1976. The United States celebrates 200 years of independence and freedom.
A vigorous Jimmy Carter was heading for the presidency.
The Soviet Union, too, displayed pride in its achievements
under the aging Leonid Brezhnev.
Both leaders promised to reduce East-West tensions.
But within four years the promises had turned to anger and mistrust.
The Cold War was far from over.
Washington D.C., January the 20th, 1977
"I believe the future is going to be very bright for all of us.
You are partners of mine. Together...
I'm sure we'll reach for greatness
and we'll never disappoint the people
who put their trust in us.
Thank you. Have a good time. We'll be seeing you tomorrow, a lot of you..."
President Carter aimed to restore self-confidence at home
and American leadership abroad.
Jimmy Carter was a completely fresh face.
He was in essence an outsider.
Nationally most people had never heard of him.
Jimmy who?
Jimmy Carter?
Jmmy who?
I don't know who he is.
Jimmy Carter is a baseball player, isn't he?
He would say things like, 'I will never lie to you.
I believe in God. I have always been faithful to my wife.'
Now in Washington you can imagine the reaction was jaded
and disbelieving and...
contemptuous.
The people liked this very much
They wanted someone who was fresh and someone
who was new and someone who was unsullied
by the traumas and problems and corrosion of the past.
In his relations with the Soviet Union
the new president wanted to promote respect for human rights
and to press for major nuclear arms cuts.
"...And we will have moved this year a step toward our ultimate goal
the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth."
President Ford and the Soviets had made an interim agreement
on nuclear arms cuts at Vladivostok in November 1974.
The agreeement established common ceilings for strategic arsenals.
President Ford's successor, Jimmy Carter, wanted to go much further.
Brezhnev would be urged to put the arms race into reverse.
Uncertain of Carter, Brezhnev re-affirmed his faith in détente.
Carter sent Cyrus Vance, his secretary of state,
to Moscow with a set of proposals
one called for radical cuts in strategic arsenals,
well below the Vladivostok levels.
Vance had given Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin a preview of Carter's aims.
The morning we departed for Europe,
Vance met with Dobrynin and in effect
gave him the details
of the proposal that he would present to Mr. Gromyko
a few days hence.
Dobrynin said what he had said to us all along
'It's Vladivostok, marginal cuts, or nothing.'
The Soviets bluntly rejected the American initiative.
Our position was very simple:
We thought everything had been agreed in Vladivostok.
What he was suggesting was to make bigger, more drastic cuts,
which we knew would take a very long time.
In retrospect, I can see that PresidentBrezhnev was quite proud
of the limited agreement that he had concluded in Vladivostok;
and to have a new American president come in and say,
'That is not good enough - let's do much more,
and do it quite rapidly,
took him by surprise.
At home Carter and Vance promoted the Moscow talks as a positive move.
"Cy, we're glad to have you back."
"Thanks Mr. President.
The whole of the trip was not only useful but very necessary.
It seems to be that Mr. Gromyko agrees with that conclusion, and...
I do not believe, contrary to what appeared in one of the papers today,
that there were any miscalculations.
We were very well prepared for what came up, and...
I think on the whole, as I've said, it was a very useful and necessary talk."
Other aides were less confident.
The Vance mission was a big disappointment to us.
The Russians adopted a very intransigent attitude,
and that was a disappointment to those who thought
that perhaps we could start a new...
...administration, the Carter administration,
with some wide-ranging agreement with the Russians.
It became clear that this would be much more difficult.
I think most of us on the American side knew
the fat was in the world publicity fire,
that here the Carter administration had gone to Moscow with...
new hopes, new dreams to limit the nuclear arms race,
and had failed;
that it meant somehow we didn't understand the Soviets
that the Carter team was inept,
and that we would not be able to manage Soviet-American relations.
So this was to be a deep stab wound.
Carter proposed a 3 percent increase in the American defense budget.
But those who saw détente as a trap
demanded, not parity, but nuclear superiority.
There was a strong view that détente was not working
and that the United States was becoming progressively weaker
and the Soviet Union not only progressively...
stronger in relationship to the United States and the West,
but also more aggressive.
The Soviets were still pouring resources into their military build-up.
Huge deposits of oil and natural gas in Siberia
had insulated the Soviet Union from the oil price rises
which had caused recession in the West.
