A Bad Year for Soviets

Unusually, given the nature of the thematic material, this column will shed a few rays of light in the winter gloom. To sum up in one short sentence: The Soviets have had a bad year. Indeed, one has to go back to the 1970s for gloom of at all comparable magnitude. Between 1970 and 1977, to illustrate the point: A Communist coup was crushed in the Sudan; Soviet-recruited revolutionaries were rounded up in Mexico; Marxist terrorists were smashed in Uruguay; Soviet advisors were expelled from Egypt, and later from Somalia; a Communist coup was foiled in Portugal; the Allende regime was overthrown in Chile; and a pro-Soviet government was ousted in Peru.

Now look at 1983. By far the most important of the reverses, of course, was the Grenada affair—just how important was shown by the documents seized on the island, which the Western press has been curiously reluctant to publish. Another important reverse —in some senses more important, although less fundamental—was the defeat of the “peace” movement in Western Europe, which failed to stop the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles, and the defeat of the corresponding “freeze” movement in the United States, which failed to block the MX.

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Brian Crozier

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Unusually, given the nature of the thematic material, this column will shed a few rays of light in the winter gloom. To sum up in one short sentence: The Soviets have had a bad year. Indeed, one has to go back to the 1970s for gloom of at all comparable magnitude. Between 1970 and 1977, to illustrate the point: A Communist coup was crushed in the Sudan; Soviet-recruited revolutionaries were rounded up in Mexico; Marxist terrorists were smashed in Uruguay; Soviet advisors were expelled from Egypt, and later from Somalia; a Communist coup was foiled in Portugal; the Allende regime was overthrown in Chile; and a pro-Soviet government was ousted in Peru.

Now look at 1983. By far the most important of the reverses, of course, was the Grenada affair—just how important was shown by the documents seized on the island, which the Western press has been curiously reluctant to publish. Another important reverse —in some senses more important, although less fundamental—was the defeat of the “peace” movement in Western Europe, which failed to stop the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles, and the defeat of the corresponding “freeze” movement in the United States, which failed to block the MX.