Date: October 1984.
Source: "An Address from Konstantin Chernenko",
Soviet Life magazine, February 1985,
page 2.
Last October Praeger Publishers In New York released the book Soviet-U.S. Relations: The Selected Writings and Speeches of Konstantin U. Chernenko. The volume was compiled and edited by Victor Pribytkov. It opens with an address written specially for the American reader by Konstantin Chernenko, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and President of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. The text of the address follows below.
Dear Reader,
I hope this book will in a certain measure help you better to understand how the Soviet Union see the world, what it strives for, and what causes it supports. I think a collection of speeches and articles delivered and written at different times and on different occasions best serves this purpose. The material it contains reflects real moments of history in its onward movement and evaluates certain events as they occurred, not in retrospect.
I think you will notice that Soviet-American relations, in their different aspects, are dealt with in virtually every speech of mine. This is understandable became our two countries bear a special responsibility for peace on earth, for making it possible for people in all countries to live and work in peace.
This is not a question of a subjective wish to shoulder or not to shoulder this responsibility. History, it may be said, has so decreed. Hence our attention and, I would add, carefully weighed approach to everything that determines relations between our countries, that may contribute to their improvement.
We find it hard to understand the reasoning of those who allege that tension in relations with the Soviet Union will inevitably be maintained, that it almost predestined, and that the United States has nothing to lose by that.
There are also people in your country who assert that they are not against normal relations with the Soviet Union, that they are for talks with it and even for arms limitations agreements. Bur for this, they say, the United States must be stronger than the Soviet Union. This, of course, is not so. Striving for military superiority and conducting honest businesslike talks on questions that affect the national security of the two parties are incompatible. The uncontrolled escalation of the arms race and its extension even to outer space —this, in the final analysis, is a threat to the United States’ own security.
The attempts to achieve military superiority are fruitless and at the same time dangerous, and, of course, they cannot but complicate our relations. On the contrary, when both sides showed their readiness to adhere to the principles of equality and equal security and on this basis reached mutually acceptable accords, including agreements on arms limitation, the state of the relations between our countries changed for the better.
We have no alternative but to live together. This being so, it is better to live not in an atmosphere of enmity and fear, hut in peace, as human beings should live, observing certain standards in our relations.
I hope that after familiarising yourself with our country's approach to the issues of war and peace and of our specific proposals, you will be convinced that the Soviet Union is for equal and if possible, good relations with the United States, that it wants to reach agreement with the United States on a wide range of issues. We only want our proposals to be judged objectively, without prejudice. Prejudice and an unwillingness to recognise the truth have never done any good and today they may have the gravest of consequences.
I wish the readers of this bonk in the United States prosperity and peace.
K. Chernenko