals.
22:26No one had any plan to attack Europe using SS-20s.
22:35At first, they were just a replacement of old obsolete rockets.
22:43Then the conveyor belt started working, and it went on and on.
22:50It was difficult to stop the production line.
23:01Yet the new Soviet missiles were not on the agenda of the SALT II negotiations.
23:10In my view, it was dangerous that the Americans refused, for such a long time, to include
23:17the Soviet SS-20s in the ongoing arms reduction talks.
23:25I remember being somewhat startled when Chancellor Schmidt started making a big issue out of
23:30the SS-20s.
23:31But then I came to realize that, in a sense, he was right, namely that the SS-20, while
23:38perhaps not a decisive military weapon, posed the risk of decoupling Europe's security
23:45from America's, namely of posing before us the dilemma that maybe Europe was threatened
23:52by nuclear devastation, but that we were not.
23:55And therefore, should we risk the devastation of our own people and our own cities in order
24:01to protect Europe?
24:02We had all sorts of counters in Europe.
24:04We ourselves had thousands of nuclear weapons in Europe, cruise missiles, tactical aircraft.
24:10We could have responded at any level.
24:13But it was almost impossible to make that case successfully, because everyone was so
24:19nervous about being accused of not being tough enough on the Soviet Union.
24:30The West adopted a twin-track policy.
24:34America would develop its new generation of rockets and allow Moscow three years to negotiate
24:39limits on medium-range missiles.
24:44If no agreement was reached, nuclear-tipped American crews and Pershing weapons would
24:49be stationed in Europe and targeted on Soviet cities.
24:57America's handling of the negotiations troubled the German Chancellor.
25:07They still didn't push the Soviets strongly enough on the issue of a mutual withdrawal
25:12of medium-range missiles.
25:17I remember the Soviet Prime Minister, Kosygin, with undisguised triumph, said, the Americans
25:25aren't mentioning the SS-20s at all.
25:29So you're completely isolated.
25:39NATO's promise to deploy these weapons was divisive.
25:51In Western Europe, fear of the missiles created a new mood of resistance to the arms race.
25:59What was always dangerous was that Germany would become the nuclear battlefield.
26:12That made the people very upset and angry.
26:19It was now crystal clear that military armament did not bring security.
26:26It actually undermined our society's safety.
26:32The peace movement gained increasing influence in German politics.
26:45The superpowers had agreed new limits on strategic arms in June 1979, completing the SALT 2 Treaty.
26:55Carter met Brezhnev for the first time when they both came to Vienna to sign the treaty.
27:06But Carter's plans for detailed talks with Brezhnev fell through.
27:17He was physically and intellectually deteriorating.
27:23Carter hoped that he would be able to speak without papers on a wide range of international
27:27issues, but Brezhnev was in no condition to do that.
27:35His abilities were limited by his meager knowledge and by his poor state of health.
27:48When I proposed that we make these changes in nuclear weaponry, he said, God will never
27:54forgive us if we don't succeed.
27:58And coming from a leader of an atheistic communist country, this surprised everyone.
28:03I think the most surprised person at the table was Gromyko, who looked up at the sky like
28:08this and did his hands in a peculiar way, as though this was a shocking thing for Brezhnev
28:12to say.
28:13The SALT 2 Agreement made it possible to limit the arms race.
28:28This was very important to the Soviet Union.
28:34Because at that time, our expenditure on all weapons had begun to have a negative effect.
28:41It was affecting the growth of production.
28:44It was affecting the living standards of the population.
28:50Essentially that agreement was what was agreed to in Vladivostok.
28:54We had done some things to it, I think to improve it, clarify.
28:59But in terms of cuts, they were more or less what had been agreed to three years before.
29:07And in terms of limits on the developments of new weapons systems, there were none.
29:14So we had labored for almost seven years and produced an arms control mouse.
29:31So the treaty was signed.
29:34Marshal Ustinov asked Gromyko, are they going to kiss each other?
29:38Because Brezhnev liked to kiss.
29:41Gromyko said, I don't know, we'll see.
29:45Ustinov said, no, they aren't.
