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Wielding the Weapon: The , , and Private

Citizens, 1975-1989

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the College of Arts and Sciences of University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Christian Philip Peterson

June 2009

© 2009 Christian Philip Peterson. All Rights Reserved.

2

This Dissertation titled

Wielding the Human Rights Weapon: The United States, Soviet Union, and Private

Citizens, 1975-1989

by

CHRISTIAN PHILIP PETERSON

has been approved for

the Department of History

and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Chester J. Pach, Jr.

Associate Professor of History

Benjamin M. Ogles

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3

ABSTRACT

PETERSON, CHRISTIAN PHILIP, Ph.D., June 2009, History

Wielding the Human Rights Weapon: The United States, Soviet Union, and Private

Citizens, 1975-1989 (592 pp.)

Director of Dissertation: Chester J. Pach, Jr.

My dissertation will explore the complexities of the role human rights played in

U.S.-Soviet relations from 1975 to 1989 through the prism of globalization. It will describe how Western private citizens, Soviet dissenters, and members of Congress exploited the language of Final Act ( Accords) to forge a transnational network committed to globalizing the issue of Soviet human rights violations. This development challenged bureaucratic discretion in ways that gave the Carter and Reagan administrations little choice but to challenge Soviet internal behavior in forthright fashion. Instead of viewing transnational activities as a threat to their expertise, many officials in each administration made working with and supporting non-governmental groups an integral element of their approach to undermining the international and internal legitimacy of the USSR. Utilizing Soviet internal documents available in English, this dissertation will also explain why many Soviet policymakers feared the human rights critiques of dissenters and Western private citizens just as much, if not more, than the statements of U.S. politicians.

Without losing sight of the pivotal role private citizens and Congress played in tarnishing the international reputation of the Soviet Union, this work will also offer an in- depth comparison of the Carter and Reagan administrations’ efforts to promote human 4

rights in USSR. It will argue that a transnational perspective calls into question many of the standard interpretations of each administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. In the case of the USSR, a transnational framework complicates arguments that focus on the inherent weaknesses of Soviet dissent during the early to mid

1980s. After exploring these topics, this work will outline the limitations of

“constructivist” accounts of how international human rights “norms” shaped Soviet reform efforts after became General Secretary.

Approved: ______

Chester J. Pach, Jr.

Associate Professor of History 5

DEDICATION

TO CORI MEGAN MCCARTHY—THE LOVE OF MY LIFE 6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Ohio University History Department and Contemporary

History Institute (CHI) for giving me an excellent graduate education. Dr. Chester Pach

could not have been a better dissertation advisor. Because of his professionalism and

firm commitment to mentoring graduate students, he made this work much better than it

otherwise would have been. In particular, he helped me develop my arguments and see the numerous shortcomings in my original drafts. Dr. Steven Miner and Dr. John Brobst expanded my knowledge of Soviet and British history. Dr. Paul Milazzo and Dr. Alonzo

Hamby proved excellent instructors in twentieth-century U.S. political history. Dr.

Patrick Griffin’s seminar on U.S. colonial history stands out as one of the most

informative and interesting classes that I have ever taken. I would also like to thank Dr.

Patricia Weitsman for serving as the outside reader on my committee. The feedback that

gave me will prove valuable when I begin to prepare this dissertation for publication.

I also need to thank the archivists and scholars who helped me carry out the

research necessary to complete this project. The staff at the Presidential

Library expressed interest in my dissertation topic during my two visits and helped me

locate a wide variety of documents that had just been declassified. At the National

Security Archive, Svetlana Savranskaya permitted me to examine her personal copies of

transcripts from a series of conferences examining U.S.-Soviet relations from 1977-1981.

The archivists at the National Archive went out of their way to help me locate and

examine the files of the U.S. Helsinki Commission and copies of the CSCE Digest. 7

In conclusion, I would like to thank my graduate peers who made studying at

Ohio University such a memorable experience. I enjoyed discussing a wide variety of works with Jack Epstein, Sherry Hill, Mark Rice, Tom Bruscino, Ricky Garlitz, Robert

Davis, and Jon Peterson. I also enjoyed hanging out with and discussing history with

Bill Knoblauch, Paul Isherwood, Todd Pfeffer, Steve Heinze, and Mario Cinquepalmi.

No matter where I end up over the long term, I will never forget eating “salmon and salad” with these individuals on the porch at 34 East Carpenter Street. For me, this residence will always be a “gorgeous” abode with picture perfect windows. 8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………...3

Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………...5

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………. 6

Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………… 10

Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 13

Chapter 2: The Human Rights Weapon Emerges: Soviet Dissent, Private Citizens, and

the U.S. Congress, 1975-1977..……………………………………………… …46

Chapter 3: Setting the Stage for a Superpower Confrontation: Jimmy Carter, the Soviet

Union, and Human Rights, 1975-1976…………………………………………..88

Chapter 4: The Carter Administration Wields the Human Rights Weapon, January 1977-

August 1978…………………………………………………………………… 139

Chapter 5: The Soviet Government versus Dissenters: Conflicting Interpretations of the

“Globalization of Human Rights” and Jimmy Carter, January 1977-August

1978…………………………………………………………………………… 195

Chapter 6: A Delicate Balancing Act Topples: The Carter Administration, Human Rights,

and Private Citizens, September 1978-January 1981…………………………. 241

Chapter 7: The Soviet Government versus Dissenters, Part II: Conflicting Interpretations

of the “Globalization of Human Rights” and the Carter Administration,

September 1978-January 1981………………………………………………… 288 9

Chapter 8: The Reagan Administration’s “Conservative” and “Private” Human Rights

Campaign, January 1981-November 1985……………………………………. 334

Chapter 9: The Soviet Government versus Dissenters: Conflicting Views of the

“Globalization” of Human Rights, Peace, and the Reagan Administration, January

1981-September 1986…………………………………………………………. 389

Chapter 10: Holding Mikhail Gorbachev and Soviet Bureaucrats Accountable: U.S.-

Soviet Relations, Human Rights, and the Final Act, December 1985-January

1989……………………………………………………………………………. 431

Chapter 11: from Above and Below: Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet

Bureaucrats, Human Rights, and the Tribulations of Soviet Civil Society…… 475

Chapter 12: Conclusion ……………………………………………………………...... 529

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...... 549

10

ABBREVIATIONS

Used in text:

AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations AI AFTU Association of Free Trade Unions of Workers BEA Bureau of European Affairs CIA Central Intelligence Agency CEC Conference on East European Churches CAPR Covenant on Civil and Political Rights CBM Confidence-Building Measures CDE Conference on Security and Disarmament in Europe CCECB Council of Churches of the Evangelical Baptists COCOM Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls CPSU Soviet Communist Party CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ES Executive Secretariat ESACR United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Exit Group Initiative Committee to Fight for the Right of Free Exit from the USSR HAIG Helsinki Agreements Implementation Group HRF Human Rights Foundation IHF International Helsinki Federation KGB Committee of State Security KOR Committee of Workers Defense ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions ICA International Communication Agency ILO International Labor Organization ISKAN Soviet Institute on the United States and KP Klub LDC Less-Developed Country MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet) MFN Most-Favored Nation NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCSJ National Council on Soviet Jewry NED National Endowment for NGOs Non-Governmental Organizations NSC National Security Council NSDD National Security Decision Directive NTS People’s Labor Alliance () PCG Press Club 11

PD Presidential Directive PRM Presidential Review Memorandum RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty SI Socialist International SMOT Free Interprofessional Association of Workers SOS Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov, and Shcharansky UCSJ Union of Councils for Soviet Jews UNESCO U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Commission UNHRCM U.N. Human Rights Committee USIA United States Information Agency USNAS United States National Academy of Sciences VOA WCSJ Washington Council on Soviet Jewry WCC World Congress of Churches WJC WPA World Psychiatric Association

Used in footnotes and bibliography:

BBC BBC Summary of World Broadcasts BEA Bureau of Ethnic Affairs BM Brzezinski Materials CCL Chronicle of the Catholic Church in CDSP Current Digest of the Soviet Press CCE Chronicle of Current Events CHRUR Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR CO Country CV ES Executive Secretariat FO Foreign Affairs GSB General Secretary Brezhnev GSC General Secretary Chernenko GSG General Secretary Gorbachev HOSF Head of State Files HU Human Rights JC Jimmy Carter JCPL Jimmy Carter Presidential Library JT Jessica Tuchman Memcons Memorandums of Conversations MC Midge Costanza MH Marilyn Haft NA National Archive 12

NSA National Security Archive NSABM National Security Affairs—Brzezinski Materials OPL Office of Public Liaison PPOP Public Papers of the President of the United States PH Paul B. Henze RCSCE Records of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe RL Robert L. Lipshutz Files RRPL Presidential Library SB Bulletin SAEA Special Assistant for Ethnic Affairs WHCF White House Central Files WO William Odom WHORM White House Office of Records Management USHCF United States Helsinki Commission Files ZB Zbiginew Brzezinski 13

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

In his work Power and , Jeremi Suri makes a compelling argument that a

“global disruption” took place in 1968 that challenged the existing political structures of

the U.S., Chinese, and European national governments. Dissatisfied with “

politics,” private citizens took to the streets and called into question the “legitimacy and prestige” of the modern nation state. To preserve domestic stability, leaders as diverse as

Mao Zedong and embraced a “profoundly conservative” type of “politics” called détente. They “used promises of international peace to deflect attention from domestic difficulties and to free their resources for repressive measures.” They also placed a premium on using secrecy “to insulate their activities from domestic attack” and reinforce “established authorities.” When reflecting on how these developments played out over the long term, Suri lamented that détente had “protected a state-centered world” and discredited “political idealism.” Just as troubling, “it further isolated policymakers from their publics” and “fortified” the boundaries of political authority at the international and national levels. By excluding so many people from decision making, the rise of détente “contributed to the pervasive skepticism of our ‘postmodern age’.”1

Suri’s arguments deserve attention for a number of reasons. They help show the

conservative of détente and the “democratic deficit” of international institutions.

They also make important contributions to the growing body of literature that describes

the shortcomings of using a “state-centric” approach to explain changes in the

1 Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge: Press, 2003), 5, 213-4, and 262-4. 14 international environment.2 No matter how sophisticated, works that privilege the behavior of national leaders at the expense of non-state actors fail to capture the complexities and nuances of how important foreign decisions are made. Despite these larger accomplishments, Suri’s conclusions have one notable drawback. The same international impulse against bureaucratic authority and discretion that he described continued to have an important impact on U.S.-Soviet relations during the 1970s and

1980s.

To illustrate this development, this dissertation will offer a careful comparison of how the Carter and Reagan administrations utilized the Final Act () as

part of a larger campaign to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. By defending

international ideals, private citizens and Congress succeeded in making each of these

administrations active participants in a transnational network committed to globalizing

the issue of Soviet human rights violations. Instead of viewing these transnational

activities as a threat to their bureaucratic expertise, many officials in each administration

2 See also Thomas Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 14-5. The following works also highlight the trappings of relying on “state-centric” approaches to describe how states behave. See Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 185-214; Risse-Kappen, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1-38, 234-78; Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca and : Cornell University Press, 1996), 1-33, 128-50; Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 887-917. Daniel C. Thomas has written a number of important works on how transnational human rights activities and Helsinki “norms” shaped the behavior of the U.S. and Soviet governments. See Thomas, “The Helsinki Accords and Political Change in ,” in Risse- Kappen et al., ed., The Power of Human Rights, 205-33; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of , and the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 110-41.

15 made working with and encouraging NGOs an integral element of their overall approach to undermining the international legitimacy of the USSR.

In addition to examining the behavior of the U.S. government, this work will offer an in-depth analysis of the Soviet government’s view of dissenters and non-official activities. It will devote considerable attention to how Soviet policymakers responded to the efforts of Western governments and private citizens to use human rights as a way of undermining the international prestige of their regime. It will also examine the role human rights and transnational actors played in shaping Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to reform Soviet-style .

The starting point for understanding the role human rights played in U.S.-Soviet relations during the 1970s and 1980s must begin with a brief summary of how the Final

Act came into existence and the language of the document. Because World War II ended without a comprehensive peace settlement, the Soviet government wanted to obtain a treaty that legitimated the political status quo in Eastern Europe. To accomplish this goal, it proposed the convening of a general European security conference during the

1950s. Besides inducing Western European governments to accept ’s domination of Eastern Europe, Soviet leaders hoped to prevent West ’s

“integration into” NATO and create “demilitarized” zones designed to remove U.S. military forces from Western Europe. They also wanted to forge agreements that allowed

Moscow and its allies “to achieve much needed investment and technical assistance from the West.”3

3 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 28-30; and William Korey, Human Rights and the Helsinki Accords: Focus on U.S. Policy (: Foreign Policy Association, 1983), 8-10 and 12-15. See also Korey, The 16

The United States and Western European governments were skeptical of Soviet

proposals calling for “demilitarized zones.” While never a unified block, they countered

with proposals that called for the freer flow of information between Eastern and Western

Europe. They also asked for more scientific and cultural exchanges, as well as

agreements that outlawed the jamming of foreign broadcasts. Since Soviet leaders had no intention of taking such far-reaching steps, the idea of convening a security conference became “overshadowed” by Cold War crises such as the Soviet invasion of in

1956 and the in 1962.4

These setbacks did not prevent Soviet General Secretary from

reviving the idea of a pan-European security conference in 1966. Three years later, a

Warsaw Pact summit in Budapest issued a communiqué that proposed the convening of a meeting that would reach agreements on the following issues: 1) the inviolability of

European frontiers; 2) the renunciation of the threat of force between European countries;

3) the formation of a “permanent multilateral mechanism for peace and security in

Europe; and 4) the expansion of trade, economic, scientific, technological, and cultural relations between all European nations.”5 Despite the Soviet invasion of

in 1968, many Western European governments found these proposals much more

appealing than they once had. The West German Chancellor viewed them

Promises Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process, and American Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 1-19; Ibid., NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “A Curious Grapevine” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 229-30; and John J. Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1973-1975 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985).

4 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 30-1.

5 Ibid., 35-6. 17

as a useful way to build enduring links with Eastern Europe; the French government “was

attracted by the opportunity to promote détente in a forum less biased toward” the United

States and Soviet Union. Even more important, “public and parliamentary support for

détente meant that no Western European government could afford to be uninterested in

an apparently reasonable Soviet initiative to reduce East-West tensions.”6

Overcoming the skepticism of the Nixon administration, NATO foreign ministers

agreed to explore “substantive issues for a conference” in 1969. This decision resulted in

a barrage of diplomatic activity over the next three years aimed at finalizing the

negotiating agenda of a “comprehensive” European security conference. While NATO

ministers insisted that the United States and Canada must participate in any such meeting, the proposals that they issued refrained from mentioning the issue of human rights. This position suited Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, , just

fine, as they preferred to pursue an agenda that stabilized rather than undermined U.S.-

Soviet relations.7 Unhappy with this attitude, the representatives of the European

Community (EC) insisted that any meeting should address the issue of human rights and individual liberties. Once the preliminary talks of the Conference on Security and

Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) began in November 1972, nations were

“faced with a firm EC commitment that its member states would not agree to participate

6 Ibid., 36. See also Korey, Human Rights and the Helsinki Accords, 13.

7 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 38-47 and 52. 18

in a security conference unless they were satisfied with the place of human rights and

contacts on the agenda.” 8

After more than two years of sometimes acrimonious negotiations, the Soviet

Union and United States had little choice but to reconcile themselves to the position that

any document produced by the CSCE would mention human rights. On 1 , the United States, Canada, and thirty-three European nations signed the Final Act. While

not a formal treaty, this agreement pledged each signatory to follow a series of

stipulations contained in three separate sections called “Baskets.” Basket I contained the

ten guiding principles of signatory relations, whereas as Basket II pledged each member

to facilitate cooperation in the fields of economics, science, and the environment. Basket

III called on each signatory to promote the free flow of information, ideas, and people

among the participating states.

Brezhnev signed the Helsinki Accords to legitimize the political status quo in

Eastern Europe and secure economic/technical assistance from Western countries.9

Subsequent events would show that he underestimated the degree to which this document challenged the internal discretion of signatory governments. For the first time, “human rights were formally recognized in an international agreement as a fundamental principle

8 Ibid., 59.

9 See Leonid Brezhnev, Peace, Détente, and Soviet-American Relations: A Collection of Public Statements (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 94-99, 101, 102-112, 119, 131, 133, 137-9; L.I. Brezhnev, Socialism, Democracy, and Human Rights (Pergamon Press, 1980), 138-9; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 94; and CDSP 27, no. 31 (1975): 14-5. See also N.A., From Helsinki to : The Soviet Union and the Implementation of the Final Act of the European Conference, Documents and Material (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 1-81. 19

regulating relations between states.”10 Principle VII called on signatories to “promote

and encourage” private citizens’ “exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural,

and other rights and freedoms.” To further enhance the importance of human rights, it

called on each signatory to act in conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights and all United Nations covenants on human Rights. Even more striking, this

principle confirmed the right of each individual to “know and act upon his rights”

outlined in the Final Act. In theory, this stipulation gave private citizens the ability to

cite the Helsinki Accords when attacking their governments’ human rights abuses.11

The language of Basket III outlined the importance of reducing the barriers that divided citizens in Eastern and Western Europe. For example, one provision called on signatory governments to expand the opportunities private citizens had to meet with and receive information from their counterparts. Another stipulation asked each nation to facilitate contacts among “religious faiths, institutions, and organizations” practicing

“within the constitutional framework of participating states.” Along with calling for more cultural agreements, Basket III urged each participating state to “further the development of contacts and exchanges among young people.” It also mentioned each signatory’s need to increase “contacts among governmental institutions and non- governmental organizations and associations.”12

10 Korey, Human Rights and the Helsinki Accords, 15 and 17.

11 N.A., “Appendix: Extract from the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe,” in Human Rights and American Foreign Policy, ed. Donald P. Kommers and Gilburt D. Loescher (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 145-6. Also see the electronic copy of the Helsinki Accords located at http://www.hri.org/docs/Helsinki75.html [14 May 2007].

20

Even though the Final Act established no mechanism for punishing specific

violations, the agreement indicated that each nation could not ignore certain provisions or

entire baskets on the grounds that they violated their “sovereign rights.” This agreement

also indicated that each of the principles in Basket I had “primary significance” and could

not be interpreted without reference to each other. This clause reinforced the idea that

progress in the implementation of one basket depended on equivalent progress in the

other two baskets. To put this insight another way, the Final Act linked the advancement

of security, human rights, trade, and human contacts in an interrelated web best defined

as the “Helsinki process.” Because the document called for a wide array of follow-up

conferences, signatories had forums to gauge progress and challenge the implementation

records of their counterparts.13

The signing of the Final Act became an important turning point in the Cold War because of the behavior of Soviet dissenters. Before exploring this development, we need to keep in mind that the term “dissent” has no simple definition.14 On one level, it

refers to a wide array of individuals such as democrats, (Jews whose emigration requests had been denied), and nationalists who had expressed disapproval of the Soviet government’s official policies in some kind of public fashion. In a larger

12 See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 1-19. Elizabeth Borgwardt explores the pivotal role the United States played in creating international human rights standards after World War II ended. See Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).

13 To view the provisions of the Final Act, see the website in footnote eleven.

14 See Robert Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: , , and Radical Nationalism in (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 81-149. For a nice account of the difficulties involved in defining Soviet dissent, see Philip Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 75-93; and Gleb Vysotin and Valentin Sereda, ”Workers Participation,” SB 94 (Feb. 1981): 2-3. 21 sense, it also encompasses private citizens and government officials who engaged in non- sanctioned activities behind closed doors such as discussing non-official poetry and debating Western European social-democratic ideas.15

Chapter II will argue that the steps that Soviet leaders took to curb dissent during

the 1960s and 1970s only created future problems. Fed up with the arbitrary bureaucratic

discretion that authorities wielded over them, some dissenters rallied around the idea of a

universal glasnost (openness) that linked the respect for basic human rights to

international security.16 Over time, this development played a key role in the creation of a transnational network based on holding Soviets accountable for their internal behavior

and respect for internationally recognized human rights. As some political scientists and

sociologists have argued, this type of network develops when “domestic groups in a

15 See Geoffrey Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union (London: Heinemann, 1990), 13. Richard Sakwa agrees with this position, noting that “the absence of effective formal means of conflict resolution and claims to a monopoly on legitimate intellectual debate created an underground market of ideas. In other countries many of the groups mentioned above, such as feminists and peace groups, would have become interest or lobby groups. In the Soviet Union they were forced to become groupings; dissent was a product of the system itself.” See Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 214. See also Vaclav Havel, “The Power of Powerless,” in John Keane, ed., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: M .E. Sharpe, 1985), 23-96. For other works on Soviet dissent, see Paul Goldberg, The Final Act: The Dramatic, Revealing Story of the Moscow Group (William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1988); Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights (Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 1985); Joshua Rubenstein, : Their Struggle for Human Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980’ Revised edition, 1985).

16 Robert Horvath makes this point in his excellent work that at least in part covers the different ways some dissenters and Soviet reformers such as Mikhail Gorbachev viewed the concept of glasnost. See Robert Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: Dissidents, Democratization, and Radical Nationalism in Russia (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 50-80. See also Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990, 1993), 108-9, 120-4, 141, 167, 175, 180-3, 203, 208, 260-1, 283, 313-4. This position also comes across in the writings of and . See Orlov, trans. by Thomas P. Whitney, Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs of a Russian Life (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991), 163-7, 193- 209; Sakharov, ed. by Efrem Yankelevich and Alfred Friendly, Jr., Alarm and Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 3-18, 112-128, 139-167; and Ibid., trans. by Guy Daniels, My Country and the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 11-50. 22 repressive state” search out international allies as part of a larger effort to exert pressure on their own governments. These allies can include a wide array of actors, including

NGOs and international institutions such as the United Nations Human Rights

Commission (UNHRC). They can even consist of philanthropic foundations, sympathetic publications, and foreign governments.17

The transnational network described above achieved an important victory when

Congress and numerous U.S. NGOs embraced the task of holding Soviet leaders accountable for their violations of the Final Act. Even though many Americans criticized the agreement for accepting the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, sympathetic members of Congress drew on the support of NGOs to create the U.S. Helsinki

Commission in 1976. This joint executive-legislative committee utilized the reports of private citizens and dissenters to monitor each signatory’s compliance with the Final Act.

Distrustful of bureaucratic discretion and authority in ways similar to dissenters,

members embraced the role of holding the executive branch accountable for its

commitment to promoting human rights in the USSR.18 They also called for more

17 See Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 12, 9, 18, 23-4, 28, 30, 37. See also Kathryn Sikkink, “Human Rights, Principle Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America,” International Organization 47, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 411-441; Volker Schneider, “The Global Capital of Human Rights Movements: A Case Study of Amnesty International,” in Karsten Ronit and Volker Schneider, ed., Private Organizations in Global Politics (New York: Routledge, 2000), 146-64; and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 139-72.

18 R. Shep Melnick advances powerful arguments about how American policymakers and private citizens began to operate in a political environment ever-more distrustful of bureaucratic discretion and authority during the 1970s. See Melnick, “From Tax and Spend to Mandate and Sue: Liberalism after the Great Society,” in Jerome Mileur and Milkus, ed., The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism 23

“public” human rights diplomacy and encouraged private citizens all the over world to

monitor and report on signatories’ Final Act compliance record.

The importance of this development cannot be overstated. By cultivating the support of Western private citizens, journalists, and government officials, dissenters began the long-term process of “globalizing” the issue of Soviet human rights violations and holding governments accountable for their behavior. As some constructivist political scientists argue, they succeeded in creating new international “norms” of behavior capable of transforming the ways that states behaved. Unlike their neorealist and neoliberal peers, they hold this position because states are in effect social actors whose interests cannot be fixed in terms of rationality models, economic capabilities, or military power. From this angle, dissenters helped unleash “local, transnational, and interstate processes” that challenged how “state and societal actors” understood their “identifies, interests,” and policy preferences. Since all states “seek legitimization by domestic and international audiences,” they played a critical role in creating an international

“normative” environment that questioned the legitimacy of governmental practices that violated the provisions of the Final Act and international human rights standards.19

Constructivist political scientists have outlined a number of frameworks to explain how international “norms” and transnational activities shape the ways

(Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2005). See also “Human Rights are Riding a Wave of Popularity,” , 28 February 1977, 2.

19 See Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 3, 269. See also Ibid., 7, 14; Sikkink and Finnemore, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 887-94; Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, 1- 7, 22-5; Risse-Kappen, et al., The Power of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1-16; and Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Press, 1996), Chapters 1 and 2. 24

policymakers behave.20 They often employ concepts such as “ideational persuasion” and

“rhetorical entrapment” to account for why state actors change their behavior in response to how transnational actors “frame” certain behaviors as either legitimate or illegitimate.

The former process takes place when policymakers accept the explanatory power of a new idea and then change their conduct based on a transformed understanding of legitimate behavior. “Rhetorical entrapment” occurs when policymakers endorse a new idea for tactical reasons such as deflecting international condemnation of domestic behavior. Even if they have to enact policies that compromise other important interests, they eventually feel obligated to behave in ways consistent with the “logic” of that idea

“to avoid the costs of rhetorical inconsistency.” 21

While these concepts have utility in explaining behavior of governments, even the most sophisticated models cannot escape one obvious point. A state actor’s willingness to adhere to an international norm depends on just how much he or she identifies with the

requirements of satisfying a specific norm.22 This reality magnifies the importance of

explaining “how norms connect” with individual policymakers.23 More to the point,

credible accounts need to specify how policymakers’ ideological underpinnings and

20 In particular, see Sikkink and Finnemore, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change;” Risse- Kappen, et al., The Power of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Thomas, The Helsinki Effect; and Katzenstein,, ed., The Culture of National Security, Chapters 1 and 2.

21 See Thomas “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 112.

22 Ibid., 140. See also Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 901- 3; Risse-Kappen, et al., The Power of Human Rights, 6-16. For accounts that pay more attention to how domestic structures impact the effects of international human rights norms, see Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations Back In, 14-33; and Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War.”

23 Jeffrey T. Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50, no. 2 (1998): 325. 25 understanding of domestic developments shape their view of appropriate and legitimate

behavior.24

To accomplish this task, Chapter III will grapple with the complexities of how the

Brezhnev regime and presidential candidate Jimmy Carter responded to the

“globalization” of Soviet human rights violations. The behavior of the Soviet government cannot be divorced from the existence of the USSR as a multiethnic, multinational empire and the pervasive influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology.25 Without any way to justify their authority other than the ideological correctness of Marxist-Leninism and the global prestige of the Soviet Communist Party

(CPSU), orthodox policymakers disliked how dissenters and human rights critiques challenged the inevitable advance of Soviet-style socialism across the globe. In sharp contrast to the image of the USSR as a powerful totalitarian state, they also worried about the loyalty of millions of Soviet private citizens, especially members of religious groups

24 In their edited work Ideas and Foreign Policy (1993), Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane highlight how a policymaker’s ideology influences the choices he or she makes because “it logically excludes other interpretations of reality or at least suggests that such interpretations are not worthy of sustained exploration.” See Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993), 12; and John Lenczowski, Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy: A Study of Ideology, Power, and Consensus (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 271. See also Frank A. Ninkovich, Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), introduction, and Frank A. Ninkovich, “Interests and Discourse in Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 13, no. 2 (1989): 135-61.

25 A number of works emphasize the fundamental role ideology plays in explaining Soviet behavior. In his work a Failed Empire, Vladislav M. Zubok argues that the existence of a “-imperial” paradigm” meant that “Stalin’s and his successors’ foreign policy motivations cannot be separated from how they thought and who they were.” See Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 8 and 342. Along similar lines, Robert D. English illustrates the pivotal role a “hostile-isolationist” ideology plays in explaining the behavior of the Brezhnev regime. See Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 9 and 119-124. See also Zubok, “New Evidence on the End of the Cold War: New Evidence on the “Soviet Factor” in the Peaceful ,” CWIHPB 12-13 (Fall/Winter 2001), 1-2; and Arkady N. Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 283-5. 26

and those who called for independence or national autonomy in , , and

the Baltic Republics. They feared these individuals because they never forgot that

millions of Soviet citizens had collaborated with Germany and fought against the Soviet

Union during World II.26 Not wanting to leave anything to chance, orthodox officials

imprisoned dissenters and worked to discredit transnational human rights because they felt as if these activities increased the likelihood that domestic insurrections against

Soviet rule would take place. Since determined foes existed at home and abroad, they

acted on the assumption that the Soviet Union would fall apart unless the CPSU kept a

tight grip on political power and enforced ideological conformity at all levels of society.

Since orthodox policymakers worried about the possibility of domestic

insurrections taking place, they viewed the development of an autonomous civil society

as a direct attack on the foundations of Soviet power. This dissertation will define this

term as a state-sanctioned “independent sphere” of legal activities “where rights are

effectively secured and in which civil associations and interest groups can assert

themselves.” Because “independent groupings” could not compete for political

influence, “civil society in the Soviet context” consisted of “independent groupings” that

defended ideals such as . It also included the “thousand[s] of other

[independent]” activities that called into question orthodox Marxist-Leninist norms of

behavior in public view and behind closed doors. This argument is important. Even

though Soviet orthodox policymakers wanted to forge an obedient population that

accepted the unquestioned authority of the CPSU, they failed to “atomize” their society in

26 For a cogent summary of these developments, see Steven Merritt Miner, Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 333-5. 27 the wake of ’s de-Stalinization efforts during the late 1950s and early

1960s. Given this reality, it makes just as much sense to write about the Soviet government’s totalitarian aspirations as it does to focus on the success it had in marginalizing the influence of dissenters.27

The importance this study places on orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology and fears of domestic insurrection does not mean that all Soviet officials were automatons. Top- level policymakers often engaged in debates when making important foreign policy decisions.28 As Robert English argues, some “liberal-minded” reformers who sympathized with Western values managed to retain positions in foreign policy think tanks and research institutes.29 In spite of their ideological pretensions, orthodox Soviet officials were not immune to international public opinion. In practice, they proved quite capable of making pragmatic concessions in hopes of quieting international criticism and furthering important foreign policy objectives such as increasing trade with United States.

27 See Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 209; and Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union, 14. See also Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 1985-1990 (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), 200-1.

28 Furthermore, this argument does not assume that policymakers always worked to the same ends. See Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change, 31-62; Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), chapters 8-14. See also Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project, 98; and The Collapse of Détente, 8-10, 107-120; Arbatov, The System, 194-200.

29 Robert English devotes considerable attention to how Nikita Khrushchev’s “cultural thaw” and de- Stalinazation produced a “liberal-reformist domestic community” who identified with Western values. See English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 11-15 and Chapters 2-5. Zubok advances similar arguments, arguing that “Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization and then Brezhnev’s détente produced the first significant cracks in the Soviet home front. See Zubok, Failed Empire, 340. See also Zubok, “Unwrapping an Enigma: Soviet Elites, Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War,” in Silvio Pons and Federico Romero, ed., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, and Periodizations (London and New York: Franck Cass, 2005), 137-64; Aleksandr Yakovlev, The Fate of in Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 111; Patrick Flaherty, “Perestroika Radicals: The Origins and Ideology of the Soviet New Left,” Monthly Review 40, no. 4 (1988): 19-33; and Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Voices of Glasnost (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1989). 28

Far from staying on the defensive, Soviet officials also defended the legitimacy of

imprisoning dissenters and described how their nation’s human rights record outshone

that of the United States.

The Soviet government’s mixture of ideologically driven and pragmatic behavior raises the question of whether Marxist-Leninist dogma or cold, calculated realism best explains its international and domestic behavior. Because orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideals influenced how Soviet policymakers viewed their “domestic legitimacy” and the appropriateness of other states’ international conduct, these principles played a fundamental role in how they rationalized their conduct. As one scholar writes,

“ideology used for purposes of rationalization must necessarily become a guide for

action,” which means that “Soviet ideology and Soviet pragmatism are complementary

rather than antagonistic.” Since foreign policymakers can make pragmatic decisions even

as they as follow ideologically driven policies, this study will dispense with the

realist/ideological dichotomy that characterizes many treatments of the Soviet

government’s conduct.30

A mixture of political calculations and deeply held beliefs accounts for why

Jimmy Carter identified himself with the cause of human rights during the later stages of

the 1976 presidential campaign. Well aware of charges that had not done

30 Lenczowski, Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy, 269. At least in part, these works also explain how pragmatic concessions do not rule out the existence of ideologically-driven behavior, see Douglas J. Macdonald, “Formal Ideologies in the Cold War: Toward a Framework for Empirical Analysis,” in Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, and Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 180-206; and Nigel Gould-Davies, “Rethinking the Roles of Ideology in International Politics During the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 90-109. This article is important because it shows the limitation of the argument that ideologues “must have a master plan . . . be inflexible . . . and cannot cooperate with adversaries.” He also rejects the position that ideologues must be “unremittingly aggressive.” See Ibid., 95-6. 29

enough to challenge Soviet internal behavior, the complaints of the U.S. Helsinki

Commission and private citizens led him to abandon his once negative view of the Final

Act. In practice, the lessons he drew from the American civil rights movement, as well

as his religious values and identification with Wilsonian principles, influenced his

thinking. He came to accept the argument that embracing universal human rights

standards would put the United States in the best possible position to fulfill its historic

role as a “beacon” to the rest of the world. Without falling victim to the pitfalls of

excessive idealism, he hoped to use the issue as a way of engaging in effective

ideological competition with the Soviet Union while laying the foundation for a day

when all governments would feel obligated to respect the basic liberties of all private

citizens.

The determination of Soviet leaders to punish dissent and restrict Jewish

emigration raises important questions about how the Carter administration attempted to

promote human rights in the USSR. The existing literature on this subject is diverse. A

number of critics focus on Carter’s naiveté or growing unwillingness to challenge the

Kremlin’s domestic conduct in a forceful manner as his term in office progressed.31

31 The following works call into question Carter’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union: Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press), 29, 32, 34, 54, 202, 216; William F. Buckley, “Human Rights and Foreign Policy: A Proposal,” Foreign Affairs (Spring 1980): 788-90; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,”Human Rights and the American Tradition,” Foreign Affairs 57, no. 3 (1979): 516-7; Nicolai N. Petro, The Predicament of Human Rights: The Carter and Reagan Administration Policies, Volume V (New York: University Press of America, 1983), 13; Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993), 39-42; , “ and Doublestandards,” Commentary (November 1979): 40; Robert O. Freedman, The Soviet Union and the Carter Administration (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian and East European Studies, 1987), 57-9; Walter Laquer, “The World & President Carter,” Commentary 65, no. 2 (1978): 56-63; Gebhard Schweigler, “Carter’s Détente Policy: Change or Continuity?” World Today 34, no. 3 (1978): 81-9; Stanley Hoffman, “The Hell of Good Intentions,” Foreign Policy 29 (Winter, 1977-1978), 3-26. Steven F. Hayward, The Real Jimmy Carter: 30

Some of these critics also contend that he failed to carry out a coherent approach to U.S.-

Soviet relations.32 While admitting that his administration took some steps to promote human rights in the Soviet Union, a number of works describe how he abandoned his

“world-order” orientation in favor of a more traditional Cold War approach after the

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.33 Unlike many critics, some treatments defend the position that Carter remained committed to challenging Soviet internal behavior throughout his entire presidency.34 Olav Njolstad and Robert M. Gates insist that Carter and many of his subordinates used human rights as a way of engaging in vigorous ideological competition with the Soviet Union and integrated “moral values” into the framework of Cold War competition.35

How our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2004), 107-113; Kristen Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (London: Sutton Publishing, 2002), 128-9.

32 For example, see , Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, 2nd ed. (Oxford: , 2005), 342-9. See also Hoffman, “The Hell of Good Intentions;” Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Politics of Human Rights,” Commentary (August 1977): 19-26; and Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, 94-7, 164-5.

33 See Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986); William Stueck, “Placing Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy,” in Gary M. Fink and Hugh Davis Graham, The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal Era (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998); John Drumbell, The Carter Presidency: A Re-evaluation, 2nd ed. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 110-30; David F. Schmitz and Vanessa Walker, Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights: The Development of a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 28, no. 1 (2004):; and Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Carter (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994); Jerel A. Rosati, “Jimmy Carter, a Man Before His Time? The and Collapse of the First Post-Cold War Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23, no. 3 (1993): 459-76; Ibid., The Carter Administration’s Quest for a Global Community: Beliefs and Their Impact on Behavior (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987).

34 Robert A. Strong, Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Press, 2000), 95-6, 122; Schmitz and Walker, “Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights,” 130, 143.

35 Njolstad, Peacekeeper and Troublemaker, 294. Gates advances this argument even though he admits that Carter’s efforts to support dissent “were idealistic and not primarily motivated by the notion of 31

The existing accounts of Carter’s efforts to challenge Soviet behavior suffer from

several notable flaws. More often than not, they do not reveal the complexities of the

role human rights promotion played in his administration’s overall approach to U.S.-

Soviet relations. Many critical treatments also make the mistake of gauging the executive

branch’s commitment to promoting human rights in the USSR and support dissenters as

function of policymakers’ public rhetoric on the subject.36 Furthermore, all works could

do a much better job of describing how transnational human rights activities both shaped

and became an important element of the administration’s approach to weakening the

international appeal of Soviet-style socialism.

Chapters IV and VI will address these issues by examining the Carter

administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union through the prism of

“reciprocal accommodation.” This framework has a number of advantages. It helps reveal how Carter calibrated the frequency of public rhetoric about Soviet human rights

violations in response to signs of either “moderation” or “deterioration” in Soviet internal behavior. It also illustrates how arms control negotiations shaped the executive branch’s approach to promoting internal reform in the USSR. Many executive branch officials, including Carter, felt as if signing SALT II would help improve Soviet internal behavior and forge an international environment more consistent with U.S. values. As a result of this mindset, they sometimes toned down their public rhetoric about Soviet human rights

violations to create an international climate more conducive to successful negotiations.

undermining the Soviet government.” See Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Inside Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Penguin Books, 90-6 and 175-8.

36 For good examples of this tendency, see Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 33-4; Buckley, “Human Rights and Foreign Policy,” 788-90; and Freedman, The Soviet Union and the Carter Administration. 32

This sort of behavior helps demonstrate that Carter and many of his subordinates

often overestimated the likelihood that Soviet leaders would make their internal behavior

more consistent with the provisions of the Final Act. Nevertheless, it does not illustrate that his administration became less willing to challenge Soviet internal behavior after the first few months of 1977. The Carter administration played an important role in making the issue of human rights a fundamental aspect of Cold War competition.37 Consistent with the larger goal of “reciprocal accommodation,” executive branch officials challenged the international legitimacy of Soviet leaders by citing the Final Act in a wide variety of public and private forums. By the time Carter left office, members of his

National Security Council felt confident enough in the larger trends of the Cold War to draw up memorandums that called into question the permanence of the USSR and advocated even more determined efforts to encourage Soviet dissent. Executive branch officials also acted on the belief that governmental alone could not change Soviet internal behavior. As a result of this mindset, they supported private citizens who worked toward the goal of “globalizing” the issue of Soviet human rights violations.38

37 This argument shares some commonalities with those of Robert A. Strong and Peter Bourne. See Strong, Working in the World, 38-41 95-6; and Peter Bourne, Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Post-Presidency (New York: Scribner, 1987), 383-92, 397, 453-4, 484-5, It has even more commonalities with those of Njolstad. In Peacekeeper and Troublemaker, he makes the crucial point that Carter used “linkages” to show the Soviets how their international and domestic behavior worsened U.S. relations. See Ibid.,291-2. While I agree with many points that Njolstad makes in his work, he stops his analysis of Carter’s human rights promotion in 1978. He also does not address the administration’s efforts to “globalize” Soviet human rights violations by working with private citizens and its efforts on the behalf of dissenters in U.N forums.

38 Edward Bailey Hodgman addresses this topic in his dissertation, but only utilized a small selection of documents found in the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. See Ibid., “Détente and the Dissidents: Human Rights in U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1968-1980 (Ph.D., University of Rochester, 2003). 33

This development raises the issue of how transnational actors shape governmental policy.39 In practice, the task of gauging the precise influence of non-governmental pressure on the behavior of elected officials remains difficult. According to the human rights historian David P. Forsythe, politicians tend to work with groups sympathetic to their viewpoint. They also utilize the activities of private citizens to serve their own interests or deflect political pressures.40 Without forgetting that promoting human rights in the Soviet Union served American interests, Chapters IV and VI will contend that the

U.S. Helsinki Commission and private citizens made executive branch officials more aware of the political costs involved in ignoring the issue of Moscow’s internal behavior.

They also helped turn the Final Act follow-up conferences in Belgrade and into

39 Many works have addressed the issue of how private citizens shaped the Carter administration’s human rights policies. This dissertation will provide more coherence by employing an integrative framework that grapples with the complexities of the role transnational human rights actors played in U.S.-Soviet relations. See Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 345-9; Drumbell, The Carter Presidency, viii, Chapter III, V, and VII; Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power, 50-3; Korey, The Promises We Keep, Chapter II; Freidbert Pluger, “Human Rights Unbound: Carter’s Human Rights Policy Reassessed,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 19 (Fall 1989): 705-716; Sandy Vogelgesang, American Dream Global Nightmare (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980). See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect; Risse-Kappen, The Power of Human Rights; David Forsythe, Human Rights and World Politics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993); Petrus Buwalda, They Did not Dwell Alone: Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, 1967-1990 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997); Martin Gilbert, Shchransky, Hero of Our Time (London: Macmillan, 1986); Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 91-165, 273-90; Myrna Shinbaum, “Mobilizing America: The National Conference on Soviet Jewry,” in Murray Freidman and Albert D. Cherlin, ed., A Second Exodus: The American Movement to Free the Jews (Hanover, NH: University of New Press, 1999): 173-80; Micah Naftalin, “The Activist Movement,” in Ibid., 224-42; and W. Ruby, “The Role of the Non- Establishment,” in Ibid., 220-3; Andrew Harrison, Passover Revisited: ’s Efforts to Aid Soviet Jews, 1963-1998 (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson Press, 2001), 185-208; David A. Harris, In the Trenches: Selected Speeches and Writings of an American Jewish Activist, 1979-1999 (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 2000); and Max Kampelman, Entering New Worlds: The Memoirs of a Private Man in Public Life (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), 226-34.

40 Forsythe, Human Rights and World Politics, 117-20. He also makes the important point that “it is reasonably clear that on many issues in international relations, including those pertaining to human rights, the state shares decisions with important non-state actors-especially from a political rather than strictly legal perspective. Ibid., 17-18. 34

visible and legitimate international forums that challenged the Soviet Union’s internal

behavior and refusal to recognize the legitimacy of non-official activities.

Since accounts that privilege the behavior of the U.S. government only give a

partial view of the role human rights played in U.S.-Soviet relations, Chapters V and VII

will examine the growing strength of the transnational network based on monitoring the

Kremlin’s internal behavior. Taking advantage of the ever-shrinking globe, dissenters

and Western private citizens formed an increasing number of transnational links with

each other. This development played an important role in moving Western governmental

and global public opinion in the direction of challenging the totalitarian aspirations of

orthodox Soviet policymakers. After describing how private citizens worked together to

“globalize” Soviet domestic misconduct, these chapters will also analyze the diverse

ways that dissenters and Soviet émigrés viewed Carter’s efforts to promote human rights

in the Soviet Union.

In addition to showing readers that the U.S. government was one player in a broader global struggle against Soviet human rights violations, Chapters V and VII will devote considerable attention to the behavior of the Brezhnev regime from 1977- 1981.

Although some critics might argue otherwise, these chapters will show that Carter could not have done much more to promote human rights in the USSR. Given their intense fear of domestic ideological subversion and insurrection, orthodox officials like KGB

Chairman feared the human rights critiques of transnational actors just as much, if not more, than those of U.S. politicians. Besides viewing Carter as a committed 35 ideological foe, they also took a wide variety of steps to enhance the international prestige of Soviet-style socialism.

After exploring the behavior of the Soviet government and transnational human rights actors, this dissertation will examine the Reagan administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the USSR. This topic deserves attention because the existing literature on this subject remains uneven and at times intensely partisan. Numerous works focus on how Reagan’s “hard-line” policies and/or efforts to promote democracy across the globe played an important role in forcing the Soviet Union to end the Cold

War on U.S. terms.41 Others focus on how Jeane Kirkpatrick’s writings about the differences between “totalitarian” and “authoritarian” governments played an important role in making Reagan’s approach to promoting human rights less hesitant to challenge communist regimes than Carter’s.42

41 Peter Schweizer and Paul Kengor make very few references to the issues of human rights in their treatments of how Reagan “won” the Cold War. See Peter Schweitzer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (New York: Doubleday, 2002); Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (New York: Harper Collins, 2006). See also Norman A. Bailey The Strategic Plan that Won the Cold War: National Directive 75. MacLean, VA, 1999); Peter Schweitzer, ed.., The Fall of the Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War (Washington, D.C: Hoover Institution Press, 2000); Edwin Meese, With Reagan: The Inside Story (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Press, 1992); and Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books); Whittle Johnson, “Reagan and America’s Democratic Mission,” in Eric Schmertz et al., ed., President Reagan and the World (Westport, Conn., 1997), 19-26; Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, “The Origins and Meaning of Reagan’s Cold War,” in Paul Kengor and Peter Schweizer, ed., The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and his Legacy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005). For a more nuanced account of the same story, see Dinesh D’ Souza, Ronald Reagan: How an Extraordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (New York: The Free Press, 1997); Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2005); and Jay Winik, On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women who Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). See also Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 355-79.

42 See also Paula J. Dobriansky, “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,” The Washington Quarterly (Spring 1989): 160-7; Petro, The Predicament of Human Rights, 58-9; Andrew Busch, Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 207. See also Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, 36

While not oblivious to the larger goal of democracy promotion, some treatments describe how Reagan made human rights an integral part of his “four-sided” negotiating agenda that linked improvements in U.S.-Soviet relations to changes in the Kremlin’s internal behavior. A number of these accounts fall within the confines of a growing body of literature that outlines how Reagan’s pragmatism and flexibility better explain his approach to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union than works that focus on his rigid ideology.43 In sharp contrast to Reagan’s image as fierce “Cold Warrior,” some of these accounts note the strong preference for “quiet” human rights policy he displayed

“Establishing a Viable Human Rights Policy,” World Affairs (Spring 1981): 323-334; Ibid., “Human Rights and the Foundations of Democracy,” World Affairs 144, no. 3 (1981/1982): 196-203; and Ibid., “East/West Relations: Toward a New Definition of Dialogue,” World Affairs 144, no. 1 (1981): 14-30; Michael Novak and Richard Schifter, “Speeches by the U.S. Delegation before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights,” World Affairs 143, no. 3 (1980/1981): 226-30, 236-9, 252; and Walter Laquer and Barry Rubin, ed., The Human Rights Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: New American Library, 1989), 278-81. See also “Human Rights and American Foreign Policy; a Symposium, Commentary 72, no. 5 (1981): 28-9, 40-9 and 60-2.

43 In particular, see Jack F. Matlock, Jr., “U.S. Policy and Human Rights in Relations with the USSR, 1961- 1991,” in Debra Liang-Fenton, ed., Implementing U.S. Human Rights Policy: Agenda, Policies, and Practices (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2004), 245-66; Ibid., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2004), 101, 105, 144, 152, 156, 161, 166, 169, 175-6, 212, 217, 222, 226, 259, 265, 268, 283-4, 291-5; Ibid., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1995), 11, 80, 84-6, 96, 148-50, 427, 637; Schmertz et al, President Reagan and the World, 124. See also Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 298-301, 307, 312, 316, 752-3, 783-4; Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1991 (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 19-24, 34-47; Melvyn Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 347-8, 360-4, 381, 383, 401, 418-20. Despite his focus on the Reagan administration’s “liberal democratic internationalism,” Tony Smith also stresses Reagan’s pragmatic instincts and behavior. See Smith, “America’s Mission: the United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 268, 272-3. See also Joshua Green, “Reagan’s Liberal Legacy: What the New Literature on the Gipper Won’t Tell You,” Washington Monthly (January/February 2003). Available [Online]: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0301.green.html [10 December 2006]; and Robert W. Tucker, “Reagan’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs (1988/1989): 12-3

37 during his first six years in office; a few even question the importance that he placed on the task of supporting Soviet dissenters.44

Chapters VIII and X will argue that current works on Reagan’s efforts to transform Soviet internal behavior have several notable drawbacks. With the exception of some specialized studies, they do not devote enough attention to the crucial roles that the Final Act and transnational human rights activities played in his administration’s approach to promoting human rights and democracy in the USSR.45 Much like it had been for Carter, remaining an active participant in the “Helsinki process” and supporting transnational human rights activities became Reagan’s best available weapon for accomplishing the goal of building democratic institutions in the USSR.

Without losing sight of Carter and Reagan’s distinctive policies, these chapters will also call into question some standard interpretations of their efforts to promote

44 See Cannon, President Reagan, 784; and Tamar Jacoby, “The Reagan Turn Around on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1986): 1066-86. See also Caleb Rossiter, Human Rights: The Carter Record, the Reagan Reaction: Part Two in a Series on Human Rights and the International Financial Institutions (Washington, D.C.: Center for International Policy, 1984), 24. The long-time ambassador to the United States felt that Reagan cared less about supporting Soviet dissenters than Carter. See In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Random House, 1995), 515, 582.

45 The best account of the Reagan administration’s relationship with the Final Act remains William Korey’s The Promises We Keep. Although this work has a number of strengths, it does not grapple with the complexities of Reagan’s overall approach to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union. Instead, it almost exclusively focuses on the administration’s relationship with the Helsinki Accords. See Korey, The Promises We Keep. See also Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement (New York: Public Affairs, 2002). For other accounts that at least mention he Final Act, see Vojtech Mastny,, ed., The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, 1986-1991: Analysis and Documentation (New York: New York University Press, 1992); Stefan Lehne, The Meeting on the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1986-1989 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 37-9, 119-20, 130; George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993), 122, 170, 277, 572-3, 1099; Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era, 60, 324-5, 395-6, 417-8, 429. Some works have addressed the influence of Congressional and private citizens without the benefit of having access to administration documents. See Jacoby, “The Reagan Turn Around on Human Rights,” 1067-1078; Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, 136-140, 148; Rossiter, Human Rights: The Carter Record, the Reagan Reaction, 22-4; A. Glenn Mower, Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: The Carter and Reagan Experience (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 153-7. 38 human rights in the Soviet Union. While Reagan embraced the task of engaging in vigorous ideological competition with the USSR, he often acted in ways designed to mollify Soviet sensibilities on human rights issues; he also placed fewer specific economic penalties on the Kremlin for imprisoning dissenters than Carter had. In many ways, the actual steps that he took to rebuild U.S.-Soviet relations had important commonalities with the “Helsinki process” described above. Because of his decision to sign cooperative and exchange agreements with the USSR throughout his time in office,

Reagan faced the same kind of Congressional and public criticisms about his commitment to supporting dissenters that Carter had.

However important, the behavior of the Reagan administration does not capture all the complexities of the role dissenters and human rights played in U.S.-Soviet relations during the 1980s. To understand this development, we need to remember that the Soviet government faced a number of important setbacks as the 1970s drew to a close. In 1978, millions of Catholics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe gained spiritual nourishment and a profound sense of hope when a Polish cardinal named Karol

Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II. During the next two years, Soviet leaders made the fateful decision to invade Afghanistan and witnessed visible cracks in their hold on

Eastern Europe. Dissatisfied with their poor economic conditions in and inspired by the efforts of John Paul II on the behalf of human freedom, the devout Catholic Lech

Walesa played a key role in organizing a federation of independent trade unions known as “Solidarity.” The repressive measures of the Polish authorities may have forced this movement go underground until 1989, but they had in reality lost the wider war. Instead 39

of remaining obedient, numerous Poles began to behave “as if they lived in a free

country.’” Rejecting the Marxist-Leninist regime, they participated in periodic strikes

and organized themselves in clandestine cells that published documents critical of

existing life in Poland; they also rallied around the idea of Poland as a Catholic nation.46

Just as the in Eastern Europe began to crack, the Kremlin also saw

signs that an increasing number of private citizens and government officials had become

disillusioned with Marxist-Leninist ideology and life in the USSR. To illustrate the

failure of the Soviet government’s totalitarian aspirations, Chapter IX will expand its

analysis of dissent well beyond the confines of human rights activities and calls for a

universal glasnost. Instead of becoming more obedient, an increasing number of

individuals decided to carve out separate spheres of existence outside the confines of

official ideology where they could pursue their interests without state interference.47 This

development is of crucial importance because it provides a partial corrective to accounts

that stress the inherent weaknesses of Soviet dissent during the 1980s.48 Better educated and more familiar with life outside the USSR, an increasing number of private citizens

46 For a cogent account of the rise of Solidarity in Poland, see J. M. Roberts, The Penguin History of Europe (Penguin Books: London, 1997), 637-8.

47 Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 209.

48 Robert Horvath addresses this topic in his work The Legacy of Soviet Dissent. See Ibid., 1-8, 81-2, and 236-8. See also Robert Sharlet, “Soviet Dissent since Brezhnev,” Current History 85, no. 513 (1986): 321- 4, 40; , “Andropov and the Dissidents: The Internal Atmosphere under the New Soviet Leadership,” Dissent 31, no. 1 (1984): 97-102; Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 8-9, 18-23; W.D. Connor,, “Differentiation, Integration, and ,” in Rudolf Tokes, ed., Dissent in the USSR (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1975), 155. 40

and government officials engaged in non-official activities that by definition showcased the erosion of the Soviet government’s domestic ideological legitimacy.49

Dissent was also not as weak as it appeared because of the growing strength and

sophistication of the transnational network dedicated to holding the Soviets accountable

for their human rights violations. Dissenters and émigrés not only continued to provide

Western private citizens and governments with information about conditions in the Soviet

Union, but also participated in activities that showed the hypocrisy of the Kremlin’s vocal

support for the Western European peace and American nuclear freeze movements. As

the international prestige of the USSR plummeted, Western European leaders became far

more vocal in their criticisms of Soviet internal and international conduct; they also went

further in defending the legitimacy of transnational human rights activities and the right

of non-Russian nationalities to exercise self-determination.

Chapter XI will focus on the question of why Gorbachev and other “liberal-

minded” reformers took steps to make Soviet internal practices consistent with

international human rights norms. Some works explain this development as a function of the ways in which “material weaknesses” and/or the Reagan administration’s policies forced Soviet policymakers to make concessions on human rights issues.50 In sharp

49 See Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 209, 214. According to this author: “The civil society. . . . that had been gathering strength in myriad of covert ways came out into the open under Gorbachev. . . . This gathering force of individual and group initiative burst the bonds that ‘mere’ democratization placed on them.” See Ibid. 209. For another excellent account of this development, see “George Urban’s Conversation with the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski,” Encounter 56, no. 5 (1981): 22-4.

50 The most respected materialist account of Gorbachev’s behavior remains Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas,” International Security 25, no. 3 (2000/2001): 5-53; and Wohlforth, “The End of the Cold War as a Hard Case for Ideas,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 2 (2005): 165-173. On the whole, I find critiques 41 contrast to these accounts, constructivist political scientists such as Robert English and

Daniel C. Thomas stress the pivotal role ideas and the international “normative” environment play in explaining the transformation in Soviet behavior.51 Since Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers held “’Westernizing’” beliefs that placed importance on making the USSR a legitimate Western nation, they took steps to make

Soviet human rights practices more consistent with international standards and the Final

Act. Other accounts complicate the explanatory power of these arguments by pointing out how Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers fell short of respecting pluralism and taking the steps necessary to create a democratic Soviet state.52

of this approach compelling. As Daniel C. Thomas argues, “the materialist argument is indeterminate with respect to Gorbachev’s decision to pursue radical political reform in the mid- to late 1980s rather than the alternative policy of marketization-without-democratization that was pursued in and that was advocated, unsuccessfully, by moderate Soviet officials who were concerned about the survival of the Soviet regime.” See Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 115. See also Robert English, “Power, Ideas, and New Evidence on the Cold War’s End: A Reply to Brooks and Wohlforth,” International Security 26, no. 4 (2002): 91; and Ibid., “The Sociology of New Thinking: Elites, Identity Change, and the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 2 (2005): 74. See also Ibid. “Ideas and the End of the Cold War: Rethinking Intellectual and Political Change,” in Silvio Pons and Federico Romero, ed., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War, 130-2. See also Zubok, A Failed Empire, 307-8.

51 See Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War, 110-41; Ibid., The Helsinki Effect; and English, Russia and the Idea of the West; and Ibid., “Ideas and the End of the Cold War.” While the following works are not oblivious to the contradictions in Gorbachev’s behavior, they on the whole paint him as a committed reformer. See Brown, The Gorbachev Factor; John Gooding, “Gorbachev and Democracy,” Soviet Studies 42 (April 1990), 195-231; Stephen F. Cohen, The Failed Crusade (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000); and Anatoly S. Chernyaev, trans. and ed. by Robert D. English and Elizabeth Tucker, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).

52 In particular, see Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 41, 43, 45, 51, 53-4, 63, 70, 78-80, 101-111, 115-6, 185-6 and 207-8. Some works focus on how Gorbachev had little understanding of how his policies would work out in practice or had difficulty moving away from his Leninist roots. See William Odom, “The Sources of ‘New Thinking’ in Soviet Politics,” in Olav Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2004), 135-158; Ibid., The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Jerry F. Hough, Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, 1985-1991 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997); Anthony D’ Agostino, Gorbachev’s Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 1998); John Keep, Last of the Empires: A History of the Soviet Union, 1945-1991 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Dmitri Volkogonov, ed. and trans. by Harold Shukman Autopsy for an 42

These works deserve attention because they help show how constructivist

accounts do not pay enough attention to the inherent limitations of “liberal-minded”

Soviet reformers and Gorbachev’s enduring hostility to non-official critics. To address

this shortcoming, Chapter XI will pay close attention the contours of ideological change

or inertia in minds of top-level Soviet policymakers and lower-ranking officials. It will

show how the steps that Gorbachev took to create a less bureaucratic society ended up

shaping the general trajectory of his reform campaign.53 The U.S. government and

transnational human right actors exploited the “liberalized” political terrain to challenge

the legitimacy of the General Secretary’s preference for a “directed” glasnost. From this

angle, Soviet private citizens became important democracy builders. With the help of

Western governments and NGOS, they helped convince some Soviet officials to make

their government’s internal behavior more consistent with the provisions of the Final Act

and international human rights standards.

Unlike many constructivist explanations, this chapter will maintain that Soviet

reformers did not just carry out reforms to make their nation a “normal” member of the

Western world.54 Gorbachev and some of his subordinates proved susceptible to

Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: The Free Press, 1998); Martin McCauley, Gorbachev: Profiles in Power (London and New York: Longman, 1998); Walter Laquer, The Long Road to Freedom: Russia and Glasnost (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989); Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State . . . and other Surprises (Washington, D.C., 1990), 36-67 and 70-92.

53 For a cogent account of Gorbachev’s efforts to create a “more participatory society,” see John Gooding “Gorbachev and Democracy,” Soviet Studies 42, no. 2 (April 1990), 205.

54 See Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War;” and Ibid., The Helsinki Effect, Chapters 7 and 8, 282. Robert English follows a similar pattern and privileges Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers’ goal of becoming a “normal” Western nation; he also could have done more to outline Gorbachev’s hostility to non-official activities. See English, Russia and the Idea of the West. For an account that diverges from this pattern, see Robert G. Herman, “Identity, 43

transnational critiques because they hoped to forge a superior synthesis of socialism and

democracy capable of generating universal emulation.55 This attitude accounts for why

these individuals hoped to use the issue of human rights as a way of engaging in vigorous ideological competition with the United States and other capitalist countries. In contrast to previous Soviet behavior, some individuals even cited the reports of transnational human rights actors to buttress the legitimacy of their complaints about U.S. internal

behavior.

The final section of this chapter will grapple with the successes and limitations of

Gorbachev’s reform campaign. In light of Russian and Soviet history, the signing of the

concluding document at the Final Act follow-up conference in Vienna marked an

important step toward creating a law-abiding that felt obligated to respect

each individual’s basic freedoms. Despite this achievement, the inability and

unwillingness of many Soviet officials to tolerate diversity had a predictable result. As

the authority of the CPSU crumbled, the Soviet government failed to institutionalize the

laws and practices necessary to create a civil society capable of checking governmental

behavior in a stable and predictable manner.

The collapse of the Soviet Union raises an important point that the renowned Cold

War historian John Lewis Gaddis has written about in detail. In his work We Know Now,

Norms, and National Security: The Soviet Foreign Policy Revolution and the End of the Cold War,” in Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security.

55 The arguments of Jacques Levesque had an important impact on my understanding of Gorbachev’s quest for superior version of socialism. He also makes a strong argument that Gorbachev held a strong attachment to ideas and in many ways worked to create a “utopian world order.” See Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’: Why and What For,” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 172. Vladimir Zubok makes a similar argument. See also Zubok, A Failed Empire, 309-10; and Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union, 11-12. 44

he reminded readers that “the diversification of power did more to shape the Cold War

than did the balancing of power.”56 The USSR may have had plenty of military strength,

but “[d]eficiencies in other kinds of power—economic, ideological, cultural, [and]

moral” resulted in its downfall. This insight is appropriate. Without any guns or bullets,

private citizens played a fundamental role in “globalizing” the idea that superpower status

could not be divorced from how Soviet leaders respected the basic human rights of their

private citizens. Much like Jimmy Carter predicted, U.S. politicians held values and

operated in a political system that put them in a much stronger position to handle and

exploit this “diversification of power.”57

This argument does not mean that the issue of human rights violations alone caused the collapse of the USSR; poor economic performance, the weakening appeal of orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology at all levels of society, and the persistence of

religious observance and nationalist aspirations in places such as Ukraine all played an

important role in the Soviet Union’s demise. Nevertheless, the growing attention that

private citizens and Western governments paid to the issue of human rights mattered a

great deal. They helped the rest of the world see that the USSR was an artificial creation

whose continued existence depended on the willingness of the CPSU to suppress basic freedoms and prevent individuals from expressing own values and identities. As the final chapter will explain, this defeat proved every bit as damaging as the economic failures of

56 John Lewis Gaddis, We Know Now: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 283. Gaddis’s doctoral advisee Jeremi Suri makes a similar point in Power and Protest. See Ibid., 263.

57 Leszek Kolakowski makes this position clear in “George Urban’s Conversation with the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski,” 26 45

Soviet-style socialism. The noted philosopher Leszek Kolakowski addressed this issue in

1983 when argued:

In the last analysis the main source of Soviet strength is Western incomprehension of those great and growing internal tensions which threaten the fabric of the Soviet system. If Soviet leaders suspected for one moment that the knew what they [author’s italics] know about their system, their worries about the staying power of the Soviet empire would increase immeasurably.58

Unlike Kolakowski, this work will argue that Soviet policymakers did comprehend and worry about the determination of the Western world to point out the level of internal repression necessary to hold the USSR together. When Gorbachev attempted to restructure the Soviet Union in ways designed to meet the human rights standards of

Western society, he unleashed developments that resulted in the destruction of Vladimir

Lenin’s Marxist-Leninist experiment.

58 Ibid. 46

CHAPTER 2: THE HUMAN RIGHTS WEAPON EMERGES: SOVIET DISSENT,

PRIVATE CITZENS, AND THE U.S. CONGRESS, 1975-1977

In January 1977, a dissident publication that reached foreign audiences described

how the Soviet government had lost the ability to shield its domestic conduct from

international scrutiny. No amount of repression, the document predicted, would allow

the authorities to “conceal the truth about their violations” of internationally recognized

human rights and “the Final Act.” Because damaging information could now flow across

state borders in a matter of seconds, Soviet leaders “can never be certain that facts on the unending suppression of elementary liberties in the USSR will not become public.”59

This chapter will explain why dissenters felt confident making this prediction. It will do so by describing how they played a crucial role in the creation of a transnational advocacy network based on monitoring Soviet internal behavior. During the 1960s, a wide array of dissenters rallied around the concept of universally recognized human rights to protect themselves from a government bent on eradicating activities that authorities deemed non-official. With a strong desire to make their society more humane, some formed a wide array of non-official groups designed to monitor Soviet compliance with the Final Act and existing Soviet laws.

The activities of these groups impressed many Western observers. Already unhappy with the U.S. executive branch’s lack of interest in human rights, several members of Congress accepted the arguments of NGOs and created the U.S. Helsinki

Commission. This organization not only monitored the executive branch’s efforts to

59 CHRUR 25 (January-March 1977): 48-9. 47

bring about Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the Final Act, but also

encouraged private citizens to hold governments accountable for their behavior. While

many in the U.S. State Department resisted this development, some members of the Ford administration recognized that they would have to carry out at least some “public” human rights diplomacy to satisfy the concerns of their Congressional and public critics. By obtaining this concession, private citizens and Congress made important progress toward accomplishing the larger goal of making human rights a contentious and visible issue in

U.S.-Soviet relations.

The Final Act, Soviet Dissent, and the Rise of Citizen Monitoring

Nikita Khrushchev’s speech at the Twentieth Party Congress about Joseph

Stalin’s crimes and de-Stalinization policies had important domestic repercussions. His

words led some survivors of the and other private citizens to make tentative

demands for more artistic and intellectual freedoms. Even before orthodox officials like

Leonid Brezhnev removed Khrushchev from power, they had become wary of the

excesses associated with the “cultural thaw” of the 1950s. In particular, they disliked

how a growing number of private citizens discussed topics such as politics and literature

in ways that conflicted with official ideology. 60

Convinced that Khrushchev’s policies had weakened the ideological resolve of

the population, the Brezhnev regime decided to curb the expression of opinions that did

60 Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 77-9. See also Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990, 1993), 117-46; and Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights (Middletown, Conn., 1985), 274-79, 323-5; and Abraham Brumberg, ed., In the Quest for Justice: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union Today (Praeger Publications: New York, 1970), Introduction; and Joshua Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights. 2nd edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 1-96. 48

conform to views sanctioned by the Communist Party. During the mid 1960s, Soviet

authorities arrested and convicted and for publishing non-

official works abroad under pen names. They based this punishment on language found

in Article 70 of the criminal code, which forbade anti-Soviet agitation and

that weakened the Soviet state. When two hundred Soviet citizens gathered in Pushkin

Square to protest these authors’ arrests and demand a public trial, the authorities detained

everyone involved and arrested several participants. The Kremlin also amended the

criminal code to ban public protests and any form of communication that government

officials viewed as slanderous.61

In response to these efforts to curtail independent thought, dissidents wrote protest letters to government officials stressing how arbitrary bureaucratic decisions such as

carrying out closed trials and sending sane individuals to psychiatric wards violated legal

norms. As part of this process, some offered to engage in dialogue with Soviet officials

on the best ways the government could follow the provisions of their nation’s constitution

and domestic laws. Many dissidents also carried out public protests and produced

samizdat, a term that refers to the self-publication and distribution of non-official

publications. To curtail this practice, the Soviet government arrested and tried four

dissidents in 1967 and 1968 for the illegal creation and distribution of samizdat. This

“trial of four” played an important role in bringing about the creation of the Chronicle of

61 Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 77-9. 49

Current Events, a bi-monthly samizdat publication that documented Soviet human rights

violations, restrictions on emigration, and suppression of religious activity.62

As Peter Reddaway and other scholars have noted, the Chronicle played an

important role in helping the diverse dissident movement find unity in the common cause

of human rights. Instead of ignoring each other as they had throughout much of the

1960s, dissidents as diverse as Crimean , Ukrainian nationalists, Baptists, and human rights activists such as Andrei Sakharov began working together and communicating with each other.63 Cognizant that their political differences could weaken

their movements’ overall strength, dissidents began to emphasize Soviet authorities’ need

to follow the international human rights agreements they had signed. For example, Jews

became visible demanding the right to emigrate afforded individuals in the U.N.

Declaration of Human Rights. The growing importance dissidents attached to human

rights became even more apparent when a group of them formed the Initiative Group to

Defend Human Rights in 1969. Its first publication, which appeared in The Chronicle,

asked the United Nations to examine the Kremlin’s violations of Soviet citizens’

internationally recognized human rights.64

62 Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia, 79, 85-6; Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent, 15-6; Paul Goldberg, The Final Act: The Dramatic, Revealing Story of the Moscow Watch Group (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1988), 28; Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 98, 100-5.

63 Peter Reddaway, ed., Uncensored Russia: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union (American Heritage Press, 1972).

64 See Peter Reddaway, “Dissent in the Soviet Union,” Dissent (Spring 1976): 138. For a good account of this debate’s history, see Richard N. Dean, “Contacts with the West: The Dissidents’ View of Western Support for the Human Rights Movement in the Soviet Union,” Universal Human Rights 2 (January/March 1980): 48, n. 2. 50

The Kremlin’s attempts to curb dissent during the late 1960s and 1970s through

arrests, imprisonment, and commitment of individuals to psychiatric institutions had mixed success. Soviet officials pressured some dissidents to renounce their activities on national television and managed to shut down production of The Chronicle from October

1972 to mid-1973. On the other hand, a group of dissidents for the first time claimed responsibility for disseminating the publication before an audience of foreign journalists.

Just as important, new groups such as the Moscow Human Rights Committee and

Council of Relatives of Imprisoned Baptists emerged and published articles in The

Chronicle calling for the rule of law in Soviet society. In 1974, and ten

other dissidents set up a Moscow branch of Amnesty International (AI), although the

organization’s International Secretariat hesitated to recognize the branch. Worried about

upsetting recent improvements in U.S.-Soviet relations, the Secretariat forbade members

of the Moscow branch from attending Amnesty’s annual meetings.

While these groups on the whole stressed the need to engage in dialogue with

government officials about possible reforms, many became impatient with the Kremlin’s

continued repression and harassment of individuals who expressed non-official opinions.

As a result of their growing impatience, some dissidents asked Western governments and

non-governmental organizations to show more support for their efforts aimed at making

Soviet officials respect their own laws and the international human rights agreements

they had signed. Consistent with this campaign, the recently exiled Alexander

Solzhenitsyn used his profits from the to create a fund in his own name that 51

gave assistance to individuals and their family members who suffered from Soviet

governmental repression.65

During the early 1970s, the ways in which dissenters cultivated Western public

opinion grew in sophistication. They held press conferences and television interviews,

distributed samizdat material to foreign journalists, and made some appeals to the United

Nations that elaborated how Soviet officials had violated internationally recognized

human rights. They also called on Western government leaders, participants in

international conferences, and private organizations such as AI to voice greater support

for their efforts.66 In many ways, dissenters had begun the process of drawing Western

governments and private citizens into an international “dialogue whose premises and

perimeters [sic] were laid down by the domestic critics of the Soviet regime.”67

Although dissidents stressed Soviet legality and the importance of internationally recognized human rights, they never viewed their protests as tantamount to creating an organized political opposition to the Communist party. Instead, they went out of their way to define their activities as moral, non-political endeavors designed to bring about the creation of a law-abiding Soviet state. They eschewed underground revolutionary

65 Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia, 87; Abraham Brumberg, “Dissent in Russia,” Foreign Affairs 52, no. 4 (1974): 782, 785; and Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 131-4. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 331-2.

66 Howard L. Biddulph, “Protest Strategies of the Soviet Intellectual Opposition,” in Dissent in the USSR: Politics, Ideology, and People, ed. Rudolph L. Tokes (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1975), 111-2. Also found in Dean, “Contacts with the West,” 50-1. Note: Dean erroneously attributed this material to Tokes. Frederick Barghoorn has a good account of the growing links between Soviet dissidents and Western journalists and human rights activists in his work Détente and the Democratic Movement in the USSR (New York: Macmillan Press, 1976), 103-6. See also Emma Gilligan, Defending : Sergei Kovalyov, Dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969-2003 (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 10-29; and Chalidze, The Soviet Human Rights Movement .

67 Quote taken from Dean, “Contacts with the West,” 51. 52

violence, sent signed petitions to Soviet government officials, and emphasized the

necessity of governments’ acting within the boundaries of international and domestic

law.68 For many dissidents, a close connection existed between human rights and the

idea of glasnost. As Robert Horvath has shown, many dissidents during the 1960s and

1970s reached the conclusion that the Soviet government would never curb their human

rights abuses and illegal imprisonments unless they generated the maximum amount of

domestic and international publicity about Soviet misconduct as they could muster.

Based on this assumption, they defended the position that glasnost guaranteed each

individual’s inherent rights to express his or her opinion and receive information from

anywhere in the world. This attitude accounts for why dissidents attached so much

importance to receiving foreign broadcasts about conditions in the Soviet Union.69

No dissident better articulated the close connection between human rights, glasnost, and international security than Andrei Sakharov. In his 1975 lecture accepting

the , which his wife read for him after Soviet authorities refused to

grant his travel request, Sakharov argued that “[d]etente can only be assured if from the

very outset it goes hand in hand with continuous openness on the part of all countries, an

aroused sense of public opinion, the free exchange of information, and an absolute

respect in all countries for political and civil rights.”70 In an essay written at the request

68 Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia, 76, 81-3, 89-93; Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 84-95; Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 151-2. See also , “Human Rights: A Policy of Honor,” CHRUR 25 (Jan./Feb., 1977): 59-62.

69 Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 54-69. See also Alexeyeva and Goldberg, The Thaw Generation, 124.

53

of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in March 1977, Sakharov continued to stress this theme:

The most serious defect of a “closed society” [Soviet Union] is the total lack of democratic control over the upper echelons of the party and government in their conduct of domestic affairs and foreign policy. . . . The “closed nature” of our society is intrinsically related to the question of civil and political rights. The human rights issue, is not simply a moral one, but also a paramount, practical ingredient of international trust and security.71

The dissenter Yuri Orlov shared Sakharov’s views about the close connection

between human rights, glasnost, and international security. This attitude explains why

each of them came to view the Final Act as a weapon that dissidents could wield against

the Soviet state. Since “appeals to the [Soviet] public” held out little chance of changing

the Kremlin’s disrespect for individual human rights, Orlov decided that “we [dissidents]

had to create our own committee and send expert documents to signatory governments

about the USSR’s violations of the political agreement it had signed.” When the full

scope of Soviet Union’s contempt for human rights became apparent, he reasoned,

Western nations would have little choice but “to demand that the Soviets cease

repressions against their citizens.”72

Many of Orlov’s fellow dissidents disagreed with his long-term plan of using the

Final Act as a means of engaging in dialogue with government officials about the best ways of reforming Soviet society. Despite these misgivings, some accepted his

70 Andrei Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, ed. by Efrem Yankelevich and Alfred Friendly, Jr. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 10.

71 Ibid., 102.

72 Yuri Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs of a Soviet Dissident, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991), 189-91. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,”330-53 and 377-83.

54

arguments about how monitoring Soviet compliance could bring about increased Western

support for their efforts. They also accepted his reasoning about “how the issues of humanitarianism and freedom of information” have a direct relationship with the problem

of international security. After discussing his plan with some of his closet friends, Orlov

announced the formation of an eleven-member committee called “The Public Group to

Support Compliance with the Helsinki Accords in the USSR (Moscow Watch Group)” at a press conference on 12 May 1976. He told reporters that the Moscow Watch Group would monitor and struggle for Soviet observance of Basket III and Principle VII, the humanitarian articles of the Helsinki Accords. So its members could obtain as much information about conditions inside the Soviet Union as possible, the Watch Group urged private citizens to send it written complaints about Soviet human rights violations and

illegal conduct.73

Once members of Moscow Watch Group received these complaints, they would

check their authenticity and then forward them to “all heads of signatory states.” The

Watch Group hoped that these states would use this information to document Soviet violations at the 1977 follow-up conference scheduled to take place in Belgrade.74 Along with trying to disseminate as much accurate information as possible, the Moscow Watch

Group called on citizens in other signatory states to create organizations that monitored their government’s compliance with the Final Act. It also called for the creation of two

73 Joshua Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggles for Human Rights, 2nd edition (Boston: Beacon Press), 320; Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 189-92; Goldberg, The Final Act, 11-58; and Alexeyeva, The Thaw Generation, 274-94. For a good account of some dissidents’ initial skepticism at Orlov’s proposal, see Peter Grigorenko, Memoirs, trans. by Thomas P. Whitney (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1982), 433-6.

74 Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 338-9. 55 international commissions to monitor each signatory’s compliance with the Helsinki

Accords and the conditions of Soviet prisons.75

In some important ways, the course of action that Orlov advocated followed the general trajectory of dissent that this chapter has already outlined in some important ways. Since he understood that dissidents championed different causes and often disagreed over tactics, the Moscow Watch Group never advocated a specific political program. Instead, this group stressed the necessity of monitoring Soviet compliance with the Final Act and convincing the Kremlin to abide by the international human rights agreements it had signed. Its emphasis on the collection and distribution of accurate information across the globe concerning Soviet human rights violations highlighted many dissidents’ belief in the close connection between glasnost, human rights, international security, and Soviet internal reform. In a fashion similar to earlier dissidents, Orlov also recognized that the Moscow Watch Group needed the strong support of Western governments and citizens if it had any chance of convincing the Kremlin to reform. In many ways, this group’s determination to disseminate well-researched reports and accurate information rather than appeals to the United Nations illustrated dissidents’ growing sophistication and willingness to call on Western governments to challenge

Soviet human rights abuses.76

75 Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent, 337. See also Catherine Fitzpatrick, The Moscow Helsinki Monitors: Their Vision, Their Achievement, The Price They Paid, May 12, 1976-May 12, 1986 (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1986), 15-2. See also “The Public Group to Promote Observance of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR,” CHRUR 20-21 (April/June 1976): 5-6.

76 Dean, “Contacts with the West,” 52.

56

While Orlov’s vision may have incorporated some familiar dissident strategies,

the formation of the Moscow Watch Group became an important turning point in the

history of dissent. During the next two years, numerous dissidents followed this group’s

example and formed similar public monitoring groups in the Soviet republics of Ukraine,

Armenia, Lithuania, and Georgia. Some groups also emerged with more specific

mandates such as the Christian Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Religious

Believers and Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political

Purposes. 77 The Moscow Watch Group’s decision to monitor the Kremlin’s compliance

with an international agreement it had signed represented an unprecedented challenge to

the Soviet officials’ “monopoly on political space.” This strategy also played a role in

further uniting the “disparate opposition” behind the banner of human rights. The

importance many dissidents attached to internationally recognized human rights only

increased when the United Nations Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Social,

Cultural, and Economic Rights, which all Warsaw Pact countries had ratified, entered

into force in early 1976. Instead of holding their annual Pushkin square rallies on the

Soviet Constitution Day (December 5), Soviet dissidents began to hold them on the

International Day of Human Rights (December 10) in 1977.78

Besides helping Soviet dissidents unite behind a common cause, the activities of

Soviet Helsinki monitors inspired private citizens in other countries to monitor their own

governments’ compliance record. In September 1976, Polish intellectuals formed the

77 Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 312; and “The Dissidents v. Moscow,” Newsweek, 21 February 1978, 23- 4.

78 Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 94. 57

precursor to Solidarity known as the Committee of Workers Defense (KOR), which

emphasized workers’ right to form independent trade unions and the Polish government

obligation to follow the Final Act. A few months later, the Polish Helsinki Committee

came into existence. In a fashion similar to the citizen monitoring groups in the Soviet

Union, this non-governmental human rights organization sent documents to the West

concerning Polish violations of the Final Act and harsh treatment of Solidarity. The

efforts of these groups received a boost when members of the Catholic Church in Poland

and later Pope John Paul II called on the Polish government to implement the Final Act.79

During the European Youth and Student Assembly that took place from 18-24

June 1976, a British delegation read a statement from the underground Polish Youth

Committee for the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreement that called on “similar committees” in Europe and the United States to monitor their governments’ compliance with the Helsinki Accords. On 1 January 1977, 242 Czechoslovakian citizens signed

Charter 77, which emphasized how private citizens had the right and obligation to challenge their governments’ violations of universally recognized human rights in the

U.N. Human Rights Covenants and the Final Act. Following the example of citizen monitoring groups in the Soviet Union, the signers of this document rejected the notion of forming a political opposition and emphasized the need to promote “the general public interest” like other “citizen initiatives in the “West and East.”80

79 William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “A Curious Grapevine” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 233-4. For a more in-depth discussion, see Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 167-74.

80 Korey, NGOS and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 234. An electronic copy of can be found at “Charter 77 Manifesto.” Available [Online]: 58

The growth of Final Act public monitoring groups coincided with other developments that raised private citizens’ awareness of the Helsinki Accords. During the

November 1975 World Congress of Churches (WCC) held in Nairobi, Kenya, a Swiss delegate proposed a resolution entitled “Disarmament, the Helsinki Agreement, and

Religious Liberty” that called on the Soviet Union “to implement effectively principle no. 7” of the Final Act. In response to this proposed resolution, the WCC central committee asked European churches to send it a report on how the Final Act protected religious liberty. Keston College and three religious institutes in England, , and the fulfilled this request and sent the central committee “extensive, well- documented evidence” of how the Soviets violated the Final Act’s provisions related to religious freedom. The report that the European institutes sent even noted that “the unmistakable conclusion to be drawn [from the analysis of Soviet legislation] is that the fundamental laws of the USSR must be drastically changed before one can speak of freedom of conscience . . . [and] before Christians and other believers will be raised from second to first class citizens.81

After a group of affiliated Orthodox and Protestant churches attended the

Conference on East European Churches (CEC) from 27-31 October 1975, numerous congregations in and other Eastern European countries discussed and analyzed the provisions of the Helsinki Accords. These discussions help explain why a large percentage of the 100,000 East Germans who requested visas to visit West

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/19/documents/charter.77/ [14 May 2007]. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 174-83.

81 Dante Fascell, “The Helsinki Accord: A Case Study,” Annals, AAPSS 442 (March 1979): 73; and CHRUR 22 (July-September 1976): 23-4. 59

Germany from August 1975-August 1976 cited the provisions of the Final Act when

making their request. One week after the European Youth and Student Assembly took

place, the meeting of the twenty-nine Communist and Workers’ parties in East Berlin, at

the insistence of the Spanish and Italian delegations, called on each signatory to

implement the provisions of the Helsinki Accords. Just like they had done with the Final

Act, Soviet and Eastern governments published the meeting’s concluding document in

their official domestic publications.82

The formation of citizen monitoring groups such as and Ukrainian Watch Group

and activities of institutions like the CEC helped increase private citizens’ awareness

about the obligations governments accepted when they signed the Helsinki Accords.83

On the most basic level, this development grew out of changes in how global society functioned that only accelerated during the 1970s. As Dante Fascell (D-FL) argues in his essay “The Helsinki Accord,” the growing interdependence of nations in areas such as energy and food production, along with technological advances in the fields of communications and transportation, had “created an enormous increase in transnational ties among nations.” As part of this process, “structures within a society, whether cultural, business, education, professional, or scientific” had to some extent become involved in international relationships. “These nongovernmental groups and individuals,” Fascell writes, “now play an important role in world affairs . . . [and] are

82 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 101-2; 107-9

83 Fascell, “The Helsinki Accord,” 70. 60 demanding a say in the traditional agreements, exchanges, and relationships among world government leaders.”84

Fascell’s arguments in many ways resemble recent works that emphasize how the idea of human rights became “globalized” in the 1970s because of the creation of transnational advocacy networks. A transnational human rights network begins when

“domestic groups in a repressive state bypass their state and directly search out international allies to try to bring pressure on their states from the outside.” These international allies can include a wide array of actors, including but not limited to churches, unions, domestic non-governmental groups with similar goals, and non- governmental organizations from other countries. They can also include international human rights organizations, international non-governmental organizations such as the

U.N. Human Rights Commission, philanthropic foundations, sympathetic publications, and Western governments.85 As Thomas Risse-Kappen, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn

Sikkink point out in their edited work The Power of Human Rights, a transnational human rights network comes together when relevant actors become “bound together by

84 Ibid.

85 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 12, 9, 18, 23-4, 28, 30, 37. See also Kathryn Sikkink, “Human Rights, Principle Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America,” International Organization 47 (Summer 1993): 411-441; Volker Schneider, “The Global Capital of Human Rights Movements: A Case Study of Amnesty International,” in Karsten Ronit and Volker Schneider, ed., Private Organizations in Global Politics (New York: Routledge, 2000), 146-64; Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1-38, 234-78; Daniel C. Thomas, “The Helsinki Accords and Political Change in Eastern Europe,” in Ibid., 205-233; and Thomas Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 139-72. 61 shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services.”

Kenneth Cmiel makes a similar argument in his article “The Emergence of Human Rights

Politics in the United States,” when he writes that “by the middle of the seventies, the information revolution on human rights was in full swing and the network of activists increasingly agile. Communication circuits that had not existed ten years before were confidently pushing politically charged information across the globe.”86

No matter how important, the formation of a transnational advocacy network based on monitoring Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the Final Act did not just depend on the proliferation of citizen monitoring groups and the activities of institutions such as the WCC. It also came together because of the exchange of information between Eastern private citizens and Western government employees. While many Western embassy employees refused to work with dissidents, some passed their messages along to broadcasting organizations such as the BBC and Radio Liberty/Radio

Free Europe. These institutions then transmitted many of these messages and reports to the ever-growing audiences in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. For example, in

1966 “only 2.4 to 4.2. percent of college-educated Muscovites regularly listened to

Western Russian-language” radio programming. By 1976, that percentage had risen to between forty and fifty percent. During the 1980s, Radio Liberty surveys estimated that about seven million Soviet citizens listened to its programming each day. According to a

1979 Polish survey, fifty percent of the adult population listened to Radio Free Europe, a

86 Risse, Ropp, Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights, 18; and Kenneth Cmiel, “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999). Available [Online]: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/cmiel.htm [16 July 2007]. 62

percentage that would only climb during the 1980s. As many dissidents have argued,

Western broadcasting played a crucial role making Eastern European and Soviet citizens’ more aware of their messages and how governments worked to repress non-official group activity.87

Western journalists stationed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe may have

paid little attention to the formation of the Moscow Watch Group, but they helped relay

dissident messages to sympathetic Western embassy officials. When these journalists

started to receive more and more Helsinki-oriented appeals from Eastern European and

Soviet citizens, they devoted more attention to the struggle for human rights in the Soviet

Union and Eastern Europe. In places such as Berlin and Moscow, they “began to write

about the Helsinki-related demands of workers, , religious believers,” individuals

seeking to emigrate from the Soviet Union, and human rights activists. As William

Korey points out in his work The Promises We Keep, “accounts in the Western media . . .

served as powerful means for stirring the consciousness in the United States” about

conditions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.88

During the 1970s, Soviet citizens began to read more dissident literature about life

in the Soviet Union published in the West (tamizdat) than they had in the previous decade. According to Boris Rabbot, a high-ranking Soviet government official whom the

Kremlin allowed to emigrate, unpublished Soviet sociological studies illustrated that “one

87 Boris Rabbot, “Détente: The Struggle within the Kremlin; The Debate over Debate; An Ex-Insider’s Revelations,” Washington Post, 10 July 1977, B1; and Korey, A Curious Grapevine, 234-5. See also Chalidze, The Soviet Human Rights Movement, 23.

88 William Korey, The Promises We Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process, and American Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993), 52. 63

copy of the dissident Vladimir Maximov’s book, ‘Seven Days of Creation,’ may

be read by 500 to 700 people . . . to the point of total disintegration.”89 Just as important,

various American and Western European publishers made samizdat publications such as

The Chronicle of Current Events (Amnesty International), A Chronicle of Human Rights

in the USSR (Khronika Press), and A Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania

(Lithuanian Roman Catholic Priests' League of America) accessible to the Western

audiences and Soviet émigré communities. These publications contained documents

about conditions in the Soviet Union that Helsinki monitoring groups managed to send

abroad. Some of these documents included accounts of dissident trials, dissident opinion

pieces about Soviet internal behavior, and dissident pleas to Western audiences for public

support. The Khronika Press published a plethora of short pamphlets in English and

Russian describing conditions in the Soviet Union such as Human Rights Conventions

Ratified By the USSR and ---Soviet Dissenter.90

Eastern European and Soviet private citizens also managed to raise the

international community’s understanding of the Helsinki Accords and Soviet human

rights abuses because they received support from and gave information to Western

private citizens and non-governmental human rights organizations. In particular, they

gave information to U.S. ethnic lobbies such as the International League for Human

Rights, the Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee, and the Czechoslovakian

89 Rabbot, “Détente.”

90 Frances X. Clines, New York Times, 10 December 1977, 23. During the mid-1970s, Edward Kline’s Khronika Press in published 1,100 English and 500 Russian editions of CHRUR each month. 64

National Council of America. Of course, these linkages had begun to form before the

Helsinki Accords came into existence. For example, the International League for Human

Rights recognized the Moscow Human Rights Committee as an affiliate in 1971. This

organization also gave its annual human rights award to Sakharov in 1973. As indicated

earlier, AI recognized a Moscow Branch in 1974. Furthermore, groups such as the Union

of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) and the National Council on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ)

championed the cause of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union within the halls of the

U.S. government.91

Because of the growth of Soviet and Western scientific contacts that grew out of

the 1973 U.S.-Soviet exchange agreement, many Western scientists chose to defend their

Soviet counterparts who faced repression for voicing non-official opinions. The

President of the USNAS Philip Handler wrote a letter to the Head of the Soviet Academy

of Science in 1973 arguing that governmental attempts to silence Sakharov jeopardized

Soviet-American scientific cooperation. In response to the arrest of the dissident

biologist Sergei Kovalyov on 27 December 1974, the Federation of American Scientists

created a “Committee in Defense of Sergei Kovalyov.” This group sent Anatoly

Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, a letter with the signatures of 92

biologists (all members of the U.S. National Academy of Scientists) urging the Soviet

government to give Kovalyov either clemency or amnesty. With advice from Handler,

91 Frederick C. Barghoorn, Détente and the Democratic Movement in the USSR (New York: The Free Press, 1976), 32; Cmeil, “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States”; Lesya Verba and Bohdan Yasen, ed., The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine: Documents of the , 1976-1980 (Baltimore: Smoloskyp Publishers, 1980), 21-22; Richard Lourie, Sakharov: A Biography (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2002), 254-55; and CHRUR 23-4 (October-December 1976): 9-10. The International League for Human Rights also made Sakharov an honorary vice-president in 1976. See Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, 33-4. 65

the USNAS created a human rights committee in 1976 that defended the rights of all scientists to receive information and attend scientific conferences anywhere in the world.92

The Final Act only increased private citizens’ willingness to endorse courses of

action designed to monitor how the Soviet government treated their citizens on a

consistent basis. After receiving numerous appeals from Soviet scientists, especially

from those who were Jewish, the 113th Annual Meeting of the USNAS that took place in

1976 asked scientists to support “An Affirmation of Freedom of Inquiry and Expression.”

The guidelines issued to the Academy’s foreign secretary insisted that the organization

“keep a closer watch over violations of scientists’ rights around the world and that the

Academy will intercede in defense of individual scientists privately or, on occasion,

publicly, when such an action appears appropriate and useful.” Along similar lines, the

Royal College of Psychiatrists (Great Britain) passed a resolution urging the 1977

Congress of World Psychiatric Association to “condemn the systematic misuse of

psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR.” The Royal College also “decided to seek

permission for a delegation of psychiatrists to visit the Soviet Union in order to examine

some of the dissenters who have been certified as insane.”93

92 Lourie, Sakharov, 255; and Emma Gilligan, Defending Human Rights in Russia, 43; Marguerite Garling, ed., The Human Rights Handbook: A Guide to British and American International Human Rights Organizations (New York: Facts on File, 1979), 228. For a good analysis of how the scientific community supported dissenters, see Laurie S. Wiseburg and Harry M. Scoble, “Monitoring Human Rights Violations: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations,” in Kommers and Loescher, ed., Human Rights and American Foreign Policy, 185.

93 CHRUR 20-1 (April/June 1976): 50. 66

Armed with information about human rights abuses in the Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe, private citizens attempted to make Western Final Act signatory governments part of their transnational human rights network. As part of this campaign, they began inundating American and Western European foreign ministries “with massive documentation of” Soviet and Eastern European human rights abuses in 1976.94 Daniel

C. Thomas makes an astute observation when he writes that “American and NATO

policy on the CSCE [Helsinki Process] began to reflect the priority on human rights favored by dissidents in the East and their supporters in West.” In sharp contrast to previous communiqués that stressed the need for “mutual understanding” and the importance of Helsinki-inspired cooperation among states, the North Atlantic Council’s communiqué of May 1976 insisted on “the full implementation of all parts of the Helsinki

Final Act by all signatories, so that its benefits may be felt not only in relations between states but also in the lives of individuals.”95

The issue of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union became a visible issue in

the U.S. Congress well before the Helsinki Final Act went into force. Nevertheless, the

efforts of human rights organizations such as Freedom House and U.S. ethnic lobbies on

the behalf of Soviet dissents and their Eastern European counterparts “made the West

aware of the value of the Helsinki Accords.” As the next section of this chapter will

illustrate, Congress responded to public pressure by creating a U.S. governmental

commission designed to receive and publish information from private citizens across the

94 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 130-1.

95 Ibid. 67

globe concerning Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the Helsinki Accords.

Many members concluded that this commission could not carry out its mandate of

monitoring how Final Act signatories implemented the agreement and respected

internationally recognized human rights without receiving advice and information from

private citizens.

The growing interest members of Congress displayed for monitoring signatories’

compliance with the Final Act also flowed from their increasing identification with the

issue of human rights. During the 1970s, private citizens belonging to groups as diverse

as the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights and the National Council of

Churches began forging an influential U.S. domestic human rights lobby in the mid-

1970s. While these groups advocated a dizzying array of positions, they stoked

Congressional members’ interest in the issue of human rights through their testimony in

hearings and “background information for U.S. [human rights] legislation and U.N.

deliberations.” They also made the issue of human rights difficult for members of

Congress to ignore because of the vast quantity of credible “detailed information” they

gave U.S. policymakers documenting “just how badly many of Washington’s client states

are abusing their own citizens.”96

In the case of the Final Act, one could speak of an American “Helsinki Lobby”

in 1980 consisting of over one hundred ethnic, religious, and human rights groups that

put consistent pressure on the U.S. government to bring about Soviet and Eastern

96 Vogelesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare, 142-47; and Cmiel, “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics and the United States.” 68

European compliance with the Final Act.97 As this dissertation will illustrate in the

forthcoming chapters, this American “Helsinki Lobby” provided U.S. policymakers with

detailed, credible information about Soviet and Eastern European violations of the Final

Act and internationally recognized human rights. These groups also continued to forge

more and more transnational links with private citizens across the globe during the late

1970s and 1980s, a development that only further “globalized” the issue of Soviet and

Eastern European human rights violations.

The U.S. Government, the Final Act, and the Impact of Citizen Monitoring

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. executive branch shied away from

challenging the Soviet Union’s repression of dissent.98 Richard Nixon and his National

Security Advisor/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advocated a realipolitik version of

détente that placed almost no emphasis on encouraging the Soviet Union to show a

greater respect for human rights.99 Instead of working to change Soviet internal behavior,

Kissinger called on the United States to provide the Soviet Union with economic benefits

if it improved its international conduct. He hoped that the prospect of losing access to

American technology would convince the Soviet Union to stop supporting national

liberation struggles in less developed countries and preserve international stability. If the

97 Vojtech Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security: Analysis and Documentation (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986), 197.

98 See Patricia Weiss Fagen, “The United States and International Human Rights, 1946-1977,” Universal Human Rights 2, no. 3 (1980): 19-33.

99 William C. Green, “Human Rights and Détente,” Ukrainian Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1980): 138. For a good comparison of Jimmy Carter’s and Henry Kissinger’s approaches to the promotion of human rights, see David P. Forsythe, “America’s Foreign Policy and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality,” Universal Human Rights 2, no. 3 (1980): 35-53. 69

subject of human rights were to be raised at all with the Soviets, Kissinger thought that

such discussions should only take place in closed negotiating sessions (i.e., quiet

diplomacy).100

Besides having little interest in raising the issue of Soviet human rights violations,

the Nixon administration also felt little need to challenge the internal behavior of right-

wing authoritarian allies in nations such as . Numerous members of Congress,

especially those who first entered office in the early 1970s opposed to the War,

grew tired of the executive branch’s approach to foreign affairs and started to call

attention to realipolitik’s lack of morality. This dissatisfaction only intensified as

senators and representatives began associating the disastrous consequences of the

Vietnam conflict and hypocrisy of CIA covert activity with the executive branch’s almost

unquestioned control of U.S. foreign policy. To challenge executive dominance,

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over Nixon’s veto. Not satisfied with this

victory, many Congressional members called on Kissinger to restore the “Wilsonian

tradition” of U.S. foreign policy that emphasized human rights rather than balance of

power considerations. The strength of this sentiment became apparent when

Congressman Don Fraser (D-MN), with the help of his staff member John Salzburg, held

100 Samuel P. Huntington, “Renewed Hostility,” in the Making of America’s Soviet Policy, ed. Joseph Nye, Jr. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 268, 270-1; and Sandy Vogelesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare: The Dilemma of U.S. Human Rights Policy (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1980), 102. For an excellent of account of Kissinger’s hostility toward the task of promoting human rights, Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 242-6. 70

a series of fifteen hearings concerning the proper role of human rights in U.S. foreign

policy in 1973.101

The summary report from these hearings condemned Kissinger’s conduct of foreign policy for all but ignoring human rights and insisted that “consideration for human rights in foreign policy is both morally imperative and practically necessary.”

