I recall the telegram I received at the time of our first Congress from an ordinary woman in Brooklyn. It was short: "Thank you on behalf of the chil… - Yevgeniy Chazov

He wasn’t a man of erudition, yet very quickly grasped the significance of this or that problem for the state at large and for his own popularity rating. As one far removed from the sciences, he had tremendous respect for the opinions of scientists.

Confrontation is the road to war, destruction and end of civilization. Even today it deprives the world's peoples of hundreds of millions of dollars which are badly needed for solving social problems, combating hunger and diseases. Cooperation is the road to increased well-being of peoples and flourishing life. Medicine knows many examples when joint efforts to nations and scientists contributed to successful combat against diseases such, for example, as smallpox.

Today we are talking not just about warring sides but about humanity at large. Any reasonable man finds it hard to believe that while hunger, diseases, social inequality, economic underdevelopment and illiteracy are in existence, hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted to feed the insatiable monster — the arms race.