29:47Gromyko said, I'm not sure.
29:51Brezhnev began to kiss Carter, and Carter was forced to kiss Brezhnev, for which the
29:57American media gave him a telling off.
30:01The treaty was condemned by the American right.
30:05SALT II is not strategic arms limitation.
30:08It is a strategic arms buildup with the Soviet Union authorized to add a minimum of 3,000
30:13nuclear warheads to their already massive inventory.
30:17The Carter administration's principal argument for ratifying SALT II was that no one will
30:22like us if we don't.
30:25You know, it's the time that we made him understand we don't really care whether they like us
30:29or not.
30:30We should be respected.
30:36The Soviets never really gained military superiority over us.
30:40It was just part of the psychodrama in America to use that issue to galvanize Americans about
30:51this larger legitimate question of the strategic competition between our two countries and
30:58two philosophies.
31:00Carter increasingly was charged with being soft on the Soviets.
31:07His critics pointed to Soviet expansionism in Angola and the Horn of Africa.
31:13They warned that America's oil supplies were threatened.
31:17They feared that America's vital interests were under attack.
31:24Then the Shah of Iran was overthrown.
31:30Oil-rich Iran had been an American client state.
31:34Now Islamic fundamentalists took over.
31:37They were led by the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini.
31:41Denouncing the United States as the great Satan, he returned to Tehran in triumph.
31:54A siege of the American embassy ended with all diplomats taken hostage.
32:07A failed rescue attempt sealed America's humiliation.
32:15The crisis in Iran heightened our sense of vulnerability insofar as that part of the
32:22world is concerned.
32:24After all, Iran was one of the two pillars on which both stability and our political
32:32preeminence in the Persian Gulf rested.
32:42In the United States, oil shortages after the loss of Iran led to long lines at the
32:48pumps.
32:49I've been here for four hours, it's just too much.
32:58The economy was slowing down.
33:01The blame fell on President Carter and further damaged his prestige.
33:07Then the Soviets struck in Afghanistan.
33:12This invasion is an extremely serious threat to peace because of the threat of further
33:18Soviet expansion into neighboring countries in Southwest Asia and also because such an
33:25aggressive military policy is unsettling to other peoples throughout the world.
33:32This is a callous violation of international law.
33:38Carter saw the invasion as part of a wider Soviet plan.
33:47Unfortunately, there was no strategic plan at all.
33:51Events were developing chaotically.
33:56In Angola and Ethiopia, as well as in Afghanistan, Soviet policy became the hostage of unfolding
34:04events.
34:10The invasion of Afghanistan ended detente.
34:14President Carter gave up hopes of congressional approval to the SALT II treaty.
34:20He organized punitive international sanctions against the Soviet Union.
34:27Carter called for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.
34:33America stayed away.
34:35As a gesture, the boycott was futile.
34:37It proved unpopular at home and the Games went ahead anyhow.
34:48In Poland, the Russians faced a fresh challenge.
34:52The new Pope, Karol Wojtyla, visited his homeland.
34:56He called on his flock to recapture control of their destiny.
35:05It broke down the barrier of fear.
35:10We saw that if we could stick together in solidarity, the authorities would have less
35:16power.
35:22The Polish economy was in crisis.
35:25There were shortages everywhere.
35:32Western loans had been squandered and the country was burdened by foreign debt.
35:48When the government yet again raised food prices in the summer of 1980, workers at the
35:53Gdansk shipyard staged an illegal strike.
36:01The strikers drew up a 21-point list of demands and refused to leave the shipyard until they
36:06were met.
36:12This fight with the communist monster was really impossible.
36:18We could only fight against it by using its own weapons because it pretended to be the
36:22people's system.
36:27The only effective way was for us to organise around bread-and-butter issues and use these
36:35concerns to gain our freedom.
36:39We set about using truth to conquer untruth.
36:48The government decided to negotiate with the strikers, but first it promised there would
36:53be no reprisals.
37:15What began as an economic protest became a demand for sweeping political concessions.
37:24The government negotiators gave way to the workers' key demands.
37:47The workers were joined by intellectuals.
37:51Together they formed a new movement, Solidarity.
