Pardon Our Nukes

The post-Khrushchev leadership of the Kremlin has been notably modest about Soviet strategic weaponry since Nikita was bounced nine months ago--perhaps out of the realization that no body could follow Nikita's rocket-rattling act and top it. Nonetheless, when the U.S. recently announced that it now has 800 solid-fuel Minutemen in place, First Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev apparently felt he had to reply. "We hate to boast, and we do not want to threaten anyone," Brezhnev confided diffidently to the graduates of the Soviet military academies in Moscow. "However, it is necessary to note that the figures and calculations quoted in the West about the rocket and nuclear power of the Soviet Union do no credit at all to the intelligence services of the imperialist states." Exactly what, then, were the figures for Soviet ICBMs, estimated by Western intelligence at some 270-300? Oh well, said Brezhnev, "it is hardly necessary to quote here concrete data about the quantity."

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