Oil earned the Soviet Union much-needed hard currency.
The Soviet people were constantly told that their country was thriving
and able to match the West in everything.
In reality defense expenditure was draining the civilian economy.
By 1977, the geriatric Leonid Brezhnev was no longer in full control.
The doctors began to limit the time he was allowed to work.
His eyesight was going.
We had to change the font of his typewriter to the largest one possible.
At that time the whole central running of the state was in disarray.
Each member of the Politburo began to work in his own interests
and in the interests of the section of the economy he represented.
Beyond the Kremlin, ordinary Russians were increasingly apathetic.
Living standards were poor.
Communist idealism had evaporated.
Everyday life was drab.
Détente had not changed the Soviet Union's repressive ways.
The pressure to respect human rights increased East-West tensions.
In 1975, Brezhnev, Ford and 33 other leaders
had signed the Helsinki Declaration.
For the first time, the West had a powerful political weapon
to defend the cause of human rights behind the Iron Curtain.
Thanks to the Helsinki Accord,
which the Soviets saw as just a piece of paper,
the attention of the world media turned to our cause.
Suddenly the American Congress was dealing with it.
Heads of state were dealing with it.
It started influencing the whole character of relations
between East and West.
I was very convinced before I became president that basic human rights,
equality of opportunity, the end of abuse...
by governments of their people, was a...
was a basic principle on which the United States
should be an acknowledged champion.
We said to the president, 'We are not going to let you put pressure on us.
This is an internal matter.
We are not going to discuss the subject with you.'
I was deeply committed to human rights;
I felt this was important, but I will not hide the fact that I also thought
that there was some instrumental utility in our pursuit of human rights
vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.
And raising the issue of human rights
pointed to one of the fundamental weaknesses in the Soviet system,
namely that it was a system based on oppression.
In Czechoslovakia, dissidents secretly drew up Charter 77,
a human rights document that was smuggled to the West.
The signatories were persecuted. Many were imprisoned,
including playwright Vaclav Havel.
Under house arrest, Havel made a clandestine recording.
That special house what you see now, it isn't dream of Corbusier
but I think more a dream of George Orwell
because it is house of police which it built
three months ago and the whole day, every day,
they live inside and they follow all my steps
and everything what I do in my country house.
Sometimes they are here also during the night
but mainly only during the day.
They are my new neighbors.
Even as he walked his dog, police kept close.
Yet he had a sense of freedom and achievement.
I know from my experience collecting signatures for the Charter
how tortuous it was for people till they decided to sign.
When they did sign, they found themselves in a state of euphoria.
It was a community of free people in the middle of an unfree society.
They had a feeling of harmony with themselves.
Human rights activists in the communist bloc set up Helsinki Watch Committees
to monitor and publicise human rights abuse.
Close links with the Western media were forged by dissidents
such as physicist Andrei Sakharov.
Systematically intimidated, dissidents ended up in KGB prisons.
The threat was that their criticism of the Communist Party
and the socialist way of life
would become a platform for attacking the regime.
It could turn into an organized political force.
That was what we were afraid of.
Jews were a distinctive group among the dissidents.
They claimed the right to leave the Soviet Union.
But many were refused exit visas and became known as refuseniks.
Those who campaigned for their rights
were often punished with long prison sentences in forced labor camps,
along with other political activists
One refusenik, imprisoned in Latvia, was Yakov Raskin.
The whole territory was surrounded by armed guards with dogs.
The door would open and we would be split up into work groups,
five people in each group.
Then in a few seconds we had to jump into those trucks
and it was like a closed cage inside.
I could see people outside in the streets.
Everyone was getting on with life and I was jealous of them all.
I was envying them and my heart was aching.
Another way of silencing Soviet dissidents
was to label them insane and put them in mental hospitals.
Mind control drugs were used to make them recant.
They would tie us up for long periods.
They gave us handfuls of drugs three times a day
so the body couldn't stand it any more.
I was dumb for two years.
I couldn't speak.
My whole mouth and jaw were paralyzed.
My tongue was swollen. My arms and legs were shaking.
I was dribbling. I couldn't eat.
I couldn't unclench my teeth to force the food into my mouth.
Soviet doctors who exposed the psychiatric abuse to the West
risked imprisonment.
Dr. Anatoly Koryagin was jailed for 12 years.