After Fraser’s hearing took place, Congress strove to reassert its role in determining U.S. foreign policy, paying particular attention to adjusting “the distorted perspective” of human rights “within the executive branch.” The 1973 Foreign Assistance Act urged the

President to withhold military or economic assistance from any country that imprisoned its citizens for political purposes. Fraser also sent numerous letters to the State

Department declaring the importance Congress now attached to human rights considerations when deciding foreign aid requests. 102

Armed with information about human rights violations in countries allied with the

United States provided by groups such as AI, Congress next added Section 502B to the

Foreign Assistance Act of 1974. This measure called on the executive branch to “reduce or terminate security assistance to any government which engages in a consistent pattern

of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” In response to the U.S.

State Department’s determination to ignore human rights legislation, Congress in effect enacted a series laws over the next two years--sometimes over Gerald Ford’s veto--

101 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Human Rights and the American Tradition,” Foreign Affairs 57, no. 3 (1979): 512; and Vogelesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare, 121, 125-7.

102 Vogelesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare, 128-33. See also David P. Forsythe, “Congress and Human Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Fate of General Legislation,” Human Rights Quarterly 9 (1987): 382-404. 71

barring U.S. foreign aid to countries that violated internationally recognized human rights

“unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such [a] country.” These

laws eventually required the U.S. State Department to issue human rights reports on

every country that belonged to the United Nations. In amendments to the Foreign

Assistance Act made in 1976, Congress justified these laws on the grounds that the

United States should “promote and encourage increased respect for human rights and

fundamental freedoms throughout the world without distinction as to race, sex, language,

or religion.” In blunt language, Congress also insisted that “a principal goal of the

foreign policy of the United States shall be to promote the increased observance of

internationally recognized human rights by all countries.103

The growing Congressional interest in human rights impacted Soviet-American

relations. In 1974, Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Reform

Bill and the Stevenson Amendment to Export-Import Bank Bill. Against the wishes of

both the executive branch and Soviet government, these measures placed an assortment

of economic restrictions and penalties on the Kremlin for attempting to curb Jewish

emigration from the Soviet Union. As expected, Kissinger argued that these measures

only torpedoed his efforts to gain the release of Soviet Jews though “quiet” diplomatic

efforts. The Soviets rejected them as interference in their “internal affairs” and cancelled

earlier-negotiated trade agreements with the United States.104

103 For a solid review of this legislation, see Robert F. Drinan, The Cry of the Oppressed: The History and Hope of the Human Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass: Harper & Row, 1987), 70-80.

104 Samuel Huntington, “Renewed Hostility,” 279. 72

The intense lobbying of Jewish non-governmental organizations such as NCSJ and

Sakharov’s letter to Congress in support of the Jackson-Vanik amendment help explain why these measures became law. This development should not obscure the reality that the U.S. government’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union remained limited during the early to mid 1970s. As one-time Congressman and human rights activist Robert Drinan argues in his work Cry of the Oppressed, the congressional interest in human rights that accelerated in the mid 1970s primarily reflected this institution’s shame “at seeing the United States linked to repressive regimes in nations such as [South]

Korea, the Philippines, Chile, and .105

While Congress wanted to make human rights an integral component of U.S. foreign

policy, its members in no way showed enthusiasm for the Final Act negotiations that

began in 1973. The executive branch also did not enter these negotiations with

enthusiasm. In fact, Kissinger expressed his disapproval of the Helsinki Process in

private on more than occasion during the negotiating period. For example, he told

William F. Buckley that “the Conference [Final Act negotiations] wasn’t our idea. It

isn’t something I am proud of . . . . Heads of government shouldn’t meet for something

that isn’t that important.”106 State Department officials must have followed Kissinger’s

instructions “to stay ½ step behind the Europeans” because Brezhnev expressed his displeasure with U.S. officials’ torpor during Final Act negotiations. In a private

105 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 123. See also Thomas M. Frank and Edward Weisband, Foreign Policy by Congress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 83-97. See also Drinan, Cry of the Oppressed, 76.

106 See Korey, The Promises We Keep, 15-8; and “Henry Kissinger Telecon with William F. Buckley,” 21 July 1975. Available [Online]: [14 May 2007]. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 55-88. 73 conversation with Kissinger, Brezhnev argued that “[w]e feel the United States is far too passive. At the conference, [it] sits in silence. France takes one position. THE FRG

[Federal Republic of Germany] has its position. We think the United States should take a resolute position.”107

This criticism has merit because European nations on the whole played a much more active role than the United States in convincing the Soviet government to accept Basket

III and Principle VII. Worried about the possibility of Congress’ removing American troops from Western Europe, the Nixon administration viewed Final Act negotiations “as the prince to be paid for the MBFR [Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions] negotiations” that Kissinger “saw as essential for safeguarding the U.S. military presence in Europe.”108 In practice, Ford believed that the Final Act’s human rights provisions could help reduce East/West tensions over the long term. Nevertheless, he remained committed to “quiet diplomacy” and refused to meet with the exiled Soviet writer

Solzhenitsyn two weeks before the Final Act came into existence.109

107 See William Burr, ed., The Kissinger Transcripts: Top Secret Talks with and Moscow (New York: New Press, 1998), 334.

108 Burr, ed., The Kissinger Transcripts, 16-7. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 73-85.

109 John J. Maresca, To Helsinki, 154-60. For Ford’s strong endorsement of the Helsinki Accord’s human rights provisions, see Judith F. Buncher, ed., Human Rights & American Diplomacy, 1975-1977 (New York: Facts on File, 1977), 9. See also Douglas Brinkley, Gerald R. Ford (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007 ), 110-2; and Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (Harper & Row, Publishers and the Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1979), 298-301. During a conference about the Carter presidency that took place in 1994, the former Soviet ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin stated that Henry Kissinger made the following statement to the Soviet foreign minister when discussing the Final Act: “Why are we quibbling over these forms of words? No matter what goes into the Final Act, I don’t believe that the Soviet Union will ever do anything it doesn’t want to do.” See Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars held at Musgrove Plantation, St. Simon’s, Georgia, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C. A transcript of this conference is in the possession of NSA archivist Svetlana Savranskaya. 74

Even though Ford emphasized the Final Act’s human rights provisions when justifying why his administration signed the agreement, the State Department showed little inclination to challenge Soviet human rights practices in public. Instead, it continued the executive branch’s practice of presenting the Soviet foreign ministry with a

list of families who wanted to immigrate to the United States for the purpose of family

reunification.110 The Ford Administration and Soviet Union also agreed to resolve

differences over the implementation of the Helsinki Accords at “the responsible

diplomatic level.” In practice, the deputy chief mission at the U.S. embassy in Moscow

and the deputy chief of the USA Department in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs

met twice at the U.S. embassy in Moscow to discuss practices that each nation considered

a Final Act violation. If any of the issues raised in these exchanges proved intractable, subsequent meetings at the level of “foreign ministers or heads of government” would

attempt to resolve them.111

Despite his commitment to “quiet diplomacy,” Ford agreed to the exchange of

Bukovsky for the Chilean Communist Luis Corvalan in December 1976. U.S. State

Department officials may have gone out of their way to distance the United States from

the exchange, but Bukovsky himself in no uncertain terms endorsed the measure. “My

release in exchange for the release of Luis Corvalan,” he noted, “seems to me to be

unprecedented.” “For the first time the Soviet government plainly acknowledged the

110 CHRUR 22 (July-September 1976): 36.

111 Jack F. Matlock, “U.S. Policy on Human Rights in Relations with the USSR, 1961-91,” in Implementing Human Rights Policy: Agendas, Policies, and Practices, ed. Debra Liang-Fenton, ed., (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2004), 253-4. 75

existence in the USSR of political prisoners.” Soviet exile Valery Chalidze and the

American publisher Edward Kline issued a joint statement that referred to the exchange

as a confirmation that the Soviet regime “is waging a pseudo-war on its own citizens who

have dared to criticize the government.”112

The Ford administration’s continuing emphasis on holding the Soviets accountable

for their implementation of the Final Act through “quiet diplomacy” only explains part of

the reason why the U.S. government hesitated to undertake a public campaign to promote

human rights in the Soviet Union. Instead of recognizing the importance of the Final

Act’s human rights provisions and calls for increased “human contacts,” many U.S.

politicians viewed the measure as a sellout to the Soviet Union. Senator Henry Jackson

(D-WA) argued that the agreement nullified the U.S. government’s commitment to the

right of self-determination for citizens in the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe.113

Throughout his 1976 Presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter condemned Kissinger-style détente as “amoral” and excoriated the Final Act as tantamount to accepting “the Russian takeover of Eastern Europe.” In a series of interviews with Playboy over a three-month span of the campaign that appeared in November 1976, he asserted that “I never saw any reason we should be involved in the Helsinki meetings at all” because “we got very little, if anything, in return.”114

112 CHRUR 23-4 (October-December 1976): 8-9.

113 Buncher, Human Rights & American Diplomacy, 9.

114 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part Two (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1978), 836, 953. See also Buncher, Human Rights & American Diplomacy, 79. 76

Republican presidential-hopeful Ronald Reagan also voiced his strong

disapproval of Kissinger-style détente and referred to Ford’s signing of the Helsinki

Accords “as having put an American ‘stamp of approval on Russia’s enslavement of the

[of Eastern Europe].’”115 During the drafting of the 1976 Republic Party

Platform, Reagan’s supporters played a pivotal role in passing a foreign policy plank

entitled “Morality and Foreign Policy.” Along with praising Solzhenitsyn’s admonitions

about the inherent evils of communism, this plank insisted that future negotiated

agreements, “such as the one signed in Helsinki, must not take from those who do not

have freedom the hope of one day gaining it.”116 Almost one month after Carter defeated

Ford in the 1976 election, Reagan informed his radio listeners that “thousands of Soviet

citizens are in concentration camps for trying to obtain an exit visa.” Since the Kremlin

refused to let these individuals exercise their universal right to emigrate, he argued that

“the Helsinki Pact should be used for wrapping garbage . . . like yesterdays newspaper.”117

Many dissidents shared Reagan and Carter’s suspicions that the U.S. government

cared more about preserving Kissinger-style détente than helping them promote Soviet

internal reform. When trying to figure out why Western nations acted in such a manner,

Andre Amalrik, who wrote the provocative work Will the Soviet Union Survive Until

1984, argued that the West found it easier to support emigration than deal with the

115 Bunchner, Human Rights & American Diplomacy, 33.

116 For an electronic copy of the Republican Party’s 1976 Platform, see “Republican Party Platform of 1976,” 18 August 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showplatforms.php?platindex=R1976 [14 May 2007].

117 Kiron K. Skinner et al. ed, Reagan, In His Own Hand (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 144. 77

confrontation required of any campaign designed to challenge Soviet human rights

practices. This type of attitude remained commonplace among many dissidents even

after Ford signed the Final Act.118 When discussing his reasoning behind creating the

Moscow Watch Group, Orlov insisted that “Western governments had not doubted that

the Soviet Union would fail [emphasis in original] to discharge its obligations in the area

of human rights, but they went along with this as unavoidable evil.” The purpose of our

group, he continued, “was, first and foremost, to change this ‘ approach’ of the

West.”119

Even though many dissidents remained wary of the West’s willingness to promote

human rights in the Soviet Union and U.S. politicians continued to criticize the Final Act,

events had already taken place that would transform the U.S. government’s attitude

toward the utility of the agreement. Two weeks after Ford signed the Final Act, a

Congressional delegation traveled to Moscow to meet with Soviet government officials.

During this visit, Representative (R-NJ) held meetings with numerous dissidents, including Orlov and Turchin (not yet exiled). These individuals impressed upon her that close “cooperation between the West and the Soviet human-rights movement on the basis of the humanitarian articles of the Helsinki Final Act” could help promote Soviet internal reform. Heartbroken by the stories she heard about the Soviet government’s harsh treatment of individuals who wanted to emigrate or practice their

118 , Notes of a Revolutionary, trans. Guy Daniels (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1982), 304.

119 Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 194. See also Valery Chalidze, “The Humanitarian Provisions of the Helsinki Final Act,” CHRUR 25 (Jan./Feb., 1977): 91-3

78

religion without state interference, Fenwick raised the issue of Soviet compliance with

the Final Act during her delegation’s meeting with Brezhnev.120

The arguments of dissenters about the importance of the Helsinki Accords and

determination to meet with the Congressional delegation despite KGB surveillance impressed Fenwick. She returned to the United States convinced that the Ford administration had not done enough to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki

Accords. In September 1975, she introduced a bill proposing that Congress establish a

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) designed to monitor Soviet compliance with the Final Act. Twelve days later, Clifford

Case (R-NJ) followed Fenwick’s example and introduced the same legislation in the

Senate. Because these pieces of legislation called for the creation of a commission with

both legislative and executive representatives, the Ford administration worked against it,

insisting that the commission gave Congress more power in determining American foreign policy than the Constitution allowed. While the administration’s constitutional arguments remain debatable, most agree that the State Department opposed the

commission because Kissinger believed that the proposed legislation would complicate

his handling of Soviet-American relations.121

When defending the creation of a Helsinki commission, Fenwick emphasized how

much importance dissidents attached to the Final Act and the U.S. government’s need to

120 See Alexeyeva and Goldberg, The Thaw Generation, 283. See also Goldberg, The Final Act, 59-64; Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 214.

121 Madeline K. Albright and Alfred Friendly, Jr, “Helsinki and Human Rights,” in The President, The Congress, and Foreign Policy, ed. Edward S. Muskie (Lanham, MD: The Atlantic Council of the United States, 1986), 297-302; and Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 126. See also William Korey, The Promises We Keep), 21-35 79

monitor the Soviet Union’s human rights record. During a Congressional hearing on 4

May 1976, she explained how Soviet private citizens had told congressional delegates

that “the West must not forget about the third basket of the Helsinki which addresses itself to human rights.122 “Since members of Congress are perhaps more aware of the

individual cases and group assessments developed by associations in this country, she

continued, “Congressional participation will help agencies like the State Department to

speak more forcefully for human rights in dealing with communist countries.”123

Ford administration officials rejected this line of argument and tried to defend their “quiet” diplomatic efforts to further Soviet compliance with the Final Act. In response to Fenwick’s testimony, Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional

Relations Robert J. McCloskey argued that “[t]he commission . . . would not appear equipped to add significantly to the action being taken or the information being compiled; nor would it appear to be able to exercise a more effective monitoring role than existing committees or subcommittees of Congress.” “[I]ts extraordinary composition,” he insisted, “would not seem to provide an appropriate or effective means for coordinating or guiding our efforts.”124

Because of the constitutional issues an executive-legislative commission raised,

the Ford administration’s campaign against Fenwick’s legislation appeared to have some

chance of success until something astonishing happened. Hearing of increased dissident

122 Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security, 114-5.

123 Ibid., 115-6.

124 Ibid., 117. 80

activity in Eastern Europe, many of the ethnic lobbies that had once denounced the

Helsinki Accords, including the Joint Baltic American Committee and the Polish-

American Congress, voiced strong support for Fenwick’s legislation, viewing it as means

of pressuring the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations to comply with the Helsinki

Accords. Groups as diverse as the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, the

National Council on Soviet Jewry, Freedom House, Human Rights Research (Inc.), and

the Federation of American Scientists also endorsed the creation of a commission.125

During debates about the formation of a commission, Amalrik wrote an editorial in the New York Times criticizing “the U.S. government’s tendency to favor good relations with the Kremlin over frank discussion of human rights conditions and compliance with Helsinki norms.” Dissidents and human rights activists from all over the world echoed Amalrik’s sentiments and urged Congress and the Ford administration to monitor Soviet and Eastern European implementation of the Final Act. Facing intense public pressure and charges from both Republicans and Democrats that it had no interest in human rights, the Ford Administration dropped its campaign to stop Fenwick’s legislation. On 3 June 1976, Congress created the U.S. Helsinki Commission.126

While the Ford administration all but refused to cooperate with the Helsinki

Commission, this institution came to play a pivotal role in keeping human rights an important issue in Soviet-American relations. With the words of dissidents fresh in their

125 See U.S. House of Representatives, Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Part II, 94th Congress, 4 May 1976, 89-118. See also Korey, NGOS and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 235-7; Ibid., “Human Rights NGOS: The Power of Persuasion,” Ethics & International Affairs 13 (1999): 163; and Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 126-7.

126 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 127-8. 81

minds, commission members called for more “public diplomacy” and encouraged private

citizens to monitor Final Act signatories’ compliance record.127 The Commission’s

emphasis on public participation explains why it became an important forum for

members of non-governmental organizations and exiled dissidents to articulate their goals

and gauge U.S. efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

This body also published documents it received from private citizens in Eastern Europe

and the Soviet Union. This practice in effect made the Commission an important clearinghouse for private citizens’ reports about conditions in the Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe.

Along with serving as clearinghouse, the Commission’s staff worked with non- governmental groups to create reports that documented how well various signatory nations had implemented the Helsinki Accords. Staff members also drew on the reports of private citizens when offering recommendations to the executive branch on how to improve signatories’ compliance with the Final Act. After consulting with non- governmental groups, staff members worked with State Department officials to create the

U.S. negotiating positions at the Final Act follow-up conferences. As these practices would suggest, “the knowledge and resources of nongovernmental bodies” became “an integral part” of monitoring and encouraging governments’ compliance with the Final

Act.128

127 See U.S. House of Representatives, Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Part II, 89-118.

128 Fascell, “The Helsinki Accord,” 27. 82

Much like Fenwick envisioned when she proposed the legislation, the

Commission became an important forum for executive and legislative consultations on the Helsinki Accords.129 On a routine basis, executive branch officials gave testimony before the Commission, often answering members’ questions about the administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. As required in the legislation creating the commission, the State Department also had to publish semiannual reports documenting Final Act signatories’ compliance records and the steps the administration had taken to improve that compliance record. For all intents and purposes, the commission monitored the executive branch’s commitment to the Final

Act.

As the description above indicates, the Commission became an instrumental part of the transnational human rights network based on furthering Soviet and Eastern

European compliance with the Helsinki Accords and other internationally recognized human rights. Its very existence helps illustrate the development of a diverse international impulse against governmental bureaucratic discretion and authority. For example, during the 1976 presidential campaign, Carter on more than once occasion complained about Kissinger’s secret, unpredictable diplomacy and stressed the need for the American public to “be involved as deeply as possible” in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy positions and decisions.130 The 1976 Republican platform rejected the

129 Albright and Friendly, Jr., “Helsinki and Human Rights,” 288. See also Korey, Human Rights and the Helsinki Accord, 31.

130 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part Two, 710, 736, 1013, and 1113. See also The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume One, Part One (Washington D.C: United States Government Printing Office, 1978), 67-8, 81, 110-1, 447 83

practice of concluding secret agreements without the participation of the American

public.131

In a fashion similar to how Fenwick emphasized the legislative branch’s closer

association “with individual cases and group assessments developed by associations in

this country,” Representative Larry McDonald (D-GA) voiced his distrust of the State

Department’s willingness to speak for the rights of individuals:

The Department of State . . . asserts that it can and is sufficiently able to monitor the Helsinki agreement for compliance and take the necessary corrective steps. I suggest that is wrong. By its very nature, the prevailing attitude at the Department of State is not to ruffle anyone’s feathers. This is particularly true in the case of the Soviet Union, because, as they themselves say, ongoing negotiations are always more important than the individual rights of any person.132

In his Congressional testimony near the end of 1976, the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s

Deputy Chief of Staff Alfred Friendly, Jr., argued that “only if American public opinion

presses the American government to seek real progress on the human rights promises of

the Final Act can we expect American officials even to raise such questions at the

diplomatic level.” “Helsinki has made those questions legitimate subjects for diplomatic

discourse,” he continued, “but it will take an informed and energetic effort by interested

private groups in the West to get those questions asked and asked until satisfactory

answers are forthcoming.”133

131 See “Republican Party Platform of 1976.”

132 See Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Part II, 19. To view other representatives’ non- similar sentiments toward non-governmental groups, see Ibid., 13-4, 26-7, 41, 57, 61.

133 CHRUR 23-4 (October/December 1976): 18. 84

Soviet dissidents and their counterparts in Eastern Europe may have faced

different circumstances than Western politicians and representatives of non-governmental

organizations, but also chose to criticize their governments’ bureaucratic and arbitrary

definitions of human rights. Since many dissidents emphasized the importance of

glasnost, few should be surprised that the founding document of the Ukrainian Watch

Group argued that “we . . . fully understand that the bureaucratic interpretation of Human

Rights does not exhaust the interpretation that is embodied in the international legal agreements signed by the government of the USSR. “We accept these documents in their full scope, the document continued, without bureaucratic distortions or arbitrary limitations by officials or state agencies.” Charter 77 insisted that Czechoslovakian citizens could not exercise their civic rights because secret “political directives from the machinery of the ruling party . . . and powerful individuals” dictated that “national institutions and organizations” curtail and punish any independent political thought or nonconformist conduct.134

The dissenter Valery Chalidze wrote a samizdat article that expressed similar

sentiments about the Soviet judicial system. “Politically-motivated arbitrary practices,”

he lamented, provide authorities the bureaucratic discretion needed to punish nonconformists (i.e., dissenters and prisoners) and conceal “everything shameful or harmful.” Because “legislators take account of the need for such arbitrary actions in

134 Verba and Bohdan Yasen, The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine, 21-22. The Ukrainian Watch Group issued a manifesto on its first anniversary that in part read: “There is only one culprit: the bureaucratic structure of society created by Stalin, whose inertia has not been overcome yet. This unique underground cybernetic machine, a bureaucratic superbrain, a social computer that has usurped the privileges ands rights of rule by the people and has camouflaged itself with the idea of such rule.” See Ibid., 126. See also See “Charter 77 Manifesto.”

85

drafting laws,” he writes, Soviet law consists of vague definitions, “abundant loopholes,” and statutes that “contain conflicting provisions.” Even more troubling, “legislative

functions are delegated to executive organs . . . and numerous legislative acts are never published.” When discussing why Western governments hesitated to challenge Soviet and Eastern European human rights violations, Chalidze voiced concerns similar to those of Alfred Friendly, Jr, arguing that “governments are not obligated to see to it that other states fulfill their international commitments.” “For this reason,” he continued,

“whenever the issue of human rights has been an issue, I have always counted on social forces, and have only regarded government activity as a potential secondary factor when

roused to action by public opinion in Western countries.”135

The development of a transnational human rights network based on monitoring

governmental violations of the Final Act with strong links to Congress proved of

immense importance. In the coming years, the executive branch would have greater

difficulty addressing the issue of human rights violations behind closed doors and not

endorsing the efforts of Soviet dissenters and their Eastern European counterparts in

public. The Ford administration’s conduct illustrates these new realities. Unlike his

earlier behavior, Kissinger began “urging the Chilean military to mend its

ways” and agreed to hold meetings with members of AI.136

A State Department official even wrote a letter to a representative of AI noting

that “the contacts that you and others from organizations like Amnesty have made with

135 See Chalidze, “The Humanitarian Provisions of the Helsinki Final Act,” 92. See also Andre Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 22.

136 Cmiel, “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States.” 86

the Department of State serve to direct our attention to the human element in our foreign

policy.” “All of us, the letter continued,” have been impressed with the growth of

attention to the issue of human rights in the Congress and among the American people.”

In reference to the recent Congressional legislation concerning human rights, the letter

also noted that “the Department has made institutional changes to attempt to make certain

that human rights factors are included in the formulation of foreign policy.” 137 Unlike his earlier refusal to meet with Solzhenitsyn, Ford received a “Ukrainian cardinal who had been expelled from the Soviet Union ‘whom even the Pope had forbade’” from participating in further political activity.138

Besides shaping the behavior of U.S. politicians, the globalization of human rights issues also spelled trouble for the Soviet government. In January 1977, a dissident document that reached foreign audiences predicted how the Politburo would respond to the proliferation of international critiques concerning Soviet domestic misconduct.

Because Soviet leaders feared the ways in which foreign and domestic critics called into question their right to rule, they would “carry out a ruthless suppression of civil liberties and fundamental human rights in the USSR.” They would also have no choice but “to discourage world public opinion from responding to [dissident] appeals for support issued in the USSR.” Such a development,” the document concluded, should not come as a surprise to anyone because “West European Communist parties’” calls for

137 Letter from Charles W. Robinson to Wendy Turnbull, 11 June 1976, Human Rights/Amnesty International Collection, Box 1, Folder 1976, National Security Archive (NSA), Washington DC.

138 “Memorandum of Conversation: W. Averell Harriman and Leonid Brezhnev, 20 September 1976, IV- 202, Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations: A Conference of Russian and U.S. Policymakers and Scholars, held at Harbor Beach Resort, Fort Lauderdale, FL 23-6 March 1995, NSA. 87

implementing all of the Final Act’s provisions had only increased “the authorities’ fear of

the bourgeoning human rights movement in the USSR.” 139

Even in the short term, these words proved quite accurate. The “globalization” of

human rights issues forced the Soviet government to take a number of steps to defend the

internal cohesion of its multinational, multiethnic empire and the international reputation

of Soviet- style socialism. Congressional and public pressure also shaped the behavior of

Jimmy Carter during the 1976 presidential campaign. Influenced by the reports of

private citizens and the U.S. Helsinki Commission, he identified his candidacy with the

cause of human rights and changed his once negative view of the Final Act. As the next chapter will explain, the Kremlin and Carter behaved in ways that made the issue of human rights an important element of Cold War competition.

139 CHRUR 25 (January-March 1977): 48-9. 88

CHAPTER 3: SETTING THE STAGE FOR A SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION:

JIMMY CARTER, THE SOVIET UNION, AND HUMAN RIGHTS, 1975-1976

In his memoir Keeping Faith, Jimmy Carter recounts how he stressed the proper

role human rights should play in U.S. foreign policy when he announced his intention to

run for president on 12 December 1974. After asking the audience what happened to

Americans’ “great dreams” about their nation’s future, he insisted that the United States

should “set a standard within the community of nations of courage, compassion, integrity,

and dedication to basic human rights and freedoms.”140 He may have mentioned human

rights on a few occasions after he made this speech, but never went out of his way to

identify his candidacy with this issue before the Democratic convention that took place

from 12-15 July 1976. Besides criticizing the Helsinki Accords, Carter showed little

enthusiasm for the Jackson-Vanik amendment. During the National Democratic Issues

Conference held near the end of 1975, he voiced his preference for increasing the rate of

Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union through “quiet diplomacy” and called the

Jackson-Vanik amendment “a mistake in our foreign policy.”141

As Carter crisscrossed the United States drumming up support for his presidential

campaign, the Soviet Central Committee received a report from a KGB official about the

behavior of Andrei Sakharov. This document denounced the publication of his work My

140 For the full text of Carter’s speech announcing his intention to run for the presidency see [Online]: http://www.4president.org/speeches/carter1976announcement.htm [14 June 2007].

141 Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 2-3; The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Part One, Volume I, 83-4, 116, 160, 202, 247, 270, 547, 693, 836, 953. See also Njolstad, Peacekeeper and Troublemaker, 227-9. For a clear analysis of when Carter mentioned human rights before the Democratic Convention, see Ibid., note 13.

89

Country and the World in English and “several Western European languages.” It also

excoriated Sakharov for allowing his writings to appear in foreign publications such as

Time and the Western radio stations “’Voice of America,’ Die Deutsche Welle,’ and

‘Radio d’Italia.” Based on this evidence, the report concluded that this dissenter’s behavior “shows a further toward an anti-Sovietism and direct complicity with the forces of international reaction.”142

This internal Soviet report and Carter’s behavior raise important questions about

how they responded to the globalization of human rights issues. Why did Soviet

policymakers worry so much about the activities of a small number of dissenters and view human rights critiques as tantamount to “international reaction”? What steps did

they take to defend the international reputation of Soviet-style socialism and curb

transnational human rights critiques? Why did Carter chose to identify his candidacy

with the cause of human rights after the Democratic convention of 1976? How did he conceive of the Final Act, Soviet-American relations, and the task of human rights promotion before he entered office? By addressing these questions, this chapter will explain why the behavior of Carter and the Kremlin ended up making the treatment of

dissenters and human rights contentious issues in U.S-Soviet relations for the remainder

of the Cold War.

The 1976 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Jimmy Carter and Universal Human Rights

During the early stages of his presidential campaign, Carter crafted a message designed to appeal to the American public’s growing disillusionment with the

142 “Chebrikov to the Central Committee; the appearance of Sakharov’s collection of essays My Country and the World.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_100.htm [12 July 2007]. 90

performance of the U.S. government at home and abroad. According to William Stueck,

Carter attacked from the “right and left.” To head off disasters such as Vietnam or illegal

CIA interventions in other nations’ internal affairs, he stressed the need to make foreign

policy reflect American citizens’ inherent morality and U.S. ideals such self-

determination and freedom of expression.143 In a firm rejection of secret agreements and arbitrary bureaucratic decisions, he also voiced his intention to open up regulatory agencies to public scrutiny and “let the American people be involved as deeply as possible” in the creation of U.S. foreign policy. Sensing many Americans’ growing uneasiness with Kissinger-style détente , Carter criticized the Ford administration’s lack

of morality and noted how the Soviets had taken advantage of détente at the expense of

U.S. interests.144

While some have argued that his campaign representatives appeared uninterested

in the issue of human rights at the Democratic convention, Carter accepted their advice

that embracing human rights held out the possibility of reconciling the left and right-wing

factions of the Democratic Party. As his advisers recognized, liberal Democrats could use human rights to criticize right-wing dictatorships, whereas their conservative

143 William Stueck, “Placing Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy,” in Gary M. Fink and Hugh Davis Graham, ed., The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal Era (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998), 245. See Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power, 28; and The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Part One, Volume I, 79-80

144 For example, see The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Part One, Volume I, 110-1. See also Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best? (New York: Broadman Press, 1975, 1977; Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 123-8. Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason and Power, 27-33; Tony Smith, America’s Mission, 240; and Dan Caldwell, “U.S. Domestic Politics and the Demise of Detente,” in Odd Arne Westad, ed., The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations during the Carter Years (: Scandinavian University Press, 1997), 105-6.

91

counterparts could employ the same issue to rebuke the Soviet Union.145 After careful

negotiation, Carter agreed to a Democratic platform that called on the United States to

“reaffirm the fundamental American commitment to human rights across the globe” and

“work for a release of all political prisoners in all countries.” He also issued a press

release on 14 July that called on the Soviet Union and other countries to “abide by the

human rights commitment they made at the Helsinki Accords.”146

Following the advice of his campaign team, Carter devoted more attention to the

issue of human rights as a way of criticizing Ford’s amorality and approach to Soviet-

American relations after the Democratic convention ended. An anonymous campaign

adviser summed this strategy up well when he told the New Yorker reporter Elizabeth

Drew that “[human rights] was a beautiful campaign issue . . . [because] there was a real

degree of public opinion hostile to the administration.”147 Given the sheer volume of letters Carter received from private citizens and NGOs about the plight of individual dissidents, the campaign team must have also advised him to voice his support for individuals who faced governmental oppression inside the Soviet Union. In particular, his team urged him to pay close attention to the policy preferences of Jewish groups worried about the Kremlin’s refusal to allow numerous Jews to exercise their right of emigrating from the Soviet Union.148

145 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 134; and Drumbell, The Carter Presidency, 117-8. See also and Njolstad, Peacekeeper and Troublemaker, 228-9; and Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 2-4.

146 For an electronic copy of the Democratic platform, see “Democratic Party Platform of 1976,” 12 July 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=29606 [14 May 2007]. See also Moynihan, “The Politics of Human Rights,” 22.

147 See Elizabeth Drew, “A Reporter At Large: Human Rights,” The New Yorker (18 July 1977): 38.

92

After receiving this advice, Carter chose not to answer an open letter that

Sakharov addressed to him and Ford about the importance of holding the Soviet government accountable for its repression of dissent. Instead, he addressed the topics of human rights and dissidents in the speech he delivered to the Jewish organization B’nai

B’rith on 8 September.149 Drawing on materials about the plight of that his campaign team had received from the ’s mother living in , Carter told the audience that “the fate” of dissidents such as Vladimir Bukovsky and Slepak “will be very much on my mind as I negotiate with the Soviet Union.” He also indicated that “if any nation, whatever its political system, deprives its people of basic human rights, that fact will help shape our people’s attitude toward that nation’s government.” “Despite our deep desire for successful negotiation on strategic arms, he asserted, “we cannot pass over in silence the deprivation of human rights in the Soviet Union.”150

148 To see a wide assortment of the letters Jimmy Carter received about the plight of individual dissidents and the importance of human rights, see the following collections: 1976 Presidential Campaign—Stuart E. Eizenstat, Box 23, Folder: Jewish Affairs, 10/76, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (JCPL), , Georgia; Ibid., Box 20, Folder: B’nai B’irth Speech, Washington, D.C., 9/8/76, JCPL; Robert L. Lipshutz Files (RL), Box 46, Folder: Soviet Jewry, 4/78-4/79, JCPL; 1976 Presidential Campaign— Bleicher, Box 36, Folder: Human Rights, JCPL; 1976 Presidential Campaign—Harriet Zimmerman, Box 312, Folder: Telegrams, JCPL. For a glimpse of how much importance the administration attached to obtaining the Jewish vote see, Letter from Richard Holbrook to Stuart E. Eizenstat, 14 October 1976, 1976 Presidential Campaign—Stuart E. Eizenstat, Box 23, Folder: Jewish Affairs, 10/76, JCPL.

149 Richard Holbrooke raised the possibility of Carter’s answering this letter to make President Ford look weak and amoral, but Carter never carried out such a course of action. See Holbrooke to Eizenstat, 14 October 1976.

150 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part Two, 711-2. National Director of Jewish Community Affairs Harriet Zimmerman issued a press release in mid-September that pointed how: “A major part of Gov. Carter’s background material on Vladimir Slepak came to us in a letter and enclosure from Mr. Slepak’s mother in Israel. See Press Release, 1976 Presidential Campaign—Stuart Eizenstat, Box 20, Folder: B’nai B’irth Speech, Washington D.C., 9/8/76. See also Edward Bailey Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents: Human Rights in U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1968-1980 (Ph.D., University of Rochester, 2003), 247-8. 93

One week after delivering this speech, Carter sent telegrams to Stuart Wurtman

and Irene Manekofsky, the president and vice-president of the Union of Council for

Soviet Jews (UCSJ). In his note to the former, he explained that “the list of persons who

have been oppressed by the Soviet Union is long, and includes both Christians and Jews.”

He also wrote that “the Soviet Union should abide by the human rights commitment it

made when it signed the Helsinki Accord[s] and the United States should voice its

support for that commitment.” In his note to the latter, Carter observed that while “our

power is not unlimited,” it can in “many instances . . . make a crucial difference to

thousands of men and women who are victims of oppression around the world.”151 When

his campaign staff received letters indicating that Soviet officials would not allow Jews to

hold a for the 35th anniversary of the Nazi massacre of Jews at Babi Yar

(Ukraine), he sent letters to the President of the Jewish Community Relations Council in

Philadelphia and the Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. In terse language,

Carter expressed his hope that “Soviet citizens of the Jewish faith be permitted to

memorialize their dead at Babi Yar on the 35th anniversary of the Nazi massacre.”152

The large number of letters addressed to Carter criticizing his negative stance toward the Jackson-Vanik amendment must have played a role in modifying his attitude toward this legislation during the campaign. In sharp contrast to his earlier statements, he told UCJS President Stuart Wurtman on 16 September that his administration would

151 Telegram from Jimmy Carter to Irene Manekofsky, 14 September 1976, 1976 Presidential Campaign— Harriet Zimmerman, Box 312, Folder: Telegrams, JCPL; and Telegram from Jimmy Carter to Stuart Wurtman, 16 September 1976, Ibid.

152 Mailogram from Jimmy Carter to Mrs. Esther Polin and Leonid Brezhnev, 1976 Presidential Campaign—Harriet Zimmerman, Box 312, Folder: Telegrams, JCPL. 94

show “the resolve of both the Executive Branch and the Congress on this basic matter

[emigration] on human rights.” Around the same time, Carter sent a telegram to the

Union of Council for Soviet Jews indicating that he “would do everything I possibly could as President to encourage the Soviet Union to liberalize its emigration policies for

Jewish citizens who want to move.” He even went so far as to suggest that he “would not

hesitate to use trade pressures to effectuate that purpose.”153 On 29 September, Carter

voiced his support for Jackson-Vanik amendment in public. Instead of seeing this

measure as an ineffective interference in Soviet internal affairs, he now viewed it as a

“human rights measure,” even telling Jackson that he would “effectively implement it” if elected.154 As these examples suggest, Carter’s public and private actions during his

campaign suggest that he tailored his message about the Final Act, human rights, and

Jackson-Vanik amendment to enhance his candidacy.

These considerations explain why the presidential-hopeful changed his attitude

toward the Final Act. After the staff director of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, R.

Spencer Oliver, contacted the Carter campaign and told officials about the specifics of the

Final Act and the degree of the measure’s public support, Carter decided to emphasize a

view of the agreement more in line with his July 14 press release. During his second

televised debate with Gerald Ford on 6 October, he criticized the President for denying

Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and not insisting on full Soviet compliance with the

153 Carter to Wurtman, 16 September 1976; and Telegram from Jimmy Carter to Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, 14 September 1976, 1976 Presidential Campaign—Harriet Zimmerman, Box 312, Folder: Telegrams.

154 Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994), 630. 95

Final Act’s Basket III and Principle VII.155 Shortly after Carter won the election, he moved to show his concern about Soviet human rights abuses by sending a telegram

Vladimir Slepak that expressed his “deep personal interest in the treatment that you and your colleagues receive.” He also sent a telegram to NCSJ President Eugene Gold indicating that once in office he “would ask the Soviet Union publicly to comply with the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords.” On 22 December 1976, his Secretary of State-designate Cyrus Vance met with the exiled dissident Andrei Amalrik, who once again urged the United States to do more “to encourage democratization in the Soviet

Union.”156

Political calculations, as well as pressure from the U.S. Helsinki Commission and private citizens, impacted the ways in which Carter articulated his commitment to human rights during the 1976 presidential campaign. Nevertheless, these considerations should not obscure other important reasons why he voiced his support for the issue and Soviet dissenters before he became President. Along with unifying the Democratic Party, the

issue “gave his general call for a decent foreign policy some much-needed focus and

substance.”157 Carter also hoped that Republicans who had become disillusioned with

détente would find the prospect of promoting human rights in the Soviet Union

appealing. With conservative support, his administration could then work to forge a

155 Albright and Friendly, Jr., “Helsinki and Human Rights,” 303-4. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 134; and “Soviets Reproved Over Dissident; Soviet Treatment of Top Dissident Criticized by U.S.”, Washington Post, 28 January 1977, A1.

156 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 629. For copies of the telegram Jimmy Carter sent Vladimir Slepak and Eugene Gold, see RL, Box 46, Folder: Soviet Jewry, 4/78-4/79.

157 Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 6. 96

public and congressional foreign policy consensus that emphasized human rights instead

of realpolitik or the rigid and fearful anticommunism that produced the Vietnam

debacle.158

The issue of human rights also appealed to Carter because of his beliefs in the lessons of U.S. civil rights movement and Wilsonian impulses. According to his reading of history, the United States had an important role to play in making the international order more just and amenable to American values. In his speech accepting the

Democratic nomination, Carter noted that the made his nation “a pioneer in shaping more decent and just relations among people and among societies.”

Two hundred years later, he remarked, the legacy of the American Revolution necessitated that U.S. politicians “carry out a sustained architectural effort to shape an international framework of peace within which our own ideals gradually can become a global reality.” This mindset helps explain why Carter had little trouble insisting that

“our country is a beacon of light that ought to provide a concept of what freedom is” during the 1976 presidential campaign.159

Carter employed the word “ought” because he recognized that the United States

had not always lived up to its ideals in both the recent and distant past. For example, he

reminded Americans that their country had practiced slavery, tolerated “Jim Crow”

segregation in the South, and committed many missteps in Vietnam. He also spoke about

158 Nicolai N. Petro, The Predicament of Human Rights (New York: University Press of America 1983), 13; and John Dumbrell, The Carter Presidency, 118. See also Vogelgesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare, 110.

159 Carter, Why Not the Best, 164; For example, see “The Second Carter-Ford Debate,” 6 October 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.debates.org/pages/trans76b.html [14 May 2007]; and The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Part One, Volume Two, 97

negative developments such as Watergate and the immorality of supporting white minority governments in Africa. Inspired by the U.S. civil right movement’s transformation of the South, Carter linked the issues of domestic reform and moral

renewal to a larger universal struggle for human rights.160 This attitude became clear

when told the Democratic convention that no 20th century President had done more to advance the cause of human rights than Lyndon Johnson. When a Playboy reporter asked

why he had neglected to mention Vietnam when making this comment, Carter stood firm.

After responding that Vietnam had destroyed Johnson’s political career, he remarked that

“there’s hasn’t been another President in history---with the possible exception of

Abraham Lincoln—who did more to advance the cause of human rights.”161

These words illustrate the close connection Carter saw between carrying out

domestic reforms and a wider universal struggle for human rights. As one scholar writes,

he believed that reestablishing a “sense of moral authority at home” would allow him to

“present America as a model abroad with more credibility.” The ways in which Carter

linked a domestic renewal to a wider universal struggle for human rights account for his

determination to explain why the United States needed to embrace universal human rights

standards. From his perspective, working toward adherence to and adopting these

standards would put the United States in a much better moral position to fulfill its role as

a “beacon” to the rest of the world.162

160 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 425; and Ibid., Volume I, Part Two , 710-1, 993-8.

161 Ibid., 950. See also Carter, Why Not the Best, 161.

98

The lessons of the U.S. civil rights movement only reinforced his belief that the demonstration and defense of moral principles could help transform the international environment and serve American interests. Much like the defense of moral principles played a pivotal role in the “political and social transformation of the Southland,” he reasoned, a universal defense of human rights could both raise the international community’s awareness about the issue and force leaders from nations as diverse as the

Soviet Union and Argentina to think about how they treated their citizens before acting.

Over the long term, all governments, including the Soviet Union and the United States, would have to acknowledge that “human rights had become the historic tendency in our time” just like American politicians accepted the necessity of ending racial in the South. From Carter’s point of view, this sort of peaceful change would not only enhance U.S. efforts to make the structure of the international system more amenable to

American values, but also reflect “human progress.”163

Carter’s religious values and respect for how U.S. civil rights activists

transformed the moral environment of the United States through their selfless activism

162 Gebhard Schweigler, “Carter’s Détente Policy: Change or Continuity?” World Today 34, no. 3 (1978): 84-5.

163 Members of the Carter administration such as Marshall Shulman and have emphasized how Jimmy Carter’s understanding of the American civil rights movement shaped his view of human rights. See Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars held at the Musgrove Plantation, St. Simons Island Georgia, 90, 202-3. The quotes can be found in Ibid. 202-3; and Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 142. See also “Interview with Jimmy Carter,” CNN Cold War Series. Available [Online]: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/19/interviews/carter/ [10 July 2007]; The Collapse of Détente: From March 1977 Moscow Meetings to the December 1979 Invasion of Afghanistan—The Launch of the Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars held at the “Playhouse” on the Rockefeller Estate, Pocantico Hills, New York, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C., 19; Frank A. Ruechel, “Politics and Morality Revisited: Jimmy Carter and Reinhold Niebuhr,” Atlantic History 37, no. 4 (1994): 26; Tony Smith, America’s Mission, 64- 5; and Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 261. 99

predisposed him to sympathize with the plight of individuals facing governmental

oppression. Because “every child is a child of God . . . entitled to stature and respect,” he

believed, the U.S. government had a moral duty to voice its support for those who faced

repression for their defense of human rights. In both domestic and foreign affairs, the

United States needed leaders who would not ignore the plight of “the powerless . . . weak

. . . disenfranchised . . . and . . . other victims of oppression.”164 From this vantage point,

Carter’s deep affinity for human rights flowed from his belief that the United States

government should use its power and influence to “alleviate human suffering around the

world,” which accounts for why he reminded his audiences during the campaign that

human rights abuses took place in countries such as Chile and Argentina, not just the

Soviet Union.165

When discussing why Carter decided to champion human rights before he became

president, his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, argued that the

President’s deep belief in the issue flowed from his inherent “idealism” and

understanding of the U.S. civil rights movement. While Carter’s inherent idealism helps

explain his emphasis on the necessity of embracing universal human rights standards, we

need keep in mind that Carter in no way viewed himself as advocating a simple idealistic

position. His descriptions of an “imperfect world” and admonitions that Americans could

not remake the world in their own image indicate that accepted the American theologian

164 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part Two, 714, 994-5. See also Jimmy Carter: American Experience, Public Broadcasting Corporation, Washington D.C, 180 minutes, 2002, DVD.

165 Ibid., 712, 996. See also The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 445. See also , with , : The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), XX; and “Interview with Jimmy Carter.” 100

and philosopher’s Reinhold Niebuhr’s admonitions about “the inevitable tension between

idealism and realism” in “political life.”166 In his own way, Carter wanted to articulate a

human rights vision that attempted to reconcile Wilsonian morality with constraints of

realism. In his campaign speech at Notre Dame University in the fall of 1976, he

commented:

I think all of us realize that the question of human rights throughout the world is a very difficult one. It requires a balancing of tough realism on the one hand, and idealism on the other. Of our understanding of the world as it is, and the world as it ought to be. The question I think is whether in recent years we haven’t been too pragmatic, too cynical. And as a consequence have ignored those moral values that have always distinguished the United States of America from other countries.167

Long after he left the presidency, Carter referred to his vision of reconciling idealism with the constraints of realism as “idealpolitik.” He found this word appropriate

because he believed that “moral principles were the best foundation for the exertion of

American power and influence.” Carrying out a foreign policy that emphasized

fundamental American values and the importance of international law would not only

help transform the international environment, he concluded, but also serve legitimate

American interests. Such a stance would reduce the international appeal of communism

and remove “the reasons for revolutions that often erupt among those who suffer from

.” Along similar lines, Carter believed that “a human rights effort would also

166 See Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project, 47, 202; The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Part One, Volume Two, 710, 994-5; and Ruechel, “Politics and Morality Revisited,” 27.

167 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Part One, Volume Two, 710. 101

help strengthen our influence” among developing nations “that were still in the process of

forming their own governments and choosing their future friends and trading partners.”168

The use of the term “idealpolitick” may have reflected Carter’s understanding of

Niebuhr’s writings, but articulating such a position has potential pitfalls in the real world

of politics. As we will see in the following chapters,” the affinity he showed for

emphasizing human rights ideals without always admitting “the compromises and

contradictions necessary to translate them into deeds” opened him up to charges of abandoning those ideals and “moral hypocrisy.” When voicing his commitment to

human rights and support for the Final Act during the 1976 presidential election, it also

remains unclear just how much Carter had grappled with Stanley Hoffman’s admonition

that any U.S. human rights policy pursued with rigor reduces the targeted state’s chances

of working with American leaders to solve “world order issues.” This observation has

special relevance because of ways in which Carter outlined his preferred approach to

Soviet-American relations and détente before he became President.169

Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter: “World Order Problems,” Détente, and the Soviet Union

As a number of authors have argued, while the positions that Carter outlined

during the 1976 shared some commonalities with those of Ford and Nixon administrations, he wanted to transform how the United States approached global

168 See “Interview with Jimmy Carter;” and Carter, Keeping Faith, 142-3. See also Drew, “A Reporter at Large,” 38; and Brzezinski’s comments in Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project, 47, 202.

169 See Ruechel, “Politics and Morality Revisited,” 27; and Stanley Hoffman, “The Hell of Good Intentions,” Foreign Policy 29 (Winter 1977): 8. 102

affairs.170 In contrast to Kissinger’s penchant for “unilateral dealings with the Soviet

Union,” he stressed the importance of coordinating American foreign policy with other democratic nations. He also wanted the U.S. government to make a bolder effort to help solve the problems less-developed nations faced such as , political instability, and

a lack of educational opportunities. As part of this vision, he wanted the United States to curb foreign arms sales to dictatorships and reduce its military presence abroad. Just as important, he railed against the U.S. government’s meddling in other nations’ “internal affairs” and the shortcomings of relying on military power to increase the influence of the

United States abroad. In his address to the Council of Foreign Relations on 15 March

1976, he denounced an American foreign policy “that has consisted almost entirely of maneuver and manipulation, based on the assumption that the world is a jungle of competing national antagonisms where military supremacy and economic muscle are the only things that work and where rival powers are balanced against each other to keep the peace.”171

Because the world had become more interdependent and pluralistic since World

War II, Carter insisted that the United States had to embrace “world order politics”

designed to create a more “just and stable international order.” He articulated this vision

because he believed that lasting solutions to global problems such as the spread of nuclear weapons, pollution, international , and the growing income gap between

170 For a good account of the connections between the Carter administration’s approach to foreign policy and its predecessors, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 344. The quotation comes from Stueck, “Placing Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy,” 245.

171 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 46, 50, 58, 66-70,79, 81, 88, 110-3, 186-7, 247, 268, 270-5, 376, 423-4, 447-8, 460, 543, 546, 685; Ibid., Volume, Part Two, 776, 873, 994 103

nations in the North and South depended on the collective efforts of all countries. This

mindset explains why Carter spoke of the U.S. government’s need to place more

importance on working through international institutions such as the United Nations. He

also advanced his “world order politics” vision because he felt that the United States and

Soviet Union no longer had the power and resources necessary to dominate the

international system as they had the during decades after World War II ended.172

Since global problems required international solutions, Carter argued that the

United States needed to work “with the countries of the communist world.” In the case of the Soviet Union, he spoke about how Soviet and American leaders needed to work together to promote “peace in the Near East,” reduce nuclear weapons, and remove the

“menace that presents to South Korea.” The two countries could also engage in common efforts to solve “world problems” such as “agricultural development and the population crisis.” While he did not rule out difficulties in obtaining such cooperation, Carter believed that “the great problem we Americans confront is to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that our good will is a great as our strength . . . until our two nations can achieve new attitudes and new trust.” He made this assertion because of his belief that American policies “should treat people of other nations as individuals, with the same dignity and respect as we demand of ourselves.” After all, Carter observed that individuals in different countries “work hard, they have families whom they love, and

172 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 68-70, 115-6, 118, 187, 189-90, 247, 249; Ibid., Volume I, Part Two, 815-9, 104

they have hopes and dreams. . . . Their basic personal motives are the same as ours.”173

He also believed that Brezhnev had a genuine interest in peace and disarmament.174

The rhetoric Carter employed about how Soviet and American leaders could cooperate on certain issues clashed with some of his other statements about the USSR.

He supported the objective of détente on the grounds that such a policy “can be an instrument for long-term peaceful change within the Communist system . . . and the rest of the world.”175 On the other hand, he rebuked the Soviets for not living up to the

Helsinki Accords (even when he had a negative view of the agreement), their harsh

treatment of Jews and Christians, and their manipulation of détente as a cover to aid

national liberation struggles and expand their international influence. To rectify this

development, he pledged to become a tough negotiator with the Soviet Union so his

administration could forge a more “reciprocal détente” that gave the United States an equal advantage for every Soviet benefit. A more even-handed approach to détente, he indicated, would require “the Soviets, as well as the United States, [to] refrain from irresponsible intervention in other countries.”176

Because Carter prided himself on reconciling idealism and realism, he referred to his vision of détente as a mixture of “cooperation and competition” that contained “new

173 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 115-8, 272, 112, 249, 272-74, 373-4, 460, 515, 543; 547; Ibid., Volume I, Part Two, 817-9, 1021.

174 “Memorandum of conversation between Averell Harriman and President-Elect Carter at Plains, Georgia, 29 November 1976,” in Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations, IV-240, V-264.

175 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 116-7.

176 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 83, 110, 115-6, 202, 246-47, 270, 547, 691-4; and Ibid. Volume I, Part Two, 711, 742, 836, 874, 953, 970, 996, 1004, 1009, 1021, 1043. 105

kinds of contacts in some areas along with continued hostility in others.” For example,

he spoke about the need “to develop touristic, academic, and cultural exchanges” among

the Soviet, Eastern European, and American peoples.” Yet, sometimes in the same

breadth, he insisted that the Soviets must follow the human rights provisions of the Final

Act and cease their jamming of international broadcasting. To complicate matters further, Carter often spoke about the vital importance the U.S. government must attach to

arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. On more than one occasion he

emphasized that “our core dealings with the Soviet Union must be the mutual reduction in [nuclear] arms.”177

The vision Carter articulated during the 1976 presidential campaign left many

questions unanswered. Would an expression of American goodwill convince Soviet

leaders to cooperate with the U.S. government to solve “world order problems” if Carter

wanted them to meet his conditions for a more “reciprocal détente” and abide by the human rights provisions of the Final Act? How would Carter balance his deep belief in

articulating American ideals and showing support for those who faced government

oppression against his stated goal of forging closer relations between the American and

Soviet peoples and quest to reduce nuclear weapons? Would not his desire to create an

international order more amenable to American values and human rights by definition

breed confrontation with the Soviet Union?

The next chapter will provide answers to these questions, but some of his

campaign statements provide important insights into how would handle the issues of

177 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 46, 112, 116, 202, 246-8, 272, 547-8, 694, 704; and Ibid., Volume I, Part Two, 704, 711-4, 742, 856, 955, 1005. 106

Soviet human rights violations when he became President. He may have believed that

the Soviets should follow universal human rights standards, but refused to move Soviet-

American relations backward in time. “While détente must be more reciprocal, Carter

argued, “I reject the strident and bellicose voices of those who would have this country return to the days of the cold war with the Soviet Union.”178 He also hinted that the

United States should refrain from lashing out at other countries’ when they violated

American principles or behaved in a manner that threatened global peace. In a speech

delivered to the New York Liberal Party, he remarked that:

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity. Ours is a strong nation, and it must remain strong.179

This statement deserves attention because the Soviet government’s treatment of

dissenters and disregard for the provisions of the Helsinki Accords would test the

patience of Carter administration officials and private citizens during the next four years.

The Soviet Government, Dissent, and the Helsinki Accords, 1975-1976

The Brezhnev regime’s reaction to the “globalization” of Soviet human rights

violations cannot be divorced from the importance it placed on eradicating dissent and

discrediting anti-Soviet/communist propaganda. Because many Soviet officials based

their legitimacy on the correctness of orthodox Marxist-Leninism, they viewed political

pluralism with disdain and saw no reason to tolerate the development of an autonomous

civil society. Instead, they held fast to the position that private citizens only gained the

178 The Presidential Campaign of 1976, Volume I, Part One, 247

179 Ibid., 1008. 107 ability to exercise basic political and economic rights in an effective manner when a communist party representing their interests abolished private property and liquidated the bourgeois class.180 On the 106th anniversary of Lenin’s birth (23 April 1976), Andropov

differentiated between Soviet-style socialism and what passed for democracy in capitalist

countries: “There is no democracy in general. There is either bourgeois democracy or

socialist democracy.”181 This viewpoint helps account for why official Soviet authors often referred to the criticisms of dissenters as “slanderous provocations.” From their perspective, private citizens possessed no inherent right to criticize their government’s conduct because the Soviet Communist Party had already created a system that ensured the exercise and protection of all their rights. At least in part, this attitude helps explain why the Soviet Union decided to sign numerous U.N. human rights conventions during the 1960s and 1970s.182

The Kremlin also found the existence of dissent troubling because such a development defied its orthodox Marxist-Leninist conceptions of what made “Soviet

180 Mark Hawkesworth, “Ideological Immunity: The Soviet Response to Human Rights Criticism,” Universal Human Rights 2 (January/March 1980): 70-3. See also Nikolai N. Yakovlev and Nikolai V. Sivachev, trans. by Olga Adler Titelbaum Russia and the United States: U.S. Soviet Relations from a Soviet Point of View (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 266-7.

181 CDSP 28, no. 16 (19 May 1976): 7. In a speech delivered at the 1973 World Peace Conference in Moscow, Brezhnev told the audience that “we have no serious reason to shun any serious discussion of human rights.” “Our revolution, the victory of socialism in this country,” he remarked, “have not only proclaimed but have secured in reality the rights of working people whatever his nationality . . . in a way that has been unable to do in any country of the world.” See Brezhnev, Socialism, Democracy, and Human Rights, 82.

182 Although the Kremlin would not have singed these agreements if they had contained strong enforcement mechanisms, many would have endorsed the claim that “the historic gains made under socialism have directly influenced the formulation of international principles and norms in the realm of human rights.” See K. Chernenko, Soviet Democracy: Principles and Practice (Moscow: Novosti Publishing House, 1977), 26; and Hawkesworth, “Ideological Immunity,” 82-3. See also CDSP 28, no. 7 (17 March 1976): 1- 6. 108

socialist democracy” such a just and humane system. Even though the Politburo defined

the nation’s policies, official publications often pointed out how the general population’s

mass participation in public affairs and official public mass organizations “objectively

proved” the strength and vitality of Soviet democracy. In theory at least, active citizen participation not only illustrated the monolithic and homogeneous nature of Soviet

society, but also showed how citizens exercised their wide array of rights such as

freedom of expression in a responsible manner. Furthermore, public participation showed that a majority of citizens wanted to take part in a common effort to improve the functioning of Soviet-style socialism. This sort of attitude explains why many official

Soviet publications also spoke about how an engaged public proved the existence of the

“.” The report of the 25th Congress of the CPSU defined this individual as

“a man who has been building the future unsparing of his energy and making every

sacrifice.” This “new man” also maintained a “consistent internationalist outlook” while

combining “ideological conviction, vital energy, culture, and knowledge.”183

Those who chose not to participate could also exercise their human rights as long as they accepted the Soviet government’s “absolutism in the realm of ideas” and kept their opinions to themselves. As one observer has written, “individuals who fail to develop this complex of socially useful properties simply fail to qualify for the status of

‘person’ whose rights the [Soviet] socialist state guarantees and protects.” From this angle, the discretion of Soviet bureaucrats governed the ways in which private citizens

183 For example, see Chernenko, Soviet Democracy, 49-56; 63-4, 81; CDSP 18, no. 7 (17 March 1976): 3; Samuel Zivs, Human Rights: Continuing the Discussion (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980), 11, 20-24, 45, 83, 143-50; CDSP 28, no. 16 (19 May 1975): 7; and Brezhnev, Socialism, Democracy, and Human Rights, 133-4. 109

could exercise their basic human rights. They had an obligation to behave in a manner

that bureaucrats defined as consistent with the task of building of socialism in the Soviet

Union.184

The Brezhnev regime’s insistence on domestic ideological conformity operated in

tandem with the orthodox belief that the rest of the world should follow and emulate the

example of Soviet-style socialism. After all, the Soviet Union was the first nation “to

accomplish a socialist revolution” and forge a strong socialist state under the guidance of a communist party that expressed “the will and interests of all working people.”185 As a

result of this position, orthodox Soviet officials expected Soviet “fraternal”

socialist/communist parties to endorse and defend the legitimacy of Soviet-style

socialism.186 They also believed that these “fraternal” parties should follow the

guidelines and positions set in Moscow when struggling for the creation of socialism in

their own countries.187 Since the Brezhnev regime in effect rejected the legitimacy of

“moral and political pluralism,” many officials concluded that Western Communists had

become infected with “’Eurocommunist heresy’” during the 1970s. They saw no reason

why these parties should criticize Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Accords or

184 Hawkesworth, “Ideological Immunity,” 72; CHRUR 23-4 (October-December 1975): 19; Zivs, Human Rights, 17-9; N.A., “Human Rights in the Soviet Union—Putting the Record Straight,” New Times 1 (January 1976): 19; CDSP 28, no. 44 (1 December 1976), 4; and Peter Reddaway, “Soviet Policies on Dissent and Emigration: The Radical Change of Course Since 1979,” no. 192 (28 August 1984), 2-4.

185 See Chernenko, Soviet Democracy, 85.

186 Lenczowski, Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy, 102-3, 129-30, 272-4; McCauley, Gorbachev, 1-3. See also CDSP 28, no. 3 (18 February 1976): 4-5.

187 During the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union never repudiated the position that the CPSU was the leader of the global communist movement. See Vasili Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 294, 280-6, 297-304. 110

“advocate a parliamentary road to socialism within a multi-party system” rather than

imitate the Soviet model.188

Since orthodox Soviet officials believed that the advance of Soviet-style socialism

represented the wave of the future, they viewed the struggle between the forces of

socialism and capitalism as the most important factor in international relations. Of

course, they paid close attention to relations with the United States and weighed the

international balance of power in both the military and economic spheres. At the same

time, the Brezhnev regime on the whole acted on the belief that “the development of

different forms of mass communication” such as radio, film, television, and satellites

made the attitude of private citizens “a vital factor in contemporary politics.” This

viewpoint grew out of the orthodox Marxist-Leninist position that “the increased role of the masses in the formulation of foreign policy” represented “the key factor in the growth of the world socialist system.”189

Because the attitude of private citizens mattered, the Brezhnev regime had a duty to show the rest of the world how capitalists and imperialists employed baseless

propaganda to distort the global masses’ attitude toward Soviet-style socialism.190 For

example, the official work Contemporary Anti-Communism (1976) decried how

bourgeois political parties, subversive ideological “centers,” and the Western mass media

188 Lenczowski, Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy, 274; and Hawkesworth, Ideological Immunity, 75-6. See also CDSP 28, no. 26 (28 July 1976): 5-6; Ibid., no. 8 (24 March 1976): 4-9; Ibid., 18, no. 29 (18 August 1976): 9-10; and Mitrokhin and Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 286.

189 Lenczowski, Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy, 24-5 and 32-6. See also Zivs, Human Rights, 145.

190 Zivs, Human Rights., 102-3. 111

all participated in a common campaign of “psychological warfare.” These forces

concocted stratagems such as citing Soviet human rights violations to “distort the actual

state of affairs in Soviet society” and “belittle the real achievements of the

following the Great October Socialist Revolution.” They also used slanderous statements

to legitimize the erroneous idea that any socialist government’s application of Marxist-

Leninist principles automatically resulted in a Stalinist reign of terror.191

The prevalent belief in the existence of a “monolithic” bourgeois ideology meant that orthodox Soviet policymakers tended to view the activities of groups as diverse as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Western journalists, human rights NGOs, and

Western international broadcasting institutions in much the same light. From their perspective, they all shared the Zionist and imperialist goals of undermining the Soviet

Union’s legitimacy in the eyes of its general population and private citizens all over the

world. As part of this vision, official publications often referred to dissidents as

“immature people who succumb to the influence of this [imperialist and Zionist]

propaganda,” which explains why they often attributed the existence of dissent to the

machinations of foreign intelligence services.192

The widespread belief that ideological subversion fueled dissent meant that many

Soviet leaders viewed détente as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Brezhnev

favored the continuation of détente because such a policy increased his nation’s

191 O. Reinhold and F. Ryzzhenko, Contemporary Anti-Communism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 15-6, 33, 311-28. See also Zivs, Human Rights, 97, 173, 179; CDSP 18, no. 7 (17 March 1976): 1-2; Ibid., 18, no. 9, 1-2. Brezhnev also made illusions to “psychological warfare.” See Brezhnev, Socialism, Democracy, and Human Rights, 82-3.

192 CDSP 18, no. 7 (17 March 1976): 5. 112

opportunities to participate in beneficial exchanges with capitalist countries. In

particular, he liked Kissinger-style détente because such a policy had much in common

with the official position that Soviet domestic conduct lay outside the appropriate bounds of diplomatic discourse.193 Strengthening détente also meshed well with the Soviet

leadership’s understanding of “peaceful coexistence.” In short, this doctrine posited that

the Soviet Union could negotiate mutually advantageous agreements with capitalist

countries without abandoning the inevitable ideological and class struggles.194

Even though the Brezhnev regime defended the position that “peaceful

coexistence” put the Soviet Union in the best possible position to strengthen the international prestige of socialism, orthodox officials worried about how the freer flow of

information might contaminate the minds of Soviet citizens. For example, a passage

from the official publication Contemporary Anticommunism argued that Western

propagandists who emphasized human rights sought “to take advantage of détente and

make changes in the internal order of the socialist countries an indispensable condition

for the easing of tensions.” “The perseverance of the architects of this campaign, it

continued, “is due to their striving to use the expansion of economic, scientific,

technological, cultural and political relations between socialist and capitalist states to find

193 See Westad, ed., The Collapse of Détente, 8-10, 130; Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project, 2.Brezhenv, Peace, Détente, and Soviet-American Relations, 131-4. See also Barghoorn, Détente and the Democratic Movement in the USSR, 119-123; and Reinhold and Ryzhenko, Contemporary Anticommunism, 333-4.

194 CDSP 28, no. 16 (19 May 1976): 8-9. See also Yakovlev and Sivachev, Russia and the United States, 264-5, 260-1. 113

channels for invigorating bourgeois survivals [sic] in the peoples’ minds and destroying

the unity of . . . socialist communities.”195

Since the strengthening of détente and adherence to the principle of “peaceful

coexistence” increased the risk of ideological subversion, the Soviet government decided

to launch “a vast new political indoctrination drive” in mid 1974. This campaign had

“the purpose of intensifying and broadening propaganda” designed to educate Soviet

citizens about the inevitable conflict between the forces of socialism and capitalism.

Many Soviet officials echoed this theme in either their writings or speeches during the

next two years. For example, one author noted that the government’s “concern for

molding a socialist way of life and for the upbringing of the new [Soviet] man obliges us

to intensify our ideological-political work and to reach the heart and mind of every

person.”196

The tenets of orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology go a long way in explaining the importance the Brezhnev regime placed on ideological conformity and discrediting foreign anti-Soviet/communist propaganda. Yet, they do not paint a full picture of why the Kremlin placed so much importance on eradicating dissent. No matter how much they praised their nation’s “monolithic unity,” many Soviet policymakers worried about

the internal cohesion of their multinational, multiethnic empire because they questioned the loyalty of numerous citizens in republics such as Ukraine and Georgia. This

195 Reinhold and Ryzhenko, Contemporary Anticommunism, 28-30. See also CDSP 18, no. 9 (31 March 1976): 1-2.

196 CDSP 28, no. 9 (31 March 1976): 13. N.A., From Helsinki to Belgrade, 108-9; CDSP 28, no. 16 (19 May 1976): 8-9. See also Barghoorn, Détente and the Democratic Movement in the USSR, 123, 148-50; and Brezhnev, Socialism, Democracy, and Human Rights, 121-6. 114

viewpoint grew out of the bitter reality that millions of Soviet citizens collaborated and

fought with invading Nazi armies during World War II; it also grew out of memories of

how the Soviet government only managed to crush Ukrainian insurrections in the early

1950s. Just as they had in the past, many Soviet officials continued to act on the position

that émigré communities across the globe worked day and night to reverse the historic

gains of the .197

The memory of Soviet citizens’ collaboration with invading Nazi armies during

World War II and subsequent domestic insurrections predisposed many leading officials

to link dissent to conspiracies, terrorism, and . For example, Soviet publications

sometimes referred to samizdat publications as little more than World War II “Nazi

propaganda” that reflected the thinking of “Dr. Joseph Goebbels.” One official

publication translated into English went so far as to equate Sakharov’s writings about the

benefits of creating a world government to subversive “ and fascism.”198

In an interview with a French newspaper near the end of 1976, the Chairperson of the

Soviet Association of Jurists Samuil Zivs called Sakharov a “fascist” and referred to dissidents as “the successors of Nazis” because they associated themselves “with organizations which during the war [World War II] fought against the USSR and Soviet

197 In reference to foreign enemies who wanted to destroy the Soviet state, Brezhnev called Sakharov’s 1973 letter to Congress in support of the Jackson-Vanik amendment “a Trotskyist deed.” See Michael Scammell, trans. with help of Catherine Fitzpatrick, The Solzhenitsyn Files: Secret Soviet Documents Reveal One Man’s Fight Against the Monolith (Chicago: edition q, inc., 1995), 312-3. In his work Human Rights, Samuel Zivs remarked, “At the Great Congress of ‘Ukrainian Nationalist Organizations,’ the Banderavites call was: Beware of ‘various deceitful conferences on peace, security, disarmament, détente!” See Zivs, Human Rights, 132.

198 This work also called Solzhenitsyn a “dedicated successor to the ideologues of fascism.” See Nikolai Yakovlev, CIA Target—The USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980), 234-5. 115

society.” “If a fascist says that détente is a crime against humanity, and Sakharov says

the same thing,” he remarked, “that is meaningful.”199

The Brezhnev regime also showed little hesitation in linking Jewish emigration

and with Nazism or fascism. As a Soviet émigré pointed out in 1976, official

publications and public meetings attacked “everything in any way connected with Israel

and Judaism.” Quoting a sample of these publications, he indicated that the main Soviet

argument ran as follows: “Zionism is fascism and is demonstrated by the fact that the

Zionists have always been the chief allies of the Nazis, from the burning of the Reichstag

to the present time. Consequently, Israel is a fascist state and everyone who wants to go

there is a renegade traitor.”200

Before moving ahead, we need to keep in mind that Andropov played a pivotal

role in shaping how Brezhnev regime responded to and viewed dissenters. As a number

of works have pointed out, Andropov’s stint as the Soviet ambassador to Hungary during

the 1956 uprising against Soviet rule “made a deep impression on him.” “As an orthodox

Marxist,” he believed that the uprising took place because of imperialist machinations

and concluded that the Soviet government had to take stern measures to eradicate non-

conformist thought at both home and abroad.201 Once he became Chairman in 1967,

Andropov viewed himself a modern “Chekist of the Lenin School” and grasped “that the

199 CHRUR 23-4 (October-December 1976): 20, 22. See also Zivs, Human Rights, 132-5.

200 CHRUR 19 (January/March 1976): 50-1; and Arbatov, The System, 237.

201 Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 334. See also Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova, trans. by Guy Daniels, Yuri Andropov: A Secret Passage into the Kremlin (New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1983), especially 122-47; , Andropov (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), 71-87; and Joshua Rubenstein and Alexander Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, 20-33; and Arbatov, The System, 254-86. 116

main threat to the [Soviet] system came not only from stagnation, but also from a rise in

the rebellious state of mind of a growing number of people.” He sent the Politburo and

Central Committee hundreds of memorandums concerning both foreign and domestic anti-Soviet activities. He also created KGB directorates with the specific purposes of curbing dissident activities and Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. Andropov even introduced “modern” and “professional methods” designed to improve his agency’s ability to engage in espionage and produce counter-intelligence, as well as monitor

individual and public opinion. Just as he wanted, the KGB served “as of

ideas” and carried out “’preventive work’” designed to preserve Soviet citizens’ ideological reliability.202

While Andropov had to gain the Politburo’s approval before undertaking major

actions such as expelling dissidents from the Soviet Union, the KGB retained a great deal

of autonomy to combat dissent and international criticism of the Soviet Union’s domestic

practices.203 Well aware that trials could give dissenters a platform to outline their beliefs and garner international sympathy, he approved of using psychiatry as a way of discrediting their views of the Soviet government. Working with the KGB, the Soviet psychiatry establishment concocted diagnoses such as “’sluggish ’” or

“’creeping schizophrenia’” to explain why dissenters wanted to reform Soviet society.

Consistent with this position, a local KGB official sent a memorandum to the Central

Committee complaining about how he had to deal with mentally ill individuals who

202 Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 343.

203 Ibid., 341. 117

wanted to form new political parties and distribute “’plans for new laws and

programs.’”204

The pervasive influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thought and perceptions of

domestic threats shaped leading Soviet officials’ view of dissent and international

criticism of their nation’s domestic practices. Yet, they were not immune from pragmatic

behavior when pursuing specific foreign objectives. Brezhnev allowed Jewish

emigration from the Soviet Union to reach new highs during the early 1970s as part of his

effort to increase Soviet-American trade and head off passage of the Jackson-Vanik

Amendment. International condemnation also resulted in the release of a number of

dissenters who had spent time in psychiatric institutions. The Soviet government may

have lamented Western European Communist parties’ “Eurocommunist” positions, but

officials still sent these parties large amounts of money to fund their political activities.

The KGB also continued to train “selected” Italian Communists in “underground

operations” such as “the fabrication of false documents.”205

Since Soviet policymakers worried about international public opinion, they made

every effort to distance their internal behavior from the mass arrests and arbitrary

“crimes” that took place during the Stalin era. Instead of arresting and doing away with political opponents in a “Stalinist fashion,” official publications explained how the Soviet government now adhered to the principles of “socialist legality.”206 Because authorities

204 , Gulag: A History (New York: Random House, 2003), 548.

205 Ibid, 550; and Mitrokhin and Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 286, 298. See also Arbatov, The System, 248.

206 Zivs, Human Rights, 79-80, 81-88. See also N.A., “Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 29. 118

now respected the “rule of law,” they treated law-breaking dissenters in a “humane”

fashion. In theory at least, they warned dissidents to cease their unlawful activities before

arresting them, worked to educate Soviet citizens about the requirements of the law, and

tried lawbreakers in neutral judicial bodies. According to one official Soviet publication,

these sorts of practices not only made the Soviet legal practices consist with international

standards, but in some ways surpassed them.207

Brezhnev’s pragmatic instincts and desire to retain the appearance of upholding

“socialist legality” explain why he hesitated for almost eight years before deciding to

revoke Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship and expel him from the country in mid 1974. When

the KGB asked the Politburo for the permission to take the same course of action after

Solzhenitsyn received the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, Brezhnev expressed

reservations about carrying out such a drastic move.208 He ended up siding with his

Interior Minister Nikolai Shchelokov, who argued that the “Solzhenitsyn problem” was

created by literary administrators who should have known better . . . In this case what

needs to be done is not to execute our enemies publicly but smother them with embraces.209

While ideological considerations or fears of domestic subversion did not always dictate Soviet behavior, we should not forget that Brezhnev’s chose not to deport

Solzhenitsyn at the same time that the Soviet arrest rate for dissident activities reached

207 N.A., “Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 29.

208 Mitrokhin and Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 312-3. See also Scammell, The Solzhenitsyn Files.

209 Ibid. 119 the highest levels between the years 1957 and 1979. His hesitations also did not prevent the authorities from waging a systematic campaign to eradicate samizdat publications.

During the early 1970s, the Brezhnev regime carried out show trials in which dissident

“defendants incriminated themselves in the best Stalinist tradition.”210 The Soviet government’s mixture of ideologically-driven and pragmatic behavior once again reveals the shortcomings of debating whether Marxist-Leninist dogma or cold, calculated realism best explains Soviet international and domestic behavior.

This pattern of behavior guided Soviet conduct after Brezhnev signed the Final

Act on 1 August 1975. When defending Soviet participation in the Helsinki process, he referred to the agreement as “the culmination of everything positive that has been done thus far on our continent to bring about the change from the ‘cold war’ to détente and the genuine implementation of the principles of peaceful coexistence.”211 He advanced this argument even though other members of the Politburo had warned him about how

Western countries might use the provisions of Basket III and Principle VII to interfere in

Soviet “internal affairs.” Instead of heeding these warnings, Brezhnev supported Foreign

Minister Andrei Gromyko’s arguments that the Kremlin would remain in control of

“what did and did not constitute interference in our domestic affairs.” Perhaps influenced by Kissinger’s private assurances that the U.S. government would stay out of Soviet

210 Ibid., 313. See also Barghoorn, Détente and the Democratic Movement in the USSR, 140-1.

211 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 94; and CDSP 27. no. 31 (27 August 1975): 14-5. 120

“internal affairs,” the Foreign Minister reassured his critics that “’We are masters of our own house.’”212

This confident prediction could not prevent transnational human rights activities

from putting the USSR on the defensive. Only two weeks after the Final Act came into existence, Brezhnev felt the need to clarify the true meaning of the agreement. He told

visiting members of the U.S. Congress that the agreement’s provisions about the

“inviolability of frontiers and non-interference in internal affairs were ‘points of a

binding nature, whereas “those contained in Basket III were subject to further agreements.”213 During his private Final Act negotiations with the U.S. attaché Jack

Matlock in November 1975 concerning American and Soviet compliance with the

Helsinki Accords, Deputy Foreign Minister G.M. Kornienko minimized the importance

of Basket III and Principle VII. He told the American representative that the “Soviet side

starts from the assumption that the political substance” of the agreement “is defined

primarily by the principles of relations between member states.”214 Around the same

time, the head of ISKAN, Georgi Arbatov, published an article in the New York Times

212 Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Random House, 1995), 346. During a conference on U..S-Soviet relations that took place in 1994, Anatoly Dobrynin commented, “Gromyko always detested having to discuss anything related to Basket III. But he had been conditioned—and this, I think, is an important factor—he had been conditioned by Henry Kissinger to treat the whole thing as something of no practical importance.” See Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars held at the Musgrove Plantation, St. Simons Island Georgia, 63.

213 Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security, 84.

214 “Memorandum of Georgy Kornienko Conversation with U.S. Attaché Jack Matlock,” 12 November 1975. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/11-12- 1975%20Kornienko.pdf [15 July 2007]. 121

lambasting U.S. citizens who criticized the Soviet Union’s Final Act compliance

record.215

The Soviet signing of the Final Act in no way changed Andropov’s attitude toward dissenters. On 29 December 1975, he informed the Central Committee that over the past four years his organization had warned 63,108 individuals to cease their “anti-

Soviet” activities and disrupted the subversive plots of almost two thousand “anti-Soviet” groups. “Our information shows the aspiration of special services and ideological centers of the opponent” to create “an anti-Soviet underground publishing organ designed to serve as an organizational center.” Well aware of the large number of citizens who

collaborated with Nazis during World War II and the domestic insurrections that lasted

into the 1950s, Andropov wrote that foreign subversive organizations counted on the

loyalty of elements such as “Vlasov’s troops” and “participants in the bandit armed

underground in the Ukraine,” Baltic republics, Belorussia, “several regions of Central

Asia, and [the] Northern .”216

Six months later, Andropov sent the Central Committee another memorandum

that provided even more statistics about the characteristics of anti-Soviet activities. He

indicated that over the course of 1975 “10,206 anti-Soviet, ideologically harmful and

slanderous anonymous documents were prepared and distributed by 1,629 authors [6,476

pamphlets, 3,255 letters and 475 petitions].” He also wrote that the KGB had identified

215 Georgi A. Arbatov, “Reciprocity After Helsinki,” New York Times, 8 October 1975, 41.

216 “Yuri Andropov Report to the CC CPSU,” 29 December 1975. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/1975-12-29%20Andropov.pdf [19 January 2007]. See also “Excerpt from Anatoly S. Chernayev's Diary,” 3 January 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/01-03-76%20Chernyaev.pdf [19 January 2007]. 122

“1,277 authors, who distributed 6,602 anti-Soviet, politically harmful and slanderous

documents [3,210 pamphlets, 3,045 letters, [and] 347 petitions]. “Among those detained

were 37 authors,” he wrote, “who prepared hostile documents with terrorist threats

directed at the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet

government.”217

Since Andropov saw no difference between the activities of “’legal’” dissent

linked to AI and nationalists “who . . . never miss a chance to inflict harm on Soviet

society,” he recommended that the Communist party keep imprisoning dissidents. Such

arrests might upset some of our “détente partners,” he reasoned, but the Soviet

government could not take any chances because “there are hundreds of thousands of

people in the Soviet Union, who are either acting or are ready to act against the Soviet

regime.” The Kremlin also had to remain firm because “under certain circumstances,”

some of these individuals “will embark on an open struggle, or even an armed assault.”

Given these realities, Andropov surmised, “it seems to us [KGB] that one cannot make . .

. concessions on this issue, because they [will] inevitably lead to additional demands

unacceptable to us.”218

The considerable attention Andropov paid to dissident acts only underscores his

fear that these private citizens would succeed in “globalizing” the issue of Soviet human

rights violations. In particular, he warned the Central Committee that western radio

217 “Memo from Andropov to CC of CPSU, ‘On the Results of Search for Authors of Anti-Soviet Anonymous Documents in 1975,’” 13 March 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/KGB%2003-13-1976.pdf [26 January 2007].

218 Ibid. He also noted that and Jewish nationalists had either sent letters to or asked to meet with the leaders of these Western communist parties during their stay in Moscow for the “25th Congress of the CPSU [Soviet Communist Party].” 123

stations had broadcast the French and Italian communist parties’ statements about Soviet

non-compliance with the Final Act into the Soviet Union. These messages have not only become known “to a wide circle of Soviet citizens,” he indicated, but had also led “to an increase in the activity of hostile elements like Sakharov, [Roy] Medvedev, and some others.” He advised the Central Committee to tell our “French and Italian comrades “that the struggle with so-called ‘dissidents’ is not an abstract question of democratization for us, but vitally important for ensuring the security of the Soviet state.” In his estimation,

Western communist parties could not grasp that “anti-Soviet expressions could still exist to a lesser or greater extent, even after events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.”219

Much as Andropov reacted when Solzhenitsyn won the 1970 Nobel Prize in

Literature, he became enraged when Sakharov won the same prize for peace five years later. In a series of memorandums concerning this development, Soviet émigrés and

Western non-governmental organizations such as AI and the Organizing Committee for

Sakharov Hearings had sent this dissenter congratulatory letters. In addition to quoting

foreign journalists’ positive statements about this development, Andropov also quoted

Sakharov’s statement that “[i]t is now very important to increase the pressure of world

public opinion to defend human rights in the Soviet Union.” In obvious disgust, he

concluded that the Nobel Committee decided to give Sakharov the peace prize “in order

to support his anti-Soviet activities and . . . consolidate hostile-minded elements within this country.”220

219 “Yuri Andropov Report to the CC CPSU,” 29 December 1975.

220 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 190-1. 124

With the support of Politburo members Dmitri Ustinov and Roman Rudenko,

Andropov sent the Central Committee a recommendation near the end of 1975 that called

for the exile of Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner to the town Sverdlovsk-44. In

defense of this measure, the document explained how the “the Procurator’s office and state security organs . . . have taken every possible measure--through the party, Soviet, and public organizations . . . to bring Sakharov to his senses and avert his political downfall.” The document also lambasted Sakharov’s role in creating “the so-called

‘International Hearings on Human Rights Violations in the USSR.’” “[T]he organizers of the ‘Hearings’ exploited [Sakharov’s work] to confirm ‘the fact of persecution” of national minorities in the USSR, the ‘trampling’ of political and religious freedoms, and the ‘repression’ of citizens for their political convictions.”221

The authors favored the exiling of Sakharov and Bonner to a city closed to

foreigners for predictable reasons. Such a move would terminate their association with

“citizens of capitalist countries” that “result in the disclosure of secret information that

can cause serious harm to the country’s defenses.” They also endorsed internal exile

because “court proceedings may evoke a negative [international] reaction.” Even though

“the administrative resettlement of Sakharov and his wife will evoke an anti-Soviet

campaign in the West,” the document noted, such a move “will entail smaller political

costs than permitting Sakharov to act with impunity in the future or putting him on trial

for criminal activities.”222

221 Ibid., 200-4.

222 Ibid., 201-2. 125

While Brezhnev never acted on this proposal, Andropov once again denounced

the efforts of foreign governments to globalize the issue of Soviet human rights violations

in a Central Committee memorandum dated 30 March 1976. From his perspective, the

KGB had “always accounted for the fact that the special services of the imperialist

countries and the PRC [China] were trying as much as they can to use détente, and the

expanding international ties to step up their political, economic, and technological

intelligence [activities] against the Soviet Union.” These governments, he insisted, want

to “carry out hostile ideological subversive actions aimed at undermining the

international prestige of the USSR . . . [and] Soviet society.” In reference to dissident

attempts to draw international attention to their activities, he assured the Central

Committee that “attempts to unite anti-Soviet elements organizationally under the banner

of defense of ‘human rights’ in the USSR were frustrated.” He also indicated that their

efforts “to abuse the general principles of the Final Act . . . for hostile purposes were

compromised.”223

The creation of the Moscow Watch Group and the U.S. Helsinki Commission

gave Andropov little choice but to reexamine the domestic impact of the Final Act. On

15 November 1976, he wrote a memorandum that analyzed dissent’s evolution from the

creation of Initiative Group to Defend Human Rights in 1969 to the recent activities of

the Watch Group. He viewed this organization as yet another attempt to create an

“’internal opposition’” to the Soviet regime. After naming all the individuals in the

Watch Group, he noted how its members wanted to “create an international commission”

223 “KGB Annual Report for 1975,” 30 March 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/03-30-1976.pdf [27 July 2007]. 126

designed to investigate Final Act violations. He also outlined how “the anti-social

elements” wanted private citizens “to establish similar informal control groups . . . [that]

could be united in an international committee in their countries.” Once again paying close attention to Soviet citizens’ contacts with foreigners, he wrote that Yuri Orlov went

to the U.S. embassy in Moscow and asked a State Department officer to give the Watch

Group “official recognition.” He also warned the Central Committee that Orlov had

encouraged Americans to “use the information passed to them by the ‘group’ at the level

of governments and heads of states, including at the forthcoming Belgrade

conference.”224

The reports that Andropov sent to the Central Committee elucidate how the Soviet

government went about curbing dissent and weakening the influence of foreign anti-

Soviet propaganda. Consistent with the Brezhnev regime’s emphasis on strengthening

Soviet citizens’ ideological convictions and upholding “socialist legality,” he and his

subordinates emphasized how the KGB carried out “preventive-prophylactic” work

before it made arrests, which consisted of warning individuals about the illegality of their

activities and hinted at the possibility of arrest if such behavior did not cease. On 13

March 1976, Andropov bragged that about “20 thousand persons, who committed

politically harmful actions that did not contain a criminal intent, were subjected to

prophylactic work” during the following year.225 To cite a more specific example, on the

224 “KGB Memorandum to CC CPSU about the Hostile Actions of the So-Called Group for Assistance of Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR,” 15 November 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/11-15-1976.pdf [28 June 2007].

225 “KGB Annual Report for 1975.” 127

same day that Orlov announced the formation of the Moscow Watch Group, KGB

officials threw him into a car and warned him that “nobody has the right to question the

Soviet government’s sincerity in signing and implementing the Helsinki Final Act.” The

authorities may have released him, but TASS issued a dispatch describing Orlov’s conduct as illegal behavior designed to please foreigners who opposed the relaxation of

“international tensions” and “enemies of the Soviet Union.”226

In an attempt to prevent embarrassing reports about Soviet human rights from reaching foreign audiences, the KGB disconnected the international phone lines of many dissenters and confiscated a large number of letters they tried to send abroad. Soviet authorities also censored the incoming mail of many dissidents and conducted searches of their homes for illegal non-official publications. Furthermore, the Soviet government carried out a “vitriolic” campaign against RFE/RL and managed to bar reporters from this organization from attending the 1976 Winter Olympics in . In response to the

Jackson-Vanik and Stevenson amendments, the KGB stepped up its efforts to harass and intimidate Jews who had asked for emigration visas.227 Soviet newspapers also contained articles written by Jews who had returned to the Soviet Union because of their disillusionment with life in either Israel or the United States.228

226 Goldberg, The Final Act, 53.

227 CHRUR 22 (July-September 1976): 26-30. In particular, Soviet authorities continued to break up the scientific seminars of refusenik scientists and refused to let these individuals to attend conferences in Western countries. See Colin Shindler, Exit Visa: Détente, Human Rights, and the Jewish Emigration Movement in the USSR (London: Bachman and Turner, 1978), 119-40, 142-3.

228 Shindler, Exit Visa,162-3; and CDSP 28, no. 6 (10 March 1976): 12. See also Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: Paradox of Survival, Volume II (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 691-729; CDSP 28, no. 47 (22 December 1976): 11-12; Ibid. 28, no. 45 (8 December 1976): 18. 128

The KGB also carried out operations beyond Soviet borders designed to discredit

the arguments of dissenters and the idea that the Soviet government violated human

rights.229 According to Christopher Andrews and Vasili Mitrokhin’s work The Sword

and Shield, Andropov approved a document entitled “Complex Operation Measures to

Expose the Political Background to Award the Nobel Peace Prize to Sakharov” on 22

November 1975. While not an exhaustive list, First Chief Directorate of the KGB

(foreign intelligence) received instructions to give “the Danish, Swedish, and Finnish

press” materials “hinting at his links with reactionary organizations financed by the CIA

and other Western special services.” These instructions also encouraged agents to have

Chilean émigrés produce and disseminate a telegram from the reactionary dictator

Augusto Pinochet congratulating Sakharov for winning the Nobel Prize. They even

called on agents to “inspire public statements by public personalities in the Arab

countries” that explained Sakharov’s award as a function of Zionists’ “decisive influence

on the Nobel Committee” and appreciation of his public statements in support of Jewish

“emigration from the Soviet Union.”230 Given the scope of these proposals, few should be surprised that Andropov called Sakharov “Public Enemy Number One” during a meeting of the KGB Collegium in 1976.231

Soviet newspapers also published articles emphasizing how Jewish culture thrived in the Soviet Union. See Ibid. 28, no. 51 (19 January 1977): 7-8.

229 Mitrokhin and Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 319, 558. By 1977, thirty-nine active operations of the KGB were targeted against Sakharov. See Ibid., 549.

230 Mitrokhin and Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 322-4. For a list of similar proposals, see Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 190.

231 Ibid., 325. 129

Unhappy with the decision of the WCC to look into the issue of religious freedom

in the Soviet Union, the KGB carried out a campaign to smear the reputation of the West

Indian Methodist Dr. Philip Potter, who served as the group’s chairman. The report that he authored on Final Act signatories’ respect for religious liberty failed to denounce the

Soviet Union in harsh terms. Not preoccupied with small details, the KGB flooded his

residence with angry letters “from Russian Orthodox clergy, Baptists and other Soviet

Christians, protesting . . . his alleged hostility towards them.” It even attempted “to

orchestrate public criticism of Potter by ‘prominent religious figures’ in Britain,

and .” Around the same time, Soviet officials published an English-language

book entitled Religion Under Socialism and produced a TV documentary in English

called Freedom of Religion in the USSR that defended their nation’s respect for religious

observers.232

To challenge the messages dissidents had begun to transmit across the globe in

the mid 1970s, the Soviet government announced the creation of the Rodina

(Motherland) Society in February 1976. This organization aimed at helping other official groups such as the Soviet Society for Cultural Ties with Compatriots Abroad, the newspaper Golos Rodiny (Voice of the Homeland), and the magazine Otchizna

(Motherland) shape the opinions of foreign citizens who traced their roots back to current

Soviet republics. As an Isvestia article reported, the Rodina Society strove to strengthen

“ties with primarily progressive émigrés from our country and give them an accurate and

clear account of the achievements of the Soviet people in developing their economy,

232 Ibid., 492-3. 130

culture, and science and in improving of the working people. Taken together with the

importance the Brezhnev regime attached to non-governmental organizations who

supported the official Soviet line, the Rodina Society stands out as a Soviet effort to

challenge transnational actors’ globalizing of the issue of Soviet human rights violations.

Perhaps as expected, the foreign intelligence arm of the KGB created a “Rodina intelligence section” designed to use the ’s foreign contacts for agent recruitment purposes.233

Not satisfied with discrediting reports about Soviet violations both at home and

abroad, Soviet officials also attacked the human rights record of the United States

government. As they had done for some time, official publication criticized American

politician for their long-standing discrimination against Native Americans, African

Americans, and their consistent support for brutal right-wing dictatorships. Some

mentioned the illegality of how the FBI harassed Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil

rights movement and conducted surveillance on millions of American citizens.234 The foreign intelligence arm of the KGB in Copenhagen, prepared a booklet entitled

“America’s Two Hundred Years” aimed at discrediting the U.S. two-hundred year anniversary in the eyes of Western Europeans. Distributed by “the fictitious Danish organization ‘The European Bicentennial Committee,’” the booklet contained “lavishly illustrated” drawings and photographs associating the United States with “the crimes of

233 CDSP 28, no. 1 (4 February 1976): 16; and Mitrokhin and Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 498.

234 For example, see , “Soviets Strike Back on Civil Rights Criticism,” New York Times, 25 November 1975, A12; and Christopher S. Wren, “Soviet Offers U.S. Rights Challenge,” New York Times, 4 September 1976, 16. 131

the white regimes in .” It also contained the letter of a “courageous young

Afro-American named General G. Baker” who opposed the American draft during the

Vietnam War on the grounds that U.S army only really cared about fighting against non-

whites interested in freeing themselves from capitalist domination.235

Beyond trying to weaken the international appeal of the United States, official publications also focused on the Kremlin’s excellent Final Act compliance record. On the whole, they emphasized how the Soviet government now allowed “multiple entry and exit visas for accredited journalists” and had reduced the price of exit visas effective 1

January 1976. These publications also explained how the Soviets promoted extensive cultural and scientific exchanges with other countries and agreed to the reunification of

many divided families.236 Some articles even praised the high level of religious freedom

that existed in Soviet Union.237

The Brezhnev regime also explained how many U.S. policies and laws failed to

live up to the ideals outlined in the Final Act. Authors often criticized the U.S.

government’s policy of denying entry visas to representatives of Soviet trade union

delegations and decision not to publish the entire text of the Helsinki Accords in

235 Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 91-2.

236 Peter Osnos, “Moscow Moves to Put West on Defensive Over Helsinki,” Washington Post, 24 October 1976, 9; Christopher S. Wren, “Soviet Denounces Critics in the West,” New York Times, 2 October 1975, 7; Ibid., “So Far, the Helsinki Accords Have Not Opened Soviet Doors,” New York Times, 22 February 1976, E3; David Fouquet, “Kremlin Carrying Out Some Helsinki Pledges,” Washington Post, 14 January 1976, A9; David K. Shipler, “Helsinki Accord and the Soviet Union: Effects on Human Rights Seem Mixed,” New York Times, 1 August 1976, 3; Leonard H. Marks, “The Unfilled promises of Helsinki,” Washington Post, 1 August 1976, 33; CDSP 28, no. 43 (24 November 1976): 27; Ibid., 28, no. 30 (25 August 1976): 10- 11; ibid., 28, no. 40 (3 November 1976): 3; ibid., 28, no. 26 (28 July 1976): 4-5.

237 CDSP 28, no. 5 (3 March 1976): 1-4. See also Ibid., 28, no. 7 (17 March 1976): 4-5; and ibid. 28, no. 23 (7 July 1976): 1. 132

American newspapers; they also complained about how Soviet and countries

viewed and read far more Western literature and movies than vice versa. Furthermore,

Soviet publications emphasized how the Soviet Union had signed more international

human rights covenants and complained about the U.S. Helsinki Commission had no

right to judge Soviet domestic conduct. In a clear violation of the “spirit” of the Final

Act, the Brezhnev regime also accused Western countries, in particular the United States,

of attempting to inundate the Soviet public with “fascist and revenge-seeking works” that

exalted “racism and chauvinism, the cult of violence and pornography.”238

The Soviet government carried out measures across the globe to curb dissent and

discredit the very idea of Soviet human rights violations after the Helsinki Accords came

into existence. Yet, evidence suggests that concerns about international opinion

influenced the Brezhnev regime’s conduct from July 1975 until the end of 1976. The

Chronicle of Current Events “lists no arrest of a well-known dissident” from April 1975

to February 1977.239 The KGB may have continued to arrest and/or confine less well-

known dissidents in psychiatric hospitals during this time period, but the documented

dissident arrest rate began to decline in 1975. In fact, these arrest rates would not come

close to the levels of the early 1970s until 1979. Reflecting Brezhnev’s pragmatism,

238 CDSP 28, no. 26 (28 July 1976): 4; Ibid., 28, no. 21 (23 June 1976): 16; Peter Osnos, “Soviets Strike Back on Civil Rights Criticism,” Washington Post, 25 November 1975, A12; Ibid., “Soviets Hit Back at West,” Washington Post, 19 February 1976, 14; Christopher Wren, “Soviets Offer U.S. Rights Challenge,” New York Times, 4 September 1975, 16; N.A., “Soviets Rebut Party Critics,” Washington Post, 21 February 1976, A10; N.A, “Soviets Rebuffs Criticisms of Human Rights Stand,” 21 February 1976, New York Times, 51; David K. Shipler, “Soviet Official Affirms Ideological Curbs on Import of Western Publications,” New York Times, 28 September 1975, 23.

239 Edward Kline, “The Helsinki Process: A Balance Sheet,” in Allan Wynn, ed., The Fifth International Sakharov Hearing: Proceedings (London: Andre Deutsch, 1986), 183. 133

Soviet authorities also began permitting more dissenters such as Andre Amalrik to

emigrate from the Soviet Union and once again allowed Jewish emigration levels to

increase after a step curtailment in 1975.240 During his private conversations with Jimmy

Carter’s unofficial representative Averell Harriman on 8 December 1976, Brezhnev

called many Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union “arrogant troublemakers.” Yet,

in the same breath, he insisted that further Jewish “emigration could be facilitated

through more trade.”241

Even more telling, the practice of using the Soviet criminal code to take away

children from religious parents began to decline in 1975, although “[c]ourt decisions

made prior to 1 August 1975 on deprivation of parental rights” remained legally binding.

