Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Evil Empire speech is the name given to a speech Ronald Reagan delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals on the 8th of March 1983, in which he called the Soviet Union 'the focus of evil in the modern world.' Reagan rejected the idea that the United States and the Soviet Union were equally responsible for the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, framing the conflict as a battle between good and evil.
Reagan's chief speechwriter Anthony R. Dolan coined the phrase 'evil empire' for Reagan's use. Dolan had already tried similar language in a draft for Reagan's June 1982 speech before the British House of Commons, but reviewers struck it before it reached the Evil Empire speech.
Reagan gave the Evil Empire speech on the 8th of March 1983, at the National Association of Evangelicals' 41st annual convention, at the height of the Cold War and the Soviet-Afghan War.
Reagan delivered the Evil Empire speech in the Citrus Crown Ballroom of the Sheraton Twin Towers Hotel in Orlando, Florida.
The Soviet Union accused the United States of being the real imperialist superpower and said it was fighting that ambition 'in the name of humanity.' The state news agency TASS said the 'evil empire' remarks proved the Reagan administration could 'think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anti-communism.'
No. When a reporter asked Reagan during his May-June 1988 visit to Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow whether he still considered the Soviet Union an evil empire, he said he did not, calling his earlier remark 'another time, another era.'