I said to myself,
I can't be silent when people are kept in psychiatric hospitals
for their political beliefs.
We can't live on our knees like slaves when they do these things.
In prison, Koryagin refused to admit any wrongdoing.
They tried to break my will.
In January, they opened all the doors, letting in the cold air.
They poured cold water on me.
My body came out in huge pimples.
They put a bowl of hot water next to me and said, 'Wash yourself.'
I just lay there, next to that hot water,
because I was protesting.
It was like having food put in front of you on a hunger strike.
In 1978 the prominent refusenik Anatoly Sharansky
was sentenced to 13 years for espionage and treason.
Outside the court, supporters, who included Andrei Sakharov,
defiantly publicised Sharansky's case to the Western media.
The KGB and the police looked on.
When there were protests,
and when material was published in the Western press
about violations of human rights,
there was indignation.
The KGB reaction was: 'Those wicked people have penetrated our defenses
and published information in the West.
Punish them!'
Free Sharansky now! Free Sharansky now!
The Sharansky trial triggered forceful protests in the West.
The fate of political prisoners became a key issue in American politics.
"The trials which began yesterday in the Soviet Union have serious implications
for the future relations between the United States and the U.S.S.R."
The United States Congress and the Helsinki Watch Committees
monitored Soviet behavior.
"But I am not at all a specialist in regard to military matters
but I do not trust the Soviet government."
The evidence of human rights abuse
inflamed anti-Soviet feeling in America.
Moscow and Washington were clashing over human rights.
They were updating their arsenals.
Yet they stepped up negotiations for a new arms limitations treaty
SALT II
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was deploying
its new medium-range nuclear missiles, the SS-20s.
They were targeted on Western Europe.
The decision to deploy the SS-20s was made in total secrecy.
Even our intelligence didn't know about it.
The military industrial complex was out of control, including the army.
We in intelligence learnt about it from American sources.
The SS-20 missiles alarmed the NATO allies,
particularly the West Germans.
With a range of 3,000 miles, these missiles could hit their capitals.
No one had any plan to attack Europe using SS-20s.
At first they were just a replacement of old obsolete rockets.
Then the conveyor belt started working and it went on and on.
It was difficult to stop the production line.
Yet the new Soviet missiles were not on the agenda
of the SALT II negotiations.
In my view it was dangerous that the Americans refused for such a long time
to include the Soviet SS-20s in the ongoing arms reduction talks.
I remember being somewhat startled when Chancellor Schmidt
started making a big issue out of the SS-20s,
but then I came to realize that in a sense he was right:
namely that the SS-20, while perhaps not a decisive military weapon,
posed the risk of de-coupling Europe's security from America's;
namely, of posing before us the dilemma that maybe Europe
was threatened by nuclear devastation, but that we were not,
and therefore, should we risk
the devastation of our own people and our own cities
in order to protect Europe?
We had all sorts of counters in Europe,
we ourselves had thousands of nuclear weapons
in Europe: cruise missiles, tactical aircraft.
We could have responded at any level.
But it was almost impossible to make that case successfully,
because everyone was so nervous about being accused of
not being tough enough on the Soviet Union.
The West adopted a twin-track policy.
America would develop its new generation of rockets
and allow Moscow three years
to negotiate limits on medium-range missiles.
If no agreement was reached,
nuclear-tipped American cruise and Pershing weapons
would be stationed in Europe and targeted on Soviet cities.
America's handling of the negotiations troubled the German chancellor.
They still didn't push the Soviets strongly enough
on the issue of a mutual withdrawal of medium-range missiles.
I remember the Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin
with undisguised triumph said,
'The Americans aren't mentioning the SS-20s at all.
So you're completely isolated.'
Narration: NATO's promise to deploy these weapons was divisive.
In Western Europe, fear of the missiles
created a new mood of resistance to the arms race.
What was always dangerous was that Germany
would be the nuclear battlefield.
That made the people very upset and angry.
It was now crystal clear that military armament did not bring security.
It actually undermined our society's safety.
The peace movement gained increasing influence in German politics.
The superpowers had agreed new limits on strategic arms in June 1979
completing the SALT II treaty.
Carter met Brezhnev for the first time
when they both came to Vienna to sign the treaty.
But Carter's plans for detailed talks with Brezhnev fell through.
