The Crusader

crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union.

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty…. The dimensions of this failure are astounding: a country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people.

Calling on more evidence of the economic crisis, Reagan borrowed material he had used in his radio addresses from the 1970s:

Were it not for the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. These private plots occupy a bare three percent of the arable land but account for nearly one-quarter of Soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables.

Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year, the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people.

What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones.

The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies—West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam—it is the democratic countries that are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people.

Here again was Reagan’s foreknowledge of the calamity coming to the USSR, served up in 1982 when others were claiming the USSR was fine. He perceived economic failures that were in fact abounding and getting worse, and he was hoping to exacerbate the problems through his administration’s burgeoning economic-warfare efforts. Next, he shared his mutual goals of spreading democracy and reversing Communism:

We must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. The objective I propose is quite simple to state: To foster the infrastructure of democracy—the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities—which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means….

It is time that we committed ourselves as a nation—in both the public and private sectors—to assisting democratic development.

I do not wish to sound overly optimistic, yet the Soviet Union is not immune from the reality of what is going on in the world. It has happened in the past: a small ruling elite either mistakenly attempts to ease domestic unrest through greater repression and foreign adventure, or it chooses a wiser course—it begins to allow its people a voice in their own destiny.

Then came the talk of that “plan” that Reagan had penciled in, that “hope”; it was followed by a Reagan prediction and a challenge:

What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people….

For the ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas—a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

I have often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world…. Let us be shy no longer—let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable….What kind of people do we think we are? And let us answer: Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so, but to help others gain their freedom as well….

Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best—a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation…. [L]et us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Lou Cannon, who spent his career in newsrooms, rightly notes that the Western press derided the Westminster Address as “wishful thinking, bordering on delusional.”³⁹ In London, Andrew Alexander, a Daily Mail columnist, protested: “To be invited to defend ourselves against Communism is one thing. To be asked to join a crusade for the overthrow of Communism is quite another.”⁴⁰

There was no doubt about how the Soviets interpreted Reagan’s words. Official spokesmen described the address as a declaration to destroy the USSR.⁴¹ Writing in Sovetskaya Rossiya, S. Volovets said the speech showed that Reagan had “declared an ideological ‘crusade’ against atheistic communism.”⁴² Volovets parroted the line of the Moscow Domestic Service, which said the “notorious speech” threatened to impose upon the rest of the world the American way of life—that is, it sought to “impose” freedom.⁴³

The pages of Pravda were likewise certain about what Reagan had in mind. Vitaliy Korionov warned that Reagan and his merry band of “latter-day crusaders” had malicious intentions toward the Soviet bloc: “The new ‘crusade’ is essentially a whole system of methods geared to undermining the socialist community.”⁴⁴ He was right, and had merely mimicked the just-released CPSU Central Committee report to the twenty-sixth Party Congress, which explained the U.S. effort this way: “It employs an entire system of means geared to undermining the socialist world and causing it to disintegrate.”⁴⁵

Pravda did not like this American bravado, and responded with some swagger of its own. Bolshakov issued a warning to the Reagan team: “[I]f the U.S. Administration supposes that by means of force and ideological sabotage it will succeed in ‘changing history,’ let it remember that its numerous predecessors in the sphere of organizing ‘crusades’ against communism finished up in the very place where Washington resolved to dispatch Marxism-Leninism—the garbage heap of history.”

Indeed even before Reagan made the speech there were rumblings about his new strategy in the Communist press. The day of the Westminster Address, Poland’s Domestic Service released an appraisal of Reagan’s overall strategy, in which it judged that Reagan had made an unequivocal choice “to go on the offensive,” as part of a “global campaign for democracy,” which included the development of “appropriate institutions for the realization of this task.”⁴⁶ Warsaw’s Communists saw this as a bad thing. Little did they know that in their zeal to frighten Poles with Reagan’s words, they had uplifted them.

Each word in this analysis by Poland’s Domestic Service was right on the money, as was a July 1982 editorial in Pravda that said that Reagan specifically had issued “an open call to ‘undermine’ socialism in the USSR and the other socialist countries.”⁴⁷

In short, Reagan subversion was becoming the theme in the Communist press for 1982. It was that year, summed up Pravda, that Reagan publicly launched his crusade against the USSR.⁴⁸

Despite the criticisms that would be lobbed at him in both the Western and Communist presses, Reagan remained resolute. There had been nothing accidental in the Westminster Address, but instead from start to finish it was a deliberate attempt to send an unmistakable message to the Soviets and to the world. It was a message that he had been advancing for four decades, and it was a speech that would be the embodiment of that image for years to come. That moment at Westminster saw Reagan uncover the full extent of his rhetorical arsenal, as he went headfirst in announcing his intentions to attempt to change history.

Though the Soviet press found itself up in arms over Reagan’s confrontational language, words were merely a precursor of events to come. Emboldened by the speech and his meeting with the pope, Reagan returned home determined to take the next step in his crusade. The first half of 1982 was just the beginning of his assault