37:57Support spread throughout Poland.
38:02For the first time, they had a taste of being citizens, with civil liberties, which you
38:09don't forget.
38:12For someone who had lived under communism, it was like a narcotic or fresh air.
38:25It was like having your identity for the first time.
38:30Solidarity was given massive coverage in the Western media.
38:35The United States provided crucial, covert assistance.
38:39We tried to meet their specific requests, what they asked us for, and those requirements
38:47were conveyed to us through a variety of channels.
38:52They wanted communications equipment of various kinds, offset printing presses, radio equipment,
38:58things of that sort.
39:06Solidarity became increasingly defiant.
39:21As the movement began to challenge the communist system, Moscow watched with growing alarm.
39:32We exerted pressure on the Polish leadership all the time to take more decisive measures
39:36to restore order.
39:40By December 1980, Soviet pressure on the Polish leadership was intense.
39:47Warsaw Pact forces were massed around Poland's borders.
39:51The message was obvious, curb Solidarity or there is worse to come.
40:00Russian concern grew.
40:04The critical moment came in December of 1980, when the Soviets were poised to intervene
40:09in Poland.
40:10We did everything we could to mobilize international opinion, to galvanize maximum international
40:16pressure on the Soviets, to convince the Soviets that we will not be passive.
40:23Our leadership, including we the military, thought that under no circumstances should
40:27we move in the troops.
40:32We said one Afghanistan is enough.
40:38We will have to make the Polish comrades solve the problem with their own forces.
40:46The Kremlin, bent on ending Solidarity's mutiny, leaned forcefully on the Polish leader, General
40:52Jaruzelski.
40:58Soviet actions were influencing America's 1980 presidential elections.
41:03Carter faced difficult odds.
41:06The economy was slack.
41:08Americans were still hostage in Iran.
41:11The Russians were still in Afghanistan.
41:14There was what he himself called a growing spirit of malaise in the United States.
41:19That malaise related, I believe, to a popular sense of the decline of American strength
41:29and of Western strength, and also of American clarity and purpose in the world.
41:40Carter's opponent was the Republican, Ronald Reagan.
41:44Thanks very much.
41:45Now, if the vote doesn't go straight, it's because they tell me I've got to steer it.
41:50All right, everybody.
41:53We have got to stop letting all of these events catch us by surprise, as Carter has been caught
41:59by surprise.
42:01We have got to control events to the place that we don't run into a crisis that inevitably
42:06leads to war.
42:12Reagan won the election by a large margin.
42:16He had promised much tougher policies against Moscow.
42:21It was necessary to show that detente couldn't work in order to go beyond it and to reengage
42:33in the Cold War, to reestablish a set of objectives that was aimed at victory in the Cold War
42:41rather than ending it by accommodation.
42:47America's hard-line policy boosted morale in Poland.
42:51Solidarity now had nine million members supporting their fight for economic reform and political
42:56rights.
42:59Strikes gripped the country.
43:05The Soviets were tightening the screws on the Poles.
43:11Brezhnev pressed Jaruzelski to plan countermeasures.
43:20I received a letter from Brezhnev.
43:24This letter had the character of an ultimatum, warning Poland not to change its structure
43:30and policies.
43:33If we made any changes, we should expect military intervention.
43:45On December 2, 1981, a fireman's strike was crushed by riot police.
44:01It was a warning to Solidarity that the authorities were ready to use force.
44:09On December 12, Solidarity met to plan a nationwide strike.
44:22That night, the Polish government sent in the army.
44:28Solidarity's leaders were arrested.
44:31Solidarity was banned.
44:36President Jaruzelski declared martial law.
44:40Citizens, it is a great responsibility that I am bearing at this dramatic moment in Polish
44:51history.
44:52It is my duty to take this responsibility.
44:58Martial law fractured east-west relations.
45:14Civil rights were suspended, mocking the Helsinki Declaration.
45:20Moscow had reimposed its will.
45:24In 1981, I said to the gentleman who came to arrest me, this is the moment of your defeat.
45:33These are the last nails in the coffin of communism.
45:42The fires of rebellion burned on.