In Russia Reagan Remembered for Helping Bring Down the Soviet Union.
MOSCOW — He stunned the Soviet Union with his tough rhetoric, calling it an “evil empire” whose leaders gave themselves the “right to commit any crime.”
His famed “Star Wars” program drew the Soviets into a costly arms race it couldn’t afford. His 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War.
Ronald Reagan’s determination to destroy communism and the Soviet Union was a hallmark of his eight-year presidency, carried out through a harsh nuclear policy toward Moscow that softened only slightly when Gorbachev came to office.
He is vividly remembered in Russia today as the force that precipitated the Soviet collapse.
“Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal,” said Gennady Gerasimov, who served as top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s.
Reagan’s agenda toward Moscow started shortly after the start of his first term — and marked a major departure from the mild detente of the Jimmy Carter administration.
In 1981, Reagan backed his rhetoric with a trillion dollar defense buildup. U.S.-Soviet arms control talks collapsed, and the two nations targeted intermediate-range nuclear missiles at each other across the Iron Curtain in Europe.
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The deployment of the U.S. missiles in Europe rattled the Kremlin’s nerves, because of the shorter time they needed to reach targets in the Soviet Union compared to intercontinental missiles deployed in the United States.
In an even bigger shock to the Kremlin, Reagan in 1983 launched an effort to build a shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles involving space-based weapons.
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