When Sakharov threatened to “abjure the titles of three times Hero of Socialist labor,

“Laureate of Lenin,” and other “State Prizes” unless his wife received permission to go

abroad for medical treatment on the same day that nations planned to sign the Final Act,

Andropov hesitated. He believed that Bonner had only made this a request at the behest

of foreign intelligence services. After internal deliberations, he voiced his approval of

the Central Committee’s decision to grant her permission on the grounds that such a

move allowed the USSR to “abort the hostile action arranged by Sakharov.”242

240 See also Reddaway, “Soviet Policies on Dissent and Emigration,” 7-12.

241 “Memorandum of Conversation: W. Averell Harriman and Leonid Brezhnev,” 8 December 1976, Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations, IV-261.

242 CHRUR 22 (July-September 1976): 46-7; and “Andropov to the Central Committee; Sakharov's reaction to permission for Bonner to go to ,” 21 July 1975. Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_099.htm [19 July 2006]. 134

Although concerns about international public opinion influenced the Brezhnev

regime’s conduct, we have every reason to believe that many Soviet officials viewed their

government’s efforts to curb dissent and preserve its global prestige as proper and

effective measures. Behind closed doors, Andropov bragged about how the number of

Soviet citizens sentenced under Article 70 (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda) from

1967 to 1974 almost equaled the number of individuals sentenced under the same

provision in 1959, a year of supposed “liberalization.”243 He also described how the number of authors who produced illegal literature in 1975 declined twenty-four percent in comparison to the previous year. When comparing the same two years, he wrote that

“the number of individuals distributing anti-Soviet anonymous documents containing terrorist threats directed at party leaders and the Soviet government was reduced twofold

[41.4%] [48 instances in 1975 versus 82 in 1974].”244 He attributed these numbers to the

“further strengthening of the moral and political unity of Soviet society, the Soviet people’s dedication to the cause of socialism, and the decisive disruption of anti-Soviet

actions by hostile elements.” He also applauded how “measures” such as “stripping certain persons of their Soviet citizenship and exiling them abroad . . . have proven to be effective. . . . and [have] helped improve the situation.”245

243 “KGB Memorandum to the CC CPSU, ‘About Some Results of the Preventive-Prophylactic Work of the State Security Organs,’”31 October 1975. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/KGB%2010-31-1975.pdf [24 July 2007].

244 “Memo from Andropov to CC of CPSU, ‘On the Results of Search for Authors of Anti-Soviet Anonymous Documents in 1975,’” 13 March 1976.

245 “KGB Memorandum to the CC CPSU, ‘About Some Results of the Preventive-Prophylactic Work of the State Security Organs,’" 31 October 1975. 135

This analysis deserves attention because official publications and messages

tailored for Western audiences often advanced similar arguments. In a 1976 interview

published in Moscow and printed in English, a Soviet legal official pointed out that

“since the war [World War II] the annual number of convictions in this country has

declined by half.” He also defended the prosecution of a dissenter on the grounds that

“he was prosecuted for homosexualism, which under our laws is a punishable offense.”246

During his interview with a French journalist, Zivs reiterated the predictable line that the

Soviet government cracked down on non-official demonstrations because “Soviet public

opinion strongly supported” such a policy. When he received a question about the

putting the Ukrainian dissenter in a psychiatric institution, Zivs insisted

on the legality of the practice, pointing out that “[t]he diagnosis in question was conceived not by Soviet psychiatrists but by a famous Austrian psychiatrist at the turn of the century.” “And as a matter of fact,” he remarked, “it is insane to want to reform everything: the family, traffic, everything you can think of. It is a sure sign of madness.”247

After trading the dissenter Vladimir Bukovsky for a Chilean communist political

prisoner in 1976, Soviet newspapers chose not to acknowledge this exchange. Instead, they ignored this dissenter’s support for non-violent political protest and focused on his close connections to the fascist émigré organization NTS and “other Western subversive centers.” When he was not in prison, one article observes, Bukovsky wanted “’to choose

246 N.A.,“Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 14, 18.

247 CHRUR 23-4 (October-December 1976): 22-3. 136

people who are ready to fight Communists, teach them how to shoot, divide them up into

groups of five and combine them in assault detachments.” Consistent with this sort of

analysis, another official publication later emphasized how “[i]t is only a small step from

participation in Operation human rights to terrorism.”248

Because orthodox Soviet bureaucrats worried about the international prestige of

Soviet-style socialism, the Kremlin paid close attention to the rhetoric of Carter and Ford

during the 1976 U.S. presidential campaign. During his private conversations with

Harriman, Brezhnev complained about how Carter “belittled Soviet-American relations”

and argued that “only the Soviet Union benefited from détente.” He also criticized

Carter’s calls for “interference” in Soviet internal affairs and his strange mixture of hard-

line rhetoric and calls for more extensive cooperation.249 Brezhnev even told Harriman to

tell Carter that Soviet leaders did not share his understanding of the Helsinki Accords.

Soviet officials must have read the statement that Carter had issued during the

Democratic Convention outlining the need for all signatories to follow the provisions of

the Final Act. An article in dated 18 July of the same year accused the

248 CDSP 28, no. 52 (26 January 1977): 3; Yakovlev, CIA Target, 209. See also CDSP 18, no. 44 (1 December 1976): 1-4. The USSR took particular interest in the activities of NTS (People’s Labor Alliance), a émigré organization based in . An official Soviet publication not only remarked how members of this group “were among the jailers in the Nazi mass extermination camps,” but also blamed the NTS-CIA alliance for various dissenters’ close identification with Nazi ideology. See Yakovlev, CIA Target, 162, 140-229. See also Goldberg, The Final Act, 166; Sukharev, “Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 19.

249 W. Averell Harriman to Mr. Tony Lake, “Brezhnev Comments on US-USSR relations, Carter administration,” 2 December 1976, Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations, IV-257; and Memorandum, W. Averell Harriman to Alex. R. Selith,” Ibid., IV-259. 137 presidential-hopeful of “attempting to please the extreme right wing of reaction and the

Zionists.”250

The overall thrust of Brezhnev’s private and public remarks in 1976 and early

1977 indicate that he had no intention of testing “Carter right away” and preferred the continuation of Kissinger-style détente with the United States.251 At the same time, the

Soviet authorities appear to have toyed with the idea of undertaking a “new offensive against those persons who collect news and inform world public opinion about human rights violations in the USSR.”252 If true, the fact that Moscow contemplated such a course of action goes a long way in explaining why human rights became a visible and contentious issue in U.S.-Soviet relations during the next four years. Even if Carter chose not to press Soviet leaders on the subject of Final Act violations before assuming office, he had voiced his intention to support dissenters and make human rights an important aspect of U.S. foreign policy.253 Given the importance they placed on

250 CDSP 28, no. 29 (18 August 1976): 17. An article dated 9 October 1976 pointed out that “Jimmy Carter, who is trying for tactical reasons to get away from his reputation as a liberal, “’sounded almost like Reagan’” on a number of occasions.” See CDSP 28, no. 41 (10 November 1976): 1.

251 W. Averell Harriman to Mr. Tony Lake, “Brezhnev Comments on US-USSR relations, Carter administration,” IV-257; Brezhnev, Peace, Détente, and Soviet-American Relations, 147-54; and CHRUR 25 (January March 1977): 47.

252 According to an article in the CCE, an official Soviet spokesman who attended “a closed, high-level briefing for editors” on how the government would now handle dissent explained that “firmness be shown and the dissidents silenced. It has been decided to imprison the 50 most active dissidents (probably mainly Helsinki monitors) and deal severely with their associates. It is time to show strength and not pay attention to the West. . . . The Soviet Union showed its good will by signing the Helsinki Agreement.” This quote is taken from Reddaway, “Soviet Policies on Dissent and Emigration,” 9.

253 See “Ambassador A.F. Dobrynin’s Conversation with Averell Harriman, December 1, 1976,” in The Path to Disagreement: U.S.-Soviet Communications Leading to Vance’s March 1977 Trip to Moscow, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]. See also Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations, (IV) 188-265.

138 preserving the internal and ideological cohesion of their multinational, multiethnic empire, Soviet leaders could only have sensed trouble ahead when Carter sent a letter of support to Vladimir Slepak on 22 December 1976. They also must have winced when his

Secretary of State-designate Cyrus Vance held a private meeting with the exiled dissenter

Andrei Amalrik, who once again urged the United States to do more “to encourage democratization in the Soviet Union.”254

254 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 629. 139

CHAPTER 4: THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION WIELDS THE HUMAN RIGHTS

WEAPON, JANUARY 1977-AUGUST1978

The support that Carter showed for dissenters after winning the 1976 election

could not help but raise questions about the role human rights would play in U.S.-Soviet

relations once he entered office. Even though his subordinates had not devoted

significant attention to this issue during the transition period, he appeared to give an

answer during his inaugural address. Drawing on his close identification with the

concept of “idealpolitik,” he told the audience how “our commitment to human rights

must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not

persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.”255 A few hours later, the

USIA reinforced this message. It transmitted a short speech across the globe in which

Carter assured other nations of his commitment to “human rights, self determination, and

nonintervention.”256

These words proved as unfortunate as they were unnecessary. By choosing not to

admit the compromises necessary to further the cause of ideals, Carter ended up inviting

accusations of weakness when he compromised on human rights issues to accomplish

other important foreign objectives. They also obscured the reality that he had never made an “absolute” commitment to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union at any point

255 “Inaugural Address.” Available [Online] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=6575 [20 November 2007]. For an account of how members of the Carter administration did not pay particular attention to human rights issues before the inauguration, see Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 7. See also Ambassador A.F. Dobrynin’s Conversation with Averell Harriman, December 1, 1976,” in The Path to Disagreement: U.S.-Soviet Communications Leading to Vance’s March 1977 Trip to Moscow, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]

256 Schmitz and Walker, “Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights,” 119.

140

during his presidential campaign. When Carter assumed power, he actually made human

rights promotion an important element of an approach to U.S.-Soviet relations best

defined as “reciprocal accommodation.”

The main goal of this strategy involved creating an international environment in

which Soviet leaders would have little choice but to accept the need to respect the basic human freedoms of their citizens and work with the United States to solve important global problems. This policy meant that the Carter administration made a conscious effort to balance the competing objectives of highlighting Soviet human rights violations within the framework of a universal campaign, acknowledging the plight of dissenters, and forging cooperative links with the Kremlin. Since the Brezhnev regime could not

ignore the growing international appeal of human rights forever, Carter and other

officials often chose to use to careful, calibrated public and private acts to show

American displeasure with Soviet domestic abuses. From their perspective, such a

strategy provided a way for the U.S. government to show its displeasure with Soviet

internal behavior without foreclosing the possibility of a “reciprocal accommodation”

taking place over the long term.

Analyzing the steps that the Carter administration took to promote human rights

in the Soviet Union through the prism of “reciprocal accommodation” has a number of

advantages. It provides a useful way to critique Carter’s conduct without falling victim

to the familiar argument that he became less willing to challenge Soviet internal behavior

after his first few months in office. It also reveals the shortcomings of gauging the

administration’s commitment to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union as a 141

function of Carter’s public rhetoric on the subject. Furthermore, this approach provides a

useful way of showing how transnational human rights activities influenced and became

an important part of the administration’s efforts to challenge Soviet internal behavior.

While political calculations were never absent, Carter and other officials came to

appreciate how NGOs and the U.S. Helsinki Commission provided up-to-date

information about the internal conditions of individual countries. Others liked how

private citizens challenged the bureaucratic discretion of State Department members who

preferred to keep the issue of human rights behind closed doors. Just as important, many

officials encouraged and supported non-governmental human rights activities because

they believed that private citizens had a crucial role to play in creating an international

environment that challenged the legitimacy of systematic human rights violators like the

Soviet Union.

“Reciprocal Accommodation” and the Carter Administration’s Efforts to Promote Human Rights in the Soviet Union

After he entered office, Carter picked an upper-echelon foreign policy team

whose collective views reflected his preference for carrying out a universal human rights campaign and forging a more “reciprocal” détente with the Soviet Union. While

important commonalities existed among these individuals, each of them tended to

privilege certain courses of action over others. Unhappy with the conservative nature of

Kissinger-style détente, Brzezinski and members of the National Security Council

identified with how the issue of human rights gave the United States an effective way of

engaging in peaceful ideological competition with communist countries. In contrast to

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Carter, he also worried more about the spread of 142 communism in less developed countries and the negative global consequences of projecting a weak American image vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.257

Dissatisfied with the “reflexive” anti-communism of U.S. leaders, State

Department officials such as Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Patricia Derian placed greater importance on disassociating the United States from authoritarian allies than engaging in ideological competition with communist countries. They also stressed the need of the United States to sign international human right covenants and begin the process of making American domestic laws more consistent with international standards.

While Vance would have preferred to promote human rights in the Soviet Union through

“quiet diplomacy,” Derian went out of her way to advance the argument that individuals facing government repression in communist and non-communist countries deserved the vocal support of the U.S. government. She found such a policy appropriate because

“human rights violations do not really have much to do with the form of government or . .

. political philosophy.”258

257 See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “America in a Hostile World,” Foreign Policy 23 (Summer 1976): 65-96; and G.R. Urban, ed., Détente (New York: Universe Books, 1976), 270-80. This idea also comes through in the interviews Brzezinski gave during his first two years as National Security Advisor. See “Face the Nation as Broadcast over the CBS Television Network,” 30 October 1977 6-12, National Security Affairs— Brzezinski Materials (NSABM), Box 2, Folder: Brzezinski Interviews: 10/77-4/78, JCPL; “CTV Reports,” 10-17, Ibid; “United States Information Agency Television Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, 7-15, Ibid; “Summer Semester,” 7-13, Ibid.; and “Meet the Press,” 13-15, Ibid. During his stint as National Security Advisor, Brzezinski appointed staffers such as William Odom, Paul Henze, and Samuel Huntington who shared his view that promoting human rights could serve “as an important instrument for promoting internal change within the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.” See Njolstad, Peacemaker and Troublemaker, 244; and Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 15.

258 Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1983), 46. Because Vance favored reinforcing Soviet leaders’ sense of equality with the United States, he appointed Marshall Shulman as Chief Advisor to the State Department on Soviet affairs. See The Collapse of Détente: From March 1977 Moscow Meetings to the December 1979 Invasion of Afghanistan—The Launch of The Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S and Russian Policymakers and Scholars Held at the “Playhouse” on the Rockefeller Estate, Pocantico Hills, New York, 22-24 October 1992, NSA, 46. For Derian’s quote see Paula J. Dobriansky, “Human Rights and U.S. 143

Whatever differences the members of Carter’s foreign policy team may have had with each other, they found common ground in the “reciprocal accommodation” approach to U.S.-Soviet relations. The best description of this strategy comes from an internal memorandum that Brzezinski sent to Carter on 28 December 1978. According to this document, whose contents Carter analyzed, the administration’s “reciprocal accommodation policy” consisted of four main pillars: “ 1) containment; 2) resistance to indirect expansion; 3) ideological competition; 4) and the creation of a framework within which [Brzezinski’s italics] the Soviet Union can accommodate with us, or face the prospect of isolating itself globally.”259

The ways in which Brzezinski linked the third and fourth pillars go a long way in explaining how human rights fit into the administration’s overall approach to U.S.-Soviet relations. By tapping “the global yearning for human rights,” he told Carter, you have forged a policy that “provides an effective response to Soviet ideology” and “increases the moral appeal of the United States.” As a result of the “diversification of power” that had taken place since World War II, the promotion of human rights put pressure on

Foreign Policy,” The Washington Quarterly (Spring 1989): 160. See Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 11-16; and Victor S. Kaufman, “The Bureau of Human Rights during the Carter Administration,” The Historian 61, no. 1 (1998): 50-66.

259 See also Memo, Zbiginew Brzezinski (ZB) to Jimmy Carter (JC), “Weekly Report #83,” 28 December 1978, 1-2, Brzezinski Materials (BM), Box 42, Folder: Weekly Reports, 82-90, JCPL. Some scholars have accused Jimmy Carter of assembling a foreign policy team with a “’McGovernite’ or ‘left-liberal’ worldview . . . whose human rights passions were focused on the depredations of rightist regimes.” The charge of a “left-liberal” bias has significant merit, in particular among lower-ranking officials in the State Department’s Human Rights Bureau. Yet, as this chapter will help show, the growing importance that the American public attached to human rights and the lobbying efforts of transnational human rights actors made it difficult for administration officials to downplay or ignore the issue of Soviet human rights violations whatever their policy preferences might have been. See Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 14. See also Vladislav Zubok, “An Offered Hand Rejected? The Carter Administration and the Vance Mission to Moscow in March 1977,” in Alexej Ugrinsky, ed., Jimmy Carter: Foreign Policy and Post-Presidential Years (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 357-368

144

Soviet leaders to change their domestic behavior in recognition of international realities.

This situation gave the U.S. government the luxury of using a mixture of carrots and sticks to challenge Soviet internal repression without relinquishing the goal of forging more cooperative links with Moscow.260

The collective appeal of this vision meant that the administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union within the confines of a universal human rights campaign consisted of three distinct, but often overlapping strands of behavior. The first consisted of the most visible manifestations of the government’s efforts to engage in peaceful ideological competition such as strengthening the ability of U.S. radios to reach audiences in Eastern Europe. It also included behind-the-scene debates between Soviet and American officials concerning the topic of human rights violations. The second grew out of the close link that Carter and other officials saw between the task of promoting human rights across the globe and domestic reform. To make the United States a more credible and legitimate human rights model, Carter signed several international human rights covenants and made some attempts to change U.S. laws that conflicted with either international standards and/or the Final Act. The final strand involved the ways in which transnational human rights actors both worked with and became an important element in the Carter administration’s approach to challenging the international legitimacy of Soviet internal behavior.

Promoting Human Rights in the Soviet Union: Ideological Competition, International Law, Domestic Reform, and the Final Act

260 Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly Report #83,” 4. 145

Carter’s preference for a universal human rights campaign and “reciprocal

accommodation” surfaced early in his presidency. On 26 January, he approved

Presidential Review Memorandum (PRM)-17, which called on the State Department to chair a study that grappled with the question of how American foreign policy “could reflect a higher and more effective level of concern for fundamental human rights in all

nations.” The first private letter he sent to Brezhnev on the same day explained his goal

of improving “relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of reciprocity, mutual respect

and advantage.” “The most important first step” in this process, he wrote, “must be the

urgent achievement of an agreement on the second stage strategic weapons limitation

[SALT II].”261 After outlining other areas where the Soviet Union and the United States

could work together to promote peace, he reminded Brezhnev that:

[W]e cannot be indifferent to the fate of freedom and individual human rights. We represent different social systems, and our countries differ from each other in their history and experience. A competition of ideals is inevitable between our societies. Yet this must not interfere with common efforts towards formation of a more peaceful, just and humane world.262

Events soon tested Carter’s commitment to these positions. On 21 January, he

received a letter from Andrei Sakharov that also appeared in The New York Times urging

him “to defend those who suffer because of their unviolent [sic] struggle.” A short time

261 “Carter’s Letter to Brezhnev,” January 26, 1977 in The Path to Disagreement: U.S.-Soviet Communications Leading to Vance’s March 1977 Trip to Moscow, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]. In February 1977, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance issued a memorandum for all his assistant secretaries insisting that “the Department of State must help implement” the President’s goal of making human rights an integral part of U.S. foreign policy.” See “Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 17,” 3. Available [Online]: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/prm/prm17.pdf [18 August 2007]; “Memorandum for All Assistant Secretaries of State,” N.D., NSABM, Box 28, Folder: 2-4/77, JCPL; and “Guidelines for US Foreign Policy for Human Rights,” Ibid.

262 “Carter’s Letter to Brezhnev,” 26 January 1977. 146

later, Soviet authorities expelled an American correspondent from Moscow and arrested

the Helsinki Monitors Alexander Ginsburg and Yuri Orlov. They next proceeded to

arrest Anatoly Shcharansky, a well-known defender of Jewish emigration rights, and

several members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group on 15 March. The Kremlin justified

most of these arrests on the grounds that monitoring Soviet compliance with the Final Act

violated Article 70 of Russian criminal code (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda). It

chose to connect Shcharansky to the CIA and charged him with espionage under Article

64.263

The administration’s response to Sakharov’s letter only produced confusion.

Without consulting either Carter or Vance, State Department officials issued a statement

warning the Soviet authorities that “any attempt to intimidate Mr. Sakharov will not

silence legitimate criticism in the Soviet Union.” When asked about this statement on 30

January, Carter responded that any comment on the Soviet treatment of Sakharov “should

have been said by myself or Secretary Vance.”264 He may have confirmed that the State

Department’s words represented his views, but many observers thought he had vacillated

on supporting dissenters, including Sakharov.265 Because Carter had criticized the Ford

administration for not meeting with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he had little choice but to

send this dissenter a reply. After careful deliberation, Carter sent a personal letter to

263 Fitzpatrick, The Moscow Helsinki Monitors, 22; Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 246-7; and Goldberg, The Final Act, 258-66. See also Hawkesworth, “Ideological Immunity.”

264 Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 465.

265 Ibid., 465; and Strong, Working in the World, 75. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 256-60.

147

Sakharov that referred to “human rights” as “a central concern of my administration” and

reiterated his determination to win the release of political prisoners all over the world266

The confusion surrounding the administration’s response to the Sakharov letter should not obscure Carter’s determination to assert the U.S. right to challenge Soviet internal behavior. During his first few weeks in office, Carter read telegrams from the

U.S. embassy in Moscow explaining how Soviet leaders equated dissent with ideological subversion. In spite of these warnings, Carter told Dobrynin in a private meeting on 1

February that the United States would not “back down on” its human rights campaign. A few days later, Vance presented the Soviet ambassador with a list of divided families and private citizens who had not yet received permission to emigrate. 267 During these

discussions, Vance warned him that the U.S. government “would have to speak out

publicly to condemn Soviet behavior” if Ginsburg were not released. He also indicated

that the United States would force “a member of the TAS [sic] Washington staff” to leave

the country within a week unless the Soviet government reversed its decision to expel an

American journalist for meeting with dissidents. When the Soviet government failed to

266 “Letter to Andre Sakharov, by Carter.” Available [Online]: http://america.eb.com/america/article?eu=413245 [10 January 2004]. See also “A Letter to a Friend,” Time, 28 February 1977, 30-1. See also Department of State Telegrams to Moscow Embassy and Moscow Telegrams to Department of State, Subject: Sakharov Letter, BM, Box 78, Folder: 3/77, JCPL.

267 For example, see Telegram, Moscow Embassy to State Department,” February 1977, BM, Box 78, Folder: 3/77, JCPL; Ibid., June 77, Ibid., Folder: 6/77, Ibid.; Ibid., March 1977, Ibid., Folder: 3/77; Ibid., May 1977, Ibid., Folder: 4-5/1977. In one dispatch, U.S. Ambassador Al Toon reported that Soviets considered Carter’s rhetorical support of dissenters as tantamount to their support of the “Weathermen in the USA.” Telegram, Moscow Embassy to President,” February 1977, BM, Box 78, Folder: 3/77, JCPL. See also “US Government Initiatives on behalf of Human Rights in the USSR, 1. 148

heed Vance’s warnings, Carter voiced his concern about Ginsburg during a press

conference on 10 February and later expelled a Soviet journalist from Washington.268

The Soviet émigré Vladimir Bukovsky also forced Carter to confront the issue of

Soviet human rights violations. During an appearance on the television show 60 Minutes, he reiterated his strong desire to speak with the President about internal conditions in the

USSR. After this event took place, officials engaged in a spirited internal debate about the appropriateness of holding such a meeting. Worried about offending Soviet sensibilities, Press Secretary Jody Powell suggested that Vice President Mondale rather than Carter meet with Bukovsky. Powell even suggested that the President tell the

Soviets in private that his human rights campaign only aimed at building “domestic political support for initiatives in arms control and for détente in general.” Carter refused to mollify Soviet sensibilities by adopting such a cynical position. Instead, he and

Mondale held a private meeting with Bukovsky without offering the Soviets any explanation other than the U.S. government’s general concern for human rights and sympathy for individuals whose governments had mistreated them.269

Carter used public forums to defend this sort of behavior. In response to a

reporter’s question about his personal reply to Sakharov, he insisted that the United States

268 Telegram, State Department to Moscow Embassy, February 1977, BM, Box 78, Folder: 3/77, JCPL; and JC to Cyrus Vance (CV), 7 February 1977, White House Central Files (WHCF), HU-Box 1, Folder: 1/20/77-1/20-81; and Public Papers of the President of the United States (PPOP), 1977, Volume I (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977), 99-100.

269 It appears that Carter agreed Brzezinski’s reaction to the Powell memorandum: “In my view, this smacks of cynicism and weakness.” See Memo, Jody Powell to JC, 21 February 1977, BM, Box 78, Folder: 3/77. Brzezinski later received a memorandum outlining the positions Bukovsky outlined for Assistant Secretary James Lowenstein on 8 February. “Vladimir Bukovsky’s Meeting with the Vice President Mondale,” 25 February 1977, WHCF, C0-165, Folder: 3/1/77-3/15/77, JCPL. For an excellent treatment of this episode, see Njolstad, Peacemaker and Troublemaker, 232. 149

had “a responsibility and legal right to express our disapproval of violations of human

rights” because “[w]e are a signatory of the Helsinki agreement,” whose third basket

“ensures that some of the human rights shall be preserved.” One month later, he told a

reporter that “there is an ideological struggle that has been in progress for decades

between the Communist nations on the one hand and the democratic nations on the

other.” “Mr. Brezhnev and his predecessors,” he continued, “have never refrained from

expressing their point of view when they disagreed with some aspect of social or political

life in the free world.” Given such behavior, Carter argued that his administration had “a

right to speak out openly when we have a concern about human rights wherever those

abuses occur.”270

Along with defending his statements about Soviet human rights abuses, Carter

took steps to strengthen the ability of the United States to engage in peaceful ideological

competition with the Soviet Union. In March, he announced that Radio Free

Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America needed sixteen additional 250-kilowatt

transmitters for broadcasts to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Discounting the

objections of the German Chancellor , he defended the modernization of

U.S. radios on the grounds that Western broadcasts had become “a vital part of the lives

of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.”271

270 “President’s News Conference,” 23 February 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=6887&st=&st1= [16 August 2006]; and “President’s News Conference,” 24 March 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7229&st=&st1= [18 August 2006].

271 “Memorandum for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,” 29 July 1977, BM, Box 9, Folder: 2-12/77; Memo, Paul B. Henze (PH) to William Hyland, “RFE/RL Transmitter Modernization—Instructions to Ambassador Stoessel,” Ibid. See also The Department of State Bulletin, 25 April 1977, 423. The Board of International 150

Even more telling than his support for U.S. international broadcasting, Carter approved several of Brzezinski’s proposals for covert propaganda actions inside the

Soviet Union, as well as Western and Eastern Europe. These activities included: (1) the clandestine distribution of Soviet dissident literature inside the Soviet Union; (2) an enhanced book publishing program involving subsidies of East European-oriented journals with distribution in cultural centers in Eastern Europe; (3) a minorities program aimed at infiltrating written materials focused on the culture and conditions of diverse ethnic regions of the USSR; and (4) support to groups in Western Europe promoting

Soviet observance of human rights and democracy “through press articles and other means.”272

The measures that Carter approved were not put into effect as planned. The State

Department prevented the implementation of the minorities program and bureaucratic infighting “whittled down” the other proposals. Despite these setbacks, the administration significantly increased “the quantity of dissident and Western information

Broadcasting, which oversaw the operations of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America argued that U.S. broadcasting to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union showed America’s commitment to “the Helsinki provisions” calling for “freer and wider dissemination of information of all kinds.” It also noted that this type of broadcasting helped promote “democratic ideas.” See Board of International Broadcasting, Fourth Annual Report, 1978 (Washington, D.C., 1978), 40 and 43. Although some have argued that Carter only saw Western broadcasts to the Soviet Union as a way to promote Soviet-American dialogue, he never objected to Radio Liberty’s consistent broadcasting of samizdat literature. See Gene Sosin, Sparks of Liberty: An Insider’s Memoir of Radio Liberty (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 1999), 173, 187-9, 191; and Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 138, 141, 146, 163. James L. Tyson argued that the Carter administration curbed potentially subversive radio broadcasting. He does not appear to have examined the actual content of Radio Liberty’s broadcasts or dissidents’ strong support for such broadcasting. See James L. Tyson, U.S. International Broadcasting and National Security (New York: Ramapo Press, 1983), 68.

272 Gates, From the Shadows, 91-4. 151

and literature smuggled into Eastern Europe and the USSR.”273 On 18 December 1978,

National Security Council staffer Paul B. Henze informed Brzezinski that the

administration-approved efforts of the CIA “to publish and send more indigenous-

language material into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe” had proven successful.

When explaining the success of these programs, Henze outlined the important role

private citizens played, noting that they now produced more publications that the CIA could distribute in their countries than they had ten to fifteen years earlier.274

Before moving ahead, we need to keep in mind that Carter’s preference for a

“reciprocal accommodation” and desire to carry out a universal human rights campaign shaped how he described his efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. On several occasions, he tried to reassure Brezhnev that his support of dissenters sprang from his strong commitment to carrying out a universal human rights campaign rather than desire to single out the Soviet Union.275 In his second private letter to the General

Secretary, he reiterated his determination to hold the Soviet Government accountable for

its internal behavior, but then added: “We do not wish to create problems with the Soviet

Union, but it will be necessary for our Administration from time to time to publicly

express the sincere and deep feelings which our people and I feel.276

273 Ibid.

274 Memorandum from PH to ZB, “CIA Report on Results of Stepped-Up Publishing and Distribution Effort to USSR & Eastern Europe,” 18 December 1978, National Security Affairs (Horn/Special), Box 3, Folder: 12/78, JCPL.

275 For example, see PPOP, 1977, Volume I, 503.

276 “Carter’s Letter to Brezhnev,” 14 February 1977 in The Path to Disagreement: U.S.-Soviet Communications Leading to Vance’s March 1977 Trip to Moscow, Cold War International History Project. 152

On the eve of Bukovsky’s visit to the White House, Brzezinski warned Carter not

to lose sight of his overall approach to U.S.-Soviet relations. The preoccupation of the

international and domestic media, he lamented, inevitably raises the “question of whether

you are right or wrong in commenting directly on the issue of Soviet” human rights violations. The visibility of this concern only complicates our efforts “stimulate a serious discussion on the central and concrete issues in the U.S.-Soviet relationship.” To steer his approach to Soviet relations in the right direction, Brzezinksi urged the President to deliver “a broadly gauged statement to the effect” that the U.S. government’s human rights policy “is based on principle and that our concerns are applicable to all nations” and did not just consist of “anti-Soviet tactics.”277

These words resonated with Carter. During a speech he delivered to the United

Nations on 17 March, he reiterated the U.S. commitment to carrying out a universal human rights campaign and forging a more cooperative international framework.278

Following the advice of the NSC staffer Jessica Tuchman, Carter attempted to strengthen the legitimacy of the U.S. human rights criticisms. Confident that American behavior could both withstand and benefit from more international scrutiny, he pledged to seek the

Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]. Vance confirmed Carter’s position on more than one occasion. See “Vance: We Will Speak Out,” U.S. News and World Report,” 14 March 1977, 18-9; and The Department of State Bulletin, 25 April 1977, 391.

277 Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report,” 19 February 1977, 1-2, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 1-15, JCPL

278 “United Nations—Address before the General Assembly.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7183&st=&st1= [5 August 2006]. Deputy Secretary Anthony Lake’s six-month review of the Carter administration’s human rights policy stressed the importance of strengthening international human rights institutions. See Memo, Anthony Lake to CV, “The Human Rights Policy: An Interim Assessment,” N.D., 20, WHCF, Box: HU-1, Folder: 1/20/77- 1/20/81, JCPL. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 260-4.

153

ratification of four international human rights covenants, including Civil and Political

Rights (CAPR) and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESACR). Carter also

expressed his regret that world had “allowed its [United Nations'] human rights

machinery to either be “ignored” or “politicized.” To rectify this development, he called

on the U.N. Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) “to meet more often” and urged all

nations to extend the body their “fullest cooperation.” He also called for the United

Nations Human Rights Division to move from Geneva to New York so “the attention of

the press corps can stimulate us to deal honestly with this sensitive issue.”279

Some of the ways that Carter and other officials defended the goal of

strengthening international human rights institutions stand out as quite naïve in

retrospect. For example, Tuchman endorsed the goal of creating a U.N. Human Rights

Commissioner on the grounds that such a move might one day create an “apolitical

forum” capable of responding to a diverse “array of human sufferings.” Another

document described how working through multilateral institutions mitigated the chances

that the United States would “come into direct confrontation with the” country accused of

domestic misconduct.280

279 “United Nations—Address before the General Assembly.” See also Memo, Jessica Tuchman (JT) to ZB, “Human Rights Proposal,” 18 February 1977, 1-2, NSABM, Box 28, Folder: 2-4/77, JCPL. Carter remained committed to the concept of strengthening international human rights institutions and making the United States a more credible human rights model even though he appreciated the possibility that such a strategy could open up his nation to charges of human rights abuses in international forums. See Memo, Leslie Denend to ZB, “UN Human Rights Commission Citing of the U.S.,” 1 September 1978,” WHCF, Box HU-3, Folder: 9/1/78-12/31/78, JCPL.

280 Memo, JT to ZB, “Human Rights Proposal,” 18 February 1977. See also Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 28, 7 July 1977, 68-70. Available [Online]: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/prm/prm28.pdf [18 August 2007]. This document also explained how the “clearly defined human rights responsibilities of multilateral organizations” gave the United States legitimate documents to cite when raising the subject of human rights with other countries. See also Hodgman, “Détente and Dissidents,” 260-4. 154

Despite these shortcomings, officials took steps to combat the unwillingness of

U.N. institutions to challenge the domestic practices of communist countries. On 11

February, a U.S. representative raised the issue of Orlov’s arrest in the General

Assembly. Over the course of the next month, both he and Carter asked the UNHRC to

“request information from the Soviets on the arrest and detention of dissidents.” On 7

March 1978, members of the executive branch asked the commission to take a closer look at the problem of Soviet human rights violations. While such behavior may appear innocuous, Soviet internal documents show that orthodox policymakers viewed such developments with alarm. In a directive to the Soviet delegation attending the thirty- fourth session of UNHRC, the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko stressed the importance of clarifying “the illegality and the bankruptcy” of any actions contributing to the notion that “the UN carries the central responsibility for securing human rights in all

States.”281

Carter also took other steps designed to make the United States a more credible

human rights model. To improve the U.S. Final Act compliance record, he removed “all

restrictions on travel abroad by American citizens” and relaxed visa restrictions that

281 Memorandum for ZB, “US Government Initiatives on behalf of Human Rights in the USSR,” 17 , 2-4, Staff Office, BEA, Box 4, Folder: HRD and BOR, 2/80-12/80, JCPL. To combat the “globalization” of Soviet human rights violations mentioned in the previous chapter, the Foreign Minister also instructed the delegation to “stress” that the problem of human rights “is the responsibility of governments, which have taken on themselves the corresponding international obligations, and pertains to the sphere of their internal competency.” See “Resolution of the CC CPSU: Concerning Participation in the 34th session of the UN Human Rights Commission,” 19 January 1978,” V, 108-9 in Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations, NSA.

155 excluded foreign groups because of their political beliefs282 On 30 March, Carter told the

National Women’s Political Caucus that “our failure to pass the equal rights amendment hurts us as we try to set a standard of commitment to human rights throughout the world.” “I hope,” he continued, “that we can correct that defect by next year at the latest.”283 Well-aware of Soviet complaints, he supported Attorney General Griffin Bell's decision to carry out an investigation of the Wilmington 10 case, a controversial court decision in North Carolina that involved civil rights issues “stemming from desegregation-related violence.”284

The steps Carter took to illustrate the universal nature of the American human rights campaign failed to impress Soviet leaders. Brezhnev lambasted the President’s penchant for interfering in Soviet Union internal affairs and rejected “Washington's claims to teach others how to live.” In a private letter, Brezhnev warned Carter that

“[w]e do not recommend taxing our patience in any area of international politics, including the sphere of Soviet-American relations. There is no dealing with the Soviet

282 Third Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 4. See also Carter, Keeping Faith, 144-5. In practice, Carter proved sensitive to Soviet charges about the ways in which the United States practices violated the Helsinki Accords. As he asked Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on February 7 1977: “To what degree are we not complying with Basket III?” See “Handwritten Note from President to Cyrus Vance, dated 2/7/77 re Dissidents,” in Memo, Rick Hutchenson to ZB, “Dissidents, Vietnam, and CIA Operations,” 7 February 1977,” WHCF, Box HU-1, Folder: 1/20/77-1/20/81. See also Hodgman, Détente and the Dissidents,” 256.

283 During this meeting, he also discussed how the Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin complained to him about how Americans criticized the Soviet Union human rights practices even though “'you still haven't ratified the equal rights amendment.” See PPOP, 1977, Volume 1, 545

284 “See U.S. Probe of Case of ‘Wilmington 10’ Gives Activist Hope,” 14 February 1977, Washington Post, A3. See also Third Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 4; PPOP, 1977, Vol. I ,1105; Ibid., 1977, Volume II, 2123; and Ibid., 1978, Volume I, 323, 537, 695, and 1098.

156

Union that way.” Some Soviet press reports explained that Carter’s conduct endangered the prospects of signing an arms control agreement. Others insisted that he had initiated psychological warfare against the Soviet Union.285

The Kremlin’s displeasure with the Carter administration’s human rights campaign boiled over when Vance presented the administration’s SALT proposals in

Moscow near the end of March. Before the meeting took place, the Secretary of State went out of his way to emphasize that he did not plan to raise the issue of human rights or discuss individual dissenters. These words fell on deaf ears in Moscow. Brezhnev chose to denounce Carter’s human rights campaign for endangering the continuation of détente.

Because Vance’s new SALT proposal emphasized weapons reductions rather than limiting the growth rate of nuclear arsenals, the Soviets dismissed it and refused to make a counteroffer.286

The harsh Soviet reaction to U.S. government’s human rights campaign and the failure of Vance’s arms control negotiations in Moscow worried administration officials, including the President himself.287 While some scholars argue that Carter moderated his

285 Dobrynin, In Confidence, 390-1. “USSR International Affairs,” N.D., 2, Office of Public Liaison (OPL), Box 53, Folder: Human Rights, Soviet Jewry, 2/77-5/77, JCPL. See also John M. Howell, “The Carter Human Rights Policy as Applied to The Soviet Union,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1983): 286-295; and “Labor Leaders Hear Russian's Rights Appeal,” Washington Post, 26 February 1977, A8.

286 “Testing Carter,” 27; “The SALT Standoff, Time, 11 April 1977, 11.

287 PPOP, 1977, Volume II, 1206; and Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 155. See also “Interview With the Question-and-Answer Session With a Group of Publishers, Editors, and Broadcasters.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7726&st=adverse&st1=reaction [10 July 2006]. When thanking an author who wrote a favorable editorial about the administration’s strong defense of human rights in early March, Carter expressed his surprise “at the timidity of some leaders,” but also indicated that he had to be “cautious . . . about [the] possible adverse effect on those who already suffer.” See Letter, Carter to T.J. White, 8 March 1977, WHCF, C0-165, Folder: 3/1/77-3/15/77, JCPL. Shortly thereafter, he failed to answer a second letter Sakharov sent him and later declined to meet with Avital Shcharansky 157

efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union after Vance returned from Moscow,

the overall thrust of his administration’s behavior paints a more complicated picture.

From one angle, the harsh Soviet reaction made officials even more determined to

highlight the universal and even-handed nature of their human rights campaign. Echoing

arguments commonplace in the Human Rights Bureau, Brzezinski urged Carter to make

the American definition of human rights more consistent with international standards. As

he put it, this “broad concept” has “universal appeal” because of the ways in which it

addressed political, economic, and social problems. A more flexible definition would

help prevent the U.S. government from becoming involved in “every major civil rights

issue” or having to take “an overtly anti-Soviet position.” It would also “give us the

freedom to point out the most glaring abuses” without taking away “the necessary margin

of flexibility in dealing with most governments.”288 These words proved influential.

Two weeks after Carter analyzed this memorandum, Vance confirmed the U.S. embrace

of international human rights standards during a speech he delivered at the University of

Georgia.289

during her visit to the United States. See “The Carter Administration’s Morality Play,” Time, 7 March 1977, 11; and Vogelesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare.

288 Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report #9,” 16 April 1977, 1-2, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 1-15. See also Njolstad, Peacemaker and Troublemaker, 238-40. In his memoirs, Carter himself admitted that the administration at first defined human rights “too narrowly.” See Carter, Keeping Faith, 144.

289 On 1 April 1977, Vance delivered his speech about the U.S. commitment to human rights that affirmed Brzezinski’s larger arguments and made the U.S. definition the same as international standards. “Cyrus Vance, Law Day Speech on Humane Purposes of Foreign Policy,” in Walter Laquer and Barry Rubin, ed. The Human Rights Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 299-304. Olav Njolstad takes the same position in his work Peacemaker and Troublemaker, 239-241.

158

The redefinition of U.S. human rights standards does not mean that Carter

abandoned his efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. In the immediate

aftermath of Vance’s failed negotiations in Moscow, the president explained that the

“Soviets' reaction against me personally on the human rights issue is a misplaced aim. I

have no hatred for the Soviet people, and I believe that the pressure of world opinion

might be making itself felt on them and perhaps I am kind of a scapegoat for that adverse

reaction on their part.” On 2 June, Carter used a public address to reject charges that

Shcharansky had ever worked for the CIA. A few weeks later, he defended his universal

human rights campaign. If this policy “touches the Soviet Union and they interpret it as

intrusion, so be it.” “I don't believe,” he continued, “that there is a single leader of a

nation on Earth today who doesn't have within his or her consciousness a concern about

human rights--how do we appear to our own people, how do we appear to observers from

other nations?”290 Behind closed doors, he wrote to Brzezinski on 8 July that “I see no

need to change” how this administration has gone about promoting human rights across

the globe.291

This comment has special relevance because one day earlier Carter had approved

PRM-28, an internal study which contained the first official guidelines on how the executive branch should address the issue of Soviet human rights violations. Instead of deferring to Soviet objections, the document reiterated the importance of monitoring the

290 “The President’s News Conference.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7670&st=&st1= [17 June 2006].

291 Ibid.; “European Broadcast Journalists Question-and-Answer Session.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7432&st=struggle&st1=Soviet [10 August 2006]; “European Newspaper Journalists - Question-and-Answer Session.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7435&st=intend&st1=back+down [10 April 2007]. Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly Report #20,” 8 July 1977, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 16-31, JCPL. 159

Final Act compliance records of all signatories. It also favored the further strengthening

of U.S. radios on the grounds that such a program gave the U.S. government an excellent

way of elaborating “our human rights concerns directly to “audiences abroad” and

“foreign leaders.” The document endorsed these types of policies because the promotion

of human rights “supports the growth in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe of

democratic forces which may in time contribute to the development of more open

societies.” It also assists in the philosophical debate with the” USSR “as to the type of society worth developing.” 292 This point of view remained consistent. One month after

Carter approved PRM-28, he signed Presidential Directive (PD)-18, which confirmed the

importance of competing “politically with the Soviet Union by pursuing the basic

American commitment to human rights and national independence.”293

The importance that Carter and other officials placed on pursuing peaceful

ideological competition with the Soviet Union led them in the direction of supporting

transnational human rights activities. Instead of seeing NGOs as a threat to the

bureaucratic discretion of executive branch officials, PRM-28 praised the ways in which

these groups raised “international . . . and national awareness” about “human rights

concerns.” Because larger political concerns were always present, the document

recommended that the State Department Bureau of Public Affairs play a significant role

292 PRM-28, 58-60. Reflecting President Carter’s preference for careful, calibrated responses to Soviet human rights violations, the document urged administration officials to “remain firm but non-polemical” in their criticisms. It also warned about the dangers of too much public diplomacy. “We need not take a public stance on every human rights violation [in the Soviet Union], but we should not hesitate to speak out on important cases when circumstances warrant, e.g., the Shcharansky case.” Ibid., 72-4, 34.

293 Ibid, 18. See also and PD/NSC-18, 24 August 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/pddirectives/pd18.pdf [12 January 2006]. The larger goal of “reciprocal accommodation” definitely shaped the language of PRM-28. In particular, see Ibid., 18-9. 160

“in fostering domestic support for our human rights policy” while “facilitating interaction

with efforts abroad.” To accomplish this task, it called for a wide variety of measures,

including “increased cooperation with private organizations throughout the United States

concerned with human rights” and “public appearances by senior administration officials

that stress human rights.” It also suggested that the administration disseminate “material

on our human rights policy to opinion leaders and groups throughout the United

States.”294

These words were not just window dressing. A wide array of officials, including

Carter, took a number of steps to encourage non-governmental human rights activities.

Employing language that must have enraged Soviet leaders, Deputy Secretary of State

Warren Christopher told an audience in August that “the human rights initiative. . . . has a

resonance in the homes and hearts of people around the world . . . . because of the power

of ideas we are espousing.” “With the understanding and support of our citizens [and] leading private organizations,” he maintained, “this new policy will achieve historic results.” Carter sent personal letters to representatives of NGOs. On 2 February 1977, he thanked the President of the Christian Peace Conference for his kind words and prayers.

One month later, he congratulated Jerome Shestack, President of the International League of Human Rights, for giving various upper-echelon administration officials the recommendations of a conference entitled “Implementing a Human Rights Commitment in the United States Foreign Policy.”295

294 PRM -28, 10, 63. This document also called on the State Department to take a wide array of measures to stimulate public interest in human rights issues. See Ibid., 59-62.

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When Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1977, Carter

sent the organization a telegram that read: “Through this high recognition, the Nobel committee has indeed honored those whose work symbolizes the universal quest for world peace and justice.” A short time later, he sent a short note to the Chairman of

Global Affairs for the National Council of Catholic Laity. “I warmly commend your plans,” he wrote, “to promote educational programs” that will increase “public awareness” about the appalling level of governmental human rights violations still taking place in the world.296

On 22 November 1977, Mondale spoke at a B'nai B'rith awards ceremony in

recognition of what the dissenters Sakharov and Shcharansky had accomplished for the

cause of human rights. He urged the attendees to work for the cause of human rights

across the globe because the issue had now become “the moral agenda of our time.

“Those who seek to deny individual rights,” he continued, “must answer for their actions

in the court of world opinion.” One month later, Public Liaison officer Joyce Starr

delivered a similar speech to the Washington Council on Soviet Jewry (WCSJ). Because

documents such as the Final Act had given human rights an "international status,” she

commented, the executive branch supported the efforts of transnational actors to hold

295 Department of State Bulletin, 29 August 1977, 273; Telegram, JC to Christian Peace Conference, 10 February 1977, WHCF, CO 165, Folder: 1/20/77-2/28/77-JCPL; and Letter, JC to Jerome Shestack, 9 March 1977, WHCF, Box: HU-1, Folder: 3/1/77-3/31/77, JCPL.

296 Telegram, JC to AI, October 1977, Human Rights/Amnesty International Collection, Box 1, Folder 1977, NSA; and Letter, JC to Mr. Ford Niehaus, 14 October 1977, OPL, Box 54, Folder: Human Rights, Interreligious Task Force—10/77, JCPL. In a move that combined the impulse of “globalizing” the issue of human rights and political motivations, Carter followed Press Secretary Powell’s suggestion that he send private letters of encouragement to individuals who had written favorable editorials about his human rights policy. See Memo, Jody Powell to JC, “Thank You Notes for favorable editorials,” 23 February 1977, WHCF, Box HU-1, Folder: 1/20/77-2/28/77, JCPL; Letter, JC to Charles Buxton, 28 February 1977, Ibid., JCPL; and Letter, JC to Jim Wells, 21 April 1977, Ibid., JCPL.

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governments accountable for their behavior. “[W]e encourage members of Congress and

the people to write to Soviet leaders about specific cases” so that they will “not be

surprised at the political consequences which may arise” as a result of U.S. public’s concern with the cause of “Soviet Jewry.”297

Carter confirmed the importance of encouraging and supporting transnational

human rights activities in March 1978. After reviewing several drafts, he added language

to PD-30 that called on officials to work with “private groups” such as “Amnesty

International” to raise international awareness about human rights issues. The

administration’s emphasis on stimulating non-governmental activities received a boost

when the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted a

new procedure “permitting individuals to file complaints of human rights violations in

areas” of the organization’s “jurisdiction.” A short time later, the UNHRC adopted the

same policy as UNESCO and agreed to “hear complaints from individuals and non-

governmental organizations” about human rights abuses.298

Besides supporting transnational human rights activities, the administration also

held the Soviets accountable for their internal behavior at the Final Act follow-up

297 “Text of Vice-President Walter Mondale’s Address to The National Commission Luncheon of the Anti- Defamation League of B’nai B’rith at the Hyatt Regency Hotel,” November 1977, OPL, Box 75, Folder: HRR, 3/77-11/77; and Memo, Marilyn Haft (MH) to Midge Costanza (MC), “Soviet Jewry: Speech to the Jewish Community Council, 12:00 Noon, December 12 1977,” 15 December 1977, OPL, Box 55, Folder: 3/77-12/77, JCPL.

298 President Carter’s comments on the rough draft of PD-30 can be found at: http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/pddirectives/pd30.pdf [28 August 2007]. See also PPOP, 1977, Volume 1, 1050; Memo, Lincoln Broomfield to ZB, “Classified Annex,” 16 January 1981, 36-7, BM, Box 34, Folder: NSC Accomplishments, Human Rights, JCPL; Lincoln Broomfield, “From Ideology to Program Policy: Tracking the Carter Human Rights Policy,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 2 (Autumn 1982): 11-2; and Schneider, “A New Administration’s New Policy,” 12-14. See also Department of State Bulletin, 29 August 1977, 831-2. See also State Department Bulletin, 23 May 1977, 506-7; and PRM-28, 10. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 313-16.

163 meeting in Belgrade.299 Determined to put the United States in the best possible position to engage in peaceful ideological competition with Moscow, Carter signed CAPR and

ESACR just before the main session of this meeting began. During the plenary sessions,

U.S. delegates went out of their way to buttress the credibility of American complaints

about other signatories’ compliance records. Lead U.S. delegate Arthur Goldberg

described how “President Carter . . . [has] said explicitly that we have to do better at

home.” “In spite of the blemishes on our record,” he pointed out, “the point to be made is

that the governmental institutions of the United States are working to eliminate injustices rather than to deny them.”300 Well aware of Soviet complaints about U.S. internal behavior, another delegate explained how Carter’s vocal support of ratifying the Equal

Rights Amendment showed the administration’s commitment to furthering U.S. compliance with Principle VII and international human rights standards.301

After defending the credibility of American criticisms, the U.S. delegation attacked suggestions that nations could seal themselves off from the “globalization” of

299 Evidence suggests that Carter viewed the Belgrade conference as an excellent way of comparing American and Soviet human rights practices. See “The President’s News Conference.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7670&st=&st1= [17 June 2006]. See also PPOP, 1977, Volume II, 994.

300 Department of State Telegram, “Belgrade CSCE—Ambassador Goldberg’s Statement on Human Rights,” 1 November, OPL, Box 75, Folder: Ottawa Conference, 12/77, JCPL. For Ambassador Goldberg’s opening speech at Belgrade, see Department of State Bulletin, 14 November 1977, 674-80. See also State Department Special Report, “The Belgrade Followup Meeting to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.”

301 To buttress this line of argument, U.S. delegates also emphasized how the United States had “liberalized” visa restrictions and made it easier for Americans to travel abroad. They also reported that Carter had signed and intended to seek ratification of several U.N. human rights covenants. See “Basket I Statement by R. Spencer Oliver,” 12 December 1977, 1, Box 37, Folder: Robert Spencer Oliver, Belgrade, Main Meeting, 10/77, Records of the Commission on the Security and Cooperation in Europe (RCSCE), U.S. Helsinki Commission Files (USHCF), National Archives (NA), Washington, D.C.

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human rights issues. Time and time again, they explained how the provisions of the

Helsinki Accords and other international human rights documents gave signatories’ no

right to cite “internal affairs” to dodge questions about how they treated their citizens.

During one of the plenary sessions, Goldberg indicated that every political system “can

be held accountable by other nations of the international community for conforming to . .

. certain minimum international standards of justice in the field of human rights as well as social and economic problems.” In response to a Soviet delegate’s argument that examining the implementation of human rights would only “undermine the bridges of understanding . . . built over the last decade between the participating states,” Goldberg replied that those bridges are only as strong as their foundations. “It is the primary role of this conference,” he concluded, “to strengthen the foundations so that détente can have a strong, enduring and noble edifice” whose “practical benefits” private citizens can see in their “daily lives.”302

These words could not prevent the Warsaw Pact nations from blocking the

signing the concluding document that made specific references to the problem of human

rights violations. However unfortunate, this shortcoming needs to be put in perspective.

In an international forum, U.S. delegates succeeded in defending the right of private

citizens to hold signatories accountable for their internal behavior. Deifying diplomatic

conventions against naming specific names, Goldberg described how the Soviet

government’s imprisonment of Orlov, Ginsburg, and Shcharansky proved its inability to

302 Department of State Telegram, “Belgrade CSCE—Ambassador Goldberg’s Statement on Human Rights”; and Department of State Telegram, “Ambassador Goldberg’s Statement in Plenary November 9 Summing Up Belgrade Meeting After Six Weeks and Implementation of Human Rights Commitments,” November 1977, OPL, Box 75, Folder: Ottawa Conference, 12/77, JCPL. 165

tolerate non-governmental activities sanctioned by the Final Act. His subordinates

behaved in a similar manner. They even took time to cite the names of Ukrainian

Helsinki monitors who had been imprisoned for exercising their basic human rights.303

Many critics have overlooked the Belgrade conference because of the

administration’s preference for using careful, calibrated public and private acts to show

American displeasure with Soviet internal behavior. After the Kremlin began arresting fewer prominent dissenters in the summer of 1977 in preparation for the Belgrade

conference, Carter responded by making fewer specific references to Soviet human rights

violations than he had in the past. When this trend continued and Jewish emigration

levels rose, he chose to defend his commitment in public by making periodic references

to Belgrade. He also described how the United States had once again become a “beacon

of light to the rest of the world” and had helped raise international awareness about

human rights violations. Facing charges both at home and abroad that the U.S. human

rights campaign had become less active, Brzezinski advised the President in October

1977 that he “might have to speak out again publicly on the issue [of human rights] to

disabuse the Soviets and . . . head off domestic charges that you are backing off human

rights.” Instead of heeding this advice, Carter told him not to worry because Soviet

303 Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 146; and Department of State Telegram, “Belgrade CSCE—Ambassador Goldberg’s Statement on Human Rights.” The wealth of information the U.S. delegation had about conditions in the Soviet Union and individual dissenters comes across in the USHCF. See Untitled Hand written notes, Box 37, Folder: Belgrade, Human Rights, RCSCE, USHCF, NA. See also Department of State Telegram, “Ambassador Goldberg’s Statement in Plenary November 9 Summing Up Belgrade Meeting After Six Weeks and Implementation of Human Rights Commitments,” November 1977; and Department of State Telegram, “Belgrade CSCE—US Basket Three Presentation to Closed Plenary October 13, 1977,” OPL, Box 75, Folder: Ottawa Conference, 12/77, JCPL.

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attacks on the U.S. delegation in Belgrade “are helping” the image of the United States as

an even-handed human rights defender.304

Around the same time, Carter also attempted to convince Soviet leaders not to let

human rights issues stand in the way of taking concrete steps to improve U.S.-Soviet

relations. At a private meeting on 9 September 1977, he told the Soviet Foreign Minister

Andrei Gromyko about all the ways the United States and Soviet Union could work together to help solve important global problems. When he raised the issue of

Shcharansky’s arrest, Gromyko became angry and argued that “such questions have an

infinitesimal significance” and “can only harm the climate of our relations.”305

In response to these harsh words, Carter pointed out that “[t]here were no words

of criticism as such toward the Soviet Union or Brezhnev personally” in contrast to

negative portrayals of himself in the Soviet press, which he hoped would subside. He then uttered an amazing volley of statements, beginning with his hope that

Soviet-American relations will constantly improve. I would suffer a complete political fiasco as President if this does not happen. In other words, I would have betrayed . . . [the] confidence my own people. . . . The goal of constant improvement of relations with the Soviet Union is a matter of first priority for me. There is no more important problem for me.306

304 “’I Don’t Intend to Lose,” 2 May 1977, Newsweek; and Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly Report #33,” 21 October 1977, 3, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 31-41, JCPL. During this time period, Carter preferred to speak about his general commitment to promoting human rights throughout the world. For example, he would say things like: “2 years ago . . . the subject of human rights would be a rarity among heads of state, but now, even the most abusive governments, there is a concern ‘what does the rest of the world think about me, what will happen if I persecute this group or bring a legal charge against this person.” See PPOP, 1978, Vol. I, 237.

305 “Record of a Conversation between Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and Carter, 23 September 1977” in U.S.-Soviet Relations and the Turn Toward Confrontation, 1977-1980—New Russian and East German Documents, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]

306 Ibid. Carter had already expressed such sentiments as early as 4 March. See “Carter’s Letter to Brezhnev,” 14 February 1977 in The Path to Disagreement: U.S.-Soviet Communications Leading to 167

At the same time, “[w]e do not believe that that the Shcharansky affair lacks significance.

I did not blow it up. It concerns broad segments of the American public.” In reference to

Gromyko’s concerns about American human rights practices, he remarked that “the

concern you expressed about human rights in our country, as well as our public concern over this question in the Soviet Union, could lead to a broadening of human rights in both countries.” In the future, “I hope that both sides will exert necessary restraint and that

you will not allow openly expressed concern over these issues in the USA to spoil our

relations.”307

These statements are revealing. They help illustrate how Carter’s ideological

underpinnings and commitment to forging a “reciprocal accommodation” shaped U.S.

efforts to promote human rights in the USSR. At least in part, Carter preferred a

calibrated strategy because he identified with the inherent strengths of democratic

governments and the universal appeal of human rights. He saw no reason why the United

States should give up on the larger task of forging cooperative links with the Brezhnev

regime in vital areas such as arms control. In retrospect, Carter also appears to have shared Vance’s and Marshall Shulman’s (State Department Adviser on Soviet Affairs)

view of Soviet leaders as essentially pragmatic policymakers capable of adapting

themselves to larger changes in the international environment. Based on this assumption,

he held fast to the position that expressions of goodwill tempered with realistic

Vance’s March 1977 Trip to Moscow, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004].

307 “Record of a Conversation between Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and Carter,” 23 September 1977. 168

bargaining could convince Soviet leaders to change their internal behavior over time and

sign agreements consistent with U.S. interests.

Besides retaining a faith in the efficacy of realistic negotiations, Carter shared

Vance’s and Shulman’s fear that any sharp deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations would

only make the Kremlin more prone to crack down on dissident activities. He made this

position clear on 21 July 1977. “The experience of our own country this last century,” he

told the American public, “has proven that an atmosphere of peaceful cooperation is far more conducive to an increased respect for human rights than an atmosphere of belligerence or warlike confrontation.”308 Carter’s firm belief in the lessons of the U.S.

civil rights movement and the transformative power of promoting ideals (idealpolitik)

also predisposed him to follow a calibrated strategy. In the same speech in which he

dismissed Americans’ “inordinate fear of communism,” he remarked: “I fully understand

the limits of moral suasion, “[b]ut I also believe it is a mistake to undervalue the power of

words and of the ideas that words embody.” Because the leaders of “totalitarian” regimes

understand that “words are action,” they persecute “dissidents” for the words they use

and the ideals they espouse.309

The collective appeal of the positions outlined above help account for why many

officials expected Soviet leaders to moderate their international and domestic behavior

308 “Charleston, South Carolina Remarks at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Southern Legislative Conference.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7852&st=&st1= [13 July 2006].

309 “University of Notre Dame--Address at Commencement Exercises at the University.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7552&st=Notre&st1=Dame [10 August 2007]. It appears that Brzezinski, not the State Department, wrote the phrase “inordinate fear of communism”. See “Discussant: David L. Aron,” in Ugrinsky, ed. Jimmy Carter, 369.

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over the long term. On 26 February 1977, Brzezinski informed the President that the

Soviets “have stopped short of linking human rights to security issues” and look forward

to discussing arms control proposals with Vance next month in Moscow. Soviet wariness

to engage in confrontation on this issue,” he assured the President, “is probably

reinforced by their concern over the possible contagion of the issue in Eastern Europe.”

No matter which way you look the problem of human rights violations, the Soviets “have

an incentive to be firm but not to allow the [human rights] situation to escalate.”310

Even after the harsh Soviet reaction to the Carter administration’s human rights

campaign and Vance’s SALT proposal, Brzezinski remained optimistic about the future

trajectory of U.S.-Soviet relations. On 24 June 1977, he told the President that “the

Soviets have applied varying tactics to neutralize” dissent, “but it continues.” Because

the problem of Soviet human rights violations had now become a global issue, “the U.S. .

. . has the power to greatly aggravate the Soviet dilemma.” This situation points to “an

eventual turn in Soviet policy back toward something resembling détente.” Even if such

a change does not take place over the short term, “we still have most of the high cards

[necessary] . . . to shape Soviet policy” in ways favorable to U.S. interests. Expressing

his general agreement with Brzezinski’s arguments, Carter wrote “good” on the first page

of the report.311

310 Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report #2,” 26 February 1977, 1-2, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 1-15, JCPL.

311 Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report #18,” 24 June 1977, 3-4, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 16-30, JCPL. Cyrus Vance also believed in the eventual moderation of Soviet behavior. See Vance, Hard Choices, 105. See also Petrus Buwalda, They Did Not Dwell Alone: Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, 1967-1990 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 132.

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The belief that members of the Brezhnev regime would have little choice but to

moderate their behavior over the long term or accommodate themselves to U.S. human

rights criticisms proved a profound misjudgment. Once the Belgrade conference

concluded, the Soviets convicted Orlov of “anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced him to a

seven-year prison term followed by five years of internal exile. They also convicted

several Ukrainian and Georgian Helsinki monitors, as well as the prominent refuseniks

Ida Nudel and Vladimir Slepak.312 In the summer of 1978, the Soviets put Ginsburg,

Shcharansky, and Maria Slepak (wife of Vladimir) on trial and convicted them of various

offenses related to monitoring Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Accords.

Shcharansky’s trial received worldwide attention because the Soviets also convicted him

of espionage even though Carter had publicly announced that he had never worked for

the CIA. By July 1978, the Soviets had imprisoned or exiled twenty members of the

Moscow Helsinki Watch Group.313

These developments raised the question of how Carter would show Soviet leaders

U.S. displeasure with their internal behavior. Having rejected the option of linking progress in SALT negotiations to Soviet domestic and international behavior, he had the options of using economic sanctions or reductions in cultural exchanges to penalize the

Kremlin for its crack down on dissent. Evidence suggests that he preferred not to use either option, although he never ruled out the possibility of using economic penalties to

312 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VII, 48-9. See also “Human Rights Developments in the USSR, January-May 1978,” NLC-6-79-6-15-7, JCPL. Note: Carter reviewed this document.

313 Fitzpatrick, The Moscow Helsinki Monitors, 23-9; Fourth Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), 8; Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VII, 108. See also “Moscow Begins Scharansky Trial, Three Others,” New York Times, 11 July 1978, A1. 171 enhance the U.S. government’s ability to shape Soviet behavior.314 With these options off the table, he gradually moved in the direction of using “indirect” linkages to warn the

Soviets that their international and domestic behavior jeopardized the future trajectory of

U.S.-Soviet relations. In January 1978, he indicated in public for the first time that

“continued” human rights abuses would increase the difficulties of concluding and ratifying a SALT treaty. On 7 March, the U.S. State Department followed suit and released a statement indicating how the mistreatment of Shcharansky would have an adverse impact on U.S.-Soviet relations. It also condemned the Slepak and Nudel verdicts and asked for transcripts of several dissident trials.315

Behind closed doors, Vance voiced American displeasure with the Soviet government’s treatment of Shcharansky during his SALT negotiations with Gromyko from 20-21 April 1978. On 11 May, Derian “spoke out” for the imprisoned Ukrainian

Helsinki Monitor when meeting with a Soviet writers delegation. Two

314 Before the summer of 1978, Carter took a number of steps to increase the scope of U.S.-Soviet exchanges. For example, he helped create Friendship Force, a private non-governmental organization that sent individuals all over the world to live with host families. See the “Friendship Force.” Available [Online]: http://www.friendshipforcetwincities.org/ [10 October 2006]. For descriptions of other efforts, see “CSCE Briefing Book: International Parliamentary Union Spring Conference, 10-16 April, 1977,” N.D, Box 48, Folder: 04/77 2nd IPU Conference, RCSCE, USHCF, NA; and “U.S. Position,” N.D., Box 37, Folder: Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, RCSCE, USHCF, NA. See Third Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 15.

For the best account of Carter’s ambivalent attitude toward U.S.-Soviet economic relations, see Njolstad, Peacemaker and Troublemaker, 267-72. See also “Weekly Report #18.” See also See Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 31. Available [Online]: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/prm/prm31.pdf [26 August 2007]; Letter, JC to Henry Jackson, 26 July 1977, Office of Congressional Liaison, Box 63, Folder: Correspondence, Jackson, 1977, JCPL; Presidential Directive/NSC 18. Available [Online]: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pd/pd18.pdf [26 August 2007]; Samuel Huntington, “Trade, Technology, and Leverage: Economic Diplomacy,” Foreign Policy 32 (Fall 1978): 63-80; and “Winston-Salem, North Carolina Address at Wake Forest University.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=30516&st=&st1= [10 August 2007].

315 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 674. See also “President’s News Conference.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=30852&st=&st1= [10 January 2006]. 172

weeks later, Carter informed Gromyko in private that Soviet human rights violations and

Soviet-Cuban conduct in Africa threatened to weaken the foundations of stable and

peaceful U.S.-Soviet relations. In reference to human rights, he expressed his concern

that Shcharansky and Ginsburg would receive sentences similar to Orlov’s that in

practice exceeded the penalties outlined in the Soviet criminal code. Although Carter

recognized the Soviet government’s right to “act in these matters as it saw fit,” he “did

have to point out” that these trials would hurt U.S.-Soviet relations and impact matters

“such as trade and scientific and cultural exchanges.”316

Despite Vance’s best efforts to reduce Soviet-American tensions and find more

common ground between the two nations, the Kremlin proved unwilling to halt the trials

of well-known dissenters.317 This development tested Carter patience. Unhappy with

Soviet intransigence, he moved in the direction of direct linkage and cancelled a cabinet

member’s trip to Moscow scheduled to take place on 30 May. One week later, he also

delivered an address at the U.S. Naval Academy that challenged Soviet leaders to adapt

themselves to an international environment consistent with U.S. values and norms. As he

put it, the behavior of Moscow has “demonstrated that the Soviet system cannot tolerate

freely expressed ideas or notions of loyal opposition and the free movement of peoples.”

Its “form of government is becoming increasingly unattractive to other nations” that

“even Marxist-Leninist groups no longer look on the Soviet Union as a model to be

316 See “Memorandum for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,” 2-3; and Memorandum of Conversation, “SALT, CTB, Africa, Human Rights,” 27 May 1978,” IV-513-514 in Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations.

317 See “Record of the Main Content of the Conversation Between A.A. Gromyko and the U.S. Cyrus Vance,” 31 May 1978, IV-54 in Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations.

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imitated.” Given the inherent economic, political, military, and ideological strengths of

the United States, Soviet leaders had it within their grasp to chose “either confrontation

or cooperation” with the United States.318

When these words failed to halt the trials of dissenters, many concluded that

Soviet conduct had put the United States on the defensive. On 7 July, NSC staffer Jessica

Tuchman wrote a memorandum to Brzezinski that referred to the Kremlin’s behavior as

“the clearest test we have faced . . . on the human rights policy. . . . [W]e should respond appropriately and quickly.” “If we do not respond,” she warned, “the Soviets will feel free to crack down even harder, and it will not be difficult for U.S. press and public

opinion to draw the obvious connection.” Brzezinski agreed with this analysis.

Disturbed that Carter had received thousands of postcards from the Soviet Union calling on him to free U.S. political prisoners, he wrote to the President that “your credibility on human rights is now at stake.”319

Since Carter agreed with Brzezinski’s advice, he went out of his way to show

Soviet leaders that the United States meant business. On 14 July 1978, Carter told an

audience that the behavior of Soviet leaders “reveals a weakness in their system of not

being able to withstand the lonely voice of a dissenter or an accurate newspaper article

318 “United States Naval Academy Address at the Commencement Exercises.” Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=30915&st=&st1= [12 December 2006]. Robert Strong makes a strong argument that Carter wrote the bulk of this speech and it accurately reflected his views at the time. See Robert A. Strong, “Jimmy Carter’s Annapolis Address on U.S.-Soviet relations,” Miller Center Journal 1 (1994): 35-54.

319 Memo, JT to ZB, “Human Rights,” 7 July 1978, WHCF, CO 165, Folder: 3/1/78-4/30/78; and Memo, ZB to JC, “NSC Weekly Report #66,” 7 July 1978, 1-2, 4, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 61-71, JCPL. 174

not printed in the Soviet Union.”320 He also issued a separate statement that read: “We

are all sobered by this reminder that, so late in the 20th century, a person can be sent to

jail simply for asserting his basic human rights. The struggle for human liberties is long

and difficult, but it will be won. There is no power on earth that can long delay its

progress.”321 Echoing this theme, Brzezinski called the Shcharansky trial a landmark

event because “we know that the suffering of the Jews has been connected with . . . the

quest of mankind for higher standards” in behavior.322

Besides producing verbal protests, the dissident trials raised the issue of how the

U.S. government could show its displeasure with Soviet conduct in a manner more

forceful than public and private statements. On 12 July, Tuchman sent Brzezinski a

memorandum warning about how Congress might pass punitive measures that would

make the executive branch look weak. She explained how Senator Henry Jackson’s

proposed bill requiring a 90-day suspension in issuing trade licenses to the Soviet Union

raised the possibility that “the President would be pre-empted on most of the specific next

steps that are being considered vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.” To prevent this development,

she urged Carter to “suspend all trade, government-sponsored exchanges, and technology

transfer with the Soviet Union for 90 days.” As Tuchman told Brzezinski, “political

320 “Statement by Department Spokesman: Shcharansky Trial,” RL, Box 46, Folder: 4/78-4/79, JCPL; “After the Russian Trials,” U.S. News and World Report, 24 July 1978, 12; and “Moscow Begins Scharansky Trial, Three Others,” New York Times, 11 July 1978, A5; and Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 674.

321 “Statement by the President,” 14 July 1978, RL, Box 46, Folder: Soviet Jewry, 4/78-4/79

322 “Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs by Robert Pierpoint, CBS, on the banks of the Rhine River, Germany,” BM, 17 July 1978, 5-6, Box 2, Folder: Brzezinski Interviews, 5/78-5/79, JCPL.

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realities demand a rethinking of your desire to calibrate the U.S. response so as to save

stronger actions for later sentencing and subsequent acts.” “If we wait it will be too late,”

she lamented. “Congress will have preempted all but the most extreme steps” and we

“will reap nothing but a political loss.”323

Brzezinski once again agreed with the main thrust of Tuchman’s

recommendations and told Carter that words alone would not show Soviet leaders that

“we are seriously concerned” about the trials. Instead of advocating measures as far

reaching as those of Tuchman, however, he suggested that the President consider

“limiting either some exchanges with the Soviets or the flow of U.S. technology to the

Soviet Union.”324 Consistent with the Carter’s preference for calibrated responses, he

cancelled two government missions to the Soviet Union and “postponed the U.S.S.R.

Science-Technology meeting.” He also cancelled the scheduled visits of the heads of

the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Housing and Urban

Development. On 24 July, he announced that most high-level official visits to the

Soviet Union “were being deferred in protest over Soviet violations of human

rights.”325

Carter also agreed to adopt the National Security Council’s longstanding plans for

tighter restrictions on U.S. trade with the Soviet Union. The State, Commerce, and

Treasury Departments objected to such an action, but Carter wanted to send the Soviets a

323 Memo, JT to ZB, “Human Rights-USSR,” 12 July 1978, BM, Box 28, Folder: 5/77-11/78, JCPL.

324 ZB to JC, “Weekly Report #66.”

325 “After the Russian Trials,” U.S. News and World Report, 24 July 1978, 12; and “Moscow Begins Scharansky Trial, Three Others,” New York Times, 11 July 1978, A1; “The ,” 24 July 1978, Newsweek, 20-8; “Handling the ,” Ibid., 31-2; and Quotation taken from Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 674. 176

clear message that their behavior had tested the patience of the U.S. government.326 He

directed the Commerce Department “to put oil production technology and related

equipment on the Commodity Control List.”327 He also declined to approve the export

license required for sending the Soviet government a high-powered computer and

deferred decisions on the export of drill-bit factory and an electron beam welder.328

While Carter called these measures “moderate” in public, the United States for the first time had placed restrictions on trade with the Soviet Union for reasons other than specific goods’ contribution to Soviet military power. In theory at least, the U.S. government now restricted goods “for which the Soviets had a critical need, and for which they were largely dependent upon U.S. supply.”329

Carter may have wanted to show Soviet leaders that their domestic conduct

jeopardized Soviet-American relations, but he refused to withdraw from the SALT

negotiations that took place in Geneva from 12-13 July. During this meeting, Vance met

with Shcharansky’s wife, Avital, and raised the issue of human rights with his Soviet

counterparts. Despite these gestures, Carter’s preference for remaining an active

participant in arms control negotiations opened his administration to charges of

weakness and an unwillingness to challenge Soviet behavior in any sort fundamental

326 See Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 323. Consistent with this viewpoint, PRM-42, which appeared on 24 August 1978, called for the creation of study that outlined the best ways “to mobilize and apply our economic and technological advantages in the competition with the Soviet Union.” See Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 42. Available [Online]: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/prm/prm42.pdf [23 August 2006]. 327 To ship a good on the Commodity Control List, an American company needed to receive a license from the American government.

328 Njolstad, Peacemaker and Troublemaker, 273.

329 Ibid., 277. 177 way.330 For example, a U.S. News and World Report article reported that “there is a feeling in the Soviet capital that SALT is so important to Carter that the Russians can get away with almost anything, anywhere.” In the opinion of a Newsweek columnist, “Carter

found and held to the calibrated response he sought; his real problem was that, having

encouraged the dissidents, he was finally powerless to help them.”331

The behavior of Carter’s subordinates did little to undermine these judgments. As the U.S. reaction to the dissident trials played themselves out in July, U.N. ambassador

Andrew Young made a statement that must have been well received in Moscow. He caused a political explosion in the United States when he told a French reporter that the

Soviet government’s trial of Shcharansky should have “no real effect on the course of détente” because “we also have hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in our jails

that I would call political prisoners.” 332 Without consulting Carter or the NSC, the

Commerce and State Departments later approved the sale of the same drill-bit factory and electron-beam welder that the President had earlier suspended pending a future review.333

330 During this meeting, Vance told Gromyko that the recent trials had “exacerbated relations” and “led to a gap between us on a number of issues.” Four days after these negotiations ended, Avital met with Walter Mondale and received a telephone call from Rosalyn Carter expressing her support for the cause of Soviet dissent. See “Memorandum for Zbigniew Brzezinski,” 3. See also “Ginzburg Gives 8-year Sentence”; “Vance-Gromyko Hopeful on SALT Pact Despite Trials”; and Vance Gromyko Hopeful on SALT,” Washington Post, 14 July 1978, A1. See also “U.S.-Soviet Talks Must Continue, Vance Declares,” New York Times, 11 July 1978, A1; and Memorandum of Conversation, “Vance-Gromyko Meeting,” 13 July 1978,” in Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations; and PPOP, 1978, Volume II, 323.

331 “After the Russian Trials,” 13; “At the Wall,” Newsweek, 24 July 1978, 18; and James Burnham, “Reflections on the Trials,” National Review, 18 August 1978, 1009.

332 “At the Wall,” 18; and “Andy Young, Dissident,” Newsweek, 24 July 1978, 22. See also Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, “Establishing a Viable Human Rights Policy.” Available [Online]: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human%20Rights%20Documents/Kirkpatrick_HRPolicy.html [10 October 2006].

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Even if the missteps described above had not taken the place, the Carter

administration’s preference for forging a “reciprocal accommodation” all but invited

accusations of weakness. Of course, the “absolute” commitment Carter made to the cause

of human rights during his inaugural address shaped this viewpoint. Whenever he

refrained from condemning Soviet behavior in public forums, many observers concluded

that the executive branch’s willingness to challenge Soviet internal behavior had

lessened.334 No matter what the administration did to show displeasure with Soviet

behavior, many critics remained convinced that the President could nevertheless still do

more. Congressmen Norman Lent (R-NY) expressed these sentiments well during this

testimony before the U.S. Helsinki Commission in July 1978. In reference to the

problem of Soviet human rights violations, he suggested that

It is not sufficient to show official concern merely by canceling the visit of some U.S. scientists to the Soviet Union, especially while permitting Secretary of State Vance to meet with Foreign minister Gromyko at Geneva . . . . President Carter has spoken out strongly about the importance of human rights in the world and his dedication to that cause. Now is the time for action to back up the rhetoric.335

While many critics have overstated how the Carter administration abandoned its effort to promote human rights in the Soviet Union, they have every reason to argue that his approach to U.S.-Soviet relations ignored some basic realities. The ways in which

Soviet leaders equated dissent to domestic subversion precluded any possibility that the

Kremlin would find a U.S. human rights campaign legitimate ideological competition.

333 This move enraged Carter, but he decided not to punish anyone. He feared the domestic political consequences of such an action. See Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 324.

334 See Ruechel, “Politics and Morality Revisited,” 30; Hoffman, “The Hell of Good Intentions,” 3; Schlesinger, “Human Rights and the American Tradition,” 503.

335 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VII, 106. Senator Dole gave similar advice. See Ibid., 33. 179

Daniel Moynihan made this point as well as anyone when he wrote that the Soviets “are necessarily singled out by any serious human-rights offensive” because they reject

“liberty as a ‘bourgeois’ illusion.” No amount of goodwill, patience, or stressing

Brezhnev’s peaceful intentions could have changed this fundamental reality or

transformed Moscow’s hostile attitude toward dissenters.336

Carter’s identification with U.S. civil rights movement also led him to make

some unsound assumptions. He appears to have viewed human rights as the basis for an

international ideology capable of uniting disparate nations, including the Soviet Union, in

a common effort aimed at improving the treatment of private citizens. Such a viewpoint

failed to place enough weight on the how Moscow’s fear of national uprisings shaped

their attitudes toward human rights.337 Despite all his statements about the powerful

example of democracy, Carter indeed fell short of advancing the position that the Soviets

needed to adopt the governmental institutions necessary for democratic practices to

flourish.338 Instead, he remained convinced that a mixture of calibrated responses and

identifying the United States with the nebulous concept of social and economic rights

336 Moynihan, “The Politics of Human Rights,” 24.

337 Tony Smith makes a similar argument. See Ibid., America’s Mission, 264-5. Although contemporary CIA reports sometimes questioned the seriousness of Soviet leaders, they nevertheless accurately explained just how much Soviet leaders hated dissenters and feared the effects of their activities. For example, see “Soviet Foreign Policy at the Crossroads,” 8 July 1977; “Soviet Objectives and Tactics at the Belgrade Conference,” 1 May 1977; “The Soviet View of the Dissident Problem Since Helsinki,” 1 May 1977; “Soviet-U.S. Relations: A Six Month Perspective,” N.D.; “Moscow and the Eurocommunists: Where Next?,” 1 April 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.foia.cia.gov/ [10 June 2007]; “The Spectrum of Soviet Dissent,” NLC-6-78-8-25-5, JCPL; and “Dissident Activity in East Europe: An Overview,” 1 April 1977, NLC-7-17-5-4-7, JCPL. See Memo, ZB to Walter Mondale, “Origins of Soviet Campaign Against Dissidents,’ 19 July 1977, NLC-28-23-3-2-1, JCPL.

338 I find Joshua Muravchik’s arguments on this subject convincing and well-argued. See Ibid., The Uncertain Crusade, 53-74. 180

held out the possibility of coaxing Soviet leaders in the direction of moderation and

eventual internal reform—a view that increased Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union

only fueled. Such viewpoints pushed aside the basic reality that the adoption of institutions necessary for the proper functioning of representative government ran in direct opposition to how the Soviet system operated in practice.

The Helsinki Accords, Private Citizens, and the Fight Against Bureaucratic Discretion

The task of sorting out the complex ways in which transnational actors shaped the administration’s approach to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union must begin

with the obvious. Carter and other officials may have appreciated the role private

citizens could play in “globalizing” human rights issues, but they also grasped that these individuals and Congress wanted to hold Carter accountable for his “absolute” commitment to human rights. On a regular basis, members of Congress and private citizens sent letters to the executive branch expressing either their support for or grievances with the executive branch’s efforts to help individual dissenters and/or promote human rights in the Soviet Union. They also sent Carter letters about the importance of securing the right of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The high- level of Congressional and public interest in human rights meant that officials had little choice but to forge a policy designed to enhance the executive branch’s domestic credibility on the issue. As PRM-28 warned: “There is the potential cost if we do not pursue a human rights policy---a backlash of public cynicism and Congressional 181

impatience and distrust, which may have an inhibiting or detrimental effect on the whole range of the Administration's foreign policy.”339

These sentiments are important because executive branch officials often received

letters from private citizens asking them to take advantage of the information they had

amassed about conditions in specific countries. NGOs also sent the executive branch

recommendations outlining the best ways of promoting human rights across the globe.

On one occasion, Jerome Shestack wrote Carter a private letter that applauded how his

“strong commitment to human rights had evoked a wide ‘volunteer response from’ from

private groups that wanted to help implement the new policy.” To give officials the most

up-to-date information about conditions in the Soviet Union and build “’popular support among the masses,’” he urged the State Department to engage in regular “communication

with human rights movements abroad, including dissidents.”340

Reflecting a mixture of political calculations and the practical need to acquire

accurate information, many officials followed Shestack’s advice and forged working

relationships with private citizens interested in Soviet human right violations. Two

weeks after viewing Shestack’s letter, Carter received a petition from 520 Soviet

Pentecostals asking the U.S. government to help them emigrate. After speaking with the

339 For a good view of the administration’s effort to keep closed tabs on the American public’s view of human rights, see all the polls in the OPL, Box 75, Folder: Human Rights Reports, 3/77-11/77. In particular, one poll highlighted the “potency of the ‘Helsinki idea.’” See Memo, Hodding Carter III to Ms. Derian, “Recent Press Comment on Human Rights,” Ibid., JCPL. For a poll reflecting the world’s reaction to his human rights campaign, see Memo, ZB to JC, “Foreign Public Opinion on U.S. Advocacy of Human Rights,” 3 May 1977, NSABM, Box 28, Folder: 5/77-11/78. PRM-28, 16. To gain a feel for the vast amount of letters Representatives and Senators related to human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, see WHCF, Box HU-1 at the JCPL. See also Hodgman, “Détente and Dissidents,” 269-84.

340 Letter, Shestack to Carter, February 1977, WHCF, Box: HU-1, Folder: 3/1/77-3/31/77, JCPL. 182

President, Derian decided to work behind the scenes with “private organizations to assist members of the Pentecostal Sect and their families to leave the Soviet Union.” 341 Her deputy, Roberta Cohen, often “brought together officials and Ambassadors [who are] home on consultations in order to create a dialogue on policy and exchange information.”342 Joyce Starr met with and received detailed reports about the plight of

Soviet Jews from Irene Manekofsky, the head of Union of Councils for Soviet Jews

(UCSJ). After these meetings took place, she forwarded the information she had received to Vance and Brzezinski.343

Vance supported these exchanges. On 30 April 1977, he told an audience how the administration's human rights policy “has been framed in collaboration and consultation with Congress and private organizations.” In February 1978, the State Department for the first time ever sponsored a two-day human rights conference “for about 500

341 In a move that shows how the administration never abandoned “quiet diplomacy,” Derian wanted “no publicity for this effort, which we hope will result in substantial numbers of the Pentecostals being able to leave.” See Memorandum for Mr. C Arthur Berg, “Appeal to President Carter from Protestant Pentecostals in the Soviet Union (S/S/ 7707707),” 23 March 1977, WHCF, CO 165, Folder: 3/16/77-3/31/77 #2, JCPL; and Memorandum for ZB, “Appeal to President Carter from Protestant Pentecostals in the Soviet Union,” 21 March 1977, Ibid., JCPL.

342 Memo, MH to MC, “Conference of the International League for Human Rights, December 1 and 2, 1977, Ottawa, Canada,” 15 November 1977, OPL, Box 75, Folder: Ottawa Conference Preliminaries, 12/77. See also “Seminar on Advancing Human Rights in Foreign Policy: The American Experience,” Ibid., Folder: Ottawa Conference, 12/77, JCPL; and “American Participants at Canadian/American conference on foreign policy and human rights---December 1-2, Quebec Suite, Chateau Laurier, OPL, Ibid., JCPL.

343 The following works mention these meetings: Martin Gilbert, Shcharansky: Hero of Our Time (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1986), 187-8; The Post, Anatoly and Avital Shcharansky: The Journey Home (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 189-93; Korey, NGOs and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 188. The Carter administration cited an Amnesty International report in its second semiannual report to the Helsinki Commission. See Second Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1977), 4. On 19 June 1978, the executive Director of NCSJ told Joyce Starr about the effectiveness of her letter to human rights NGOs. See Letter, Jerry Goodman to Joyce Starr, 19 June 1978, RL, Box 46, Folder: Soviet Jewry, 4/78-4/79.

183

representatives of non-governmental organizations.” Vance later informed Carter that the

event’s success stemmed from “the fact that we and the non-governmental organizations

cooperated in designing the program.” Stressing the importance of carrying out an even-

handed human rights campaign, he also praised how the participants discussed “domestic

human rights issues . . . along with foreign policy issues.”344

Some officials favored forming working relationships with private groups because

they worried the willingness of lower-level State Department officials to challenge Soviet human rights violations. On 19 June 1978, Starr wrote a memorandum lamenting how the U.S. embassy in Moscow “has not once asked the Soviets on an official basis that” dissenters “be allowed to exercise their Helsinki Rights.”345 Unhappy with this

development, she encouraged private citizens to hold executive branch officials

accountable for their behavior. Reflecting the existence of a broad international impulse

against bureaucratic authority and discretion described in Chapter II, she told members of

the WCSJ that NGOs

keep the U.S. government honest. . . . [and] put pressure on bureaucrats whose limited time and global concerns sometimes prevent enough consideration of the “human” element in policymaking . . . . Groups as yours should be encouraged to keep the pressure up, to ask searching questions of their government, and to offer their own ideas for policy. Government insiders do not have all the answers.346

344 During his speech, Vance also noted how the administration welcomed “the efforts of individual American citizens and private organizations—such as religious, humanitarian, and professional groups—to work for human rights with commitments of time, money, and compassion.” See State Department Bulletin, 23 May 1977, 506-7. See also Memo, Cyrus Vance to JC, 1 March 1978, 4, NLC-7-20-1-1-0, JCPL. For a negative account of this meeting, see Vogelesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare, 152.

345 Memo, Joyce Starr to Robert Lipshutz and Stuart Eizenstat, “CSCE: Failure of U.S. Diplomacy,” 18 June 1978, 2, RL, Box 46, Folder: S.D., 2/77-1/78, JCPL. See also Walter Laquer, “The World and Carter,” Commentary 65, no. 2 (1978): 59.

346 Memo, MH to MC, “Soviet Jewry,” 15. 184

A mixture of political calculations, fears of bureaucratic discretion, and the larger

goal of “globalizing” human rights issues raised the issue of creating a Human Rights

Foundation (HRF). In defense of such a policy, Brzezinski told Carter and Mondale near

the end of 1977 that the executive branch’s behavior had created a “climate in which

American commitment to human rights is judged solely by the frequency of public

denunciations or aid cut-offs.” Now that the issue of creating a HRF had surfaced in

Congress, he warned, the administration's failure to make the measure its own would

result in more press reports about its “negative and passive role on human rights” in

comparison to “Congress' active and imaginative stance.” If we do not “make a prompt decision on this” measure, we run “the risk of being preempted” by “Congressional initiative.”347

Having received substantial input from a “large number” of NGOs, Brzezinski

advised Carter to endorse a NSC proposal aimed at creating a “quasi-governmental” organization that “provided financial and other support to the non-governmental human rights organizations in the US and elsewhere.” While this proposal never received enough Congressional support to be enacted, the ways in which Brzezinski defended it deserve attention.348 He called cultivating the support of NGOs crucial because they

347 Memo, ZB to JC, “Human Rights Foundation,” N.D., 1-2 and 4, NSABM, Box 28, Folder: 5/77-11/78, JCPL; Memo, Walter Mondale to JC, “Human Rights,” 7 December 1977, RL, Box 18, Folder: Human Rights, 12/77, JCPL. President Carter approved creating a HRF in private on 3 December 1977. See Memo, ZB to JC, “Human Rights,” 3 December 1977, 4, Ibid., JCPL.

348 Despite the President’s behind the scenes endorsement, Congress never authorized the measure. According to State Department Officials, the bill authorizing creation of the HRF never passed because some influential NGOs such as Amnesty International expressed their fear that the proposed foundation would “become oriented only towards Eastern Europe” and the Soviet Union. Even more important, Carter shied away from showing more open support for the creation of a HRF because of his articulated stance 185

could provide the government with “a critical assessment of how well our policies are

working” and “longer term trends in individual countries and regions.” These

organizations could also provide “direct help and psychological support for dissenters”

by awarding them prizes or “helping to finance the publication and distribution of

suppressed works.” Most of important of all, Brzezinski noted, a HRF could play a vital

role in generating and sustaining a “worldwide constituency for human rights” through

activities such as holding “international conferences on human rights issues” and

“serving as a central clearinghouse for information on human rights.” Over time, a HRF

could become an “’echo-chamber’” that amplified “the voices of individuals and

numerous small groups.”349

The executive branch’s handling of the Belgrade follow-up meeting also reveals the complex ways in which public opinion, Congressional pressure, and fears of bureaucratic inertia shaped its efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. As

Chairperson of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Dante Fascell called for a close collaboration between Congress and the executive branch on all matters related to the

Final Act. He also called on executive branch officials to work with private citizens as part of a larger effort to publicize the Final Act violations of communist countries.350 As

William Korey points out in his work The Promises We Keep, Vance proved “responsive

against the “creation of new [federal agencies].“ See Memo, Madeline Albright to ZB, “Congressional Human Rights Vote,” N.D., NSABM, Box 28, Folder: 2-4/77.

349 Memo, ZB to JC, “Human Rights Foundation,” 2-4.

350 The last point comes across in the following letter: Memo, Dante Fascell to Cyrus Vance, “Discussions on Cooperation between Department of State and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe,” 3 February 1977, Box 48, Folder: Unmarked, RCSCE , USHCF, NA. Fascell praised the role of NGOs played in bringing public concerns to the attention of the U.S. delegation in his article “Did Human Rights Survive Belgrade,” Foreign Policy 31 (Summer 1978): 108, 117-8. 186

to the Fascell proposals” concerning how the executive branch should handle Belgrade

meeting. He instructed State Department officials to “share relevant information with commission staff.” He also “agreed to have the Commission and its staff represented on the U.S. delegation to the Belgrade preparatory session in June and at the regular session beginning in October.” 351

Placed in charge of the administration’s handling of follow-up conference,

Warren Christopher ensured that Commission staff members attended State Department meetings on the Belgrade Conference; he also directed the Bureau of European Affairs

(BEA) to give staff members all classified material related to preparations for Belgrade.

In a letter to Brzezinski, Vance explained why he wanted to form a good working relationship with Commission members. “I have reason to believe,” he wrote, “that the

CSCE [Final Act] Commission was set up in the first place mainly because of Executive

Branch unwillingness to consult fully with Congress on CSCE.” In practice, “the consultations that I am authorizing with members of Congress will tend to reduce, not increase, the chances that they will push for the creation of similar commissions, for

example on SALT.”352

Vance’s efforts to satisfy Fascell’s concerns failed to erase the fundamental tensions that existed between the Commission and the BEA. In short, some members of

BEA rejected the idea that either Congress or private citizens should play an important role in how the executive branch monitored signatories’ compliance with the Final Act.

351 Korey, The Promises We Keep, 41-2.

352 Ibid.; and Memo, CV to ZB, Untitled, 22 March 1977, NSABM, Box 13, Folder: 3-10/77, JCPL. 187

Career State Department officials such as Albert Sherer, Jr., who served as head of U.S. delegation during the Belgrade preparatory session, also rejected Fascell’s calls for the visible citations of human rights violations at Belgrade. They feared that such a strategy ran the risk of undermining U.S. relations with NATO and Western European countries that favored “quiet” human rights diplomacy over public exhortations.353

These sorts of sentiments account for why some members of the Commission became uneasy with the administration’s willingness to confront the Soviet Union about the issue of human rights violations at Belgrade. This viewpoint surfaced when Vance testified before the Commission on 6 June 1977. When he indicated that the U.S. delegation had no plans to mention the plight of Shcharansky, Clifford Case (R-NJ) questioned if the State Department had the will to stand up to the Soviet Union. He told the Secretary of State that he had real concerns “about having this thing [Belgrade

Conference] run by a bunch of professional diplomats.” “I don’t know if you can break free from it,” he remarked, “because I have not seen yet the kind of spirit to have the knock-down, drag-out, real confrontation [with the Soviet Union] that I think is called for at this stage.”354

353 Korey, The Promises We Keep, 68-72. See also Albert W. Sherer, Jr., “Goldberg’s Variation,” Foreign Policy 39 (Summer 1980): 154-159.

354 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume IV, 94-6. Some State Department officials also hoped that the U.S. delegation would take a low profile at Belgrade in comparison to Western European nations just like it had during the negotiations that led to the creation of the Final Act. This mentality helps explain why they became “horrified” when NSA Brzezinski suggested that the administration “have a paper prepared which deliberately examined the “advisability of a confrontationist approach” at Belgrade. See Korey, The Promises We Keep, 70-2; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 135-6, 140; Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 297; and Letter, Jim Huff to R. Oliver Spencer, 27 July 1977, Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1976-1977, RCSCE, USHCF, NA. Documents at the Carter Library reveal that Goldberg had to resist State Department Pressure not to name individual dissenters at Belgrade. See “Memorandum 188

Despite Vance’s assurances that the U.S. delegation would discuss specific Soviet

human rights violations, many Congressional members and private citizens remained

uncertain about the State Department’s willingness to engage in public human rights

diplomacy at Belgrade. In a report dated August 1977, the Commission urged the

administration to stand firm during the conference and cite the names of imprisoned

Helsinki monitors. The depth of Congressional concern became even more apparent

when a bipartisan group of 127 Representatives and 16 Senators later sent Carter a letter

that asked the U.S. delegation to cite specific human rights violations in Belgrade.355

Under the intense pressure of the Commission to work with private citizens, State

Department Counselor Matthew Nimetz invited a wide variety of NGOs to attend a

CSCE meeting about Belgrade on 9 September 1977. After sending out the invitations, he received a reply from “ten leading ethnic groups” that still expressed uneasiness with the executive branch’s previous behavior. They demanded that U.S. delegates use the follow-up meeting to describe the human rights violations of Warsaw Pact nations.356

As Congressional and public critics wanted, Carter and Brzezinski proved sympathetic to arguments calling for a thorough review of each signatory’s Final Act implementation record at the Belgrade follow-up meeting. Downplaying Western

European concerns that the meeting would turn into “a judicial proceeding” on Soviet internal behavior, they wanted the State Department to stand firm on the issue of human

of Conversation with Arthur Goldberg, 28 December 1977,” 6 January 1978, RL, Box 46, Folder: SD, 2/77-1/78, JCPL.

355 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Findings and Recommendations Two Years After Helsinki (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 19. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 146.

