Soviet Leader Accuses U.S. of Warlike Policy

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev accused the United States on Wednesday of following a warlike foreign policy that has become a “constant negative factor” in global relations.

He delivered the indictment, probably the toughest rhetoric of his two-month period in power, at a Kremlin meeting observing the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

Martial Music

Gorbachev favorably mentioned wartime leader Josef Stalin and drew loud and prolonged applause from the audience, composed mainly of bemedaled war veterans and military officers. Soviet battle flags that flew over the German Reichstag in conquered Berlin were carried into the 6,000-seat Palace of Congresses to the sound of martial music.

Gorbachev, a farm boy of 14 when the war ended in 1945, paid brief tribute to Soviet allies in the war, including the United States, Britain and France in his hourlong speech. However, he spent far less time praising the United States, for material aid and the valor of its soldiers, than he did attacking it.

“American imperialism is at the forward edge of the war menace to mankind,” Gorbachev said. “The policy of the U.S.A. is growing more bellicose in character and has become a constant negative factor in international relations, a factor we cannot ignore.”

U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman and other American diplomats boycotted the meeting, anticipating that they might have to walk out in protest if they attended.

“The (U.S.) ambassador’s probably pretty glad he didn’t go,” a Western diplomatic colleague said. “The speech was stridently anti-American, perhaps more strident than Gorbachev ever has been.”

Envoy Lays Wreath

Earlier, Hartman had laid a wreath at the tomb of an unknown Soviet soldier who died in the war. Last Tuesday, the U.S. envoy went to Murmansk to honor Americans and others who died bringing war supplies to that northern Soviet port on ships constantly menaced by German submarines.

Alluding to President Reagan’s wreath-laying Sunday at a German military cemetery where 49 SS combat soldiers are among 1,887 World War II dead, Gorbachev referred to politicians ready “to forget or even justify the SS cutthroats and, moreover, pay honors to them.”

He also charged that American leaders were trying to revive “revanchism” in West Germany, a term used by the Soviets to describe an alleged German effort to reunite and regain the territories it lost in the war.

Gorbachev used more conciliatory rhetoric in a telegram he sent to Reagan to mark the victory anniversary, which will be celebrated in Moscow today with a military parade in Red Square.

The lesson to be learned from the war, Gorbachev told Reagan, was that “a responsible approach to preserving peace and strengthening international security is required from all states and their leaders. The Soviet Union is prepared to cooperate with the United States of America to accomplish on this basis the task of preventing a nuclear catastrophe and fully eliminating nuclear weapons.”

Interim Detente

He also said he favors a revival of East-West detente but only as an interim measure.

“From our point of view, detente is not the end aim of politics,” he said. “It is needed, but only as a transitional stage from a world cluttered with arms to a reliable and all-embracing international security system.”

Reagan also sent a V-E Day message to Gorbachev, and the text was released by the White House staff traveling with the President in Western Europe.

In his message, Reagan called the V-E Day anniversary “an occasion for both our countries to remember the sacrifice of those men and women everywhere who gave the last full measure of devotion to the cause of fighting tyranny.”

“Together with our other allies,” Reagan continued, “our two countries played a full part in that long struggle. We demonstrated that despite our differences we can join together in successful common efforts.

“I believe we should also see this solemn occasion as an opportunity to look forward to the future with vision and hope. I would like our countries to join in rededication to the task of overcoming the differences and resolving the problems between us, and in renewed progress toward the goals of making peace more stable and eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. By pursuing those goals, we will truly honor those whose memories we commemorate today.”

Gorbachev, in his Kremlin speech, which was broadcast to the Soviet people, said the course of events “can be changed sharply if tangible success is achieved at Soviet-American talks on space and nuclear arms” in Geneva.

However, he charged that an American “ruling elite” is stepping up the arms race and developing “barbarous” doctrines for the use of nuclear weapons. “A policy of state terrorism is being followed against Nicaragua and an undeclared war waged in Afghanistan,” he added.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and is being opposed by Afghan rebels.

The new Soviet leader, who took over the top Kremlin post on March 11, did not mention his late predecessor, Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko.

However, in an unusual departure, he referred to the wartime leadership of Stalin as head of the State Defense Committee. This touched off thunderous applause that lasted longer and seemed more enthusiastic than the ovation given to Gorbachev himself at the start of his speech.

Stalin, who was accused of creating a “cult of personality” and one-man rule and of responsibility for the execution of millions of people in the 1930s, has been mentioned more favorably in recent months as a wartime commander and statesman.

Soviet officials, however, said there are no plans “for the time being” to restore his name to the city that was a legendary battlefield in World War II--Stalingrad. It was renamed Volgograd in 1961 during Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev’s “de-Stalinization” campaign.

Most of Gorbachev’s speech was devoted to what the Soviets call the Great Patriotic War, the struggle against the Nazis that took an estimated 20 million Soviet lives before it ended with victory.

“Almost every family lost one of its members, was seared by the war,” he recalled. “But without their heroic lives given to the motherland there would be no victory.” Gorbachev termed it a “holy war,” reflecting the Soviet view that the Red Army saved civilization by smashing the Nazi forces that once came within 20 miles of Moscow.

In addition, he described the war with Germany as “socialism’s biggest armed clash with the shock forces of imperialism,” charging that Western leaders tolerated or encouraged Hitler in the 1930s.

He did not mention the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact of 1939, which effectively divided Poland between the two countries and turned over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the Soviet Union. The pact freed Hitler from fear of a two-front war.

Gorbachev did acknowledge that “some miscalculations made from our side” prevented an adequate defense against the surprise attack Germany launched against the Soviet Union in June, 1941.

As for Allied aid from the United States and other Western nations during the war, Gorbachev said it has not been forgotten.

“True, this assistance was not so great as they in the West like to say but we remain grateful for this assistance and regard it as a symbol of joint actions.

“The opening, though belated, of the second front in Europe was an important contribution to the common struggle,” he added.

Times staff writer George Skelton in Strasbourg contributed to this story.