He was physically and intellectually deteriorating.
Carter hoped that he would be able to speak without papers
on a wide range of international issues.
But Brezhnev was in no condition to do that.
His abilities were limited by his meager knowledge
and by his poor state of health.
When I proposed that we make these changes in nuclear weaponry,
he said: 'God will never forgive us
if we don't succeed.'
And, you know, coming from the leader of an atheistic, communist country
this surprised everyone.
I think the most surprised person at the table was Gromyko,
who looked up at the sky like this and did his hands in a peculiar way
as though this was a shocking thing for Brezhnev to say.
The SALT II agreement made it possible to limit the arms race.
This was very important to the Soviet Union.
Because at that time our expenditure on all weapons
had begun to have a negative effect.
It was affecting the growth of production.
It was affecting the living standards of the population.
Essentially that agreement was what was agreed to in Vladivostok.
We had done some things to it, I think, to improve it, clarify.
But in terms of cuts
they were more or less what had been agreed to three years before.
And in terms of limits
on the developments of new weapons systems,
there were none.
So we had labored for almost seven... seven years
and produced an arms control mouse.
So the treaty was signed.
Marshall Ustinov asked Gromyko, 'Are they going to kiss each other?'
because Brezhnev liked to kiss.
Gromyko said, 'I don't know, we'll see.'
Ustinov said: 'No, they aren't.'
Gromyko said, 'I'm not sure.'
Brezhnev began to kiss Carter
and Carter was forced to kiss Brezhnev,
for which the American media gave him a telling off.
The treaty was condemned by the American right.
"SALT II is not strategic arms limitation.
It is a strategic arms build-up
with the Soviet Union authorized to add a minimum of
3,000 nuclear warheads to their already massive inventory.
The Carter administration's principal argument for ratifying SALT II
was that no one will like us if we don't.
You know, isn't it time that we made him understand we don't really care
whether they like us or not. We want to be respected.
The Soviets never really gained military superiority over us.
It was just part of the psychodrama in America
to use that issue
to galvanize Americans
about this larger legitimate question
of the strategic competition between our two countries
and two philosophies.
Carter increasingly was charged with being soft on the Soviets.
His critics pointed to Soviet expansionism in Angola
and the Horn of Africa.
They warned that America's oil supplies were threatened.
They feared that America's vital interests were under attack.
Then the Shah of Iran was overthrown.
Oil-rich Iran had been an American client state.
Now Islamic fundamentalists took over.
They were led by the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini.
Denouncing the United States as the great Satan,
he returned to Tehran in triumph.
A siege of the American Embassy ended with all diplomats taken hostage.
A failed rescue attempt sealed America's humiliation.
The crisis in Iran heightened our sense of vulnerability
insofar as that part of the world is concerned.
After all
Iran was one of the two pillars
on which both stability and our political pre-eminence
in the Persian Gulf rested.
"Let's go, dude.
Right behind there."
In the United States, oil shortages, after the loss of Iran,
led to long lines at the pumps.
"Hah, I've been here four hours.
It's just too much."
The economy was slowing down.
The blame fell on President Carter and further damaged his prestige.
Then the Soviets struck in Afghanistan.
"This invasion is an extremely serious threat to peace
because of the threat of further Soviet expansion
into neighboring countries in Southwest Asia
and also because such an aggressive military policy
is unsettling
to other people throughout the world.
This is a callous violation of international law."
Carter saw the invasion as part of a wider Soviet plan.
Unfortunately there was no strategic plan at all.
Events were developing chaotically.
In Angola and Ethiopia, as well as in Afghanistan,
Soviet policy became the hostage of unfolding events.
The invasion of Afghanistan ended détente.
President Carter gave up hopes
of congressional approval to the SALT II treaty.
He organized punitive international sanctions against the Soviet Union.
Carter called for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.
America stayed away.
As a gesture, the boycott was futile.
It proved unpopular at home,
and the Games went ahead anyhow.
In Poland, the Russians faced a fresh challenge.
The new pope, Karol Wojtyla, visited his homeland.
He called on his flock to recapture control of their destiny.
It broke down the barrier of fear.
We saw that if we could stick together in solidarity,
the authorities would have less power.
The Polish economy was in crisis.
There were shortages everywhere.
Western loans had been squandered
and the country was burdened by foreign debt.