356 Korey, The Promises We Keep, 73-4. 189

rights.357 The official internal guidelines that Vance approved for this meeting ended up reflecting this point of view. He asked members of the BEA s to relay the message that

the U.S. delegation “would give clear expression to the President’s commitment to press

Eastern governments for improved Final Act compliance.” The United States would also

not accept arguments that criticizing signatories’ human rights records represented

interference in their “internal affairs.”358

These instructions are also important because they reveal how Vance and other

officials recognized the existence of a broad international impulse against bureaucratic

discretion and authority. Unlike the negotiations “shrouded in secrecy” that resulted in

the creation of the Final Act, U.S. delegates would work with NGOs to show the Soviets

that they could not pull away from Belgrade “without suffering public and political

criticism here and in Europe.” In a fashion similar to Commission, the State Department

also hoped that NGOs would help the U.S. delegation challenge communist

governments’ intolerance for diversity and pluralism by holding public press conferences

and passing out non-official literature in Belgrade They even asked representatives to

“thank” NGOs for: 1) keeping “us honest when bureaucratic expediency creeps into

decision-making”; 2) keeping us “informed by bringing to light detailed concerns related

to the Helsinki Accords”; 3) keeping “us thoughtful by providing innovative suggestions

357 Ibid.

358 “CSCE: Meeting with NGOs,” September 9, 1977, 8 September 1977, 2-3, OPL, Box 53, Folder: HR— CSCE/Helsinki Commission, Articles and Printed Materials, JCPL. See also Fascell, “Did Human Rights Survive Belgrade,” 116-8. 190

for better compliance—including here in the U.S”; and 4) helping “to make our policy by

pressing your concerns, even if results do not show themselves immediately.”359

Since Carter had vowed to “let the American people be involved as deeply as possible” in the creation of U.S. foreign policy during the 1976 campaign, he also proved sympathetic to the Commission’s goals of encouraging “public diplomacy” and facilitating “citizen participation.” He instructed the U.S. delegation to include all members of the Commission; he also appointed public delegates and consultants “from business, academia, the labor movement and other walks of life.” Because Carter wanted to have the delegation reflect America’s diversity, the public appointees came from backgrounds as different as a Polish-American political science professor, an African-

American female lawyer, and a union representative. To show his commitment to a thorough review of implementation records, he replaced the professional diplomat Albert

Sherer as head of U.S. delegation in favor of the former Supreme Court Justice and U.N.

Ambassador Arthur Goldberg in late September 1977.360

The selection of Goldberg proved important because he made a conscious effort

to implement the State Department’s official guidelines once the Belgrade meeting

began. Under his direction, U.S. delegates cited specific examples of Soviet human

359 “CSCE: Meeting with NGOs,” 3-4.

360 Korey, The Promises We Keep, 73-4; and Thomas, Helsinki Effect, 141. See also State Department Special Report, “The Belgrade Followup Meeting to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: October 4, 1977-March 9, 1978,” June 1978, no. 43 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Public Affairs), 5. See also Second Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1-2; Third Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1-4 and 23; and Fourth Semiannual Report by the President to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1-15.

191

rights violations. They also supported the decision of public delegates to hold press

conferences and describe the Soviet Union’s hostility toward human rights criticisms.

Even though some BEA members still favored closed sessions, the U.S. delegation lobbied to make these meetings open to private citizens. It also made a conscious effort to hold frequent press conferences and pass out copies of the speeches members had given behind closed doors.361 Delegates also touched base with the representatives of

NGOS that had sent them volumes of information about individuals who faced

governmental repression and conditions in specific signatory nations. For example,

Ambassador Goldberg met a group of Soviet exiles when he returned to Washington for a

brief visit in January 1978. He also went out of his way to make sure that the

representatives of NGOs that came to Belgrade had the chance to consult with and

provide information for members of the U.S. delegation.362

The complaints of private citizens played a critical role in the decision of the U.S.

delegation to cite the arrest of Ukrainian Helsinki monitors during the Belgrade meeting.

In November, the president of the Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee, Bohdan

Yasen, sent Fascell a private letter complaining how U.S. delegates had ignored the plight

of . He could not understand this oversight. At the State Department CSCE

361 See Michael Wall, “Design to Avoid Confrontation,” in Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security, 166-7; Lord Thomson Monifieth, Belgrade and After: Report of the Helsinki Review Group (London: David Davies Memorial Institute, 1978), 7-8, 19. Nils Andren and Karl E. Birnbaum, Belgrade and Beyond: The CSCE Process in Perspective (: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1980), 7 and 9-10. See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 74-5. Brzezinski succeeded in having U.S. radios relay information about the Belgrade conference. See Memo, ZB to Gregory F. Treverton, “Briefing the Press on CSCE,” 17 February 1978, BSABM, Box 13, Folder: 11/77-4/78, JCPL.

362 Memo, Joyce Starr to Robert Lipshutz, 12 January 1978, RL, Box 46, Folder: S.D., 2/77-1/78; and Memo, Meg Donovan to Michael Klosson et al., “Paper on Press and Public Participation in the CSCE,” 1 January 1984,” Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1984, RCSCE, UHCF, NA. 192

conference, officials had assured him that events in Ukraine would receive “top priority

at Belgrade.” After hearing about this oversight from Fascell, a U.S. delegate raised the

names of the Ukrainian monitors whose plight Bohdan had emphasized in his original

letter to the Commission Chairperson.363

Congressional and public pressure forced reluctant members of the BEA to work with private citizens within the confines of the Helsinki process. On 27 October 1977,

Commission staffer Al Friendly sent a memorandum to Fascell that called on the State

Department to hold small conferences so “they can engage with the NGOs.” Since these

organizations distrusted the motives of the European Bureau, “they want . . . the opportunity to eyeball those people and keep heat on them.” American delegates in

Belgrade need such a meeting because “everybody has worked too hard to have” NGOs

“jump off the boat now.” After viewing this letter, Fascell sent a note to Assistant

Secretary of State for European Affairs George Vest encouraging him to meet with

disgruntled NGO representatives. “They want a chance to lecture you, not just be

lectured at,” he noted, “and in the interests of keeping them from taking their discontents to the broader public, it might be worthwhile to hear them out while reassuring them.”

Perhaps sensing that the State Department could no longer ignore the wishes of NGOs

interested in the Final Act, Vest followed Fascell’s advice. In late November, Goldberg and BEA representatives held “a very successful small meeting with representatives of a

363 Letter, Bohdan Yasen to Dante Fascell,” 29 November 1977, Box 48, Folder: Belgrade—U.S. Statements, RCSCE, USHCF, NA; and “Basket I Statement by R. Spencer Oliver,” 12 December 1977, 1- 2.

193

cross-section of concerned organizations to afford them an opportunity for a first hand- report.”364

By holding the executive accountable, Congressional and public opinion made

important contributions to Carter’s long-term goal of creating an international

environment more conducive to human rights. Just after this meeting ended, the North

Atlantic Council issued a communiqué that condemned the Warsaw Pact position that raising human rights issues represented “interference” in a nation’s “internal affairs.”

The same document also affirmed the important role private citizens played in holding governments accountable for their internal behavior.365

The steps that the executive branch had taken to strengthen the international

legitimacy of citing governmental human rights violations does not mean that Carter had

given up on his larger goal of forging a “reciprocal détente.” As Chapter VI will show,

the “restraint” the Soviet Union showed in the wake of July trials led him to believe that

signing SALT II would lead to improvement in U.S-Soviet relations, including how the

Kremlin treated dissenters. While he also viewed the signing of an arms control treaty as

a critical step in increasing the global appeal of American ideals, the Soviet Union’s

behavior defied his hopes and expectations. When Moscow launched a systematic

campaign to eradicate dissent and invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Carter became enraged

364 Letter, Al Friendly to Dante Fascell, “General-CSCE,” 27 October 1977, Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1976-1977, RCSCE, USHCF, NA; Letter, Fascell to George Vest, 28 October 1977, Ibid.; and Letter, Vest to Fascell, 19 November 1977, Ibid.

365 Texts of Final Communiques, 1975-1980, Volume II (Brussels: NATO Information Service, 1980), 91. On 7 October 1977, Brzezinski gave Carter a poll showing the Western European public’s overwhelming support for universal rights such as emigration and “access to information from other countries.” See Memo, BZ to JC, “Weekly Report #31,” 7 October 1977, BM, Box 41, Folder: Weekly Reports, 16-31, JCPL. 194 and passed a wide array of punitive measures that left Ronald Reagan with the task of rebuilding U.S.-Soviet relations. 195

CHAPTER 5: THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT VERSUS DISSENTERS:

CONFLICTING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE “GLOBALIZATION OF HUMAN

RIGHTS” AND JIMMY CARTER, JANUARY 1977-AUGUST 1978

Near the end of 1976, the private citizen Antoon Pype received permission from Soviet authorities to visit the USSR as part of a student exchange program. As a member of Flemish Action Committee for Eastern Europe, he decided to test the Soviet government’s willingness to adhere to the provisions of the Final Act. At

Leningrad University, he passed out leaflets that called for the free flow of information between Western and Eastern Europe. He also handed out a document from the Russian

émigré organization NTS that advocated the creation of a “democratic and prosperous

Russia.”366 The Soviet government did not stand for this kind of behavior. It arrested

Pype for “anti-Soviet” propaganda and sentenced him to five years in a strict regime . An article in an official Soviet newspaper justified this harsh sentence on the grounds that this individual had consorted with the “fascist” organization NTS before his trip to Leningrad It also marveled at how tourists who came to Soviet Union “under the pretext of ‘exchanging information’” thought they could pass out “slanderous and pornographic publications” without any repercussions.367

Transnational human rights actors made sure that Western governments heard about this development. In May 1977, the Belgium NGO Helsinki Agreements

Implementation Group (HAIG) sent a letter to all Final Act signatories urging them to

366 HAIG, “The Antoon Pype Case,” OPL, Box 70, Folder: Helsinki Agreements (Watchers), 5/77, JCPL.

367 Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 287-90; and CDSP 29, no. 34 (21 September 1977): 12. 196

challenge the Soviet government’s sentencing of Pype. “The infringements . . . of human

and civil rights” in the USSR, it warned, “are a first step towards violent interference

with the internal affairs of all other states.” By preventing the free flow of information

across European borders, the USSR jeopardized the “mutual knowledge and

understanding” among private citizens necessary for peace in Europe. Around the same

time, a U.S. representative of HIAG sent President Carter a letter with a similar

message.368

This episode demonstrates that the importance Carter administration officials

placed on supporting transnational human rights activities was not misplaced. Inside the

Soviet Union, a wide array of dissenters continued to work toward educating the rest of the world about the inherent brutalities of the Soviet system.369 Shaped by a broad

international impulse against bureaucratic discretion and authority, they managed to form

additional non-official groups aimed at holding Soviet officials accountable for their

behavior and protecting themselves from further repression. Dissenters also had notable

success in advancing the idea that private citizens could not leave the task of creating an

open and free world (i.e. universal glasnost) to governments alone. Taking advantage of

the ever-shrinking globe, dissenters and Western private citizens formed an increasing

number of transnational links with each other. While these activities posed no immediate

threat to Soviet power, they played an important role in moving Western governmental

368 HAIG, “To All Governments of the States Participating in the Helsinki Conference, OPL, Box 70, Folder: Helsinki Agreements (Watchers), 5/77, JCPL; Letter, HAIG to Jimmy Carter,” Ibid.

369 Edward Bailey Hodgman addresses this issue in his dissertation “Détente and the Dissidents.” See Chapter VII, especially pages 401-3. 197 and global public opinion in the direction of challenging the totalitarian features of Soviet society.

Besides examining how dissenters evaluated the Carter administration’s efforts on their behalf, this chapter will also look at the behavior of the Soviet government. As they had in the past, orthodox officials continued to link dissident critiques, transnational human rights activities, and the behavior of the U.S. government to a global conspiracy designed to destroy the foundations of Soviet power. Bent on preserving the territorial integrity and international legitimacy of their multinational empire, they employed a wide variety of measures to discredit and disrupt the activities of dissenters and transnational human rights actors. They also made a concerted effort to strengthen the international reputation of Soviet-style socialism and challenge the U.S. government’s human rights record.

The ways in which Soviet leaders attempted to legitimize their internal conduct are revealing. From their perspective, they had taken the steps necessary to defend the ideological conformity and political power structure that made the Soviet Union a universal model. This ideologically driven mindset complicates arguments that Carter could have done much more to promote human rights in the Soviet Union during his first year and a half in office. If anything, the ways in which his administration worked with and encouraged private actors to “globalize” Soviet human rights violations proved effective. It helped prevent Soviet leaders from obtaining the international legitimacy they wanted to capture without changing their domestic and international behavior in any fundamental way. 198

Soviet Dissenters’ View of the Human Rights Weapon, the Soviet Government, and the Carter Administration

The Soviet government’s visible arrests of dissenters in the first half of 1977

failed to eradicate non-official activities related to human rights. New private groups came into existence such as the Initiative Group to for the Defense of the Rights of the

Invalids (Invalid Group), Catholic Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers, and the Association of Free Trade Unions of Workers (AFTU). The publication of non- official literature at home and abroad also showed few signs of abating.370 Because

Soviet officials refused to consider their appeals, many dissenters, including avowed

nationalists, went out of their way to stress the binding nature of universally recognized

human rights. This strategy had obvious advantages. Drawing on a common vocabulary

allowed them to subsume their differences while at the same time legitimizing their

struggle. Even a dissident journal as focused as A Chronicle of the Catholic Church in

Lithuania stressed the important unifying power of human rights. “One of the most

remarkable aspects of the dissident movement in the USSR today, an article explained,

“is the way in which it has united [the] Orthodox Christian, Jew, Catholic, and agnostic in

the common cause of human rights.”371

370 See Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent, 349-50, 353-5; Roy Medvedev, “The Future of Soviet Dissent,” Index on 8 (March-): 27-8. See also Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 81-138; and Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia, 75-131; Valery Chalidze, The Soviet Human Rights Movement: A Memoir (Washington, D.C.: The American Jewish Committee, 1984), 1-17.

371 CCCL 21 (1978): 1. Valery Chalidze’s analysis supports these insights. See CHRUR 26 (April-June 1977): 48-50. See also Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, 142; Hyung-Min Joo, “Voices of Freedom: Samizdat,” Europe-Asia Studies 56, no. 4 (June 2004): 579-87; and David Kowalewski, “The Multinationalization of Soviet Dissent,” Nationalities Papers 11, no. 2 (1983): 206-9. 199

Many dissenters also viewed human rights promotion as a flexible ideology

capable of uniting private citizens with very different views of the world. On numerous

occasions, Sakharov called defending human rights “compatible with such wide ranging

ideologies as the communist, the social-democratic, the religious, the technocratic, and

that of the national ‘native roots’.” He also believed that human rights appealed to those

“who are tired of the abundance of ideologies which do not bring people simple human happiness.” The Ukrainian Watch Group endorsed this position, noting that “the struggle for human rights is not the internal affair of this or that state, but rather “the internal affair of a united mankind.”372

These ideals should not obscure that Sakharov and other dissenters viewed the

promotion of universal human rights as the best way of protecting themselves from the

arbitrary authority Soviet bureaucrats wielded over them. For example, a Ukrainian

Watch Group document explained that international human rights agreements “should not

be viewed as the right of a bureaucrat to allow me this or that.” Instead, they should be

viewed as the “right of man to turn the sword of law” on bureaucrats hostile to basic

freedoms.373

Dissenters also stressed the importance of universally recognized human rights for

at least two other important reasons. This strategy lent credibility to their arguments that

372 Sakharov, “The Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe: Its Goals, Significance, and Difficulties,” in ed., Alexander Babyonyshev, trans. by Guy Daniels, On Sakharov (New York: Random House, 1982), 259; and Yasen and Verba, The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine, 83.

373 Yasen and Verba, The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine, 79; “Deep Gratitude: Appeal of P. G. Grigorenko to Norwegian Society,” SB 47 (March 1977): 1. See also “To the World Community, to All People of Good Will, to All Who Hold Dear the Principles of Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights,” Ibid, 1. 200

the Soviet Union’s repression of peaceful, non-official activity ran counter to how

legitimate, modern states behaved. Members of the Moscow Watch Group argued that

the “Soviet authorities have literally been reduced to a hysterical state by . . . the exposes

compiled by” our group’s activities. “Nothing else can explain” the return to the

“Stalinist methods” of planting incriminating materials in the homes of dissenters. “In

trying” to apply these methods, the document concluded, “the Soviet authorities have lost

their sense of reality.”374

Many dissenters also stressed how the Soviet government’s lack of respect for basic human rights posed a threat to the international community. During his

Congressional testimony in February 1977, Vladimir Bukovsky argued that the Soviet

Union will remain a threat to the world “until the time when . . . a public opinion is established which is capable of controlling the Soviet state.”375 The Soviet émigrés

Andre Amalrik and Valentin Turchin published a letter in that

outlined the close link between Soviet officials’ respect for human rights and American

security. They defended the position that “the best guarantees of American security

would be the evolution of the Soviet Union from a closed society in which the question of

374 Documents of the Helsinki Monitoring Groups in the USSR and Lithuania (1976-1986), Volume I (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 86-7; and CCE 48 (1978): 9. See also “Psychological Terror of the KGB,” SB 69 (January 1979): 4. See also Yasen and Verba, The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine, 38, 131. Sakharov spoke about the Soviet Union’s “uncivilized” behavior on numerous occasions. See Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, 143-163.

375 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume I, 28; CCE 47 (1977): 73; and “Sakharov on Human Rights,” Newsweek, 14 March 1977, 31. See also U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Right to Know, the Right to Act: Documents of Helsinki Dissent from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), 116; and Bukovsky, “How A Dissident Describes ‘Human Rights in Russia,” U.S. News and World Report 14 March 1977, 22. 201

a nuclear strike is decided by five or ten individuals . . . into an open society . . .

controlled by the people.”376

Since they viewed publicity as their most effective weapon, individual dissidents

also continued to stress the fundamental role private citizens played in holding

governments accountable for their conduct. During his Congressional testimony, an

exiled member of the Ukrainian Watch Group called the Final Act “too important to be

left solely to governments” and announced that private citizens in signatory states should

follow the example of Soviet monitors and publish reports about their government’s

compliance with the agreement. In May 1977 the exiled dissenter Valery Chalidze

expressed his satisfaction that “the movement’s links with Western human rights organizations . . . . have markedly expanded in recent years.” By working with governments, he argued, an informed Western public can play a crucial role in securing

the “fulfillment by the Soviet Union of its obligations under international human rights

conventions and agreements.”377

The growing links between Soviet dissenters and the Western private citizens

Chalidze wrote about took many different forms. Near the end of 1977, three dissident groups chose to align their movements and exchange documents with HAIG. Around the same time, exiled Soviet lawyers and Western private citizens invited Ambassador

Dobrynin to attend public hearings in Washington, D.C. concerning the Kremlin’s

justifications for arresting Shcharansky. The city of Cleveland, Ohio held a “human

376 CHRUR 29 (January-March 1978): 23.

377 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume I, 63; U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Right to Know, the Right to Act, 74; and CHRUR 26 (April-June 1977): 49-50. 202

rights week,” which included public seminars in which émigrés from Warsaw Pact countries described human rights violations in their native lands. On 20 April 1978, the

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) denounced the Soviet practice

of repressing individuals who attempted to form independent labor unions. Unhappy with dissident trials of 1978, the United Auto Workers Union cancelled scheduled visits to Soviet automobile factories.378

Making reference to materials that they received from Western NGOs about

psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union, the World Psychiatric Association censured the

USSR for the “political use” of psychiatry in 1977. Members of the Invalid Group

managed to have their documents published in the West describing the poor conditions

that disabled individuals faced in the Soviet Union. New transnational groups also came

into existence such as Alexander Ginsburg and Orlov Defense Committees, as well as

Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov, and Shcharansky (SOS). The latter group organized an

American moratorium on scientific exchanges with the Soviet Union, which gained the

support of over 2,400 American scientists. In July 1978, the group held a rally for

Shcharansky at the University of California featuring a performance by the folk artist

Joan Baez.379

378 Helsinki Agreements Implementation Group, “Press Release—October 22, 1977—Soviet Citizens Join the H.A.I.G.,” OPL, Box 75, Folder: Helsinki Agreements and Belgrade Conference, JCPL; “Human Rights Internet Newsletter,” 3, no. 4 (January/February 1978): 5-8, OPL, Box 75, Folder: Human Rights Publications, 2/78, JCPL; and CHRUR 30 (April-June 1978): 8-9. See also U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Findings and Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government , 1980), 100-1.

379 CHRUR 29 (January-March 1978): 7-10; and Andre W. Sessler, “Physicists and the Eternal Struggle for Human Rights.” Available [Online] http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199510/human-rights.cfm [21 October 2007]. 203

The importance many dissidents placed on generating international publicity for their cause helps explain why they found Carter’s public rhetoric so important. “For the

first time since the establishment of the Soviet regime,” a dissenter wrote, “the head of a world power communicated directly with the representatives of the human rights movement in the USSR.” “Until now, communist leaders considered it their exclusive privilege to offer support to their sympathizers all around the world.”380 The prevalence

of this attitude meant that most dissenters rejected the argument that Carter’s public

rhetoric had increased the scale of Soviet repression.381 Instead, they viewed the

Kremlin’s conduct as a direct challenge to Carter’s human rights campaign designed to

test his resolve. As Amalrik put it, “the Soviet Union wants to see how tough Carter

is.”382

Because many dissenters stressed Moscow’s penchant for intimidation, they

warned Carter not to deemphasize the importance of human rights in deference to Soviet

sensibilities and interests. A Ukrainian dissenter named Geily Sneguirev addressed a

letter to Carter--no evidence he ever received it--arguing that future positive changes in

Soviet behavior will depend on “whether you, Mr. President, will be firm in your actions

380 Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, N.A., N.T., SB 47 (March 1977): 1. One dissident even referred to Carter’s staunch defense of human rights as a miracle. See CCE 46 (1977): 107; and “Human Rights Internet Newsletter.”

381 Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 235; and “Dissidents versus Moscow, 21. See also, Dave Zimmerman, The Associated Press, 9 February 1977, N.P.; and “Sakharov on Human Rights.”

382 “The Dissidents v. Moscow,” Time, 21 February 1977, 21; and Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume IV, 56. See also “Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn’s Statement to the Western Press,” SB 48 (April 1977): 1; Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VII, 48, 51; and “Dissidents to Continue Rights Battle; Dissidents Vow to Continue Struggle For Human Rights; Sakharov Asks Waldheim to Aid Jailed Activists,” Washington Post, 16 July 1978, A1.

204

as you announced.”383 Vladimir Shelkov, Chairman of the unofficial Seventh-Day

Adventist Church, asked Carter “not [to] allow the economic ties of your country with

ours” and “all the technical, scientific, cultural, and other such arrangements to take precedence” over your “holy Christian and humanitarian obligation” to defend dissenters.384 According to another dissident, “the decisive hour has come in which

either the social-political monster called the Socialist Superpower will gain the upper

hand over human reason once and for all, or human reason will conquer.” Since “our

superpower appears . . . to resemble a wagon rushing down a slope,” “may God give you

the strength to stop the wagon.”385

As these words suggest, many dissenters felt as if the Soviet government’s desire

to test Carter’s firmness on human rights only scratched the surface of its larger goal of

challenging the West’s commitment to human freedom.386 Alexander Solzhenitsyn put

this position in stark terms when he argued that the Soviet repression of dissent “concerns

the people of the West more than is immediately apparent. It is a “substantive step by the

Soviets in their unrelenting preparation” for a wider global struggle against the “strength,

spirit, and very existence of the West.”387 When speaking before Congress in February

1977, Bukovsky argued that “the fate of these people [dissenters] and of the Helsinki

383 G. Sneguirev, “Sneguirev’s Inspiring Letter to Carter,” SB 54 (October 1977): 2 and 6.

384 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume IV, 94-6.

385 CCE 47 (1979): 31.

386 “The Dissidents v. Moscow,” Time, 21 February 1977, 21; and Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume IV, 56. See also “Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn’s Statement to the Western Press,” SB 48 (April 1977): 1; Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VII, 48, 51; and “Dissidents to Continue Rights Battle; Dissidents Vow to Continue Struggle For Human Rights; Sakharov Asks Waldheim to Aid Jailed Activists,” Washington Post, 16 July 1978, A1.

387 “Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn’s Statement to the Western Press,” SB 48 (April 1977): 1. 205

agreement depends on the reaction of Western countries.” [I]f the Soviet leaders become

convinced that protests about the in the Soviet Union are not a temporary

expedient of the West, they will have no choice but to” change their internal behavior

over the long term.388 Sakharov voiced similar sentiments. He believed that the scale of

Soviet repression would only increase if Western governmental officials and private citizens failed to defend Carter’s statements about Soviet human rights violations.389

The quite accurate perception that the Soviet Union wanted to challenge Western nations’ commitment to human rights accounts for why many dissenters placed particular importance on the Belgrade review conference. In reference to this event, Sakharov posed the question: “Is the West prepared to defend those noble and vitally important principles? Or will it gradually, in silence, acquiesce” to the Soviet government’s refusal to respect basic civil liberties? A group of political prisoners sent Carter an appeal that called on Western states and “world public opinion” to raise the issue of Soviet human rights violations in Belgrade and call into question the Kremlin’s harassment of private citizens who had criticized the government “without the permission of the Communist party.” Timing their actions with the beginning of the preliminary talks in Belgrade, these individuals also announced their decision to assume the legal status of as defined by international law in hopes of attracting “the attention of the world public.” Another group of prisoners sent a letter to Final Act signatory states that called

Soviet government officials “barbarians, hypocrites, [and] criminals” who “do not want

388 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume I, 29.

389 Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, 53. 206

peace.” They felt obligated to issue such a statement because the world had “not yet

encountered the barbed wire of the concentration camps.” “Your partners in the

negotiations are not diplomats,” the prisoners warned, “but jailers.”390

The Moscow Watch Group demanded that the United States and other Western nations discuss Soviet violations of the Final Act in detail. It also called on these countries to reject the argument that such discussions violated Principle XI (non- interference in signatories’ internal affairs). It also asked that the West “agree on . . . formal criteria on the fulfillment of the obligations concerning human rights” and insist on the creation of an international organization dedicated to disseminating information across national borders.391 While some demanded that the West refuse to discuss Basket

III until the Soviets released all “arrested members of the Helsinki Watch Group,” most

appear to have favored Western governmental declarations calling for the immediate release of individuals arrested for monitoring the Final Act.392

These recommendations in no way imply that dissenters held a uniform view of

what constituted Western “resolve” and “firmness.” The roots of these differences lie in

how individuals defined the proper trajectory of U.S.-Soviet relations and viewed the

costs and benefits of pursuing some form of détente. Like many other dissenters,

Solzhenitsyn expected Western governmental officials and private citizens to denounce

390 Yankelevich, “The Political Thinking of Sakharov”; and CHRUR 28 (October-December 1977): 41-2. See CHRUR 28 (October-December 1977): 12.

391 “Summarized Document of the Group to Promote the Observance of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR for the Conference at Belgrade [October 1977],” SB 53 (September 1977): 9-11.

392 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume IV, 49. See also “By Andrei Sakharov,” New York Times, 4 October 1977, 37.

207

Soviet repression in public as much as possible and send dissenters valuable items such

as food and money. On the other hand, he viewed the West’s pursuit of détente as

“another Munich.” Discounting the importance of Basket III, he viewed the Final Act as

a symbol of abject Western capitulation. As a result of this mindset, he advocated that

Americans give up arms control negotiations that in practice only weakened their ability

to defend themselves against the massive Soviet military buildup. To ease the plight of dissenters, he also called on Western nations to stop the food and technology exports to the Soviet Union that in practice only contributed to the “Kremlin’s ability to control and pacify the population.”393

Bukovsky endorsed a similar position. He argued that United States should not

pursue a “Détente with the Soviet Union so long as” the Kremlin “continues to violate

human rights.” In fact, Bukovsky argued that “until the Soviet Union starts to fulfill its

obligations with its treaties, no normal relations and good relations . . . with the Soviet

Union can be granted.” He even likened the continuation of détente to “saying that you

can improve the conditions of the inmates of the jail by drinking champagne with the

jailor.”394

When appearing before Congress, Bukovsky praised Carter’s recent statements

defending dissenters, but pointed that the West would have to do much more to prevent

the Kremlin from crushing the movement. He insisted that the United States would have

393 Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 204. See also , Détente: Prospects for Democracy and Dictatorship (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), 23-4. See also Reddaway, Dissent in the Soviet Union, 141.

394 “Labor Leaders Hear Russians’ Rights Appeal,” Washington Post, 26 February 1977, A8.

208

to rigidly link increases in Soviet-American trade to tangible improvements in Moscow’s

Final Act compliance record. To strengthen this argument, he explained how the devices

the KGB used to monitor dissenters “are made in the West” and indicated that “the

handcuffs he wore when he was expelled from the Soviet Union were inscribed ‘Made in

the U.S.A.’”395 Bukovsky could very well have directed this last statement at Carter, who

had rejected the concept of rigid linkages on a number of occasions. Yet, he refrained

from criticizing the President in public during the first few months of 1977, perhaps hoping that Carter administration officials would move closer to some of his views.396

Much like Bukovsky and Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov called for a general amnesty for

all nonviolent political prisoners and urged Carter to speak out about human rights abuses

whenever possible. He also feared the consequences of improvements in U.S.-Soviet

relations based on Kissinger-style or a Soviet-defined détente. Without solving

fundamental global problems such as the nuclear arms race, Soviet leaders could exploit

such a path to keep their “closed” society isolated from the rest of the world. He

therefore urged Western governments to utilize their strengths when dealing with the

Soviets. “I do not believe the West utilizes fully the opportunities provided by détente in

assuring the success of the human rights movement,” he argued. “There is not enough

pressure put on the Soviet Union.”397

395 Hearings Before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, 95th Congress, Volume 1, 23-24 February and 15, 17 March 1977 , 28; and “Labor Leaders Hear Russians’ Rights Appeal.”

396 Bukovsky, “How a Dissident Describes ‘Human Rights’ in Russia.”

397 Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, 40, 102-110; Sakharov, “The Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” 25-3; and Efrem Yankelevich, “The Political Thinking of Sakharov,” in Allan Wynn et 209

This position seems clear enough, but Sakharov’s vision of Western firmness differed from those of Solzhenitsyn and Bukovsky. He endorsed the importance that

Carter placed on a signing a SALT treaty and frowned upon using food embargoes as a way of punishing Soviet leaders for their human rights violations.398 He supported the

Jackson-Vanik amendment on the grounds that the measure reflected the moral commitment of Americans to helping individuals who suffered at the hands of the Soviet government. Yet , he criticized that required the Soviet Union either to back down or accept the demands of a foreign government. In his view, these types of measures often resulted in “dead-end” situations that had little chance of improving

Soviet conduct in either the short or long term. He therefore believed that Western governments could best show their displeasure with Soviet human rights abuses by defending Soviet dissenters in public in conjunction with calibrated measures such as trade restrictions and the cancellation of various cooperative exchanges without rigid public ultimatums. As this viewpoint suggests, Sakharov shared Carter’s fears that a wholesale abandonment of détente would only succeed in further cutting off the Soviet

Union from the rest of the world and increase the scale of Soviet repression. He explained this position to an American journalist: “It mustn't be forgotten that it was only

Détente that created conditions for at least a minimum influence on the policies of

al., ed., Fifth International Sakharov Hearing, 192; and N. Borisov, “The Hopes and Apprehensions of D. Sakharov,“ SB 60 (April 1978): 1-2.

398 N. Borisov, “The Hopes and Apprehensions of D. Sakharov.” 210

[Communist] countries.” “A [complete] retreat [from Détente ],” he argued, “would be a

disaster.”399

The views of the dissenter/historian Roy Medvedev in many ways diverge from the positions outlined above. Although his statements in defense of Western communist parties enraged Yuri Andropov, he believed that Western governmental pressure and dissenters could not play fundamental roles in reforming Soviet society. With a fair amount of justification, he argued that a weak and divided dissident movement without a coherent political program or strong links to the general population could not offer a viable alterative to the Soviet system for the foreseeable future. Foreshadowing arguments that Mikhail Gorbachev would later advance, he believed that Soviet Union could transform itself into a pluralist, law-abiding socialist state along the lines Lenin supposedly envisioned before Stalin’s bureaucratic distortions appeared. In defense of this position, he described the existence of committed Soviet reformers who might one day find themselves in a position to introduce fundamental economic and political reforms. In other words, he had faith that enlightened Soviet leaders would one day emerge and transform their centralized, bureaucratic political system in ways designed to meet the challenges of functioning in an era of economic and political globalization.400

399 Sakharov, “The Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” 7. See also Dean, “Contacts with the West,” 55; and Ernest Clark, “Russian Dissidents Debate on Détente,” Dissent (Spring 1975): 117. Sakharov, “Human Rights: A Common Goal,” New York Times, 27 June 1978, 22; Sakharov, Alarm and Hope, 25-30; CHRUR 30 (April-June 1978): 20.

400 Roy Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent: Interviews with Piero Ostellino, trans. William A. Packer, ed. George Sanders (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 13, 51, 78, 120-1, 134-7, 147. See also Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 207-9; Medvedev, “The Future of Soviet Dissent,” 25-31; Medvedev, “Problems of Democratization and Détente ,” 7.

211

Since Medvedev believed that Soviet-style socialism could become more tolerant

and humane over time, he in effect “separated détente from the democratization of the

Soviet system.” He advanced this view because of his faith in the transformative power

of the global flows of information that accompanied détente. Over time, such

developments would put reformers in a stronger position to carry out the reforms needed

to make the Soviet system more “pluralistic” and tolerant of non-socialist opinions.401

Defending this viewpoint, Medvedev told a journalist that curbing cooperative links to

penalize Soviet leaders for their internal behavior “would play into the hands of the most

reactionary elements in the Soviet leadership.”402 In the end, “it is precisely in periods of

détente that the efficacy of public opinion grows considerably in shaping the internal

affairs of each major power. By contrast, a country which is isolated and cut off from the outside world by various Cold War barriers becomes insensitive to protests and views

beyond its borders.”403 Needless to say, Medvedev found the Jackson-Vanik amendment

a counterproductive measure and applauded Henry Kissinger’s efforts to improve the

Soviet Union’s respect of human rights through “quiet” diplomacy.404

The small sampling of views described above underscores the reality that the

Carter administration could never have satisfied the expectations of all dissenters. Given the importance most of them placed on standing firm, however, the executive branch’s

401 Hyung-Min Joo, “Voices of Freedom,” 580; and Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 110-2. See also Clark, “Russian Dissidents Debate on Détente,” 118.

402 Ken Coates, ed., Détente and Socialist Democracy: A Discussion with Roy Medvedev (New York, Monad Press, 1976), 141.

403 Coates, ed., Détente and Socialist Democracy, 140-1; and Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 201.

404 Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 68. 212

preference for calibrated responses to Soviet domestic misconduct invited accusations of

weakness. Sakharov may have supported Carter’s SALT negotiations, but he believed that the President made a bad mistake when he expressed reservations about the State

Department’s denunciations of Soviet behavior after viewing the dissenter’s personal letter to the President. Carter’s vacillation “had serious repercussions,” Sakharov wrote.

“It was seen in both the USSR and USA as a disavowal of the State Department’s words.”405 In his memoirs, Sakharov lamented how Carter’s tendency not to back up his

words with forceful action often gave the Soviet government more leeway to arrest

dissenters.406

While evidence strongly suggests that Carter’s comment on the State

Department’s handling of the Sakharov letter was a bureaucratic mix-up, other dissidents

expressed similar views.407 Irina Orlova (Yuri Orlov’s wife), a member of the Helsinki

Watch Group and strong supporter of Soviet-American arms control, blamed Alexander

Ginzburg’s arrest on the Carter administration’s handling of the Sakharov letter. When

she heard about the arrest, she grabbed the nearest Western journalist and told him: “You

betrayed us.” “The U.S. president’s hesitation had sent a message to the KGB that the

United States wouldn’t stand up for the dissidents.”408

405 Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 16.

406 Sakharov, Memoirs, 466.

407 See Strong, Working in the World.

408 Goldberg, The Final Act, 219. For a similar view, see Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent, 343-4.

213

As hinted at earlier, Bukovsky ended up finding the Carter administration’s

efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union wanting. He believed that the

President had “failed to grasp the dimension of his task” and shied away from penalizing

the Soviets with hard-hitting economic sanctions or reductions in exchanges until the

Afghanistan invasion took place. Instead of utilizing U.S. strengths, Carter contented

himself with toothless rhetoric and in effect turned “the White House into an annex of

Amnesty International.”409 Other dissenters advanced similar arguments. In reference to the 1978 dissident trials, Amalrik argued that they might not have taken placed if Carter had engaged in more public human rights diplomacy and taken more concrete steps to make the USSR comply with the Final Act such as curbing economic relations or suspending SALT negotiations.410 Of course, Medvedev criticized the Carter

administration from a different angle. He blamed its vocal human rights diplomacy for

causing the Soviet authorities to strike a clause from the 1977 Soviet constitution that

would have permitted free emigration. Without any reference to past Soviet conduct, he

also argued that vocal U.S. human rights diplomacy only increased the likelihood that a

crack down on dissent would take place.411

In sharp contrast to how U.S. representatives viewed their efforts, a number of dissenters found the results of the Belgrade Conference disappointing. During the proceedings, the Moscow Watch Group sent a document to signatory states expressing its

409 Vladimir Bukovsky, trans. by Denise H. Wood, ed. Alexis Klimoff, To Chose Freedom (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), 47.

410 Andre Amalrik, trans. by Guy Daniels, Notes of a Revolutionary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 290-5.

411 Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 68-9. 214

reservations about Western delegations’ hesitation to address issues such as nationality problems, the persecution of religious groups, and the political use of psychiatry. It warned Western nations not “to capitulate or vacillate in the face of this sort of blackmail

or analogous threats” because such a development would cause “irreparable

consequences for the future of mankind.” When the conference ended, the same group

issued a report condemning the failure of the Belgrade concluding document to mention

human rights. Such a development represented “a step backwards from the Final Act

itself which affirmed the unbreakable link between the observance of human rights,

security and cooperation.” This omission prompted Bukovsky to pose the question:

“What did the West do with the information obtained at such a high price [Helsinki

Watch Group reports]? At the first review conference in Belgrade it was decided ‘not to

demand too much’ from the Soviets, which in practical terms meant not to demand anything at all.”412

Despite these criticisms, many dissenters still appreciated Carter’s efforts to

promote human rights in the Soviet Union. In particular, they praised U.S. efforts to

reach audiences in Soviet Union through international broadcasting and found Carter’s

embrace of human rights inspiring.413 Ida Milgrom, Anatoly Shcharansky’s mother,

wrote an open letter to the President praising his efforts to support her son: “All the

difficult days of the trial, I have been standing in front of the iron barriers, in front of a

412 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Documents of the Helsinki Monitoring Group in the USSR and Lithuania, Volume I (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 169. Korey, The Promises We Keep, 98; and Bukovsky, To Chose Freedom, 179. See also Sakharov, “Human Rights,” 22.

413 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume IV, 55. See also Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume I, 31; and “Sakharov Speaks to the AFL-CIO.” See also “The Dissidents versus Moscow,” 24. 215

thick wall of KGB men and militiamen . . . All these days I have heard your sincere,

authoritative voice in defense of innocent men.”414 As a token of their gratitude, Soviet

Pentecostals referred to Carter as nash, best translated as “one of us.” Mstislav

Rostropovich, the world-class cellist who refused to return to the Soviet Union while

traveling abroad, sent Carter a letter reading: “[y]our noble, brilliant, and courageous

defense of the most precious commodity given by God to man---freedom of the soul---

will bring you gratitude not only of your contemporaries, but also of their descendants as

well.” After viewing this letter, Carter sent him a reply that thanked him for his kind

words and referred to his music as “an inspiration.” “As President,” he promised, “I’ll try

not to disappoint you.”415

These words are appropriate because the disappointments of dissenters often

reflected a view that the U.S. government could always do more to support their cause.

When speaking on a CBS program speaking about the trial of her husband, Avital

Shcharansky expressed her hope that the Carter administration would carry out even

stronger economic sanctions in the near future designed to increase Jewish emigration

levels and do something “special” to win the release of her husband. 416 Alexander

Slepak thanked administration officials for their efforts to help members of his family

emigrate from the Soviet Union, but also posed the question: “Will you continue to do

414 Drumbell, The Carter Presidency, 126.

415 Letter, to JC, 31 March 1977, WHCF, BU-Box 1, Folder: 1/20/77-1/20-81, JCPL; and Letter, JC to Rostropovich, 5 April 1977, Ibid; and Goldberg, The Final Act, 152. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 285-6.

416Avital Shcharansky, My Husband, the Soviet Dissident, CBS Tape Recording, July 1978, no.2 (New York: Encyclopedia Americana/CBS News Resource Library, 1978). 216

more?”417 Pytor Grigorenko, a World War II Soviet general who spent time in a psychiatric hospital for his dissent activities, expressed similar sentiments. After praising

Carter’s stance on human rights, he asked him for more support: “Mr. Carter! Look after

all of us . . . . in the name of the Lord.” Without delay, “[p]lease invite all these

Christians [to emigrate to the United States] and . . . help them financially.”418

Some dissenters thought that ignorance of how Soviet-style socialism operated in

practice best explained why the United States government had not done more for their

cause. During her testimony before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Natalia

Solzhenitsyna (wife of Alexander) thanked Americans for speaking out against the Soviet government’s violations of the Final Act. At the same time, she reiterated that these

gestures did not go far “enough.” To elicit a more forceful response, she begged U.S. citizens to think about “why these rights and agreements are being violated.” Before searching for compromise, they needed to remember that a “Communist regime cannot exist without a Gulag Archipelago.” If Americans kept this consideration close to their hearts, they would not shy away from difficulties involved in supporting dissenters and transforming Soviet internal behavior.419

In some ways, Sakharov shared this viewpoint. Near the end of 1978, he wrote

articles about conditions in the Soviet Union that appeared in prominent Western

publications. He used these forums to outline the Kremlin’s scorn for basic human rights

417Alexander Slepak to Robert Lipshutz, 26 December 1977, RL, Box 46, Folder: S.D., 2/77-1/78.

418 Pytor Grigorenko, “Three Documents in Defense of Mikola Rudenko,” SB 61 (March 1978): 3.

419 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VII, 84. 217

and civil liberties. He also explained how the Soviet government had failed to solve a myriad of nationality problems in the Baltic republics and Ukraine. Furthermore, he warned Western audiences not to accept Soviet officials’ arguments about their nation’s inherent equality and respect for social and economic rights at face value. In reality, there is “tremendous social inequality between the working masses” and officially- recognized professionals and government bureaucrats, as well as the average Soviet

citizen’s paltry salary.420

Although serious problems still existed in the Soviet Union, Sakharov warned

Western governments and private citizens not to fall victim to a “short-sided pragmatism”

capable of seeing “instantaneous solutions for the most complex problems of peace and

justice.” In effect, he asked them and other dissenters to take a longer view of recent

global developments. “Despite some slip-ups and compromises,” he argued, “the West in

general made it very plain that the observance of human rights is a matter of fundamental significance and will remain a central issue.” In particular, the Belgrade conference represented the “first time specific human rights violations were discussed at such a representative international level.” Even more important, the discussions at Belgrade

“drew the attention of the press, public figures, and world opinion.” Despite the best

efforts of the KGB: “The world has not only received a wealth of information, but also

believed in it.”421

420 Sakharov, “The Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” in On Sakharov, 244-53; and Sakharov, “Human Rights,” 22.

421 Sakharov, “Human Rights,” 22; Sakharov, “The Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” in On Sakharov, 255-6. 218

Because of the growing attention private citizens paid to human rights issues and

events like the Belgrade conference, Sakharov concluded that “there is no basis for

stating that the human rights movement has been defeated.” On the contrary, “the human

rights struggle in the USSR and Eastern Europe has substantively changed the moral and

political climate of the entire world.” Over time, he reasoned, the efforts of a “unified

human rights movement” would set the stage for the “moral victory of the ideology of

human rights over the ideology of .”422 While an impressive vision, Soviet

officials did not see global developments in quite the same way and acted to make sure

that Sakharov’s hopes for the future never came true.

“Provocative Damage Control”: The Soviet Government’s Efforts to Curb Dissent, Neutralize the Helsinki Accords, and Stymie U.S. Human Rights Criticisms

The vast crack down on dissent that the Soviet government appears to have prepared for near the end of 1976 never materialized. Such a development in no way stemmed from changes in the reports that Andropov sent to the Central Committee. In a memorandum dated 5 January 1977, he once again described how private citizens in

Helsinki monitoring groups across the Soviet Union “have significantly stepped up their collection and dissemination to the West of slanderous materials” that called into question Soviet compliance with the Final Act. As he had in the past, he equated the peaceful activities of these groups to revolutionary violence. To justify this charge, he noted that KGB searches had uncovered (i.e., planted) “weapons, foreign currency, large sums of Soviet rubles, and pornographic literature” in the homes of several dissenters.

422 Yasen and Verba, The Human Rights Movement in Ukraine, 79; and “Sakharov Speaks to the AFL- CIO,” 2. 219

He also connected Watch Group members to subversive foreign groups, noting that

officials had “unearthed a large quantity of slanderous materials prepared . . . for

transportation to the West.”423

On the same day as Carter’s inauguration, Andropov issued another report about

the activities of Orlov, Ginsburg, and several nationalists from various republics. He

described how Western journalists, secret services, and U.S. embassy employees had

stepped up their efforts of “encouraging the anti-Soviet movement. . . . [to] draw the

world’s attention to violations of the Helsinki Accords in the Soviet Union.” These

nefarious forces preyed on susceptible individuals such as “Zionists, Crimean Tatars,

Meskhettian Turks, and religious sects.” They also encouraged individuals to make

appeals to foreign governments “containing vile slander of Soviet life” and hold “press

conferences” for the benefit of foreign journalists. Even worse, the global forces aligned

against the Soviet Union hoped that dissenters would “use the upcoming Belgrade

Conference as a basis for legalizing open anti-Soviet declamations . . . and activity.”424

Andropov advocated a vigorous governmental response to combat these developments. He justified arresting a wide array of dissenters on the grounds that “we are depriving them (especially Orlov and Rudenko) of the ability to cause controversy in the West and the negative reaction in some communist parties.” Carrying out trials

423 Memo from Andropov to CC CPSU, "On Measures for Stopping Hostile Activities of the So-called Group for Assistance of Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR,” 5 January 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/KGB%2001-05-1977.pdf [19 January 2007].

424 “Resolution of secretariat of CC of CPSU, “On Measures for Stopping Criminal Activities of Orlov, Ginsburg, Rudenko, and Ventslova,” 20 January 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/index.htm [7 January 2007]. 220

would also disabuse dissidents of the notion that visible Western support on their behalf

gave them immunity against arrest. By undertaking vigilant “pre-emptive” measures and

conducting trials, “the ruling circles of Western countries” would “be shown the

ineffectiveness of their policy of sabotage and pressure towards the Soviet Union.” The

political significance of these measures, he wrote, “will come from the fact that they will

influence the situation in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Polish People’s

Republic, [and] other socialist countries.” Much like the Soviet Union, Andropov reported, these nations “are presently being subjected to mass pressure from both hostile internal elements and international .”425

In preparation for the arrests that took place over the course of the next several months, Soviet authorities continued their “prophylactic” work, which consisted of

“intensive surveillance,” searching individual dissidents’ homes, and confiscating any

non-official publications they found. They also kept disconnecting telephone lines and

used the confessions of one-time dissidents to denigrate individuals who called into

question Soviet human rights practices. In an official Soviet publication, a confessor

repudiated his past dissident activities and attacked Alexander Ginsburg for his desire “to

remake our whole country in the Western mold.” He also explained how dissenters

gathered “various embittered, morally unstable persons . . . who blame all their troubles

on Soviet rule” in return from money from the CIA and fame in Western countries.426

425 Ibid.

426 “The Role of the KGB in World Affairs,” SB 51 (July 1977): 1; and CDSP 29, no. 4 (23 February 1977): 3-5. 221

The Jewish doctor S. L. Lipavsky wrote an open confession to the Presidium of

the Supreme Soviet, U.S. Congress, and the United Nations. 427 In an obvious attempt to

link the existence of Jews who wanted to leave to the Soviet Union to Western intrigues,

he described how CIA agents tricked Jewish families into emigrating because they

wanted to “weaken the foundations of Soviet power.” “The enemies of socialism and the

Soviet state,” he insisted, “are deliberately exploiting the so-called human rights question

for the benefit of imperialism and world reaction.” On 22 January, the film Buyers of

Souls appeared on Soviet television. It referred to Slepak, Shcharansky, and Yosef

Begun as “’agents of world Zionism’” bent on “destroying the country from within.”428

Carter may have attempted to deflect the impression that his human rights statements were only aimed at the Soviet Union, but Andropov failed to pick up on the nuances of the President’s approach to Soviet-American relations. In February, he reported that “[i]deological centers and Zionist organizations “have involved the new

Carter administration and prominent senators” in treacherous “anti-Soviet activities.” He also described how U.S. embassy officials “transmitted a large quantity of hostile anti-

Soviet literature to” a Georgian nationalist and “incited Lithuanian nationalists to increase their activities.” American officials even had the audacity to disseminate

“Zionist materials” “while visiting the Moscow synagogue.”429

427 S. L. Lipavsky was in all likelihood a KGB informant who had worked with the CIA and dissenters at the behest of the Soviet government.

428 CDSP 29, no. 9 (30 March 1977): 1-3; and Avital Shcharansky, trans. Stefani Hoffman, Next Year in Jerusalem (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1979), 86.

429 Andropov to the Central Committee, “U.S. government activities in defense of human rights,” 18 February 1977. Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_123.htm. [20 January 2007]. In public, 222

Brezhnev shared Andropov’s evaluation of U.S. behavior. He called the Carter

administration’s human rights campaign an “outrageous” ideological attack on the Soviet

Union that illustrated the President’s willingness to please reactionary domestic opinion.

In March 1977, he stated that “our people demand that such so-called public [dissident]

figures be treated as opponents of socialism, as persons acting against their own

motherland, [and] as accomplices and agents of imperialism”---a viewpoint official

Soviet publications drove home with force.430 He also took the position that Carter had

designed his human rights campaign to “loosen” the Kremlin’s control of the Soviet

Union. These sentiments explain why he sent Carter a letter that criticized the

President’s interference in Soviet “internal affairs” and correspondence with “an apostate

[Sakharov] who has proclaimed himself an enemy of the Soviet state.”431

A few weeks after Brezhnev sent this letter, the Politburo sent detailed

instructions to Ambassador Dobrynin about how to handle the topic of human rights

during his upcoming meeting with Cyrus Vance. “No reference to human rights,” the document read, can hide the reality that “American intelligence services” have undertaken a campaign designed to undermine “the Soviet social system.” These

Andropov voiced similar sentiments. See Y. V. Andropov, Speeches, Articles, and Interviews: A Selection (New Delhi: Allied Publishers Private Limited, 1984), 103.

430 The Collapse of Détente: From March 1977 Moscow Meetings to the December 1979 Invasion of Afghanistan—The Launch of The Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars Held at the “Playhouse” on the Rockefeller Estate Pocantico Hills, New York, 22-24 October 1992, 11, Washington, D.C., NSA; and Leonid Brezhnev, Peace, Détente, and Soviet- American Relations (New York: Harcourt and Jovanovich, 1979), 155.

431 Andropov, Speeches, Articles, and Interviews, 104; and Dobrynin, In Confidence, 391. See also “Memorandum of Conversation between Averell Harriman and Ambassador Dobrynin, Soviet Embassy,” 14 September 1978 IV-356 in Global Competition and Deterioration of U.S. Soviet Relations, IV-240, V- 264.

223

instructions also called on Dobrynin to criticize the administration’s approval of

“American journalists” and “USA Embassy personnel in Moscow . . . whose only interest

is to find and publicize the so-called ‘dissidents.’”432

During his meetings with Vance and Carter, Foreign Minister Gromyko stuck to

the position that no American had the right to raise matters that only pertained to Soviet

“internal affairs.” When Carter continued to defend American conduct, Gromyko grew

frustrated. After one of these meetings, he met with Dobrynin and commented, “What

kind of man is he with ‘human rights’? He is always bringing up human rights, human

rights—what for?” As the Ambassador himself later remarked, Gromyko on one

occasion “complained to me” about the President’s behavior “as if I was a representative

of Carter.”433

Besides condemning Carter’s statements about Soviet human rights violations,

Soviet officials also criticized the links that the U.S. executive branch had formed with

NGOs. In the official work Human Rights, Soviet legal expert, Samuel Zivs, castigated the Carter administration’s determination to make greater use of “non-governmental channels” and “pseudopublic organizations” such as “Amnesty International” and the

“World Jewish Congress.” Well aware of how these groups helped shape international

opinion, he explained how they prostituted the issue of human rights, “using the issue of

democracy to provoke political confrontation and manipulate public opinion.” When

432 CPSU Central Committee Politburo Decision “About the instruction to the Soviet ambassador in Washington for his conversation with Vance on the question of ‘human rights’ and the text of instruction,” 18 February 1977. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]

433 See also SALT II and the Growth of Mistrust, Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars held at Musgrove Plantation, St. Simons Island, Georgia, 6-9 May 1994, 210, NSA.

224

combating the activities of these groups, Zivs warned, Soviet officials would “be

objective, informed, and resolute in exposing the enemies of peace and détente.”434

Even though Soviet officials arrested dissenters and condemned transnational

human rights activities, they made pragmatic concessions to satisfy the concerns of

global public opinion. Take the example of how Andropov dealt with Elena Bonner’s

requests to travel abroad for medical treatment. He had little doubt that Bonner would engage in anti-Soviet activities on such a trip. Nevertheless, he reminded the Central

Committee that approving her previous foreign travel requests had paid dividends in the past. When Bonner accepted the Nobel Prize for her husband in 1975, she spoke in such a provocative manner that Sakharov’s reputation “among the Soviet ” and wider world suffered a great blow. He also defended granting Bonner’s request because the “rejection of a trip for medical treatment will entail large costs [for the Soviet Union] in terms of propaganda.”435

During the preparatory and main meetings of the Belgrade Conference (June 1977

to March 1978), Soviet leaders still arrested a wide array of dissenters. Yet, they also

made a conscious decision not to put well-known Helsinki monitors such as Shcharansky

on trial until this conference ended.436 They also either forced or allowed a number of

individuals to emigrate from the Soviet Union rather than imprison them. One week

before the International Stern Tribunal conducted hearings in Amsterdam on the

434 Zivs, Human Rights, 180-1.

435 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 228-9.

436 For a copy of a document outlining this rationale, see Benjamin Pinkus, “The Soviet Regime vs. Anatolii Shcharansky: New Soviet Documentation,” Shevut 22 (1997): 143-5. 225

treatment of Soviet Jews, the Kremlin released Mikhail Stern, a Jewish doctor who they

had arrested on bribery charges after his sons applied for emigration. This maneuver

coincided with a dramatic rise in Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. The arrests

of Orlov and Shcharansky may have received widespread international attention, but the

Soviet government refrained from arresting as many “Helsinki monitors” as it could

have. In fact, the total number of known dissident arrests in 1977 represented “the lowest

figure since 1965.”437

These pragmatic concessions do not mean that Soviet officials had become less

worried about the ways in which the existence of dissent threatened their regime’s

internal cohesion and image as a legitimate superpower. As they had in the past, Soviet leaders carried out a wide array of steps designed to curb dissent and transnational human rights critiques. The decision of the World Psychiatric Association’s General Assembly

to censure the Soviet Union’s use of psychiatry for political purposes had little impact on

Andropov’s behavior. Following his orders, KGB agents continued to put dissenters in psychiatric hospitals, especially those from Ukraine.438 On one occasion, Andropov

found time to tell the Central Committee “that one third of the ‘activists’ who

engineered” a demonstration on the International Day of Human Rights (10 December)

“are [now] being treated by psychiatrists.”439

437 See Edward Kline, “The Helsinki Process: A Balance Sheet,” in The Fifth International Sakharov Hearing, 182-3.

438 “One Year After Helsinki: A Group of Soviet Citizens Reports,” SB 48 (April 1977): 1. U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Right to Know, the Right to Act, 148; and Amnesty International, Prisoners of Conscience in the USSR: Their Treatment and Conditions (London: Amnesty International, 1980), 183.

439 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 229. 226

Besides warning Soviet citizens about the dangers of foreign ideological contamination, the Kremlin continued to keep close tabs on the behavior of Sakharov. In a Central Committee report dated 26 March 1978, Andropov noted that “Sakharov champions Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists, Zionists, reactionary clergymen, and sectarians, and would-be emigrants and passes anti-Soviet documents produced by them to [U.S. diplomats].”440 This attitude helps account for why “a total of thirty-two active

measures against Sakharov . . . were either in progress or about to commence both within the Soviet Union and abroad” in “early 1977.” One of these “” consisted of sending Western European gay rights organizations forged letters claiming that

Sakharov belonged to a gay liberation movement in Byelorussia. Instead of delivering him an invitation to speak before the AFL-CIO in the United States, the KGB replaced the invitation with a picture of an “extinct monster brontosaurus,” which Sakharov understood as a reference to the union’s leader George Meany.441

Andropov also advocated “active measures” when he found out that Ginsburg,

Orlov, and Shcharansky might receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their strong defense of human rights. He explained global support for this initiative as a result of the ways in which “the intelligence services and ideological centers of the United States and

European capitalist states” manipulated the “means of mass information.” While some individuals “were convinced anti-Soviets,” many public figures in areas as diverse as

440 Andropov to the Central Committee, “Sakharov increases his contacts with foreign diplomats in Moscow,” 26 March 1978. Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_130.htm [19 January 2007].

441 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 325, 549. On more than one occasion, the Soviet authorities the charge of homosexuality when arresting dissenters. See CCE 47(1979): 129-30. See also “Sakharov Speaks to the AFL-CIO,” SB 58 (February 1978): 2. 227

“science, literature, and art” only voiced their support because they had fallen prey to

“foreign propaganda.” “Whatever the case,” Andropov wrote, these individuals

“contribute to the formation of public opinion, which is inclined to perceive the award of the prize as something deserved.” After making these observations, he requested permission “to organize a statement in the Soviet press” designed to “arouse a perception of the award of the Nobel Prize” as an “overt provocation” rather than something . . . [to] be taken seriously.”442

Andropov went so far as to order the residency in to undertake “active

measures” to “ensure” that the dissidents’ [Nobel Prize] candidacy “failed.” In a

campaign that he himself directed, KGB officials used “reliable assets” to pressure

Norwegian political leaders into not granting the award to “provocative . . . anti-Soviet

agitators.” As one report from Norway highlighted, these “reliable assets” told

Norwegian officials that giving such a prize to “Orlov and his committee” would weaken

Soviet-Norwegian relations. According to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s

work The Sword and the Shield, the KGB viewed these operations as a tremendous

success because the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize went to Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin

rather than the dissenters.443

442 “Andropov to the Central Committee; On Western Proposals to award the Nobel Prize to Soviet human rights activists,” August 1978. Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_132.htm [22 December 2006].

443 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 329-30. As this work also points out, KGB foreign residencies received instructions in 1977 to combat subversive foreign activities at the local level. See Ibid., 559. Official Soviet publication also tried to the famous cellist Mstilav Rostropovich to “White émigré organizations.” See CDSP 30, no. 15 (10 May 1978): 5-6. See also Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 325, 560

228

The close attention KGB officials paid to Western media was no accident because

the Brezhnev regime also tried to short-circuit the transnational human rights

communication network by utilizing U.N. institutions. On the eve of the July 1978 dissident trials, the Soviet government charged and later convicted (19 July) two

American journalists stationed in Moscow who had reported about dissident activities of slander and libel. The court ordered the journalists to pay fines and write retractions in both the Baltimore Sun and New York Times. In a fashion similar to how Soviet members of UNHRC received instructions to advance the idea that human rights questions only pertained to state’s “internal competency,” the Soviets advanced a proposal in UNESCO that in effect would have given governments a document to cite when censoring the press reports of foreign journalists. It would have accomplished this task by holding governments accountable “for the activities in the international sphere of all mass media under their jurisdiction.” In theory, a government could censor all reports that failed to promote “international peace and security,” détente, and the “national liberation of peoples.”444

This Soviet-backed proposal produced bitter debates between Western and non-

Western nations concerning the information monopoly of the former. While Western

representatives were in the minority, the declaration that UNESCO ended up making

about the mass media’s role in facilitating the exchange of information failed to

incorporate the Soviet delegation’s main proposals. In particular, the United States and

444 CDSP 30, no. 29 (16 August 1978): 3; N.A., “No, no Unesco; Unesco's draft declaration on the media threatens press freedom. Britain should tell Mr. M'Bow so,” 16 September 1978, The Economist, 17; “UNESCO and the Press,” 27 October 1978, Washington Post, A23. See also CDSP 30, no. 17 (24 May 1978): 18. 229

Western European countries succeeded in advancing the notion that the mass media

played an important role in advancing the cause of human rights. One section of the

concluding document called on journalists to draw attention to those “who are unable to make their voices heard within their own territories.”445

The Soviet Union’s efforts to legitimize a greater governmental role in controlling

press reports about their nations reflected a determination to discredit U.S. human rights

practices and failures to abide by the provisions of the Final Act. For example, official

newspaper articles complained about how American officials refused “to issue visas to a

delegation from the USSR Seaman’s and River Transport Workers’ Trade Union” and import more Soviet books. They also criticized the decision of the U.S. Congress to re-

impose some of the travel restrictions that Carter had lifted the previous year in

retaliation for dissident trials that took place in 1978. During an interview with an

American journalist, Georgi Arbatov posed the question of what the United States would

do if the Soviet government “established close ties with the American Indians who fought

at Wounded Knee?”446 Coinciding with the beginning of the Belgrade conference’s

preparatory sessions, Isvestia ran an interview with the “political prisoner” Ben Chavis,

the main defendant of the “Wilmington 10” court case. He thanked Soviet citizens for

sending him letters of support and explained how “many political prisoners are in

445 “UNESCO Accepts Declaration Avoiding Controls Over Press,” 23 November 1978, Washington Post, A34. See also “Declaration on Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, and incitement to war,” 28 November 1978.” Available [Online]: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13176&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html [1 October 2007].

446 CHRUR 25 (January-March 1977): 22. 230

American” jails. When questioned about the Carter administration’s human rights

campaign, he replied, “I view it as unparalleled hypocrisy.” “Rights and liberties are

advertised for the purpose of foreign policy, but are fragrantly violated within our

country—that’s the way our system is.”447

On 12 June 1977, Soviet officials participated in a debate with American private

citizens and Carter administration representatives about the status of human rights in the

United States and Soviet Union. During the discussions, which NBC broadcast on U.S.

network television, Soviet representatives became agitated. One took strong exception to

a journalist’s contention that Americans would never be able to “trust a country which

cannot allow its citizens to publish or read whatever they want to.” In response, he posed the question: “Why are the new administration and mass media so busy defending human rights?” “This well-orchestrated anti-Soviet campaign, he argued, “is one of the manifestations of revival of forces hostile to the Soviet Union and Socialism.” “The aim of the campaign” of such a campaign “is to distract the American people from their own problems.”448

Soviet representatives at the Belgrade follow-up meeting found the U.S.

delegation’s public statements about human rights issues and the naming of persecuted

dissenters embarrassing and provocative.449 The head of the delegation later called the

Soviet position on human rights “weak,” but at the time he defended the position that the

447 CDSP 29, no. 21 (22 June 1977): 7.

448 CHRUR 26 (April-June 1977): 19-20.

449 SALT II and the Growth of Mistrust, Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project, 97, 206, 209; “Memorandum of Conversation between Averell Harriman and Ambassador Dobrynin, 3 March 1978, IV- 338 in Global Competition and the Deterioration in U.S.-Soviet Relations, NSA. 231

most important parts of Final Act dealt with the promotion of good relations between signatory states; he also held fast to the position that the provisions of the agreement in no way shielded dissenters from imprisonment under Soviet laws. Unhappy with the behavior of the United States, Soviet delegates started issuing statements that questioned the right of the United States to judge other nations’ human rights practices. One of these press releases posed the question: “Are the judges to be those who used napalm and terrible weapons of destruction to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam and wipe hundreds of villages off the face of the earth? Or those who planned secret CIA programs to try to assassinate foreign statesmen?450

Two weeks before the dissident trials of 1978 began, Izvestia published an article

describing ’s visit to the Soviet Union. According to the author, Ali

called his private meeting with Brezhnev the “greatest honor accorded me in my entire

life” and referred to the Soviet people as “the most peace loving I have ever seen.” The

boxer also praised the Soviet Union’s religious freedoms and marveled at the fact that

“not less than 100 nationalities live in harmony within” the nation’s borders. When

returning to Chicago, the article pointed out, Ali would have to reconcile his visit with

the news that members of the American Nazi party had received permission from the

proper authorities to hold a demonstration in the city.451

The timing of these attacks on U.S. human rights practices illustrate that the

Brezhnev regime wanted to enhance his nation’s image as a universal human rights

450 “Belgrade Spat on Helsinki Detainees,” N.D., Box 37, Folder: Belgrade, General, USHCF, RCSCE, NA.

451 CDSP 30, no. 26 (26 July 1978): 15-6. 232

model. In an effort to strengthen this campaign, the Soviet government made its new

constitution official (7 October 1977) around the same time that the Belgrade’s main

working session began (October 4) and Carter signed CAPR and ESACR (October 5).

To show the Soviet Union’s commitment to the Helsinki process, the new constitution

defined the nation’s approach to foreign relations (Article 29) in terms of a truncated

version of the Final Act’s ten principles regulating relations between signatories. For

example, the phrase “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the

freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief” became “respect for human rights

and basic freedoms.” The document also never mentioned the provisions of Principle IV,

which emphasizes how “institutions, organizations,” and private citizens played a pivotal

role in furthering the Helsinki process.452

The Soviet government’s willingness to manipulate language in the Final Act to enhance its international credibility should not be overlooked. It helps substantiate one

author’s argument that Brezhnev’s 1977 constitution marked an important “landmark in

the project” of creating a “law-abiding totalitarian state.” The document in effect gave

crystal clear legal sanction to the binding nature of Soviet communist officials’ bureaucratic discretion and authority. Shedding the “democratic pretensions of the Stalin constitution,” Article 6 confirmed the position of the CPSU as “the leading and guiding

force of Soviet society.” To dissuade dissenters from referring to the Soviet constitution

452 For a copy of 1977 Soviet constitution, see http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/m/c/mcw10/Download/SovietConstitution.htm [10 October 2007]. During his opening statement, the head Soviet delegate at the main Belgrade meeting stressed how the new constitution showed his government’s commitment to respecting basic human rights. See Birnbaum and Andren, Belgrade and Beyond, 117-8. 233 when criticizing governmental conduct, Article 59 indicated that the exercise of rights and freedoms “is inseparable from the performance of . . . duties and obligations” to the state as defined by CPSU. Some of these duties included the obligation of safeguarding

“the interests of the Soviet state” and combating “anti-social behavior.”453

Brezhnev extolled this document in the World Marxist Review. He argued that

“the new constitution . . . multiplies the magnetic force of the socialist example.” The cogent synthesis of “civic duties” and democratic freedoms” found in the document will give “Communists of the world an effective ideological weapon in the global ideological struggle with” capitalist countries. Over time, he assured his readers, the number of individuals who denigrated the Soviet state and socialist democracy “will be reduced as the world learns more about the new Soviet constitution of the USSR and the life of our people.” This attitude helps explain why the USSR submitted a report to the United

Nations Human Rights Committee in January 1978 extolling the ways in which Soviet human rights practices now conformed to the requirements of all international agreements, including the Final Act.454

The steps that Soviet orthodox leaders took to defend the international reputation of their regime in no way meant that they had actually changed their internal behavior.

At the conclusion of the Belgrade follow-up conference, Andropov saw an excellent opportunity to put Shcharansky and Orlov on trial. When outlining his plans to the

453 Ibid. See also Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 97-8.

454 L.I. Brezhnev, Socialism, Democracy and Human Rights (Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1980), 219-20; and Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1979 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1980), 688. 234

Politburo, he opened with the astonishing claim that the Soviet Union only kept 520

people in prison, of whom 110 were being “held on charges of that have political

coloring.” He prefaced his remarks with that observation that “Carter [had] made a

speech to the effect that Shcharansky should not be brought to responsibility.” Of course,

“we cannot satisfy such a request because” the dissenter had committed crimes and has taken responsibility for them, including the “betrayal” of his “Motherland.”455

Taking advantage of the broad bureaucratic discretion he possessed, Andropov explained how the trial would take place in an isolated location with an “appropriately

prepared . . . audience” without correspondents. He also advised the Politburo not to

make any promises to Carter concerning his confidential request of the Soviets not to

mention Shcharansky’s “connections with the CIA” during court proceedings. Because

Soviet courts were very “democratic,” the leadership could not possibly satisfy such a request.456

Orthodox officials defended the legitimacy of these trials using familiar methods.

They published articles in official publications connecting the convicted dissenters to

foreign intelligence services and “White émigré organizations.” Some focused on how

their punishments in no way violated the provisions of Final Act. An article entitled

“Slanderers and Provocateurs” contained letters from private Soviet citizens who

supported the Kremlin’s conduct. Someone from Lvov wrote that “Orlov, Shcharansky,

and Ginsburg have gotten their just desserts. If there turn out to be others like them, they

455 “Extract from Minutes of CC CPSU Politburo Session on Scharansky,” 22 June 1978. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/06-22-1978%20t.pdf [7 June 2006].

456 Ibid. 235

should also be convicted without so much as a glance ‘across the border.” After posing

the question “just what are the ‘rights’ in the Soviet Union for which the West shows

such persistent interest,” the same author answered “the right to counterrevolution.”457

Around the same time, an article appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta that excoriated

Patricia Derian for attending the “’National Conference on Soviet Jewry.’” Citing an excerpt from the Christian Science Monitor, the article called her conduct

‘unprecedented’” and in strict violation of established diplomatic protocol. It also pointed out how “world public opinion” found her comments “false” and provocative because of the U.S. government’s close relations with “despotic regimes, “neocolonialist adventures in Africa,” and “disregard for” internationally recognized human rights of

U.S. citizens. To drive home this point, the editors of Literaturnaya Gazeta told Derian to read another article in the same magazine that pointed out how the American government allowed Ukrainian Nazi war criminals to live in the United States.458 The

Brezhnev regime also organized a citizen postcard campaign against Carter’s human

rights policies in June 1978. The prefabricated cards asked the U.S. President to “stop

the political trials of the american [sic] civil rights fighters.” They also asked him to

support the “broad international campaign of solidarity with political prisoners” in the

jails of the United States and right-wing dictatorships such as Chile.459

457 CDSP 30, no. 31 (30 August 1978): 5.

458 Ibid. 30, no. 28 (9 August 1978): 5-6.

459 Ibid., 6. 236

This postcard campaign reveals much about the attitude of Soviet orthodox

leaders in the summer of 1978. Evidence suggests that they viewed themselves as

successful defenders of the ideological conformity and political power structure that held

their multinational empire together. Even though the full scope of the Carter

administration’s reactions to the recent dissident trials had not yet played itself out in full,

Dobrynin told the Soviet Foreign Ministry that “our expression of firmness in relation to

the prosecution of renegades like Shcharansky” has more than justified itself. “The

Carter administration, despite all its rhetoric, was forced to retreat and to announce its

intention to continue the Soviet-American negotiations on SALT.” In the opinion of U.S.

“political observers,” the “Russians won this mini-confrontation.”460

The notes that East Germany’s leader compiled during his

meeting with Brezhnev on 25 July 1978 also reveal Soviet satisfaction with the impact of

the recent dissident trials. According to Honecker, Brezhnev indicated that:

In the West a true witch dance has been staged over these two traitors [Shcharansky and Ginzburg] whose hostile activities were inspired by subversive imperial centers. . . . Actually this was an attempt of reactionary circles to test our strength, and we have vigorously demonstrated that any attempts to intervene in our internal affairs. . . under the pretext of protecting human rights . . . [for the purposes of] creating a legal opposition against the Socialist order, are doomed to fail. . . . [T]his should teach them once and for all.461

460 “Political Letter of Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly F. Dobrynin, 11 July 1978” in U.S.- Soviet Relations and the Turn Toward Confrontation, 1977-1980—New Russian and East German Documents, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]

461 Transcript, Meeting of East German leader Erich Honecker and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Crimea, USSR, 25 July 1978,” in U.S.-Soviet Relations and the Turn Toward Confrontation, 1977-1980—New Russian and East German Documents, Cold War International History Project. Available [Online]: http://cwihp.si.edu [6 February 2004]

237

This boast did not mean that Brezhnev saw smooth sailing ahead. While “Carter has moderated his tone after the decisive rebuff we gave him, there is no reason to assume that he is willing to eliminate . . . the continuing campaign for the so-called ‘human rights.’” On the other hand, Brezhnev mused, Carter “is wavering and apparently is listening to the forces for which détente goes against the grain, although he seems to be aware that it is necessary to search for agreements with us on the cardinal question of war and peace.462

These evaluations of Carter raise the question of whether or not his administration

could have done more to promote human rights in the Soviet Union before the visible

dissident trials of 1978 took place. Evidence suggests that the frequency of public human

rights statements only affected at the margins the Soviet government’s determination to

curb dissent. Of course, many Soviet officials viewed these statements as provocative.

Nevertheless, they appear to have cared much more about how the suppression of

dissident activity affected their regime’s international prestige and important interests

such as trade, arms control, and beneficial exchanges. Contrary to the views of some

dissidents, the use of more public rhetoric than administration officials employed would

not have impacted Soviet behavior to any great degree. Like many dissenters argued,

Carter would have had to resort to measures such as canceling SALT negotiations, cutting off exchanges (scientific ones in particular), and passing even stronger economic sanctions than he approved to have any sort of fundamental impact on the Soviet government’s hostility to dissent.

462 Ibid. 238

Arguments suggesting that stronger punitive measures might have resulted in

more restrained Soviet behavior suffer from several shortcomings, however. On the most

basic level, they overestimate the amount of influence American measures could ever

have had on Soviet conduct. Because the Soviet Union was a multinational, multiethnic

empire bound together by a rigid, centralized bureaucracy and strict ideological

conformity, government officials had an ever-present need to combat the existence non-

official opinion and activities. In other words, the Soviet leadership’s best interests lay in

the consistent suppression of dissent. As subsequent chapters will help show, the

Brezhnev regime was also quite willing to face international condemnation, the

cancellation of exchanges, and economic sanctions when undertaking the measures they

felt necessary to defend Soviet-style socialism. While appealing from a political point of

view, the option of cutting off exchanges over the long run would have only succeeded in

further isolating Soviet government officials and private citizens from global

developments and other points of view, thereby contributing to the closed nature of

Soviet society.

Several former Soviet government officials and Roy Medvedev have advanced

the argument that Carter would have done much more for the cause of promoting human

rights by taking a quieter and more flexible position on issue. In his memoirs, Anatoly

Dobrynin argues that Carter’s efforts “would have been more successfully enhanced

through a combination of permanent and strong but essentially private pressure through the confidential channel.”463 At a conference about U.S.-Soviet relations that took place

463 Dobrynin, In Confidence, 389. 239

in 1994, he commented that “I was 100% percent convinced that it didn’t matter whether

you solved the case . . . of Shcharansky or Sakharov; they [Carter administration officials] would always continue with more.” During the same conference, the former

Special Assistant to the head of the KGB and member of the Soviet delegation at

Belgrade Sergei Kondrashev indicated that Andropov wanted to find more quiet and

pragmatic ways of dealing with specific human rights cases and understood that the

Helsinki Process made “it necessary to develop our position [on human rights]

further.”464

These sorts of arguments suffer from some of the same flaws as those that

emphasize how stronger U.S. measures might have produced important changes in Soviet

domestic conduct. The use of “quieter” diplomacy might have succeeded in solving more

individual cases, but such a strategy would not have made orthodox officials like

Andropov any less fearful of domestic subversion. As indicated in Chapter III, the Soviet

arrest rates for dissident activities between the years 1957 and 1979 reached their highest

levels during the early 1970s when the Nixon administration’s “quiet” human rights

diplomacy predominated. Given the inherent shortcomings of this approach, the Carter

administration’s public rhetoric about Soviet domestic misconduct and support for

transnational human rights activities proved excellent policies. They recognized that

dissenters and private citizens deserved U.S. governmental support for creating an international environment that challenged the legitimacy of systematic human rights violators like the Soviet Union. More than anything else, the globalization of human

464 SALT II and the Growth of Mistrust, Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project, 327, 24, 66, 97. 240

rights issues prevented Soviet leaders from obtaining the international legitimacy and

ideological appeal that they wanted to achieve in the Western world without changing

their domestic behavior in any sort of fundamental way.

Yuri Orlov summarized this position quite well in a message addressed to Soviet

leaders that reached Western audiences in 1979. He warned them that “persecuting

independent humanitarian information” only destroyed “the seeds of healthy political

development” in “our country” and lowered the international prestige of the USSR. Until

you embraced the ideals of the Final Act and “democratic socialism,” the wider world

would continue to view your regime as a “totalitarian” menace.465

Instead of listening to Orlov, Soviet leaders continued to place importance on

curbing transnational reports about Soviet human rights violations and reducing the

Carter administration’s support of dissenters. In a note he sent to Moscow in July 1978,

Dobrynin reminded the Foreign Ministry that the Carter administration “fears a decline of

relations with the Soviet Union,” which explains why it “has shown lately a desire to

smooth them out a little.” “On a practical level,” he pointed out, the executive branch

will make every effort to conclude a SALT agreement in the near future. “It goes without

saying that it is necessary to use this to our interest.”466 As the next chapter will explain,

Soviet leaders only had limited success using the issue of arms control as a way of

curbing the executive branch’s commitment to promoting human rights in their nation.

465 “My Meeting with My Husband, Dr. Yuri Orlov, on August 21 1979,” BEA, Box 30, Folder: Sakharov Hearings, 10/79, JCPL.

466 “Political Letter of Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly F. Dobrynin, 11 July 1978.” 241

CHAPTER 6: A DELICATE BALANCING ACT TOPPLES: THE CARTER

ADMINISTRATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND PRIVATE CITZENS, SEPTEMBER

1978-JANUARY 1981

Upon first glance, the argument that Soviet leaders exploited the issue of arms control to weaken the Carter administration’s commitment to promoting human rights in their nation seems persuasive. Because many officials believed that signing a SALT treaty would lead to improvements in Soviet domestic and international conduct, they tried to create an atmosphere more favorable to successful negotiations. Carter made fewer specific public references to Soviet domestic misconduct than one might have expected in the wake of the dissident trials of 1978. Under the impression that the human rights situation in the Soviet Union had improved, he and other officials also carried out calibrated measures designed to smooth out Soviet-American relations and reward the

Soviets for increasing Jewish emigration rates until at least September 1979.

The steps that the U.S. government took to facilitate a “reciprocal accommodation” with the Soviet Union only tell one part of the story, however. In many ways, the administration’s approach to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union remained consistent. Carter and his subordinates continued to criticize Soviet internal behavior in a wide variety of forums and take steps to buttress the international legitimacy of U.S. human rights criticisms. They also kept supporting transnational human rights activities as part of a larger effort to highlight Moscow’s harsh repression of dissent. Just as they had in the past, executive branch officials advocated and implemented policies designed to enhance the American ability to engage in peaceful 242

ideological competition with the USSR. In fact, Carter believed that signing a SALT treaty would help the American democratic model “prevail” over Soviet totalitarianism in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Besides examining what Carter meant by the term “prevail,” this chapter will analyze how transnational human rights activities remained an important element in the executive branch’s efforts to promote human rights in the USSR. In some ways, this development was inevitable. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the transnational human rights network dedicated to monitoring signatories’ compliance with the Final Act and other internationally recognized human rights agreements continued to gather strength.

The Final Act review conference in Madrid (November 1980-September 1983) revealed

that transnational actors had gone a long way in accomplishing their goal of working with

governments to “globalize” the issue of Soviet and Eastern European human rights

abuses. Whatever missteps the Carter administration had taken, Brzezinski had every

reason to argue that the U.S. executive branch had played an important role in creating an

international “climate” that challenged the legitimacy of nations like the USSR.467

The Pitfalls of Reciprocal Accommodation

Marshall Shulman’s Congressional testimony in September 1978 conveyed the

executive branch’s position that Soviet-American relations had improved in the wake of

the Soviet Union’s mid-July dissident trials. After outlining the recent difficulties, he

commented that “a number of steps on the Soviet side in recent weeks suggest that the

Soviet Union wishes to reverse the [recent] tide of events.” In defense of this position, he

467 Memo for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski: The White House, “Questions and Answers for Human Rights Day Briefing Session,” 5 December 1978, NSABM, Folder: Human Rights, 12/78-3/79, JCPL. 243

noted that the Soviets had terminated the slander cases against American correspondents

and reduced “the inhumane severity of sentences” in trials that followed the sentencing of

Shcharansky. They had also allowed a “number of families to leave the country who had previously been denied permission to do so” and increased Jewish emigration rates to the highest levels since 1973. In words that reflected Carter’s preference for a “reciprocal accommodation,” Shulman asserted that “the United States would be “fully responsive . .

. if the Soviet leadership chooses the wiser course of restraint and responsibility.”468

When meeting with a group of Senators before their scheduled trip to the Soviet

Union in November 1978, Vance expressed sentiments similar to those of Shulman.

“The dissident trials have left [a] bad aftertaste,” he conceded, but the “problems of the summer have largely abated.” In defense of this position, he spoke of the increasing rate of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union and the recent increases in U.S.-Soviet trade.

He also mentioned how “some Soviets are increasingly receptive to the concept of inter- dependence,” which means that we should encourage the USSR to “play a role” in solving complex global problems and “3rd world issues.”469 As Vance’s notes reveal, he

viewed the signing of a SALT agreement as the “key” to Soviet-American relations

because such a development “would lead to a summit” and open up a “broad discussion

on bilateral and other issues.” He also felt that SALT II needed to pass the Senate

because the agreement would provide a “vital thread of stability in Soviet-American

468 State Department, “Overview of U.S-Soviet Relations,” Current Policy 33 (September 1978): 2-3.

469 “Soviet Union; For Ribicoff Committee (notes prepared for congressional appearance with attached table on Jewish Emigration),” 8 November 1978 in Global Competition and the Deterioration of U.S.- Soviet Relations, 1977-1980, IV-426-9. 244

relations” and make “many problems . . . go away.” In fact, he believed that not

reaching an arms control agreement would amount to a “shattering setback to our foreign

policy” and give the “public initiative to the Soviets.”470

Carter took an even more optimistic view of the effects of signing an arms control treaty with the Soviet Union. After mentioning Carter’s upcoming meeting with

Gromyko, Brzezinski warned the President about the dangers of placing too much importance on signing an arms control treaty. “Not only should we be cautious about the imminence of a SALT agreement,” he wrote, “but we should also be more skeptical about the centrality of SALT.” While such a treaty would be “a useful and positive element in the U.S.-Soviet relationship,” it “is not likely to alter profoundly the nature of the US-

Soviet relationship.” Because the President believed in the possibility of Soviet moderation over the long term, however, he disagreed with this last sentence. In the report’s margins, he wrote, “I’m not so sure about that provided a summit meeting is held to conclude SALT II.”471

Because many top-level officials perceived moderation in Soviet behavior and

saw a successful SALT agreement as way of improving superpower relations, they strove

to create a climate more amenable to signing an arms control treaty. For example, a new

State Department official who raised the issue of Shcharansky’s arrest in a private

conservation with a Soviet official later received a rebuke for amalgamating SALT and

470 “Attention of people everywhere . . ., (notes taken in connection with the Vienna Summit, June 1979 in Global Competition and the Deterioration of U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1977-1980, IV-435-7.

471 Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report #72,” 22 September 1978, 2, BM, Box 42, Folder: Weekly Reports, 71-81, JCPL.

245

human rights. Carter also made fewer specific references to specific Soviet human rights

violations. In November, Brzezinski proposed that he meet with the “half-dissident”

writer Andrei Voznesensky because of his friendship with “Robert Kennedy and Martin

Luther King, Jr.” Carter passed on this opportunity even though he admitted that such a

meeting would help keep “intellectual life open in the Soviet Union and strengthen those

with courage to speak out on intellectual issues.”472

Numerous officials employed positive calibrated responses designed to show U.S.

support for the Soviet government’s apparent decision to moderate its behavior. Carter

ended the on all high-level meetings not related to arms control when he sent an

American delegation to a Soviet-American trade conference in Moscow on 10 December

1978. Even though the framework for restricting the flow of American technology to the

Soviet Union existed, Carter decided to use trade as a way of reinforcing positive Soviet

behavior. While in Moscow, the Secretary of the Treasury Blumenthal “announced U.S.

approval of 73 outstanding requests for export licenses” related to “oil and gas production

equipment.”473 On 25 January 1979, State Department press officer Hodding Carter

announced that the visit of the U.S. scientific delegation that had been postponed in

August 1978 would now take place in February. He called this visit appropriate because

“the human rights picture in the Soviet Union had improved considerably.” In defense of

this position, he spoke of the increasing number of Jews who had received permission to

472 Drumbell, The Carter Presidency, 126; and Memo, ZB to JC, “Meeting with Andrei Voznesensky,” 6 November 1978, BM, Box 80, Folder: 11/78, JCPL. See also Robert C. Tooth, “Soviet Dissidents Isolated by West’s Official Silence,” The Times, 4 March 1979, 2.

473 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Sixth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 10; and Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 679. 246

leave the Soviet Union and praised how “judicial repression against dissidents had

‘quieted down.’”474

Because of these perceived improvements, Carter reversed the decision he made

in August 1978 not to “approve the sale of a large American-made computer to TASS.”

When the Sperry-Univac company reduced “the total communication capability” of the

computer in question by about “77 percent,” he approved the sale in April 1979. In

contrast to the previous argument that the computer sale had been suspended because of

Soviet human rights violations, officials now reported how it had declined to sell it

because of national security considerations.475

Carter’s ambivalent attitude toward the Jackson-Vanik amendment resurfaced in

1979. In February, Representative (D-OH) introduced legislation that

gave the President the authority to waive the requirements of the Jackson-Vanik

amendment if he thought that a nation had liberalized its emigration policies enough.

After deliberations, Carter chose to work toward awarding the Soviets a waiver granting

them most-favored nation (MFN) trade status based on private assurances that the recent

high Jewish emigration rates would continue. Near the end of April, Vance and

Blumenthal told Dobrynin that the executive branch would attempt to waive the

474 Documents of the Helsinki Monitoring Groups in the USSR and Lithuania (1976-1986), Volume I, 293- 4. In her Congressional testimony about Soviet human rights violations on 16 September 1980s, Assistant Secretary Derian commented, “After the Orlov and Shcharansky trials and the accompanying strong international criticism, including our own, there was a definite hiatus in arrests. Stiff repression began to resume only in late 1979, the result of a larger number of political and economic factors.” See American Foreign Policy Basic Documents, 1977-1980, 452.

475 “Carter Reverses on Tass Computer Sale,” Washington Post, 6 April 1979, A28. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 217. See also Letter, S. T. Sherman to Rauer H. Meyer, 26 January 1979, BM, Box 80, Folder: 2/79, JCPL. 247

requirements of the Jackson-Vanik amendment after the Vienna Summit meeting took

place in June. Carter may have supported granting MFN status to the Soviet Union as

part of his larger effort to grant the same privileges to China without calls of favoritism,

but he also viewed such a move as a way of encouraging the Soviets to keep Jewish

emigration levels high.476

The use of calibrated responses to encourage positive Soviet behavior does not

mean that Carter had given up on the task of engaging in peaceful ideological

competition with the Soviet Union. He held fast to the position that signing an arms

control treaty would only enhance the ability of the United States to outshine the Soviets

in the eyes of the rest of the world. On 19 , he warned that not ratifying a

SALT treaty “would give the Soviets an enormous propaganda weapon to use against

us.” “They would be identified, at least in their own mind and maybe in the minds of

many nonaligned countries around the world as a peace-loving nation.” Such a

development, he warned, would put the United States “at a decided disadvantage” in the

realm of “peaceful competition” with the Soviet Union.477 Five months later, he

remarked that maintaining approximate military parity with the Soviet Union served

476 Petrus Buwalda, They Did Not Dwell Alone: Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, 1967-1990 (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997), 132-5; and Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 810. See also Carter, Keeping Faith, 202; and William W. Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), 153-4. Convinced that Soviet leaders would adapt their policies to larger changes in the international environment, Vance advised Carter that giving the Soviets MFN status would strengthen “the hand of those who favor détente as a path to modernizing the economic and social system.” See Memo, Cyrus Vance to JC, 8 June 1979 in Global Competition and the Deterioration of U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1977-1980, IV-435-7.

477 PPOP, 1979, Vol. I, 904 248

American interests because “we have all the advantages.” When explaining this position, he argued that

The Soviet Union is a totalitarian government; ours is a free government, a democratic government. The Soviets believe that the citizen ought to be subject to the mandates of the state; we believe that citizens as individuals ought to be honored and the citizens ourselves should control the government. We believe in individual initiative and the worth of human beings; the Soviets believe that the state should dominate every aspect. 478

“So, in a peaceful competition with the Soviet Union,” he continued, “we have all the

advantages to prevail.” “That is an important element of the SALT treaties.”479

As this language suggests, the executive branch never really abandoned the task

of creating an international environment more conducive to human rights and holding the

Soviets accountable for their internal behavior. As part of a larger effort “to offset the

emphasis that will be placed on SALT” in the coming months, Carter and other officials gave prominent speeches commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights in December 1978. Carter went out of his way to reject

arguments that he should abandon his human rights campaign. He reminded the audience

that no individual who “is actually taking the risks or suffering for human rights has ever

asked me to desist in our support of basic human rights. From the prisons, from the

camps, from the enforced exiles, we receive one message: Speak up, persevere, [and] let

the voice of freedom be heard.” Well aware that he had become less vocal about specific

Soviet violations, he also reiterated the complexities and trade-offs involved in the very

nature of human rights promotion. Since “we live . . . in a difficult and complicated

478 Ibid., Volume II, 1916.

479 Ibid. 249

world,” he had no choice but to balance the promotion of human rights against other

American interests.480

Behind closed doors, a wide array of officials carried out symbolic gestures and engaged in “quiet diplomacy” to show their disapproval of Soviet human rights practices.

On 22 September 1978, Ambassador Al Toon met with émigré dissidents while visiting the United States. Three months later, he and Shulman raised the issue of Elena Bonner’s eye problem with Dobrynin, while the White House Science Advisor Frank Press criticized Soviet human rights practices when the American scientific delegation he headed visited the Soviet Union.481 During the later half of 1979, the U.S. embassy in

Moscow cancelled a reception for Soviet publishers in retaliation for the Kremlin’s

decision to bar an American publisher who had published dissident literature from

attending a book fair in Moscow. Toon also met with the Pentecostals who had taken

refuge in the U.S. embassy and raised their plight during a meeting with the Soviet

Minister of Internal Affairs.482 In sum, various officials made twenty-seven individual

representations in “human rights cases, including “the problem of Shcharansky’s health

480 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights Remarks at a White House Meeting Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Declaration's Signing,” 6 December 1976. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=30264&st=&st1= [10 December 2006]. When Brzezinski suggested that the President “reaffirm at some point” his “general commitment” to human rights on 27 October 1978, Carter responded “I agree.” See Memo, ZB to JC, “NSC Weekly Report #77,” 27 October 1978, 1, BM, Box 42, Folder: 71-81, JCPL. The quote about offsetting the emphasis on human rights comes from Memo, ZB and Anne Wexler to JC, “A White House Event on Human Rights,” 24 October 1978, WHCF, HU-3, Folder: 9/1/78 to 12/31/78, JCPL. See also Memo, JT and Leslie G. Denend to ZB, “Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” WHCF, HU-3, Folder: 9/1/78-12/31/78, JCPL; and “The White House Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” BEA, Box 30, Folder: Human Rights, UD on 12/78, JCPL.

481 Memo for ZB, “US Government Initiatives on behalf of Human Rights,” 4-5, BM, Box 29, Folder: 4/79-4/80, JCPL.

482 Ibid., 3, 4-5. 250

and the arrest of Father .” They also made “at least 40 representations”

related to “family reunification cases” and over 60 representations that raised issues such

as travel, marriage, and media representation.483

Brzezinski attempted to carry out a prisoner exchange involving Shcharansky. On

20 September 1978, he raised the possibility of such an exchange with Dobrynin, noting

that the release of Shcharansky “would in itself contribute to a better atmosphere” and

“make SALT ratification easier.” In response to this suggestion, Dobrynin indicated that

“Shcharanskiy could not be involved in any discussions” because “his case has become symbolic and Soviet leaders feel very strongly about it.” After making this point,

Dobrynin suggested that “it was the Soviet irritation over human rights that made Soviet

leaders so unresponsive to Carter’s repeated expressions of concern regarding the

escalating Soviet-Cuban involvement in Africa.” According to transcripts of the meeting,

Brzezinski rejected the ambassador’s suggestion that the United States “release the two

Soviets charged for espionage in exchange for the less notorious cases” such as “the Vins family.” “Since the exchange would be designed to have a positive political effect,” he argued, “it would have to involve some of the cases that have attracted public attention in this country.” From his vantage point, “[f]ocusing on essentially obscure cases would not serve the political purposes of such accommodation.”484

After almost seven more months of intense negotiations, the United States agreed to trade two convicted Soviet spies for ten dissenters, including the well-known

483 On the eve of the Vienna Summit, a State Department official wrote a letter to the Soviet government complaining about “interruptions in the delivery of mail to dissenters.” See Ibid.

484 Ibid., 4-5. 251

individuals Alexander Ginsburg and the Ukrainian Helsinki monitor Valery Moroz. The

Soviets also agreed to release Baptist minister and two Jews who had been

sentenced to death for their attempts to reach Israel by hijacking an airplane in 1970.

When a reporter asked him about how his administration concluded the exchange, Carter commented, “We’ve not forgotten about any human rights activist in the Soviet Union who is being punished or imprisoned.” When he met with Vins after he arrived in the

United States, Carter told him not to feel guilty about leaving the Soviet Union because he “had the opportunity to send a Christian message to ten million television viewers who

saw him raise his bible when he arrived in the United States.” A short time later, they

both attended church together.485

Even though the signing of SALT II represented the most important and visible

aspect of the 1979 U.S.-Soviet summit at Vienna, Carter wanted members of his

delegation to raise the issue of Soviet human rights violations. During his preparations

for the summit, he directed his delegation to “register our concern regarding non-

compliance with Helsinki” and work toward a Soviet commitment to the “freer flow of

information and people in exchange programs.” He also wanted members to fight for

“greater equality and reciprocity” related to “media and commercial representation.”

Furthermore, Carter agreed to proposals from his subordinates calling on members of the

485 PPOP, 1979, Volume I, 751; and Carter, Keeping Faith, 148-9. See also “Biographical Background on Five Human Rights Activists Released in Detention or Prison in the Soviet Union,” BM, Box 19, Geographical File, Folder: Prisoner Exchanges, Alpha 7/78-5/79, JCPL; Memo, ZB to JC, “Update on New Arrivals,” 28 April 1979, BM, Box 81, Folder: 3-4/1979, JCPL. “Soviet Dissidents Still Speaking Out,” Newsweek, 17 September 1979, 17; and “Soviets Exchange 5 Dissidents for 2 spies; Five Dissidents Freed by Soviets,” Washington Post, 28 April 1979, A1. 252

U.S. delegation to raise the cases of dissenters such as Shcharansky, Nudel, and Slepak

during their discussions with Soviet officials.486

In a move designed to show the administration’s commitment to human rights,

Brzezinski held a meeting with one of the recently traded dissenters eight days before the

summit took place. Once in Vienna, American representatives presented their Soviet

counterparts with the U.S. Representation List of Hardship (Human Rights) Cases and a

“list of those denied exit permission to Israel, including prisoners of conscience.” During

his discussions with Brezhnev, Carter asked the Soviet leader to free Shcharansky and

noted that the Senate would pay particular attention to the Soviet human rights record

before agreeing to ratify the treaty. He also expressed his appreciation for the large

increase in Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union and told Brezhnev that he would

attempt to give both China and the Soviet Union MFN status when he returned to

Washington.487

Carter’s assurances about how his administration would work to grant the Soviets

MFN status helps illustrate that the possibility of a “reciprocal accommodation” remained

on his mind when he traveled to Vienna. During his preparations for the meeting, he

directed his delegation to ask the Soviets for help in resolving the regional disputes in

Southern Africa and Southeast Asia; he also wanted the delegation to “press the Soviets

to cooperate on global issues” such as increasing economic aid to “poorer LDCs.”

486 Memo, “Decisions on Summit Objectives,” ZB to JC, 24 May 1979, BM, Box 20, Folder: Alpha Channel, 5/79-8/79; and Memo, “Soviet Prisoners, Refuseniks, and Dissidents,” Edward Sanders to JC, 6 June 1979, BM, Box 19, Folder: USSR-Vienna Summit, 6/79, JCPL; and Note, Robert Gates to ZB, N.D. in Ibid.

487 Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 810; Drumbell, The Carter Presidency, 127; and Rosati, The Carter Administration’s Quest for Global Community, 135. 253

During one of his discussions with Brezhnev, Carter thanked him “for initiating the

concept of détente, which provided for increased stability between us.” “It was his firm

hope and highest goal,” he remarked, “to structure our relations with the Soviet Union on

a stable basis in order to preserve peace in our common interests and in the interests of

people throughout the world.”488

Much to the dismay of critics, Carter’s preference for forging a “reciprocal

accommodation” resulted in his signing of a summit communiqué favorable to Soviet

positions. The document included phrases calling for the “deepening of détente” and

strict adherence to the 1972 Basic Principles of Relations between the United States and

Soviet Union. He even embraced Brezhnev during their official singing of SALT II.489

Because he favored a “reciprocal accommodation” on American terms, however, he chose to ignore earlier Soviet protests and reiterated his message about how the Soviets had it within their power to choose between a path of cooperation or competition with the

United States. In measured words, he asserted that

I believe that two possible roads lie before us. There is a road of competition and even confrontation. Any effort by either of our nations to exploit the turbulence that exists in various parts of the world pushes us towards that road. The United States can and will protect its vital interests if this becomes the route we must follow. But there is another way, Mr. President---the path of restraint and, where possible, cooperation. This is the path we prefer.490

488 Memo, “Decisions on Summit Objectives”; “Carter’s Conversation with Brezhnev, 16 June 1979,” in The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations during the Carter Years, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997), 230-2. See also Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 807-810. For a copy of the summit communiqué, see “Vienna Summit Meeting Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Communiquй,” 18 June 1979. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=32497&st=&st1= [10 July 2006].

