Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume III, Soviet Union, January 1981–January 1983

123. Memorandum From the Acting President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Nance) to President Reagan¹

Washington, December 25, 1981

SUBJECT

• Letter from Brezhnev

Attached is a letter we have just received from Brezhnev over MOLINK. We have had it translated here in the NSC. As you will see, it is abrasive, and accuses you of gross interference in the internal affairs of Poland and Russia. However, the interesting part of the letter is that it is not as abrasive as some previously received from Brezhnev and asks that we talk. It tries to minimize our differences over Poland as being secondary to overall U.S./Soviet relations and the need for arms control agreements. He hints in response to your assertion we would be forced to take certain actions toward the Soviet Union if it persisted in pressuring Poland, that so little is left in U.S./Soviet collaboration anyway that your threat isn’t very frightening. The tacit assumption of the letter is that an irreversible change has taken place in Poland’s reverting to the Soviet model, that Poland therefore has ceased to be a “problem”, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union should go on to other issues.

I have discussed the letter with Ed Meese and the Vice President. We are planning the following actions unless you direct otherwise.

1. I will prepare for you a complete list of actions we can take against the Soviet Union. This list will be graduated in severity, will afford you many options and will be predicated on the discussions we had during the NSC meetings.

2. I have scheduled a meeting on Monday² morning, with the Vice President chairing, in which we will discuss the list of options I will provide you. Participants in the meeting will be all the principles of the Special Situation Group (SSG).

3. Following the meeting, the Vice President and Ed Meese will call you with the recommendations from the SSG to obtain your approval. They will be speaking from the list of options I will provide you to assist you in making your decisions.

Should you desire any changes in our proposed plan of action, the Vice President and I will be readily available by phone.

Attachment

Message From Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev to President Reagan³

Moscow, undated

Dear Mr. President:

Your address on the Direct Communications Link has made all the more pressing the necessity to call upon you and the government of the USA to put a final end to the interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state—the Polish People’s Republic. This interference in its various forms—overt and covert—has continued for a long time.

In your current letter, you have placed your personal signature upon the fact that gross interference in the internal affairs of Poland is the official policy of the United States. We have condemned and continue to condemn such a policy and consider it unacceptable.

Attempting to mask this policy, you did not address the point of the letter of the Central Committee of our Party dated 5 June of this year, which was sent to the Central Committee of the PZPR (Polish United Worker’s Party). Not to mention the fact that in so doing you distorted its sense, you again speak from the position of interference in the mutual relations between two political parties—the CPSU and the PZPR, between whom, there exists their own completely equal and friendly norms and procedures of contact. Such procedures are not new.

If a frank exchange of opinions between Communist parties and the expressions by them of their opinions to each other is not pleasing to someone in the United States, then, in reply, we must firmly say: that is the business of the parties themselves and only them. And the Polish people do not sit in judgment of others, who would force their values on them.

It is especially important to emphasize such a principal point.

From the standpoint of our party, antipathy has been, and continues to be, expressed in relation to those in Poland who are enemies of the existing system there and who break the laws and violate the law and order of the country and are plunging it into chaos.

You, yourself, as head of the state and government of the United States, are speaking out against the existing state system in Poland; in other words, you favor the overthrow of this system. This has not been imagined, but is the most real interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state.

And this is taking place not only in relation to Poland. Similar attempts are also being undertaken in relation to the Soviet Union. American officials, yes, even you personally, are defaming our social and state system, our internal order. We resolutely repudiate this.

In the light of these and many other generally known facts, what then remains of your discussions concerning our alleged participation in the internal events in Poland? Nothing remains.

In your address is quoted the good provision of the Helsinki Final Act upon which was placed not only my signature but also the signature of the President of the United States. Yes, this provision stipulates the restraint from any interference in the affairs which concern the internal competence of another state, which, by the way, is the only way to refer to the unacceptability of the United States advancing any sort of demand regarding the introduction of martial law by the highest Polish organs in accordance with the state constitution and the attempt of the United States to dictate to the Poles what they should and should not do.⁴

No one should interfere with what the Poles and the Polish authorities are doing and will do in their own home.

