Tough Talk on D

How do the Soviets view detente--as permanent peaceful coexistence? As a way of maintaining East-West balance? As a tactic to lull the West into relaxing its vigilance? Foreign-policy experts have been debating this issue since the early 1970s, when Washington and Moscow proclaimed their intent to work for a reduction of world tensions. Although taking a hopeful view of the long-term trend of U.S.-Soviet relations, Henry Kissinger has recently warned Americans against expecting too much of detente, which Kremlin hard-liners have long described as a mere tactic. Last week Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev strongly reinforced that view --and then some. Detente, he argued, is not an end in itself but a means of achieving Russia's strategic objectives.

"We make no secret of the fact that we see detente as the way to create more favorable conditions for peaceful socialist and Communist construction," Brezhnev told the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its opening session in Moscow. "Detente and peaceful coexistence refer to interstate relations. This means mainly that disputes and conflicts between countries are not to be settled by the use or threat of force. Detente does not in the slightest abolish, and cannot abolish or alter, the laws of the class struggle . . . There is no room for neutralism and compromise in the struggle between [socialism and capitalism]."

Brezhnev's keynote address, delivered in the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses, lasted more than five hours. Listening intently were some 5,000 Soviet delegates and hundreds of foreign guests, including Cuba's Fidel Castro (who sported the only full beard in the hall), North Viet Nam's Le Duan, Italy's Communist Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer and his Portuguese counterpart, Alvaro Cunhal. Brezhnev's speech seemed carefully crafted to convey a double message. While it extolled the benefits of detente--of which Brezhnev has been Moscow's principal architect--it implied that the Soviets are prepared to intervene almost anywhere in the world if "bid by our revolutionary conscience, our Communist convictions."

Red Gendarme. This double message was apparent in the Soviet leader's discussion of Moscow's relations with the U.S. He praised them for having turned "for the better" and talked about "good prospects in the future." He then expressed his determination to solve disputes between the superpowers by "peaceful political means" rather than by "force, threats or saber rattling." But Brezhnev also boasted of recent Soviet gains and American setbacks: Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia and Angola. He further declared Moscow's right to support "the struggle of other peoples for freedom and progress."

State Department officials insisted that the Brezhnev statement was in line with the long-held Kremlin view that detente does not diminish "ideological competition" with the capitalist West. But some experts interpreted his definition of detente as a repudiation of a basic principle enunciated in the 1972 Moscow summit. There the U.S. and U.S.S.R. vowed not to seek "unilateral advantages" against each other. Says a Munich-based Kremlinologist: "The Soviet Union is taking on the role of a world gendarme and is using its advantage wherever a vacuum is created by the withdrawal of the U.S." That interpretation is supported by the vigorous pace of the Soviet arms buildup (see following story). Brezhnev's speech does not spell the end of detente. But the unintended moral of his remarks may be that a balanced U.S.-Soviet relationship requires a strong America, ready to defend its interests.

China came in for harsh treatment. In some of the strongest language from Moscow in years, Brezhnev blasted Peking for "frantic attempts to torpedo detente, to obstruct disarmament, to breed suspicion and hostility between states, to provoke a world war."

Addressing himself to Russia's domestic economic problems (TIME, March 1), Brezhnev blamed poor weather for much of the Soviet Union's disappointing harvest last year. He also heaped scorn on apparatchiks in charge of food and consumer-goods production. Said he: "Our central planning and administrative organizations have shown insufficient concern for the light [consumer], food and service industries." As examples of poor-quality products, he specifically cited shoes, fabrics, clothing, housewares and furniture.

Apparently embarrassed by the normal shortage of consumer goods in the capital--and well aware of the effect this might have on the foreign delegations--the government last week stocked up stores and markets with huge quantities of normally scarce merchandise. As a result, Muscovites, in a near stampede, charged through shops buying up such scarce delicacies as lettuce, mushrooms, chickens, Czech glassware, Hungarian shoes and Indian soap.

The Congress is scheduled to adjourn late this week, after Premier Aleksei Kosygin discusses Russia's new economic program, which is also guaranteed to be praised by an assortment of party officials, ordinary comrades and visiting dignitaries. The strongest notes of dissent last week came from Italy's Berlinguer and from Gaston Plissonnier, leader of the French Communist delegation. Berlinguer proclaimed that his party would be willing to cooperate with widely divergent ideologies within "a pluralistic and democratic system." Next day, Plissonnier declared that France's Communists would seek "a socialism of the French sort" including "the guarantee of all individual and group freedoms."

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