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A. We cannot take in earnest the assertions that the SDI would guarantee invulnerability from nuclear weapons, thus leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons. In the opinion of our experts (and, to my knowledge, of many of yours), this is sheer fantasy. However, even on a much more modest scale, in which the Strategic Defense Initiative can be implemented as an antimissile defense system of limited capabilities, the SDI is very dangerous. This project will, no doubt, whip up the arms race in all areas, which means that the threat of war will increase. That is why this project is bad for us and for you and for everybody in general.
From the same point of view we approach what is called the SDI research program. First of all, we do not consider it to be a research program. In our view, it is the first stage of the project to develop a new ABM system prohibited under the treaty of 1972. Just think of the scale of it alone--$70 billion to be earmarked for the next few years. That is an incredible amount for pure research, as emphasized even by U.S. scientists as well. The point is that in today's prices those appropriations are more than four times the cost of the Manhattan Project (the program for development of the atom bomb) and more than double the cost of the Apollo program that provided for the development of space research for a whole decade--up to the landing of man on the moon. That this is far from being a pure research program is also confirmed by other facts, including tests scheduled for space strike weapons systems.
That is why the entire SDI program and its so-called research component are a new and even more dangerous round of the arms race. It is necessary to prevent an arms race in space. We are confident that such an agreement is possible and verifiable. (I have to point out that we trust the Americans no more than they trust us, and that is why we are interested in reliable verification of any agreement as much as they are.)
Without such an agreement it will not be possible to reach an agreement on the limitation and reduction of nuclear weapons either. The interrelationship between defensive and offensive arms is so obvious as to require no proof. Thus, if the present U.S. position on space weapons is its last word, the Geneva negotiations will lose all sense.
Q. You have taken several steps to improve the Soviet economy. What further steps do you propose to take? What are the main problems of the Soviet economy?
A. It is often asserted in the West that it would take the U.S.S.R. 50 to 100 years to restore all that had been destroyed as a result of the fascist invasion. Having restored their national economy in the shortest possible time, the Soviet people did what would have seemed the impossible. But the fact remains that after the Revolution we were forced to spend almost two decades, if not more, on wars and reconstruction. Under those arduous conditions, using our system's potential, we have succeeded in making the Soviet Union a major world power. This has attested to the strength and the immense capabilities of socialism.