The U.S. and USSR had just concluded the CFE agreement (Conventional Forces

in Europe), clearing the way for a summit meeting the following year. Mr. Beichman, a

veteran student of the Soviet Union, is unimpressed: "We have to keep negotiating. This

is what I call treadmill diplomacy. We have to go on, knowing full well that the

agreements will be violated ... We have to do so simply because of those weapons." ...

WFB: "Don't you see signs there of a genuine total skepticism about Communism

itself?" AB: "It's been there for a long time among the people of the Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe, but not in the leadership ranks. If they gave up Marxism-Leninism,

what do they have to justify their monopoly rule?"--just the question, it turned out, that

the hard-liners in the Kremlin were asking themselves as they prepared their Putsch

against Secretary Gorbachev, attempted two months after this show was taped.