President Ronald Reagan, speaking on this day in 1983 at the convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, branded the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” further cooling already chilly relations between the White House and the Kremlin.
“In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals,” Reagan said, “I urge you to beware [of] the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all, and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and, thereby, remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
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Anthony Dolan, Reagan’s chief speechwriter, coined the phrase. Dolan also drafted Reagan’s 1982 speech to the British Parliament, delivered at the Palace of Westminster, that has been cited as Reagan’s initial “evil empire” speech.
While in London, the president also used the phrase “ash heap of history” to predict the coming collapse of the Soviet Union. That idiom was coined in 1917 by Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik revolutionary leader. Trotsky used it to disparage the Mensheviks, a moderate socialist faction during a tumultuous time in Russia. The irony underpinning the historical allusion was not lost on Reagan’s speechwriter.
In his 1983 speech in Florida, Reagan noted that “during my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution.
“I think I should point out I was only quoting [Vladimir] Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas — that’s their name for religion — for ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.”
The president told the evangelical conclave: “Well, I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates a historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930s. We see it too often today.”
Reagan also called for deploying North Atlantic Treaty Organization nuclear missiles in Western Europe in response to Soviet missiles deployed in Eastern Europe. The NATO missiles subsequently became a bargaining chip in talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who took office in 1985. Reagan and Gorbachev agreed in 1987 to reduce their nuclear stockpiles by eliminating intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles. The disarmament moves served as a prelude to the end of the Cold War as the decade ended.
SOURCE: “PRESIDENT REAGAN: THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME,” BY LOU CANNON (2000)