Vigilance Is the Price of D

At the same time that the Soviet leaders have been pursuing detente internationally, they have embarked on an intensified program to prevent the thaw from reaching their own people. Ever since the Brezhnev-Nixon meetings began in Moscow two years ago, Soviet officials have conducted a massive "vigilance" campaign to warn ordinary citizens of the danger of closer contacts with the West. Nationwide indoctrination courses and a spate of books, pamphlets, newspaper articles and television shows have all been designed to dampen Russian hopes that detente abroad might portend an easing of the cold war at home. No greater freedoms will flow from East-West agreements, the Soviet press insists. Instead, it cautions, a torrent of American spies is spilling into the U.S.S.R., in the guise of businessmen, scholars, students, tourists and diplomats. Underscoring the supposed menace, Soviet Secret Police Chief Yuri Andropov addressed the nation on television in a rare public appearance last month. "Reactionaries spend millions of dollars for intelligence and subversive services in hostile work against us," he charged. "The imperialists know we cannot be conquered militarily, so they seek to weaken the unity of the Soviet people and erode Soviet society."

In a new 400-page pamphlet The Secret Front, printed in a 250,000-copy edition, Semyon Tsvigun, Andropov's chief aide, calls for "intensifying the people's vigilance" as a "guarantee that foreign agents will be exposed." Any American Soviet citizens may meet in the U.S.S.R. is likely to be a spy, the book asserts. According to KGB Policeman Tsvigun, the 90,000 American tourists who visited the Soviet Union last year were obliged to submit a written report to U.S. authorities on their return home.

Not to be outdone by the KGB in vigilance, the Soviet army has issued a book that purports to "help army propagandists develop in Soviet soldiers a feeling of hatred toward imperialists and a high level of political vigilance."

Recent Soviet charges of American treachery also reach deep into the past. Exploiting the Russians' grief over their immense losses in World War II, a Soviet history, introduced by Defense Minister Andrei Grechko, accuses the U.S., Britain and France of inciting Germany to destroy the U.S.S.R. in 1939.

With less public fanfare, Party activists have been conducting courses throughout the U.S.S.R. on "the struggle for ideas between opposing social systems." In the Moscow region, 100,000 lecturers have been emphasizing the subversive impact of Western ideas.

Soviet army leaders have also been quick to crush the nascent hope that a reduction in military spending would result in more consumer goods for the people. On the contrary, asserted Soviet Chief of Staff Victor Kulikov recently, "the process of preparation for a new war, of accumulating and perfecting weapons continues and has even intensified in capitalist countries." As a result, he said, "the Soviet armed forces are maintaining their defense capabilities at the necessary level."

In spite of the systematic efforts to engender suspicion of the U.S., TIME Moscow Correspondent John Shaw reported last week that there is little evidence that the official image of a hostile America is accepted by the majority of Soviet citizens. "Any Western traveler with enough time, and a knowledge of the language, will meet a range of attitudes toward the U.S. including curiosity, admiration, envy and critical appreciation," Shaw cabled. "Official paranoia seems to find little echo among the millions who are constantly exhorted to be vigilant."

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