489 See Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 807-810.

254

Because Carter remained committed to his “reciprocal accommodation” vision, he

continued to take steps designed to enhance the international legitimacy of American

human rights criticisms. After internal debates, he ordered his subordinates to help the

Helsinki Commission write a comprehensive report on the American Final Act compliance record.491 Since some domestic critics and the Soviet government argued

that the experiences of the “Wilmington Ten” proved the existence of American political

prisoners, the Justice Department took the unprecedented steps of filing a series of legal

briefs in federal court that supported the defendants’ habeas corpus petitions. The

administration found their actions in defense of these individuals so important that the

Sixth Semiannual Report (1 December 1978-31 May 1979) described them in detail.492

The executive branch also utilized its Congressionally mandated semiannual Final

reports to describe the myriad of steps that the U.S. government had taken to implement

the agreement. These reports described American civil rights legislation, affirmative

490 “Vienna Summit Meeting Toast at a Working Dinner Hosted by the Soviet Delegation,” 17 June 1979. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=32494 [12 December 2006].

491 Carter issued a memorandum that called on all departments and agencies to help representatives from the State Department and Commission identify areas where the United States could improve its Final Act compliance record. Always concerned about enhancing the credibility of U.S. human rights criticisms, he defended the Commission’s work on the grounds that “other governments, including the Soviet Union, will better understand the depth of our concern for full implementation of the Helsinki pledges if we demonstrate that we are working hard at home to fulfill even more effectively our side of the Helsinki bargain.” See Department of State Bulletin, February 1979, 41.

492 Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Eighth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 4; Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Ninth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), 4; Fulfilling Our Promises, 56-7; and Sixth Semiannual Report, 5. See also Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 321-2. 255

action programs, and efforts to eradicate sexual discrimination. They also outlined the

government’s efforts to rectify the grievances of Native Americans.493

In November 1979, Carter asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to

reconsider the international human rights covenants that he had signed and then

submitted for ratification the previous year. To help secure the passage of these

agreements, he sent Chairman Frank Church (D-ID) a letter explaining how “’the United

States has enhanced its international position as a recognized champion of human

dignity” over the past few ears. Returning to arguments he had made during the 1976

presidential campaign, he claimed that the ratification of these treaties “would ‘sustain

this momentum’ by giving the United States new authority to press for human rights.”

Such a step would also remove the common charge that non-ratification amounted to

American human rights hypocrisy. Even more important from Carter’s perspective, the

Senate’s consent would also allow the “United States to participate in the way these

treaties were interpreted and applied.”494

Despite failing to revamp U.N. human rights institutions, the administration

remained committed to making more effective use of multilateral human rights forums.

When the UNHRC resumed meetings in February 1979, the American delegate Edward

Mezvinsky submitted “responses to complaints raised against the U.S. by private

organizations in the” UNHRC. He also asked the commission to investigate and report

493 Sixth Semiannual Report, 3-5; and Ninth Semiannual Report, 4-5. For an account of the Soviet government’s criticisms of how the U.S. government treated Native Americans, see CSCE Digest, 31 January 1979, 8.

494 Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 322-3. 256

on the arrests of twenty-two dissenters. These moves could have only enraged Soviet

delegates. Official instructions from Moscow had asked them to discredit “the

demagogic slogan [in] the defense of human rights which has been unleashed in all

countries by western” nations and the United States.495

The willingness of Carter to subject the U.S. human rights record to international

scrutiny went hand in hand with efforts designed to stimulate transnational human rights

activities. Near the end of 1978, he invited “300 human rights, civil rights, church and

other liberal activists” to hear him speak at the ceremony commemorating the 30th

Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On the same day that he voiced his support for the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s efforts to examine and report on

U.S. human rights practices, Carter praised the role NGOs played in raising global consciousness about Soviet human rights violations: The reports of “Amnesty

International, the International Commission of Jurists, the International League for

Human Rights, and many other nongovernmental human rights organizations amply document the practices and conditions that destroy the lives and the spirit of countless human beings.”496

495 See Memo for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “U.S. Government Initiatives on Human Rights,” 4, 6; and Conference #2 of the Carter-Brezhnev Project: A Conference of U.S. and Russian Policymakers and Scholars held at Musgrove Plantation, St. Simon’s, Georgia, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C., V-122-3,

496 Memo, ZB and Anne Wexler to JC, “A White House Event on Human Rights,” 24 October 1978, WHCF, Box HU-3, Folder: 9/1/78-12/31/78, JCPL; and “The White House Commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” BEA, Box 30, Folder: Human Rights, UD, 12/78, JCPL. For a copy of Carter’s remarks, see “Universal Declaration of Human Rights Remarks at a White House Meeting Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Declaration’s Signing,” 6 December 1978. Available [Online]: www.presidency.uscb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=30264 [12 December 2006]. 257

In a note acknowledging the human rights medal he had received from the

Campobello Conference on Peace and Human Rights in August 1979, Carter described

how “Nobel Prize winners . . . have [all] been tireless participants in the struggle to

achieve the great dream of universal human rights.” On 4 September 1980, he told the

leaders of NCSJ how “it’s important that we work together in a governmental and extra-

governmental way” to increase the levels of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.”

Since political realities always mattered, he also reported that he and other administration

officials did not meet with any Soviet officials, including Brezhnev, without raising the

issue of “increasing the out-migration of Soviet Jews who want to come to other

nations.”497

These messages complimented Matthew Nimetz’s earlier statements to the

National Interreligious Task for on Soviet Jewry about the pivotal role private citizens

played in advancing the cause of human rights. As he told the audience, “the U.S.

government continues to believe that private citizens and their organizations in all CSCE

countries necessarily play a very important role in encouraging CSCE implementation.”

They had an important contribution to make because

the very nature of private groups . . . puts beyond dispute the humanitarian concerns to which . . . they . . . are devoted. You are not required to balance competing interests as governments must do. Your concerns are direct and specifically focused. You have the enormous advantage in many respects in bringing public attention, in a believable and effective way, to the areas in which human rights implementation can and must be improved.498

497 “Campobello Conference of Peace and Human Rights,” WHCF, Box HU-3, Folder: 6/1/79-8/31/79, JCPL; and “Photo Opportunity with the President and Leaders of the Conference of Soviet Jewry,” Special Assistant for Ethnic Affairs (SAEA), Box 4, Folder: HRD and B.O.R. Week, 2/80-12/80, JCPL.

498 Department of State Bulletin, January 1980, 22-3. 258

These fine words could not hide the reality the increases in Jewish emigration that

Carter and other officials praised in no way amounted to a move toward liberalization on behalf of the Soviet government. By March 1979, ten of the twelve original members of the Moscow Watch Group had been arrested or forced into exile. According to one of this group’s reports, “the authorities are carrying on an accelerated and ever- widespreading [sic] campaign of discrediting the human rights movement in our country .

. . This campaign has been markedly intensified as from the middle of this year [1978].”

On the same day that the U.S. trade delegation visited Moscow in December 1978, the

Soviets convicted the Armenian Watch group member Robert Nazaryan for his anti-

Soviet activities. Near the end of 1979, the overall dissident arrest began to climb after the Soviet government launched a systematic campaign aimed at eradicating non-official activities. In January 1980, Brezhnev accepted Andropov’s recommendation to exile

Sakharov to Gorky, a town off limits to foreigners.499

Carter may have wanted to give Soviet leaders the opportunity of adapting themselves to type of international environment he preferred, but he had a limited reserve of patience. Well aware of the U.S. public’s growing disillusionment with Soviet international behavior, he agreed with Brzezinski’s advice that the United States once again needed to tighten economic restrictions on U.S. trade with the USSR. While intense political opposition from Jewish groups and Senator Jackson gave Carter little choice, he approved granting China MFN trade status without granting the same privilege

499 “Propaganda Campaign to Discredit the Human Rights Movement in the USSR,” SB 72 (April 1979): 1; and “Soviet Union’ So glad to see you,” The Economist, 9 December 1978, 24. 259

to the Soviet Union. Unhappy with the continuation of the Soviet effort to repress

dissent, he criticized Moscow’s insistence on harassing and arresting the members of

organizations “established to monitor compliance with the Helsinki agreement” in August

1979.500 A few weeks later, he agreed with Brzezinski’s recommendation that the United

States should begin engaging in more “assertive competition” with the Soviet Union.501

With Soviet-American relations already faltering under the weight of the U.S.

Senate’s hesitancy to ratify the SALT II treaty, the Kremlin’s invasion of Afghanistan on

27 December 1979 succeeded in exhausting Carter’s patience and goodwill toward the

USSR. In near hysterical language, he called the invasion the greatest threat to world peace since World War II. No doubt infuriated that the Soviets had chosen the path of confrontation over cooperation, he commented that the Kremlin’s conduct “made a more dramatic impact in my opinion of what the Soviets’ goals are than anything they’ve done in the previous time I’ve been in office.”502

In private conversations, Carter argued that the lessons of the Soviet Union’s

1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia required that the United States carry out a vigorous and

substantial response to such a visible example of aggression. Although he felt that public

human rights criticisms should still correspond to Soviet domestic conduct, he called on

the administration to “step up” American international broadcasting into the USSR. He

500 PPOP, 1979, Volume I, 1352.

501 See Olav Njolstad, “The Carter Legacy: Entering the Second Era of the Cold War,” in Njolstad, ed. The Last Decade of the Cold War, 208; and Memo, ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report #110,” 21 September 1979, 2, BM, Box 42, Folder: Weekly Reports, 102-120, JCPL.

502 John Spanier and Steven W. Hook, American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 14th ed. (Washington, D.C: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998), 205. 260

once and for all rejected any notion of granting the Soviets MFN status and halted all

discussions about opening an American consulate in Kiev in return for a Soviet

counterpart in New York. Furthermore, he suggested that the administration “send

someone to COCOM and talk with our allies about tightening up on trade with the Soviet

Union so long as it did not disadvantage U.S. businessmen in comparison with our

allies.” When advancing this argument, he stated that “we should deny the Soviets

credits and urge others to do the same.” Carter also suggested that United States curtail grain shipments, fishing allocations, and exchanges with the Soviet Union.503

After careful consultation with his subordinates, Carter approved a wide series of

measures designed to punish Soviet aggression. For example, the U.S. government suspended grain sales above the 8 million metric tons required by the long-term grain agreement. It also placed further restrictions on shipments of sophisticated technology to the Soviet Union and withdrew the completed SALT II from Senate consideration. Not content with these measures, the executive branch helped organize an American boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and allowed the US-USSR cultural agreement to lapse.

When taken together with the sizable increases in U.S. military spending, Carter’s insistence that the United States could not “do business as usual” with the Soviets until they left Afghanistan ended any suggestion that détente still existed.504

In retrospect, the punitive measures Carter approved in the wake of the

Afghanistan invasion grew out of previous steps that his administration had taken to

503 “NSC Meeting on Afghanistan, 15 February 1980,” in Westad, ed., The Fall of Détente, 338-45.

504 Njolstad, “The Carter Legacy: Entering the Second Era of the Cold War,” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 214. See also Hawkesworth, “Ideological Immunity,” 67. 261

enhance the U.S. ability to engage in peaceful ideological competition with the USSR.

On 13 September 1979, Brzezinski wrote to Carter that “Radio Liberty/Voice of America should be instructed to step up broadcasts to Soviet national minorities, notably Moslems and Ukrainians.” “I see no reason why the Soviets should be free to agitate against us” on the issue of “Puerto Rico” while “we remain intimidated by the fact that Moscow is sensitive to the problems of its national minorities.”505

This appeal appears to have put a process in motion that resulted in Carter’s

approval of a Special Coordinating Committee proposal calling for the expansion of

American broadcasts to Muslim audiences in the Soviet Union and Middle East in

December 1979. Despite constant financial problems and bureaucratic infighting,

RL/RFE managed to expand broadcasts to audiences in Georgia, Ukraine, and the Central

Asian Republics “by more than 11 hours per week in 1980.” It also succeeded in

broadcasting more samizdat publications to audiences in and Lithuania.506

The decision to let the U.S-Soviet cultural agreement lapse grew out of earlier efforts to use exchanges as a way of combating the closed nature of Soviet society. A few months after the dissident trials of mid-1978 ended, U.S. representatives only agreed to renew the cooperative agreements in transportation and energy for two years rather

505 Memo , ZB to JC, “Weekly National Security Report #109,” 13 September 1979, 3-4, BM, Box 42, Folder: Weekly Reports, 102-120, JCPL.

506 Memo, PH to ZB, “Expansion of VOA’s Muslim-Language Broadcasting,” 17 June 1980, Board of International Broadcasting (BOIB), Box 9, Folder: 2-9/1980, JCPL; Memo, PH to ZB, “Expanding Radio Broadcasting,” 13 June 1980, BOIB, Box 5, Folder: 6/80, JCPL; Memo, PH to ZB, “Daily Report Item,” 10 April 1980, BOIB, Box 9, Folder: 2-9/1980, JCPL; Memo, Richard H. Cook to Ralph E. Walter, “Expansion of First-Run Programming Since January 1979,” 27 March 1980, BOIB, Box 9, Folder: 2-9, 1980, JCPL; and Memo, Stephen Larrabee to ZB, “Baltics: RFE/RL,” 13 June 1980, BOIB, Box 9, Folder: 2-9/1980, JCPL. See also Njolstad, “The Carter Legacy: Entering the Second Era of the Cold War,” 213. 262

than the customary five. In a move to make these agreements more “reciprocal, they also

phased out some scientific exchanges where the Soviets had concealed specific

technologies from American view. On 23 , International Communication

Agency (ICA) Director John E. Reinhardt informed Brzezinski that the State Department

would not sign a new cultural agreement unless the Soviets agreed to end practices that violated U.S. standards of “equality, mutual benefit, and reciprocity.”507

Carter’s decision to curb shipments of technology to the Soviets after the invasion

of Afghanistan developed out of an earlier decision to place tougher economic

restrictions on U.S. trade with the Soviet Union in the months following the Vienna

Summit. In contrast to previous attempts, however, the United States now stood firm and

had suspended “426 outstanding validated licenses to the USSR” by mid-March 1980.

The administration also revoked two licenses that had already been validated. Consistent

with his rhetoric in wake of the invasion, Carter went to great lengths to strengthen

“allied support for its more assertive exports-control policy.”508 In a letter to the German

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, he wrote that “with respect to exports of high-technology

507 Memo, Marshall Brement to ZB, “Negotiation of Educational and Cultural Exchange Agreement,” 23 October 1979, BM, Box 82, Folder: USSR, 10/19-31, 1979, JCPL; and Memo, ZB to The Director of the International Communication Agency, “Negotiation of U.S.-USSR Educational and Cultural Exchange Agreement,” N.D., Ibid.; and Memo, John Reinhardt to ZB, “Negotiation of US-USSR Cultural Agreement,” 18 October 1979, Ibid.

508 “President Sets Tougher Standards on High Technology Exports to the USSR,” BM, Box 81, Folder: Measures Taken After USSR Afghanistan Invasion, 3-9 1980, JCPL. Many officials perceived the restrictions on technological and agricultural trade as hurting the Soviet economy. For example, see Memo, ZB to JC, “Impact of Economic Measures on the USSR,” 10 January 1980, BM, Box 82, Folder: 1/9-15 1980, JCPL; and Memo, “Review of Actions Taken Against the Soviet Union,” 14 March 1980, BM, Box 82, Folder: 3/1-19 1980, JCPL. Officials also created an “open-ended statement” that criticized “Governor Reagan’s announcement” about the ineffectiveness of the grain embargo on the ground that such statements gave “false encouragement to the Soviet Union and is not in the best interests of the US and our stand against Soviet aggression. See “Open-Ended Statement,” N.D. BM, Box 82, Folder: 7/1/80, JCPL. 263

items to the Soviet Union, I ask that your authorities not request exceptions in COCOM

to the embargo on strategic goods and technology destined for the USSR, except in

hardship cases or where Western security interests dictate.” He also expressed his

preference that “the list of items covered by the embargo should be expanded to include

technology critical to the modernization and expansion of the Soviet industrial base.”509

The steps that the administration took to punish Soviet behavior in the wake of

Afghanistan went hand in hand with more public statements about Soviet human rights violations. Carter publicly referred to the exile of Sakharov as “a scar on their system that . . . [Soviet leaders] cannot erase by hurling abuse at him and seeking to mask the truth.” In a speech that stressed the importance of the Madrid Final Act follow-up conference scheduled to begin in November 1980, he spoke about the importance of defending dissenters. “More than 40 courageous men and women are now in exile just because they worked in private groups to promote the Helsinki agreement.” Since private citizens facing governmental repression all over the world did not want the United States to “abandon” them, the administration would use the Madrid conference to amplify their voices.510 Carter later reiterated this theme when he described how dissenters “applaud”

and “pray” that Americans will not lose faith in their cause.511

509 Letter, JC to Helmut Schmidt, February 1980, BM, Box 1, Folder: Measures Taken After USSR Invasion of Afghanistan, 2/80, JCPL. See also “Export Policy Review,” Ibid.

510 PPOP, 1980, Volume I, 194; and “Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Remarks at a Ceremony Commemorating the Fifth Anniversary of the Signing of the Final Act,” 29 . Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44835&st=&st1= [17 September 2006].

511 On 2 April 1980, Carter received a letter from a human rights activist complaining that “’in recent months the Administration has appeared to be downplaying its human rights policy.’” On the letter’s 264

Many other officials also denounced Soviet domestic conduct in explicit terms.

Patricia Derian condemned the Sakharov exile on a Voice of American broadcast,

whereas another official wrote a letter to the chairman of the Soviet State Committee for

Science and Technology rebuking Soviet leaders for their treatment of Sakharov. The

new Secretary of State, Edmund Muskie, insisted that the “Soviets dislike and fear our

emphasis on human rights . . . because they know that what a powerful attraction freedom

has for millions of people everywhere on Earth.” No matter what Soviet officials say, he continued, “the contrast between our system and closed societies of our adversaries is

dramatically visible” to private citizens across the globe.512

After the Soviets exiled Sakharov to Gorky, the new American delegate Jerome

Shestack and his staff worked with a “lawyers’ group” determined to make the UNHRC take “action on [the] Sakharov case.”513 These efforts bore fruit when a number of

Western delegates backed the American position that the Commission needed to discuss

the Soviet government’s treatment of Sakharov and further investigate the extent of human rights violations in the USSR. The Commission may have only reached a consensus to “defer further consideration of the Sakharov case” until its next session, but

margins, he wrote, “’I agree’” and “sent the file with his comment to the Vice-President, Jody Powell, and Dr. Brzezinski.” See Memo, Lincoln Broomfield to ZB, “Classified Annex,” 40. See also Department of State Bulletin, September 1980, 50; and PPOP, 1980-1981, Volume II, 1855.

512 Department of State Bulletin (December 1980): 8. See also Edmund Muskie, “The Foreign Policy of Human Rights,” Current Policy 241 (21 October 1980); Ibid., “America’s Strength: Ideals and Military Power,” Current Policy 208 (7 ); Ibid., “The Challenge of Peace,” Current Policy 236 (11 October 1980); and Ibid., “Human Freedom: America’s Vision,” Current Policy 208 (7 August 1980). See also American Foreign Policy Basic Documents, 1977-1980, 445; Department of State Bulletin (April 1980): 44-5; and Memo for ZB, “US Government Initiatives on behalf of Human Rights in the USSR,” 5-6.

513 Memo for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “U.S. Government Initiatives on Human Rights,” 4, 6. 265

the very fact that the dissenter’s treatment remained an issue testified to the

“globalization” of human rights.514

Around the same time, Carter sent executive branch representatives to a

conference in Warsaw entitled “Peace and Human Rights.” Instead of allowing the

meeting to become a propaganda victory for the Soviets in the wake of the Afghanistan

invasion, Shestack described the plights of numerous dissenters and attacked the

Kremlin’s decision to move hundreds of them out of Moscow in preparation for the 1980

Summer Olympics. Carter even sent a personal message to the attendees explaining how

“world peace is indissolubly linked with human rights.” The conference’s concluding document had much in common with this position, indicating that “there can be no true peace in a society in which human rights and fundamental freedoms are violated.”

Instead, “it must be a peace in which human personality and its dignity can flourish.”

The efforts of U.S. delegates also ensured that his document included a specific reference to how NGOs must play a larger role in “safeguarding peace and the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”515

Once the main meeting of the Madrid follow-up conference began, U.S. delegates

criticized the human rights violations of Warsaw Pact nations. During his opening

remarks, Co-chairman Griffin Bell referred to the Russian monitors Orlov and

Shcharansky, as well as the Ukrainian Mykola Rudenko and Lithuanian .

514 CHRUR 37 (January-March 1980): 43-5.

515 Letter, Armand Hammer to Ed Muskie, 25 July 1980, Amnesty International Files, Box 1, Folder: Documents Released on Appeal (1), NSA. See also “European Security Conference Scientific Forum in Hamburg,” BBC, 5 March 1980, N.P.

266

“When Andrei Sakharov was banished,” he lamented, “some of our best hopes for a spirit

of security and cooperation in Europe were banished.” Another delegate invited Soviet

leaders to engage in peaceful ideological competition with the United States. He warned

communist signatories that arresting Helsinki monitors only “created a situation in which

those of us all over the world join our voices with theirs and become with them Helsinki

monitors. 516 The United States believes in the “inevitability of human rights” and

“individual freedom,” not “some ideologically defined doctrinal concept of revolution.”517

On the eve of the 1980 Presidential election, Carter returned to the larger theme that free nations such as the United States held numerous advantages over their

communist counterparts in the realm of peaceful ideological competition. In exaggerated

language, he explained how Soviet international and domestic behavior had done nothing

but undermine the international legitimacy of Soviet-style socialism. “The failure of

communism has been demonstrated by the fact that the Soviets don’t have a single nation

on earth . . . that want[s] to have the same kind of government that exists in the Soviet

Union.” In contrast, “there are dozens of nations now shifting over to the American form

of government, which shows that in the long run, we’ll prevail.” Carter also used his

final State of the Union message to reaffirm his belief in the powerful example of

democratic government, asserting that “the future of our world is not to be found in

authoritarianism . . . that wears the mask of order . . . or in totalitarianism that wears the

516 American Foreign Policy Basic Documents, 1977-1980, 454-6.

517 Max Kampelman, ed., Three Years at the East-West Divide: The Words of U.S. Ambassador Max Kampelman at the Madrid Conference on Security and Human Rights (New York: Freedom House, 1983), 12. 267

mask of justice.” Over the long term, private citizens across the world will find their

future “in the human face of democracy, the human voice of individual liberty, [and] the

human hand of economic liberty.”518

The belief that the United States would “prevail” over the Soviet Union in the coming decades explains why NSC staffers drew plans endorsing “competitive engagement” as a way of exacerbating Soviet domestic weaknesses during the 1980s.519

In a memorandum he sent to Brzezinski entitled “Dissidence in Eastern Europe and the

USSR-Are We Doing Enough,” Paul Henze regretted that the U.S. government had not

yet done enough to institutionalize policies designed to support dissenters. He wrote that

the “allocation of resources—both manpower and money to programs encouraging

dissidence . . . has not been proportionate to the high level of attention given this field in

statements and demonstrative actions.” He also described how “no new operational

instrumentalities have been created for implementing human rights policies, sustaining

research effort, and channeling and coordinating human rights initiatives on a self-

propelled basis.”520

518 PPOP, 1980-1981, Vol. III, 2995.

519 While this dissertation will not describe all of these proposals in detail, the strategy of “competitive engagement” drew upon courses of action that the administration had already begun to implement. See Memo, William Odom (WO) to ZB, “East-West Relations: A Formula for U.S. Policy in 1981and Beyond,” 3 September 1980, BM, Box 42, Folder: Weekly Reports, 151-161, JCPL. See also Njolstad, “The Carter Legacy: Entering the Second Era of the Cold War,” in The Last Decade of the Cold War, 210- 9.

520 Despite these criticisms, Henze praised the administration’s commitment to human rights, noting that the policy “has generated a worldwide debate on human rights on which dissidents in Communist societies have capitalized.” He also called last year’s “’spies for dissidents exchange’ . . . one of the most politically astute moves the U.S. government has ever made on behalf of Soviet dissidents” and lauded how the Belgrade conference “highlighted Soviet efforts to avoid honoring commitments they accepted in 1975.” See Memo, PH to ZB, “Dissidence in Eastern Europe and the USSR—Are We Doing Enough,” 17 April 268

Henze also felt as if the executive branch could do more to strengthen U.S.

international broadcasting capabilities. While new investment in transmitters had taken

place, budgetary problems had postponed a “comparable investment in programming”

and “major manpower rejuvenation. Given these realities, “Radio Liberty’s current level

of performance is only a fraction of its potential.” He also pointed out that the

administration needed to allocate more resources to “book and publication programs for

Eastern Europe and the USSR.” As a result of manpower shortages, the United States

could not take quick enough advantage of all the “samizdat” and “tamizdat” literature

“available for republishing and distribution into Eastern Europe and the USSR.”

Increased funding, he believed, would enable the United States to “exploit the new

opportunities for penetrating the communist world with ideas and information which are

constantly developing.”521

In addition to these recommendations, Henze called on officials to do a much better job of exploiting the national and religious “self-assertion” of Soviet Muslims,

Ukrainians, , and residents of the Baltic republics. He hoped the United States could accomplish this goal through the creation of a “tape-cassette distribution program” capable of augmenting “existing book and magazine programs.” He also revived the idea

of creating “one or more semi-autonomous institutions” with both private and public

1980, 1-2, BM, Box: Horn/Special, Folder: 4/80, 1-2. Olav Njolstad also devotes considerable attention to this document. See Njolstad, “The Carter Legacy: Entering the Second Era of the Cold War,” in Njolstad, , ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 217-8.

521 Memo, PH to ZB, “Dissidence in Eastern Europe and the USSR—Are We Doing Enough,” 17 April 1980, 1-4. Lincoln Broomfield also believed that the United States could have done more to support Soviet dissenters. In a note to Brzezinski, he wrote, “Obviously we could have done more if we had tried.” See Note, Lincoln Broomfield to ZB, “U.S. Government’s Initiatives on Human Rights in the Soviet Bloc,” BM, Box 29, Folder: Human Rights, 4/79-4/80, JCPL. 269

funding capable of sustaining pressure for the “implementation of human rights goals.”

Because these programs would only call for modest monetary increases, Henze called them “the most cost effective” way that the U.S. government could call into question the legitimacy of Soviet rule. Brzezinski must have liked what he read because he told

Henze “to organize a Soviet working group meeting to discuss possible ways of implementing these proposals.”522

In September 1980, the U.S. General and NSC staffer, William Odom, sent

Brzezinski a memorandum outlining how the United States should go about completing

the transition from Era I (1945-1975) to Era II (1980s and ) of East-West relations.

Beyond citing Soviet human rights violations, the next Carter administration could “do a

lot more on the nationality question within the USSR.” In an age of nationalism,” he

wrote, “there is nothing permanent about Soviet ‘internationalism’ and . . . borders---

something we can imply and encourage others to say explicitly.” Since Soviet-style

socialism “suffers from enormous centrifugal forces,” a “shock could bring surprising

developments within the USSR, just as we have seen in Poland.” Based on this

observation, Odom declared that “the dissolution of the Soviet empire is a not a wholly

fanciful prediction for later in this century.” Perhaps thinking about all the advantages

that American leaders held over their Soviet counterparts, Carter wrote “Very

Interesting” in the margins of this memorandum.523

Transnational Human Rights Activities, The Final Act, and Domestic Politics

522 Ibid. See also See Njolstad, “The Carter Legacy: Entering the Second Era of the Cold War,” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 217.

523 Memo, WO to ZB, “East-West Relations” 3 September 1980, 1, 7-8. 270

The steps the Carter administration took to promote human rights in the Soviet

Union should not obscure how private citizens helped “globalize” human rights issues

and held government officials accountable for their behavior. Near the end of 1978, U.S.

Helsinki Commission Chairman Dante Fascell published an article in Bulletin of Atomic

Scientists that thanked dissenters in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for helping

diplomats “break [their] silence” on the subject of human rights. This important

development “was not accomplished by any brilliant strategists in Washington or a

NATO, but by a small branch of intrepid Soviet citizens who began” to speak out about

Soviet human rights abuses. “It was they,” he continued, “who made the West aware of

the value of Helsinki Accords.” During this Congressional testimony defending the U.S.

delegation’s accomplishments at Belgrade, Chairman Arthur Goldberg extolled the role

private citizens played in monitoring how governments implemented the provisions of

the Final Act. In language that reflected the existence of a broad international impulse

against bureaucratic discretion and authority, he told a friend that the U.S. Helsinki

Commission now “needs a private counterpart . . . to keep it honest and active.”524

Goldberg then spoke with a number of leading human rights activists about creating an American version of the Helsinki monitoring groups that existed in the Soviet

Union and Eastern Europe. After months of deliberation and securing a $400,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, Goldberg and other activists, including Random House

524 A copy of Fascell’s article “Breaking the Silence Barrier on Human Rights” can be found in the USHCF, Box 9, Folder: Fascell Article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, National Archives (NA), Washington D.C. See also Letter, Arthur J. Goldberg to Alfred Friendly, 25 April 1978, Box 37, Folder: Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, USHCF, RSCE, NA; and The U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Belgrade Followup Meeting to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: A Report and Appraisal (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1978), 82-96. 271

Chairman Robert L. Bernstein and editor of the Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR

Edward Kline, formed the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee in February 1979. Because

they grasped the importance dissenters attached to developing links with Western private citizens, this group worked to coordinate their activities with and show visible support for

Final Act monitors. Members also decided to publish and distribute accurate, up-to-date

reports about human rights conditions in all signatory states and travel to Warsaw Pact

nations whenever feasible to speak with dissenters.525

As Daniel C. Thomas points out in his work The Helsinki Effect, the U.S. Watch

Group “immediately became a major fixture in the transnational network” dedicated to

globalizing the issue of Soviet human rights violations. Even though Soviet authorities

cut off the connection after thirty seconds, the organization managed to hold a joint press

conference with Helsinki monitors in Moscow who had not yet gone to jail on 31 July

1979.526 The two groups issued a joint statement that vowed to raise international

consciousness about governmental violations of international law and “other arbitrary

actions resulting in infringements of human rights.”527

In September of the same year, Executive Director Jeri Laber met with Helsinki monitors in Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries. U.S. Watch Group

525 For a nice account of how this group came into existence and functioned, see Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 97-108; U.S. Helsinki Commission, , Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Hearings Before Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Volume VIII, 56; and U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee: The First Fifteen Months (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1980), 3-4. See also Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 149-51; Korey, NGOS and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 238-9; and CHRUR 33 (January-March 1979): 30-1.

526 CSCE Digest, 17 August 1979, 2; and CHRUR 35 (July-September 1979): 5-6.

527 CHRUR 35 (July-September 1979), 5-6. 272

members also formulated common plans with Soviet émigrés and tried to remain in contact with individual dissenters via the telephone or mail. After the Kremlin’s exile of

Sakharov, this organization joined other human rights groups and émigrés in holding a joint press conference that condemned the Kremlin’s behavior as inconsistent with the provisions of the Final Act. It also sent numerous personal appeals to Brezhnev asking him to “support individuals and organs of society exercising their rights and responsibilities to promote the effective observance of human rights.”528

To garner publicity for their cause, U.S. Watch Group members wrote prominent

articles about their efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. In a New York

Times opinion piece, Jeri Laber reported that dissenters “have been dispersed in a variety

of ways: the Sakharovs to the closed city of Gorky, others to prison or internal exile,

[and] still others expelled to the West.” The Ukrainian monitor Oksana Meshko may have survived “Stalin's gulag,” but the Soviet authorities had recently put her in “a psychiatric

hospital.” During the Vienna Summit, Chairman Robert Bernstein and Vice-Chairman

Orville Schell published an article in the New York Times arguing that “’Soviet leaders

should be told in Vienna that their nation will not receive MFN status unless the

“legitimate rights of the Helsinki monitors are restored.”529

Because the U.S. Watch Group wanted to encourage as much private citizen

participation in the Helsinki process as possible, they contributed to human rights

528 See Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 113-9; and Korey, NGOS and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 239-41; and U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 13. See also CHRUR 38 (April-June 1980): 7.

529 Jeri Laber, “Moscow versus Rights,” New York Times, 31 July 1980, A19; and CHRUR 34 (April-June 1979): 50; and See U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 12. See also CHRUR 34 (April-June 1979): 51. 273

conferences held by groups such as the European Helsinki Group and International

League of Human Rights; many delivered speeches at the 1979 International Sakharov

Hearings held in Washington, D.C. To educate the American public, the organization

published numerous reports that described conditions in the Soviet Union and held a

conference that explored ways of increasing Soviet-American exchanges. Even more

important, members participated in “periodic consultations with the White House Staff,

the State Department,” and the U.S. Helsinki Commission staff. They also began

publishing written responses to State Department human rights reports and testified on

numerous occasions before the Commission about human rights violations across the

globe.530

Other organizations besides the U.S. Watch Group continued their efforts to give

dissenters more operational and moral support. For example, the Socialist International invited Sakharov to attend and speak at their meetings. The World Psychiatric

Association’s Executive Committee established “a Committee to Review the Abuse of

Psychiatry” to examine submitted complaints by private citizens about the use of psychiatry for political purposes. One year later, the American Psychiatric Association

awarded Semyon Gluzman a “Distinguished Fellowship Award” after he received a stiff

prison sentence for publishing a report describing the Soviet psychiatric abuse that made

its way abroad. In a similar vein, the long-time political prisoner

530 See U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 3-19. 274

learned from a foreign radio broadcast that the Congress of American Labor Unions had

invited him to attend its annual meeting.531

In mid 1978, a group of Lithuanians and Western private citizens announced the

formation of a new organization called the League for the Freedom of Lithuania As

envisioned, the group’s executive council in Lithuania would send reports to an overseas council that would in turn disseminate them to foreign audiences. If governmental

repression prevented the executive council from functioning, the overseas council would

then take over operations. Near the end of 1980, a new organization came into existence

called the Advisory Council for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR. The specific

mandate of this organization called for better coordinating “efforts to defend human

rights in the USSR” and publicizing “the ideas of the human rights movement.” To

accomplish these tasks, members formed several committees “on communications with

international human rights organizations, on economic and social rights, and on departure

from the USSR.” 532

New transnational religious NGOs came into existence such as the Persecuted

Church Commission and Freedom of Faith. The explicit goals of these groups included

speaking out for private citizens in the Soviet Union who faced persecution because of

their religious beliefs and disseminating their reports to foreign governments. Unhappy

with treatment of Soviet Christians, the acting General Secretary of the WCC wrote a letter to External Church Relations Department of the Russian Orthodox Church. He

531 CHRUR 33 (January-March 1979): 29; Ibid. 36 (October-December 1979): 22-3; and SB 61 (March 1978): 1.

532 CCE 51 (1979): 129; and CHRUR 40 (October-December 1980): 56. 275

voiced his organization’s distress at the “number of cases involving Christian believers which are presently on trial” and the “disproportionate sentences” that some believers had

received. “Since [numerous] leaders of our member churches have made inquires

concerning this matter, “we intend to make . . . the contents of this letter” public.533

AI may have hesitated before deciding to forge links with dissenters in the early

1970s, but the organization became quite committed to “globalizing” the issue of Soviet

human rights abuses as the decade progressed. In mid-April 1979, members organized

and sponsored a demonstration near the Soviet mission to the United Nations designed to

protest the imprisonment of the 83-year-old Seventh-Day Adventist minister Vladimir

Shelkov. AI even took the step of writing an open letter to Brezhnev indicating that its

members would use the 1980 Olympics in Moscow “as an opportunity to inform

international opinion and . . . visitors to the Olympics Games about the reality of Soviet

political imprisonment.” The following year, AI published reports about the harsh

conditions of Soviet prisons and the use of psychiatry for political purposes in the

USSR.534

As an organization that prided itself on holding all governments accountable for

their behavior, AI also published reports about U.S. domestic conduct. One report

asserted that the U.S. authorities had imprisoned sixteen individuals because of their

533 CSCE Digest, 1 March 1979, 5-6; CHRUR 40 (October-December 1980): 53-4. The leadership of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) decided not to cancel its 1979 conference in Moscow in face of American and Canadian protests. Despite this development, a large number of participants agreed to work with the U.S. Watch Group on creating “human rights initiatives,” some which began part of the conference’s official program. See CHRUR 35 (July-September 1979): 35-47; and U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 16.

534 CHRUR 34 (April-June 1979): 22; CSCE Digest, 10 October 1979, 1-2; and CHRUR 40 (October- November 1980): 20. 276

“’beliefs, origins, or involvement with unpopular political groups.’” Two years later,

another publication reported that pardons and paroles had reduced that number to four.

These criticisms helped convince the U.S. Helsinki Commission to examine how

American domestic conduct measured up to international standards. Near the end of

1978, the Helsinki Commission began a series of hearings that addressed topics as

diverse the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans and homosexuals.535 As a result of public pressure, the Commission decided to publish a comprehensive report on the U.S. Final Act compliance whose contents Carter endorsed.536

Many executive officials appreciated the diverse array of transnational human rights activities described above because they grasped that governmental efforts alone could not change the Soviet government’s domestic behavior. According to one internal study, dramatic changes in Soviet government’s respect for universally recognized human rights “cannot be accomplished by American [governmental] efforts alone.”

Instead of “a short-lived outcry provoked by one case or directed at one target,” the

United States had to mobilize “world public opinion” as part of a larger effort to exert

“persistent pressure on governments to observe the norms of international law which they have accepted.”537 In a similar vein, Henze praised the political scientist Peter

Reddaway’s observation that “the best hope for a peaceful evolution of Soviet society”

535 See Sixth Semiannual Report, 5; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume VIII, 411.

536 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Fulfilling Our Promises: The United States and the Helsinki Act: A Status Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1979), 59-69. See also Sixth Semiannual Report, 5; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volumes VIII and IX.

537 “Review of the United States Policy toward the Soviet Union Requested by Section 24(b) of the International Security Act of 1978,” 19 December 1978, NSABM, Box 80, Folder: 12/1-12/20 1978, JCPL. 277

lay in “public opinion at home and abroad, backed by far-sighted governments, forcing

the Politburo to face up to its profound internal problems.” He favored such an argument

because the larger effects of globalization ensured the continued existence of

constituencies in Eastern Europe committed to human rights ideals.538

This attitude accounts for why executive branch publications often utilized

transnational human rights activities as a way of engaging in peaceful ideological

competition with communist countries. For example, the Ninth Semiannual Report

praised the U.S. Watch Group’s releasing of nine reports examining the American Final

Act compliance record. “These reports identify a number of areas in which the authors

believe improvement is warranted, but Helsinki Watch representatives” feel as if U.S.

internal behavior will improve “because the freedom to monitor is firmly established in

the United States.” Because the American government respected the Final Act’s

stipulations about allowing private citizens “to know and act upon” their rights,

politicians had the opportunity to learn about and rectify the shortcomings of their

policies. Instead of drawing on this potential source of strength, Warsaw Pact nations

persecuted private citizens who only wanted their governments to abide by international

human rights standards.539

The expression of these sentiments did not mean all members of the State

Department had actually embraced the task of pressing their Soviet counterparts on

538 Memo, PH to ZB, “Peter Reddaway on Chronicle of Current Events,” 26 July 1978, NSABM, Box 80, Folder: 7/78, JCPL.

539 Ninth Semiannual Report, 4-5. See also Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Seventh Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 3. 278

human rights issues. In reference to the follow-up meeting in Madrid, a report from the

BEA suggested that “going beyond the precedents established at Belgrade” would called

in question to the U.S. commitment to making “further progress on implementing other

parts of Final Act.” Such behavior would also substantiate arguments that American

policymakers only wanted to embarrass and provoke Soviet officials. After all, “the

Soviets are aware that Lenin once suggested using human rights advocacy as a tactic for

revolution.”540

This type of language infuriated members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission and

their staff. Much as they had in Belgrade, they engaged in bureaucratic battles designed to challenge the State Department’s “careerism” and “bureaucratic inertia.” The staff sent a report to the National Security Council indicating that “domestic political considerations as well as overall U.S. foreign policy objectives demand that consistent pressure for implementation of Principle VII and Basket III be maintained.” To help rally the public behind the agreement, the report called for “conferences and seminars involving government and private groups [that] could be organized to seek further ways and means to implement the Final Act.” With solid planning and commitment, these meetings could “involve private groups and international citizens in cooperative efforts with their governments designed to enhance the implementation process.” Another document argued that Carter needed to appoint a “political figure to head the U.S. delegation” just as he had in Belgrade if his administration wanted to retain “the support of Congress, NGOs, and [the] public at large.” The Commission also recommended that

540 N.A., “Human Rights in the Review of Implementation,” 3, 5-6, Box 9, Folder: Unmarked, USHCF, RCSCE, NA. 279

Carter appoint more public members to the Madrid delegation rather than the seven that

had attended Belgrade.541

A wide array of officials proved responsive to the Commission’s

recommendations. Carter announced that thirty private citizens from diverse

backgrounds would serve as public members of the U.S. delegation to Madrid. Before

the meeting began in November, he invited over “330 persons . . . from Jewish, religious,

nongovernmental, labor, and international law groups” to participate in day-long

briefings with executive branch and Congressional officials about U.S. preparations for

the conference. As a State Department press release noted, these meetings followed

“regional meetings” it had already sponsored in “Cleveland, New York, Pittsburgh,

Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.”542 On 29 July, Muskie reaffirmed

that public members would “will be able to meet with U.S. diplomats on the scene and actually take part in the conference’s closed sessions.543

The executive branch proved responsive to the Commission’s recommendations for a wide variety of reasons. Fascell’s strong “personal and professional relations” with

541 “Goals and Objectives for the U.S. During the Next Two Years,”13-17, N.D., Box 9, Folder: Unmarked, NA; and “Human Rights Paper: Our Comments,” Box 9, Folder: Unmarked, NA. See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 104-7, 110.

542 Korey. The Promises We Keep, 110; “Meeting to Commemorate the Fifth Anniversary of the Signing of the Helsinki Accords,” SAEA, Box 27, Folder: Helsinki Accords, JCPL; and Department of State Bulletin, “Meeting to Commemorate the Fifth Anniversary of the Signing of the Helsinki Accords, 29 July 1980,” SAEA, Box 27, Folder: Helsinki Accords, JCPL. For a good description of the administration’s overlapping goals of appearing strong on the issue of human rights in the face of domestic criticism and putting ideological pressure on the Soviet Union, see Memo, ZB et al. to Jack Watson, “President’s Remarks at July 29 White House Event Commemorating 5th Anniversary of the Helsinki Accords,” SAEA, Box 4, Folder: Foreign Policy, 3/80, JCPL.

543 Department of State Bulletin, September 1980, 51-2; and Robert Rand, “America’s ‘Helsinki Lobby,’” in Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security, 198. 280

Vance and later Muskie ensured that his views about the importance of public human rights diplomacy received attention within administration circles. The Commission also

became an important resource for executive branch officials to draw upon because of the

high-rate of post rotation in the State Department. Unlike professional diplomats who

moved around, the Commission’s staff possessed unequaled information about the plight

of private citizens in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It had this advantage because

staff members who remained at their positions for longer periods of time continued to

compile, synthesize, and publish the large amount of information they received from

NGOs and commission hearings. The staff also had a wide array of studies on how the

Soviet Union would attack U.S. human rights practices at their disposal.544

Executive branch officials could also not ignore the large number of letters they

received from private citizens about the need to call out the human rights violations of

Warsaw Pact nations at Madrid and involve the public as much as possible in the

proceedings. In a letter to the Bureau of Ethnic Affairs that expressed distrust of

bureaucratic discretion and authority, the Ohio Helsinki Accords Council demanded that

the U.S. delegation to Madrid “include private citizen involvement in the preparation and

presentation of the U.S. position.” Instead of relying on career diplomats, “we feel that

U.S. [private] citizens who are familiar with language, culture, and history of the various

nations within the USSR would be the most qualified individuals who would be able to

represent American interests in the area of human rights.” Such a move would also show

544 Korey. The Promises We Keep, 106-113. 281

unequivocal American support for “the Helsinki monitors in Ukraine, Lithuania,

Armenia, Georgia, and Moscow.545.

Carter’s decision to appoint Max Kampelman as co-chairperson of U.S.

delegation also facilitated the Commission’s goal of shaping U.S. behavior in Madrid.

His background as a Democratic member of the Committee on the Present Danger and

strong civil rights advocate led him to view his appointment as a chance to make the

meeting a “’bully pulpit’” for freedom and democracy. Once he took up the appointment,

he treated the Commission as a valuable resource and attached particular importance to

receiving information from and consulting with NGOs. As he recounts in his memoirs:

“My political instincts told me that the Madrid meetings needed a constituency to support

our efforts.” “If they [human rights and religious organizations] understood what the

delegation was after and accepted what we accomplished they could be indispensable

supporters and advocates.”546

Kampelman traveled across the country to meet with a wide variety of “citizen

groups” that wanted the United States to advance their agenda at the Madrid meeting.

During these meetings, he worked to overcome the suspicions of ethnic, religious and

human rights groups that questioned the Carter administration’s commitment to human

rights. He also used his travels to discuss the importance of covering events in Madrid

with “newspaper, radio and television journalists.” He also kept in constant contact with

545 Letter, Ohio Helsinki Accords Council to Stephen Aiello,” 5 , SAEA, Box 7, Folder: Madrid Conference on Human Rights, JCPL.

546 Max M. Kampelman, Entering New Worlds: The Memoirs of a Private Man in Public Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 226-7. See also Korey. The Promises We Keep, 110-1. 282

representatives from the U.S. Watch Group. With his help, “a number of the reports that

the Watch commissioned” became part of the “briefing book for the U.S. delegation at

Madrid.”547

The importance that the executive branch attached to public involvement in the

Helsinki process manifested itself in other ways. The U.S. delegation supported the

Commission’s decision to set up a public liaison office in Madrid to brief private citizens,

NGOs, and journalists about the conference’s proceedings. U.S. officials also promised

that NGOs not represented on the Madrid delegation would “be able to meet with

delegation members in the Spanish capital to receive briefings on the progress of the

conference and to exchange views with U.S. officials.” With the help of Commission

staffers, the U.S. delegation succeeded in obtaining press credentials for “representatives of American ethnic and human rights organizations with newsletters or journals.”548

These descriptions do not convey the magnitude of non-governmental activity that

took place at the Madrid. Just before the conference began, thirty-two NGOs and

fourteen United Nations Associations “called on the participating states to make the

fullest possible use of non-governmental organizations in their plans for implementation of the Final Act. Once the proceedings began, groups as diverse as the U.S. Watch

Group, World Federation of Free Latvians, and Freedom House passed out reports to

American and Western European delegates and journalists; many of these groups also

547 Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 230-1; Letter, Max Kampelman to Hedrik Hertzberg, 17 July 1980, SAEA, Box 7, Folder: 12/79-11/1/80; and U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 17.

548 Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 240-1; Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 123-6; Robert Rand, “America’s ‘Helsinki Lobby,’” in Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security, 198; and Letter, Meg Donnovan to Ambassador Scanlon et al., 1 January 1984, Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1984, USHCF, RCSCE, NA. 283 held regular press conferences. To make their lobbying efforts more effective and further publicize their activities, the NCSJ worked with other Jewish groups to set up a “full-time reception center” that distributed “meticulously prepared research studies” to every delegation. The U.S. Watch Group leased office space so its staff could provide “well- researched documentation on human rights violations to the hundreds of media correspondents who had descended upon Madrid.” Freedom House “conducted a week- long program” that “brought to Madrid a group of internationally recognized dissidents who addressed human rights issues.”549

Sensing an opportunity to raise international awareness about the issue of Soviet human rights violations, a sizable contingent of Soviet émigrés descended on Madrid.

Once at the conference, they met with Western delegates, held their own press conferences, and mingled with the representatives of NGOs. Edward Lozansky was no exception. He arrived in Madrid ready to do whatever he could to raise international awareness about the Soviet government’s refusal to let his wife emigrate. With great effort, he managed to participate in a demonstration in France coinciding with the arrival of a Soviet delegation. He also used his life savings to organize a “gala performance” in honor of Sakharov that received widespread coverage in Spanish newspapers. He even printed five-hundred copies of a telegram he had just received from his wife’s Divided

549 CHRUR 40 (October-December 1980): 32-33; Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 240-2; Korey, The Promises We Keep, 123-5; Letter, Meg Donnovan to Ambassador Scanlon et al.”; and “Helsinki Watch Groups,” Freedom at Issue 71 (March-April 1983): 19. 284

Family Group and distributed them to every delegate at Madrid, including those from the

Soviet Union.550

The combined effects of Carter’s determination to engage in peaceful ideological

and transnational pressures meant that U.S. delegates proved even more vocal about

Soviet human rights violations and international misconduct than they had in Belgrade.

During the first phase of the Madrid follow-up meeting (13 November-19 December

1980), U.S. delegates made specific references to sixty-five individuals who had faced

governmental repression in Warsaw Pact nations. This number stood well above the

seven individuals that the United States had mentioned at Belgrade. They also raised a

number of embarrassing issues such as the Afghanistan invasion, state-sponsored anti-

Semitism, and religious persecution. The U.S. delegation even denounced the Kremlin’s

treatment of national minorities, a topic that their predecessors had considered too

provocative to raise at the previous follow-up meeting.551

Following the Commission’s recommendations, Kampelman also made every effort to create a more unified Western position on human rights than existed at Belgrade.

While the Soviet Union’s efforts to curb dissent played an important role, his consistent meetings with NATO delegations and superb negotiating skills made Western European delegates less reticent about criticizing Soviet human rights abuses. In sharp contrast to

their cautious behavior at Belgrade, “Western allies of the United States” joined in the

550 Edward Lozansky, For Tatiana: When Love Triumphed over the Kremlin (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1984), 232-6, 241.

551 Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 251-2; CHRUR 40 (October-December 1980): 32; and Korey, The Promises We Keep, 132. 285

criticism of Soviet practices and, in some instances, named names and cited cases.” They

also began criticizing the Soviet government’s restrictions on Jewish emigration and

imprisonment of refuseniks.552 During a working session, a Belgian delegate even went

so far as to argue that the Kremlin’s “’intensified anti-Semitism’ . . . showed a ‘rising

mercury level in that horrible barometer of hate.’”553

The successes transnational actors and executive branch officials had in

“globalizing” the issue of Soviet human rights violations had obvious limits. At the end

of the day, they failed to curb Moscow’s long-term goal of eradicating non-official

activities. This stark reality raises the question of how Carter understood the term

“prevail” and would have approached the task of promoting human rights in the Soviet

Union had he been reelected. At this moment, no records exist that elucidate what happened to Henze and Odom’s proposals described above other than the description of efforts to strengthen the ability of U.S. radios to reach audiences in the USSR. Whatever steps Carter might have approved, evidence suggests that he viewed “prevail” as an honest effort of Soviet leaders to abandon the tenets of orthodox Marxist-Leninism and make their domestic practices more consistent with international standards. To accomplish this goal, the United States would have remained an active participate in the

Helsinki process and committed to engaging in vigorous ideological competition with

Moscow. In the spring of 1980, Carter made this position clear when he told an audience

552 Korey. The Promises We Keep, 133-5.

553 Ibid. 286

that “we have no reason to fear global competition with the Soviets if we remain strong.

It is our values which promote pluralism and diversity.”554

This attitude does not mean that Carter would have transformed his approach to

promoting human rights in the Soviet Union had he served a second term. He would not

have gone out of his way to stress the centrality of Soviet nationality problems.555 He also would not have placed rhetorical importance on the need for Soviet officials to build democratic institutions as soon as possible. Instead, he would have kept calibrating his public rhetoric about the Kremlin’s human rights violations in relationship to Soviet internal behavior. He also would have stuck to the position that Soviet leaders had little choice but to recognize international realities and join Americans in the complex task of forging an international environment consistent with U.S. principles and values. Even if

Carter had decided to seek ratification of SALT II and rebuild U.S.-Soviet relations after being reelected, the die had already been cast. Despite a number of missteps and unrealistic assumptions about the future trajectory of Soviet behavior, the Carter administration helped private citizens make human rights an integral element of U.S.-

Soviet relations. During the 1980s, Soviet leaders never came close to curbing transnational critiques of their domestic behavior. Just as Carter had predicted, this

554 See “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Address Before the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia,” 9 May 1980. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33393&st=&st1= [10 October 2007].

555 Memorandum for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski: The White House, “Questions and Answers for Human Rights Days Briefing Session,” NSABM, Box 78: Folder, Human Rights, 12/78-3/79, JCPL. There can be little doubt that Carter examined internal reports that outlined Soviet nationality problems. See Memo, ZB to Carter, “Soviet National Problems,” 3 June 1977, NSABM, Box 78: Folder 6/77, JCPL.

287 development ensured that the reputation of the Soviet government only grew worse in the eyes of the Western world as the decade progressed. 288

CHAPTER 7: THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT VERSUS DISSENTERS, PART II:

CONFLICTING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE

“GLOBALIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS” AND THE CARTER

ADMINISTRATION, SEPTEMBER 1978-JANAURY 1981

Near the beginning of 1980, the U.S. Helsinki Commission published a report that contained information it had received from NGOs and dissenters about the widespread use of prison labor in the Soviet Union. The document explained how “some prisoners have found it particularly unjust that items they have produced” had ended up “part of the

Soviet Union’s trade with the West.” A “former prisoner of conscience” even indicated

that “forced labor had been employed for the manufacture of Bear souvenirs for

the 1980 Moscow Olympics.”556

This example reveals that Brezhnev regime proved unable to prevent dissenters

from undermining the international prestige of the Soviet Union. Bent on combating the

totalitarian features of Soviet society, a wide array of dissenters continued the practice of

citing human rights violations to show the rest of the world how Soviet-style socialism

suffered from a lack of glasnost. They may have remained hesitant about specific

political objectives, but continued to have success in forging transnational links with

Western private citizens and government officials. In addition to exploring how dissenters had helped “globalize” the issue of Soviet human rights violations, the first section of this chapter will revisit their divergent evaluations of Carter’s efforts to

556 See U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1980), 76, 101.

289

promote human rights in the USSR. While a number of them criticized the U.S. executive branch for not having done enough to challenge Soviet internal behavior,

others thanked Carter for his decision to defend the cause of Soviet freedom.

The second part of this chapter will describe the Soviet government’s behavior in detail. Although not averse to making pragmatic concessions that furthered important foreign policy goals, the pervasive influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thinking meant that Moscow’s attitude toward dissenters changed little after the visible public trials of mid 1978 took place. When their repressive tactics failed to curb the spread of dissent at home and transnational attacks on Soviet internal behavior, the Kremlin decided to accelerate its campaign to eradicate non-official activities near the end of 1979. Because the USSR lacked democratic political institutions and suffered from a governmental mindset that equated criticism to ideological subversion, orthodox Soviet leaders felt

obligated to protect their multinational empire’s internal cohesion and international

legitimacy through further repression.

Soviet Dissenters’ View

The steps that orthodox Soviet leaders took to curb non-official activities from the

beginning of 1977 to mid 1979 could not prevent a number of private citizens from

questioning their government’s arbitrary interpretations of internationally recognized

human rights. Following the example of the Moscow Watch Group, new ones came into

existence such as the Initiative Committee to Fight for the Right of Free Exit from the

USSR (Exit Group), the Christian Youth Council, and the Free Interprofessional

Association of Workers (SMOT). Several Seventh Day Adventist and Baptist groups 290

also formed that compiled reports on how the Soviet authorities imprisoned and harassed

church members. 557

As the formation of these groups suggests, Soviet authorities only had limited success in stemming the publication of samizdat literature at home and preventing its

dissemination abroad. They not only failed to stop the publication of established journals

such as The Chronicle and the Information Bulletin of the Crimean Tatar Movement, but also could not prevent the appearance of new publications such as the feminist journal

Woman and Russia, and an Estonian journal called The Saturday Newspaper. Even more impressive, Sakharov and other dissenters managed to hold a meeting with a representative of Polish Workers Defense Committee (KOR) in Moscow near the beginning of 1979. After this gathering took place, representatives of KOR and the

Moscow Watch Group held a joint press conference six months later that called on the

Czechoslovak authorities to release the ten leaders of Charter 77 whom they had earlier arrested.558

The success of members of the Invalid Group in sending their reports abroad also

helps illustrate the troubles the Kremlin had in stemming the “globalization” of Soviet human rights violations. A U.S. Helsinki Commission report cited a document from the

Invalid Group that recounted how handicapped individuals “who live in state invalid

homes find themselves in the most terrible conditions. There is [even] evidence of

557 See Alexeyva, On Soviet Dissent, 349-50, 209-12, 235; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki: Findings and Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 89-110, 137-42.

558 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 86-9; Medvedev, “The Future of Soviet Dissent,” 27-8; and Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 76. 291

terrible beatings and of absolutely helpless, bedridden invalids being driven to

suicide.”559 In another letter that reached a West German newspaper and the radio station

Deutsche Welle, Invalid Group members complained about Soviet bureaucratic inertia

and explained that “the only way of getting something done for the disabled in the USSR

is through publicity.” To give Western audiences the ammunition needed to generate this

publicity, they vowed to supply concrete data without delay on any of the complex

problems concerning the disabled in the USSR.560

Despite their failure to forge a close working relationship with a broad-based

labor movement, dissenters succeeded in telling the rest of the world about the existence

of forced labor in the Soviet Union. According to a Moscow Watch Group document,

Soviet law “provides for forced labor, systematic deprivations in diet, [as well as] supplementary punishments that include isolation cells in labor camps and in prison.” In another document that reached foreign audiences, Orlov estimated that the Soviet prison system had five million people participating in some sort of “forced labor activity,” whose treatment he equated with the “condition of serfs in remote times.” While this estimate appears high in retrospect, Sakharov supported

Orlov’s conclusions and called labor in Soviet camps “compulsory, punitive,” and

“slavelike in nature”561

559 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 103. A document from the Moscow Watch Group that also reached Western audiences substantiated these charges. See Documents of the Helsinki Monitoring Groups in the U.S.S.R. and Lithuania, 1976-1986, Volume I, 163.

560 CCE 55-6 (1981): 67. See also Ibid., 59-61 (1981): 220 and Hodgman, “Détente and the Dissidents,” 383.

292

Near the beginning of 1980, workers in found a note that political

prisoners in managed to smuggle out in a timber shipment. In words that expressed their desperation, they wrote that “we do not know whether these products, manufactured by the slave labor of Soviet prisoners, will be exported to a socialist or to a free country.” Nevertheless, we “firmly believe that in every land and among every people our letter will find persons who are willing to listen to what we have to say” and challenge the “unrestrained tyranny of the CPSU.562 These prisoners were lucky, as the

workers who found this letter forwarded it to the West German Society for the Defense of

Human Rights for public distribution.563 Armed with these sorts of materials, the U.S.

Helsinki Commission issued a report in 1980 that explained how “compulsory labor is an

essential aspect of life in Soviet prison and camps.”564

Besides “globalizing” the issue of slave labor, dissenters also managed to send

messages abroad describing how Soviet workers had fewer rights than their Western

counterparts. For example, a French newspaper published the words of a Ukrainian

worker who explained how Soviet “oppression and direct arbitrariness is directed most

against the working person . . . who” lacks the “opportunity to fight against political and

economic repression.” The Moscow and Ukrainian Watch Groups picked up on these

561 Documents of the Helsinki Monitoring Groups in the U.S.S.R. and Lithuania, 1976-1986, Volume I, 304-6; 349-67; and “Statement by Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Representative of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group in the West,” SB 80 (December 1979): 2. See also CCE 51 (1979): 89; and Irina Orlov, “My meeting with my husband, Dr. Orlov, on August 21, 1979,” BEA, Box 30, Folder: Sakharov Hearing, 10/79, JCPL.

562 “People! We Need Your Help? SB 84 (April 1980): 1.

563 Ibid.

564 See U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 76, 101, 160-6. 293

sorts of reports and published documents describing Soviet laborers’ poor working

conditions and inability to engage in collective bargaining or carry out a strike. In a

speech he delivered to the AFL-CIO near the end of 1979, Vladimir Bukovsky explained

how international human rights agreements actually gave Soviet workers the right to form

independent organizations such as SMOT to protect themselves from arbitrary

government bureaucrats uninterested in the humane treatment of workers.565

These types of reports helped tarnish the image of the Soviet Union as the

international champion of labor. In sharp contrast to its previous unwillingness to

criticize the abridgement of workers’ rights in Eastern bloc nations, the International

Labor Organization (ILO) found reports about “slave labor” in the Soviet Union credible.

After careful deliberation, the ILO issued a report that called on Soviet officials to make

their labor legislation consistent with international standards that forbade “forced labor.”

When the same organization criticized the USSR for preventing dissenters from

procuring work commensurate with their educational levels, the Soviets rejected the charge with the lame excuse that their “anti-parasite” laws only punished “gamblers and

fortune tellers.”566

565 “Ukrainian Worker Accuses Soviet State of Bourgeois Class System,” SB103 (November 1981) 3; “Statement by Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Representative of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group in the West”; and “Speech Delivered by Vladimir Bukovsky on the Workers’ Opposition in the USSR,” SB 79 (November 1979): 1-7. See also “Worker Participation in the Dissident Movement,” Ibid. 94 (February 1981): 1-6.

566 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 76, 98-102. See also “International Labor Organization. Available [Online]: http://www.genevabriefingbook.com/chapters/ilo.pdf [12 November 2007].

294

Soviet authorities also had to grapple with visible calls for self-determination in

numerous republics and their inability to extirpate religious practices. In a process one

writer calls the “multinationalization of Soviet dissent,” private citizens in ,

Lithuania, and Estonia who had worked together in a joint committee for two years sent

the U.N. a “Baltic Charter” in August 1979. This document not only denounced the

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but also called for the independence of their countries from

Soviet rule. After it became public, over 30,000 individuals in Lithuania signed the

charter over the course of the next year and Sakharov voiced his strong approval of the

measure. Baltic dissenters also sent a petition to the Olympic committee arguing that the

yachting events in Estonia represented the “first time in Olympic history” that “a part of

the games will be staged in an occupied territory.”567

After the Carter administration secured his release in 1979, the Ukrainian Watch

member Valentyn Moroz delivered a speech at a National Press Club luncheon that

emphasized Ukraine’s status as a colonial nation. “The tragedy of the Ukraine,” he

observed, “lies in the fact that the world’s attention is focused on the struggle of Blacks

for the decolonization of Africa.” In sharp language, he told the audience that “the arena

of decolonization should shift to Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R where we have dozens

of subjugated nations as well as the largest colony in the world—Ukraine—a nation of 50

million people.”568 The Ukrainian Patriotic Movement defended a proposal to have the

567 See Kowalewski, The Multinationalization of Soviet Dissent 206-30; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 19-20. See also CSCE Digest, 23 January 1981, 10.

568 “Of the Valentyn Moroz at the National Press Club Luncheon, held Friday, May 18 1979 at the National Press Building in Washington, D.C.,” NSABM, Box 81, Folder: 5/18-2/1/79, JCPL. 295

United Nations to supervise a referendum on the political status of Ukraine on the grounds that “the decolonization of the USSR is the only guarantee of peace in the entire world.”569 Because of the importance they placed on internationally recognized human rights, members of the Moscow Watch Group agreed to distribute the documents of their

Ukrainian counterpart and support all private citizens who fought for the right to

“determine their own fate.”570

The Soviet government also had to face the reality that hundreds of thousands of

individuals remained committed to practicing their faith and publicizing their plight.571

For example, the Catholic Committee of Lithuania sent a letter to the Presidium of the

Supreme Soviet near the end of 1978 reminding members that “no less than 70% of the population of Lithuania even today belongs to the Catholic Church and only a insignificant portion consider themselves atheists.” Five months later, it sent a petition to

UNECSO describing how Lithuanian parents have no right to teach their children religion and cannot have them participate in religious rites without breaking the law. In addition

569 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 19; and Alexeyeva, Soviet Dissent, 56-8. See also Smoloskyp 1, no. 4 (Summer 1979). A copy of this journal can be found in NSABM, Box 81, Folder: 5/18-2/1/79, JCPL.

570 U.S. Helsinki Commission, A Thematic Survey of Documents of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), 6-9.

571 A study released near the end of 1980 confirmed this reality, noting that an estimated 100,000 Baptists and 500,000 unregistered Pentecostals lived in the Soviet Union. In the case of the later, over 30,000 had already submitted their requests for emigration. Along with the millions of Byzantine Catholics (Uniates) in Ukraine who belonged to an outlawed Church, authorities also had to contend with 50,000 Seventh-Day Adventists who operated an underground printing press that the government failed to locate until 1984. In addition to the rise of other sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, government officials also had to contend with the ever-increasing number of Jews who had expressed their desire to emigrate from the Soviet Union. See CSCE Digest, 10 April 1981, 12-4. 296

to these activities, letters from Pentecostals and Baptists addressed to Carter continued to

make their way to the West.572

After attending church with Carter in 1979, the Ukrainian exile and Watch Group

member Georgi Vins set up a U.S. branch of the Council of Churches of the Evangelical

Baptists (CCECB), an organization that represented Soviet Baptists who refused to register with the state. His wife Lydia became the foreign representative of a dissident organization called the Council of Relatives of Evangelical Christian Baptist Prisoners.573

The latter used the opportunity of speaking before the U.S. Helsinki Commission to describe how the Soviet government decided to rescind the permission it gave a Baptist family to leave for the United States based on the ruling that “their departure could result in a mass movement among believers to appeal to the authorities for permission to emigrate.”574

Besides the problems involved in combating the “globalization” of Soviet human rights violations, authorities also had to deal with individuals who had become

disillusioned with Soviet-style socialism. On 5 December 1978, two hundred “young

people” in Leningrad held a demonstration on Soviet Constitution Day (5 December).

572 CCCL 37 (6 January 1979): 7; and Ibid., 38 (1 May 1979): 32-6. For examples of letters from Pentecostals and Baptists, see CCE 50 (1979): 154; Ibid, 52 (1980): 19. Ibid., 53 (1980): 153. The Carter administration also received a series of letters from the Baltic Women’s Council asking the United States to endorse dissenters’ proposals calling on the United Nations to supervise elections in the Baltic Republics designed to secure the independence of these nations. See Letter, Baltic Women’s Council to JC, 13 October 1980, BEA, Box 7, Folder: Madrid Conference on Human Rights, JCPL; and Letter, Stephen R. Aiello to John Bolsteins, 31 October 1980, BEA, Box 7, Folder: Madrid Conference on Human Rights, JCPL.

573 Alexeyva, On Soviet Dissent, 212.

574 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume XI (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1979), 124-5. 297

They gathered to protest the arrest of two students who had formed informal groups

committed to rectifying the Soviet government’s distortions of socialism. Unhappy with

the Soviet Communist Party’s handpicked nominees for the Supreme Soviet elections, a

group of private citizens in Moscow created a voters’ group known as “Election 79.” The

authorities rejected the candidacy of these individuals, including the dissident historian

Roy Medvedev, and warned the group not to carry out similar actions in the future.575

The successes dissenters had in “globalizing” the issue of Soviet internal behavior

helped convince the Kremlin to attack all manifestations of dissent at once in the fall of

1979, a practice the Brezhnev had refrained from since Carter had become President.

According to a report in the Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR that appeared in

January 1980:

The arrests, trials and searches have affected all sectors of dissident activity, but some patterns have emerged. Individuals who have served as links among different dissident groups or between dissidents and the West have been particular targets for repression. Women no longer enjoy relative immunity from imprisonment. Well known Moscow authors . . . have been urged to emigrate as a substitute for arrest. The Moscow Watch Group, the Working Commission on the Misuse of Psychiatry, the Christian Commission, and other organized groups of dissenters have suffered heavy casualties.576

In the United States, émigré Valery Chalidze argued that “Moscow believes that it can

end Western complaints by cutting off channels of information, by denying citizens all

575 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 21; Alexeyva, On Soviet Dissent, 350-1, 355-61; CSCE Digest, 1 March 1979, 4; and Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 138. See also CCE 54 (1980): 130-1.

576 CHRUR 37 (January-March 1980): 1. Exasperated with Soviet behavior, the head of Solzhenitsyn Fund for Political prisoners, S. Khodorovich, issued a statement that read “how morally weak that mighty power which fears honest people must be. And how dangerous are the cowards who posses such power.” See CCE 55-6 (1981): 97.

298

means of expressing their opinions and by confining the more stubborn civil-rights

activists in labor camps and psychiatric hospitals.” These reports had significant merit

because Soviet authorities arrested 300 dissenters while forcing fifty others to emigrate

between mid 1979 and February 1981.577 From his exile in Gorky, Sakharov and his wife

Elena managed to send messages abroad expressing similar themes.578

The increasing intensity of the Soviet government’s efforts to eradicate non-

official activities only reinforced the importance dissidents attached to the Madrid

follow-up conference. Anatoly Shcharansky’s mother wrote a letter to Western

delegations describing her son’s tragic fate that in part read: “My son, along with many

other people who are in our country are labeled renegades, believed in the reality of the

Helsinki Accords” because this document affirmed “the interconnection of international

détente and human rights.” Since “you inspired hope in the [Helsinki] monitors,” she

continued, “it is your duty to defend the rights of these honest and courageous people.”

After warning Western countries not to trust Soviet promises about better behavior in the future, she insisted that their “actions” will only become “valuable” when the Soviet authorities released “courageous; and innocent” individuals such as her son.579

Andrei Sakharov wrote an article in the New York Times that asked Western

nations to take an “unequivocal, uncompromising” attitude toward Soviet human rights

violations that went beyond “verbal protests.” He rejected calls for a boycott of Madrid,

577 CSCE Digest, 23 January 1981, 8-9; and Ibid., 3 February 1981, 5.

578 After arriving in this closed city, Sakharov denounced the “’arbitrariness on the part of the KGB’” and vowed to fight the Soviet government despite the possibility that such behavior might “threaten him and his wife.” See CCE 55-6 (1981): 81. For an excellent example of psychiatric abuse, see CHRUR 41 (January- March 1981): 25-6.

579 CSCE Digest, 10 April 1981, 9. 299

but reiterated that “the critical international situation requires that Western participating

States coordinate their tactics and pursue their goals with more determination and

consistency than at Belgrade.” If the West remained determined over the long term,

Warsaw Pact nations would have to concede that the efforts of private citizens to monitor

governments’ compliance with the Final Act only increased “international security and

confidence.” With the help of his wife, Orlov managed to forward a short message to

Madrid that echoed some of Sakharov’s larger points. “As human rights advocates,” he

wrote, “we have a stake in . . . [a] kind of détente which takes account of public control

over governments as a key factor in safeguarding peace.” He also suggested that the

heads of signatory states should “make a major effort to restore the former—precrisis—

situation” in the Soviet Union.580

A wide array of dissenters attached importance to the Madrid meeting because they viewed themselves as participants in a global struggle against the totalitarian features of Soviet society. This attitude accounts for why many viewed human rights as an issue they could exploit to bring more glasnost to the “clandestine” Soviet state. One publication that reached Western audiences called remaining silent about Soviet human rights violations the equivalent of being an “obedient cog” in an evil bureaucratic system.

When describing a samizdat document, an excerpt from the Chronicle explained how

“‘one of the most striking features of the Soviet power machine is the ‘isolation of its

580 CHRUR 39 (July-September 1980): 24-6. Before Madrid’s main meeting began in November 1980, the Moscow Watch Group issued a document that rejected proposals calling on Western nations to boycott the proceedings and called on the participants to defend the position “that the observance of human rights is not solely a State’s internal affair, but rather an international obligation.” See Ibid., (July-September 1980): 22- 4. See also Ibid., 40 (October-December 1980): 14. 300

upper echelon . . . from the outside world and from objective information, including information about KGB activities.” As a result of this unfortunate situation, “‘top-level inquiries [and petitions] about the fate of’ Soviet private citizens “handed in person to

Brezhnev by public organizations in the West . . . may have a restraining effect on the

Soviet bureaucratic machine.”581 Sakharov himself encouraged “Western man” to challenge the “totalitarian system” that relies on the “discretion” of a “single center” to

make all important decisions for Soviet society. “It is frightening to think, he wrote,”

that the most honest and generous people who have devoted many years to defending

others with words of truth, have become victims to [this system’s] arbitrary repression.582

The importance Sakharov and other dissenters attached to challenging the global threat of totalitarianism invites the question of how dissenters evaluated the Carter administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. Although he voiced strong approval for the President ’s early statements about Soviet human rights abuses, Vladimir Bukovsky concluded that Carter had “discontinued his open [human rights] campaign and did not resume it during the rest of his time in office.” “Even

Carter,” he lamented, “whose administration started so auspiciously [on human rights], soon came to side with the ‘experts,’ despite all the information we were able to get into his hands.” As part of this general criticism, he excoriated Carter’s move toward “quiet” human rights diplomacy and condemned him for not mentioning human rights abuses as

581 CCE 62 (1982): 152. Another dissenter rejected suggestion of issuing anonymous writings because “the concept of ‘illegal, underground activity’ is more applicable to the actions of the [Soviet] authorities themselves and their organs.’” “How else, he asked, “can you describe the existence of secret decrees, instructions, and directives? Or political trials which consistently violate the principle of public discourse?” See CCE 53 (1980): 59; and Robert Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 67.

582 “These Disturbing Times,” SB 86 (June 1980): 4-5. 301

one of the reasons why his administration enacted a series of punitive measures in

response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.583

Bukovsky’s criticisms of the Carter administration reflected his belief that most

Americans and Western Europeans remained seduced by the siren song of détente.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he could not understand how countless Western

“experts” believed that “the USSR is a state just like a Western one” that “desires peace

just like we do.” He also rejected any notion that “détente works for the liberalization of

Soviet society.” To support this argument, he posed the question: “How can one

seriously believe that importing foreign goods can help liberalize the Soviet Union?” No matter what Western experts thought, they could not change the fundamental reality that

Soviet economic backwardness in no way weakened the Kremlin’s commitment to waging and winning a global ideological struggle against the West.584

Because Western nations never really attempted to make the Soviets adhere to the

provisions of the Final Act, Bukovsky argued that the West’s preoccupation with

preserving détente only ensured that a “liberalization” of Soviet society would not take

place. “If any positive gains [in human rights] were made [during the Carter

administration],” he concluded, “they came about not because of the policy of détente but

in spite of it.” To put this insight another way, Bukovsky believed that “these positive

gains” owed little to governmental activities. Instead, they “were achieved by individuals

583 Bukovsky, To Chose Freedom, 47, 158-9.

584 Ibid., 153-6. 302

and organizations who took strong exception to the policy of détente and made a point of

opposing it.” 585

Alexander Solzhenitsyn advanced arguments similar to those of Bukovsky. His

wife spoke for him when she argued that Carter’s human rights policy “has been reduced

to mere words.”586 This position grew out of a belief that Western governments made the

“strategic error” of failing to recognize that the oppressed peoples” of the Soviet Union,

especially Russians, were invaluable “allies” in the global struggle against communism.

As he explained, “communism will never be halted by negotiations or through the

machinations of détente.” Instead, “it can only be halted by force from without or by

disintegration from within.” Since the latter option remained the only feasible course of

action to pursue, “a fully united Western world can no longer prevail except by allying

itself with the captive people of the communist world.” This mindset explains why he

urged private citizens all over the world to defend the “threatened, persecuted, and

arrested persons in the USSR.” He may have hated the Final Act, but praised how

“energetic” public “protests” had time and time again had saved private Soviet citizens from years of imprisonment and hapless existences waiting for permission to emigrate.587

585 Ibid., 153-6, 160.

586 Robert G. Kaiser, “Soviet Dissidents Tell Stories of Life in Motherland,” Washington Post, 30 September 1979, A5. This position grew out of his larger belief that Western political leaders made tragic errors when they downplayed “the radical hostility of communism to mankind as a whole.” For example, see Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Misconceptions about Russia are a Threat to America,” Foreign Affairs 58 (Spring 1980): 820-3.

587 Ibid., 832-4; and “Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Address to the 1979 Sakharov hearings, BEA, Box 30, Folder: Sakharov Hearings, 10/79, JCPL. 303

Anatoly Shcharansky shared many of Bukovsky’s and Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms

of détente. They felt as if the policy allowed Soviet leaders to repress their citizens while

obtaining the economic and scientific benefits from the West that they needed to sustain a

viable economy. He may have praised Carter’s statements in defense of human rights,

but criticized the President for signing SALT II even though the Soviets had disregarded

the provisions of the Final Act. In his account on life in the Soviet gulag, he wrote, “The

prison loudspeaker reported that Carter and Brezhnev embraced after singing the SALT II

agreement. We [fellow prisoners] were astounded. Did this embrace mean a speedy

release? The loss of hope?” Shcharansky voiced these sentiments because he believed

that “Carter was almost never willing to back his rhetoric on human rights with decisive

action.” Because the President did not appreciate how the Soviet system operated in

practice, he sometimes lost “moral clarity” and refused to press the Soviet leaders on the

issue of how they treated their private citizens.588

Andrei Amalrik and Edward Lozansky felt much the same way. The former

excoriated Westerners for not seeing that “Soviet leaders have the mentality of thugs”

and made specific criticisms of Marshall Shulman’s position that the U.S. government

could “’educate’” Soviet leaders “through concessions and its own example.” He also

rebuked Carter’s human rights policy as being “inconsistent” and “not supported by

specific actions.” As he put it up: “Once the President “began to tone down his

588 Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 1986), XX-XXII, 2-10, 107-9, 131-4. See also Natan Sharansky, trans. by Stefani Hoffman, Fear No Evil (New York: Random House, 1988), 257-8. Other dissenters shared Sharansky’s belief that many Americans with good-intentions had little appreciation of how Soviet system worked in practice. See N.A., “Ginsburg: Exile Worse Than Prison,” Final Edition (WP), 5 May 1979, B1.

304

statements, Soviet leaders realized they could ignore him.” The latter argued that

Brezhnev “had no intention to please Jimmy Carter” because the President “had already

given” Soviet leaders “more than” they “ever expected to get without demanding anything in exchange.” In reference to SALT II, Lozansky asserted: “Brezhnev knew

that Carter would sign it and do everything to have it ratified. So why should he release

any hostages? Better to save them for some future time when they could be used to good

advantage in negotiations.”589

Unlike Bukovsky and Amalrik, Roy Medvedev stuck to the position that the

continuation of Soviet-American détente represented the best way to “liberalize” the

USSR over the long term. At the same time, he expressed impatience with the inability

of Westerners to comprehend how Stalin’s supposed distortions of socialism worked

against reform impulses in the Soviet Union. For example, he could not understand why

an Italian journalist asked him a question about why the Soviet government feared

powerless dissenters such as Sakharov. He told the journalist that Soviet officials could

not engage in a dialogue with dissenters because such behavior would “mean confessing

that our unity is imperfect, that the myth of solidarity between the People and the Party is

false, and that all other derivative myths are also false.”590 When asked if Carter and

Italian Communists were naïve in “wondering why the Kremlin can’t confront dissent

‘politically,” he made as a cogent a summary of Soviet behavior as this author as ever

read:

589 Andre Amalrik, Notes of a Revolutionary, 299-300, 311-13; and Lozansky, For Tatiana, 209-10.

590 Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 141. 305

The USSR isn’t France or Italy, because the Soviet regime isn’t founded on a majority or a total consensus, but on ideology. Only Marxists . . . have the right to rule; conversely, the ruling class justifies itself only by the country’s ideological foundations. It’s a vicious circle, a religion, if you like. The USSR is the last great religious state on earth. Therefore . . . every dissident, every heretic must be flushed out and gagged. This isn’t a problem of quantity, but of basic principles on which the regime rests. It’s inconceivable that the regime would accept its own demise.591

Based on these observations, Medvedev criticized the Carter administration for

believing that the United States could change Soviet internal behavior through punitive

actions or high-flown human rights rhetoric. Because “dissent must be repressed at all

costs, he continued, “the will . . . to liquidate” non-official activity will always trump the

“fear of hurting international relations.” After all, “weren’t there arrests and trials even

during the best years of détente?”592

As indicated earlier, Sakharov shared Carter’s preference for signing SALT II and

creating an international environment more conducive to human nights.593 Nevertheless,

he thought that the President’s hesitations about promoting human rights in the Soviet

Union may have contributed to the Soviet government’s decision to repress dissent with

more vigor near the end of 1979. As he wrote in his memoirs, “Jimmy Carter’s inaugural

statement of the need for international efforts in the defense of human rights ruffled the

591 Ibid., 145-6.

592 See Ibid., 142-3; and Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 207-9. Despite all of the flaws he saw in the Soviet dissident movement and Western behavior, the increased scale of Soviet repression made him less wedded to the idea that dissenters would play only a secondary role in shaping Soviet reform efforts. In sharp to some of his previous statements, he now argued that no “democratic development or reforms would be possible” without the existence of dissent. In retrospect, this statement rang hollow, as he ignored dissenters once Gorbachev came to power. See Medvedev, On Soviet Dissent, 142-3. See also Ibid., “The Problems of Democratization and Détente,” 6-8.

593 In June 1980, Sakharov wrote that “on the whole, actions taken by Carter in these tragic days win nothing but respect from me.” See Sakharov, “These Disturbing Times,” 2. 306

Soviet leaders, but his later vacillation may have encouraged them to believe that he was

“manageable” and contributed to the difficulties which followed in other aspects of

Soviet-American relations.” Despite expressing these sentiments, Sakharov still admired

him for raising the issue of Soviet human rights violations and supporting dissenters.

“My critical remarks,” he noted, “should not obscure my appreciation of Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy. It may not have always been successful; that, after all, is fate. As

for his personal regard for me, I feel certain it is sincere, and not just politics.”594

Many other dissenters expressed positive sentiments similar to those of Sakharov.

In December 1978, three private citizens sent Carter a letter that read: “On Human

Rights Day please accept our tribute of great admiration for you, Mr. President, and for

your administration: in a world becoming wrapped in lies, you have allowed yourselves

to make human rights and moral considerations the basis of your international policy.”

Another dissenter wrote a letter asking Carter “to take an interest in my future destiny for

it is precisely you, by the will of fate, who has become the President of Human Rights

and, therefore, my President as well.” The former Soviet general

thanked him for becoming “the first American President to meet personally and salute

former Soviet political prisoners (human rights defenders).” He also expressed his

“respect” and “gratitude” for the President’s decision to make human rights “a keystone”

of U.S. “foreign policy.” Valentyn Moroz may have wanted Carter to express more

support for Ukrainian self-determination in public, but called the President’s emphasis on

594 Ibid., 466. 307

human rights “the first instance in the post-World War II era when the West has seized

the initiative and is in an undefeatable position.”595

As this position suggests, dissenters often found common ground in the position

that American officials could do more to support their efforts. This point of view comes across in a letter that Lozansky wrote to the Public Liaison Officer Joyce Starr asking for updates concerning her promise to raise the issue of his wife’s emigration with members of the National Security Council. He called the support he had received “from the

American people and [non-governmental] organizations” valuable, but then reminded

Starr of the tremendous influence U.S. policymakers held over the general trajectory of

Soviet behavior. Unless the U.S. government took stronger measures to secure the release of his wife in the near future, he warned, the Kremlin would never allow her to

emigrate.596

A wide array of dissenters also found common ground in the argument that Soviet leaders would never succeed in their long-term goal of eradicating non-official activities.597 This mindset helps account for why many of them remained convinced that

their efforts would bear fruit over the long-term. In a letter he sent abroad, Sakharov

595 CCE 52 (1980): 59; N.A., N.T. SB 69 (January 1979): 1; Letter, Peter Grigorenko to JC,” N.D., Peter Grigorenko Files, Box 1, Folder: Peter Grigorenko, JCPL; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Volume XI, 103. See also CCE 51 (1979): 89; and Ibid., 53 (1980): 192.

596Alexander Slepak to Robert Lipshutz, 26 December 1977, RL, Box 46, Folder: S.D., 2/77-1/78; and Letter, Edward Lozansky to Joyce Starr, 18 January 1979, OPL, Box 53, Folder: Human Rights Correspondence, 5/78-2/79. This point of view also comes across in a dissident letter that reached Western audiences: See “People We Need Your Help” SB 84 (April 1980): 1-2.

597 Medvedev may have held grave doubts about the future of public dissidence, but he also believed that “opposition and dissidence will inevitably continue to exist in the Soviet Union . . . if only because many of the most important problems of society have not yet been solved in our country.” See Medvedev, “The Future of Soviet Dissent,” 27-8; and CCE 62 (1982): 149. 308

explained how the apolitical human rights movement “has changed the moral climate and

created the spiritual precondition needed for democratic changes in the USSR and for the

formulation of an ideology of human rights throughout the world.” Even if the scale of

repression further increased, he wrote, “nothing can erase . . . what has become known to the world” about Soviet domestic conduct. After visiting her husband in prison, Irina

Orlov voiced her husband’s sentiments that Helsinki monitors had succeeded in bring

about a permanent change “in the leadership’s phraseology” about human rights and

contributed to the “growing sympathy of workers for the propagation of political and

civil freedoms.598

The ways in which dissenters defended their accomplishments does not mean that

they underestimated the inherent difficulties of reforming Soviet society. In fact,

Sakharov informed Western audiences that fundamental changes in the USSR would not

“take place in the near future.” “Our totalitarian society,” he remarked, “with its caste

and bureaucratic structure, its complete lack of freedom of expression or democratic

mechanisms for decision making, is extraordinary inert.” “Because the system can

petrify for years without initiating change,” Sakharov feared that conditions in the Soviet

Union would only worsen before they became better. This mentality helps explain why

many dissenters, including Sakharov, continued to stress the pivotal role that their

transnational links with Western private citizens and government officials played in

598 CCE 55-6 (1981): 87; and Irina Orlov, “My meeting with my husband, Dr. Orlov, on August 21, 1979.” 309

giving them the strength to continue their efforts against a government fearful of genuine

glasnost.599

The Acceleration of “Provocative Damage Control”: The Soviet Government’s Efforts to Curb Dissent, Neutralize the Helsinki Accords, and Undermine Human Rights Criticisms

Despite the decline in the arrest rate between 1977 and 1979, Soviet officials had

not changed their changed their hostile attitudes toward dissenters and transnational human rights activities. For all their boasting about the “monolithic unity” of the Soviet

Union, they still feared the possibility that these forces could transform the international environment in ways hostile to Soviet-style socialism. In a speech he delivered behind closed doors to the Fifth Directorate of KGB in March 1979, Andropov expressed dismay that “’our enemies’” and “’certain comrades from Communist parties in Western countries’” continue to ask us the following question: “’If . . . you have constructed a developed socialist society, do various anti-social phenomena or the negative activities of an insignificant handful of people really represent a threat to it? Are they really capable of shaking the foundations of socialism?’” 600 He answered this question with a

resounding affirmative. No matter how many times Westerners referred to dissident

activities as innocuous, Soviet authorities could not ignore the reality that these forces

wanted “to create an underground” movement committed to “terrorism” and creating

“conditions for the overthrow of socialism.”601

599 CCE 55-6 (1981): 85-7. See also CCE 62 (1982): 150. Along similar lines, Shcharansky wrote about how the efforts of Western private citizens gave him the strength to survive his imprisonment. See Sharansky, Fear No Evil, 169.

600 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and Shield, 330.

310

This mindset accounts for why the KGB promulgated an order on 28 September

1978 that explained why officials needed to undertake more “active measures” designed

to sever private citizens’ attachment to their religious practices. As they had in past,

“imperialist intelligence services and foreign anti-Soviet centers” wanted to “incite

religious organizations towards confrontations with the state and social order and

stimulate the emergence of an anti-Soviet underground among sectarians.” “With

encouragement from abroad,” the document warned, “hostile elements” wanted to form

“illegal groups and organizations within the sectarian milieu” that could set up “printing

presses” and sustain “contacts with foreign clerical centers.” 602

Unhappy with the tenacious resistance of religious groups such as the Christian

Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights, the KGB Collegium issued further

orders in early 1979. These instructions called on officials to increase “the level of

operational work” against “the subversive activity conducted under the cover of religion by imperialist intelligence services, [foreign] clerical centers . . . and hostile elements within the country.” Because of the importance of stopping these “subversive activities,” every KGB organ should “submit proposals for identifying and cutting off subversive channels, as well as “identifying and interrupting communication channels with hostile elements in the sectarian milieu.” Each organ also needed to carry out further measures designed to prevent “individuals with hostile attitudes” from entering the “leading ranks” of the Russian Orthodox Church.603

601 Ibid.

602 Ibid., 494-5.

311

Since the collective influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thinking had not

abated, Soviet officials continued to harass and arrest a wide array of private citizens in

the months following the 1978 July trials. For example, an official publication that

appeared in October 1978 described the arrest and sentencing of two Baptists on the

grounds that they made their children attend religious classes, a practice that Soviet law

forbade. In defense of these trials, an official author explained how “witnesses testified

that the children who attended the religious classes have a narrow mental outlook . . . and

are mentally inactive.” One month before the Vienna summit began, an article appeared

in Izvestia explaining that authorities had not convicted several Seventh Day Adventists

because of their religious beliefs as members of the “Western mass media” alleged.

Instead, these individuals had received punishments because of their efforts to help

“fascist intelligence services” weaken the international prestige of Soviet Union.604

An official newspaper article may have explained how the existence of “four

‘Helen Kellers’” at proved the inherent superiority of “Marxist theory,” but Soviet authorities found the formation of the Invalid Group an unacceptable development. They not only threatened to take away one member’s children if she continued her activities, but also directed “a city maintenance crew to dig a ditch in front of” another members’ “garage,” thereby confining him to his home. When another member arrived at work, he had to attend a meeting where his peers shouted out slogans at him such as “’CIA’” and “Orlov wears ‘foreign underpants.’” Near the end of this

603 Ibid., 495-6.

604 CDSP 30, no. 43 (22 November 1978): 15; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Documents of the Helsinki Monitoring Groups in the USSR and Lithuania, Volume I, 317-18; and CDSP 31, no. 19 (6 June 1979): 10- 11. 312

meeting, government officials demanded that the Invalid Group member would have to

appear before KGB officials in the future unless he renounced his “incorrect beliefs” and joined an official trade union.605

The documents that the Moscow Watch Group sent abroad also help illustrate that

KGB officials continued to harass and conduct searches in the homes of individuals

whom they suspected of engaging in non-official activities in late 1978 and the first half

of 1979. Employing harsh language, one document denounced the U.S. State Department

position that “the human rights situation in the USSR has substantially improved.” KGB

officials had not only broken into the apartments of anyone associated with the

production of the samizdat journal Poiski, but also used violent methods to break a

human rights demonstration in Moscow on 10 December 1978. The Soviet government

had also rejected the petitions of thousands of Jews who wanted to emigrate and

continued to persecute Crimean Tatars. Given these developments, U.S. comments about

Soviet human rights improvements “can only mislead public opinion and undermine the

struggle for human rights.”606

Another Moscow Watch Group Document described in detail how authorities had

ransacked the home of a radio mechanic named Vadim Konovalikhin near the beginning

of 1979. After this “illegal search, authorities then convicted him for “’having been

under the influence of foreign anti-Soviet broadcasts” and his decision to send libelous

605 CDSP 29, no. 7 (16 March 1977): 18; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Documents of the Helsinki Groups in the USSR and Lithuania, Vol. I, 311-13; CCE 59-61 (1980): 31; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act, 102-4; and CCE 51 (1979): 176.

606 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Documents of the Helsinki Groups in the USSR and Lithuania, Vol. I, 315- 22 and 293-6. 313

literature to “international organizations and private individuals abroad.” Besides putting

some dissenters in psychiatric hospitals, Soviet officials also continued to publicize

dissident confessions as part of a larger effort to discredit notions that the Soviet Union

violated internationally recognized human rights. For example, an article published in

June 1979 emphasized how a Georgian Helsinki Monitor admitted that a “pharisaic campaign launched in the West . . . under the slogan of upholding human rights” duped him into slandering the Soviet state.607

Because Soviet authorities had an interest in connecting the rising levels of Jewish

emigration to Soviet Jews’ disloyalty and working relationships with foreign intelligence

services, they continued to excoriate Zionism. On 12 January 1979, an article appeared

in Pravda arguing that “the participation on Zionists in the crimes of Hitler concerning

the annihilation of Jews . . . is known from many sources.” One month later, an official

author referred to Zionism as “one of imperialism’s shock-troop detachments in its struggle against, socialism, democracy, progress and peace,” which accounts for why “18 international Zionist organizations are engaged in directly influencing citizens of Jewish nationality in socialist countries.” On 18 July, the Chairman of the Association of Soviet lawyers wrote a glowing review of the “White Book,” a collection of documents that

607 Ibid., 323-32. Here are some other descriptions of the ways in which the Soviet government used confessions to discredit human rights criticisms. See CCE 57 (1980): 38-40; Ibid. 58 (1980): 28-9; and CHRUR 40 (October-December 1980): 55; and CDSP 32, no. 35 (1 October 1980): 5-6.

314

purported “to expose the true nature of international Zionism” and “the serious nature of

Zionist conspiracies against” the USSR.608

Official Soviet publications also continued to heap scorn on the Carter

administration’s human rights campaign and the U.S. government’s lack of respect for

universally recognized human rights. In particular, Soviet commentators mocked the

Carter administration’s position that human rights issues had no connection to ideology.

“There is not,” one author noted, a conception of human rights outside ideology, just as

there can be no concrete ideology of human rights outside philosophical systems.”609

According to an article in a publication designed to reach English-speaking audiences,

“the U.S. refusal to adhere to the most important international documents on human rights and liberties shows the hypocrisy of Washington’s claim to be the supreme judge

and universal mentor on human rights.” After all, FBI agents and corrupt local officials

terrorized Americans who dared question the U.S. government’s behavior. When serving

as the governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter showed his true colors when he “spoke of

giving the National Guard live ammunition and shoot-to-kill orders in the event” that

student protestors and civil rights activists questioned his authority.610

A Soviet political commentator used the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s favorable report on American compliance with the Final Act to recount the “’appalling’” extent of

608 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Vol. XIII, 18-44; CDSP 31, no. 2 (7 February 1980): 14; and Ibid., 31, no. 29 (15 August 1979): 14. See also “Unusual Attack on Jewish Religion in Soviet Paper,” RL, Box 46, Folder: Soviet Jewry, 4/78-4/79, JCPL.

609 Zivs, Human Rights, 13; and CSCE Digest, 31 January 1979, 8.

610 Igor Geyevsky, “Washington and the Human Rights Issue,” in N.A., Bourgeois Democracy and Human Rights (Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1978), 70-72. See also Mark Mitin, “The Socialist System and Human Rights,” in Ibid; and B. Nikiforov, “The United States: The Bill of Rights and Real Civil Rights,” in Ibid; and V. Granov, “New Realities and Anti-Communists’ Maneuvers,” in Ibid. 315

human rights violations in the United States. No amount of “propaganda maneuvers,” he wrote, can succeed in hiding “the real picture of the harsh suppression of human rights and freedoms in the citadel of imperialism.” Not satisfied with these barbs, another article designed to reach U.S. audiences outlined how the McDonald’s restaurant

“exploits workers with low pay, grinds out poor quality food, supports paramilitary organizations, [and] sets up secret informer networks” to bend “the minds of America’s

youth.” On 8 August 1980, the Kremlin publicized the contents of a letter that Soviet citizens of American origin sent to the Democratic convention. The authors lamented

that Carter had “’dealt the first blow at cooperation between two great peoples’ by

starting to exaggerate the non-existent problem of the protection of human rights in the

Soviet Union.”611

The Kremlin’s continuous arrest of dissenters and attacks on allegedly evil

foreign intrigues coincided with behavior designed to enhance the credibility of the

Soviet Union as a universal human rights model. In a move consistent with Orlov’s

arguments about how dissenters had succeeded in changing the “phraseology ” of Soviet

policymakers, the journal published a “roundtable discussion on human rights”

in November 1978. This meeting offered “appraisals of the Western ‘human rights

campaign’” and the determination of Soviet leaders to follow international human rights

standards. As one participant argued, “the consistent efforts of the Soviet state to

consolidate the Soviet citizen’s legal status do not interest” Western governments and

611 CSCE Digest, 15 January 1979, 7; and Ibid., 14 December 1979, 5-10; N.A., “Open Letter to Democratic Convention from US-born Residents of Gorkiy,” 8 August 1980, BBC. The Soviet government also organized a letter-writing campaign that called on Soviet citizens to write letters to the U.S. protesting the brutal suppression of racial riots in Miami. 316

private citizens. “Nor is truthful information” about Soviet citizens’ happiness with their

social system “of any interest to those who raise a hullabaloo about imaginary violations

of human rights in the USSR.”612

Another official Soviet publication called human rights an important “element” in

international relations so long as the issue did not interfere with efforts designed to strengthen peace. Without making references to the Helsinki Accords or the Universal

Human Rights declaration, he wrote that international law precluded private citizens from

participating in “’inter-state relations.” From his perspective, Western private citizens’

statements about Soviet human rights abuses were misguided because the “’consistent

exercise of human rights is possible only under [Soviet-style] socialism which creates conditions for the all-around development of the individual.” Near the end of 1978, the

Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact issued a similar statement that read:

“’The very birth of the new social system was engendered by the desire to realize the basic human rights—the right to a decent existence without exploitation and to create

conditions for a harmonious development of the individual. The banner of human rights

is the banner of socialism.”613

A few weeks after the Warsaw Pact issued this statement, Petr Fedoseyev

delivered a speech to both foreign and Soviet journalists about all the ways in which the

Soviet government protected basic “civil rights in the USSR.” Reflecting the

612 CHRUR 32 (October/November 1978): 8.

613 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 67-8; and CHRUR 32 (October/November 1978): 8.

