Communists: Playing to a Western Audience

In his foreign debut, Andropov offers a "grand peace proposal"

"The peace-loving forces on earth are looking at Prague in anticipation," the Soviet Communist Party daily Pravda reported with due solemnity. If they were, all that they saw was perfunctory television footage when leaders from the seven Warsaw Pact nations converged on Czechoslovakia's capital last week for their biennial summit. The main attraction was the tall, stooped figure who stepped off a Soviet airplane at Prague's rain-soaked Ruzyne Airport. Yuri Andropov was making his first trip abroad since he became party chief...