Video: 'SYND 27-5-72 NIXON AND BREZHNEV SIGN ARMS LIMITATION TREATY'

(Friday, May 26, 1972, 11:07 p.m. Moscow Standard Time; during the Moscow Summit (1972), part of the Cold War) — U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Soviet Communist party leader Leonid Brezhnev, signed two landmark nuclear arms control agreements tonight that for the first time put limits on the growth of American and Soviet strategic nuclear arsenals.

Video: 'PBS Nixon (1990)_2of3' (May 26, 1972, at 52:49)

In a brief televised ceremony in the Great Hall of the Kremlin, the two leaders put their signatures to the SALT I treaty, product of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks that froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, while the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty restricted both sides to only two sites for anti-ballistic missiles, with 100 missiles each.

Video: '45 85 Part 12' (Nixon, Brezhnev sign treaties at 1:49)

After signing the two accords, Brezhnev and Nixon walked toward each other, smiling broadly and shook hands vigorously amidst applause from a gathering of senior officials including negotiators who had worked through the day to put the final touches on the agreement.

“We want to be remembered by our deeds not by the fact that we brought war to the world, but by the fact that we made the world a more peaceful one for all peoples of the world,” Nixon said.