317

government’s preoccupation with upholding “socialist legality,” the Kremlin adopted a new citizenship law in December 1978 that allowed authorities to revoke “Soviet citizenship ‘if a person has committed acts defaming the lofty title of citizen of the USSR and harming the prestige or national security of the USSR.’” The new law, which took effect on 1 July 1979, also allowed the government to reject individual renunciation of

citizenship in cases where “a person has unfulfilled obligations to the state” or “is the

subject of criminal proceedings or punishment.” 614

The decision to promulgate the new citizenship law coincided with the decision of the U.N. Human Rights Committee (UNHRCM) to conduct hearings covering the Soviet government’s compliance with CAPR. During a series of meetings, some delegates asked Soviet officials about the ways in which their 1977 Constitution contravened the requirements of international law. For example, the delegate from the pointed out that “there had been cases in the Soviet Union in which severe measures had been taken against persons who had sought to express their views, propagate their ideas

and promote their rights by peaceful means.” The West German delegate criticized the

Soviet practice of not allowing parents to teach their children religion and asked the

Soviet delegates how they could justify “their discriminatory treatment” of Jewish and

German communities. Even the sympathetic delegate from Norway asked about the

government’s approval of “anti-Semitic” propaganda and whether “a person could be

614 CHRUR 32 (October/November 1978): 8; and Ibid., 27.

318 punished for having an expressed opinion that there was no freedom of opinion in his country on the ground that such a declaration was untrue.”615

While the Soviet representative must have found these questions objectionable, he thanked committee members for their efforts to learn about how his nation’s new constitution protected human rights. “The Soviet peoples,” he commented, “were proud of their achievements in human rights and had nothing to hide from world public opinion in that field.” Echoing a common orthodox Marxist-Leninist line of argument, the delegate took issue with a committee member’s assertion that Soviet domestic conduct offended global public opinion. After posing the question “who really represented public opinion,” he responded:

The bourgeois press could not be said to do so . . . [because] it did not even represent national opinion. The USSR was a signatory to all relevant human rights instruments, something that could not be said of the Western countries, including the largest one. Furthermore, the USSR had submitted a comprehensive report to the Human Rights Committee and had cooperated with it in answering questions.616

Soviet officials also attempted to give members of UNHRC a favorable image of their nation through the activities of private citizens. A resolution of the Central

Committee directed official organizations to encourage Western NGOs such as the

“International Union of Students and the International Democratic Federation of Women” to send materials to the UNHRC. In theory, these documents would condemn the policies of “, racism, apartheid, neofacism, [and] the capitalistic exploitation of workers in western countries.” The same order also asked official organizations to

615 Ibid., 33-8

616 CHRUR 32 (October-December 1978): 33-44. 319

encourage Western private citizens to submit materials outlining the “mass violations of human rights in Chile, in South Africa, and in the Arab territories.”617

Because Soviet officials lobbied the General Assembly to pass a resolution

declaring peace every human being’s most fundamental right, they either supported or

publicized the activities of individuals and groups sympathetic to this position. For

example, the Kremlin awarded the American Communist Party member the

International for her efforts to strengthen “peace among nations.” An

official Soviet publication designed for English-speaking audiences explained how

thousands of politicians, U.N. officials, and representatives of NGOs attended the 1980

World Parliament of Peoples for Peace held in . Once they arrived, an

overwhelming majority stressed the importance of preventing “fascist” and “reactionary”

circles from starting another war and perpetuating racism. These attendees also denounced the representatives of Amnesty International for concocting stories about

Soviet human rights violations.618

The importance many Soviet officials placed on defending their regime’s

international prestige should not hide how pragmatic considerations continued to shape

their longstanding campaign of eradicating dissent. Because he hoped to obtain MFN status from the United States and facilitate the ratification of SALT II, Brezhnev declined to act on requests calling for the deportation of Sakharov to a city closed to foreigners.

Along with allowing Jewish emigration to rise to unprecedented levels, he also agreed to

617 Global Competition and the Deterioration of U.S.-Soviet Relations, V-121, NSA.

618 Zivs, The Anatomy of Lies, 62-6. 320

the prisoner exchange described in Chapter VII and either allowed or forced a number of

dissenters to leave the Soviet Union. Although hostile to religion, he agreed to allow

groups of Lutherans from foreign countries to visit their registered Soviet peers and give

them bibles.619 Near the end of 1978, the Soviets permitted Elena Bonner to travel to Italy

for medical treatment even though she had made “a number of anti-Soviet statements” at

“the so-called ‘Sakharov hearings’ in ” the year before. Andropov referred to this decision as “tactically justified because the fact of permission arouses surprise on the part of her and Sakharov’s accomplices” and “leads to “greater discords [sic] and hostility within their milieu.” As all of these examples mention above suggest, Brezhnev remained

committed to balancing a wide array of competing interests, including the conflicting

views of his colleagues, when deciding how to curb dissent.620

The “restraint” the Soviet authorities had shown toward dissenters began to

evaporate in the later half of 1979 when they began a campaign to attack all manifestations of dissent at the same time and curb Jewish emigration. These efforts

differed from those of the previous five years in some important ways. On the most

visible level, Jewish emigration declined from the record high 1979 level of 51,320 to

21,471 the following year, a figure that would further plummet to 914 by 1986. Whereas

the overall dissident and refusenik arrest rate averaged 87 from 1975-1978, the average

619 Joshua Rubenstein describes the consistent delays to exile Sakharov in his work Soviet Dissidents, 256- 7; and Ninth Semi-Annual Report, 7. A year-to-year summary of Soviet Jewish emigration levels from 1954-1997 can be found at https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/fsuemig.html [10 February 2007]. See also Zubok, A Failed Empire, 233-6.

620 “Andropov to the Central Committee; Elena Bonner travels to Italy, 14 December 1978. Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_134.htm [12 December 2007]. 321

for the next two years climbed to 207. Authorities not only started handing out fifteen- year sentences for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, but also began add additional punishments to dissenters who had already served their jail terms. The Kremlin even resumed the jamming of VOA broadcasts, a practice it had not done since 1973. In effect, Moscow had begun a campaign to wipe out non-official public organizations as soon as possible, which accounts for why authorities had succeeded in arresting all the public members of the Psychiatric Watch Committee by November 1980.621

The Kremlin’s decision to intensify their efforts to curb dissent resulted from a number of overlapping developments. Because of their inability to eradicate non-official activities, government officials had to acknowledge that “dissent was no longer limited to urban intellectuals.” They now faced a wide assortment of Helsinki monitors, religious believers, ethnic minorities, workers, and “even invalids” who had forged strong links with Western governments and private citizens on the basis of elucidating Soviet human rights violations. As part of this phenomenon, thousands of Germans, Armenians, and

Pentecostals had followed the examples of their Jewish peers and asked for permission to leave the Soviet Union. Just as important, the downturn in Soviet-American relations

that took place after the Vienna summit, which the invasion of Afghanistan only drove

home with force, gave Soviet policymakers less of a reason to take Western sensibilities

into account when deciding how to stamp out non-official activities.622

621 All of these statistics are taken from Peter Reddaway’s article “Soviet Policies on Dissent,” 52. See also CHRUR 41 (January/March 1981): 5-11; and Ninth Semiannual Report, 5-9.

622 In particular, see Reddaway, “Soviet Policies on Dissent,” 11-21; and Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents, 255-9. 322

The crack down on dissent also grew out of Brezhnev’s growing political

weakness. Beset with deteriorating health, he proved unable to ignore his colleagues’

growing dissatisfaction with the meager benefits of détente had brought the Soviet Union

and the “rapid growth of corruption” in all levels of Soviet society. In August 1979,

Andropov took advantage of these sentiments when he played an important role in

convincing the Central Committee to pass a decree that called for more determined

efforts to “strengthen law and order” across the USSR. Reflecting his growing political

prestige, Brezhnev made Andropov a member of the Order of the October Revolution in

the same month that the Central Committee passed this resolution.623

Given the successes private citizens and the U.S. government had in “globalizing”

the issue of Soviet human rights violations, the Kremlin had little choice but to worry

about what might take place during the in Moscow. On 25 April

1979, Andropov sent a report to the Central Committee explaining how “Zionist and

nationalist organizations based abroad,” including the NTS, have convinced “some

antisocial elements in the USSR . . . to use the” Olympics “for their antisocial activities.”

Unlike their earlier efforts to organize an Olympic boycott,” these forces have now put

their main emphasis on “the idea of using the 1980 to conduct terrorism,

sabotage, and other subversive activities of an extremist character on Soviet territory.”624

Because Andropov held fast to the position that increased contacts with Westerners only

raised the risks of ideological subversion, he explained how

623 Reddaway, “Soviet Policies of Dissent,” 11-16.

624 “Andropov to the Central Committee; Preparations for the Moscow Olympics.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_134.htm [12 December 2007]. 323

Nationalist and clerical organizations intend to carry out a massive importation of anti-Soviet literature to the USSR, and according to their plans, should “inundate Moscow, Kiev, and the Baltics” during the Olympics Games. Simultaneously, clerical centers are endeavoring to unite their efforts to collect slanderous information about the status of believers in the USSR and to encourage religious fanatics in various oblasts . . . to engage in active illegal activities in the period preceding and during the 1980 Olympics.625

He also complained about how “the enemy’s intelligence services and foreign anti-Soviet

centers . . . are attempting to use various kinds of insinuations about the ‘violation’ of

human rights in the USSR . . . for the purpose of discrediting the XXII Olympic Games.”

In an obvious attempt to slander the Soviet state, Sakharov had gone so far as to advocate that foreign sports delegations refuse to participate unless “one or two so-called

‘prisoners of conscience in the USSR’ be released.” 626

Worried about the spread of dissenting opinions in Soviet society and Western

private citizens’ attacks on his government’s domestic behavior, Brezhnev finally agreed

to let the KGB deport Sakharov to Gorky in January 1980. When defending this course

of action, Andropov emphasized that Sakharov “has been taking measures to build a

unified block of anti-Soviet elements inside the country . . . and push them toward

extremist acts.” In a fashion similar to how one Soviet author compared Sakharov to a

Western “broadcasting station,” he recounted how the dissenter had forged “direct

contacts with anti-social elements in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and expressed

solidarity with the Czechoslovakian ‘Chartists’ and members of the Polish ‘Committee of

Social Self-Defense.” Besides urging these groups to “coordinate their anti-Soviet

625 Ibid.

626 Ibid. 324

initiatives,” the dissenter “has been systematically offering aid to foreign states in their

hostile activities against the USSR.”627

Fearing international condemnation for exiling Sakharov, Andropov advised

against holding a public trial. During the several months needed to conduct an

investigation, “the West” would attempt “to stir up clamorous anti-Soviet campaigns

which would be difficult to counter,” as the “legislation governing procedure in criminal

cases prohibits the use of materials from cases under investigation.” Given these

difficulties, he proposed that the government dispense with a trial and “apply

administrative measures . . . that would make it possible to halt his contacts with

foreigners and seriously hamper his hostile activity.” Andropov’s views about how to

handle Sakharov proved persuasive, as the Central Committee enacted all of the

proposals that he submitted in a report dated 26 December 1979.628

Besides targeting Sakharov, Andropov also launched a more determined

campaign against AI in early 1980. Employing familiar language, he recounted how this

organization “received financing and actively uses the secret services of the USA,

England, and other imperialist governments in order to carry out actions of ideological

diversion against the USSR” and other “socialist countries.” “From 1978-1980,” he

pointed out, the group had carried out “a series of hostile actions abroad . . . directed at

discrediting the Soviet government and socialist order, as well as gaining international

627 “Andropov and Rudenko to the Central Committee; The case against Sakharov.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_136.htm [12 December 2007]. See also Zivs, The Anatomy of Lies: Amnesty International (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), 114.

628 Ibid. 325

support for an Olympic boycott.”629 Even more troubling, the Carter administration

“intends to use representatives of ‘Amnesty International’ and materials prepared by

‘Amnesty’ at the Madrid summit with the goal of rendering political ‘pressure’ on the

Soviet Union and other socialist countries in connection with the violation of human

rights.” Following the recommendations outlined in this document, official Soviet

authors published a series of articles that advanced themes similar to those of

Andropov.630

The reports Andropov sent to the Central Committee and Politburo once again

illustrate how orthodox Marxist-Leninist conceptions of the world shaped Soviet

behavior. Despite international condemnation, many felt as if they had little choice but to intensify efforts to eradicate samizdat literature, which resulted in the destruction of non-

official publications such as Searches and the feminist publication Women and Russia in

1980. As it had in the past, the official Soviet press continued to publish articles linking

dissenters to Nazism, the émigré organization NTS, and the machinations of foreign

intelligence services. The Kremlin also refused to host the 1980 on

the grounds “no one in the country was disabled.”631

Brezhnev’s belief that Carter had only undertaken a human rights campaign to weaken the Soviet government’s control over its territory colored his reaction to

629 “Extract from Protocol 206 of the CC CPSU Politburo on Amnesty International.” Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB191/06-25-1980%20t.pdf [12 December 2007].

630 Ibid. For examples of how official publications attacked AI, see CDSP 32, no. 34 (24 September 1980): 1-4; and Zivs, The Anatomy of Lies, 14-20.

631 See Fred Wier, “Disabled Russians Gain Mobility, Visibility,” Christian Science Monitor, 12 December 2001. Available [Online]: http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1227/p6s3-woeu.html [12 December 2007]. 326

American conduct after the invasion of Afghanistan. Behind closed doors, he equated

American behavior with dangerous “brinksmanship” and a crusade against

“Socialism.”632 This hostility helps account for why official Soviet publications went out

of their way to connect Carter and other U.S. politicians to Zionist conspiracies. In early

1980, the Central Committee leaked a report to a Moscow newspaper that explained how

James Earl Carter belongs to a special Masonic order “International Lions” or, in English “Lions International,” created and directly subordinate to the 33d degree of the order to the purely Jewish Masonic order of B’nai B’rith. Consequently, Carter knows very well that in the case of deviation from the discipline and the instructions of the order, he would have to deal with the B’nai B’rith Gestapo in the person of the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, the Vice President of which, Senator Jacob Javits, is obeyed unquestionably by the entire Zionist Masonic Mafia of the .633

U.S. government officials noticed the publication of these sorts of articles. On 9 July

1980, a NSC internal memorandum explained how a Soviet author had connected “the

President and Mrs. Carter with a ‘Zionist conspiracy’ to discredit the Soviet Union.

“This highly objectionable stuff, a staff member wrote, “is part of a ‘vigilance campaign to alert Soviet citizens not to be taken in by CIA agents who may be visiting the USSR disguised as Olympic tourists.”634

This observation was not far off. The “Moscow city party committee” had earlier

warned citizens against succumbing to ideological contamination when thousands of

foreigners pour into the Soviet capital for the Olympic games next year. Around the

same time, a Politburo member also told official writers that they must resist “alien

632 Global Competition and the Deterioration of U.S.-Soviet Relations, IV-356, NSA.

633 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, Vol. XIII, 4-5.

634 Memo, Marshall Brement to David Aaron and ZB, “Soviet Propaganda Attacks on the President and Mrs. Carter,” 9 July 1980, NSABM, Box 82, Folder: 7-11/80, JCPL. 327

ideas” during the Olympics and do a much better job in the future of glorifying “Soviet

life” and “denouncing foreign views.”635 Consistent with the “law and order” campaign

that would later take shape in August 1979, many Soviet officials still felt as if strengthening the Marxist-Leninist ideological convictions was an efficacious way of weakening the proliferation of non-official activities in the Soviet Union. Because they could not officially repudiate the project of forging “new Soviet man” without calling into question their right to rule, members of Central Committee passed a resolution entitled “On the Further Improvement of Ideological and Political Upbringing Work” on

6 May 1979. 636 This resolution “instructed Party committees” and media “executives” to

“heighten the ideological content and effectiveness of” newspaper articles, television

programs, and radio broadcasts.637

The Kremlin’s determination to bolster the ideological fortitude of Soviet private

citizens went hand in hand with a widespread belief that the intensified effort to eradicate

dissent had more than justified itself. In a series of reports he sent to the Central

Committee in 1980, Andropov described how the KGB officers had “learned to quash

undesirable and hostile phenomena in their initial stages.” “Of the 15,580 people who

were suppressed last year, only 107 showed themselves to be hostile a second time.”638

He also reported that many Western and Chinese journalists had either accepted

635 CSCE Digest, 15 May 1979, 3.

636 CSCE Digest, 15 May 1979, 3.

637 CDSP 31, no. 18 (30 May 1979): 8-10. See also U.S. Helsinki Commission, Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Recommendations Five Years After Helsinki, 147-9.

638 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and Shield, 331. 328

Sakharov’s exile with equanimity or even approved of the measure as a means of

preserving détente. Furthermore, Andropov congratulated KGB operatives for

preventing “anti-social elements” (dissenters) from holding meetings with Sakharov and

“significantly decreased the agitation around his name conducted earlier by foreign

propaganda centers.”639 In fact, the banishment of Sakharov “made it possible to

forestall” the unification” of all “anti-Socialist elements within the USSR. Unhappy with

this bitter reality, Western “secret services” and “propagandistic agencies” had begun an

active search to “find a new figure that could somehow compensate them for the loss.”640

The satisfaction many Soviet officials expressed with the banishment of Sakharov

also comes across in the way Gromyko behaved during a meeting he held with U.S.

Ambassador Thomas Watson on 30 January 1980. When Watson raised the issue of how

the Soviets had treated him, Gromyko responded that “he had never heard of an

American named Sakharov.” In the same breadth, he rejected any suggestion that

Sakharov “was an international figure,” although he admitted that dissenters had made

illegal “intelligence contacts” with U.S. embassy officials. Near the end of the meeting,

Gromyko changed his tune and argued that his government would not discuss the affairs

of Soviet private citizens “with anyone” or allow “anyone else” to “interfere in its

internal affairs.” “The U.S.,” he told Watson, “should look after its own citizens, not

639 “Andropov to the Central Committee; Responses in the West to Sakharov’s Banishment.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_139.htm [10 October 2006].

640 “Andropov to the Central Committee; Attempts to visit Sakharov in Gorky.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_142.htm [29 August 2007]; and “Andropov to the Central Committee; To isolate and harass Sakharov and Bonner.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_145.htm [29 August 2007]; and “Andropov to the Central Committee; Sakharov’s first days in Gorky.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_140.htm [29 August 2007]. 329

those of the Soviet Union.” In retrospect, we have every reason to believe that Gromyko

viewed this exchange as a strong defense of the deportation because Watson refrained

from making a “spirited defense of” the U.S. position on Sakharov.” As an NSC staffer

noted, Soviet officials would interpret this silence to mean that the United States “could

not answer their line of argument.”641

While Andropov and in Gromyko both viewed the internal exile of Sakharov as a

necessary and successful course of action, the former recognized that the measure had not solved all the problems surrounding this dissenter’s behavior. As his reports to the

Central Committee reveal, he understood that Western private citizens and governments would continue their attempts to use Sakharov’s treatment as a way of slandering Soviet- style socialism.” For example, he described Elena Bonner’s attempts to keep her husband’s treatment a visible issue in international relations. In her meetings with

foreign journalists, she “spread provocative rumors about her husband’s situation” and

urged them “to organize protests against the ‘arbitrariness committed toward

Sakharov.”642 Andropov wrote scathing accounts of Bonner’s behavior because he

believed that she played a pivotal role in shaping Sakharov’s behavior. In a telling

passage, he explained Sakharov’s susceptibility to Bonner’s machinations as a function of

his disturbed “mental state.” In the opinion of “leading psychiatrists,” he wrote,

“Sakharov’s behavior does not often correspond to accepted norms” and “patently

641 Memo, Marshall Brement to ZB, “The Gromkyo-Watson Exchange of Afghanistan,” 6 February 1980, NSABM, Box 19, Folder: 7/78-3/80, JCPL; and Telegram, “Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, Updated Assessment and Policy Recommendations, Ibid.

642 “Andropov to the Central Committee; Attempts to visit Sakharov in Gorky.” 330

violates common sense.” In the end, his “delusions of grandeur, which increase

proportionally with the efforts of Western intelligence services pass him off as a ‘world

fighter for human rights,’” predispose him to engage in anti-Soviet activities at the behest

of others.643

This description of Sakharov’s mental instability helps illustrate the almost

impossible task the Carter administration faced in convincing the Brezhnev regime to

carry out reforms designed to make the USSR a more humane society. The collective

strength of the orthodox Marxist-Leninist worldview and commitment to defending the

internal cohesion of their multinational, multiethnic empire ruled out any sort of lasting

reconciliation with dissenters in either the near or long term. They may have cared about

projecting the image of a law-abiding socialist-state and obtaining economic benefits

from the United States, but they could not accept dissenters as respectable, legitimate

critics without weakening their justifications for holding a monopoly on political power.

Since they refused to create the political institutions necessary to enter into an honest

dialogue with private citizens who disagreed with the Communist Party’s official policy,

they had little choice to opt for further repression when faced with the success dissenters

had in “globalizing” the issue of Soviet human rights violations.

Given these immense constraints, arguments that the Carter administration could

have done a lot more to promote human rights in the Soviet Union suffer from several

flaws. While many dissenters might argue otherwise, the cancellation of SALT

negotiations or suspension Soviet-American trade would not have removed the

643 Andropov to the Central Committee; The mental stability of Sakharov.” Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_145.htm [29 August 2007] . 331

fundamental reasons why many Soviet policymakers viewed attacks on non-official

activities as necessary and proper. Carter’s commitment to forging a “reciprocal

accommodation” may have been unrealistic and invited accusations of weakness, but

evidence suggests that Soviet officials saw little overall moderation in his campaign to

promote human rights in their nation. For example, on 12 April 1979, Dobrynin held a

private meeting with Averell Harriman, Carter’s unofficial representative in Moscow,

concerning Jewish emigration from the USSR. The ambassador complained about how

the U.S. government kept raising the issue of Jews who had not received permission to leave even though the Soviets had made concession after concession on the issue.

Dobrynin made a similar argument thirteen years later. When summarizing how the

Carter administration’s human rights campaign affected U.S.-Soviet relations, he

criticized the pernicious effects of the President’s penchant for publicity, noting that he

“continued to attack us in public, in public, in public! Always in public!”644

Carter may have failed to protect dissidents from intensified repression, but we should not lose sight of his administration’s larger accomplishments. The ways in which officials worked with and encouraged private citizens to “globalize” the issue of human rights succeeded in putting the Soviet government on the ideological defensive. Because

they clung to the notion that they had found the correct path to “modernize” the world,”

they feared that NGOs such as AI might succeed in “globalizing” the idea that Soviet-

644 Global Competition and the Deterioration of U.S.-Soviet Relations, IV-386, NSA; and “The Collapse of Détente: From March 1977 Moscow Meetings to the December 1979 Invasion of Afghanistan—The Launch of The Carter-Brezhnev Project,” 20, NSA. 332 style socialism lacked legitimacy.645 In other words, orthodox officials feared that private citizens would succeed in showing the falsity of Marxist-Leninist arguments that the increased participation of the masses in global affairs heralded a move toward Soviet- style socialism across the globe. They also detested how the reports of private citizens weakened the image of the USSR as a progressive state in the eyes of international forums such as the ILO and many Western European Communists. From this angle, the same measures Soviet policymakers took to insure their regime’s internal security and defend the veracity of Marxist-Leninist positions only succeeded in weakening the international legitimacy they craved.

After Carter left office, the Kremlin’s conduct over the next four years confirmed

Sakharov’s prediction that bureaucratic, totalitarian states like the Soviet Union changed slowly, if at all. Well aware of Soviet system’s stagnation and resistance to internal reform, the Yugoslavian émigré Mihajlo Mihajlov criticized Carter’s human rights campaign for its narrow focus on the plight of individuals. He also questioned the U.S. preoccupation with “just being a [democratic] example” to the rest of the world. Of course, Carter deserved credit for giving Eastern European dissenters a significant amount of moral support, he admitted, but “the aim of a human rights policy should not be simply to help dissidents abroad.” Because of the close link between a nation’s democratic institutions and its respect for human rights, Mihajlov argued the United

States needed to create and sustain “a truly international democratic movement” and

645 Zubok, A Failed Empire, 343. 333

“fight for the principles of democracy all over the world.”646 These words would prove prophetic because many leading Reagan administration officials reached similar conclusions and decided to carry out a “Crusade for Democracy.”

646 “Mihajlov Interview,” N.D., WHCF, HU-3, Folder: 9/1/78-12/31/78, JCPL. 334

CHAPTER 8: THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION’S “CONSERVATIVE” and

“PRIVATE” HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, JANUARY 1981-NOVEMBER 1985

Before winning the 1980 Presidential election, Ronald Reagan questioned the

accomplishments of the Carter administration’s human rights campaign on numerous

occasions. Mocking the President’s congratulatory report entitled “Domestic and Foreign

Policy Accomplishments,” he rejected the claim that the United States now stands with

the “‘victims of repression’” across the globe. “Is that why,” he asked, “our

representatives at the Belgrade Conference remained silent in the face of the final report

that contained not one word about Russian violations of the human provisions of the

Helsinki agreement?” “If the Carter administration indeed stood with the “‘victims of

repression,” he continued, suffering individuals “living in , Panama, Vietnam,

Cambodia, and the mainland of China have yet to hear about it.”647

At the time, these words suggested that Reagan would take a much bolder

approach to the task of promoting human rights in the USSR than its predecessor. In

retrospect, they failed to capture the complexities of how his administration worked to

challenge Soviet internal behavior. As this chapter will argue, Congressional and public

opinion played a fundamental role in checking the desire of a wide array of executive

branch officials, including Reagan himself, to distance themselves from the Carter

administration’s policies and minimize the importance of human rights.648 The strength

647 James C. Roberts, ed., A City Upon a Hill: Speeches by Ronald Reagan Before the Conservative Political Action Conference (Washington, D.C.: The American Studies Center, 1989), 41.

648 The following works describe Reagan’s failures to downplay the importance of human rights issues after he entered office. See Charles Maeching, “Human Rights Dehumanized,” Foreign Policy 52 (Autumn 1983): 118-35; Pfluger, “Human Rights Unbound”; Terry Diebel, “Reagan’s Mixed Legacy,” Foreign 335

of these forces also persuaded Reagan and other officials to engage in far more “public”

human rights diplomacy than they would have preferred and exposed the contradictions of the administration’s initial approach to the task of promoting human rights. More than anything else, this development resulted in the creation of a “Reaganite” human rights policy that privileged the goal of building democratic institutions across the globe.

While important differences existed, Carter and Reagan’s approach to transforming Soviet internal behavior ended up having some important commonalities.

Much like their predecessor, Reagan officials had to accept the reality that they only possessed a limited ability to shape Soviet domestic developments. Given the Kremlin’s determination to curb non-official activities, the provisions of the Final Act once again became the U.S. government’s best available weapon for accomplishing the long-term goal of promoting democracy in the USSR. Reagan’s decision to embrace a flexible negotiating agenda designed to improve U.S.-Soviet relations also invited political complications. When he agreed to renew agricultural exchanges or send a trade mission to Moscow in 1985, he opened himself up to the same kind of Congressional and public criticisms about the executive branch’s commitment to challenging Soviet internal behavior that Carter had faced.

Following in the footsteps of their predecessors, Reagan administration officials accelerated their efforts to strengthen U.S. international broadcasting capabilities and draw attention to Soviet nationality problems. They also encouraged and supported non- governmental human rights activities on the grounds that governmental efforts alone

Policy 75 (Summer 1989): 39-40; Arthur Goldberg, “The Perilous State of Human Rights Then and Now,” The Center Magazine (January/February 1984): 1-35; Stephen Wrage, “Thinking About Human Rights,” SAIS Review 3, no. 1 (1983): 219-26; Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, 134-7, 142-7. 336

could only go so far in building democratic institutions across the globe. From this angle,

the decision to create the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 had important

commonalities with the Carter administration’s attempt to create a Human Rights

Foundation in 1978.

The Trials and Tribulations in Forging a “Reaganite” Human Rights Policy

As indicated earlier in this work, Reagan criticized the Final Act on a number of

occasions before becoming President. During the 1980 campaign, he questioned Carter’s

decision to send a delegation to Madrid. “Frankly, he said, “I have an uneasy feeling that

going to Madrid is negating what we thought we could accomplish by boycotting the

Olympics. If the athletes can’t go, why should the diplomats?” Reagan made these

statements even though he understood that the agreement put Soviet officials on the ideological defensive. “The Russian government doesn’t feel obligated to observe” the

Final Act,” but “Soviet officialdom is taking it’s [sic] lumps and is very uncomfortable in the face of tourists who argue back with full knowledge of their legal rights and the items of the Helsinki pact.”649

Reagan may have grasped the utility of the Final Act, but the skepticism he

continued to express about the agreement grew out of his harsh indictments of the Carter

administration’s human rights campaign. In a newspaper article that appeared near the

end of 1978, he criticized the pernicious effects of the State Department’s preoccupation

649 Anthony Lewis, “Abroad at Home, New York Times, 3 November 1980, A23; See also Kiron K. Skinner et al., ed., Reagan’s Path to Victory: The Shaping of Ronald Reagan’s Vision, Selected Writings (New York: Free Press, 2004), 334. 337

with preserving détente while punishing allies with less than perfect human rights

records. As he put it:

No sooner had President Carter made his early and strong statement on human rights than born-again McGovernites began infesting various foreign-policy making levels, with an eye toward forcing any nation they could to tow the mark—and they defined the mark. Nearly any charge made against the nations such as Argentina, , and Chile was assumed to be true. Worse, the Carter Human Rights office has managed to hold up important sales to these and other nations.650

Reagan believed that the Carter administration’s misguided behavior resulted

from a debilitating mixture of “well-meaning intentions” and preoccupation with the U.S.

defeat in Vietnam. Just as children believed in the “tooth fairy,” he mused, Carter

appeared to think that mere wishing could make other nations across the globe embrace

“democratic institutions.” Since Vietnam had given the President and his advisers “a

false sense of guilt,” they held the dangerous position that “the United States must prove

and reprove and prove again its goodness to the world.” This misguided view allowed

officials to justify their efforts to improve relations with communist nations guilty of

massive human rights violations; it also explained their lack of faith in American ideals

and institutions. Now more than ever, Reagan intoned, “we need a foreign policy

stripped of platitudes, cant and mere moral earnestness—an earnestness fatally

compromised by the massive crimes of some of the communist world’s newer

members.”651

650 Robert F. Drinan, Cry of the Oppressed: The History and Hope of the Human Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harper and Row, 1987), 88. See also Kiron K. Skinner, ed., Reagan In His Own Hand (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 143

651 Skinner, ed., Reagan In His Own Hand, 41-44. 338

Reagan’s arguments exaggerated the extent to which Carter had lost faith in U.S.

ideals and ignored the issue of Soviet human rights violations. Yet for all his hyperbole,

Reagan clung to the position that the U.S. government had done a poor job of defining

America’s role in the world. He also believed that U.S. politicians had done a poor job of

emphasizing the fundamental differences between communism and democratic self-

government. On 7 August 1978, he castigated “Nicolai” Lenin’s quest for global

communist domination to buttress his argument that “the ideological struggle dividing the

world is between communism and our own belief in freedom.” During the final months

of the 1980 presidential campaign, he insisted that the “greatest fallacy of the Lenin-

Marxist philosophy is that it is the wave of the future.” In reality, Reagan argued,

“[e]verything about it is as primitive as tribal rule; compulsion in the place of free

initiative; coercion in the place of law; piracy in the place of trade, and empire-building

for the benefit of a chosen few at the expense of the many. We have seen nothing like it

since .”652

Unlike the founders of Marxist-Leninist political thought who distrusted the

masses, Reagan argued that the American founding fathers refused to design a

government that sanctioned the rule of the “powerful” or the “few.” Because “our

example inspired others,” albeit “imperfectly at times,” he described how “our foreign policy . . . should be to show by example the . . . greatness of our system and the strength

652 Ibid., 13, 486. For other accounts of Reagan’s long-term hatred of communism, see Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (New York: HarperCollins, 2006); Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (New York: Doubleday, 2002); and Chester J. Pach, Jr., “Sticking to His Guns: Reagan and National Security,” in Brownlee and Graham, ed., The Reagan Presidency, 85-113.

339

of American ideals.” When advancing this argument, he extolled Andrei Sakharov’s

view of United States as “the historically determined leader of the [global] movement

toward a pluralist and free society, vital to mankind.” As a result of this special burden,

Reagan declared that his administration would “do a better job of exporting

Americanism” and not compromising “our principles and ideals.” From his perspective,

the U.S. officials had little choice but to act in such a manner because of their nation’s

“pre-ordained destiny to show all mankind that they, too, can be free without having to

leave their native shore.”653

Along with criticizing the Carter administration’s human rights campaign and moral confusion, Reagan also went out of his way to publicize the ways in which dissenters struggled against the repression of arbitrary Soviet bureaucrats before he entered office. For example, he expressed his deep sympathy for the Pentecostals who had taken refuge in the US. Embassy after the Soviet government refused to grant their emigration requests. He also praised how private citizens such as Vladimir Bukovsky

“are not skulking in the alleys and basements trying to create an underground movement.” Because dissenters cherished freedom, “they are speaking out openly, citing their rights under the Soviet constitution (yes there is such a thing).” “Let our state department take heed,” he told his radio listeners, “a little less détente with the politburo and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions.”654

As many scholars have argued, Reagan had no trouble denouncing Marxist-

Leninist regimes and stressing the importance of defending freedom once he entered

653 Ibid., 485-6.

654 Skinner, ed., Reagan In His Own Hand, 145, 149-50, and 178-9. 340

office. Even though he sympathized with the plight of dissenters, his administration failed to articulate a coherent and popular human rights policy. The roots of this failure lay in a general agreement with Jeane Kirkpatrick’s arguments about the Carter administration’s naïve approach to promoting internal reform in other countries. She argued Carter’s human rights policies were misguided because they failed to distinguish between authoritarian regimes that could liberalize over the long term and their totalitarian counterparts that remained resistant to democratic evolution. Because authoritarian allies such as Argentina and Chile could democratize over the long term, the United States had an interest in helping them prevent Marxist-Leninist groups from taking power through armed insurrection.655

To avoid debacles similar to ones the United States had just experienced in

and , the State Department’s transition team recommended that policy-making procedures (i.e., Human Rights Bureau) should no longer “delay decisions on issues where human rights concerns conflict with the vital interests of the United States.”

Unhappy with Carter’s dangerous naiveté,” Secretary of State Alexander Haig used his first press conference to announce that “’international terrorism will now take the place of human rights’” as the chief U.S. foreign policy concern because such conduct amounted to the “ultimate abuse of human rights.’” National Security Advisor Richard

Allen made a similar argument, noting that this administration “’would not place as much ideological emphasis on human rights.’” Reagan seemed to endorse these positions when

655 Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Foreign Policy in the Reagan Presidency: Nine Intimate Portraits (Lanham, MD: University Press of America), 105-6; and Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary (November 1979): 34-45. See also Smith, America’s Mission, 286-9. 341

he refrained from nominating a new Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and

Humanitarian Affairs after he won the election. During an interview with the journalist

Walter Cronkite in early March, he spoke of not letting authoritarian allies fall victim to a

“totalitarian takeover that denies what human rights the people already had.” He also suggested that American leaders should not shun dialogue with countries like South

Africa as long as they felt comfortable negotiating with the Soviet Union.656

Under intense Congressional pressure to nominate someone, Reagan picked

Ernest Lefever to head the Human Rights Bureau near the end of February. While serving as Director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center of Georgetown University,

Lefever authored several articles that criticized the Carter administration’s approach to human rights in ways similar to Reagan. Lefever believed that Carter suffered from an

“excessive confidence” that “reason and [American] goodwill” would convince other governments to treat their private citizens better. Beyond serving as a good example and maintaining our security commitments,” he observed, “there is little the U.S. Government can or should do to advance the cause of human rights . . . other than using quiet diplomatic channels at appropriate times and places.” Based on the assumptions, he

656 American Association of the International Commission of Jurists (AAICJ), Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: The First Decade (Washington, D.C.: American Association of the International Commission of Jurists, 1984): 31-4; Drinan, Cry of the Oppressed, 94-6; and “Excerpts From an Interview With Walter Cronkite of CBS News,” 3 March 1983. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43497&st=Cronkite&st1= [10 February 2007]. See also Juan Onis, “U.S. Report Says Status of Rights Improved in 1980, The New York Times, 10 February 1981, A10. For Haig’s views on human rights, see Alexander M. Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 90-1. 342

called for the abolishment of all Congressionally mandated human rights laws and the

same Human Rights Bureau that Reagan had chosen him to lead.657

Since NSC staffer Carnes Lord appreciated the ways in which human rights

concerns still resonated with the American public and Congress, he warned that

downplaying the importance of the issue would only prove self-defeating and invite

political complications. In a memorandum whose contents Allen endorsed, Lord

recommended that the administration needed to correct the impression that “human rights

are being jettisoned or severely downgraded in favor of countering terrorism or

supporting authoritarian allies.” Because “human rights” would have to remain “an

integral part of the Administration’s foreign policy,” he recommended that the review of

U.S. foreign policy “now underway” should focus on correcting the failures of the Carter

administration’s approach rather than abandoning the concept.658

After making these observations, Lord proceeded to write a comprehensive

internal human rights study that he sent to Allen on 27 February. This work suggested

that any reformulated human rights policy would have to close the yawning gap between human rights issues and “other [important] foreign policy objectives” such as defense and

security. Given the importance of this task, he agreed with the proposition that the

executive branch needed to codify a human rights policy that differentiated between

authoritarian allies whose conduct could improve over the long term and their totalitarian

657 Ernest W. Lefever, “The Trivialization of Human Rights.” Available online at Lexus-Nexus. See also AAICJ, Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy, 31-4; and Drinan, Cry of the Oppressed, 94-7.

658 Memo, Carnes Lord to Richard V. Allen, “Interim Policy on Human Rights,” 17 February 1981, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 000001-022999, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (RRPL), Simi Valley, CA. See also Memo, Carnes Lord to Richard Allen, “Human Rights Policy Study,” 27 February 1981, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 023000-027999, RRPL. 343

counterparts that could not. To make such a policy politically viable, however, officials

would have to convince the public that “supporting regimes whose political systems are

less than impeccably democratic is not necessarily incompatible with support for human

rights.” Whether Americans like it or not, “those systems may provide the best

protection for human rights that is possible under existing circumstances.”659

These arguments proved influential. After this study appeared, Allen and Haig

delivered public speeches over the next several months designed to reaffirm the

fundamental role human rights played in U.S. foreign policy. Just as Carnes suggested,

they focused on the morality of encouraging “the evolution of authoritarian regimes

toward a more humane society” while carrying out defense and security policies designed to prevent “the establishment of totalitarian regimes” that violated human rights on a

permanent basis. At the same time, they explained how a wide array of cultural and

historical factors weakened the chances that the United States could convince human

rights violators to cease their activities in the near term. Allen also reminded audiences

about the folly of trying to impose our “democratic institutions” on other nations not

ready for them. He also called into question the notion that democratic institutions

ensured a government’s respect for basic human rights.660

This “conservative” approach to promoting human rights only sowed confusion.

Even though totalitarian regimes remained permanent human rights violators, Reagan

659 Lord Carnes, “Human Rights in a Non-Liberal World,” Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 023000-027999, RRPL.

660 For a copy of Allen’s speech, see Memo, James M. Rentschler to Allen, 22 May 1981, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 028000-037999, RRPL. See also Vita Bite, “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Issue Brief Number IB81125 (Washington DC: The Congressional Research Service), 3-5.

344

chose to follow a plank in the 1980 Republican Platform that stressed the importance of

insisting on full Soviet compliance with the Final Act. Without extensive consultations

or prominent public speeches on the subject, he allowed Max Kampelman to remain head of the U.S. delegation at the Madrid follow-up conference. From 27 January 1981 until

the meeting concluded in November 1983, Kampelman and his subordinates made

specific references to hundreds of dissenters and cited ILO studies to prove the existence

of forced labor in the Soviet Union. They also delivered countless statements that spelled

out Soviet authorities’ specific human rights violations and inability to tolerate any form

of dissenting opinion, including the activities of a small number of peace activists.

Furthermore, they highlighted the Kremlin’s official sanction of anti-Semitic writings and acts of imperialism in the Baltic Republics and Poland. Even Haig found time to show up in Madrid and deliver speeches that stressed the link between following the principles of the Final Act and promoting peace in Europe.661

Fed up with human rights “double standards,” American representatives at the

United Nations also delivered scathing attacks on the Kremlin’s domestic and

international conduct. Following the lead of Kirkpatrick, U.S. members of the UNHRC

attacked the prevalence of anti-Semitic thought in the Soviet Union and complained

about how the Kremlin put dissenters in “jails, forced labor camps, and psychiatric

wards” just “because they called attention to Soviet denial of basic freedoms.” “In order

for this commission to be worthy of the name,” a representative commented, member

661 See Thompson, ed., Foreign Policy in the Reagan Presidency, 104-7; Kampelman, Entering New Worlds, 254-7; and Kampelman, ed. Three Years at the East-West Divide; and Madrid CSCE Negotiations, 1980-81 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of State, 1982); and Mastny, ed., Helsinki, Human Rights, and European Security, 227-30. 345

states had a moral obligation to criticize human rights abuses in the Soviet Union and other communist nations just as often as they condemned those in South Africa and

Chile. These sorts of speeches failed to keep the issue of Sakharov’s treatment on the

official agenda of the UNHRC. Nevertheless, they played an important role in bringing

about the passage of a U.N. declaration that banned all forms of discrimination based on

religion or belief. In a direct shot at the Soviet Union, this measure stressed the illegality

of preventing parents from teaching their children religion.662

The willingness of American officials to criticize Soviet human rights violations

at the United Nations and in Madrid seemed to confirm statements suggesting that the

executive branch would now focus on the misconduct of totalitarian regimes. Yet, the

administration seemed just as preoccupied with repudiating the Carter administration’s

approach to human rights. When appearing before Congress, executive branch officials,

including the nominee Lefever, refused to repudiate the suggestion that Reagan wanted to

abolish the Human Rights Bureau. During a speech near the end of April designed to

commemorate holocaust victims, Reagan asserted that the U.S. government had “no

business” engaging in negotiations with other nations that avoided the issue of “human

persecution.” Since these remarks were extemporaneous, a White House spokesperson

told reporters the next day that “Mr. Reagan had not meant to alter his policy of playing

down the human rights issue in foreign relations.” “The President,” he reported, “was not

662 Michael Novak and Richard Schifter, “Speeches by the U.S. Delegation before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights,” World Affairs 143, no. 3 (1980/1981): 226-30, 236-9, 252; and Walter Laquer and Barry Rubin, ed., The Human Rights Reader, 278-81. See also Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Human Rights and the Foundations of Democracy,” World Affairs 144, no. 3 (1981/1982): 196-203; and Ibid., “East/West Relations: Toward a New Definition of Dialogue,” World Affairs 144, no. 1 (1981): 14-30. 346

saying that this subject must be placed on the agenda before we proceed with discussion

with another government.” 663

Reagan may have sympathized with the plight of dissenters, but he chose not to

make frequent public statements about Soviet human rights abuses during his first year as

President. In sharp contrast to Carter, he and Vice President George Bush sided with

individuals like Lefever who argued that “quiet diplomacy” represented the most

“effective” way of handling the issue of Soviet human rights abuses. Behind closed

doors, Reagan told a critic that “I feel as deeply as you do about the abuse of the people

in the countries you mentioned.” Since the U.S “long term goal is peace and freedom for

the enslaved people behind the ‘iron curtain,’” the executive branch would focus on using

“quiet diplomacy to bring about changes” in Soviet internal behavior, the president

explained..664

These words may seem odd given Reagan’s harsh denunciations of the Soviet

government, but he preferred “quiet” human rights diplomacy for a wide variety of

reasons. As his private correspondence indicates, he was far more pragmatic and willing

to engage in dialogue with Soviet leaders than his harsh denunciations of Marxist-

663 See Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination of Ernest W. Lefever, 97th Cong., 1st session, 1981 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), 85-8, 117-18, 123, 134, 146; and House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, Implementation of Congressionally Mandated Human Rights Provisions, Vol. I, 97th Cong. 1st session, 1981 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982),16-20; and Howell Raines, “Reagan Stirs Flurry with Rights Remark,” The New York Times, 1 May 1981, A1.

664 Kiron K. Skinner et al., ed., Reagan: A Life in Letters (New York: The Free Press, 2003), 377-8. See also CSCE Digest, 29 May 1981, 3-4. Behind closed doors William Clark told South African officials: “’We’re not the Carter administration, whose policy was to berate you in public. We will abhor apartheid, but we will not emphasize it in public, and we will not embarrass you in public ad did the prior administration.’” See Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, The Judge: William P. Clark: Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 133.

347

Leninism suggested at the time. He also held a firm belief that governmental leaders

could best solve disputes through personal diplomacy without the interference of

meddlesome and short-sighted bureaucracies.665 Consistent with this viewpoint, he

believed that carping about human rights abuses in public would only embarrass Soviet

leaders and make them even less willing to release political prisoners or allow individuals

to emigrate.666 Reagan also appears to have accepted Richard Nixon’s dubious argument

that the Jackson-Vanik amendment torpedoed the rising levels of Jewish emigration that

“quiet” diplomatic efforts had produced in the mid-1970s.667

The Reagan administration’s emphasis on “quiet” human rights diplomacy and determination to work with authoritarian regimes produced a multifaceted Congressional

and public backlash. The Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee

rejected the Lefever nomination. In defense of his vote, Claiborne Pell (D-RI) indicated

that Congressional approval for this individual “would be taken in many areas of the

world as a signal that the United States has lost interest in human rights.” On 11 March

1981, the United States Catholic Mission Council sent Reagan a letter explaining that

“violations of the rights of the poor were being stepped up by people who no longer

feared the U.S. human rights stance.” Since members possessed “information from the

665 In particular, see Reagan, An American Life, 637-8. See also Cannon, President Reagan, 298-301, 307; Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to the New Era, 21-2 and 226; and Smith, America’s Mission, 272.

666 This perspective comes across in his personal correspondence. See Letter, Reagan to Brezhnev, 24 August 1981, Executive Secretariat (ES): General Secretary Brezhnev (GSB), Box 38, Folder: 8190204- 8190205, RRPL. For all the controversy this letter caused, see Cannon, The Role of a Lifetime, 299-300; and Reagan, An American Life, 269-73, 567, 576.

667 This viewpoint comes across crystal clear when he answered a question about why the United States supported human rights violators such as Chile and Argentina. See PPPOP, 1982, Vol. I, 606. See also Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 152; and Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to the New Era, 226. 348

grass roots that you are lacking in this area, knowing our concern and sharing our

information” should make you see “the advisability of a stronger stance against

repression throughout the world.”668

Others argued that the Reagan administration only cared about denouncing human

rights violations in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. During a

Congressional session, Dante Fascell argued that “the words and actions of the

administration, to date, have caused widespread uncertainty and concern about whether

the United States is going to continue its leadership in human rights advocacy.” The

“Soviet Union is the biggest human rights violator in current history,” he remarked, but

should “civilized nations . . . only criticize the Soviet Union for human rights violations?”

“That’s just an-anti Soviet policy” that will not attract “much international support.”669

The executive branch even received criticism for not paying enough attention to

Soviet human rights violations. In their testimony before a House subcommittee, Patricia

Derian and other former Carter officials denounced the new administration for allowing

the issue of Sakharov’s exile to disappear from the agenda of UNHRC. They also

expressed their disbelief in the unwillingness of officials to make public criticisms of

Warsaw Pact nations’ human rights violations. In a short article written for

Commentary, Bayard Rustin supported this position, arguing that “President Reagan has

been profoundly disappointing in his failure to highlight the issue of human rights” and

668 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination of Ernest W. Lefever, 506; and Letter, United States Catholic Mission Council to Reagan, 11 March 1981, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 000001- 022999, RRPL.

669 House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, Implementation of Congressionally Mandated Human Rights Provisions, 38-9. 349

express his concern for the treatment of political prisoners, East or West.” If he did not

change his policies, “President Reagan may prove that a foreign policy without a human-

rights dimension will be reduced to a matter of military strength.”670

On 1 October 1981, forty-five Representatives sent Reagan a letter expressing their dismay with the executive branch’s “reluctance in making a policy statement

concerning human rights.” The letter also criticized administration officials for not

giving Soviet political prisoners as much public support as they deserve: “We believe

that the Reagan administration could become a symbol of hope for the prisoners of

conscience.” “By remaining silent, by not declaring a policy on human rights violations,

by not condemning the Soviets for breaking the Helsinki treaties and the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights,” the United States had made fundamental mistakes, the

letter continued. “We are letting stand idle one of the most important tools we have in

fighting for the rights that all citizens of the world are entitled to under the international

law.”671

Around the same time, Richard Allen received a copy of a speech given by

Myroslaw Smorodsky, a Ukrainian activist who had served as a U.S. public delegate in

Madrid until Reagan became President. Using blunt language, he explained that “the

public perception of the Administration’s position on human rights is not favorable.”

“The majority of activist organizations in the human rights area are of the erroneous view

670 Ibid., 72, 77, 90-2, 129; and “Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: A Symposium,” Commentary 72, no. 5 (1981): 62.

671 Letter, House of Representatives to Reagan, 1 October 1981, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 038000- 046999, RRPL. 350

[of] the Administration’s policy as totally ignoring human rights issues within the

international arena.” One year ago, Reagan received a tumultuous greeting from “10,000

people” at a Ukrainian festival in New Jersey. “This . . . supportive attitude,” he warned,

has been waning because of” the executive branch’s lack of interest in “nationalities and

humanitarian issues.” In the meantime, “[t]he Democratic Party has been exploiting”

these issues “in its bid for votes in future elections.” This attitude helps explain why the

Helsinki Watch Group sent Reagan a letter expressing concern that he would not raise the

issue of human rights if a summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev took place.672

The criticisms cited above help illustrate the strength of the broad international impulse against bureaucratic discretion and authority described in previous chapters. As they had during the Carter and Ford administrations, private citizens and members of

Congress challenged the executive branch to take a strong stand on the issue of human rights. A mid-level State Department official named Elliott Abrams grasped these realities. A staunch neoconservative who had earlier served as Senator Patrick

Moynihan’s aide, he received an excellent chance to shape policy when Reagan picked him to lead the Human Rights Bureau after the Lefever nomination tanked. In October

1981, he helped write an “eyes only” State Department memorandum that evaluated the shortcomings of the administration’s human rights policies. Employing language that

Reagan appears to have endorsed, the document maintained that the “Congressional belief that we have no consistent human rights policy threatens to disrupt important foreign policy objectives.” Not appearing interested in this issue has “been one of the

672 Memorandum from Myroslaw Smorodsky, N.D., Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 050000-052698, RRPL. 351

main avenues for domestic attack on the Administration’s foreign policy.” Unless” we

create a foreign policy that “relates to American ideals and to the defense of freedom,” he

advised, “we will never maintain wide public support for our foreign policy.”673

According to the memorandum, reaffirming the fundamental role human rights

played in U.S. foreign policy would accomplish two important goals. Such a move

would not only answer the complaints of domestic critics, but also give the administration

a powerful ideological weapon to wield against the Soviet Union. Because many critics

will not be satisfied with a policy that focuses on Soviet domestic misconduct, however,

“we will have to speak honestly about our friends’ human rights violations and justify

any decision” when other considerations (economic, military, etc) are determinative.”

“There is no escaping this [reality], the memorandum noted, “without destroying the

credibility of our human rights policy, for otherwise we would simply be coddling friends

and criticizing foes.”674

After this document appeared, Abrams played an important role in defining and

articulating a “Reaganite” human rights policy. The positions that he and others outlined

had some commonalities with those of Carter administration. Each recognized that

exploiting human rights issues gave the United States an excellent way of engaging in

673 See “Human Rights Victory,” New York Times, 5 November 1981, A27; Judith Miller, “A Neoconservative for the Human Rights Post,” The New York Times, 31 October 1981, 7; and Aryeh Nier, “Of Reagan and Rights,” The New York Times, 12 November 1981, A31. See also Bite, “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 3-4; Caleb Rossiter, “Human Rights: The Carter Record, the Reagan Reaction,” International Policy Report (September 1984): 23-7; and Tamar Jacoby, “The Reagan Turnaround on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1986): 1066-1081; and John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals in Foreign Affairs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 156-8. During his confirmation hearing, Abrams indicated that Reagan agreed with the memorandum’s contents. See Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Nomination of Elliott Abrams, 97th Cong., 1st session, 1981 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1981), 20.

674 Bite, “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 3-4 352

peaceful ideological competition with the Soviet Union and other communist countries.

They also favored participating in international human rights institutions such as the Final

Act follow-up conferences and the UNHRC. In theory at least, each administration also

endorsed the notion of carrying out an “even-handed” human rights policy that employed

a mixture of both private and public diplomacy. As the next section of this chapter will

explain, officials also recognized the important role private citizens played in holding the

Soviets accountable for their human rights violations.675

Yet there were important differences. Unlike their predecessors, Reagan officials

made the explicit argument that preventing the spread of communism and strengthening

American power in and of themselves amounted to a universal victory for human rights.

They also chose not to recognize a separate category of social and economic rights.

Raising these “aspirations” to the level of rights, a publication warned, only muddled the

fundamental connection between human freedom and economic development; such a

category also gave governments convenient rationales for justifying repression. Just as

important, they rejected the rhetorical importance Carter placed on public criticisms of all

human rights violators. Instead, the executive branch would now focus on using “quiet”

diplomacy to effect change in “friendly” authoritarian regimes because they were more

susceptible to American leverage than their totalitarian counterparts.676

675 Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1981 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1982), 2-3, 9.

676 Ibid., 6; Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1982 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1983), 5, 7-9. 353

Well aware of negative Congressional and public opinion, members of the

Reagan administration gravitated toward internal and public studies that urged the United

States to make the promotion of democracy an important U.S. foreign policy objective.677

The ways in which Abrams defended this approach are revealing. Unlike Carter, he rejected any suggestion that U.N. documents proved the existence of an international consensus on human rights. “The only alternative to democracy as a contemporary system of legitimacy,” he wrote, “is Marxism-Leninism.” Because Marxist-Leninist regimes abhorred diversity, “the Reagan administration has developed a two-track human rights policy.” In the short term, the executive branch would oppose specific violations through an “effective” mixture of public and private diplomacy. Over the long haul, the

“positive side” of promoting human rights would consist of supporting the “long-term development of “democratic institutions “throughout the world.”678

In sharp contrast to Allen’s earlier speech, Abrams defended this approach on the

grounds that the existence of democratic institutions and practices provided private

citizens with powerful tools to protect themselves from governmental repression. When

compared to other forms of government, “democracy is the nearest thing we have to a

guarantee on human rights.” The promotion of democracy would also allow the

677 In particular, NSDD 11-82 called on the United States to “provide political assistance and support to democratic elements in the USSR and other countries.” This document is available from the Digital National Security Archive. See also Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1982, 8-9. See also See also Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 192-9; and Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and his Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Radom House, 2005), 60-80; Kengor and Doerner, The Judge, 166-70; and John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Strategy during the Cold War, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 355.

678 Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1982, 4-5, 8-9; and Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1983 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1984), 5-7, 11 354

administration to engage in the global ideological struggle with communism in a much

more effective way than the United States had in the past. The executive branch, Abrams

maintained, “believes that we should not treat not only the symptoms but the disease [of

human rights violations].” The main aim of any effective human rights policy must

involve “working to establish democratic systems in which human rights violations are

less likely to occur.”679

Unlike the rhetorical importance Jimmy Carter placed on making U.S. laws and

behavior consistent with international human rights standards, Abrams chose to focus on

the task of democracy promotion. As a result of this preference, he held up the United

States as a universal democratic model. Drawing upon arguments found in the Federalist

Papers and Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, he explained that the American government’s

respect for human rights developed over time because of founding principles that

recognized the importance of recognizing private citizens’ “minority rights” and diverse

interests. In other words, Americans found an efficacious strategy for mitigating the

ever-present tensions between “majority rule” and minority rights: “democratic

government in the political sphere, diversity and pluralism in the social sphere, both

operating under the principle of equality.”680

While Abrams might have mentioned the large amount of violence and coercion needed to forge the Soviet Union, he explained this country’s poor human rights record in terms of its leaders’ refusal to respect minority rights and private citizens’ diverse

679 Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1982, 8-9; Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1983, 5-6.

680 Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1983, 7-11. 355

interests. In effect, Soviet private citizens could not make their leaders live up to the

“internationalist” and “egalitarian” principles of the “Bolshevik revolution” because the

Soviet Union had become a vast bureaucratic machine that lacked pluralism. This

argument very much conveys the position that Soviet leaders would never respect human

rights as long as they refused to allow an autonomous civil society to develop and

function within the bounds of a democratic political system.681

Reagan had no trouble embracing the goal of building democratic institutions

across the globe. Speaking before the British Parliament on 8 June 1982, he explained

how Soviet-style socialism “runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom

and human dignity to its [private] citizens.” Rejecting any suggestion that promoting democracy amounted to “cultural imperialism,” he explained that the United States would carry out a global campaign for democracy designed to aid “the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals.”682 Because of the close link he saw between functioning

democratic institutions and the respect for human rights, he stated:

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, [and] to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.683

Ever the optimist, he predicted that Soviet leaders could not insulate themselves from

“the renewed strength of the [global] democratic movement” forever. To drive this point home, he asserted that “the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-

681 Ibid.

682 “Address to Members of the British Parliament,” 8 June 1982. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=42614&st=&st1= [10 September 2006].

683 Ibid. 356

Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom

and muzzle the self-expression of the people.” In support of this vision, the

administration ended up creating the National Endowment of Democracy in December

1983, a “quasi” NGO that used federal funds to help promote democracy all over the world.684

Reagan’s views and temperament predisposed him to make democracy promotion

the “positive side” of his human rights policy. Yet, as Abrams later admitted, the

President “did not intervene in the human rights policy often.” As a result of this detachment, played a fundamental role in raising the visibility of the issue

and strengthening the Human Rights Bureau after he replaced Haig as secretary of state

in the summer of 1982.685 Because he recognized political realities, he went out of his

way to articulate the importance the United States placed on carrying out an effective,

even-handed human rights that always held the Soviets accountable for their conduct. He

also endorsed the position that “support for the development of democracy is an essential part of” the U.S. human rights policy.686

The emphasis Shultz placed on democracy promotion and holding Soviet leaders

accountable for their domestic conduct became the administration consensus. No

document better illustrates this development than NSDD-75, which appeared on 17

684 Ibid.

685 See Thompson, Foreign Policy in the Reagan Presidency, 106.

686 In particular, see “Human Rights and the Moral Dimension of U.S. Foreign Policy,” 22 February 1984, Current Policy, no. 551 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1984), 1-2, 4-5. See also “Soviet Jewry and U.S.-Soviet Relations,” 22 October 1984, Current Policy, no. 628 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1984); and “America and the Struggle for Freedom,” 22 February 1985, Current Policy, no. 659 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1984). See also Petro, The Predicament of the Human Rights, 53. 357

January 1983. In language that had much in common with the Carter administration’s

PRM-28, this memorandum emphasized the need “to promote within the narrow limits

available to us, the process of change in the Soviet Union toward a more pluralistic

political and economic system in which the power of the privileged ruling elite is

gradually reduced.” To accomplish these goals, officials needed to stress “the superiority

of U.S. and Western values” such as “individual dignity” and a “free press.” They also had to strengthen “the President’s London initiative to support democratic forces” and

“U.S. governmental efforts to highlight Soviet human rights violations.” When negotiating with the Soviets, the United States “must insist that Moscow address the full

range of U.S. concerns about Soviet internal behavior and human rights violations.”687

Principled Flexibility: Wielding the Human Rights Weapon against the Soviet Union

As his speech in London suggests, Reagan never veered far way from his pre-

presidential statements about the pivotal role the United States needed to play in

defending freedom across the globe. Unlike Carter, he sometimes used controversial

expressions such as “evil empire” to express his deep beliefs in the benefits of democratic practices and inherent weaknesses of Marxist-Leninist regimes. For all the controversy

these words caused, he more often than not expressed his deep belief in freedom and the

moral superiority of democratic government using measured language that the average

American could understand. During his first two years in office, he strung together

phrases such as “our democratic dream of human fulfillment through individual equality

687 National Security Decision Directive Number (NSDD) 75, 17 January 1983, 1-3, 5-6. Available at the Digital National Security Archive. 358

and opportunity is still the most exciting, successful, and revolutionary idea in the

world.” He also described how “limited government” that empowered private citizens

provided “mankind’s best defense against tyranny.”688

Reagan may have used words to engage in ideological competition with the

Soviet Union, but he attempted to project a pragmatic attitude toward Soviet human rights violations behind closed doors. After holding a private meeting with Avital

Shcharansky about her husband’s fate in May 1981, he referred to Soviet leaders as

“inhumane bastards” in his diary and vowed to gain his release. While angry, the private

letter he sent to Brezhnev one month later struck a much different tone. He asked the

General Secretary to release Shcharansky and a group of Pentecostal Christians who had taken refuge in the U.S. embassy. Using language more pragmatic than Carter ever employed, he assured Brezhnev that these matters would remain “between the two of us” and “I will not reveal that I made any such requests.” He also reminded him that “actions on your part would contribute to lessening my problems in the future negotiations between our two countries.”689

Although Reagan deleted specific references to Sakharov and Shcharansky in a

letter he sent to Brezhnev in November 1981, he became alarmed when the Pentecostals began a hunger strike near the beginning of 1982. He once again wrote to the General

Secretary and asked him to “intervene personally in this matter” before the chances of

688 PPOP, 1981, 586, 1143; and Ibid, 1982, Vol. I, 62-3.

689 Douglas Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 21; and Letter, Reagan to Brezhnev, 16 June 1981, ES: GSB, Box 37, Folder: 8105567-8105658, RRPL. 359

finding a “humanitarian solution” evaporated. 690 After Shcharansky began a hunger

strike to protest his harsh treatment, Reagan sent Brezhnev another letter that expressed

“American sympathy” for this dissenter’s plight. To appease Soviet sensibilities, Robert

McFarlane of the NSC staff suggested that Reagan meet with Dobrynin so he could convey his intention of not seeking “to embarrass the Soviets” or “publicize this letter.”

The President could use such a meeting to relay his consistent position that he “only

wants to see some results [on specific cases] without a test of manhood.”691

According to Dobrynin’s memoirs, Shultz conveyed a private message to him a

month later that had much in common with the one McFarlane had recommended. He

admitted that the U.S. government could not ignore the issue of Soviet human rights

violations given the “widespread domestic reaction it causes.” Nevertheless, Shultz told

the Ambassador that Reagan had accepted Nixon’s advice about the importance of

dealing with this sensitive issue in private. When Dobrynin meet with Reagan in

February 1983, the President once again raised the issue of the Pentecostals, noting that

the American public would view their release “with greater enthusiasm than any other bilateral agreement.” He also told the Ambassador that he would not stand in the way if

Congress decided to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment. These messages only

690 Letter, Brezhnev to Reagan, 14 January 1982, ES: GSB, Box 37, Folder: 820225-8204854, RRPL. Alexander Haig also engaged in vigorous “quiet” human rights diplomacy. See Memo, Haig to Reagan, 18 September 1981, ES: GSB, Box 37, Folder: 8190211-8290012, RRPL.

691 Earlier drafts included these names, but the transmitted letter did not. Reagan went over the drafts with care. See Letter, Reagan to Brezhnev, 17 November 1981, ES: GSB, Box 37, Folder: 8106607, RRPL. The drafts are located in the same location. See also Letter, Reagan to Brezhnev, 20 October 1982, ES: GSB, Box 38, Folder: 8290742-8290870, RRPL; and National Security Council Memorandum, 16 October 1982, Ibid. 360

complemented Reagan’s private assurances to Soviet leaders that solving “humanitarian

issues” would have a “positive influence” on U.S.-Soviet relations.692

Reagan and Shultz’s statements about their preference for “quiet” human rights

diplomacy flowed from the same conclusions found in the memorandum that Abrams

wrote in 1981: Congressional and public pressure all but necessitated that the executive

branch make public statements that condemned Soviet human rights violations and

supported individual dissenters. In practice, the House and Senate forced Reagan’s hand

when they began passing resolutions condemning Soviet domestic misconduct at a much

greater rate than they ever had during Carter’s Presidency. Not wanting to appear weak

on the issue of human rights, Reagan signed many of these resolutions. For example, he

signed a proclamation designating 9 November 1982 Ukrainian Watch Group Day. 693

The following year, Reagan signed another congressional resolution, which designated 21

May 1983 “’National Andrei Sakharov Day.” 694

The administration also took other steps to address the concerns of public critics.

In deference to the concerns of NGOs committed to the cause of freedom in the Baltic republics, Reagan revived the practice of signing Captive Nation Proclamations in

accordance with a Congressional resolution passed in 1959. He also named 14 June 1982

692 Dobrynin, In Confidence, 514-5.

693 For a good summary of the ever-increasing number of Congressional resolutions concerning Soviet domestic misconduct, see Bite, “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 13-19; and Margaret E. Galey, “Congress, Foreign Policy, and Human Rights Ten Years After Helsinki,” Human Rights Quarterly 7 (1985): 352-5.

694 PPOP, 1983, Vol. I, 731. 361

“Baltic Freedom Day” in accordance with S. Joint Res. 201.695 Near the beginning of

1982, George Bush met with the leaders of “major Jewish organizations” to express the

administration’s firm commitment to increasing the rate of Jewish emigration from the

Soviet Union. For the first time ever, the White House also sent a representative to attend the “daily noon vigil across from the Soviet embassy.”696 In the early months of 1983,

Reagan sent a personal message to the Third World Conference on Soviet Jewry

confirming his commitment to making human rights an integral part of Soviet-American

relations. He also told the leaders of World Jewish Congress that the U.S. government

would make every effort to raise Jewish emigration rates to the record high levels of

1970s.697

As Richard Pipes recounts in his work Vixi, steady Congressional pressure played an important role in the decision to hold a Presidential luncheon in March 1982 for dissidents who held “diverse political opinions” and came from different ethnic groups.

When the meeting took place, Reagan listened to each dissenter’s story and spoke about his private diplomatic efforts to win the release of individuals through private diplomacy.

He also tried to regale the audience with a wide assortment of jokes about life in the

Soviet Union. Although officials tried to keep the meeting out of the headlines through a

ban on photographs and the distribution of Reagan’s remarks to interested parties, the

695 Ibid., 1982, Vol. I, 798, 936-8, 103; and Ibid., 1984, Vol. II, 1046-9.

696 “Bush Pledges Forceful Policy on Soviet Jews,” The New York Times, 29 January 1982, A6; and House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, Soviet Jewry, 98th Cong., 1st session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1984), 47-9.

697 The CSCE Digest, 15 March 1983, 6; Ibid., 28 February 1983, 2; and Bite, “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,” 13. 362

event received some media attention because of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s public refusal to attend “’symbolic encounters’” and identify himself as a dissenter.698

Despite all these actions, the administration was not acting merely from political

expediency. Reagan expressed his concern about the Soviet government’s treatment of

Sakharov and other dissenters on numerous occasions while in office. The deep sympathy he felt for individual suffering rather than political calculations explains why he sent Avital Shcharansky a private letter of support in 1983 and later identified himself as a dissenter. All available evidence indicates that George Shultz felt the same way.699

Consistent with the language of NSDD-75, many officials came to appreciate how citing Soviet human rights violations amounted to an effective and popular way of engaging in ideological competition with the Soviet Union. On 15 June 1983, Shultz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that human rights performance “is as central to

Soviet-American dialog as any other theme.” “If we can put the East-West competition on an ideological basis or on the basis of alternative economic systems,” he explained,

“we will walk away with it.” To underscore the administration’s commitment to holding the Soviets accountable for their internal behavior, he publicized the executive branch’s deep commitment to monitoring Soviet compliance with the Final Act. When speaking at the concluding session of the Madrid conference in November 1983, Shultz argued that

698 Richard Pipes, Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 184-7.

699 For a description of Reagan’s letter, see Sharansky, Fear No Evil, 398; PPOP, 1982, Vol. I, 581; Ibid., 1983, Vol. I, 174, 731, 856; Ibid., 1983, Vol. II, 1054; Ibid., 1984, Vol. I, 731, 894; Ibid., 1984, Vol. II, 1047, 1547, 1881-2; Ibid., 1985, Vol. I, 247, 459, 617-8; Ibid., 1985, Vol. II, 1289. For his quote about being a dissenter, see Ibid., 1983, Vol. II, 1174. Reagan also held private meeting with Jewish émigrés. See House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, Soviet Jewry, 47. See also, Reagan, An American Life, 606; Cannon, The Role of a Lifetime, 312, 784. 363

“the struggle for human rights is unstoppable” and will always “remain a priority of

American foreign policy.” He also raised the issue of human rights each time he met

with Andrei Gromyko and Dobrynin.700

Executive branch officials also held the Soviets accountable for their treatment of

national minorities. When Elliott Abrams appeared before the Baltic-American Freedom

League’s Third Annual Human Rights Conference, he posed the question: “In an age

such as ours when all the colonial empires have all but vanished . . . is it realistic to

assume that the sole remaining colonial empire, the Soviet empire, will survive forever?”

After quoting de Tocqueville to illustrate how the “idea of democracy . . . cannot be

destroyed,” he expressed his confidence “that the last word on the human rights situation

in the Baltic states . . . and throughout the Soviet bloc . . . has not yet been spoken.” This

attitude helps explain why the State Department’s Annual Reports on human rights began

offering separate treatments of the Soviet Union and Baltic Republics in 1983.701

Committed to engaging in vigorous ideological competition with the Soviet

Union, Reagan agreed to accelerate the Carter administration’s efforts to strengthen the ability of U.S. radios to reach audiences in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. He favored such a course of action because he wanted the rest of the world to know the

“truth” about Soviet international and domestic misconduct; he also grasped the

700 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, United States-Soviet Relations, Part I, 98th Cong., 1st session, 1983 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 10-2; George Shultz, “The Challenge of the Helsinki Process,” 9 September 1983, Current Policy, no. 598 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 2-3; and George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1993), 266 and 277.

701 American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1984 (Washington D.C.: Department of State, 1986), 285- 7. 364 importance dissidents attached to receiving messages from abroad. His first budget included a small increase in the substantial rise in funding for American radios that Carter

had planned to request during his second term. On 15 July 1982, he signed NSDD-45,

which called for “a major, long-term program of modernization and expansion” for VOA

and RFE/RL over the next five years.702

Almost one year after he signed this directive, Reagan announced the creation of a separate Baltic States Service within Radio Liberty on Latvian Independence Day (18

November 1983). When defending this action, he asserted that the “people of the three

Baltic Republics look to the United States international broadcasting services as their informational lifeline.” By announcing formation of Baltic Radio Liberty Division on

Latvian Independence Day,” he continued, “this administration reaffirms its resolve to maintain our commitments to the people of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in their struggle to regain freedom and self-determination.”703

702 CSCE Digest, 20 March 1981, 6; and Christopher Simpson, ed., National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations: The Declassified History of U.S. Political and Military Policy, 1981- 1991 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 70, 155. See also Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 192-9; Alvin Snyder, Warriors of Disinformation: American Propaganda, Soviet Lies, and the Winning of the Cold War, an Insider’s Account (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995), 32-42 ; and Sosin, Sparks of Liberty, 169-94.

703 “Statement on the Establishment of the Baltic States Service of Radio Liberty,” 18 November 1983. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=40786 [10 July 2007]. Because Reagan attached importance to engaging in effective “public diplomacy,” he supported efforts to set up a satellite television network called WORLDNET designed to shape the ways in which private citizens all over the world viewed the United States. The main impetus for this venture may have come from combating Soviet propaganda in Western Europe, but the administration managed to set up links with over 100 cities “in 80 foreign countries” by the time Reagan left office. See Snyder, Warriors of Disinformation, 38-42, and 85-92. See also American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1985 (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1986), 301-5, 310; Foreign Relations Authorization Act, 100th Cong., 1st session, 17, 1987 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 356, 2-47, 405-11; and David Ottaway, “Cynicism Marks Helsinki Gathering 10th Anniversary Finds Little Accord in East-West Relations,” Washington Post, 30 July 1985, A1

365

There can be little doubt that Reagan understood that the issue of human rights put Soviet leaders on the ideological defensive. At the same time, he believed that U.S.-

Soviet relations would not improve in any sort of fundamental way unless the Kremlin modified its domestic behavior. As a result of this mindset, he directed Max Kampelman and State Department Representative Walter Stossel, Jr. to discuss the issue of Soviet domestic conduct with nine different European leaders throughout 1983 and 1984.

Reagan hoped to gain insights from U.S. allies because “Soviet performance on human rights has deteriorated badly in several specific areas.” To his dismay, the Kremlin appeared committed to maintaining “drastic cutbacks in Jewish emigration and eliminating “ties between the Soviet people and the outside world that are not under . . .

[their] complete control.” In his letter to the Prime Minister of , he pointed out that

“human rights” must “have a central role in our discussion with the Soviets” because “of the importance I attach to the Helsinki Final Act commitments” and “the terrible costs that are being paid by individual human beings.” Even more important, “our overall relationship with the Soviets is seriously affected by human rights violations.”704

This attitude never disappeared. In the same conciliatory speech Reagan delivered on 16 January 1984 that some scholars have used to show his abandonment of a hard-line approach to U.S.-Soviet relations, he argued that the Kremlin’s refusal to respect basic human rights has “created the mistrust and ill will that hangs over our relationship . . . as much as any other issue.” “Our request is simple and straightforward,” he announced, Soviet leaders must start abiding by the provisions of the

704 Letter, Reagan to Felipe Gonzalez, 2 July 1983, Human Rights, Box 2, Folder: 142000-1507365, RRPL. See also Memo for Robert C. McFarlane, “Ambassadors Kampelman and Stoessel’s Recommendations,” 2 March 1985, ES: NSC Systems Files, Box 2, Folder: 8501710, RRPL. 366

Helsinki Accords and other international human rights covenants they signed on their

own accord. In the end, “[e]xperience has shown [us] that greater respect for human

rights can contribute to progress in other areas of the Soviet-American relationship.” He

advanced the same argument in his private letters and conversations with Soviet

officials.705

After delivering this speech, Reagan and Shultz succeeded in institutionalizing a

“four-sided” negotiating agenda designed to improve U.S.-Soviet relations that included human rights, bilateral issues, arms control, and regional conflicts. This strategy meant that taking steps to improve Soviet-American relations required no substantial decrease in public rhetoric about Soviet human rights violations. As he had in the past, Shultz continued to deliver speeches that highlighted the American commitment to supporting

“the forces of freedom in communist totalitarian countries” and speaking “out at every opportunity against Soviet human rights violations.” During a gathering commemorating the tenth anniversary of Final Act that took place on 30 July 1985, he denounced the

Soviets for putting peace activists, feminists, and Social Democrats in either jails or psychiatric prisons. “We cannot talk about the Helsinki Process without talking about human beings,” he told the audience, “for they are supposed to be the true beneficiaries

705 “Address to the Nation and Other Countries on United States-Soviet Relations,” 16 January 1984. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=39806 [20 February 2006]. Beth A. Fischer stresses how Reagan made a conscious effort to improve U.S.-Soviet relations before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, but never really addresses the issue of human rights. See Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 102-143; and Beth A. Fischer, “Reagan and the Soviets: Winning the Cold War?” in Brownlee and Graham, ed., The Reagan Presidency, 113-32. Jack Matlock has a very good account of all the work that went into the address Reagan delivered on 16 January 1984. See Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 78-87. 367 of the Helsinki Final Act.”706 Reagan behaved in a similar fashion both behind closed doors and in public. On the tenth anniversary of the Final Act, he criticized the Kremlin for not allowing Soviet private citizens to “’know and act upon’ their rights” and have regular contacts with their Western counterparts.707 In 1984 and 1985, he delivered speeches at the United Nations that stressed the crucial links between peace, individual freedom, and governments’ respect for basic human rights.708

The statements described above only reinforce the reality that the Helsinki process had an important place in the administration’s “four-sided” negotiating agenda.

At the 1985 Final Act experts meetings on human rights and cultural affairs held in

Ottawa and Budapest, executive branch officials held the Soviets accountable for their internal behavior and mistreatment of non-Russian nationalities. At the former meeting, the new head of the Human Rights Bureau Richard Schifter criticized the Soviet

706 “Managing the U.S.-Soviet Relationship Over the Long Term,” Current Policy, no. 624 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1984); and “Ten Years After the Helsinki Final Act,” Current Policy, no. 728, 30 July 1985 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1985), 2-3. To reinforce these arguments, Shultz raised the issue of human rights when he met with Mikhail Gorbachev and the new Soviet Foreign Minister . See also Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 573-77, 586-7; Eduard Shevardnadze, trans. by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 70-2 and 85-6; and Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era, 110, 122, 137.

707 These remarks come from a statement Reagan released commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Final Act. See PPOP, 1985, Vol. II, 955-6.

708 See “Address to the 39th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York,” 24 September 1984. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=40430&st=United+Nations&st1=Address [20 December 2006]. See also “Address to the 40th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York,” 24 October 1985. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=37963&st=United+Nations&st1=Address [21 December 2007]; Letter, Reagan to Chernenko, 7 December 1984, ES: GSC, Box 39, Folder: 8491237- 8491334, RRPL; Letter, Reagan to Chernenko, 11 March 1985, ES: GSG, Box 39, Folder: 8590272- 8590419, RRPL; Reagan, An American Life, 645-9; and Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom, 81-2; and “Statement on the Exile of Andrei Sakharov and Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 15 May 1985. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=38637&st=&st1= [10 March 2006]. 368

government’s efforts to repress homegrown peace and anti-nuclear activists. He also

explained the Kremlin’s imperialistic attitude toward non-Russian nationalities. “It is

ironic” that Soviet leaders refuse to hold their domestic practices up to international

scrutiny, he told his fellow delegates, when they follow a political philosophy “based on

the concept of historic inevitability.” Since human rights have become a “legitimate . . .

subject of international discourse,” they “are [actually] swimming against the tide of

history.”709

Reagan may have continued to make statements about the fundamental

distinctions between Marxist-Leninist and democratic regimes, but the “four-sided”

agenda gave him the flexibility to pursue his longstanding goal of facilitating contacts

between Soviet and American private citizens.710 In practice, he wanted to accomplish

this goal from the moment he entered office. Consistent with language found in the

Helsinki Accords, Reagan voiced his strong support for “Sister City” exchanges and signed the International Tourism Policy Act in 1981. Overcoming Congressional

resistance, he then signed legislation that “doubled funding for international exchange

programs over the next four years.” Determined to have more young Americans

participate in exchanges, he also created the President’s Council for International Youth

Exchange in 1983.711

709 U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Ottawa Human Rights Experts Meeting and the Future of the Helsinki Process, 99th Congress, 1st session, 1985 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), 184- 5.

710 See PPOP, 1984, Vol. I, 809. See also U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Ottawa Human Rights Experts Meeting and the Future of the Helsinki Process, 70.

369

After intense bureaucratic infighting, Reagan sided with Shultz and ordered the

State Department to negotiate a new cultural exchange agreement with Moscow in July

1983 under the umbrella of “bilateral issues.”712 Reagan’s defense of this policy is revealing.713 Without ignoring the issue of Soviet human rights violations and harsh treatment of dissenters, he expressed his fear of punishing the “proud peoples” of the

“multinational” Soviet empire for their government’s sins. He wanted to negotiate agreements that would allow Soviet private citizens to meet their American counterparts in greater numbers. He painted the picture of a day when “Americans and Soviet citizens from “all walks of life” could “travel freely back and forth, visit each other's homes . . . and, if they feel like it, sit up all night talking about the meaning of life and the different ways to look at the world.” On the eve of the 1985 Geneva summit, he voiced similar

711 “Remarks to Representatives of the Sister Cities International Program,” 27 March 1981. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43604&st=sister&st1=cities [10 October 2005]; U.S. Helsinki Commission Report, Report: Progress in Perspective, 138-41, 241-2. Available [Online]: http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail&ContentRecord_id=304&Region _id=0&Issue_id=0&ContentType=R&ContentRecordType=R&CFID=6546930&CFTOKEN=96369328 [10 March 2006]; Memo, Haig to Reagan, 18 September 1981, “My forthcoming Meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, Executive Secretariat: NSC, Head of State Files (HOSF), Box 37, Folder: General Secretary Brezhnev, RRPL; and PPOP, 1983, Vol. I, 78.

712 See Memo, William P. Clark to Reagan, “U.S.-Soviet Relations: Decisions on New Consulates, Cultural Exchange Agreement and Reciprocity,” 21 May 1983, William Clark Files, Box 8, Folder: U.S.-Soviet Relations Working Papers, RRPL, 6/7, RRPL; and Letter, McFarlane to Clark, N.T., 23 March 1983, Ibid., Folder: U.S.-Soviet Relations Working Papers, RRPL, 3/7. See also Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 275-6.

713 The proposals he advanced may have been far from novel, as one notable scholar notes, but he nevertheless made an effective argument that only uncivilized nations that violated human rights with impunity “insisted on sealing their people off” from the rest of the world and limiting the information they could receive. See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 281; and “Remarks to Participants in the Conference on United States-Soviet Exchanges,” 27 June 1984. Available [Online]: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=40102 [10 March 2006]; and Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994), 156-7. 370

sentiments, noting his preference for exchanging “thousands of undergraduates” with the

Soviet Union each year and facilitate the creation of “new sister city” arrangements.714

Even though Reagan saw nothing wrong with reminding Americans about the fundamental distinctions between democratic and Marxist-Leninist regimes, his willingness to negotiate a new cultural agreement with Soviets helps show that he never tried to modify their internal behavior through rigid linkages. He may have wanted to put the Soviets on the ideological defensive, but he never delayed progress in arms control, imposed economic penalties, or suspended cooperative agreements and high-level visits because of Soviet human rights violations. For example, he lifted the Carter administration’s grain embargo as a “goodwill gesture” even though Jewish emigration levels remained low and Soviet human rights abuses had in no way abated. He also allowed the economic sanctions he placed on the Soviet Union and Poland in December

1981 to drop over the course of next three years without obtaining any visible concessions on human rights or dramatic changes in Soviet behavior.715

On 11 May 1985, Reagan informed Gorbachev in a private letter that Secretary of

Commerce Malcolm Baldrige would visit Moscow in April 1985 so he could attend the

714 “Remarks to Participants in the Conference on the United States-Soviet Exchanges,” 27 June 1984.

715 Reagan, An American Life, 269-71. See also Skinner, ed., Reagan, 740; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Basket II—Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Findings Eleven Years After Helsinki, 100th Congress, 1st session, 1987 (Washington, D.C: Department of State, 1987), 44-58; United States Information Agency, The President’s U.S-Soviet Exchange Initiative: Fact Sheet (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Information Agency, 1986). Alan Dobson makes a cogent argument that Reagan failed to carry out economic warfare against the Soviet Union on a consistent basis. See Dobson, “The Reagan Administration, Economic Warfare, and Starting to Close Down the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 29, no. 3 (2005), 534-5, 552-6. In his work Survival Is Not Enough, former NSC Staffer Richard Pipes argues that Reagan gave up on the enforcement of “industrial controls” against the Soviet Union. “By 1983, he seemed to have given up trying.” See Richard Pipes, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America’s Future (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 265. See also Norman Podhoretz, “The Reagan Road to Détente,” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1984/1985): 459. 371

first meeting of the U.S./U.S.S.R Joint Commercial Commission that had taken place

since 1978.716

As his private correspondence reveals, Reagan took many steps designed to

stabilize U.S.-Soviet relations without demanding visible Soviet concessions on human

rights. He signed a long-term grain deal with the Soviet Union in 1983; he also agreed to

renew the U.S-Soviet cooperative agreement in agriculture. During the next two years,

he either renewed or took steps to strengthen cooperative agreements in environmental

protection, space travel, and industrial cooperation. In contrast to some officials’ earlier

statements, Reagan allowed the United States to negotiate confidence-building measures

(CBM) within the confines of a Final Act forum in known as Conference on

Security and Disarmament in Europe (CDE).717

While always interested in negotiating from a “position of strength,” Reagan

shied away from rigid linkages because he accepted language found in NSDD-75 that warned against the futility of engaging in an “open-ended,” sterile confrontation with

Moscow.” He believed that Soviet leaders would never engage in negotiations designed

to produce agreements consistent with American interests and principles if the U.S.

remained rigidly hostile.718 Shultz made this viewpoint clear in a speech he delivered

716 See Letter, Reagan to Gorbachev, 11 May 1985, ES: GSG, Box 40, Folder: 8590475-8590495, RRPL. Baldrige delivered the same message to Dobrynin before leaving for Moscow. See Memo, Lionel H. Olmer to Jack Matlock, N.D., Ibid.

717 United States Information Agency, The President’s U.S-Soviet Exchange Initiative. See also Letter, Reagan to Chernenko, 1 January 1985, ES: GSC, Box 39, Folder: 8491139, ½, RRPL; and See Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Eighteenth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), 3.

372

concerning U.S.-Soviet relations on 18 October 1984. Even though Soviet leaders had

little respect “our standards of human conduct and rule of law,” he explained that

Linkage as an instrument of policy has limitations; if applied rigidly, it could yield the initiative to the Soviets, letting them set the pace and the character of the relationship. We do not seek negotiations for their own sake; we negotiate when it is in our interest to do so. Therefore, when the Soviet Union acts in ways we find objectionable, it may not always make sense for us to break off negotiations or suspend agreements. . . . We should not sacrifice long-term interests in order to express immediate outrage.719

Reagan’s decision not to let Soviet human rights abuses rule out progress in other

areas of the U.S.-Soviet relationship invited the same kind of Congressional and public

criticisms that Carter had encountered. When Reagan decided to participate in the CDE

forum, some members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission suspected that he had become

less interested in holding the Soviets accountable for their human rights violations. In his

private letters to Reagan and Shultz, Fascell criticized U.S. delegates in Stockholm for

not mentioning dissenters. “By failing to raise the Sakharov issue at the Stockholm

meeting, he wrote, “the U.S. is falling prey to the long-term Soviet objective of

decoupling the military-security component from” the human rights provisions “of the

Final Act.” Because the United States had a duty to defend all private citizens who faced

governmental persecution, “the Sakharov case . . . . should not be shunted aside . . . in

your efforts to improve U.S.-Soviet relations.”720

718 NSDD-75, 8. See also Letter, Reagan to Chernenko, 16 April 1984, Executive Secretariat: GSC, Box 39, Folder: 84090236-84905461, RRPL.

719 George Shultz, “Managing the U.S.-Soviet Relationship Over the Long Term,” 18 October 1984, Current Policy, No. 624 (Washington DC: U.S. Department of State, 1984), 2-3. Evidence suggests that Reagan supported the main thrust of this view. See Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 142 and 277; and Reagan, An American Life, 572.

720 The CSCE Digest, 15 June 1984, 18-9. 373

After replacing Fascell as Chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Senator

Alfonse D’ Amato (R-NY) excoriated Reagan’s willingness to exchange agricultural

advisers with the Soviet Union and send Baldrige to Moscow for an economic

conference. In reference to the latter decision, he quipped: “Perhaps we are seeking

advice on how to destroy our system of agriculture” and carry out “forced

collectivization.” Unhappy with Baldrige’s visit, he suggested that “there’s a growing

feeling in Congress that our support for human rights is just rhetoric.” At the end of the

day, “many feel that the Soviets view our activities in this area as nothing more than

meaningless talk they can ignore.” This charge had merit, as some human rights activists

criticized Reagan for refusing to link progress in arms control and trade to visible

improvements in Soviet human rights practices. In particular, a number of Jewish groups

took Reagan to task for allowing U.S-Soviet trade to increase during his first term

without obtaining visible emigration concessions.721

Reagan officials also had to contend with Congressional and public criticism for

refusing to certify that the Soviet Union used “forced labor” on a regular basis to produce

products exported to the United States and complete large construction projects. Even

though American delegates in Madrid had raised this issue, thirty-five members of

Congress filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that the executive branch follow the

provisions of the Hawley-Smoot tariff and ban the importation of goods “produced with

721 U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Ottawa Human Rights Experts Meeting and the Future of the Helsinki Process, 2-3, 21. See also U.S. Helsinki Commission, Human Rights and the CSCE Process, 99th Cong., 2nd session, 1986 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 24, 39, 48, and 57; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Soviet Jewry, 47. See also Andrew Harrison, Passover Revisited: The Philadelphia’s Efforts to Aid Soviet Jews, 1963-1968 (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 196-200; and Stuart Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom: A History of the (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 53-62, 174-187. 374

forced labor in the Soviet Union.” When this action went nowhere, the House passed a

resolution calling on Reagan to show American displeasure with the Soviets’ “forced

labor practices” by “refusing to permit the importation of any of its products made in

whole or in part by such labor.” Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD) defended this

measure on the grounds that the United States should not assist “in the perpetuation of the

Gulag system by importing goods made there.” These sorts of doubts about Reagan’s

commitment to promoting human rights in the Soviet Union explain why he received

several Congressional petitions urging him not to shy away from raising the issue during

the Geneva summit.722

Congressional and public pressure certainly factored into Reagan’s decision to

become more vocal about Soviet human rights violations as his presidency progressed,

but these forces in no way diminished his deep belief in the efficacy of “quiet” human rights diplomacy. In his private diary, he expressed regret for having signed the 1983

Congressional resolution concerning Sakharov’s treatment because such a move “would

wreck his quiet diplomatic efforts to win his release.” “This kind of public demand,” he

lamented, “puts the Soviets politics in a corner where they lose face if they give in.” 723

Reagan also continued to dismiss any suggestion that he wanted to put “public pressure”

on Soviet leaders or take credit for their humanitarian decisions behind closed doors. In

his mind, the Kremlin’s decision to grant the Pentecostals’ emigration requests in mid

722 CSCE Digest, 2 November 1984, 11-13; and Ibid., 14 June 1985, 8. See also Letter, Powell to Percy, N.D., Human Rights, Box 2, Folder: 094143, RRPL. See also Letter, U.S. Senate to Reagan, 22 October 1985, FO, Box 2, Folder: 350400-350458, RRPL; and Letter, “U.S. Senate to Reagan, 24 October 1985, Ibid.

723 Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 153. 375

1983 as a way of facilitating the conclusion of the Madrid follow-up meeting only

confirmed that “quiet” human rights diplomacy worked better than vocal posturing. In a private letter dated 6 March 1984, he told General Secretary that

“I was touched by this gesture. In my view, this shows how quiet and sincere efforts can

solve even the most sensitive problems in our relationship.”724

Not averse to repeating examples he found instructive, Reagan once again went back to the example of the Pentecostals a few months later. Before meeting with

Gromyko in September 1984, he sent the Foreign Minister a letter that acknowledged the

Soviet position that “we are invading your sovereignty . . . when we get into the area of human rights.” To assuage Gromyko’s sensibilities, he once again expressed his hope

that Soviet officials “noticed that we would prefer quiet diplomacy on this subject.”

After offering these explanations, he then indicated that he had little choice but to raise

the issue of human rights because he operated within the confines of a “governmental

system responsive to public opinion.” He would encounter difficulties signing

agreements with the Soviets as long as “segments of our population are . . . upset by what

they feel is a violation of human rights in the land of their ancestry.” Given this reality,

he reminded Gromyko that “your handling of that [Pentecostal] matter helped the

administration justify the recent singing of a grain agreement” between our two nations.

To encourage similar humanitarian actions in the future, he told him that no official

724 This viewpoint comes across clearly in a telephone conversation he had with Dobrynin in the early part of 1984. See “Telephone Call to Dobrynin,” Jack Matlock Files: U.S.-U.S.S.R. Relations, January-April 1984, Box 42, Folder: 92219, RRPL. See also Reagan, An American Life, 558, 567, and 597; Reagan, ed. Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries, 168; and Letter, Reagan to Chernenko, 6 March 1984, ES: GSC, Box 39, Folder: 84090236-84905461, RRPL.

376

would indicate that the release of the Pentecostals “was anything other than a generous

action by your government,” a promise he never broke.725

When preparing for the summit, Reagan complained in private that “’we are

somewhat publicly on the record for human rights. Front page stories that we are

banging away at them will get us cheers from the bleachers but it won’t help those who

are being abused.’” He also indicated that Gorbachev needed “‘to show his strength to

the Soviet gang back in the Kremlin. Let’s not limit the area where he can do that to

those things that have to do with aggression outside the Soviet Union.’” When speaking

to a European journalist, he reiterated his intention of raising the issue of human rights in

Geneva, but cautioned against putting “things of this kind in public.” Too much publicity

only decreased the chances that the Soviets would satisfy American concerns because

“any change in policy would be viewed as succumbing to another power.”726

Some treatments suggest that Reagan neglected to press Gorbachev on human rights once the Geneva summit meeting began in 1985.727 This viewpoint has some

merit, but overlooks one fundamental point. When viewed in light of his earlier conduct,

Reagan’s behavior only reflected the path he had chosen to rectify Soviet human rights

violations. He criticized Gorbachev for his government’s unwillingness to follow the

725 Reagan, In His Own Hand, 496-8. The connection Reagan drew between a Soviet gesture he never publicized and an agreement that did not require Congressional approval defied sound logical reasoning. Nevertheless, he still clung to his inclination that “quiet” human rights diplomacy represented a better route to rectifying Soviet human rights violations than vocal public posturing. See Letter, Morris Abram to Reagan, 15 October 1985, FO, Box 1, Folder: 342180-342299, RRPL; Reagan, ed. Brinkley, The Reagan Diaries, 153; and Dobrynin, In Confidence, 553.

726 Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 152; and PPOP, 1985, Vol. II, 1352.

727 Cannon, The Role of a Lifetime, 753; and Kenneth L. Adelman, The Great Universal Embrace: Arms Summitry—A Skeptic’s Account (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 128-30. To see a particularly poor misreading, see Jacoby, “The Reagan Turnaround on Human Rights,” 1082-86. 377

Helsinki Accords and presented him with a list of Soviet private citizens who wanted to

emigrate. To make these criticisms more palatable, he informed the General Secretary of

his decision not to raise this issue “in the full meeting” because he wanted to dispel any

impression “that he was trying to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union.” He

also repeated the Pentecostal example and gave his word that he would neither take credit

for nor exploit any humanitarian gestures on behalf of dissenters that the Soviet government decided to make. To give Gorbachev the chance of showing “strength” in the face of domestic critics, Reagan suggested that Soviet bureaucrats might violate human rights on a regular basis without the General Secretary’s knowledge.728

As he had in the past, Reagan also told Gorbachev that the issue of human rights violations created obstacles in the fundamental task of improving U.S.-Soviet relations.

He explained this development as a function of the way in which religious and ethnic

groups made Congress distrustful of Soviet intentions. According to Reagan:

it would be easier for him to fulfill some of the possible agreements between the two countries if he were not beset by people in the U.S. Congress and by organizations that hear of their relatives and friends and complain about the restraints which they consider should not be imposed on them, such as . . . the right to live in other places or the right to emigrate.729

While Reagan attempted to project a pragmatic attitude toward rectifying Soviet human rights violations, he could not resist the temptation of explaining how well democratic practices worked in the United States. Unlike their counterparts in the USSR,

728 Memorandum of Conversation, 20 November 1985, 10:15-11:25 AM, 2-4, Geneva: Memcons, Box 52, Folder: 92137, 2/3, RRPPL. To see how Reagan planned to raise the issue of human rights at Geneva, see “Talking Points on the Geneva Meeting,” N.D., 3. Geneva Memcons, 11/19-/2, 1985, Box, 92137, Folder: 1/3, RRPL; and “Road to Geneva and Beyond: Themes and Perceptions for Public Presentation,” FO 006- 9, Box 1, Folder: 32934, RRPL.

