Pravda Assails Reagan on Berlin Wall Plea

The Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda on Saturday called President Reagan’s appeal for the demolition of the Berlin Wall a display of “bare-faced anti-Sovietism.”

Pravda said Reagan’s speech Friday in West Berlin, in which he appealed directly to Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to tear down the wall, was a hypocritical attempt to disguise the reasons for the barrier’s construction.

It said American presidents treat Berlin as a sort of Mecca where they are required to appear from time to time.

“To an equal degree the ritual has become a public outpouring of personal feelings which, unfortunately, are dominated by unfriendliness to our country and bare-faced anti-Sovietism,” it said.

“Yesterday (Friday) the President of the United States irrigated a West Berlin site near the Brandenburg Gate with hypocritical cries to tear down ‘the Berlin Wall’ and ‘open the gate,’ in other words . . . to break through the state border delimiting the (East) German state of workers and farmers.”