DOES THE SOVIET UNION FEAR THE UNITED STATES?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87R00529R000200170074-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 30, 2010
• Sequence Number: 74
• Publication Date: August 1, 1984
• Content Type: REPORT

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the hut." Its meaning: when you wield power, do so in secret. This proverb
remains the operating principle of the Politburo, which is shrouded in secrecy
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DOES 7H E. SOVIET' UNION ?FEAR THE UNITED STATES?
There is an old Russian peasant proverb, 'Don't take your garbage out of
(in striking contrast to American presidents who rush to publish their memoirs
and my speculations about the views held by the men at the top.
as soon as they leave office). It is therefore impossible to gauge what that
small coterie of septuagenarians thinks and feels about the United States.
But some of the psychological ocnponents of Soviet high politics can, be il-
luminated through a long study of Soviet history. And ordinary Russians are
garrulous and animated people; they are quite ready to"tell the interested
visitor what they think. I am an historian, fluent in Russian, and have just
returned from a two-week trip to the Ukraine. I would like to share with
you my impression of the Soviet people's attitudes toward the United States,
July is a wonderful month to visit the Ukraine.. The weather is balmy
and the fields lush. Fars' markets are well-stocked with produce grown
wrinkled faces peer out of colorful flowered scarves. In the small river
small, privately-owned plots. and sold by old peasant uxinn, babushki, whose
town of Cherkassy I came upon an ci door market. Two babushki immediately
recognized me as a foreigner and asked where I was from. "The United States,"
I said, smiling broadly over an enormous pile of carrots. '%by does your country
one of them asked. "We only want peace, war is bad for everyone,"
added the other woman. I assured them that my country wants peace as well, but
they shook their heads in discouraged disbelief.
I was last in the Soviet Union in 1978 for five months, and during that".':
was never- once accused of caning from a jingoistic country. But that was,
... _. -.. ... .. .. 't ''_ sn:-~ .1`1 it x...c'.z .1a'_. ......,... ._i:Cb -.r.:w %'?.._. (,f . T'-~ ra~.t':;
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before the breakdown of detente. Since that time, and particularly in the
past four years Soviet newspapers and magazines - and political cartoons
especially - have depicted the United States as a warmongering nation pursuing
an adventuristic foreign policy and led by a fanatically anti-Soviet president
who has made a "crusade (they use that exact term repeatedly) of anti-Co mumism.
Without going to the U.S.S.R. there is no way of telling how this propa-
ganda, has been received by the people. Friends and colleagues returning from
Moscow and Leningrad of late have in fact been reporting a generalized popular
anxiety about the United States, and have been recounting stories much like
.the one I sketched above, of ordinary people, largely warren, protesting the
United States' purported miliaristic stance. what struck me about the encounter
I had in Cherkassy was that despite its small size and remote location, public
fear of the United States was very much in evidence. It certainly does seem
that the anti American propaganda of the past several years has been enormously
effective. My general impression is that the Soviet people -- particularly
those without much sophistication -- do genuinely fear the United States, and
that this fear has grown more intense since the deployment of missiles in
Western El rope.
We may think, of course, that our past history best proves our peaceful
intentions, since during the 1940's we never exploited our four-year monopoly
of atomic weapons. Soviet propaganda, however, corers our recent past behavior,
arguing that we did use atomic weapons, twice, and that we have derronstrated
our willingness to fight aormnmism in Korea, Southeast Asia, and to sate extent
in Central America. Worse yet, the Soviet media labels our government fascistic,
which is, of course, the most hateful term possible in a country that lost
twenty million to the Nazis. "They kill you on the streets of Los Angeles.
Wrat's there to see in the United States? Fascism, that'- what!" said a tin
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old crone to ne as we,stood in a small alley in the beautiful old port city
of Odessa. She drew deeply on her cigarette and leaning heavily on her cane
blew out the smoke and said, "I am a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. I
have seen enough of fascism."
As distressing as this kind of negative publicity is to the concerned
American, it is of small iutport for two reasons. For one thing, ours is a
confident culture; our national self-esteem is not at all-affected by what _ ______
the Russians say about us. Secondly, and more important, Soviet popular fear
of the United States does not in any way inform that country's politics. The
fear Dates frcru a deliberate propaganda campaign. designed to portray the United
States as,a menace to world peace and the U.S.S.R. as a peacemaker (public
gardens that used to display red flowering plants in the shape of a banner,
and sickle now exhibit planted flowers that spell out the Russian word for
peace). What does affect us all, of course, is the Ccetrrunist Party leaders'
perception of the Un..ted States. Do !r. Chernenko and his colleagues fear our
government and if so, what is the content of that fear?
There is no evidence whatsoever that the Politburo believes its own
propaganda about the United States. It is hard to imagine the Kremlin's shrewd
old guard -actually thinking that we would be crazy enough to launch a first
strike against them or against anyone else. But they do appear huffy and
bellicose, an attitude that has filtered dawn to the quite ordinary 0=nz ist
Party spokesmen with whom I interacted on uny recent trip. 'Miy did your president
call us an evil ettpire?" asked an English-language professor_frvm Odessa
State University of the American tourists to wham we were both lecturing
during their travels through the Ukraine. This indignant professor was expressing
same prickly defensiveness that I believe operates right now at the Politburo
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level. When the Soviet leaders are anxious, they act in aggressive ways, both
at home and abroad. And today they appear upset and angered by what they perceive
to be our government's disdainful refusal to accord them respect, and at times
even legitimacy. This is ere it beoares necessary to understand the psychology
of the Soviet leadership.
Soviet political culture is one that includes a shockingly low self-
esteem. Indeed it has often been said that the Soviet Union suffers from a
massive inferiority complex. Therefore the Kremlin, unlike Washington, has
an enormous need for visible proofs of world respect. When'they call us names
it matters little to our people or government. But when we respond in kind,
they are enraged, because our government's invective feeds into a national
psychology that has a high level of self-contempt. The Soviet leaders can be
likened to a street bully in an urban neighborhood, the mixed-up kid who
wants to have friends but is sufficiently twisted to alienate everyone, and
ends up adopting offensiveness as his style, while continuing to get angry
at the frustrating consequences; and to hate himself.
mile the leadership of the U.S.S.R. sees itself as underappreciated,
I asked admit to knowing the Russian language, although I know.that students
The men who rule the Soviet Union know full well that theirs is the only
major world power with no friends and no real allies. I followed my recent
trip to the U.S.S.R. with a week each in mania and Hungary. I chatted with
a variety of people. Not cne had anything positive to say about their mighty
Eastern neighbor; about 3an