When the government yet again raised food prices in the summer of 1980,
workers at the Gdansk shipyard staged an illegal strike.
The strikers drew up a 21-point list of demands
and refused to leave the shipyard until they were met.
This fight with the Communist monster was really impossible.
We could only fight against it by using its own weapons,
because it pretended to be the people's system.
The only effective way
was for us to organize around bread-and-butter issues
and use these concerns to gain our freedom.
We set about using truth to conquer untruth.
The government decided to negotiate with the strikers.
But first it promised there would be no reprisals.
What began as an economic protest
became a demand for sweeping political concessions.
The government negotiators gave way to the workers' key demands.
The workers were joined by intellectuals.
Together they formed a new movement: Solidarity.
Support spread throughout Poland.
For the first time they had a taste of being citizens
with civil liberties, which you don't forget.
For someone who had lived under communism it was like a narcotic,
or fresh air.
It was like having your identity for the first time.
Solidarity was given massive coverage in the Western media.
The United States provided crucial covert assistance.
We tried to meet their specific requests,
what they asked us for, and...
those requirements were conveyed to us through...
a variety of channels.
They wanted communications equipment of various kinds:
offset printing presses, radio equipment
things of that sort.
Solidarity became increasingly defiant.
As the movement began to challenge the Communist system,
Moscow watched with growing alarm.
We exerted pressure on the Polish leadership all the time
to take more decisive measures to restore order.
By December 1980, Soviet pressure on the Polish leadership was intense.
Warsaw Pact forces were massed around Poland's borders.
The message was obvious
Curb Solidarity, or there is worse to come.
American concern grew.
The critical moment came in December of 1980
when the Soviets were poised to intervene in Poland.
We did everything we could to mobilize international opinion,
to galvanize maximum international pressure on the Soviets,
to convince the Soviets that we will not be passive.
Our leadership, including we the military,
thought that under no circumstances should we move in the troops.
We said, 'One Afghanistan is enough.
We will have to make the Polish comrades solve the problem
with their own forces.'
The Kremlin, bent on ending Solidarity's mutiny,
leaned forcefully on the Polish leader, Gen. Jaruzelski
Soviet actions were influencing America's 1980 presidential elections.
Carter faced difficult odds.
The economy was slack.
Americans were still hostage in Iran.
The Russians were still in Afghanistan.
There was what he himself called
a growing spirit of malaise in the United States, and that malaise
related, I believe, to a...
popular sense of the decline of American strength
and of Western strength,
and also of American clarity and purpose in the world.
Carter's opponent was the Republican Ronald Reagan.
"Thanks very much.
Now if the boat doesn't go straight
it's because they tell me I've got to steer it for a minute."
"We have got to stop letting all of these events catch us by surprise,
as Carter has been caught by surprise.
We have got to control events to the place that we don't run into a crisis
that inevitably leads to war.
Reagan won the election by a large margin.
He had promised much tougher policies against Moscow.
It was necessary to show that détente
couldn't work in order to go beyond it, and to
re-engage in the... in the Cold War,
to re-establish a set of objectives
that was aimed at victory in the Cold War rather than...
ending it by accommodation.
America's hard-line policy boosted morale in Poland.
Solidarity now had 9 million members
supporting their fight for economic reform and political rights.
Strikes gripped the country.
The Soviets were tightening the screws on the Poles.
Brezhnev pressed Jaruzelski to plan countermeasures.
I received a letter from Brezhnev.
This letter had the character of an ultimatum,
warning Poland not to change its structure and policies.
If we made any changes,
we should expect military intervention.
On December 2, 1981 a firemen's strike was crushed by riot police.
It was a warning to Solidarity
that the authorities were ready to use force.
On December 12,
Solidarity met to plan a nationwide strike.
That night the Polish government sent in the army.
Solidarity's leaders were arrested.
Solidarity was banned.
President Jaruzelski declared martial law.
Martial law fractured East-West relations.
Civil rights were suspended,
mocking the Helsinki Declaration.
Moscow had re-imposed its will.
In 1981 I said to the gentleman who came to arrest me,
'This is the moment of your defeat.
These are the last nails in the coffin of Communism.'
The fires of rebellion burned on.
Subtitles by Juan Claudio Epsteyn
E-mail: epsteyn@hotmail.com