The Year of Maximum Danger 1983

<p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>You don't know how close war is.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>Radomir Bogdanov Deputy Director Institute of the USA and Canada 1983</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>It was a matter of rather--I would say-greater danger than almost any other period in the Cold War if only because the most-shall we say extreme-or hardline elements in the Soviet intelligence and military leadership might have at some point either misconstrued some </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>developments in the West or chosen to act on the basis of </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>evaluations that were greatly exaggerated. And that's why I think there was such great danger involved.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>Dr. Raymond L. Garthof specialist on arms control and intelligence</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>in 1983 the Soviet military conducted its own exercise Zapad [West] 83 which prepared (for the first time since the Second World War) for a situation where our armed forces obtained reliable data of an [an adversary's] </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>decision made by highest military and political leadership to launch a surprise attack using all possible firepower (artillery aviation etc.) against us. In response we </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>conducted offensive operations to disrupt the enemy attack and defeat its troops. That is a preemptive strike.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(33 40 45 1)>General Valentin Ivanovich Varennikov Soviet Deputy Chief of the General Staff</span></p>