(5 of 17)
Personal contact between the two Presidents has so far been limited to messages that TIME has learned they exchanged in 1983 (how many, no one will say). They are unlikely to lay eyes on each other soon, or perhaps ever. Even if Andropov's health would permit a summit meeting in the coming months, the political climate probably will not.
For Americans, Andropov is still a puzzle, and not only because of the mystery surrounding his health. When he speaks on Soviet-American relations, it is as the voice of an entrenched Kremlin bureaucracy. His personal opinions of the U.S., and indeed whether he has any that are distinguishable from the general view in Moscow, can only be conjectured. The Soviets emphatically do not have that problem with Reagan. The President's beliefs about the U.S.S.R., its leaders and their philosophy are in no doubt.
Reagan began forming those views shortly after World War II. When he left military service and resumed his civilian acting career, he was a liberal Democrat on domestic issues: he had never thought much about world affairs. The decisive experience for him was the Hollywood labor wars of the late 1940s. As a board member of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan tried without success to help mediate a bitter jurisdictional dispute between SAG and the Conference of Studio Unions. He became convinced that the dispute had been fomented by Communists who were trying to take over the U.S. movie industry on Moscow's direct orders. After he had led nonstriking actors across picket lines, Reagan received a threatening phone call. Thinking his life was in danger from Communists, he took to carrying a gun to ward off attackers. More than 30 years later, he still talks about that period with a passion that he believes Moscow reciprocates. Asked on the eve of his election how he thought he was viewed by the Soviet leaders, Reagan responded, "You see, they remember back, I guess, [to] those union days when we had a domestic Communist problem. I was very definitely on the wrong side for them."
As the cold war began and Reagan became a spokesman for General Electric after his movie career fizzled, he also underwent a conversion to conservatism; his views became definitely anti-Soviet as well as antiCommunist. He came to see the Kremlin's leaders as thugs and bullies who tried ceaselessly to stir up trouble around the world. During the 1980 campaign, he said there would be no "hot spots" if it were not for the Soviets; they would back down if, and only if, they were confronted with force.
Since becoming President, Reagan has kept up the rhetoric, modulating it only slightly. As wielder of a nuclear arsenal and head of an alliance whose members often worry about how the U.S. might use its awesome power, he has spoken frequently of the necessity of trying to negotiate agreements with the Soviets. But his private distrust and animosity keep breaking through into his public utterances. In his first news conference as President, he said of the Kremlin leaders that, following stated Marxist doctrine, "the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat." In a sermon-like address to evangelical Christians in Orlando, Fla., early in 1983, he called the Soviets "the focus of evil in the modern