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The General Secretary formally passed his answers to TIME's written questions, signed by him, across the table. "I'm giving this to you in a green folder," said Gorbachev. "Not even a hint of the export of revolution." He then began the spoken interview with an opening statement.
I have a great many requests for various speeches, statements and interviews, but let me just say why--and I took counsel with my colleagues in the Soviet leadership on this--we decided to respond to the request put in by TIME.
First of all, when I first saw the way your questions were formulated, I felt--maybe I'm mistaken, and if I am, correct me--that the questions themselves reflected concern about the state of SovietAmerican relations. Unfortunately, that is something that we don't hear all that often in our contact and conversations with representatives of U.S. political or other circles. I felt that that in itself was very important if the questions themselves reflected concern. There is another reason of no less importance. And that is connected with our assessment of the situation in the world. That situation today is highly complex, very tense. I would even go so far as to say it is explosive. And as we see it, the situation in the world has a tendency toward deterioration. I do not want to set out our views as to the source of this present situation. I believe that you yourselves understand, and you are familiar with the situation as it stands today. So therefore I believe that it would be best of all to try and give a response to the question of where we stand, in what kind of a world we're living, at what / stage we are in world development.
I would not like to overdramatize the situation in my response to this major question on which a great deal depends. So I believe that if we were to touch upon the question of the leaders of two such great nations as the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then surely in all of their way of thinking, in their analyses, in the practical conclusions that they draw therefrom, their starting point should be an awareness of the tremendous responsibility that rests upon them as leaders of two such nations.
It is in that spirit that I would like to try to answer the question that I myself formulated just a short while ago. Today it is a reality that the development of science and technology has reached a level where the broad- scale introduction of new achievements, particularly in the military field, can lead to an entirely new situation and an entirely new phase in the arms race (Star Wars).
I endeavored in my replies to your (written) questions to be very sincere and very frank in the hope that this will not be treated as "one more propaganda exercise by Moscow." I endeavored to say that at present, even today, it is very hard indeed to reach accord, to come to terms. There are so many accretions, so many exacerbations, such a lack of confidence, that it is even hard to begin moving toward each other. But if we were to come in the future to this new phase, and to open up a new stage in the military sphere, then surely the question is: Could we really deal with these matters? Would not there be a temptation on one or the other side to believe, "At last we have overtaken our partner. Is it not time then to seek to achieve superiority and to untie our hands in the field of foreign policy?"