Something Could Snap

During the furor over President Reagan's remarks, Leonid Zamyatin, a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and an adviser to President and Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, met in Moscow with TIME Moscow Bureau Chief Erik Amfitheatrof and TIME editors. At one point he speciously compared the presence of 85,000 Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan with the approximately 400 American military advisers in Egypt. But he mainly talked about the threat of nuclear war, angrily denying the validity of Reagan's comment that the Soviets believe a nuclear war would be "winnable. "Excerpts from the interview:

On limited nuclear war. Secretary Brezhnev has just declared that the Soviet Union has no intention of [being the first to use] nuclear weapons. That rules out a pre-emptive strike. Why shouldn't the U.S. respond with a similar statement? Such a statement would do much to calm the very tense atmosphere and allay fear. None of us will be forgiven if nuclear weapons are ever used. We rule out the possibility of limited nuclear war. In a nuclear war, whether supposedly limited or unlimited, it will be difficult to tell the victor from the vanquished. We're not advocates of a strategy of preventive war, and we're not looking for a nuclear duel with the U.S. We want to return to businesslike cooperation, reduce the level of confrontation, including the nuclear area. Yet we can't sit idly by and do nothing when one great power accuses another of a policy of limited war. If the U.S. insists on an arms race, all right. Maybe we'll be put to the test. We will endure it. But we assure you, America will not attain superiority.

On Reagan's statement that the Soviets think a nuclear war might be winnable. Please convey this to your President. He appears, as Secretary Brezhnev says, to be confused by his advisers when he claims that among themselves the Soviet leaders are considering a first strike against the U.S. Privately or publicly, they have never said any such thing. They are saying that all measures must be taken to prevent nuclear war. There exists a fear of nuclear confrontation here and in Europe, and it has been heightened by your President's statement that Europe might become a battlefield for tactical nuclear weapons. In America, people are less sensitive to these matters than in Europe and the Soviet Union because World War II was fought over here.

On the state of Soviet-American relations. They have never been worse in recent times. The principal reason is that the Reagan Administration is embarking on a course of seeking confrontation with the Soviet Union. We often hear that perhaps American policy is not yet fully formulated. I think that is not so. There is a policy, and it is one of open anti-Sovietism backed by a spiraling of the arms race. Hardly a day goes by without some new invention about Soviet foreign policy, not just by the U.S. press but by officials of the Government. Frankly, we're tired of refuting these inventions. I just hope they will exhaust themselves. We hope that at some future date the possibility of establishing stable and constructive relations will come to the fore again.

On Soviet-U.S. disagreements over the Middle East and Afghanistan. You say the Middle East [including the Persian Gulf] is an area of vital interest to the U.S. Yet on the other hand you think the Soviet Union should tolerate attacks by interventionists and provocateurs against friendly regimes on its borders. The Reagan Administration proclaims U.S. interests everywhere, yet when the other side does something, it is seen as contrary to U.S. interests. The security of the Soviet Union is as much affected by the stability of the Middle East as is the security of the U.S. The distance from our southern border to the Middle East is equal to the distance from Boston to Chicago. What is the distance from your borders to the Middle East?

On Poland. The Poles should be allowed to settle their problems by themselves. You have your vital interests, we have our military-political alliances. Much depends on whether the Polish state can defend itself against subversion by reactionary forces both inside and outside the country. We have evidence of ties between external forces and those inside the country that are supporting the struggle against socialism. Poland was, is and will remain socialist. That's all I'm going to say about Poland.

On ways in which the U.S. might improve relations. We have an old saying: "Moscow does not believe in words." What is needed is practical action. A constructive stand at the [theater nuclear forces] talks in Geneva would demonstrate a definite intention to pursue better relations. But we absolutely cannot accept the concept of using negotiations to buy time in order to proceed with deployment [of the new medium-range missiles] while all sorts of pretexts are invented to blame the Soviet side [for the delay]. The U.S. should take a very unprejudiced look at relations with us without attempting to stick labels on us all the time. We've got to find a way of getting back to negotiations. We want to negotiate, not because we are weak, but because our leaders know that inevitably, at some point, if the situation continues to be aggravated, something will snap. And in the nuclear age, even a limited nuclear war would be a nightmare for humanity.

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