Today in History

March 8, 1983

Evil empire

On March 8, 1983, President Ronald Reagan in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida first used publicly the phrase "evil empire." In that speech, with reference to the Soviet Union, Reagan said:

In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

Reaction to the phrase was mixed. Anti-Communist forces by and large seized on it to foster a growning international sense that the lifespan of the USSR was coming to an end. The Cold War between the United States and the USSR ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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