729 Memorandum of Conversation, 20 November 1985, 7. 378

American Jews did not feel the need to emigrate because their government allowed them

to practice their religion and learn Hebrew. “Perhaps some people would not think of

emigrating from the Soviet Union if they were allowed to practice their religion.”

Gorbachev found this line of argument vexing, noting that Reagan’s words suggested that

“there are no rights in socialist countries” whereas “they are in bloom in the .” When he criticized American human rights shortcomings, Reagan always responded that discrimination in his country resulted from the individual prejudice rather

than governmental laws that made such behavior illegal.730

The Geneva summit also marked important progress toward accomplishing

Reagan’s goal of opening the USSR to the outside world. Building on earlier

discussions, U.S. and Soviet representatives agreed to consulate exchangers and signed a

new cultural exchange accord. While this latter agreement had much in common with

arrangements that predominated before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the new

version included a number of proposals that their counterparts in the Carter administration had wanted to implement. For example, new language appeared that endorsed “reciprocity and mutual benefit in exchanges” and the expansion of lecturer

exchanges. Echoing steps the Final Act urged signatories to take, the U.S. and Soviet

Union also agreed to expand undergraduate exchanges, youth exchanges, and contacts

between archival organizations.731

730 Ibid., 4-5.

731 Yale Richmond, U.S-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986: Who Wins? (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 97-111 and 141-165. See also Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1994), Chapters 17, 18, 19, and Section Six of the Final Act. Available [Online]: http://www.hri.org/docs/Helsinki75.html [24 August 2006]; and 379

The Helsinki Accords, Private Citizen Diplomacy, and Democracy Promotion

Even though Reagan believed in the efficacy of “quiet human rights diplomacy, numerous other officials embraced the idea that private citizens now shaped the ways in which governments conducted foreign policy to a greater degree than they had in the past.732 Picking up where the Carter administration left off, they accepted the important

roles the U.S. Helsinki Commission and private citizens played in monitoring Soviet and

Eastern European compliance with the Final Act. During the Madrid conference, Max

Kampelman and State Department officials held frequent consultations with Commission

members and their staff. They also listened to the concerns of hundreds of NGOs at

conferences hosted by the Commission. When the meeting concluded in November

1983, Shultz wrote a letter to Fascell explaining how the executive branch had

undertaken “parallel efforts” with “private organizations” to make sure that the Soviet

Union and Eastern European nations “will incur a political cost” for not fulfilling their

Final Act commitments.733

At least in part, these “parallel efforts” referred to the ways in which the executive

branch worked with private citizens and Commission members to prepare for the experts

“Joint Soviet-United States Statement on the Summit Meeting in Geneva,” 21 November 1985. Available [Online]: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/112185a.htm [10 October 2006]; “Road to Geneva and Beyond;” Talking Points on the Geneva Meeting,” 4; and Memo, Ben Elliot to Pat Buchanan, “Summit,” 9 September 1985,” FO 0006-09, Box 1, Folder: 330000-338299, RRPL.

732 In particular, see American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1986 (Washington, D.C: Department of State, 1987), 228-35.

733 The CSCE Digest, 29 October 1982, 11; 2 February 1983, 11-12; Ibid, 8 August 1983, 3; Ibid., 2 November 1985, 3-4; and Ibid., 10 June 1985, 5-10; and Letter, Shultz to Fascell, 11 January 1984, Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1984, RCSCE, USHCF, NA. 380

meetings in Ottawa and Budapest. 734 When describing the U.S. delegation’s experience in Budapest, Chairman Walter Stoessel reported that “we drew heavily on the material

prepared by non-governmental organizations in connection with the forum.” In a private

letter to D’Amato, a State Department official took a similar position, noting that her

Department “attaches the highest importance to public and Congressional involvement in

the CSCE process.” “We also recognize the value of tapping the expertise of NGO

leaders and reflecting their views in the positions we take at CSCE meetings.” Consistent

with these positions, U.S. delegates at Ottawa created a liaison office that provided

briefings about the proceedings for the hundreds of NGOs that attended the meeting.735

The Helsinki Commission also continued to have appreciable success in pressing

“its views” on the executive branch. After Fascell publicized his letters about unhappiness with U.S. conduct in Stockholm, Kampelman made a surprise trip to

Sweden. After meeting with U.S. delegates, he held a press conference that criticized the

Soviet government’s failure to abide by the Final Act’s human rights provisions and harsh treatment of Sakharov. These statements produced tangible results. When compared to their previous conduct, U.S. delegates became much more willing to cite

Soviet human rights violations in the CDE forum.736

734 The CSCE Digest, 2 November 1985, 3-6; U.S. General Accounting Office, Helsinki Commission: The First Eight Years (Washington, D.C.: GAO, 1 March 1985), 14.

735 U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Restrictions on Artistic Freedom in the Soviet Union and the Budapest Cultural Forum, 99th Congress, 1st session, 1985 (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 137; Letter, Ridgeway to D’Amato, N.D., Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1986, RCSCE, USHCF, NA; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Annual Report of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for the Period Covering January 1 through December 31, 1985 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 5-6.

381

In addition to consulting with NGOs and members of Congress, both Allen and his successor, William Clark, held meetings with private citizens to reassure them about

Reagan’s commitment to the issue.737 Abrams also held numerous meetings with NGOs interested in human rights issues. Even though he sometimes met with fierce critics, he called these “sessions useful . . . because they have given us an opportunity to exchange views with a whole range of organizations on a wide variety of human rights topics.”

Since political calculations were never absent, Abrams and other State Department

officials also held frequent meetings with Jewish groups and Congressional members

concerned about Soviet emigration restrictions. They used the information they gathered

from these meetings to update the emigration lists that U.S. representatives presented to

their Soviet counterparts.738

Because State Department officials wanted to have up-to-date information, they refused to repudiate the activities of AI. This organization may “not always share or support official U.S. views” about domestic conditions in countries such as and

736 U.S. General Accounting Office, Helsinki Commission, 13-5; and The CSCE Digest, 2 November 1984, 3-4; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Stockholm Meeting of the Conference on Confidence and Security- Building Measures in Europe (CDE), 99th Congress, 2nd session, 1986 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 65, 76-82.

737 In late September 1981, Richard Allen told a private group that abolishing the Human Rights Bureau would in no way indicate a downgrading of the issue’s importance. See The CSCE Digest, 10 October 1981, 3. William Clark met with members of U.S. Helsinki Watch Group and Americas Watch in June 1982. See Memo, Carnes Lord to Clark, “Your Meeting with Helsinki Watch Group Members,” 22 June 1982, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 085626-094142, RRPL.

738 See Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age in the Human Rights Movement (New York: Public Affairs, 2002); Jay Winik, On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind the Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 434-7; Letter, Abrams to Spencer Oliver, 22 May 1984, RCSCE, USHCF, Box 48, Folder: State Department Correspondence, 1984, NA. See also The CSCE Digest, 25 January 1985, 11; Stuart Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom: A History of the Soviet Jewish Movement (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 4-7 and 35-50; Myrna Shinbaum, “Mobilizing America: The National Council on Soviet Jewry,” in Friedman and Chernin, ed., A Second Exodus, 173-180; and Naftalin, “The Activist Movement,” in Ibid., 234-5. 382

El Salvador, a State Department official told a critic. Nevertheless, “we” still support

“Amnesty” because of its ability to raise international awareness about the issue of

human rights and keep updated lists of political prisoners. An official State Department

publication confirmed these views, noting that “we are particularly appreciative of . . .

and make reference to” the reports of “non-governmental organizations,” including those

of “Amnesty.” 739

Members of the State Department hesitated to repudiate the reports of AI because

many understood that private citizens played an important role in “globalizing” the issue

of Soviet human rights violations. In mid-1985, Abrams made this position crystal clear during a speech he delivered at the Fifth International Sakharov Hearing. After

highlighting the Kremlin’s domestic misconduct, he reminded audience members that

many Soviet policymakers worried about the ways in which human rights criticisms

tarnished their regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of the entire Western world. Given this

reality, he urged them not to view the “human rights struggle” as a contest between governments. Instead, the fight for human rights had become an all-encompassing battle between Western and Communist societies. Because governments could not change

Soviet internal behavior on their own, Abrams argued that “one of our crucial goals and

methods must be to mobilize private opinion in the West.” As he explained, Soviet

leaders would never find the international legitimacy they craved as long as a sizable

739 Letter, W. Tapley Bennett, Jr. to Chalmers Wylie, 6 January 1984, Human Rights/Amnesty International, Box 1, Folder: January-May 1984, NSA; and Country Reports for Human Rights Practices for 1984 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1985), 3-4; and Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Twelfth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), 5-6. 383

number of Western private citizens from diverse backgrounds questioned their

commitment to basic human freedoms.740

In addition to playing an important role in holding the Soviets accountable for their human rights violations, private citizens became an integral part of the administration’s campaign to promote democracy. During the planning stages of the

NED, officials drew on arguments outlined in the American Political Foundation’s bipartisan study on “how American nongovernmental organizations can help strengthen

democracy abroad.” They also invited private citizens to attend State Department

conferences that addressed the issues of how to democratize communist countries and

increase the frequency of free elections across the globe. At the former conference,

Shultz told the audience that “in the final analysis, internal forces must be the major

factors for democratization of Communist states.” “Only the people of those countries

can muster sufficient pressures for reform.”741

This sort of rhetoric reveals that the NED had much in common with the Carter

administration’s proposed Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Both of these “quasi”

NGOs accepted the premise that governments needed the help of private citizens to

accomplish their goals. According to an official description of the NED, “the expansion

of private, voluntary initiatives to promote democracy internationally cannot be

accomplished through governmental action alone.” The Endowment therefore “seeks to

740 Allan Wynn et al., Fifth International Sakharov Hearings: Proceedings (London: Andre Deutsch, 1986), 148-50.

741 The CSCE Digest, 29 October 1982, 8; and American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1982 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1985), 367-71 and 378-82; and American Foreign Policy Documents 1983 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1985), 365-8. 384

enlist the energies and talents of private citizens and groups in the United States to work with those abroad who wish to build for themselves a democratic future.” Much like the

HRF proposals outlined in Chapter IV, defenders of the NED focused on how the institution’s flexible, bipartisan structure would keep members insulated from partisan squabbles or short-term U.S. foreign policy objectives. As envisioned, the Endowment would tap the creative energies of American political parties, labor organizations, businesses, and private groups to help “indigenous efforts to build free and independent institutions” across the globe.742

The importance that the executive branch now placed on helping private citizens accomplish the goal of building democratic governments is revealing. On one level, such a position repudiated Kirkpatrick’s argument that totalitarian regimes could never reform themselves. It also raised the following question: How could dissenters even begin to build enduring democratic institutions when the Soviet authorities put them in jail for expressing non-official opinions and moved to crush any attempts to form an independent civil society? This question had special relevance because a wide array of CIA reports indicated that dissenters had little chance of convincing Soviet leaders to abandon their goals of eradicating non-official activities and curbing private citizens’ contacts with the outside world for the foreseeable future.743

742 American Foreign Policy Documents 1984 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1986), 324-5.

743 See, “Andropov’s Approach to Key US-Soviet Relations,” 9 August 1983, 16-7; “Dissent and Religion in the USSR,” 1 January 1984, 1-10; “Soviet Problems in the 1980s: Problems and Prospects,” December 1982, iii-v, 20-33; and “Dimensions of Civil Unrest in the Soviet Union,” 1 April 1983, 1 and16. All of these documents can be located at the CIA website. See http://www.foia.cia.gov/ . 385

The inability of dissenters to build viable democratic institutions raises an issue that few works on the Reagan administration’s foreign policy have emphasized. In practice, the Helsinki Accords rather than NED became the administration’s best available weapon for promoting democracy in the USSR. While conservative critics continued to refer to the agreement as a pernicious sham, remaining in the Helsinki process forced the Soviets to make a rhetorical commitment to respecting activities that by definition helped contribute to diversity and the building of democratic institutions.

For example, the concluding document of Madrid called on participating states to ensure

“the right of workers to freely establish and join trade unions as laid down in relevant international instruments [ILO].” The same document also defended the right of religious organizations and institutions from different signatories to exchange information and hold “meetings among themselves.” The agreement even called for the convening of voluntary “round-table meetings” that signatories could use “to discuss

[the] issues of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”744

The Helsinki process also gave Reagan officials visible forums to challenge the

Soviet government’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of pluralism. They went about accomplishing this goal by challenging the Soviet practice of only dealing with private groups whose activities they exercised control over or found acceptable. In the face of vehement Soviet and Eastern European opposition, American delegates in Ottawa

744 Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Fifteenth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), 2-4. For a copy of the concluding document, see http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/osce/text/MADRI83E.htm [10 October 2006]. See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 163-7; and “An Assessment of the Madrid CSCE Followup Meeting,” Current Policy, no. 500 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1983). 386

advanced proposals that confirmed the rights of private citizens to meet with delegations

and have access to the closed plenary sessions. They also advocated procedures that

would have required each signatory to investigate and respond to governmental and non-

governmental inquires about human rights violations within their states. Not satisfied

with obtaining these far reaching goals, U.S. delegates even called on participating states

to “increase the opportunities” for representatives of NGOs to inspect correctional facilities and meet with prisoners.745

These proposals went nowhere because of the obstinate opposition of Warsaw

Pact nations. Even when faced with this setback, American delegates defended the right

of private groups to hold gatherings during a Final Act forum that took place in Budapest

just like they had done in Madrid and Ottawa. The Hungarian government put this commitment to the test when it reneged on earlier promises and forbade members of the

International Helsinki Federation (IHF) from holding an international cultural symposium in the “public facilities” they had reserved. When Western delegations and the U.S.

State Department lodged formal protests, the authorities relented and allowed the IHF to hold the meeting in the “private apartments” of “Hungarian intellectuals.” As one participant noted, this gathering marked “the first time that private citizens from both

East and West had met openly in a Warsaw Pact country to discuss such topics as

“‘writers and their integrity’” and “‘the future of European culture.’”746

745 U.S. Helsinki Commission, The Ottawa Human Rights Experts Meeting and the Future of the Helsinki Process, 56-62.

746 U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Restrictions on Artistic Freedom in the Soviet Union and the Budapest Cultural Forum, 98-109 and 158; The CSCE Digest, 2 November 1984, 3-4; and Korey, The Promises We Keep, 184-88. 387

The administration’s efforts to make Soviet leaders recognize the legitimacy of

diverse opinions were by no means confined to the Helsinki Process. In June 1985,

Reagan allowed executive branch officials to attend the “citizen diplomacy” conference about U.S.-Soviet relations held in Chautauqua, New York. During this meeting,

American private citizens saw U.S. and Soviet delegates engage in debates about issues

as diverse as human rights, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and regional conflicts.

While the Kremlin chose not to send a delegation of private citizens, Soviet

representatives had to field questions from their American counterparts and audience

members. As one author notes, the Chautauqua conference put Soviet delegates “in the

unfamiliar role of taking part in a free and open atmosphere of dialogue” and debate. By

participating in these discussions, they became better acquainted with the “values the

United States espouses—freedom of speech, press, and religion.”747

Perhaps as expected, the diverse steps that the Reagan administration took to

promote human rights in the Soviet Union from 1981 to 1985 failed to make a substantial

dent in the pervasive influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thinking. The accelerated

campaign to eradicate dissent that had begun in 1979 only intensified during the early

1980s. Even after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet government did not

move in the direction of creating democratic institutions and continued to throw a wide

variety of dissenters in prison. Despite these shortcomings, the Reagan administration

deserves credit for aligning itself with the transnational human rights activities based on

monitoring Soviet compliance with the Final Act and other internationally recognized

747 Ross Mackenzie, When Stars and Stripes Met Hammer and Sickle: The Chautauqua Conferences on U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1985-1989 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 18-43 and 186-9. 388

human rights agreements. This movement not only gathered strength during the 1980s,

but also helped protect the emergence of an autonomous civil society in the USSR. In

other words, Western governments and private citizens pressured Mikhail Gorbachev and

Soviet bureaucrats to respect the provisions of the Final Act and institutionalize laws that limited the power of the state. Before examining this development, however, we need to explore how Soviet leaders failed either to revive or enhance the international reputation

of Soviet-style socialism during the early to mid 1980s. 389

CHAPTER 9: THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT VERSUS DISSENTERS:

CONFLICTING VIEWS OF THE “GLOBALIZATION” OF HUMAN RIGHTS,

PEACE, AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION, JANUARY 1981-SEPTEMBER

1986

In 2005, Mikhail Gorbachev engaged in a spirited discussion about contemporary

global problems with Daisaku Ikeda, a well-known Japanese peace activist. During the

course of their conversation, Gorbachev reminisced about why he decided to reform the

USSR after he became General Secretary in 1985. While he pointed to economic

difficulties, he also admitted that the behavior of private citizens and government

officials had factored into his calculations. “At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of

the 1980s,” he argued, “a spontaneous, sometimes conscious movement arose” against a

“system” that “fettered [individual] freedom and initiative.” Fed up with the

government’s official ideology, “the intelligentsia waged war” against the CPSU “in the

name of creative liberty and freedom of discussion.” Therefore, “to be faithful to

historical truth,” Gorbachev conceded, “the demand for change [in the Soviet Union]

ripened first in society and was, in that sense, from below.”748

These words deserve attention because they help show the limitations of arguments that focus on the inherent weaknesses of Soviet dissent during the 1980s.749

748 See Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century: Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism, trans. by Richard L. Gage (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 31.

749 Robert Horvath addresses this topic in his work The Legacy of Soviet Dissent. See Ibid., 1-8, 81-2, 236- 8. See also Robert Sharlet, “Soviet Dissent since Brezhnev,” Current History 85, no. 513 (1986): 321-4 and 340; Roy Medvedev, “Andropov and the Dissidents: The Internal Atmosphere under the New Soviet Leadership,” Dissent 31, no. 1 (1984): 97-102; Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 8-9, 18-23; W.D. Connor, “Differentiation, Integration, and Political Dissent,” in 390

To illustrate this position, this chapter will move beyond the confines of human rights activities and calls for a universal glasnost. It will argue that the steady rise of non- official groups and informal associations revealed the growing difficulties orthodox

Marxist-Leninist leaders faced in accomplishing their long-term goal of imposing

“official norms” on Soviet private citizens and members of the intelligentsia.750 Instead of becoming more obedient, an increasing number of individuals decided to carve out separate spheres of existence outside the confines of official ideology where they could

pursue their interests without state interference.751 From this angle, orthodox policymakers proved unable to prevent private citizens and “liberal-minded” reformers from forging “the first cells of a potential civil society” that by definition challenged the

Kremlin’s monopoly on decision-making, education, information, and political participation.752

Dissent was also not as weak as it appeared because of the growing strength and sophistication of the transnational network dedicated to holding the Soviets accountable

Rudolf Tokes, ed., Dissent in the USSR (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1975), 155. See also Marshall S. Shatz, Soviet Dissent in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

750 See Gail W. Lapidus, “State and Society: Toward the Emergence of Civil Society in the Union,” in Seweryn Bialer, ed., Politics, Society, and Nationality Inside Gorbachev’s Russia (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1991), 128.

751 Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 209.

752 See Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union, 39; and Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 209-14. See also Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 1985-1990, 200. Nicolai N. Petro advances a similar argument. See Petro, “Perestroika From Below: Voluntary Sociopolitical Associations in the RSFSR,” in Alfred J. Rieber and Alvin Z. Rubinstin, ed., Perestroika at the Crossroads, 105. See also Jim Butterfield and Judith B. Sedatis, “The Emergence of Social Movements in the Soviet Union,” in Jim Butterfield and Judith B. Sedatis, ed., Perestroika From Below, 2-5. For a cogent analysis of the limitations dissenters faced in autonomous civil society, see Geoffrey A. Hosking, “The Beginnings of Independent Political Activity,” in Geoffrey A. Hosking et al., ed., The Road to Communism, 1-4; and U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Nyeformaly, 1-5; and Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 209-14. 391

for their human rights violations. Dissenters and émigrés continued to provide Western

private citizens and governments with information about conditions in the Soviet Union;

they also participated in activities that showed the hypocrisy of the Kremlin’s vocal

support for the Western European peace and American nuclear freeze movements.

Shaped by a broad international impulse against bureaucratic discretion and authority, a

wide array of Eastern European dissenters and Western private citizens, including some

peace activists, advanced arguments that linked international security to holding

governments accountable for how well they respected human rights and public oversight.

As the international prestige of the USSR plummeted, Western European leaders became

far more vocal in their criticisms of Soviet internal and international conduct.

In addition to exploring Soviet internal developments in detail, this chapter will

examine the diverse ways that dissenters and émigrés evaluated Reagan’s efforts to

promote human rights in the Soviet Union. It will also analyze the growing

disillusionment some of them felt for the viability of the Helsinki process. They had

every reason to feel this way given the enduring influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist

thought. Instead of heeding global public opinion, many officials felt even more

compelled to protect their population from ideological subversion and repress dissident activities. To defend the international prestige of Soviet-style socialism, they continued to attack the legitimacy of capitalist countries and the validity of reports about Soviet human rights violations. Not unaware of their regime’s worsening international reputation, Moscow created “public” organizations designed to counter the influence of 392

transnational actors that could sometimes transmit reports about human rights violations

across borders in a matter of hours.753

The Questioning of Bureaucratic Authority Continues

The Soviet government’s accelerated campaign to eradicate dissent that began in

1979 only grew in intensity after Reagan entered office. Between 1979 and 1983,

authorities arrested around 1,000 dissenters while Jewish and German emigration levels

continued to plummet. By 1982, the original Helsinki Watch Groups and the Working

Commission on Psychiatry had either disbanded or ceased to function. One year later, an

AI report estimated that 1,479 prisoners of conscience existed in the Soviet Union. Of course, the Politburo failed to root out all non-official activities. Periodic demonstrations

against “Russification” and poor working conditions took place in Georgia, Ukraine, the

Baltic republics, and Russia. A small number of private citizens continued to face certain

arrest for celebrating the International Human Rights Day (December 10) at Pushkin

Square. In 1984, 40,000 Jewish citizens gathered in “to commemorate the 40th

anniversary of the Minsk ghetto executions.” Against all odds, Baptists, Seventh-Day

Adventists, and Pentecostals continued to print samizdat literature using underground

presses.754

753 Applebaum, Gulag, 554-6.

754 Alexeyeva, On Soviet Dissent, 198, 212-4, 222-31, 243 and 360-76; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Basket I—Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Findings Eleven years After Helsinki, 100th Congress, 1st session, 1987 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 127, 139-142, and 183-190; Peter Reddaway, “Dissent in the Soviet Union,” Problems of Communism 32 (November-December 1983): 10-15; Roy Medvedev, “Andropov and Dissidents: The Internal Atmosphere under the New Soviet Leadership,” Dissent 31, no. 1 (1984): 97-100; Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Tenth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), 7-9; Twelfth Semiannual Report, 17-9; Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, 393

The scale of Soviet repression convinced many private citizens and some

members of the CPSU to take their non-official activities underground or move in the

direction of engaging in more practical political activities. After arrests decimated their

ranks, the Christian Committee and Solzhenitsyn Fund refused to announce the names of

replacements. In the summer of 1981, an anonymous movement called the Democratic

People’s Front emerged in Estonia that began circulating leaflets calling on the Kremlin

to “free all political prisoners” and adhere to the provisions of the Final Act “in order to

create a democratic society.” Unhappy with the unwillingness of human rights activists

to embrace specific political objectives, anonymous private citizens in Moscow

announced the existence of a new organization dedicated to making the Soviet Union a

“people’s democracy.”755

Other groups advocated a similar social-democratic agenda. Unhappy with the

bureaucratic distortions of Soviet-style socialism, several Soviet youths, one of whom

worked in an official foreign policy think tank, formed an anonymous group called the

“Young Socialists” in 1982. The KGB felt compelled to arrest these individuals because they rejected any suggestion that “‘real socialism’” existed in the Soviet Union and praised the democratic credentials of European communist parties. In December 1984,

Soviet authorities discovered and took steps to eradicate another underground group called the “Mensheviks” who wanted to create a social-democratic party capable of

Fourteenth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 10-4; Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Sixteenth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. State Department, 1984), 7-15; Eighteenth Semiannual Report, 5-9. See also USSR News Brief (31 December 1984): 6-8; Ibid., (15 July 1985): 4; Ibid., (31 October 1984): 3; Ibid., (15 January 1985): 1-2; Ibid. (29 February 1984): 1-2; Ibid (15 February 1984): 1-2.

755 Alexeyeva, On Soviet Dissent, 380, 384; and Rein Taagepera, Softening Without Liberalization in the Soviet Union: The Case of Juri Kukk (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 186-7. 394

generating mass working-class support. Around the same time, “young” researchers at an

official Moscow engineering institute created an independent study group that discussed

the problems of “bureaucracy and corruption” within Soviet society.756

These groups were only the tip of the iceberg. Soviet authorities also repressed

“above ground” and underground manifestations of dissent as diverse as feminist clubs,

Hare Krishna sects, yoga clubs, unofficial artist seminars, Christian rock groups, and non-

official karate lessons. They also saw signs of virulent Russian nationalism and repressed

genuine fascist gatherings that praised Nazi Germany.757 To the dismay of the Kremlin,

Soviet and Eastern European private citizens were not immune to the explosive growth of

anti-nuclear and peace activities that took place in the United States and

Western Europe during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In June 1982, a group of Moscow

intellectuals announced the formation of the Group to Establish Trust Between the USSR

and USA (Moscow Trust Group), a loosely affiliated peace organization with like-

minded branches throughout the country.

While Trust Group members stressed their loyalty to Moscow, they had a

profound distrust of governmental bureaucratic discretion and authority. As part of a

larger effort to make Moscow consult domestic opinion on arms control issues, they

announced their own proposals designed to reduce the risk of nuclear war. They also

released documents explaining how Cold War tensions and the threat of nuclear war

756 “Soviet ‘young socialists’ on trial for doubting Kremlin’s socialist credentials,” The Christian Science Monitor, 14 February 1983, 7. See also USSR News Brief (15 March 1984): 3-4. For an account of the Menshevik arrests, see Ibid. (31 January 1985): 3

757 See also USSR News Brief (15 August 1984): 7; Ibid., (15 March 1984): 4-5 395

would not disappear until the Soviet Union and the United States became enmeshed in

“’four-sided dialogue’” that included equal contributions from politicians and private

citizens. To make this vision a reality, they urged the adoption of measures designed to increase the level of mutual trust between the two countries, including pen-pal programs

and exchanges that included the children of politicians. Since members feared the

bureaucratic inertia of official Soviet peace groups, they held independent peace

demonstrations and petition drives that garnered hundreds of signatures.758 Around the

same time, two pacifist “hippie” groups known as “Good Will” and “Independent

Initiative” found inspiration in the messages of John Lennon and managed to hold

demonstrations with hundreds of participants. Fed up with “total state control” and “the

suffocating domination of moribund dogma,” members called for the abolition of the

death penalty, an end to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and “grass roots contacts

between peoples of the East and West.”759

These activities were by no means unprecedented developments in Soviet history.

In the aftermath of Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” on Stalin’s crimes in 1956, many

758 Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Unofficial Peace Activism in the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., In Search of Civil Society: Independent Peace Movements in the Soviet Bloc (New York: Routledge, 1990), 11-13, Edward Kuznetsov, “The Independent Peace Movement in the USSR,” in Ibid., 54-70. See also “Address to Peace Supporters” and “Appeal to Governments and Peoples of the East and West,” Freedom at Issue 70 (January-February 1983): 40-1; “Moscow’s Independent Peace Group,” Ibid., 68 (September-October 1982): 28-9. U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, From Below: Independent Peace and Environmental Movements in the USSR and Eastern Europe (New York: The Helsinki Watch Committee, 1987), 107-135; USSR News Brief (31 May 1984): 8; and Ibid. (15 June 1984): 3

759 See also U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, From Below, 145-8, 155-63. See also USSR News Brief (31 May 1984): 7; Ibid. (29 February 1984): 2; U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Violations of the Helsinki Accords: August 1983-September 1984 (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1984), 118-22; U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Ten Years Later: Violations of the Helsinki Accords (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1986), 207-15. 396

educated Soviet private citizens began meeting in small groups to discuss Soviet internal

behavior and foreign policy.760 Yet, evidence suggests that non-official associations and groups became even more prevalent during the 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s. According to one publication, “rock groups, sports clubs, amateur choirs and theaters, poetry circles and seminars on religion and philosophy . . . that kept their political profiles low or non-

existent” proliferated before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.761 Of course, the growth

in non-official activities in no way represented an immediate threat to the Soviet

leadership’s tight grip on power. The chances of a successful nationalist uprising taking

place remained low and the vast majority of Soviet workers remained passive. As one

dissenter put it, far too many Soviet citizens lacked a “sense of human rights” and viewed

the “struggle for freedom of speech and the free exchange of information as an

unacceptable attack on the public order.” “Our national blindness in this respect,” he

wrote, “stems from the old Russian misconception that state and society are identical.”762

The importance that some scholars have placed on the “authoritarian character of

Russian and Soviet . . . political culture” has led them to emphasize the weakness of

Soviet dissent during the early to mid 1980s.763 Such arguments have significant merit,

760 Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union, 37-41. See also Alexeyeva, The Thaw Generation, 90- 115.

761 U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Nyeformaly: Civil Society in the USSR (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1990), 5.

762 CHRUR 46 (April-June 1982): 6.

763 For example, see Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 8-9. He advances this argument even though he fully endorses the position that “Soviet society was in 1985 at least better prepared for democratizing change than it had been a generation earlier, just after Stalin’s death.” See Ibid., 18-23. From my perspective, Brown could have gone further in showing how the activities of private citizens contributed to Gorbachev’s 397

but they tend to obscure the larger picture. The growth in official activities that took

place in the 1970s and 1980s reveals the difficulties orthodox Marxist-Leninist leaders

faced in accomplishing their long-term goal of imposing “official norms” on Soviet private citizens and members of the intelligentsia. In other words, a better educated, increasingly urbanized population with greater knowledge of the outside world had become less tolerant of their leaders’ inability to solve long-standing problems such as food shortages, economic stagnation, and “the and corruption of local officials.”764 Suffocated by the ritual of public obedience, an increasing number of

individuals decided to carve out separate spheres of existence outside the confines of

orthodox Marxist-Leninist ideology where they could live in “truth.”765

The writings of the Czech dissenter Vaclav Havel help illustrate the importance of

this development. In his article “The Power of Powerlessness,” he described how

activities as innocuous as playing in rock bands behind closed doors or discussing

unorthodox ideas at cocktail parties represented a powerful form of dissent that struck at

the heart of the Marxist-Leninist project.766 Because “post-totalitarian” regimes like the

Soviet Union strove for conformity at every level of society, he posed the question:

What else are those initial attempts at social organization than the efforts of a certain part of society to live—as a society—within the truth, to rid itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to extricate itself radically from its involvement in the post-totalitarian system. What is it but a non-violent

mindset that the Soviet system needed fundamental reforms. See also Peter Osnos, “Soviet Dissidents and the American Press,” Columbia Journalism Review (November/December 1977): 32-7.

764 CHRUR 48 (October 82-April 83): 6.

765 Vaclav Havel, “The Power of Powerlessness,” in John Keane, ed., The Power of the Powerless (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe: 1985): 79.

766 Ibid., 80. 398

attempt by people to negate the system within themselves and to establish their lives on a new basis, that of their own property identity.767

Once again, the internal cohesion of the USSR remained secure as long as orthodox Soviet policymakers dominated the levers of power. Dissenters themselves also were in no position to create enduring democratic institutions during the early to mid

1980s. Nevertheless, the signs of an independent civil society that became more visible during the early 1980s meant that Soviet leaders actually sat on a large reservoir of potential dissent.768 According to Havel, each decision to find a way of living in “truth” helped discredit governmental structures designed to stifle an individual’s humanity.

Over time, private citizens could erode the legitimacy of Soviet institutions to the point that they would have to be replaced by new ones that had evolved from “below” and were put together in a fundamentally different way.769

The emphasis Havel placed on grassroots institution building proved unrealistic in the case of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, his words appear prophetic because Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev worried about the potential ill-effects of a society becoming more disillusioned with official ideology and governmental performance. While by no means a Western-style democrat, he and other “liberal-minded” reformers within the

Soviet Communist leadership feared that the broad impulse against bureaucratic authority

767 Ibid., 79.

768 After he gained his political freedom in 1986, Yuri Orlov made the appropriate observation that “I was personally acquainted with in one way or another with about 10,000 intellectuals, mostly scientific colleagues, and I can say that the [open] dissidents were only the tip of the iceberg that now, in the Gorbachev era, is revealing itself.” See Orlov, Before and After Glasnost (New York: The Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, 1989), 17.

769 Havel, “The Power of Powerlessness,” 84-5. See also Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century, 31. 399

that pervaded Soviet society during the early 1980s would one day make their nation

ungovernable. “At some administrative levels,” he later wrote, “there emerged disrespect

for the law and encouragement of eyewash and bribery, servility and glorification.

Working people were justly indignant at the behavior of people who, enjoying trust and

responsibility, abused power, suppressed criticism . . . [and carried out] criminal acts.”

“In general,” Gorbachev continued, the “practical steps which were taken by the Party

and State bodies lagged behind the requirements of the time and of life itself. On the

whole, society was becoming increasingly unmanageable.”770

Along with facing a society increasingly disillusioned with everyday life and official ideology, the Kremlin had other problems. In the face of systematic repression, the transnational human rights network dedicated to monitoring Soviet compliance with the Final Act and international human rights standards continued to operate. As a member of the U.S. Helsinki Watch Group explained in 1985, Western governments and private citizens have continued to work “in concert” to publicize Soviet human rights

“violations” and “extend moral support to oppressed groups.”771 This observation has

merit because a number of dissenters took steps to keep transnational human rights

activities alive. Members of the Lithuanian Catholic Committee managed to operate

“above ground” until the summer of 1984 and sent reports abroad describing the

770 Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 23. The former Soviet General Dimitri Volkogonov agreed with Gorbachev’s observations. See Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 340. According to future Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, he told Gorbachev that” Everything is rotten. It has to be changed.” See Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom, trans. Catherine Fitzpatrick (New York: The Press, 1991): 37. For other accounts of the general malaise that gripped Soviet society in the early 1980s, see Laquer, The Long Road to Freedom: Russia and Glasnost (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989), 195-6.

771 U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Human Rights and the CSCE Process, 32. 400

destruction of churches and prevalence of sanctioned discrimination against religious

observers. Even when forced “underground,” members kept contributing to and

distributing The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania.772

In 1982, a new group emerged in Ukraine dedicated to legalizing the Uniate

Church known as the Initiative Group to Defend the Rights of Believers and the Church.

Following the example of its Lithuanian counterpart, this group began publishing and

distributing the publication The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Ukraine in 1984.

After the Ukrainian Watch Group disbanded, a new organization known as the Ukrainian

Helsinki Initiative Group emerged and began to send documents to the representatives of

foreign governments outlining Soviet human rights violations.773 In a similar vein,

members of the Invalid Group and the non-official union, SMOT, continued to produce

documents that reached Western audiences. The Chronicle of Current Events may have

ceased appearing in 1983, but publications documenting Soviet domestic abuses such as

the USSR News Brief, Bulletin V, and The Herald of the Human Rights Movement found their way abroad. 774

As they had in the past, Soviet émigrés brought samizdat literature to the attention

of Western audiences. For example, an organization called the External Representation

772 For example, see CCCL 51 (19 March 1982): 17; and U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Violations of the Helsinki Accords, 169-73. See also USSR News Brief (15 August 1984): 4

773 Jaroslaw Bilocerkowycz, Soviet Ukrainian Dissent: A Study of Political Association (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1988), 93-5, 98-9, 86-9.

774 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Basket I—Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Findings Eleven years After Helsinki, 135-8; Alexeyeva, On Soviet Dissent, 373-78. See also USSR News Brief (31 March 1984): 6; and Reddaway, “Dissent in the Soviet Union,” 12- 3. 401

of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group under the direction of Petr Grigorenko forwarded the accounts of dissenters to Western publications and governments. The journal Freedom at

Issue published some of these documents, including a letter that a group of prisoners in

“Perm camp No. 36” addressed to Reagan. After explaining the reprisals taken against prisoners whose writings reached the West, the authors wrote that “the existence of political prisoners in our enlightened age is as much an anachronism as the slave trade.”

Well-aware of developments in the United States because of international broadcasts, they asked Reagan to ensure that his administration’s “‘Project Truth’” included “facts about Soviet political prisoners.” They also urged him to endorse the creation of a

Western humanitarian commission that would issue a report after visiting “camps in

Ulster, South Africa, and the Soviet Union.” A former member of the Moscow Watch

Group moved to Washington, D.C. and helped found the Center for Democracy, a NGO that worked to “maintain communication” with dissenters and democratize the Soviet

Union.775

Soviet émigrés also continued to attend Final Act follow-up conferences and

experts meetings. In Madrid, U.S. delegates went out of their way to secure Avital

Shcharansky the credentials necessary to hold press conferences. They also continued to

deliver testimony before Congressional committees and the U.S. Helsinki Commission

outlining the Soviet government’s behavior and the plight of dissenters as diverse as Jews

and Crimean Tatars. To cite one example, Grigorenko told U.S. Helsinki Commissioners

775 “Letters from the USSR to the President of the United States Ronald Reagan,” Freedom at Issue 72 (May-June 1983): 32-3; and U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Human Rights and the CSCE Process, 46-7. 402

that “the so-called Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of today is no more than a

bureaucratic hierarchy of overseers over a people wholly deprived of rights.” The

dissolution of the Ukrainian Watch Group, he commented, “in no way amounted to a

“Soviet victory.” Instead, this group succeeded in becoming “a factor in the national

liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people” and an important part of “international

life.”776

The U.S. Helsinki Commission, Congressional committees, and the executive branch continued to publish and disseminate a significant amount of documents related to dissent and transnational human rights activity. After holding hearings on the status of

human rights protection in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe near the end of 1983, the

House Committee on Foreign Relations published a report that showed official anti-

Semitic posters commonplace in Moscow, one of which showed “Zionists and Jews”

constructing “Nazi death camps” in Lebanon.777 The U.S. Helsinki Commission also

published the documents “of the Helsinki monitoring groups in the U.S.S.R. and

Lithuania.” Committed to publicizing Soviet human rights violations, commission

staffers utilized samizdat literature to prepare short commentaries that hundreds of

American radio stations broadcast such as “National Rights Issues in the USSR,”

776 CSCE Digest, 17 May 1983, 3; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Fifth Anniversary of the Formation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, 97th Congress, 1st session, 1981(Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), 9 and 31-2.

777 The copies of the anti-Semitic posters can be found in U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, The Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 98th Cong., 1st session, 1983 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Press, 1983), 100-4. 403

“Religion in the USSR,” and “Social and Economic Rights in the USSR.” They also

provided information to “European youth groups interested” in the Helsinki process.778

In December 1983, the State Department published a report that explored the

history of the Soviet regime’s efforts to eradicate manifestations of dissent from the

October Revolution right up to the present day. Despite the dissolution of “the Moscow

Helsinki watch group,” the report indicated, “the human rights movement survives and

continues to attract new adherents.” No matter what Soviet officials might say, “known

activists are only the visible peak of a much larger iceberg of silent sympathizers from

which new activists step forward even in the most difficult periods.”779 These

publications complemented the detailed reports about the appalling extent of repression

in the Soviet Union that NGOs such as AI and the U.S. Helsinki Watch Group created.780

The steady outpouring of information coincided with other developments that

showed the growing sophistication and strength of the transnational human rights network dedicated to monitoring Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the Final

Act and international human rights standards. Following the advice of Orlov and

Sakharov, Helsinki Committees from countries such as the United States and Norway

created the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) in 1982. Designed

778 CSCE Digest, 11 July 1983, 11; and Ibid., 12 October 1982, 13.

779 U.S. State Department, “Human Rights in the U.S.S.R,” Foreign Affairs Note (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1983), 1.

780 For example, see U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, The Independent Peace Movement in the Soviet Union: Information booklet on the Moscow Group to Establish Trust between the USSR and the USA and its Affiliates (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1984); 39 Who Believed : Helsinki monitors in the USSR (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1980); Fitzpatrick, The Moscow Helsinki Monitors; A Decade of Dedication : Charter 77, 1977 to 1987 (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch, 1987). See also Amnesty International Report, 1983 (London: Amnesty International, 1983). 404

to coordinate and strengthen the activities of private groups with similar agendas, as well as speak for imprisoned political prisoners, members of this “umbrella” organization

forged working relationships with Western governments. They also wrote numerous

reports about conditions in nations as diverse as Turkey, , and the Soviet Union.

Much like the Moscow Trust Group, IHF reports argued that the “Helsinki Process” meant that private citizens had a pivotal role to play in breaking down the governmental barriers that had kept Europe divided since the end of World War II. Committed to this ideal, the IHF played a pivotal role in bringing about the meeting of Western and Eastern private citizens that took place in Budapest near the end of 1985 at the Final Act experts meeting on cultural affairs.781

Émigrés from the Baltic republics and their Western supporters also took other

important steps to “globalize” the issue of Soviet human rights violations. In the summer

of 1985, the Baltic World Conference held an international tribunal against the USSR in

Copenhagen, Denmark. The organizers of this meeting wanted to raise global awareness about “the illegal Soviet occupation” of the Baltic republics and “document the atrocities

and genocide committed against the Baltic people.” To accomplish this task, witnesses

gave testimony and submitted reports on topics as diverse as Soviet atrocities committed

during World War II, the “militarization of . . . Baltic youths,” and Soviet “colonization”

of the Baltic republics. After this body issued a “guilty” verdict, some participants flew

to Stockholm and embarked on a “Baltic Peace Cruise” to Helsinki so they could hold

781 For a good account of how the IHF came into existence see, Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 174-5, 178-9, and 199. The quotes can be found in International Citizens Helsinki Watch Conference, International Citizens Helsinki Watch Conference Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Lake Como, Italy, September 6-10, 1982 (Vienna: International Helsinki Federation, 1982), 6-7 and 45-49. 405

demonstrations at the same time that signatories gathered to commemorate the tenth

anniversary of the Final Act.782

Besides taking its lumps in the United Nations, the Soviet government also

encountered difficulties in other international bodies. Several delegations at the 1983

Socialist International (SI) meeting criticized Moscow’s decision to arrest and prosecute

the “young socialists” for their political beliefs. Even more troubling, Soviet delegates

had to swallow this organization’s printing of Italian Communist Party documents that

advocated the “democratization” of the Soviet system.783 In February 1983, the Kremlin

withdrew from the World Psychiatric Association instead of defending Soviet practices

against resolutions calling for the suspension or expulsion of “the Communist Country

for the abuse of psychiatry to suppress dissidents.” An official publication explained this

course of action as necessity because “it is perfectly clear that the WPA leadership has

allowed itself to become involved in outright political activity and has supported slander

against the Soviet Union.”784

Like the Danes, Western European governments showed greater willingness to

focus international attention on the issue of Soviet human rights violations During the

Final Act follow-up meeting in Madrid and experts meeting in locations such as Ottawa,

Western European delegations continued to document Soviet human rights with much

782 Baltic Tribunal Against the Soviet Union, July 25 & 26, 1985 Copenhagen (Rockville, Maryland: World Federation of Free Latvians, 1985), 1, 7-8, 31-8, 45-7, 60-64, and 190-4; and “Baltic tribunal strains relations with Moscow/Soviet attack Copenhagen Convention on human rights in Baltic Republics,” The Guardian (London), 23 July 1985.

783 CSCE Digest, 17 May 1983, 5.

784 “Soviet Union Quits World Psychiatric Association,” 11 February 1983, The Associated Press; and The CDSP 35, no. 13 (27 April 1983): 1-3. 406

more intensity than they had in Belgrade. In 1983, the passed a resolution that referred to the Soviet Union’s continued occupation of the Baltic

Republics as inconsistent with Article VIII (self-determination) of the Final Act. After making reference to the Nazi/Soviet pact of 1939 and an appeal that Baltic dissenters had sent to the United Nations in 1979, the document called on Helsinki signatories to discuss the “plight” of Baltic peoples. It also urged private citizens to “submit the issue of the

Baltic States to the Decolonization Subcommittee of the U.N.”785

Consistent with these positions, the Norwegian foreign minister publicly

denounced the Soviet government’s lack of compliance with the human rights provisions

of the Final Act in 1983. Not to be outdone, the Norwegian parliament later conducted

international hearings on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and forwarded the results of

the meeting to the U.N. Secretary General. It also asked the Soviet Union to let Andrei

Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner live in Norway.786 One year later, over two-hundred

legislators from six Western countries such as the United States and gathered for

the first formal meeting of the International Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in

the Soviet Union. The participants discussed the Kremlin’s treatment of Sakharov and

“the plight of Soviet Germans and Jews.” They also issued a statement stressing the

“need for a free flow of information in the Soviet Union.”787

785 See U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, The Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 47.

786 “Norwegian Leaders’ ‘Unseemly Accusations of Soviet Human Rights Violations,” BBC, 30 March 1983.

787 “New Human Rights Group Condemns Soviet Union,” The Associated Press, 27 May 1984. See also “Statement by Hon. Rita E. Hauser: Chair, Advisory Board--The International Parliamentary Group for 407

Near the end of 1983, the German Chancellor wrote a private letter

to Reagan thanking him for Walter Stoessel’s recent discussions with German officials

concerning Soviet violations of the Final Act. Instead of focusing on the plight of Soviet

Germans as previous chancellors had, he “strongly appealed to Andropov to release

Sakharov and allow him to emigrate to the West.” His “Foreign Minister [Hans-Dietrich]

Genscher raised the cases of Shcharansky, Orlov, and Rudenko.” “I am convinced,” Kohl wrote, “that the human rights situation [in the Soviet Union] can be

improved . . . through dogged, silent diplomacy combined with public pressure.”788

When attending a banquet during his visit to Moscow in 1984, French President François

Mitterrand defended the legitimacy of transnational human rights activities. He also told his hosts in plain view that Sakharov’s fate “cast doubt” on the Soviet Union’s commitment to the Final Act. One year later, both the Italian Prime Minister and the

Pope held private meetings with Elena Bonner when she received permission to travel abroad.789

The growing willingness of Western European officials to voice their criticisms of

Soviet domestic conduct and the creation of coordinating groups such as the IHF only

reveal one part of a larger story. The Moscow Trust Group and other peace activists

Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” Federal Government Organizations (FG) 101, Box 1: Folder: 348858, RRPL. U.S. Helsinki Commission Staffers attended a preparatory conference on the International Parliamentary Union on Human Rights in the Soviet Union from 26-27 May 1984. See CSCE Digest, 15 June 1984, 14.

788 Letter, Helmut Kohl to Ronald Reagan,” N.D., European and Soviet Affairs Directorate: NSC Records, Box 3, Folder: USSR-Human Rights—Stoessel Mission (3/5), RRPL.

789 “French President Says Sakharov Case an Issue Because of Helsinki Accords,” The Associated Press, 21 June 1984; and “Bonner, Craxi Meet,” Washington Post, 6 December 1985, A34. Unlike her meeting with the Italian prime minister, Bonner refused to comment on her meeting with the Pope. See “Bonner has Secret Meeting with the Pope,” AAPINTNEWS (Associated Press International News), 8 December 1985. 408

showed the hypocrisy of the Soviet government’s support for Western peace movements.

They did so by capturing the attention of Western journalists and sending documents to

foreign audiences that explained the harsh repression they faced for carrying out non-

official peace activities.790 For example, the U.S. Helsinki Watch Group published an

interview with Sergei Batovrin, a Trust Group member who Moscow put in a psychiatric

hospital and later expelled. When asked why so few peace activists existed in the Soviet

Union, he replied:

If Oleg Kharkhardin (vice-president of Soviet Peace Committee) were in and Yury Zhukov (chairman of same) were in a psychiatric hospital, and if the apartments of activists in the Soviet Peace Committee were surrounded twenty-four hours a day by security vehicles, and if they were subjected to exhausting interrogations, endless threats, detentions, and searches, then it would be hard to imagine how many members and supporters the Soviet Peace Committee would have.791

Soviet peace activists also became a thorn in the side of Soviet officials because they

took steps to link the issues of peace, nuclear disarmament, and respect for basic human

rights. Near the beginning of 1984, a group called “Estonian Peace Supporters” sent a

letter to the Final Act meeting in Stockholm calling for a nuclear free zone in Northern

Europe that included Scandinavian countries and the Baltic republics. Instead of limiting

their appeals to nuclear weapons reductions, however, the letter explained how

“adherence to human rights [was] a prerequisite for trust and security among nations.”792

790 For an excellent complication of the documents that the Trust Group sent to Western audiences and the reports of Western journalists, see U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, The Independent Peace Movement in the Soviet Union (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, 1984). See also USSR News Brief (31 January 1984): 7-8.

791 U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, The Independent Peace Movement in the Soviet Union (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, 1984), N.P.

409

Even though many Western peace activists found criticisms of the Soviet Union anathema, a number of American private citizens endorsed the specific link between the respect for human rights and reducing the risk of nuclear war. On 5 June 1984, voters approved a proposition that required the Los Angeles county board to transmit a message

to American and Soviet leaders indicating that the “risk of nuclear war can be reduced” if

“all people have the ability to express their opinions freely” and all signatories follow the

provisions of the Final Act. Four months later, the Massachusetts House of

Representatives adopted a resolution urging “the Soviet Union to abide by the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights . . . and the Helsinki Agreements as a means of reducing

the threat of nuclear war.”793

The close link between the respect for human rights and international security

gained ground in Western peace circles. Near the end of 1986, a broad collation of

Eastern and Western activists sent a document to the Final Act follow-up meeting in

Vienna called “Giving Real Life to the Helsinki Accords.” Employing forceful language,

this document advocated a “détente from below” that rejected “all kinds of double

standards for East and West in the application of basic [human] rights.” “In our view, working for civil liberties and social rights is not only a moral obligation for everyone cherishing human dignity and democratic ideals, but also a political necessity if we want to create the conditions for a stable, lasting and democratic peace.” In the end, “official

792 Rein Taagepera, “Citizens’ Peace Movement in the Soviet Baltic Republics,” Journal of Peace Research 23 (June 1986): 190.

793 Vladimir Bukovsky, “Peace as a Political Weapon,” in Sidney Hook et al., ed., Soviet Hypocrisy and Western Gullibility (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1987), 31-2. See also CSCE Digest, 15 June 1984, 4-5. This publication linked the passage of the L.A. proposition to Soviet persecution of the Moscow Trust Group. 410

pledges of peaceful intentions” meant little unless members of society trusted one another

and governments subjected themselves to the oversight of private citizens.794

These arguments are of the utmost importance because they echoed long-standing

dissident arguments about the close connections between glasnost, détente, and peace. In

1981, Sakharov managed to send a message abroad that reiterated this position. “The most important conditions for international trust and security,” he told Western audiences, “are the openness of society . . . [and] the observation [sic] of civil and political rights.” The Soviet government failed this litmus test because “the key features of the system formed under Stalin have basically survived,” which included “the monopoly of the Party and the state in economics and ideology.”795 An anonymous

political prisoner essentially endorsed the same view: “As long as respect for the

individual and his rights are trampled upon [in the Soviet Union], the world is in danger

of being blown up and dialogue founded on mutual trust is not possible.” Given this

reality, “each country and each person must realize today that détente is inseparable from

the question of human rights.”796

The growing strength and sophistication of the transnational network dedicated to

monitoring Soviet and Eastern European compliance with the Final Act and international

human rights standards raises question of how dissenters and the growing Soviet émigré

community viewed the Reagan administration’s behavior during from 1981 to mid 1986.

794 U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, From Below, 240-5.

795 Sakharov, Memoirs, 662

796 CCE 61 (1981): 201. 411

Plenty of evidence suggests that Reagan’s harsh denunciations of the Soviet Union and vocal defense of freedom inspired dissenters. The mother of “prisoner of conscience”

Mart Niklus wrote a private letter to the President that applauded his “staunch” defense

“of human rights.” A group of female political prisoners managed to smuggle out a letter

that described their hunger strikes and congratulated the President for his reelection.

After being denied emigration permission, a group of Soviet Jews issued a statement that expressed its “’deep gratitude to Reagan for not letting down our hopes for exit from the

Soviet Union.’”797 Behind bars, Anatoly Shcharansky and other prisoners applauded

Reagan for speaking the “truth” about the Soviet Union in his “evil empire” speech.

They also called their bible study sessions “‘Reaganite readings’” after the President had

declared 1983 “‘the Year of the Bible.’”798

These positive assessments were by no means unanimous. In a public letter explaining his refusal to attend a White House luncheon for dissenters, Alexander

Solzhenitsyn excoriated the administration’s public hesitations about meeting with “‘an extreme Russian nationalist.’” Elena Bonner thought Reagan could have done more to secure the release of her husband and criticized the executive branch’s preference for

“quiet” human rights diplomacy. Many émigrés and dissenters continued to view the

Soviet government’s harsh repression of dissent as a function of Western weakness and

797 Letter, Elfriede Niklus to Ronald Reagan, 17 December 1981, Human Rights, Box 1, Folder: 052700- 063999, RRPL; and Kiron Skinner et al., Reagan, 287-8; and “Soviet Jews Urge Washington to discuss human rights in arms talks,” United Press International, 7 December 1984.

798 Natan Sharansky, trans. Stefani Hoffman, Fear No Evil (New York: Random House, 1988), 366. See also Natan Sharasnky, “The Prisoner’s Conscience.” Available [Online]: http://jewishworldreview.com/0604/sharansky_reagan.php3 [10 August 2007]; and Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 190-1. 412

vacillation.799 After receiving permission to emigrate, Yury Yarim-Agaev criticized

Western politicians for allowing the dissolution of the Moscow Watch Group without any

threats of retaliation. “It can definitely be stated that the powerful West, with a

population of many millions, has capitulated once again.” Before signing any new

cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union,” he recommended, “Western countries

should present the ultimatum that these people first be released.”800

Vladimir Bukovsky voiced similar concerns near the end of 1985. He believed

that “the combination of Soviet psychological warfare and Western willingness to be deceived has paralyzed the will of even the most resolute and wise leaders.” He accused the Reagan administration of “reluctantly sliding into détente” and could not account for

why “meaningless arms control negotiations are still on top of the American agenda,

while issues of human rights are on the bottom.” “In the joint statement issued after the

recent summit meeting in Geneva,” he observed, “human rights problems are barely mentioned and described only as “‘humanitarian cases.’” Echoing commonplace criticisms of Carter, he asserted that Reagan failed to grasp that “human rights in the

Soviet Union is the central political issue, not a humanitarian one.”801

Sensitive to Western appeasement of Soviet belligerence and repression,

Bukovsky also castigated Reagan for remaining an active participant in the Helsinki

process. “The West seems to have accepted another Soviet idea,” he lamented, “and

799 “Solzhenitsyn to Reagan: Spasibo, Nyet,” Washington Post, 16 May 1982, C2.

800 “Moscow’s Helsinki Watch Group,” Freedom at Issue 69 (November-December 1982): 21-2.

801 Bukovsky, To Chose Freedom, 187-8. 413 agreed to discuss ‘trust-building measures’ with the Soviet Union separately from the issue of human rights.” “The Stockholm conference is probably the most vivid example of how little Western politicians understand about the nature of the problem they confront.” According to Shcharansky, the results of the Madrid follow-up meeting failed to meet the expectations of many political prisoners. “We read it [the concluding document] carefully” and noticed “how all sides. . . . made promises” to respect basic human rights. “The politicals did not conceal their disappointment, and one of them began to circulate a new curse: ‘Madrid, you mother . . cker.’”802

This harsh language resonated with a wide variety of Soviet émigrés. After a several Helsinki monitors died in Soviet prisons, a number of them wrote a letter to the

New York Times in 1985 calling on the United States to abrogate the Final Act on the grounds that the agreement “provides a degree of complicity and acceptance by the West of Soviet” human rights violations and international violence.803 During testimony before the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Yarim-Agaev took specific shots at the Reagan administration’s conscious decision not to link the signing of cooperative agreements to tangible improvement in Soviet internal behavior:

Ironically, the Helsinki accords designed to establish linkage between security, cultural cooperation and human rights, is now serving to destroy such linkage. There is a total disjunction in the Geneva arms control talks between arms control and human rights. A scientific exchange, a vital concern of the Soviet leadership, was, in effect, detached from concern for human rights when Dr. Frank Press, the

802 Ibid., 179-80; and Sharansky, Fear No Evil, 364. Alexander Ginsburg voiced a similar message. On 22 November 1982, he argued that “the West should cancel the gas-pipeline deal. Then, keep up the pressure, relentlessly. Don’t give the Soviet leadership another inch. The West has never been as conciliatory toward the Soviet Union as it is now.” See “As Dissidents See It,” Newsweek, 22 November 1982, 47

803 U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Human Rights and the CSCE Process, 74. 414

president of the National Academy of Sciences signed a new agreement with the Soviets precisely on the fifth anniversary of Sakharov’s banishment to Gorky.804

When pressed to offer an opinion on the Reagan administration’s efforts to promote

human rights in the Soviet Union, he stressed the lack of concrete results. Since “[f]ive

Helsinki monitors died recently in the camps,” he could not say “anything positive” about

the executive branch. Because of the tools at their disposal, every American politician

has “a complicity” in the death of these individuals.805

Although sympathetic to arguments calling on Western nations to move in the direction of firm linkage, some émigrés found the idea of giving up on the Helsinki process short-sighted. Ludmilla Alexeyeva, the foreign representative of the now defunct

Moscow Watch Group, called “opposition to the Helsinki Final Act . . . a weak argument mainly because this idea arose among Soviet emigrants and not within the country.” “To this day . . . not one voice from within the Soviet Union has supported this idea.”806 She may have overstated her case, but there can be little doubt that many émigrés and even well-known dissenters such as Sakharov felt a growing frustration with Moscow’s determination to punish non-official activities.807 This frustration was not out of place

804 Ibid., 48.

805 Ibid., 57.

806 Ibid., 39.

807 On 29 July 1985, Nuam Meiman, one of the two former Moscow Watch Group members still living in the Soviet Union outside the confines of jail, told a Western journalist that “the dissident movement of the 1970s is dead” and “the human rights situation in the Soviet Union is worse today than it was when the Helsinki Pact was signed.” See “Soviet Human Rights Battle: Only Isolated Voices Remain,” The New York Times, 29 July 1985, A1. 415

given the inability of many Soviet policymakers to escape the confines of orthodox

Marxist-Leninist thought.

Defending the Fortress of Marxist-Leninism: The Soviet Union, Transnational Dissent, and Human rights, January 1981-February 1985

During the early to mid 1980s, official publications portrayed the Soviet Union as

a fortress under siege. In September 1981, the first deputy Chairman of the KGB

Semyon Tsvigun published an article called “The Intrigues of Foreign Intelligence

Services” in the Communist Party journal Kommunist. Paying particular attention to the activities of private citizens across the globe, he recounted how “more than 400 anti-

Soviet centers, organizations, committees and groups engage in subversive activities against our country.” He also mentioned the World Congress of Free Ukrainians.

Besides working with Zionist organizations, it had outlined a joint program of action that called on Ukrainian groups and organizations in the Baltic republics to publicize Soviet violations of the Helsinki agreements.808

Well aware of the rise of Solidarity movement in Poland and the existence of transnational human rights critiques, Tsvigun castigated individuals who wanted to

“’improve and democratize the Soviet model of socialism.” He even felt compelled to denounce “religious mystical groups” such as “the Krishna Consciousness society.”

Disturbed at the growth of independent thought, he warned how class adversaries wanted to “organize groups of young men and women on the basis of an enthusiasm for ‘pop music’ and ‘the Western way of life.’” He also referred to how “the creation of ‘various unions,’ ‘clubs,’ theaters and seminars made up of anti-social elements” called into

808 CDSP 33, no. 49 (6 January 1982): 4-5. 416

question the legitimacy of “existing social associations and organizations of the working people.”809

These words had much in common with Andropov’s evaluations of domestic developments in 1981. A report he sent to the Central Committee explained how the

KGB had sent various administrative bodies over “eight thousand items of information” concerning “the hostile plans and the anti-Soviet activities of the secret services of the

USA and other foreign states.” In practice, KGB agents had “destroyed” a large number of illegal Baptist printing presses and identified over 1,500 authors who had either written or distributed “anonymous anti-Soviet and slanderous documents.” In the months leading up to the Twenty-Six Party Congress, “15,557 Soviet citizens have been cautioned” about their anti-Soviet activities while “433 [had been] arrested for hostile activity.”810

The ever-present fear of domestic ideological subversion explains why some

KGB agents in foreign countries received instructions to carry out “active measures”

against the forces of international Zionism over the course of the next four years. While

not an exhaustive list, this document called for the “disruption of Zionist-sponsored

congresses and other anti-Soviet gatherings.” It also recommended “running operational

ploys with leaders of the World Jewish Congress.” As described, Soviet agents would

garner support for the idea that “an intensification of the ‘cold’ war” might very well

result in “the isolation of the WJC from Jewish populations in socialist countries.”

Another provision advocated using “Soviet institutions abroad” to help foreign writers

809 Ibid.

810 Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 340. 417

“publish objective material in the Western press about the position of Jews in the

USSR.”811

As a result of the pervasive influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thinking, Reagan

failed to change the Soviet government’s negative attitude toward U.S. human rights

criticisms. Plenty of evidence suggests that many Soviet officials abhorred Reagan’s

“crusade against socialism” and at least some saw important continuities between his

administration’s and Carter’s manipulation of human rights issues. An article that

appeared in Pravda on 11 August 1981 described how “the campaign for defense of

human rights has long been used as an ideo- logical [sic] tool of US foreign policy”

designed to scuttle improvements “in relations between the USSR and the USA.” If any

difference existed, Reagan’s vocal support of right-wing dictatorships showed that “the

sanctimonious hypocrisy of the former White House masters is being replaced by the

calculated cynicism of the current ones.” Georgi Arbatov voiced similar sentiments. He

argued that “the conservatives now in power do not put much soul into their human rights

policy since they apparently never really believed in those rights in the first place.” Of

course, “this does not prevent them from conducting a fierce, if hollow, propaganda

campaign on the subject.”812

The Soviet government’s enduring hostility to human rights criticisms explains

why Reagan’s efforts to win the release of dissenters through “quiet” diplomatic efforts

811 Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, ed., More “Instructions from the Centre”: Top Secret Files on KGB Global Operations (Portland, OR: Frank Cass & Co, 1992), 92-8.

812 “US Re-adoption of Human Rights Campaign: a ‘Political Weapon’ Against the USSR,” 12 August 1981, BBC; and Georgi A. Arbatov and Willem Oltmans, The Soviet Viewpoint (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1983), 152-3.

418

failed to impress Brezhnev. In January 1982, he sent Reagan a private letter that

criticized the President’s petition on behalf of the Pentecostals residing in the U.S.

embassy. Because American officials had advised these individuals to violate Soviet

laws, “the entire responsibility for the existing situation rests with the U.S. side,

including the responsibility of a humanitarian nature.” After reading Reagan’s private

letter about the possibility of releasing Shcharansky eight months later, Brezhnev sent

a short reply that in part read “there is no basis for your concern” because the

individual had committed “grave anti-Soviet crimes.”813

When Andropov became General Secretary near the end of 1982, he recognized the economic stagnation and corruption that permeated Soviet society. Instead of thinking outside the prism of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thought, he extolled the virtues of “discipline and accelerated “the general campaign against all forms of disobedience, indiscipline, and infringement of the law.”814 This mentality meant that the already harsh

repression of dissent and non-official activities only intensified during the mid 1980s. To

cite one example, a wide variety of reports indicate that prison conditions worsened. A

U.S. Helsinki Watch publication noted that “there has been an increase in the number of

incidents of severe, systematic beatings of political prisoners, as well as deaths of

political prisoners due to mistreatment.” Since the “accession of Andropov, “new

arrivals are threatened with beatings and rape if they refuse to join the ‘volunteer’

813 Letter, Brezhnev to Reagan, 21 January 1982, ES: GSB, Box 37, Folder: 8200225-8204854, RRPL; and Letter from Brezhnev to Reagan, 30 October 1982, ES: GSB, Box 37, Folder 8290742-8290870, RRPL.

814 Zhores A. Medvedev, Andropov (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), 158; Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 345-7; and Arbatov, The System, 267-8 and 273-82; and Solovyov and Klepikova, Yuri Andropov, 268-287. 419

brigades” that enforce work discipline. Administrators also began to use mind-altering

drugs in labor camp hospitals.815

As part of a larger effort to combat the rise in non-official activities, Soviet

authorities took steps such as fining a Lithuanian priest for permitting a Santa Claus to

give children gifts without first obtaining official permission.816 Around the same time,

KGB agents arrested five individuals for participating in a “collective meditation”

ceremony aimed at neutralizing the evil around political prisoners. Always interested in

strengthening the ideological fortitude of Soviet private citizens, the Central Committee

banned Moscow establishments from playing a wide array of Western rock groups,

including the Ramones, Blue Cult, Van Halen, Depeche Mode, and Kiss.817 The same body also introduced a campaign that called on private citizens to send in anonymous postcards when they viewed misconduct such as “irregular earnings” and

“violations of social order and socialist social life.” The KGB used information from one of these cards to charge a Jewish activist with knowledge of a plot to “place bombs in the

Peter and Paul fortress in the Hermitage.”818

Near the beginning of 1983, the Soviet government exercised its bureaucratic

muscle and passed new laws that codified the already standard practice of extending the

815 U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Violations of the Helsinki Accords: USSR—A Report Prepared for the Helsinki Review Conference Vienna, November 1986 (New York: The U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, 1986), 189-204.

816 CCCL 56 (14 February 1983): 43.

817 Glasnost: Information Bulletin 2-4 ( 1987): 30-1; U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Violations of the Helsinki Accords: USSR, 45-6.

818 Freedom at Issue 77 (March-April 1984): 29; and USSR News Brief 21 (15 November 1984): 5. 420

terms of disobedient prisoners from three to five years. Even more telling, the Kremlin

amended Article 64 of the criminal code to read that “treason” included all acts that

violated the government’s “‘all-encompassing’” definition of “‘state security.’”819 Not even the “loyal opposition” of Roy Medvedev escaped the attention of the Kremlin.

Speaking on behalf of the Soviet leadership, a representative warned him that “‘you

[must] cease writing such articles and books or we shall put you in jail.’” This open threat prompted Medvedev to issue a public statement through Western journalists that read: “It is difficult to be a political writer in a country where the constitution requires every citizen to work for the strengthening of the authority of the state, yet where many in high positions do not care about this authority at all, abusing their power, using it for personal enrichment or for the elimination of their own rivals and critics.”820

These words were appropriate because Soviet authorities only intensified their efforts to keep Soviet private citizens cut off from the West. After the Madrid conference ended in November 1983, the Kremlin amended Article 70 to criminalize the possession of samizdat literature and issued a decree that forbade private citizens from giving foreigners “shelter, transportation, or other services . . . without official permission.” In a direct shot at the Solzhenitsyn fund, Soviet officials gained the right to sentence those

found guilty of receiving money or valuables from foreign sources to concurrent terms of

“ten years in [a] labor camp” and five years of internal exile. Another addition to the

819 See also U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Violations of the Helsinki Accords: August 1983-September 1984, 129-135; Ibid., Violations of the Helsinki Accords: USSR, 51-64; Ibid., Ten Years Later, 168-183 and 225-7; and Reddaway, “Dissent in the Soviet Union,” 9.

820 Z. Medvedev, Andropov, 158-9. See also CSCE Digest, 2 February 1983, 12-3. 421

criminal code in effect allowed bureaucrats to imprison anyone for eight years who gave

“unauthorized information” to foreigners that resulted in “‘grave consequences’” for the

Soviet state. Just as important, the Soviet government no longer allowed foreigners to

pay for packages sent to Soviet private citizens and reduced the number of phone circuits

with the West “by about two-thirds.”821

No example better illustrates the determination of Soviet leaders to crush dissent

and keep private citizens cut off from foreign audiences than their treatment of Sakharov

and Bonner. In March 1982, Andropov sent a report to the Central Committee that

excoriated Bonner’s determination to keep up contacts with members of the U.S.

embassy. She “takes Sakharov’s anti-Soviet and libelous articles to Moscow and

transmits them to the American embassy and foreign correspondents for further dissemination.” “The documents are subsequently used widely by the mass media in capitalist countries to harm the political interests of the USSR.”822

When defending the seizure of Sakharov’s memoirs that took place eight months

later, Andropov emphasized the key role Bonner played in using illegal channels in

Moscow to transmit anti-Soviet messages to “foreign public opinion” and “coordinate

anti-Soviet campaigns planned abroad.” “The contents of the autobiography, diary, and

correspondence provide documentary proof that for ten years Sakharov’s anti-Soviet

activity has been fomented and directed by his wife.”823 Two years later, the new KGB

821 U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Violations of the Helsinki Accords: USSR, 178-188.

822 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 268-9.

823 Ibid., 274-5. 422

Chairman reported that the U.S. government had managed “to involve

government and political figures as well as representatives of the intelligentsia from

Norway, Switzerland, and Holland in a provocative campaign on” this couple’s behalf.

“Upon instructions from Washington,” these forces at the very least hope that Bonner

will receive permission to reside abroad and serve “as a leader of” the Soviet emigration

movement. 824

The Soviet leadership finally lost patience when Sakharov sent a letter to the

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in January 1984 calling on the authorities to let his wife

travel abroad so she could receive medical treatment in Italy and visit her relatives in the

United States. Once the KGB found out that Sakharov would conduct a hunger strike

while Bonner sought asylum in the U.S. embassy to force the government’s hand, the

Central Committee acted. It approved a resolution that brought criminal proceedings

against Bonner on the grounds that she and Sakharov were active participants in an

international conspiracy designed to make her “one of the leaders of “the anti-Soviet

scum” abroad.825

After affirming this measure, a Soviet court sentenced Bonner to five years of internal exile in Gorky while the Soviet Ministry of Health worked to break her husband’s hunger strike through a series of force-feeding sessions, one of which employed a lever to pry his jaw open. Well-aware that Sakharov’s hunger strike might produce an international outcry, Chebrikov assured the Central Committee that “this

824 Ibid., 282.

825 Ibid., 288-90. 423

method of feeding is harmless and does not produce any medical consequences or

complications.” He also described how “TASS and the State Radio and Television of the

USSR have distributed abroad information refuting the insinuations of subversive centers

of the West about the state of Sakharov’s and Bonner’s health.”826 When these measures

failed to stem international speculation about Sakharov’s health, the Soviet government

released a twenty-minute video tape in September 1984 that purported to show how the

couple lived a healthy, enjoyable life in Gorky. To erase any doubt, this “KGB movie”

contained clips of Sakharov planting a tree and reading a copy of Newsweek.827

Internal documents reveal that Soviet leaders viewed these methods as an appropriate way of curbing Bonner’s and Sakharov’s “contact with intelligence agencies and anti-Soviet organizations in the West.”828 Although reports indicated that Western

audiences still paid close attention to Sakharov’s fate, Chebrikov informed the Central

Committee in mid-1984 that “the measures taken by the KGB to isolate Sakharov and

Bonner from foreigners . . . and to put an end to their ability to listen to foreign

broadcasts . . . have been fully justified.”829 When the Politburo discussed the possibility

of Francois Mitterrand’s raising the issue of Sakharov’s hunger strikes and health during

his 1984 visit to Moscow, numerous members praised Sakharov’s condition as robust.

Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov concluded the meeting with the assertion that

826 Ibid., 292-4.

827 “A KGB Home Movie,” Newsweek, 3 September 1984, 49.

828 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 289.

829 Chebrikov to the Central Committee, “How the KGB is handling the hunger strike,” May 20, 1984. Available [Online]: http://www.yale.edu/annals/sakharov/documents_frames/Sakharov_173.htm [24 January 2007]. 424

“we have every basis for making a calm and firm reply” on the correctness of our actions

if Mitterrand should mention Sakharov.830 Two weeks after this gathering, Shultz raised

the issue of Sakharov’s health during a private meeting with Dobrynin. After the ambassador pointed out that “the Soviets consider Sakharov purely a domestic matter,”

Shultz replied that “the issue was a real problem of concern to many people, especially scientists worldwide.” While not discounting the importance of world public opinion,

Dobrynin responded that “the Soviets are willing to live with the problem.”831

Despite their intense hatred of human rights criticisms, Soviet officials still felt

obligated to defend the morality of Soviet-style socialism and publicize the violations of

capitalist countries. In early 1981, Arbatov held a series of interviews with a Dutch journalist designed to elucidate how Soviet leaders viewed the world. During these discussions, Arbatov called human rights a Cold War weapon foreign governments and private citizens used “to modify . . . our domestic order according to Western liking.”

Then again, he mused, “how can one be against human rights nowadays?” It’s just like being “against motherhood.” This statement led him to outline the Soviet Union’s long- standing commitment to human rights. Since Western countries did not care about workers, “it fell to the Soviet Union to develop a new, broader approach to human rights by including social rights largely neglected before that time.”832

830 “Meeting of the Politburo,” 31 May 1984 in Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 294-5.

831 Memorandum from George P. Shultz to President Reagan, “Meeting with Dobrynin 12 June,” 14 June 1984, ES: GSC, Box 39: Folder 8490695, RRPL.

832 Arbatov and Oltmans, The Soviet Viewpoint, 148 and 144. 425

When asked how he could reconcile this comment with his government’s harsh

treatment of dissenters, Arbatov praised the Soviet Union’s monolithic unity in

comparison to individuals who suffered from personality weaknesses. He then reiterated the familiar argument that members of the “prodissident campaign are simply trying to . .

. foster an ersatz opposition inside our country . . . [and] create the image of the USSR as a .”833 To draw attention away from the subject of Soviet violations, Arbatov outlined the massive violations that took place in the United States. “We know that if

authorities in the United States deem it necessary, they not only harass people, but even

kill them. This happened . . . to leaders of the Black Panthers,” Martin Luther King, Jr.,

and the radical students at Kent State University. After offering these observations,

Arbatov posed the question: “How would Americans have reacted if Soviet journalists in

the United States had begun to cooperate with members of some clandestine groups like

the Weather Underground?”834

This interview set the tone for how Soviet officials defended their nation from foreign criticism during the early to mid 1980s. A Soviet Central Committee member endorsed the practice of putting Moscow Trust Group members in psychiatric hospitals or stripping their citizenship on the grounds that “all forces speaking out for peace and socialism have an objective interest in strengthening the Soviet Union.” Another official told an Italian disarmament assembly that the Soviet government had a right to repress non-official peace activities because “’public opinion and official opinion are the same in

833 Ibid., 161-2.

834 Ibid., 149-50. 426

our society.’”835 During his concluding address at the Madrid follow-up meeting, Andrei

Gromyko asserted that “the Great October Socialist revolution was accomplished in the

name of” freedom and for “the sake of human rights.” Besides defending the recent

downing of the South Korean commercial airplane KAL-007 that strayed into Soviet territory, he also announced his government’s intention of standing firm on the issue of human rights. Neither international human rights documents nor the provisions of the

Final Act would dissuade the Kremlin from delivering a decisive “rebuff” to hostile attacks on Soviet-style socialism.836

To paint the United States as an international outlaw, Pravda ran an article on the

international “Human Rights Day” (12 December 1984) condemning the U.S.

government’s human rights record. The Russian Minister of Justice attacked the Reagan

administration for not adhering to a number of international human rights agreements and

engaging in small wars around the world that resulted in the deaths of thousands. He also

insisted that “the working people in a society of class exploitation can only dream about

the extensive set of rights and freedoms being enjoyed by the Soviet people and by the

peoples of the fraternal countries of the socialist community.”837 In the same year, the

Soviet delegates who attended the fortieth session of the UNHRC argued that the U.S.

835 CSCE Digest, 9 March 1984, 9; and U.S. Helsinki Commission, Basket I, 130.

836 “Statement by Andrei Gromyko, Chairman of the Commission of the USSR,” N.P., RCSCE, USHCF, Box 9: Folder: Madrid, Final Analyses and Speeches, NA.

837 “Human Rights Day: Soviet and Western Attitudes Contrasted,” 12 December 1984, BBC.

427

and Western European view of human rights amounted to little more than “stressing the power of the rich, the omnipotence of the monopolies,” and “chronic .”838

In an obvious attempt to blunt the impact of Reagan’s public statements in defense of Sakharov, the Soviet government carried out a public campaign on behalf of

Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist imprisoned for murdering two FBI agents in

1975. On 27 July 1984, TASS announced that four Soviet scientists who had received the Nobel Prize sent a petition to the White House on behalf of this political prisoner. It called the treatment of Peltier “a typical example of [the] politically motivated persecutions of Americans who are fighting for human rights against the predatory practices of . . . the government and monopolies.” The document also described how the

“heroic” activist’s hunger strike endangered his life and the international reputation of the

United States. In language similar to Reagan’s statements about Sakharov and Bonner, the Kremlin asked the U.S. government to “do the humane thing” and release Peltier.839

Official Soviet publishers also produced a wide array of literature designed to convince foreign audiences about the correctness and validity of their behavior toward dissenters. In 1981, the future General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko wrote The

CPSU, Society, and Human Rights. After making the obligatory reference to the greatness of the October revolution, he went out of his way to combat arguments suggesting that the Soviet Union had become a vast bureaucratic machine. “The Party works tirelessly, he wrote, “to secure even broader participation of the people in

838 “Soviet Position at UN Human Rights Commission Session,” 10 February 1984, BBC.

839 Seth Mydans, “Soviets Point Finger at a Civil Rights Case in U.S.,” New York Times, 27 June 1984, Section A, 3. 428

managing state . . . affairs . . . and to achieve . . . constant responsiveness to public

opinion.”840 Two years later, Nikolai Yakovlev released the third edition of his work CIA

Target—USSR, which outlined how Bonner had forced Sakharov to participate in a

Zionist conspiracy against the Soviet Union. In 1985, an official Soviet publisher

released a work entitled Europe, Ten Years After Helsinki aimed at convincing Western

audiences that the Soviet Union’s Final Act compliance record compared favorably to

those of their governments, especially the United States.841

Besides publishing book in foreign languages, the Soviet government also took

other steps to combat the human rights critiques of NGOs. In 1983, the Kremlin

appointed “a third secretary” at its “embassy in Washington” to monitor the explosive

growth of “nongovernmental American initiatives” related to human rights.842 Around the same time, Andropov “agreed to discuss ‘at the highest level’ the question of ‘using

Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality for active participation in counter-Zionist propaganda.’” This initiative resulted in the creation of a “public” group under the direction of the KGB known as The Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public. On 22

June 1983, members held a press conference for Soviet and foreign journalists so they could outline this group’s agenda to the rest of the world. Just as they had in the past,

840 See K.U. Chernenko, The CPSU, Society, and Human Rights (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1981), 11.

841 For an excellent description of Yakovlev’s work, see Richard Lourie, Sakharov: A Biography (Hanover, NH and London: Brandeis University Press, 2002), 326-8. See also V. I. Kuznetsov, Europe, Ten Years After Helsinki (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985). For a typical defense of the Soviet government’s treatment of Jews, see Avtandil Rukhadze, Jews in the USSR: Figures, Facts, Comments (Moscow: Novosti Press, 1982).

842 James L. Hickman and James A. Garrison, Jr., “Psychological Principles of Citizen Diplomacy,” in David. D. Newson, ed., Private Diplomacy with the Soviet Union (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 140. 429

they rejected any suggestion that hundreds of thousands of Jews wanted to leave the

Soviet Union. They also repeated the charge that Zionists had made a “deal with the

ringleaders of the Gestapo and SS” to save themselves during World War II.843

Even though Soviet officials still felt comfortable expressing this view in public,

they sometimes felt compelled to make pragmatic concessions in deference to

international opinion. After Sakharov and Bonner threatened to continue a hunger strike

for the indefinite future in 1981, it allowed Liza Alexeyeva to join the latter dissenter’s

son in the United States. Two years later, authorities discontinued Sergei Batovrin’s

psychiatric incarceration and allowed him to immigrate to the United States. Perhaps

stung by criticisms commonplace at the SI and Madrid follow-up meetings, the Politburo

suspended the trial of the “young socialists.” It also would have permitted Shcharansky

to emigrate if he had signed an official statement asking for his release on the grounds of

poor health. On 18 May 1984, General Secretary Chernenko agreed to release two

dissenters serving terms in a psychiatric hospital after a Western newspaper reported that

the couple had sent him a letter protesting their treatment. 844

Despite these pragmatic concessions, the Soviet government’s determination to

punish individuals for engaging in non-official activities and keep them cut off from the

outside world appeared as strong as ever in early 1985. In retrospect, the steps that

orthodox policymakers took to keep their multinational empire bound together amounted

843 Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 353.

844 “Dissidents freed from mental hospital,” United Press International, 18 May 1984. For accounts of Chernenko’s attitude toward dissenters and U.S. human rights criticisms, see Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 392-3 and 424; and Ilya Zemtsov, Chernenko: The Last Bolshevik—The Soviet Union on the Eve of Perestroika (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989), 219-225. 430 to little more than a pyrrhic victory. They could not prevent dissenters and private citizens from “globalizing” the shortcomings of Soviet-style socialism. Since “power exists in multiple forms,” private citizens and some Soviet government officials helped the wider world see that Moscow’s pretensions to superpower status rested on military strength alone. 845 This development played a key role in Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to undertake a drawn out campaign aimed at making the Soviet Union a universal socialist model after he rose to power in 1985.

845 Gaddis, We Now Know, 283-4. 431

CHAPTER 10: HOLDING MIKHAIL GORBACHEV AND SOVIET BUREAUCRATS

ACCOUNTABLE: U.S.-SOVIET RELATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE FINAL

ACT, DECEMBER 1985-JANUARY 1989

In a private meeting that took place during the fall of 1987, George Shultz asked

Eduard Shevardnadze to tell Ronald Reagan about the general trajectory of the 1917

Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The Soviet Foreign Minister obliged, telling the

President that “the USSR had gone through several stages after the Revolution: War

Communism, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” and now “a quest for overall

democracy.” Instead of speaking about “Nicolai” Lenin’s quest for global domination as he had in the 1970s, Reagan took a different approach. He asked Shevardnadze “whether some of the innovation being pushed by Gorbachev harked back to [the] concepts of

Lenin which had been blocked under Stalin.”846

The willingness of Reagan to accept Lenin’s credentials as a “liberal-minded”

reformer raises important questions about how he approached the task of promoting

human rights in the Soviet Union after the Geneva summit took place. In many ways,

Reagan’s behavior remained consistent. He continued to challenge Soviet internal

behavior in a pragmatic manner without blurring the fundamental distinctions between

democratic and Marxist-Leninist regimes. He also continued to place importance on

building democratic institutions in the USSR and opening Soviet society up to the outside

world. Yet, as his second term progressed, the cumulative effects of Mikhail

Gorbachev’s reform campaign and transnational critiques of “quiet” human rights

846 Memcons, “Meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze of the USSR,” 15 September 1987, 12:00 PM-2:00 PM, 8, ES: NSC, Box 8, Folder: 8790982, RRPL. 432

diplomacy changed Reagan’s behavior. He became much more willing to support

dissenters in public and endorse transnational human rights activities. To help

Gorbachev transform Soviet government, Reagan agreed to have executive branch

officials engage in bilateral human rights conferences that allowed each side to exchange

information about topics as diverse as prison conditions and capital punishment. He even

proved receptive to the General Secretary’s proposals that called for American and Soviet

legislators to meet and exchange information on the subject of human rights violations.

These changes only underscore the reality that the Reagan administration

embraced the Helsinki process. Far from viewing the Final Act as a “sham,” as one

author writes, Reagan and other officials recognized that this agreement gave the U.S.

government a powerful tool to accomplish the larger goal of promoting democracy in the

Soviet Union.847 They also recognized that working with and encouraging and transnational human rights activities had become the executive branch’s best available

weapon for holding Gorbachev and Soviet bureaucrats accountable for their internal

behavior. The importance that the Soviet government placed on appearing in compliance

with the Helsinki Accords put the administration in the favorable position of setting the

terms of how the Vienna follow-up conference (November 1986-January 1989) would

end. Shultz took advantage of this situation and succeeded in obtaining Soviet

acceptance of a concluding document that furthered the goals of reducing the power of

the CPSU and building democratic institutions in USSR.

847 Kengor, The Crusader, 105. For a conflicting view, see Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, “Interview with George Shultz,” 18 December 2002, 20.” Available [Online]: http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/oralhistories/reagan [10 December 2007]. 433

Principled Flexibility: Wielding the Human Rights Weapon against the Soviet Union, Part II

The importance Reagan placed on rectifying Soviet human rights violations

through “quiet” human rights diplomacy did not disappear after the Geneva summit took

place. During the first eight months of 1986, he made few specific public criticisms of

Soviet human rights violations. On 6 February 1986, he signed NSDD-209, which indicated that the Secretary of State would “primarily” rely on “vigorous . . . private diplomacy” to make Soviet leaders address the issue of human rights violations. When

Gorbachev allowed Elena Bonner to travel abroad so she could receive medical treatment

and meet family members in March 1986, Reagan declined to meet with her during her

American visit. Instead, she ended up discussing U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union

with National Security Advisor John Poindexter. He told Bonner that the President

preferred to “pursue these concerns through confidential diplomatic channels.” As a

White House official later explained, Reagan “doesn't want to do anything to lessen the

chances of others being released.”848

Reagan behaved much the same way a few months later when he agreed to hold a

private meeting with Natan Sharansky849 after securing his release through a prisoner exchange. Worried about the consequences of publicizing this gathering, he followed the

advice of his subordinates and declined to invite reporters or allow photographs. When

members of the press corps asked for more details about what Reagan and Sharansky had

848 NSDD-209, 6 February 1986, 2. Available [Online] from the Digital National Security Archive (DSA); David Hoffman, “President Declines Visit From Bonner,” Washington Post, 21 March 1986, A1. 849 After being released prison, Anatoly Shcharansky legally changed his name to Natan Sharansky. I will use the latter name for the rest of the dissertation. 434

discussed, a White House spokesperson demurred. He defended his silence on the

grounds that such behavior would complicate the President’s goal of advancing the cause

of human rights in the Soviet Union through “‘quiet diplomacy.’”850

These examples in no way imply that the administration officials remained silent

about Soviet human rights abuses or backed away from engaging in vigorous ideological

competition with the USSR. U.S. representatives continued to utilize United Nations

forums to highlight the human rights violations of communist nations. Reagan never

stopped stressing the fundamental and enduring moral distinctions between democratic

and communist regimes. He also reiterated his commitment to strengthening U.S.

international broadcasting capabilities and engaging in effective public diplomacy.

During a public ceremony commemorating Captive Nations Week held on 21 July,

Reagan voiced his strong support for the activities of dissenters. To drive home this

point, he described how female political prisoners had managed to send him a letter

describing the terrible conditions of Soviet prisons. He also spoke of how dissenters who

faced the same harsh conditions as these women depended on the support of free individuals to maintain their struggles against the Soviet system.851

Disregarding the advice of conservative critics and even some Soviet émigrés,

Reagan chose not to repudiate the Final Act. In spring of 1986, U.S. delegates outlined

850 David Remnick, “Shcharansky Meets Reagan; ‘Quiet Diplomacy Unchanged,” Washington Post, 14 May 1986, A1. After settling in Israel, Anatoly Shcharansky changed his name to Natan Sharansky. See also Brinkley, ed. The Reagan Diaries, 388.

851 PPOP, 1986, Vol. II, 977. See also Ibid., 1986, Vol. 1, 159, 344-5, 348, 339, 499, 808, 827; and 1986, Vol. II, 896, 973, 1020, 1069. On 4 December 1986, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution that criticized the massive human rights violations of Afghan authorities and their foreign supporters. See American Foreign Current Documents 1986, 473. See also Garthoff, The Great Transition, 219. 435

the appalling extent of Soviet and Eastern European human rights violations at the human

contacts experts meeting held in Bern, Switzerland. Chairman Michael Novak criticized

the Soviets for repressing non-Russian nationalities and imprisoning dissenters for

exercising their basic civil liberties. Because the Final Act’s provisions had little

meaning unless the lives of ordinary citizens improved, he defended the right of Soviet

private citizens to have regular contacts with their Western counterparts. In defense of this position, he praised Helsinki monitors in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for raising international awareness about the shortcomings of Soviet internal behavior. Near

the end of the meeting, Novak became unhappy with language in the proposed

concluding document that appeared to give the Soviets legal cover for restricting

emigration and foreign contacts. Against the wishes of every other delegation, he chose to withhold American approval and allowed the meeting to end without any type of formal agreement.852

While the administration remained committed to engaging in vigorous ideological

competition with the USSR, Reagan appears to have become less worried about taking

Soviet sensibilities into account on human rights issues near the end of 1986. The roots

of this change lie in the Kremlin’s internal behavior. After the Geneva summit,

Gorbachev made some small concessions on human rights. In addition to permitting

Elena Bonner to travel abroad, he allowed more private citizens to emigrate so they could

852 Former NSC Staffer Richard Pipes equated the Helsinki Accords to the Yalta agreement. See Richard Pipes, “Assessing the Final Act, 10 Years Later, A Loss for the West,” The New York Times, 1 August 1985, A19. See also Michael Novak, Taking Glasnost Seriously: Toward an Open Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1988), 132-4, 145-7, 69-83; Vojtech Mastny, ed., The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, 1986-1991 (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 1-10, 61-70; and U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Bern Human Contacts Meeting, . 99th Congress, 1st session, 1985 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), 13 and 61-5. 436

reunite with their spouses. Despite these small gestures, the Soviet government had

shown few signs of relenting on its long-standing campaign to eradicate dissent and seal

off private citizens from subversive foreign ideas. For example, Jewish emigration levels

reached record-low levels. Authorities also continued to put many dissenters in jail and

psychiatric institutions for the mere possession of non-official literature. In the summer

of 1986, the Kremlin decided to arrest and charge the American journalist Nicholas

Daniloff with spying in retaliation for the U.S. arrest of a Soviet U.N. employee on the

charges of espionage. Because this arrest infuriated Reagan, he sent Gorbachev an angry

letter of formal protest.853

Convinced that the U.S. government had manipulated the Daniloff arrest to

launch a hostile campaign against the Soviet Union, Gorbachev proposed that the two

hold a meeting in “near future” designed to stabilize U.S.-Soviet relations and set the stage for future arms control agreements. Before agreeing to such a gathering, Reagan demanded that the Soviet government release Daniloff. After a confusing series of events, he in effect agreed to a prisoner exchange that traded the dissenter Yuri Orlov and

Daniloff for an accused Soviet spy on 20 September. With this issue settled, the two sides agreed to hold a “mini-summit” the following month in Reykjavik, . 854

853 See Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Twenty-Second Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 4-5 and 7-9; Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Twenty- Third Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 6-10. See also Vojtech Mastny, ed., Soviet-East European Survey, 1986-1987: Selected Research and Analysis from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 19-32 and 47-51.

854 Letter, Gorbachev to Reagan, 15 September 1986. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document01.pdf [10 October 2007]. For a good account of these events, see Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 198-210; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 728, 732-5, 737, and 746-8; and Garthoff, The Great Transition, 281-3. 437

The lack of fundamental improvements in the Soviet attitude toward human rights only increased the determination of Reagan administration officials to hold them accountable for their internal behavior. When he appeared before the United Nations a few days after Orlov and Daniloff gained their freedom, Reagan denounced the Soviet government’s treatment of the American journalist and refusal to follow the stipulations of the Final Act. “The persecution of scientists, religious leaders, peace activists, political dissenters and other prisoners of conscience continues unabated behind the Iron curtain,” he told the audience. Without improvements in the “human rights area,”

Reagan warned, no dramatic improvements in “East-West relations” can take place.855

Nine days before the Reykjavik summit began, Shultz informed Reagan that the

American public expected “substantial progress (but no agreements per see) at the

meeting.” Of course, “we will work across the full agenda, but the reality is that our

work will not be seen as effective without some progress on the big issues: arms control

and human rights.” To reinforce this position, Shultz told Reagan that “Gorbachev must

go home with a clear sense that Moscow’s continuing insensitivity to the humanitarian

dimension of the relationship will assume greater significance as prospects open up in

areas of mutual concern.” 856 A State Department internal memorandum advanced

similar arguments a few days later. Despite Gorbachev’s release of a few high profile dissenters, “human rights is the one area of relations where we have not made adequate

progress.” “We need to emphasize that without substantial progress . . . on emigration”

855 PPOP, 1986, Vol. II, 1228-32.

856 Memo, Shultz to Reagan, “Reykjavik,” 2 October 1986. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document04.pdf [10 October 2007]. 438

in the near future, “other areas of our relationship will be affected.” The “record-low”

levels of Jewish emigration had also produced unwanted political complications. “Jewish

groups” and members of Congress have begun to challenge the executive branch’s

emphasis on “‘quiet diplomacy.’”857

These arguments proved influential. A few days before he departed for

Reykjavik, Reagan publicized the private consultations he had held with Orlov, human

rights activists, and members of Congress. Using much stronger language than he had on

the eve of the Geneva summit, he reiterated that “true peace requires respect for human

rights as well as arms control.” In Reykjavik, “I’ll make it amply clear to Mr. Gorbachev

that unless there is real Soviet movement on human rights, we will not have the political

atmosphere necessary to make lasting progress on other issues.” A few days later,

Reagan told reporters about how “a group of human rights leaders reminded me of how

important America’s missions of both peace and freedom are.” “We must never forget”

private citizens like Yuri Orlov. “They’re our inspiration, and we are their hope.”858

Much as he had in Geneva, Reagan attempted to convey these positions to

Gorbachev in a forthright, yet pragmatic manner. After handing the Soviet leader a list of individuals who wanted to emigrate, he promised that his administration would not

“exploit” any Soviet decision to ease emigration restrictions. Instead, “we would simply express our appreciation.” According to a Soviet transcript of the meeting, Reagan also

857 Memo for George Shultz, “Materials on the President’s Meeting in Reykjavik,” 4 October 1986, 7, and “Walk-Through for the Reykjavik Meeting,” 7 October 1986, 7. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document07.pdf [10 October 2007].

858 PPOP, 1986, Vol. II, 1338. 1362. 439

reminded Gorbachev that U.S. private citizens remained worried about the extent of

Soviet human rights violations. “If the “Soviet side” refused to “ease its position on

human rights,” the U.S. public “will not give the American government [any] credit for

implementing . . . [beneficial] agreements” in the future.859

Despite Reagan’s use of pragmatic language, the Reykjavik summit marked an

important turning point in the role human rights played in U.S.-Soviet relations. For the

first time, Gorbachev formally agreed to make human rights a legitimate part of the two

countries’ negotiating agenda. This change meant that he now accepted the same “four-

sided” negotiating agenda that Reagan hoped would result in improved U.S-Soviet

relations. Over the next three years, the General Secretary took some concrete steps to

implement his policies designed to reform Soviet society known as glasnost and

perestroika. After well-known, incarcerated dissenter Anatoly Marchenko died in

December 1986, he decided to release Sakharov and Bonner from their confinement in

Gorky. By the beginning of 1989, the Soviet government had released over six-hundred

political prisoners and allowed emigration levels to rise to levels not seen since the late

1970s. Although many shortcomings remained, thousands of public organizations began

to operate in the open, and articles critical of conditions in USSR appeared in official

publications. Gorbachev even promised to pass laws that guaranteed freedom of

conscience and curbed the use of psychiatric institutions for political purposes.860

859 Reykjavik Memcons, 12 October 1986, 10:00 AM-1:35 PM, 13-15, 17-9, ES: NSC System Files, Box 6, Folder: 8690725, RRPL; Ibid., 11 October 1986, 3:30-5:40, 14-5. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document11.pdf [10 October 2007]; and “Russian Transcript of Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Reykjavik, 12 October 1986, Morning.” Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document14.pdf [10 October 2007].

440

Interested in bolstering the Soviet Union’s credentials as a legitimate member of

the European community, Gorbachev also decided to embrace the Helsinki Accords.

During the Vienna follow-up meeting (November 1986-January 1989), Shevardnadze

became the first Soviet official to announce his government’s commitment to respect the

human rights provisions of the Final Act. He also proposed that Moscow host a Final Act conference dealing with humanitarian affairs once this meeting ended. A few months after the foreign minister advanced these positions, Gorbachev delivered a public address that confirmed his commitment to satisfying the requirements of Basket III. In defense of this position, he and other officials emphasized the Soviet government’s release of political prisoners and intention of carrying out a comprehensive reform of the penal code.861

Gorbachev’s behavior weakened Reagan’s initial impression of him as a

“confirmed [Soviet] ideologue.”862 In both public and private settings, he referred to

Gorbachev as the first leader not to endorse the traditional Soviet goal of “establishing a

world .” He also expressed his general agreement with the General

Secretary’s book Perestroika and “welcomed” Soviet “moves toward” “democratization”

860 Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Twenty-Fourth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), 8-11; Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act, Twenty-Fifth Semiannual Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), 8-13; and Mastny, ed., Soviet-East European Survey, 1986-1987, 24-32 and 374-91.

