Not an Innocent Victim

continued to condemn Soviet 'hege- monism'..
The shift in the Soviet Union's thinking implies a hardening of its negotiating position, not a withdrawal from negotiations as such. Chernenko in his policy pronouncement on China in March said that "there remain differences on a number of questions of principle'' and added that the Soviet Union "cannot make any agreements to the prejudice of any third country". And for the first time, Mongolia publicly rejected the idea of a reduction of Soviet troop levels in Mongolia, claiming that this was "exclusively an internal matter of our state".