Ronald Reagan
March 8, 1983
"They violate elementary norms of decency."
Yuri Andropov
September 28, 1983
In the beginning were the words. At the top, verbal missiles fired in magisterial wrath: Ronald Reagan denouncing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" that had committed "a crime against humanity" when its fighters shot down a Korean jetliner; Yuri Andropov responding that the Reagan Administration had "finally dispelled" all "illusions" that it could be dealt with. At a baser level, crude vilification: American caricatures of Andropov as a "mutant from outer space"; Soviet comparisons of...
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