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The Soviets, as expected, said no to the two proposals, but they sent signals to the Reagan Administration that they wanted a peredyshka (breathing space). They had good reason: on many fronts, Soviet policy was and remains troubled. Though Moscow's military may command fear and respect, the appeal of Soviet ideology and life-style is at an alltime low, even among the Kremlin's allies. The open though unarmed rebellion in Poland during 1980-81, followed by the imposition of martial law, demonstrated that the U.S.S.R. can hold its East European allies in line only by force.
At home, the growth rate of the inefficient Soviet economy has slowed to roughly less than half its 1960s pace. Some experts believe the economy might stop growing altogether or even decline later in the 1980s. Most important, by 1982, with Brezhnev terminally ill, the Kremlin was burdened by internal maneuvering for the succession.
When Andropov succeeded Brezhnev, the deadline for the installation of U.S. missiles in Western Europe was approaching rapidly. The Kremlin had already begun a diploImatic and propaganda campaign to stop the deployment by trying to turn European public opinion against it. Andropov raised that effort to a fever pitch. Says one Soviet observer: "I have never seen such sustained propaganda over one issue."
The campaign was an adroit, though ultimately unsuccessful mixture of blandishments and threats. Andropov enticed Hans-Jochen Vogel, head of West Germany's opposition Social Democratic Party, who visited Moscow in January, with visions of the benefits that Bonn would enjoy if only it rejected the U.S. missiles: lucrative trade, reunification of families separated by the division of Germany, regional disarmament. At the same time, the Kremlin played deftly on Western Europe's fear of nuclear war. It warned incessantly that deployment would end the INF talks, and possibly the START negotiations as well. Worse, the Soviets said that in self-defense they would take measures that would increase the risk of nuclear catastrophe.
To the U.S., however, Moscow was simultaneously dropping hints that Andropov, like Reagan, really wanted to focus his energies on domestic economic problems. Reagan in January sent Andropov what aides describe as a "very personal message" stressing that the U.S. did not seek confrontation. By midsummer, the two sides seemed to be groping cautiously toward an easing of tensions. Washington and Moscow signed a long-term grain deal and were negotiating an agreement on the opening of new consulates. Some of Reagan's aides were even entertaining thoughts of a summit meeting with Andropov in 1984. Says a senior Reagan lieutenant: "We had undertaken to pave the way for a summit when the KAL thing shot it right in the posterior."
The shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 provoked a rage against the U.S.S.R. that surpassed even the anger stirred by events in Afghanistan and Poland. In a TV address, Reagan in effect all but indicted the Soviets as cold-blooded killers unfit for membership in the community of civilized nations. Yet, according to an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Soviets may not have known on the