Instead of letting the Poles themselves decide, you aspire to decide for them by what means and how the Polish society should develop further. But the social order in Poland was chosen not by Washington, not by Moscow, and not by any other capital, but by the Poles themselves. No one can direct the leadership of Poland on how to conduct their own affairs or which methods will more quickly and better stabilize the situation in the country.

Attempts to dictate your will to other states are in gross contradiction to the elementary norms of international law. I would like to say further: they are thoroughly amoral. And no sort of game with words regarding the rights of man can hide this fact.

The Soviet Union repudiates the claims of anyone to interfere in the events occurring in Poland.

In your letter there is mentioned the military maneuvers near Poland. You clearly wish to make your own interpretations about these maneuvers and apply them to the situation in Poland. But this is completely unfounded conjecture.

Speaking of military maneuvers, the question arises: How many maneuvers have the NATO countries, including the USA, conducted and continue to conduct in Western Europe near the borders of the GDR and Czechoslovakia? Could they (GDR and Czechoslovakia) not then present to the United States their assessment of this situation? And could we not assess such maneuvers as a threat to the Soviet Union and to other Socialist countries?

Such is the worth of your references to the military maneuvers.

You, Mr. President, hint that if the further events in Poland should develop in a manner unsatisfactory to the United States, damage will be inflicted along the entire range of Soviet-American relations.

But if we are to speak frankly, it is your administration that has already done enough to disrupt or at the very least undermine everything positive which was achieved at the cost of great effort by previous American administrations in the relations between our countries. Today, unfortunately, little remains of the reciprocal positive political gains which were achieved earlier.

But what is the use of making allusions of this type? Perhaps, before resorting to them, it would be better to weigh everything calmly.

But one cannot help but notice that the general tone of your letter is not the way in which leaders of such powers as the Soviet Union and the United States should talk with each other, especially considering their power and position in the world and their responsibility for the state of international affairs. This is our opinion.

It is not us, not the Soviet Union, which would bear responsibility should the futher undermining of Soviet-American relations take place.

It seems that it would be much more useful if the problems which are vitally important for peoples were objectively discussed by the leadership of the Soviet Union and the United States. Such problems as how to restrain and halt the arms race, which has already acquired an irrational tempo and scale, and how to preserve peace on earth.

It is precisely these problems which should occupy the center of attention of the leadership of our countries and which should find a reasonable solution. I propose, and am even convinced, that the American people need this no less than the Soviet and other people.

Respectfully,

L. Brezhnev⁵

1. Source: Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Head of State File, USSR: General Secretary Brezhnev (8190211, 8290012). Secret.
2. December 28.
3. Top Secret; Sensitive; Specat. An unknown hand wrote in the upper right-hand corner: “WHCA Second Translation.” On December 26, Haig wrote Reagan a memorandum calling Brezhnev’s letter “the harshest Presidential level communication we have received from the Soviet Union in recent years,” and proposing a number of economic and political measures to take in response. (National Security Council, NSC Insitutional Files, SSG 0005, RWR 12/28/81)
4. In an undated handwritten note, Reagan wrote: “Mr. B. says we are intervening—we know the Soviets are—maybe we should tell him we won’t if he won’t. On P.3 he says we are dictating to the Poles that now we should interfere with what the Poles and Polish authorities are doing in their own home. It seems to me we are supporting the right of the Polish people to vote on the govt. they’d like to have. Mr. B. is supporting the right of the govt. to deny the Polish people a voice in their govt. Incidentally didn’t the Yalta Pact call for the people having the right to vote on what govt they would have? The Soviets violated that pact. RR.” (Ibid.) The text of this note is similar to the entry in Reagan’s personal diary for that day. (Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, Vol. I, p. 96)
5. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.