861 For a good account of this speech, see Korey, The Promises We Keep, 188-90.

862 A short time after Gorbachev became General Secretary, Reagan wrote the following note in his private diary: “If he [Gorbachev] wasn’t a confirmed ideologue he never would have been chosen by the Politburo.” A few weeks later, he observed that “he’s [Armand Hammer] convinced that ‘Gorby’ is a different type than past Soviet leaders and that we get along. I’m too cynical for that.” See Brinkley, ed. The Reagan Diaries, 317, 337. He made his first positive private reference to Gorbachev on 24 June 1986. See Ibid., 421. 441

and “glasnost.”863 Perhaps influenced by his meetings with the Soviet scholar Suzanne

Massie or assurances from Moscow, he proved sympathetic to arguments that Gorbachev had repudiated in favor of practices more consistent with Lenin’s “progressive”

ideas.864 As one Soviet scholar points out, Reagan told a reporter in February 1988 that

“[Gorbachev] is the first leader . . . who has gone back before Stalin and he is trying to do what Lenin was teaching.” In other words, “I think that . . . glasnost and perestroika . . . is much more smacking of Lenin than of Stalin.865

These positions are revealing for at least two reasons. On the most basic level,

they help illustrate Reagan’s belief that Gorbachev wanted to make important changes in

how the Soviet government conducted its domestic affairs. They also reveal his

suspicion that Gorbachev’s policies would facilitate a radical and fundamental

improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. Reagan refers to these viewpoints on several

occasions in his memoirs. “As the pages of the calendar were turning in 1987,” he

writes, “we were seeing more and more evidence that Gorbachev was serious about

introducing major economic and political reforms in the Soviet Union.” Even more

important, “Gorbachev made a blistering attack on Stalin, opening the way for a new

863 During the Reykjavik meeting, Reagan commented, “it was a fact that every Soviet leader but Gorbachev—at least so far—had endorsed in speeches to the Soviet Communist Party Congresses the objective of establishing a world communist state.” See Memorandum of Conversation, 12 October 1986, 10:00 AM-1:35 PM, 13-4. Reagan read Perestroika on 15 January 1988. See Brinkley, ed. The Reagan Diaries, 568. He made a favorable reference to the work on several occasions in public. See PPOP, 1988, Vol. I, 666, 709, and 748. During the , he told Gorbachev that he had read the work. See Memcon, “President’s Second One-on-One Meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev,” 31 May 1988, 10:08-11:07 AM, 3, Fritz Ermath Files, Box 1, Folder: 1988 Summit Memcons, 26 May-3 June, 1988, RRPL.

864 For documents pertaining to Reagan’s meetings with Suzanne Massie, see Coordination Office: NSC, Box 2, Folder: Meeting with Suzanne Massie, RRPL. (Various Dates).

865 Anthony D’ Agostino, Gorbachev’s Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 3. 442

freedom to examine the Soviet past and its mistakes.” “Whatever his reasons,” Reagan

mused, “Gorbachev had the intelligence to admit that Communism was not working, the courage to battle for change, and . . . the wisdom to introduce the beginnings of

democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise.”866

Instead of viewing successful internal reform as inevitable, however, Reagan and

his subordinates took nothing for granted. Because Gorbachev accepted the “four-sided”

agenda as the official superpower negotiating framework, they continued to hold the

Soviets accountable for the continuation of repressive practices and promises to respect basic human rights. Consistent with the provisions of NSDD-75, they used negotiations as a way of convincing the Kremlin to abandon orthodox Marxist-Leninist dogmas in

favor of practices and laws that resembled those of successful and legitimate democratic

states. In sharp contrast to the way Carter had behaved, Reagan responded to positive changes in the USSR by becoming more vocal about the problem of Soviet human rights violations. Well aware of the importance Gorbachev attached to the agreement, he told the Canadian parliament that “we [still] look for signs that the Soviet Union intends to abide by its commitment to all its citizens under its own laws and the Helsinki Accords.”

“A system that keeps Europe artificially divided, that suppresses religion, and arrests

American journalists on trumped-up charges is a problem for other nations.” Reagan also showed less hesitation in publicizing the frequent meetings he held with dissenters whom

866 Reagan, An American Life, 686, 708. See also PPOP, 1986, Vol. I, 750; Ibid., Vol. II, 1008-9, 1515; Ibid., 1987, Vol. I, 76; Ibid., 1987, Vol. II, 1088, 1421, 1426; Ibid., 1988, Vol. I, 678, 718, , 746, Ibid., 1988-1989, Vol. II, 1638, 1670. 443

the Soviets had either forced to emigrate or allowed to travel abroad--including Sakharov when he visited the United States in 1988.867

Reagan even became more vocal about the fundamental role private citizens

played in promoting human rights across the globe. During a speech celebrating Human

Rights Day on 10 December 1986, he argued that tangible progress “will require not only support from governments but the active commitment of [private] citizens . . . unhampered in their humanitarian activities by politics or the affairs of the state.” He also congratulated AI for mobilizing “the world, government officials and private citizens on behalf of political prisoners and in defense of human rights.” On the same day that he delivered this speech, the State Department held a panel discussion about human rights issues with former dissenters and other private citizens who had been imprisoned in

communist countries and Iran.868

While political calculations were always present, Reagan decided to send the

leader of UCSJ a private letter in September 1987. “This organization,” he wrote, “has

played an outstanding role in focusing the world’s attention on the plight of Jews in the

USSR and in bringing political pressure on the Soviet government to recognize their

fundamental rights.” “The cause of human rights for Jews in the Soviet Union is the

cause of human freedom everywhere.” A few days before the Washington summit

commenced in December 1987, the State Department held another panel discussion that

867 PPOP, 1987, Vol. I, 332-4. See Ibid., , 53, 365-8, 617; Ibid., 1987, Vol. II, 843, 929, 1039, 1061, 1271, 1309, 1421, 1507; Ibid., 1988, Vol. I, 336, 506, 550-1, 555, 609, 631, 656, 658, 675, ; Ibid., 1988-19898, Vol. II, 946-8, 1005, 1220-2, 1286, 1600, 1712.

868 Renewing the U.S. Commitment to Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: U.S. State Department, 1987), 2- 3. 444

allowed nine NGOs to present their recommendations on how the U.S. government

should approach the task of improving Soviet domestic behavior. In conjunction with

this meeting, Reagan followed the advice of a Congressional resolution and met with the

spouses of Soviet private citizens who had not yet received permission to emigrate.

Quoting Theodore Roosevelt, Reagan told the representatives of these groups that “each

one of you carries on your shoulders . . . the burden of” making sure that “this nation

does well for the sake of mankind.” In the end, government officials cannot change the

Kremlin’s internal behavior on their own. “We need your involvement, your continued

support, and your stalwart involvement to our country’s ideals.”869

During a private meeting he later publicized, Reagan told Sharansky that he saw nothing wrong with “holding a massive rally of hundreds of thousands of people on the behalf of Soviet Jewry” just before the summit took place. George Bush attended this huge gathering. Unlike his earlier defenses of “quiet diplomacy,” he posed the question:

“‘If we in the United States are not strong . . . [and] courageous enough to stand up for human rights, who will?” He then added, “Mr. Gorbachev: Let these people [refuseniks] go.” During one of his private meetings with Gorbachev in Washington, Reagan mentioned this event to illustrate the American commitment to human rights, noting that

“over the previous weekend 200,000 individuals had gathered to demonstrate” against

Soviet internal behavior.870

869 For a copy of this letter, see Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom, 53-4; Memo, Colin Powell to Reagan, “Drop-by Human Rights Event,” 2 December 1987, Matthew Zachary Files, Box 1, Folder: OA 17027, RRPL; and PPOP, 1987, Vol. II, 1420-1.

870 See Sharansky, The Case for Democracy, 139-40; “Remarks by Vice President George Bush as Delivered at the National Summit for Soviet Jewry, Washington, D.C., 6 December 1987, Matthew 445

While never reticent about criticizing Soviet internal behavior in public, Shultz

also became less worried about upsetting Gorbachev’s sensibilities on human rights

issues. In the spring of 1987, he told the General Secretary and Shevardnadze that Soviet economic performance would never improve unless private citizens gained the right to exercise their basic civil liberties without fears of governmental reprisals. After this meeting took place, he chose to attend a seder with refuseniks at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union (Spaso House). Before this Passover celebration began, he told these individuals that “you are always on our minds; you are in our hearts. We never give up, we never stop trying, and in the end some good things do happen.” 871

Convinced that the Kremlin faced a religious revival among the Soviet

population, Reagan made a similar gesture several months later. Even though the Uniate

(Byzantine Catholic) Church remained an illegal organization in the Soviet Union, he

chose to address the participants of the State Department’s Conference on Captive

Nations at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine in Washington, D.C. Reagan told the

audience that “we know that Communist governments do not represent those whom they

govern, otherwise they would not suppress the people’s right to speak or travel or have

free elections.” “Those brave souls who endure such regimes are our allies. They, more

than anyone else, realize that communism is a failed philosophy, a theory that creates

only misery, deprivation, and oppression wherever it’s [sic] put into practice.”872 A few

Zachary Files, Box 1, Folder: Soviet Jewry, RRPL; and Memorandum of Conversation,, “Meeting with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, 10:45-12:30 PM, 8 December 1987, 3, ES: NSC System Files, Box 8, Folder: 8791384, RRPL.

871 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 887-94.

872 PPOP, 1987, Vol. II, 867-9. See also Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 412. 446

weeks later, he applauded how “over 200 underground Ukrainian Catholic Church

leaders and laity fearlessly and for the first time disclosed their names in an appeal to

Gorbachev to legalize their church.” Three weeks before the Moscow summit convened

in May 1988, he held a press conference to thank those who had attended a White

Seminar on the status of religion in the Soviet Union. Along with citing the names of

dissenters who had suffered for trying to practice their faith, he agreed to have his

photograph taken with a Ukrainian Cardinal.873

Besides engaging in visible public human rights diplomacy, Reagan also went out

of his way to explain why the United States needed to hold the Soviets accountable for

their internal conduct. Echoing arguments found in internal documents, he explained

how the Soviets would never gain the trust of the American public or the international community unless they started to accept the legitimacy of pluralism instead of molding

private citizens to fit the requirements of an obsolete ideology. Sensitive to the lessons of

Soviet and Russian history, he also refused to discount the possibility Gorbachev’s

reforms effort might fail. When addressing the Western European public via

WORLDNET in February 1988, he posed the question: “can we afford to forget that the policy called glasnost coexists today is separated from the era of the gulag by fewer years than NATO has existed?”874 People around the world needed to remember that the U.S.

government was

873 Ibid., 1392; and Ibid., 550-2; and Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 604-5.

874 PPOP, 1988, Vol. I, 242-4. In a private letter to Gorbachev on 10 April 1987, Reagan wrote, “I am encouraged by many of the steps you are taking to modernize your own country and by the improved dialogue between us on arms reduction. There had also been some progress on human rights, although 447

dealing with a political system, a political culture, and a political history going back decades, even centuries. Swings between glasnost and the gulag are not new or even peculiar to the Soviet regime. In history, they recurred again and again as the throne passed from czar [sic] and czar [sic], and even within the reign of a single czar [sic]. We cannot afford to mortgage our security to the assessed motives of particular individuals or to the novel approaches of a new leadership, even if we wish them well. 875

These words grew out of Reagan’s fear that Gorbachev might fall victim to domestic opposition or the machinations of Soviet bureaucrats bent on preserving their privileged positions and status. In his private diary, he chose not to dismiss Massie’s private warning that “Gorbachev might well be killed if he came here [for a summit meeting].” “There is so much opposition to what he’s trying to do in Russia,” he wrote,

“they could murder him here and pin the whole thing on us.” “The KGB is capable of doing just that.” On several occasions, Reagan advanced a similar type of argument in public. For example, he explained how Khrushchev’s tentative reforms became distant memories after his peers removed him from power. Such a development remained a possibility as long as the “one party system” remained unchecked by “democratic institutions.”876

This mindset accounts why Reagan argued that glasnost would only succeed over

the long term if Gorbachev took “steps to make it permanent . . . and to institutionalize

it.” Instead of letting Soviet bureaucrats use their privileged positions to enforce

conformity, the Kremlin needed to create institutions such as an independent judiciary

much more needs to be done.” See Letter, Reagan to Gorbachev, 10 April 1987, ES: GSG, Box 41, Folder: 8790364 (1/2), RRPL.

875 Ibid.

876 Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 478. 448

that limited the power they could wield over private citizens. Gorbachev also needed to

curb “arbitrary” decision-making and pass laws that protected basic civil liberties and the right to emigrate. Because he wanted Soviet officials to accept the legitimacy of

pluralism, he also asked them to end the jamming of Western radio broadcasts and allow the publication of outlawed authors such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn.877

As countless scholars have pointed out, Reagan also called on Gorbachev to

remove the structure that best symbolized the Cold War divisions that separated Eastern

and Western Europe: The . In June 1987, he delivered remarks at the

Brandenburg Gate that acknowledged the positive steps Moscow had taken to address

Western concerns about human rights violations. Nevertheless, he posed the question:

“Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it.” “If you seek liberalization,” he told Gorbachev, then “tear down

this wall!”878

During the Vienna follow-up meeting, U.S. delegates made sure that their Soviet

counterparts heard many of the same arguments that Reagan had advanced in public. To

combat any suggestion that the Soviet internal practices now conformed to the

requirements of the Final Act, they went out of the way to describe the harsh conditions

of the Soviet gulag and the sorry plight of hundreds of individual dissenters, including the

death of Marchenko. Chairman Warren Zimmerman admitted that Gorbachev had taken

877 PPOP, 1987, Vol. I, 594; Ibid., Vol. II, 1239, 1271; Ibid., 1988, Vol. I, 128, 434, 452, 551, 555, 643, 720; Ibid., 1988, Vol. II, 993, 1499, 1614, 1634-5.

878 PPOP, 1987, Vol. I, 634-7. 449

many positive steps, but told the other delegations that the Soviet leaders still had not

gone far enough. “To bring the Soviet Union into full compliance with its Helsinki

commitments . . . the process which he [Gorbachev] has . . . initiated must be continued,

enlarged, and institutionalized. I stress the word “institutionalized” because credible

mechanisms are essential to ensure that this important process will not be reversed.879

As Reagan and many of his subordinates understood, the steps that they had asked

Gorbachev to take amounted to repudiating the ideological underpinnings and governmental structures that bound the multinational, multiethnic Soviet empire together.

As a result of his pragmatic instincts, Reagan worked to combat suggestions that Soviet reform represented a capitulation to American demands. On 4 May 1988, he spoke of how “the Soviets should recognize basic human rights . . . . because they have accepted international obligations, particularly in the Helsinki Final Act.” Then again, he admitted: “If they recognize human rights for reasons of their own---because they seek economic growth or because they want to enter into a more normal relationship with the

United States and other nations—well, I want to say here and now, that’s fine by me.”880

Reagan’s pragmatic instincts continued to shape how he went about holding the

Soviets accountable for their internal behavior behind closed doors. On 15 September

1987, he told Shevardnadze that he appreciated the Soviet government’s recent decisions to allow long-time refuseniks such as to emigrate. At the same time, he

879 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Phase I of the Vienna Meeting of the Conference and Security and Cooperation in Europe, 100 Congress, 1st session, 1986 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 33.

880 PPOP, 1988, Vol. I, 554. He also explained that he did not want Gorbachev to appear as a “loser.” See Ibid., 557. 450

reiterated that “more must be done to assure free emigration, to release political

prisoners, to let divided spouses rejoin, [and] to end the persecution of religious

dissenters.” Reagan then reminded Shevardnadze about the importance of tearing down the Berlin Wall. “People would believe you mean glasnost at home and abroad, if you acted in Berlin.”881

Despite uttering these strong criticisms, Reagan made a conscious effort to make

his positions more palatable to Shevardnadze. Instead of emphasizing international

standards, he explained that “we do not belabor human rights issues to put you on the

political defensive or to gain bargaining advantage.” “We are simply trying to

communicate what we deeply believe it takes to bridge this gap between us.” He also

recognized “the special sensitivity involved” in permitting the emigration of a woman

whose husband had defected to England. Given potential complications, he suggested

that “the Soviets might handle this matter by simply exiling him or banning her.” If the

Soviets felt uncomfortable tearing down the Berlin Wall, Reagan advised him that they

might take smaller steps such as “improved air access, international conferences, and

perhaps . . . [holding] an Olympics in Berlin.”882

During the Washington summit, Reagan once again raised the issue of Soviet

human rights violations. After handing Gorbachev another list of Soviet private citizens

who wanted to emigrate, Reagan asked the American transcribers to put down their pens

so he could “make a purely personal suggestion in the area of human rights.” In response

881 Memorandum of Conversation, “Meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze of the USSR,” 3- 5.

882 Ibid., 3 and 7. 451

to this gesture, Gorbachev thanked the President for his consistent “tact” and reassured

him that “the Soviet government would do its utmost to remove” the issue of emigration

“from the agenda.” 883 Instead of recounting the litany of Soviet human rights abuses that

cast doubt on this argument, Reagan chose a different a path. “[W]hile there were different philosophies,” he told Gorbachev, “even primitive African tribes had some idea of God and worship.” From this angle, Soviet restrictions on such a basic human impulse explained why “some one-half million Jews sought to leave the USSR for religious- cultural freedom.” To ease Gorbachev’s obvious discomfort with these words, Reagan told him that he had “meant no threat by his line of argument.” Yet, when the General

Secretary equated Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration to American quotas on

Mexican immigration, Reagan refused to move an inch. He rejected the analogy and told

him that “the fundamental point was that the USSR prevented people from getting out,

that it compelled them to stay.”884

Reagan’s concerns about Soviet sensibilities and domestic opposition to reform

predisposed him to accept Gorbachev’s suggestion that experts from each country hold

regular panel discussions that allowed them to exchange their mutual concerns about

domestic conditions in the United States and USSR. The first of these meetings took

place in March 1988 and covered the topics of psychiatric treatment, capital punishment,

freedom of conscience, and “the relationship between national and international standards

governing human rights.” Five months later, a “’Rule of Law Conference’” took place in

883 Memorandum of Conversation,, “Meeting with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, 10:45-12:30 PM, 8 December 1987, 1-3.

884 Ibid., 3-4. 452

Moscow. The two sides “discussed various guidelines needed to ensure an independent

judiciary” and the “admissibility of wiretap evidence.” They also discussed the conditions

of Soviet and American prisons.885 These negotiations served U.S. interests because they

required Soviet bureaucrats to hear about the steps involved in creating democratic

institutions. They also forced “Soviet officials” to concede “that there are [human rights] problems that they have to face . . . [and] are trying to correct.” At the same time, as

Reagan must have gleaned from his private conservations with Gorbachev, they also allowed the Soviet reformers to tell their domestic critics that they had not capitulated to

American demands and raised the issue of U.S. human rights violations.886

Besides raising issues related to human rights, Reagan remained committed to

opening up Soviet society. While ideological considerations were never absent, he

continued to believe that Soviet internal behavior would not improve unless they allowed

their private citizens to have regular and normal contacts with their counterparts across

the globe. In April 1986, he signed NSDD-223, which called on the U.S. government to

build on the exchange agreement signed in Geneva and “expand dramatically contacts

and communications between the peoples of our two countries.” Once again reflecting

language found in the Final Act designed to break down the barriers between Eastern and

Western Europe, this document advocated the expansion of ‘sister city’ relationships,”

the “inauguration of regular media exchanges,” and further exchanges between Soviet

885 American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1989), 323-6; and CSCE Digest (July/August 1988): 5.

886 American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1989), 323-6. 453

and American youths.887 Along with calling for more frequent exchanges among “civic,

religious, and other groups,” this document also advocated the “increased publication and distribution of each other’s books and publications.” Because Reagan placed particular

importance on expanding person-to-person exchanges, he also approved the creation of a new office under the jurisdiction of the USIA called the Coordinator for the President’s

U.S.-Soviet Exchange Initiative. On paper, the person holding this position would focus on working with the private sector to increase the level of U.S-Soviet exchanges.888

Some critics argue that Reagan could have spent more government money to ensure the lasting success of his exchange initiative. While debates about appropriate funding levels will always exist, USIA Director Charles Wick held exhaustive consultations with Soviet officials designed to increase the scope of information exchanges between the two nations. He attempted to create a framework whereby each side could challenge the “alleged disinformation” and false public statements “of the other.” In addition to negotiating the expansion of book and movie exchanges, he encouraged his Soviets counterparts to bypass the U.S. government and negotiate exchanges with the American private sector. Wick also played an important role increasing the number of interviews Reagan held with Soviet journalists in 1987.

Although bureaucratic resistance made the implementation of the agreement all but impossible, Wick accepted a Soviet proposal that pledged the U.S. government to help the USSR “obtain transmission time on a U.S. radio station” in return for “VOA access to

887 Simpson, ed., National Security Directives of the Bush Administration, 690-3.

888 Ibid. 454

a local Soviet radio facility.” In a similar vein, Soviet bureaucratic resistance stood in the way of implementing another agreement allowing the VOA to open an office in

Moscow.889

The emphasis Reagan placed on increasing U.S.-Soviet exchanges once again

reminds us that he never followed rigid linkages to modify Soviet internal behavior. The

Soviets may not have “institutionalized” democratic institutions as quickly as he wanted,

but he permitted officials either to renew or sign new cooperative agreements in areas as

diverse as environmental protection and space travel. As part of his efforts to improve

U.S.-Soviet relations, he continued to support American participation in the Final Act

forum in Stockholm known as the Conference on Disarmament in Europe (CDE). While

some members of Congress and private groups argued that these negotiations downgraded the visibility of human rights issues within the Helsinki Process, they produced important results. For the first time, the Soviets agreed to the on-site verification of military confidence-building measures (CBM). Because Reagan had always wanted to sign verifiable nuclear reduction agreements, the Soviet government’s change of attitude toward inspections laid the groundwork for the 1987 Intermediate-

Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.890

889 Richmond, U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986, 109-110; Letter, Wick to Reagan, 22 December 1987, NSC: SF, Box 8, Folder 8709497; and Snyder, Warriors of Disinformation, 90-1, 115-6, 169-74, 178-9, 183-4. The expansion of the books and movies took place in practice. See “USSR-USA: Widening of Book Exchange,” TASS, 10 November 1988; and “U.S., Soviets to Exchange Recent Movies,” The Associated Press, 22 June 1988.

890 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Phase I of the Vienna Review Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 3; and Ibid., Stockholm Meeting of the Conference on Confidence and Security- Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe, 2, 52-64, and 73. See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 221-7. 455

Besides signing an arms control treaty, Reagan took some small steps to address the Kremlin’s concerns about the low levels of Soviet-American trade. Of course, unlike

Carter, he never really considered certifying Soviet compliance with the requirements of

the Jackson-Vanik amendment. He also saw no reason to ease restrictions on the transfer of “strategic technologies” that weakened U.S. national security. Yet, he continued to

sanction American participation in the Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R Commercial Commission

sessions designed to facilitate Soviet-American trade. Near the beginning of 1987, he chose to ease restrictions “on the export of [oil] drilling equipment to the Soviet Union” that Jimmy Carter had imposed in 1978.891

Reagan’s willingness to pursue arms control and discuss economic issues with the

Soviet Union led some Congressional and public critics to argue that the executive branch cared more about improving U.S.-Soviet relations than rectifying Soviet internal behavior.892 These critiques serve as a reminder that Reagan’s approach to improving

Soviet-American relations had some important commonalities with the Helsinki process.

891 Anne Swardson, “U.S. Lifts Controls on Export of Drilling Gear to Soviets,” Washington Post, 16 January 1987, A1. See also “US to rethink Soviet Oil Ban,” The Guardian (London), 30 December 1986; and “A Way to Help,” Oil & Gas Journal, 23 June 1986, 27; and “U.S. Approves Efforts to Widen Trade with USSR,” TASS, 7 April 1988. At one point, he also rejected suggestions to place a ban on the importation of Soviet chocolate and tea because “we can’t confirm whether products are made by convicts.” See also Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 632. For a description of Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R Commercial sessions, see “Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Commercial Commission (JCC),” WHORM IT086-IT101, Folder: IT095, RRPL.

892 CSCE Digest (July/August 1988): 3; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Soviet Jewry Struggle, 100 Cong., 1st session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 45-8; U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Bern Human Contacts Meeting, 71; and U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Stockholm Meeting of the Conference on Confidence and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe, 69. Although he goes much too far, Stuart Altshuler advances the argument that private citizens checked the Reagan administration’s interest in increasing U.S.-Soviet trade. See Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom, 60-4. Commerce Secretary William Verity received a letter from the Coalition of Free Soviet Jews that criticized the administration for thinking about supporting “Soviet membership in the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and the International Monetary Fund.” See Letter, Coalition of Free Jews to William Verity, 4 February 1988, Matthew Zachary Files, Box 1, Folder: Soviet Jewry, RRPL. 456

On the eve of the Moscow summit, Reagan told an audience in Helsinki that the “General

Secretary and I have developed a broad agenda that is linked directly to the agenda of the

Final Act.” As he put it:

The Final Act grapples with the full range of our underlying differences and deals with East-West relations as an interrelated whole. It reflects the belief of all our countries that human rights issues are less likely to be abused when a nation’s security is less in doubt; that economic relations can contribute to security, but depend on the trust and confidence that come from increasing ties between our peoples, increasing openness, and increasing freedom.893

After outlining how Soviet internal practices still fell far short of Final Act standards, he raised the issue of Gorbachev’s emphasis on a “common European home.”

Instead of focusing on geography, he asked the audience to think about “what is it that cements the structure of clear purpose that all our nations pledged themselves to by their signature on the Final Act?” He called the answers to these questions obvious: “the belief in the inalienable rights and dignity of every single human being” and a

“commitment to true pluralist democracy.” As the twentieth century drew to a close,

Reagan remarked, the failures and brutalities of totalitarian regimes promising a “perfect world” had become clear for all to see. “Once it was the democracies that doubted their own view of freedom and wondered whether utopian systems might be better. Today the doubt is on the other side.”894

These words set the stage for Reagan’s memorable performance at the Moscow

summit. This meeting represented logical outcome of the approach he had taken to

rectify Soviet human rights violations since the end of 1986. Before he arrived, Reagan

893 PPOP, 1988, Vol. I, 656-60.

894 Ibid. 457

made a pragmatic concession. After internal debates, he cancelled a planned visit to the

home of a refusenik family when a Soviet spokesperson indicated that such a meeting

would prevent the individuals in question from ever receiving emigration permission. 895

This decision did not dampen his determination to raise the issue of Soviet human

rights violations. Standing in the Danilov monastery, he quoted the words of the

outlawed author Solzhenitsyn to highlight the inherent religiosity of the Soviet people.

He also voiced his hope that members of the illegal Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox

Churches “will soon be able to practice their religion freely and instruct their children . . . in the fundamentals of their faith.” When addressing dissenters at Spaso House, Reagan

articulated his determination to remind Gorbachev that restrictions on emigration and

freedom of speech still violated Final Act standards. Recognizing the enormous

sacrifices involved in their struggles, he told them that “I came here hoping to do what I

could to give you strength.” “Yet I already know it is you who have strengthened me,

you who have given me a message to carry back [home].”896

Reagan also addressed the students and faculty of Moscow State University.

Reflecting his belief in the importance of making Soviet society more open and free, he

went out of his way to highlight the benefits of democratic freedoms and institutions. He

not only linked them with economic growth and prosperity, but also explained in detail

how they their existence in the United States accounted for all the fundamental freedoms

Americans enjoyed. “Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single

895 Buwalda, They Did Not Dwell Alone, 159-60.

896 PPOP, 1988, Vol. I, 674-7. 458

authority or government has a monopoly of truth,” he told the audience. “It is [also] the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people.” After calling on Gorbachev to institutionalize democratic reforms and tear down the Berlin wall, he spoke of a day when the divisions between the East and West had disappeared. “Nothing would please me more,” he observed, “than to see the day that a concert promoter in . . . England could call up a Soviet rock group, without going through any governmental agency, and have them playing in Liverpool the next night.”897

Behind closed doors, Reagan felt comfortable enough to express his hope that

U.S.-Soviet non-strategic trade would increase in the near future, but offered no firm promises. He also raised the issue of Soviet human rights violations and stressed the importance he placed on emigration issues. When Gorbachev criticized U.S. internal behavior, he reiterated how U.S. democratic practices preserved the initiative and freedom of private citizens. Since his pragmatic instincts never disappeared, Reagan reassured him that he would not tell anyone that he had demanded Soviet human rights concessions. Yet, “because they were friends,” he offered Gorbachev a suggestion in light of the positive American experience with religious freedom.898 According to a transcript of the meeting:

The President asked Gorbachev what if he ruled that religious freedom was part of the people’s rights, that people of any religion—whether Islam with its mosque, the Jewish faith, Protestants or the Ukrainian church—could go to the

897 Ibid., 677-80.

898 Memorandum of Conversation, “President’s Second One-on-One Meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev,” 31 May 1988, 10:08-11:07 AM,” 7-9, Fritz Ermath Files, Box 1, Folder: 1988 Summit Memcons (1/2), 26 May-3 June 1988, RRPL; and Memorandum of Conversation, “President’s First One- on-One Meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev,” 29 May 1988, 3:26-4:37 PM,” 3-7, Ibid. 459

church of their choice. . . . Potential emigrants often wanted to go because of their limited ability to worship the God they believed in.899

To pique Gorbachev’s conscience, Reagan described how a Russian solider on the

Eastern Front questioned his atheism just before he died and wrote a note expressing his

hope that “God would accept me.”900

Well aware that he had asked Gorbachev to repudiate an important tenet of

Soviet-style socialism that might embolden domestic critics, Reagan couched his request

as an intimate personal favor. He indicated that granting religious freedom would make

the Soviet leader “a hero” and reduce the amount of international animus directed toward

the USSR. “If there was anyone in the room who said [that] he had given such advice,”

Reagan would call him a liar and reject any notion that he had made such a request. In the end, “[t]his was not . . . something [that] someone should be told to do.” Because he did not want Gorbachev to appear weak in the eyes of his domestic critics, he articulated a similar position in public. During the question and answer session at Moscow

University, he blamed the inertia of the Soviet bureaucracy rather than Gorbachev for the backlog of private citizens who had not yet received permission to emigrate.901

Although arms control negotiations stalled in Moscow, the two sides reached a number of agreements consistent with American goals for the meeting. They signed a new “implementing program” that increased the level of high school exchanges and called for the opening of “culture/information centers in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.” They

899 Memorandum of Conversation, “President’s First One-on-One Meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev,” 29 May 1988, 3:26-4:37 PM, 6.

900 Ibid., 7.

901 Ibid., 7; and PPOP, 1988, Vol. I, 692. 460

also agreed to institutionalize the U.S.-Soviet human rights forums that had started the

previous year. Echoing the suggestions of Gorbachev, the Moscow concluding document

called for American and Soviet legislators to hold regular meetings where they could

articulate their mutual concerns about the other side’s human rights violations. The

Soviet leader may have wanted to keep all human rights meetings between the two

countries “closed,” but ended up accepting U.S. language that reaffirmed the important

role private citizens and NGOs played in facilitating the exchange of information

between “their two societies.”902

These agreements produced tangible results consistent with courses of action that

the Final Act encouraged signatories to follow. In November 1988, American and Soviet

legislators participated in a seminar on humanitarian cooperation and human rights held

in Moscow. During the proceedings, a Soviet spokesperson blamed his country’s poor

human rights record on “Stalin’s personality cult, his authoritarian rule,” and the

continued existence of the “administrative-bureaucratic system which developed in those

years.” “At the present,” he told his American counterparts, “the Soviet Union is trying

to overcome the negative phenomena inherited from the past and create a system of legal

norms which would establish democratic principles governing relations between man,

society, and law.” At another meeting, “representatives of the Soviet and U.S. public”

902 For a copy of this summit’s joint statement, see: Available [Online]: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/060188b.htm [10 December 2007]. See also “Soviet-U.S. Parliamentarians’ human rights seminar in Moscow,” BBC, 16 November 1988; Michael R. Gordon, “Moscow Summit; U.S. and Soviet Agree to Widen Student Exchange,” The New York Times, 1 June 1988, A1; and “Reagan, Gorbachev Hail Mammoth U.S.-Soviet Cultural Fest,” The Associated Press, 12 March 1988; and Memo, Nelson Ledsky to Paul Schott Stevens, “Moscow Public Diplomacy Themes,” 6 May 1988, Fritz Ermath Files, Box 1, Folder: Moscow Summit—Public Diplomacy, 26 May-3 June 1988, RRPL. 461

created a “joint action” program designed to solve human rights “problems . . . still

persisting in both countries.” To accomplish this task, the agreement called for the

exchange of legal education and television programs devoted to human rights issues. It

also advocated the exchange of experts, lecturers, and students interested in legal issues

and penal reform.903

While sensitive to the issue of domestic opposition, Reagan continued to make

public statements in defense of dissenters. On 8 December 1988, he praised the role private citizens played showing the world how governments suppressed the exercise of basic human freedoms. He also continued to argue that Soviet leaders would not overcome international distrust until they institutionalized democratic laws and practices.

During his last private meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan handed the General Secretary such a list and voiced his happiness “with the progress that had been made in the human rights field since their last meeting.”904

The steps that the Soviet government took to create a more humane form of

socialism confirmed Reagan’s core belief that freedom would one day triumph over

tyranny. Near the end of his presidency, he reminded Americans that the Cold War had

not begun because of some sort of tragic mistake:

903 “Soviet-U.S. Human Rights Seminar Continues in Moscow,” TASS, 16 November 1988; and “Soviet- American Forum for “’Life and Human Rights,” TASS, 7 December 1988. The Soviet side raised the issue of homelessness in the United States and the “harboring of undocumented illegal aliens in the United States.” See “U.S.-Soviet Human Rights Talks End,” United Press International, 18 November 1988; and “Human Rights Dialogue Makes Headway,” 21 December 1988, CDSP. This article can be located at Lexis-Nexis.

904 See Memorandum of Conversation, “The President’s Private Meeting with Gorbachev,” 7 December 1988, 1:05-1:30 PM, Executive Secretariat, Box 10, Folder: 8890944, RRPL. 462

Far to the contrary, it was understanding—not misunderstanding—that was the root cause. . . . I speak here of the clear consensus that developed in the West shortly after World War II on several vital points: the true nature of the Soviet regime, the fundamental distinction between totalitarianism and democracy, and the moral duty to resist the international threat to human rights posed by Soviet expansion.905

Reagan’s speeches about the demise of totalitarianism and “forward march of

freedom” remain important testaments to the winding down of the Cold War and the

chain of events that resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet empire. As the next section

of this chapter will explain, however, Reagan’s words were probably less important than

his commitment to holding the Soviets accountable for their violations of the Final Act.

The Helsinki process ended up giving the administration a powerful way of making sure that the Soviet government continued to move in the direction of respecting basic human rights. It also gave the United States a legitimate and visible way of protecting the civil

society that began to emerge in the Soviet Union as a result of Gorbachev’s reforms.906

The Helsinki Accords, Private Citizen Diplomacy, and Democracy Promotion, Part II Reagan’s willingness to mention the important role private citizens played in

holding the Soviets accountable for their human rights violations only reflected the

conclusions that many of his subordinates had already drawn. Voicing sentiments similar

to those of Elliott Abrams, Shultz told an audience in 1986 “that we must . . . work

closely with our concerned domestic constituencies.” “One of the highlights of the recent

meeting in Reykjavik,” he explained, “was its intimate relation to one of the most

905 PPOP, 1988, Vol. II, 1404.

906 For a similar argument, see Stefan Lehne, The Vienna Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1986-1989: A Turning Point in East-West Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 138, 185. 463

intensive series of domestic human rights consultations in history.” “Nongovernmental organizations and members of Congress directly participated in the formulation of our negotiating position.” While political considerations were not absent, Shultz noted that these consultations contributed to “American successes at the summit.” Because

Gorbachev grasped that the American public supported Reagan’s position on human rights, “we succeeded in obtaining grudging Soviet acknowledgement of the rightful place of” this issue in U.S.-Soviet negotiations.907

Shultz had every reason to articulate these positions. Before the Reykjavik

summit, State Department officials held frequent meetings with and accepted materials

from members of the UCSJ, NCSJ, IHF, and the U.S. Helsinki Commission.908 During

one of these meetings, IHF member Jeri Laber told a high-ranking State Department official that the Soviets preferred to deport refuseniks rather than political prisoners who

testified to the existence of domestic opposition. As a result of this information, the U.S.

government insisted that settling the Daniloff affair required the Kremlin to release a

political prisoner such as Orlov rather than someone who wanted to emigrate.909 Near the end of 1988, Assistant Secretary Richard Schifter received an award from UCSJ for his services on behalf of Soviet Jews. In his acceptance speech, he told the audience that

907 George Shultz, “Human Rights and Soviet-American Relations,” Current Policy, no. 882 (Washington, DC: U.S. State Department, 1986), 3-4.

908 Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom, 35-74; Walter Ruby, “The Role of Nonestablishment Groups,” in Freidman and Chernin, ed., A Second Exodus, 203-7, 218-22; Richard Schifter, “American Diplomacy, 1985-1989,” in Ibid., 144-8; and Myrna Shinbaum, “Mobilizing America: The National Conference on Soviet Jewry,” in Ibid., 174-80; Naftalin, “The Activist Movement,” in Ibid., 225-30; Andrew Harrison, Passover Revisited: Philadelphia’s Efforts to Aid Soviet Jews, 1963-1998 (Teaneck, PA: Farleigh Dickinson Press, 2001), 207; and Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 250-3 and 260-5.

909 Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 252-4. See also Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 300-1; and Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, 389. 464

“[y]ou and all those who have joined you in this effort have indeed been instrumental in putting the issues of Soviet Jewish emigration on the US public agenda.” This statement was more than a public relations stratagem. As he later recounted, he utilized the information private citizens gave him to challenge Soviet emigration refusals based on an applicant’s possession of “state secrets.”910

The U.S. Helsinki commission and private citizens also continued to play pivotal roles in shaping how the executive branch both prepared for and behaved during the Final

Act meetings in Bern and Vienna. Before the former meeting took place, Michael Novak held numerous meetings with NGOs and Commission staffers with the specific purpose of obtaining information about dissenters and conditions in the Soviet Union. He called the materials he received during these sessions valuable because “they facilitate our substantive preparations” and “add to the ammunition in our briefing books for the actual work of the session.” 911 Warren Zimmerman behaved in a similar fashion. He held

informal private meetings with Soviet émigrés and a wide array of NGO representatives.

As they had in the past, State Department officials worked with the Commission “in

writing detailed briefing books, files, and reports prepared for use by the U.S. delegation

in Vienna.” As another report indicated, “the Commission’s lengthy report on

910 “Address by Richard Schifter, “U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights at the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry Awards Banquet,” Federal News Service, 16 October 1988; and “Question and Answer Period Following Remarks by Rozanne Ridgeway, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs and Richard Schifter, U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights at the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry Awards Banquet,” Ibid.; and Schifter, “American Diplomacy, 1985-1989,” in Freidman and Albert D. Chernin, ed., A Second Exodus.

911 Novak, Taking Glasnost Seriously, 10. See also U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Bern Human Contacts Meeting, 3-30. 465

implementation of the Helsinki Final Act served as an important reference throughout the

meeting.”912

In the months preceding the Vienna follow-up meeting, the State Department

once again accepted many of the Commission’s recommendations. Executive branch

officials and Commission staffers organized “NGO briefings” designed to solicit the

input of private citizens. They also held numerous open forums in cities such as Miami

and New York aimed at further increasing public interest in the Helsinki process.

Following the precedent Carter had established at Belgrade and Madrid, Reagan agreed

to appoint fifteen public members to the U.S. delegation in Vienna. Once this meeting began, “the U.S. delegation established a public liaison office” that “provided NGOS

with information, facilitated access to the conference site, and arranged interviews with

the press.” U.S. delegates also “held formal NGO briefings and numerous meetings, both

formal and informal, with” private citizens. In particular, Warren Zimmerman went out

his way to discuss American positions with Soviet émigrés who attended the meeting.913

While executive branch officials recognized the important role NGOs played in providing information about conditions in the Soviet Union, they also supported the

912 Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 261-2; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Phase I of the Vienna Meeting of the Conference and Security and Cooperation in Europe, 3-7; U.S. Helsinki Commission, Phase III and IV of the Vienna Meeting of the Conference and Security and Cooperation in Europe, 100 Congress, 2nd session, 1988 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), 10-37; and Annual Report of Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for the Period Covering January 1 through December 31, 1986 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 3-4, 6-9. See also Annual Report of Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for the Period Covering January 1 1987 through December 31, 1988 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 3-4; and U.S. Helsinki Commission Hearings, Stockholm Meeting of the Conference on Confidence and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe, 81.

913 Annual Report of Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for the Period Covering January 1 through December 31, 1986, 7 and 21-2; and Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 261-2. See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, Chapters 11-13. 466

activities of private citizens for more practical reasons. As indicated in Chapter VIII,

they grasped that defending the right of private citizens to participate in the Helsinki

process and monitor governments Final Act compliance record gave the U.S. government

an excellent way of challenging Soviet leaders’ traditional intolerance of diversity and

pluralism. Much like their predecessors, U.S. delegates in Vienna and Bern never

stopped advancing proposals that allowed private citizens to attend closed sessions.

When defending this position, Novak reminded his fellow delegates that “thoughtful

citizens are ahead of governments” on most issues. They “often generate new ideas, imagine new horizons, and help to shape the agenda of the future.” Aware of the broad international impulse against bureaucratic discretion and authority described in previous chapters, he argued that “nongovernmental organizations keep governments honest.”

“Governments generally need that,” he argued, because they “like to project a favorable image of themselves.”914

The ways in which Gorbachev’s calls for “democratization” increased the number

of private citizens engaged in public non-official activities created problems for Soviet

officials. Visible signs that a Soviet civil society had begun to emerge left U.S. delegates

in a much stronger position to challenge the continuation of Soviet practices that violated

the ability of individuals “to know and act upon their rights.” Zimmerman told the other

delegations in Vienna a Final Act meeting in Moscow could not place as long as Warsaw

Pact delegates continued to argue that “the monitoring of [human rights] commitments

can only be entrusted to” governments. If Gorbachev really wants Soviet private citizens

914 Novak, Taking Glasnost Seriously, 3-7 and 110-2. See also Lehne, The Vienna Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1986-1989, 76-86. 467

“to teach and learn democracy,” he asked, “why not give them valuable experience by

encouraging them to monitor the Soviet government’s Final Act compliance record?”915

In defense of his argument, Zimmerman pointed out that the Soviets had invited

the IHF to attend an official human rights seminar in Moscow. While an important step,

they still had to prove that they could tolerate non-official monitoring of their domestic

behavior before any Final Act meeting could take place in their country. He therefore

challenged the Kremlin to sanction the efforts of the Press Club Glasnost (PCG) to hold

its own human rights seminar in Moscow near the end of 1987. Citing this group’s

appeal to the Vienna gathering, Zimmerman called the Soviet attitude toward this

meeting “an important test” because PCG “sees itself as part of the non-governmental

element of the Helsinki Process.”916

One month before the Moscow summit took place, Shultz used his private meeting with Shevardnadze to relay the message that the Soviets would have “to resolve difficult issues” to satisfy American concerns about Soviet human rights violations. To drive home this point, he reminded the Foreign Minister that the U.S. government had allowed Soviet physicians to visit Leonard Peltier in prison “even though we did not agree with” your government’s “characterization of him as a political prisoner.” When

“an American organization sought to examine several Soviet political prisoners” several

months ago, he continued, “their appeal went unanswered.” “If the Soviet government

915 U.S. Helsinki Commission, Phase III and IV of the Vienna Meeting of the Conference and Security and Cooperation in Europe, 19-21.

916 Ibid. 468

endorsed the visit to Mr. Peltier, it must surely recognize the humanitarian principle on

which that request was based” and reciprocate.917

Reagan also tested Gorbachev’s commitment to reform by keeping the U.S.

government an active participant in the Chautauqua Conferences on U.S.-Soviet relations. These “town-hall” meetings continued to give American private citizens the opportunity for asking government officials tough questions about emigration restrictions and the existence of political prisoners. This forum also proved particularly valuable because Gorbachev allowed these meetings to take place on Soviet territory every other year after they began in 1985. During the 1988 meeting in , Georgia, a number of

Georgian private citizens complained to Soviet representatives about their living conditions, restrictions of religious practices, and “Russian domination of [official] policy.918 The State Department favored participation in Chautauqua Conferences

because they gave the U.S. government an excellent way of reaching Soviet domestic

audiences. During the 1986 meeting in Jurmala, Latvia, the opening address of NSC

staffer Jack Matlock appeared on local televisions stations. Using a mixture of Latvian

and Russian, he explained how the United States had never recognized the Soviet

incorporation of the Baltic republics. He also described why Americans placed so much

importance on how governments behaved toward their citizens. According to Matlock, a

917 Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “The Secretary’s Initial Meeting with Shevardnadze,” 7. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB251/7.pdf [8 June 2008].

918 Mackenzie, When Stars and Stripes Met Hammer and Sickle, 140. 469

number of Latvians who later worked for independence from Moscow drew inspiration

from his words.919

While the next chapter will explain Gorbachev’s behavior in greater detail,

Soviet officials took a number of steps to address U.S. governmental and public criticisms of their Final Act compliance record and inability to tolerate non-official

opinions. The Foreign Ministry created an office devoted to cultural and humanitarian

affairs in mid-1986. The Soviet government also set up a “public” organization devoted

to “humanitarian problems and human rights” “composed of journalists, intellectuals, and

workers” on the eve of the Washington summit.920 Resembling the U.S. Helsinki

Commission, this organization defined its task as educating government officials about

the importance of human rights and monitoring Soviet compliance with the Final Act. It

also pledged to work with “corresponding international public organizations” as part of

the universal campaign to make all governments respect all basic human rights.921

Soviet officials at all levels of government also began to back away from the argument that citing human rights violations represented interference in their country’s

“internal affairs.” In Bern and Vienna, they started hold press conferences about domestic conditions in the USSR and the proposals they had supported behind closed

919 Ibid., 47-8, 53, 55, 75-6, 189, 91; and Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 203-5. See also Memo for George Shultz, “Materials on the President’s Meeting in Reykjavik,” 4 October 1986, 8.

920 “Human Rights Commission Established in the Soviet Union,” Xinhua General Overseas News Service, 26 December 1987; “Soviet Publicist on Human Rights Commission in the USSR,” TASS, 26 December 1987; and “Soviet Human Rights Commission Complaints Committee and Legislation Planned,” BBC Summary of International Broadcasting, 1 January 1988.

921 “Soviet Publicist on Human Rights Commission in the USSR,” TASS, 26 December 1987; “Soviet Human Rights Commission Appeals for Amnesty for Religious Prisoners,” BBC Summary of International Broadcasting, 12 August 1988; and “Soviet Human Rights head seeks Pardon for Religious Prisoners; Fydor Burlatsky,” The Times (London), 30 January 1988. 470

doors. They also held discussions with Western private citizens both inside and outside

Final Act forums. When IHF representatives arrived in January 1988, they participated

in “high-level” meetings with a wide array of Soviet bureaucrats, including those who

represented the Soviet Helsinki Commission, the Serbsky Institute for Forensic

Psychiatry and Council on Religious Affairs. According to a Helsinki Watch publication,

Soviet authorities did not prevent IHF delegates from meeting with a wide array of non-

official groups, including Perestroika ’88 and the Moscow Trust Group.922

While American and Soviet delegates traded barbs in Bern, Gorbachev held a

private meeting with members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission concerning the Soviet

government’s respect for basic human rights. Over the course of the next two years,

Commission members participated in human rights debates with deputies of the Supreme

Soviet that appeared on both American network and Soviet television. Near the end of

1988, Commission members accepted the General Secretary’s invitation to discuss human rights issues with Supreme Soviet deputies in Moscow.923 The efforts of Soviet

officials to illustrate their new commitment to respecting basic human rights took some

unexpected turns. In the fall of 1988, a Soviet delegate in Vienna accepted an invitation to outline Moscow’s reform efforts at a conference on international human rights standards hosted by the United National Human Rights Center in Milan, Italy. Around the same time, Soviet representatives at the Chautauqua conference in Tbilisi admitted

922 U.S. Helsinki Watch, “International Helsinki Federation Mission to Moscow”; and Jeri Laber, “Mission to Moscow,” The New York Times Review of Books 35 (2 June 1988). See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 220-5. See also Amnesty International, News From the USSR (22 February 1988).

923 Annual Report of Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for the Period Covering January 1 1987 through December 31, 1988, 6-7 471

that Western criticisms of the Soviet government’s systematic human rights violations

had significant merit. “It was senseless to deny them, even unnecessary,” he commented.

“The most important thing was that the Soviets themselves” had “on their own initiative had decided to correct the situation.”924

Even though authorities still arrested some private citizens for holding non- official views and broke up demonstrations, Soviet representatives tried to appear more tolerant toward dissenting opinions than their predecessors had. The summit in

Reykjavik marked the first time that Soviet officials agreed to “meet with former . . . dissenters and protesters now living abroad.” These meetings continued during the

Vienna follow-up meeting. Although authorities closed “meeting halls” and detained a number of “organizers,” they ended up allowing the well-attended human rights seminar of PCG to take place in December 1987. In the spring of 1988, members of the Soviet

Helsinki Commission agreed to meet with an IHF delegation in Moscow that included

Orlov.925

The steps that the Soviet government took to address the critiques of the U.S.

government and private citizens only gave the Reagan administration further leverage in

setting the terms of how the Vienna conference would end. Shultz and U.S. delegates in

effect told their Soviet counterparts that the United States could not sign a concluding

document until took further steps to satisfy Western positions. In the immediate future,

924 Schifter, “American Diplomacy, 1985-1989,” 150-1; and Mackenzie, When Stars and Stripes Met Hammer and Sickle, 140-1.

925 Korey, The Promises We Keep, 226; U.S. Helsinki Watch, “International Helsinki Federation Mission to Moscow” Vol. II, no. 1 (22 February 1988): 1-6; and Orlov, Dangerous Thoughts, 300-5, 309-10. See also U.S. Helsinki Watch, Dissidents Push the Limits of Glasnost: New Publications Reach the West (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch, 1987). 472

the Kremlin needed to stop jamming all Western radio broadcasts and implement

emigration procedures that limited the ability of bureaucrats to exercise arbitrary

discretion.926 Gorbachev proved receptive to these demands. As 1988 drew to a close, he agreed to cease the jamming of all international broadcasts and used an address at the

United Nations to voice his intention of further easing emigration restrictions. When taken together with the release of hundreds of political prisoners and rising levels of emigration, Shultz decided that the Soviet government had done just enough to meet the administration’s requirements. He therefore signed a concluding document on 17

January 1989 that called on Paris, Copenhagen, and Moscow to host “human dimension” conferences over the course of the next three years.927

While holding a meeting covering human rights issues bolstered Gorbachev’s

image as a bold reformer, the U.S. government signed the Vienna concluding document

for one important reason: The contents of the agreement were consistent with Reagan

administration’s long-term goal of promoting the “process of change in the Soviet Union

toward a more pluralistic political and economic system in which the power of the

privileged ruling elite is gradually reduced.” For the first time, the Soviet government

admitted that human rights performance in no way fell within a nation’s “internal

affairs.” It even affirmed the right of signatories to call into question their counterparts’

performance in the “human dimension” of the Helsinki process. By accepting this

926 William Korey explains how the U.S. officials indicated that they would not agree to conclude the meeting until the Soviets met their minimum human rights and emigration requirements. See Korey, The Promises We Keep, 233-55.

927 For a copy of the Vienna follow-up meeting’s concluding document, see the following website. Available [Online]: http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/osce/text/VIENN89E.htm [10 April 2006]. See also Korey, The Promises We Keep, 258-71. 473 position, all participating states also agreed to answer these “representations” through the appropriate diplomatic channels. 928

In sharp contrast to the positions they had advanced at previous Final Act meetings, the Soviets also for the first time accepted language referring to emigration as a universal human right that no government could impede in an “arbitrary manner.” The

Vienna agreement also contained a significant amount of new language about religious affairs. It called on signatories to respect the rights of religious communities to choose their own personnel and “establish . . . accessible places of worship or assembly.” In addition to protecting “the right of everyone to give and receive religious education in the language of his choice,” the agreement pledged each signatory to respect the right of religious communities to “produce, import and disseminate religious publications and materials.”929

By signing the Vienna concluding document, the Soviet government also agreed to engage in consistent dialogue with NGOs and private citizens designed to remove

“legal and administrative impediments inconsistent with CSCE provisions.” This provision implied that Soviet officials would allow NGOs and private citizens to operate with as much freedom in the upcoming as they had in Vienna and

Madrid. The agreement also forbade signatories from punishing private citizens for permitting foreigners to stay in their homes. In language that Western nations must have included to protect dissenters all over Eastern Europe, the document reaffirmed the right

928 “Concluding Document of the Vienna Meeting.” For a more complete analysis of this mechanism, see Korey, The Promises We Keep, 267-8.

929 “Concluding Document of the Vienna Meeting.” 474

of private citizens “to obtain, possess, reproduce and distribute information materials of

all kinds.” The Soviets even swallowed a plank that called on participating states to

“ensure the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons belonging to

national minorities within their territory.”930

The Soviet government’s acceptance of this document does not mean that the

USSR had become a democratic state with bureaucrats who accepted basic civil liberties and always tolerated pluralism. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration deserves credit

for remaining in active participant in the Helsinki process and working with transnational

actors to hold Soviet leaders accountable for their behavior. Given the larger Soviet goal

of becoming a “normal” Western nation, Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” had little

choice but to take steps to show that their nation was no longer a systematic human rights

violator. From this angle, Reagan’s praise of U.S. democracy and military buildup did

not induce Soviet internal reform. Instead, he helped promote democracy in the USSR

because he made the executive branch an active participant in transnational movement

based on monitoring how well governments treated their private citizens. George Shultz

spoke about this reality long after he left office, noting that the Final Act “turned out to

be a great advantage to us. We used that [agreement] very effectively” to promote

internal reform in the Soviet Union.931

930 Ibid.

931 See Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, “Interview with George Shultz,” 18 December 2002. Available [Online]: http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/oralhistories/reagan [10 December 2007]. 475

CHAPTER 11: REVOLUTIONS FROM ABOVE AND BELOW: MIKHAIL

GORBACHEV, SOVIET BUREAUCRATS, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE

TRIBULATIONS OF SOVIET CIVIL SOCIETY

At a Politburo meeting that took place in 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev explained why

he had reservations about denouncing in explicit terms. The Soviet citizens

who suffered from unwarranted persecution at this leader’s hands “worked without . . .

counting on using the fruit of their hellish labors.” These individuals deserved our

respect because “they were building the country, preparing it against fascism . . . [and]

fighting for” the idea of socialism. “Are we [now] . . . smart” enough to say that “‘[y]ou

did the wrong thing?’ No . . . [w]e need to respect the people.”932 Almost twenty years

later, Gorbachev reminisced about how dissenters complicated his efforts to transform

Soviet-style socialism. He insisted that the “originators of the dirtiest, most cynical

attacks on me are the very ones who received freedom at my hands” and “gained power

over peoples’ minds thanks to the openness policy called Glasnost.” Given his goal of

making Soviet government more democratic, he called the “malicious mudslinging” of

“people whom I literally helped to their feet . . . hard to understand.”933

These sentiments raise important questions about the reasons why Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers took steps to make Soviet internal practices more

consistent with international human rights norms.934 To explain this development, some

932 See “Chernyaev Diary—1987,” 14-5. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB250/Chernyaev_Diary_1987.pdf [15 June 2008]. See also Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 454; Laqueur, The Long Road to Freedom, 59-61.

933 See Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century, 30.

476

constructivist political scientists have relied on processes such as “ideational persuasion”

and “rhetorical entrapment.” While these accounts have significant explanatory power,

they do not always illustrate the complexities and contradictions in Soviet behavior.935

Instead of privileging theory, this chapter will grapple with the contours of ideological change that actually occurred in the minds of top-level Soviet policymakers and lower- ranking officials. It will argue that the origins of Soviet reform lay in the dissatisfaction

Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers felt with the bureaucratic stagnation and poor economic performance that plagued the USSR. Many of these individuals, including Gorbachev, hoped to forge a superior “synthesis between socialism and democracy” that would enhance the ability of the Soviet Union to engage in ideological competition with capitalist nations like the United States.936

The steps that Gorbachev took to create a “more participatory” society ended up

shaping the general trajectory of his reform campaign.937 Working with transnational

human rights actors, Soviet private citizens exploited the “liberalized” political terrain to

challenge the legitimacy of the General Secretary’s preference for a “directed” glasnost.

They also called into question his determination to create a loyal civil society that

accepted his definitions of appropriate behavior. Although they loathed non-official

934 For a good account of the difficulties involved in showing how ideas shaped Gorbachev’s behavior, see William C. Wohlforth, “The End of the Cold War as a Hard Case for Idea,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 2 (2005): 165-73.

935 See Daniel Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” Journal o f Cold War Studies 7 (Spring 2005): 110-141.

936 Jacques Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’: Why and What For?” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 162.

937 John Gooding, “Gorbachev and Democracy,” Soviet Studies 42, no. 2 (April 1990), 205

477

activities, Gorbachev and other reform-minded officials found that they had little choice

but to carry out a wide array of steps designed to identify their government as an active

participant in a universal campaign for human rights.

The final section of this chapter will grapple with the successes and limitations of

Gorbachev’s reform campaign. In light of Russian and Soviet history, the signing of the

Vienna concluding document marked an important step toward creating a law-abiding

socialist state that had an obligation to respect each individual’s basic freedoms. Despite

this positive development, the cumulative impact of U.S. governmental and transnational

human rights critiques failed to change Gorbachev’s negative attitude toward non-official

activities that he viewed as a inconsistent with socialist “norms” or as a threat to the

continued existence of the USSR. In the end, the inability or unwillingness of many

Soviet officials to tolerate diversity had a predictable result. As the authority of CPSU crumbled, the Soviet government failed to institutionalize the laws and practices necessary to create a stable civil society capable of checking government behavior in a stable manner.

“Curbing the Absurdities”: The Soviet Government, Human Rights, and Dissenters, 1985-1986

As a number of scholars have pointed out, when Gorbachev became General

Secretary in March 1985, he was ready to carry out reforms designed to revitalize Soviet society, albeit without a master blueprint.938 The myriad of ills plaguing his nation such

938 For example, see English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 12-15, 193-240; English, “The Sociology of New Thinking: Elites, Identity Change, and the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 43-80; English, “Power, Ideas, and New Evidence on the Cold War’s End: A Reply to Brooks and Wohlforth,” International Security 26 (Spring 2002): 70-92; Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 24-52; Daniel Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 478

as economic stagnation and the prevalence of alcoholism may have shaped this

viewpoint, but he also saw a need for fundamental reform for other important reasons.

The cumulative effects of his work as an agricultural bureaucrat, as well as trips to

prosperous Western countries and Brezhnev’s crushing of the “, left him

with misgivings about how Soviet-style socialism operated in practice. As a result of

these doubts, Gorbachev began an active study of international relations and social-

democratic thought. Unlike orthodox policymakers, he held extensive consultations with

the “liberal-minded” intellectuals such as who had managed to

retain positions within the Communist Party despite their sympathy for non-official

views.939 He also read dissident tracts and works on socialist democratic thought,

including “a collection of essays [on the Prague Spring] entitled The Dubcek Drama . . .

books by Antonio Gramsci, Roger Garaudy [the French Communist theoretician], and

articles by the West German Social Democratic leader Willy Brandt and the French

Socialist Party leader Francois Mitterrand.”940

Gorbachev’s interest in social-democratic thought flowed from his belief that

socialist countries had a number of inherent advantages over their capitalist counterparts.

118-23; John Gooding, “Gorbachev and Democracy.” Vladislav Zubok also describes Gorbachev’s determination to move Soviet foreign policy and internal behavior away from the “imperial-revolutionary foundation of the past.” See Zubok, “New Evidence on the ‘Soviet Factor’ in the Peaceful Revolutions of 1989,” Cold War History Project Bulletin 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 5-14; Zubok, A Failed Empire, 278- 87. See also Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 1-20; and Jacques Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’: Why and What For?” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 159-178.

939 See Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 119- 122; and English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 201-215.

940 Gorbachev cited these works during an interview he participated in with the Czech reformer Zdnek Mlynar. See Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mylnar, trans. by George Shriver Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, The Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 50. See also Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century, 30-1. 479

Based on this position, he viewed the growth and improvement of socialist systems as the

“logical . . . future of humankind.” This attitude accounts for why he attempted to improve the performance of Soviet economy during his first two years in office through the strengthening of social discipline and the acceleration (uskorenie) of “scientific and technical progress.”941 It also explains why he felt obligated to keep the Soviet Union a credible ideological power capable of winning the global struggle with capitalism within the confines of a peaceful framework.942

Even though Gorbachev continued to make many statements consistent with orthodox Marxist-Leninist positions, he took some steps to move beyond the confines of his predecessors’ “old thinking.” The ways in which he grappled with the interdependence of global civilization and social-democratic thought led him to identify with the broad international impulse against bureaucratic discretion and authority described in previous chapters. As his stint as General Secretary progressed, he became

more and more convinced that “the hierarchy of vassals and chiefs of principalities was in

fact the way the country was run. The democratic façade did not change the essence of

941 Gorbachev, M.S. Gorbachov: General Secretary of the CPSU and Member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Volume II (Pergamon Press, 1987), 184. The quote about socialism being the “logical . . . future of humankind” comes from the notes Alexander Yakovlev prepared for a Politburo meeting near the end of 1988. See “Notes for Presentation at the Politburo session, December 27, 1988.” Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB168/yakovlev05.pdf [10 December 2006]. For a good description of Gorbachev’s acceleration goals and policies, see McCauley, Gorbachev, 50-79.

942 Gorbachev advanced the idea of engaging in peaceful ideological competition with capitalist powers throughout his stint as General Secretary. See Gorbachev, Mandate For Peace: The Charismatic Soviet Leader Speaks to the World (Toronto; New York: PaperJacks Ltd., 1987), 89, 104, 246, 406; Gorbachev, At the Summit: Speeches and Interviews 1987-July 1988 (New York: Richardson, Steriman and Black, 1988), 8, 74, 88-9, 94, 120, 126, 193, 211-213, 240, and 274; Gorbachev, M.S. Gorbachov, Volume II, 184-87, 201, 219; Gorbachev, Selected Speeches and Articles (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987), 342, 347, 356- 9, 362, 364, 393, and 601. This point has much in common with Sakwa’s viewpoint. See Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 353. 480

the matter. It was a caste system based on mutual protection.”943 To rectify this

situation, he worked to implement reform programs known as perestroika (restructuring)

and glasnost (openness) that at least in part aimed at curbing the arbitrary bureaucratic

authority party officials wielded over private citizens and workers. During his opening

address at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress that took place in February 1986, he

defended the necessity of holding bureaucrats accountable through glasnost, noting that

“there is not and cannot be any democracy, political creativity by the masses or their participation in management . . . without public openness.”944

As several works have pointed out, Gorbachev worked to surrounded himself with

“liberal-minded” reformers and rehabilitated some former Communist Party members

who had been expelled during the Brezhnev era. He also moved in the direction of

identifying the Soviet Union with universal values such as the rights of private citizens to work and chose their own form of government. He also mentioned his nation’s links with a “common European home.”945 Because of his close identification with European

civilization, he and Shevardnadze discussed ways of reinvigorating the Helsinki process.

The former explained this mindset during his trip to France in October 1985. “Like

France, we support the implementation of the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act in all its parts. . . . [I]t is my strong conviction that an improvement of the situation in Europe would be enormous importance to the whole world.” As a result of the Helsinki process,

943 Gorbachev and Mylnar, Conversations with Gorbachev, 48.

944 CDSP 38, no. 8 (26 March 1986): 27.

945 Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 428-9. See also Thomas, “Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 428-9. 481

he continued, “there exists a legal base making it possible to advance along the road of

cooperation and security.”946

Despite Gorbachev’s decision to articulate a reform program, evidence suggests

that his initial use of the term glasnost had much more in common with the ideas of

Lenin than those of dissenters such as Sakharov. As one author writes, Gorbachev

preferred a “Leninist glasnost” designed to punish bureaucrats for violating socialist

norms and private citizens for their poor discipline. Instead of advocating “freedom of

expression,” he preferred to explain how individuals “’who have grown accustomed to

doing slipshod work . . . will indeed be uncomfortable in the light of public openness,

when everything done in the state and in society is done under the people’s supervision and in full sight of the people.” 947 Anatoly S. Chernyaev, a “liberal-minded” reformer

who became a top-level foreign policy adviser in 1986, captured the essence of this

position in his memoirs. He wrote that Gorbachev at first viewed democracy “as

946 Gorbachev, M.S. Gorbachov, Volume II, 253-4. See also Roy Medvedev and Giulietto Chiesa, trans. by Michael Moore Time of Change: An Insider’s View of Russia’s Transformation (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 168-9

947 The idea of Gorbachev’s preference for a Leninist glasnost and quote taken above come from the work of Robert Horvath. See Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 54. See also Horvath, “The Dissident Roots of Glasnost,” in Stephen G. Wheatcraft, ed. Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History (Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 173-89. Gorbachev discusses his attachment to past Soviet practices in his memoirs. See Gorbachev, Memoirs, 177. See also Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 59-67. The accounts of conservative Soviet officials only buttress this view, as they generally voice support for Gorbachev’s conduct from 1985 to 1987. For example, see Valery Boldin, trans. by Evelyn Rossiter, Ten Years That Shook the World: the Gorbachev Era as Witnessed by His Chief of Staff (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 75. 482 something the Party could employ in restructuring society” instead of an “underlying principle” or “universal human value.”948

Like his orthodox predecessors, Gorbachev viewed dissenters with hostility and found the idea of discussing human rights issues with foreign leaders objectionable. In a private letter dated 10 June 1985, he told Reagan that “there should be no misunderstanding concerning the fact that we do not intend and will not conduct any negotiations relating to human rights in the Soviet Union. We, as any other sovereign state, regarded and will regard these questions in accordance with our existing laws and regulations.”949 During his visit to France three months later, he defended the practice of putting a wide array of dissenters in prison. “We have some people who by some logic or another are at odds with the Soviet form of government, with socialism, and profess some different ideology.” He then added that “problems in such cases arise when one individual or another comes into conflict with the law. That was what happened to

Shcharansky.”950

This attitude only softened at the margins during his first year in office. When he met with Reagan in Geneva, he accused the U.S. executive branch and “various [anti-

Soviet] political organizations” of using “the issue of human rights . . . for political purposes.” “The Soviet Union was prepared to resolve them,” he promised, “but if

948Anatoly S. Chernyaev, trans. Robert D. English and Elizabeth Tucker, My Six Years with Gorbachev (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000), 95. In recent times, Gorbachev admits that he did not start his reform campaign to create a pluralism of opinions in the Soviet Union. See Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations with Gorbachev, 115.

949 Letter, Gorbachev to Reagan, 10 June 1985, ES:GSG, Box 40, Folder: 8590683-8590713, RRPL.

950 Gorbachev, Selected Speeches and Articles, 207. 483

questions of human rights were used for political purposes, the Soviet side would rebuff

such attempts.” He also rejected the President’s suggestion that the Soviet Union placed

undue restrictions on Jewish emigration. While he showed some flexibility in Geneva, he

went right back to orthodox Marxist-Leninist positions a few months later.951 In response

to a question from a French Communist journalist about political prisoners, he insisted that “we have none, just as we have no persecution of people for their convictions. We do not put people on trial for their convictions.” He also described how “’Stalinism’ is a notion made up by opponents of communism and used on a large scale to smear the

Soviet Union and socialism as a whole.”952

Gorbachev’s ambivalent attitude toward Stalin and hostility toward dissenters paled in comparison to the conduct of Soviet bureaucrats. As they had in the past, they continued to arrest and harass dissenters from groups as diverse as Georgian independence groups, members of Hare Krishna sects, and Yoga practitioners. They also used public forums to discount any suggestion that their regime violated human rights.

To cite a few examples, The Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania described

how KGB agents kidnapped a non-registered Catholic priest and left him tied to a tree on

22 August 1985. On the International Day of Human Rights (December 10), “a

contingent of plainclothesmen and uniformed police” arrested and beat up a small

number of dissenters who attempted to hold a silent vigil in Moscow Square. Around the

same time, a Soviet television program described the broad support Ku Klux Klan cross

951 Memorandum of Conversation, Geneva Summit, 20 November 1985, 10:15-11:25 AM, Geneva: Memcons, Box 52, Folder: 92137, 2/3, 3-5, RRPL. See also Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 175.

952 Gorbachev, Selected Speeches and Articles, 331. 484

burnings received in the United States and referred to the pop signer Michael Jackson as

“a black person who sold out to exploiting capitalists.” To mold international public

opinion, the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee held a press conference for international

journalists extolling the Soviet Union’s human rights record and humane treatment of

Jews.953

When a small band of dissenters decided to hold a rally on the International Day

of Human Rights in 1986, the behavior of authorities changed little. They arrested the

participants and allowed “an official rally” to take place whose participants held banners

praising Moscow’s human rights policy. In the background of all this commotion, a

Soviet folk band played American anti-war songs,” including Bob Dylan’s “‘Blowin’ in

the Wind.’” The use of a folk band may have appealed to KGB operatives because the

government had already arrested a non-official musical ensemble known as Phantom

Group that issued documents and wrote songs in support of the Helsinki process.954 In the same week that Gorbachev agreed to the spy trade that secured the release of

Sharansky, Soviet authorities arrested sixteen Trust Group members and placed one of them in a psychiatric hospital.955

953 CCCL 77 (5 May 1988): 17; “Soviets Arrested on Human Rights Day,” United Press International, 10 December 1985; and “Soviet marks Human Rights Day; Breaks Up an Unauthorized Demonstration,” 11 December 1985, A12. For accounts of Gorbachev’s attachment to making Soviet-style socialism more humane and moral, see Laquer, The Long Road to Freedom, 195-6.

954 “Analysis Human Rights Day sees Clampdown in Soviet Union, United Press International, 11 December 1986; and “Musicians Face Charges/Members of the Dissident Phantom Group in the Soviet Union, The Guardian (London), 1 July 1985.

955 USSR News Brief 3 (15 February 1986): 3. 485

The harassment of non-official groups described above only confirms that the

KGB continued to defend their sacred campaign of protecting the Soviet population from

domestic ideological subversion after Gorbachev became General Secretary.956 In a repeat performance of the previous year, Soviet officials force-fed Sakharov to break the

hunger strike he had undertaken to show his displeasure with the Kremlin’s decision to

deny Bonner’s foreign travel requests. To quell subversive rumors about this incident,

the Soviet government sold Western newspapers videotapes showing Sakharov’s robust

health. When Gorbachev asked KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov and Shevardnadze to

review the treatment of these individuals, the former issued a scathing report. He

explained Sakharov’s behavior as a function of his wife’s pernicious influence and

mental defects. On a more optimistic note, he relayed how recent conversations with him

had “neutralized” his influence during the meeting in Helsinki commemorating the tenth

anniversary of the Final Act.957

Well aware of the international climate, Chebrikov suggested that his government

allow Bonner to travel abroad in deference to world public opinion. At the same time, he

warned that “one must expect the onset of another [Sakharov] campaign, which will

inevitably be joined by the leaders of some countries, deputies of parliaments, public

figures, and representatives of science and culture, who would prefer to succumb to this

provocation or even act as its organizers.” To his dismay, “a few Communist parties may

956 See Raymond Garthoff, “The KGB Reports to Gorbachev,” Intelligence and National Security 11 (April 1996): 235-6. Chebrikov also kept close tabs the successes Western intelligence services had in subverting the ideological underpinnings of official Soviet writers. See “Anatoly S. Chernyaev Diary: 1986,” http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB220/Chernyaev_1986.pdf [10 December 2007].

957 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 302-3, 313, and 307-8. 486

also become involved in this type of campaign.”958 After Gorbachev accepted

Chebrikov’s advice and allowed Bonner to emigrate, the KGB Chairman sent reports to

the Central Committee that described her anti-Soviet activities in painstaking detail.

“Starting in February,” he wrote, “Bonner became actively involved in various anti-

Soviet gatherings . . . that included participation by the leaders of Zionist organizations,

Jewish religious activists, heads of anti-Soviet émigré groups, and representatives of the press, radio, and television.” She also held “unprecedented meetings” with Western

European political leaders and the “national security adviser to the U.S. President.” 959

The orthodox thinking that dominated the ranks of the KGB also continued to shape how Soviet officials handled human rights issues within the confines of the

Helsinki process. In his private diary, Chernyaev derided the behavior of Soviet delegates attending the Ottawa experts meeting. “MFA people [Minister of Foreign

Affairs] are afraid of the concept itself” and “demand to discuss it behind closed doors.”

“[B]y hiding from the people at the conference [journalists and private citizens],” they gave the matter over to the hands of Americans, who are eagerly proceeding to exploit the theme of human rights.”960 The Soviet delegates at the next experts meeting in Bern

became more active about pointing out American human rights abuses, but took the time

to lodge a formal complaint that “the film Rocky IV depicts the Soviet Union in the image

of a stupid idiot.” This accusation prompted U.S. delegates to issue an official reply that

958 Ibid., 308.

959 Ibid., 319-20.

960 “Anatoly S. Chernyaev Diary: 1985,” 95. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB192/Chernyaev_Diary_translation_1985.pdf [10 December 2007]. See also Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, 60. 487

explained how free private citizens rather than the U.S. government had released the

movie. The same reply also contained the memorable retort: “Those in our delegation

who have seen that movie found that the two boxers portrayed seemed to be

approximately equal in intelligence.”961

Despite the continued persecution of non-official activities, the cumulative impact of Gorbachev’s flirtations with more democracy and glasnost helped “liberalize” Soviet society.962 Near the beginning of 1987, Chernayev described these changes using

emotionally charged, albeit exaggerated language: “[P]eople are [now] really writing

what they are thinking without glancing over their shoulder or being afraid of anybody. . .

. . There is [now] a storm in literature, film, and theater.” To his satisfaction, “people are

[now] writing openly” about the causes of the deep stagnation that permeated Soviet

society from the 1960s to the early 1980s.963 Inspired by these changes, “blue-collar

workers” in Latvia created an NGO called Helsinki ‘86. This organization sent

documents abroad that denounced the Soviet government’s illegal occupation of their

nation and systematic human rights violations. Around the same time, Zviad

Gamsakhurdia, cofounder of the Georgian Watch Group in 1977, “launched a new movement for the independence of Georgia.”964

961 Novak, Taking Glasnost Seriously, 55.

962 Archie Brown also refers to this stage of the Soviet reform process as liberalization. See Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 126.

963 “Chernyaev Diary—1987,” 1. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB250/Chernyaev_Diary_1987.pdf [15 June 2008].

964 Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 131. See also “Documents: Helsinki ’86 Group,” Voice of Solidarity 131-2 (July/August 1987): 31-33; and Rasma 488

The liberalization of Soviet society and the formation on non-official groups such

as Helsinki ‘86 accompanied a slow transformation in how Gorbachev viewed human

rights issues. For all his bluster about the shortcomings of capitalist nations, he began to

harbor doubts about the Soviet government’s respect for basic human rights and

freedoms. When describing the Geneva summit in his memoirs, he recounted how “he

spent time trying to fend off accusations of human rights abuses, even though I was not

always convinced that these were not justified.”965 In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear

disaster, he delivered a speech to the Politburo that in effect called for a foreign policy

that would facilitate Soviet integration into the larger community of Western nations. In

defense of this vision, he spoke about the importance of “new priorities” such as

“facilitating economic integration, expanding cultural ties, cooperating in the fight

against terrorism, and, above all, raising the profile of “‘humanitarian issues.’” In reference to this last item, he remarked:

The very words “human rights” are put in quotation marks and we speak of so- called human rights, as if our revolution had nothing to do with human rights. . . . But would there have been a revolution if such rights had been observed in the old society? We need to reject decisively this outdated approach to the problem . . . and view it more broadly, particularly with regard to specific issues as reunification of families, exit and entry visas. . . all this is part of the process of building trust.966

These words indicate that Gorbachev had become more sensitive to the argument

that the Soviet Union would never gain the trust of Western governments unless he

Karklins, Ethnopolitics and Transition to Democracy: The Collapse of the USSR in Latvia (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1994), 69-71, 76, 78, 96. The “blue-collar” quote is taken from page 69 of this work. See also Mastny, ed., Soviet-East European Survey, 1986-1987, 52-94.

965 Gorbachev, Memoirs, 406.

966 English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 220. 489

changed the internal behavior of his regime. As Robert English explains, Gorbachev and

other reformers moved in this direction because of their close identification with the values of Western Europe. In practice, they proved sensitive to the ways in which

European leaders such as linked the building of international trust to the expansion of democratic practices in the Soviet Union. Behind closed doors,

Gorbachev often heard arguments such as: “‘You have no democracy, so there’s no control over the government. It does what it wants. You stress the will of the people,

that they don’t want war, but they’re denied the means to express the will. Let’s say we trust you personally, but if you’re gone tomorrow, then what?’” Reflecting on these conversations, Gorbachev later observed that “[w]e had to think long and hard to grasp that human rights are . . . universal” and “understand that [without democracy] we’d never achieve real trust in foreign relations.’”967

With the idea of building international trust bubbling in his mind, Gorbachev took some steps to address Western concerns about Soviet human rights abuses. Unlike his predecessors, he agreed to hold a private meeting with members of U.S. Helsinki

Commission in April 1986. During these discussions, Commission members outlined

American concerns about issues as diverse as the imprisonment of Helsinki monitors, the plight of Soviet Jews, and the continuation of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. They even

“asked about the possibility of meeting with Sakharov.”968 With his active support,

Shevardnadze used the Vienna follow-up meeting to his express his country’s

967 This quote is taken from Robert English’s description of a speech that Gorbachev gave about his private meeting with Margaret Thatcher. See Ibid., 219.

968 Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, 58. See also The CSCE Digest, May 1986, 7. 490

determination to host “an international conference on humanitarian problems” within the

confines of the Helsinki process. “I was convinced, he later wrote, that this conference

could become an “impetus for democratization and . . . legislation in everything relating

to human rights.”969

Transnational critiques also played an important role in the Soviet government’s decision to end the internal exile of Sakharov and Bonner. After members of the U.S.

Helsinki Commission visited Moscow, Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers worked behind the scenes to overcome opposition to the internal exile of Sakharov and

Bonner. These discussions reached their endpoint after the well-known dissenter Anatoly

Marchenko died in jail on 8 December. Well aware of the Vienna follow-up conference and Gorbachev’s determination to resolve this issue, Central Committee Secretary Yegor

Ligachev and Chebrikov produced a memorandum designed to reverse the Politburo’s negative attitude toward releasing these individuals. According to this document, the negative consequences of releasing Sakharov were obvious. His “apartment . . . might

[once again] become the center of all kinds of press conferences with the participation of foreign correspondents; it might become the place where anti-social elements will meet to

work on statements and demands of a negative character.” In the end, “no matter what

we threaten to do, “Sakharov himself is hardly likely to refrain from participating in the

so-called “’defense of human rights.’”970

969 Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 75. See also Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom, 75.

970 Rubenstein and Gribanov,, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 324-5. 491

Even though many potential liabilities existed, Chebrikov and Shevardnadze

justified the release of Sakharov and Bonner on the grounds that the former had “returned

to his scientific work” and “criticized the American ‘Star Wars’ program.” He had also

“commented favorably on the peace initiatives of the Soviet leadership . . . and made an objective assessment of the events at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Station.” When taken together with the present international circumstances, these positive changes meant that

“Sakharov’s return to Moscow will mean fewer political costs than his continued isolation in Gorky.971 Five days after this document appeared, Gorbachev telephoned

Sakharov to relay the message that he and his wife could now return to Moscow and

carry out “patriotic work.” While happy to leave Gorky, Sakharov took the time to

inform the General Secretary that he still needed to release other “prisoners of conscience

. . . prosecuted for their beliefs.”972

This statement was appropriate because Gorbachev and other reformers had

already begun the discussions necessary to prepare the Soviet government for a large- scale release of political prisoners.973 This campaign gathered steam after Sakharov sent

Gorbachev a letter in February 1986 that criticized the General Secretary’s refusal to

admit the existence of political prisoners in the USSR and outlined how the Russian

criminal code violated international human rights standards. Instead of ignoring this

inquiry, he in effect told Chebrikov to write a report on the validity of Sakharov’s

971 Ibid., 323-4.

972 Sakharov, Memoirs, 615.

973 See Pavel Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 53. Daniel Thomas makes the same point. See Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism and the End of the Cold War,” 131. 492

charges. Reading between the lines, Gorbachev must have also asked the KGB to submit reports that explored dissenters’ attitudes toward the policies of glasnost and

perestroika.974

Although put on the defensive, Chebrikov stood firm and deemed all of

Sakharov’s arguments incorrect. “The twelve people cited in . . . [Sakharov’s letter] . . .

were convicted of committing concrete criminal acts as stipulated in current law and in

strict keeping with those norms. Their guilt was fully proved by the materials of the

preliminary investigations and court proceedings.” From his perspective, “the number of

individuals prosecuted under the criminal code for these types of crimes is insignificant”

and shows every sign of decreasing in the future.975 This letter complemented other

KGB reports sent to the Central Committee warning that dissenters “were [now]

beginning to ‘connect their statements’” to the political changes of perestroika.”976

By the fall of 1986, Gorbachev was no longer satisfied with orthodox arguments that advocated preserving the status quo on dissenters and human rights issues. During a

Politburo session on 13 November, he commented, “[w]e need to think it all through seriously, to work out a [new] conception on human rights, both at home and abroad.”

Given international realities, we have little choice but to end a routine that “only produces dissidents.” Gorbachev then argued that if dissenter “wants to run away, let him run away.” The Soviet Union would only benefit “if all kinds of trash” like “Orlov”

974 Ibid., 607-8. See also Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 315-6.

975 Ibid., 316-9.

976 Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 131-2. 493

and “Shcharansky” left the country. Consistent with this position, he ignored the warnings of orthodox officials and decided to carry out a large-scale release of political

prisoners just before the main meeting of the Vienna follow-up conference began in

November 1986.977

The harsh language Gorbachev used to gain support for the extensive release of

political prisoners reveals that he had more on his mind than just making the Soviet

Union a normal, legitimate member of the Western European and international

community. Despite the influence of international public and governmental opinion, he

still saw the necessity of appeasing orthodox critics. He had also not relinquished his

intense hatred of dissenters, which explains why most political prisoners had to sign a

pledge not to engage in future anti-Soviet activities before they received their freedom.

Even more important, he feared that the issue of human rights violations would weaken

the ability of the Soviet Union to engage in peaceful ideological competition with

capitalist countries, especially the United States. As a result of this position, the Kremlin

carried out public activities designed to lessen the blow of releasing political prisoners.

For example, on the same day that Sakharov and his wife received permission to leave

Gorky, the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee held a well-publicized reception for a group of

977 “USSR CC CPSU Politburo session. About discussions between Shevardnadze and Shultz in Vienna, 13 November 1986,” 2-3. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document26.pdf [10 December 2006]. Thomas employs this quote but does not include Gorbachev’s references to Orlov and Scharansky as “trash.” He must have done so to highlight Gorbachev’s reform credentials. See also Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 131. 494

Soviet émigrés who returned home after becoming disillusioned with evils of life in the

United States978

Because he retained a strong faith in the moral superiority of socialism,”

Gorbachev found the idea of letting the United States dominate the human rights agenda

in either bilateral or Final Act forums abhorrent. In his work Perestroika, he indicated

that “what we know does not support the idea of” America “as a shining city atop a hill.’”

U.S. politicians have a penchant “for preaching human rights and liberties” with a

“missionary passion” while they take few steps to ensure “those same elementary rights

at home.” Displeased with how the hesitancy of Soviet delegates in Ottawa to discuss

human rights issues in public served American interests, Gorbachev called for the

creation of an official plan designed to strengthen the ability of officials to raise “our

banner of human rights.” To satisfy the General Secretary’s expectations, the Soviet

Foreign Ministry created an office to deal with human rights issues. Soviet officials also

became more interested in discussing human rights issues in public forums such as press

conferences and holding meetings with representatives of Western NGOs in 1986.979

Unhappy with issues as diverse as the U.S. bombing of Libya and repudiation of

SALT II, Gorbachev returned to topic of human rights on the eve of Reykjavik summit.

During a Politburo meeting on 8 October 1986, he complained that every Soviet official

should “not . . . feel shy about showing what is happening in America: unemployment,

978 “Back to the USSR,” The Sunday Times (London), Issue 8474, 4 January 1987.

979 Gorbachev, Perestroika. See also Anatoly S. Chernyaev Diary: 1985,” 215. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB192/Chernyaev_Diary_translation_1985.pdf [10 December 2007]; and Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, 265. 495

poverty, lack of personal safety, drug problems.” “We should call things by their proper

names” and show how “America [is] pushing the world with such values.” In reference

to human rights issues, he reminded his subordinates that “[w]e need some acceleration

here” and must “open the way back to the USSR for thousands of emigrants.”980

Consistent with these themes, Gorbachev informed Politburo members about his intention of going on the human rights “offensive” when he sat down with Reagan in

Iceland. “I will tell him that his concern [about human rights] is a result of misinformation. You misinform your population and try to misinform us.”981

The internal transcripts of the Reykjavik meeting reveal that Gorbachev pressed

Reagan on the issue of human rights and information asymmetries between the two

societies. He reminded the President that “Soviet public opinion was also concerned about the state of human rights in the United States.” After alluding to the ability of

VOA broadcasts to penetrate the Soviet Union, he asked the President to help his government secure transmitters so “both sides . . . [could] relay their points of view to the others’ population.” He also expressed his unhappiness with reality that many more

Soviet citizens saw American movies than vice-versa. When Reagan responded that “the

U.S. government could not dictate what private entrepreneurs show, the Soviet General

Secretary called such an arrangement “a paradox.” “[I]n an allegedly democratic country there are obstacles to Soviet films; in an allegedly non-democratic country half the

980 “USSR CC CPSU Politburo Session on Preparations for Reykjavik, 8 October 1986.” Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document08.pdf [10 December 2007].

981 “Gorbachev's instructions for the group preparing for Reykjavik, 4 October 1986.” Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document05.pdf [10 December 2007]. 496

foreign films were American. This did not tally with the view of Soviet society that

President had described earlier.”982 In the press conference following this summit’s

conclusion, Gorbachev emphasized similar themes. “It appears that the United States is becoming an increasingly closed society. People there are being isolated from objective information in a cunning and effective way.”983

Once Gorbachev returned to Moscow, he told members of the Politburo about the successes he had outlining the closed nature of American society and fending off U.S. accusations of Soviet human rights violations. In comparison to the recent past, “[w]e are getting though not only to the European, but also to the American public.” Curious about arms control proposals and his reform program, U.S. private citizens have begun to show more interest in their Soviet counterparts and hearing the “Soviet point of view.” As expected, U.S. government officials “are afraid” of this development and have decided to practice “the tactics of silencing information about our big speeches . . . [and] statements.”984 While Soviet officials will have to work diligently to overcome these obstacles, Gorbachev noted, we can still take solace in the fact that “Reagan completely failed with human rights. He sounded almost apologetic when he raised the issue.”985

982 “U.S. Memorandum of Conversation, Reagan-Gorbachev, Third Meeting, 12 October 1986, 10:00 a.m. - 1:35 P.M,” 18-20. Available [Online] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document13.pdf. This transcript is also available at the Reagan Library. See Ibid., Executive Secretariat: NSC System Files, Box 6, Folder: 8690725 (1/3), RRPL.

983 Mikhail Gorbachev, Reykjavik and Results (Madison, Conn.: Sphinx Press, Inc., 1987), 79-80.

984 Gorbachev Conference with Politburo Members and Secretaries of the Central Committee, 1 December 1986, 1-2. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document28.pdf [10 December 2007].

497

Revolutions from “Above and “Below”: “Directed Glasnost,” Private Citizens, and the Inertia of the Soviet System, 1987-January 1989

The large-scale release of political prisoners and moves toward accepting a universal human rights standard that began near the end of 1986 coincided with a

“radicalization” of Gorbachev’s reform efforts. Still dissatisfied with bureaucratic stagnation, he decided to accelerate his campaign to democratize and restructure Soviet

society. Without a firm blueprint in hand, he came to see himself “as an instrument of perestroika” who would one day give the Soviet Union “a totally different socialism from

the one that was advertised for 60 years and which has entered the Soviet Union’s

‘genotype.’”986

Speaking at the Central Committee Plenum in January 1987, he told conservative

and orthodox critics that “the further democratization of Soviet society is becoming the

Party’s most urgent task.” “It is only through the consistent development of the

democratic forms inherent in socialism . . . that our advancement . . . in all areas of social

life . . . is possible.” 987 One year later, the lack of a fundamental change in how Soviet

bureaucrats behaved once again led him to outline the crucial link between

democratization, glasnost, and perestroika. Now convinced of the need to publicize his

985 “USSR CC CPSU Politburo session on results of the Reykjavik Summit, 14 October 1986,” 10. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/Document21.pdf [10 December 2007].

986 “Chernyaev Diary—1987,” 4.

987M.S. Gorbachov, Volume II, 119. See also CDSP 39, no. 6 (11 March 1987): 11-14. See also Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 126-7. Philip Boobbyer makes a strong argument that Gorbachev faced three forms of conservative opposition during his reign: 1) Neo-Stalinists (orthodox Marxist-Leninists); 2) National ; and (3) conservative nationalists. See Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia, 194. See also Keep, Last of Empires, 284-306 and 384-6; and Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent, 150-84.

498

desire to sever his regime’s connection to Stalinism, he told an audience that “we must

reject the dogmatic, bureaucratic” legacy of Soviet-style socialism because such a view

“has nothing in common either with Marxist-Leninism or . . . genuine socialism.”988

Gorbachev uttered these words because he envisioned a “new form of socialism that would keep the best features of the Soviet-system and take the best of liberal democracies.” In other words, he wanted to move the Soviet Union toward a Western social democratic model within the confines of a multinational, multiethnic empire whose population and government officials had little experience working under democratic conditions.989 The importance Gorbachev placed on solidifying the democratic

credentials of the Soviet Union involved far more than building international trust or

securing the international legitimacy of his regime. Intent on keeping his country a

strong ideological power, he believed that a democratized USSR would increase the

international prestige of socialism vis-à-vis capitalist countries, especially the United

States. Over time, the divisions of Europe would break down through a gradual convergence of political systems. In theory at least, the “erosion of anticommunism”

associated with transformations in Europe would play a fundamental role in creating a

988 CDSP 40, no. 7 (16 March 1988): 3-5, 10. For a good account, of Gorbachev’s new willingness to repudiate Stalin in public, see “Chernayev Diary—1988,” 41. Available [Online] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB250/Chernyaev_Diary_1988.pdf [7 June 2008]; and Chernyaev, My Six Years With Gorbachev, 159. See also Medvedev and Chiesa, Time of Change, 107.

989 Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’,” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 162. See also “Memorandum of Conversation, 9 December 1987, 10:35-10:45 A.M.,” Executive Secretariat : NSC System Files, Box 8, Folder: 8791384, RRPL. For other accounts of Gorbachev’s ever-evolving views toward socialism, see Chernyaev, My Six Years With Gorbachev, 138- 142. 499

“new international order” based on nonviolence, mutual cooperation, and the

strengthening of international institutions.990

The ways in which Gorbachev touted the benefits of expanding democratic

practices in the Soviet Union meant that he had accepted the task of creating a more

“participatory society.” Unlike previous Soviet leaders who only paid lip service to such

a notion, he tried to implement the idea that the expansion of democratic practices and the

development of a genuine pluralism of opinions would result in the creation of a strong

socialist state responsive to the needs of its citizens. In practice, he hoped that private

citizens would take hold of their new freedoms and hold politicians accountable for their

behavior and provide them with independent ideas on how best to govern the Soviet

Union. During the Nineteenth Party Congress of June 1988, he expanded the concept of

democratization to the election of local party officials and the partial democratic election

of a national governing body called the Congress of People’s Deputies. Over time, he

even took steps to give workers more control of their lives by reviving the role of the

moribund Soviets in economic management.991

To legitimate this vision, Gorbachev played up the anti-bureaucratic sentiments

Lenin enunciated during the last years of this life. Employing language similar to

Yakovlev’s private memorandums about the complexities of reform, he explained how

Lenin “often spoke about the need to live in the midst of people, to heed their opinion, to

990 Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’,” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 163-4. Roy Medvedev called Gorbachev’s reform campaign as an attempt to forge a synthesis between the French and Russian revolutions. See Medvedev and Chiesa, Time of Change, 270.

991 The term “participatory society” comes from Gooding’s article “Gorbachev and Democracy,” 205. See also Gorbachev, Memoirs, 249 and 271. 500

understand their sentiments and translate their aspirations into practical policy. So the

true initiator of this style [glasnost] is Lenin, and such people as him appear once in a

century.” In practice, perestroika has an organic connection “to mass initiative, socialist-

self government,” and the expansion of democratic practices in Soviet Union.992 As he explained:

It is a distinctive feature and strength of perestroika that it is simultaneously a revolution “from above” and “from below.” This one of the most reliable guarantees of its success and irreversibility. We will persistently seek to ensure that the masses, the “people below,’” will attain all their democratic rights and learn to use them in a habitual, component and responsible manner.993

These words testify to the appropriateness of Jacques Levesque’s arguments about

the inherent ambiguities of Gorbachev’s ever-evolving search for a superior “synthesis

between socialism and democracy.” “At the peak of his power,” he wrote, Gorbachev was a “mutant” who had forsaken the main tenets of orthodox Marxist-Leninism without

yet becoming a Western social democrat.994 The ambiguities of his thinking in large

measure resulted from his inability to forsake his attachment to Leninist glasnost. Instead of identifying with political pluralism and the unfettered free exchange of information, he on the whole wanted private citizens and members of intelligentsia to work within the bounds of how he and other reformers saw the proper trajectory of democratizing and restructuring Soviet society. Because he took the universal appeal of socialism as a

992 Gorbachev, Perestroika, 34-5. See also CDSP 39, no. 4 (25 February 1987): 3-6, 32; Ibid., 34, no. 6 (11 March 1987): 11-14; Ibid., 39, no. 5 (4 March 1987): 8-11, 19; Ibid. 39, no. 7 (18 March 1987): 12. See also Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations with Gorbachev, 51.

993 Gorbachev, Perestroika, 57.

994 Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking,’” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 162. 501

given, he hoped to create a loyal, albeit well-informed and creative, civil society

committed to his program of making Soviet-style socialism more “humane” and

combating the orthodox and conservative resistance located at all levels of

government.995

Espousing a vision he referred to as “socialist pluralism,” Gorbachev argued that

“democracy is” neither “the opposite of discipline” nor “the opposite of responsibility.”

Instead, “democracy means society exercising self-control, based on confidence in the

civic maturity and awareness of social duty on the part of the Soviet people.” In other

words, “democracy is the unity of rights and duties.”996 During the Moscow summit, he

told a Western reporter that “the most substantial thing that perestroika has demonstrated

is that our people, while being firmly in favor of a renewal of society, and of change, has

[sic] firmly expressed the view that changes should happen only within the boundaries of

socialism and on the basis on socialist values.”997 Behind closed doors, he expressed the

same sentiments to Reagan.998

995 Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations with Gorbachev, 84. See also Walter Connor , “Soviet Society, Public Attitudes, and the Perils of Gorbachev’s Reform,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 71; Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia, 2-4and 172-177; and Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, 370.

996 See Gorbachev, At the Summit, 191. For a more in-depth analysis of “socialist pluralism,” see Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 96, 127, 128, 361; Brown, “Ideology and Political Culture,” in Seweryn Bialer, ed., Politics, Society, and Nationality Inside Gorbachev’s Russia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 8-11. Gorbachev’s preference for channeling the trajectory of reform comes across in his memoirs. See also Gorbachev, Memoirs, 175 and 213.

997 M.S. Gorbachov, Volume II, 169-70; and Gorbachev, At the Summit, 224.

998 See Memorandum of Conversation, “President’s Second One-on-One Meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev,” 31 May 1988, 10:08-11:07,”4, Fritz Ermath Files, Box 1, Folder: 1988 Summit Memcons, 26 May-June 3, 1988 502

Gorbachev subscribed to this vision because he remained committed to the idea

that the Soviet Communist Party had the moral mandate and prestige necessary to direct

the democratization of Soviet society. For good reason given Soviet realities, he also

believed that without firm hand in control of events, perestroika and glasnost would

result in chaos. These sentiments pervade his public statements. When holding a private

interview with NBC anchor Tom Brokaw on the eve of the 1987 Washington summit, he

indicated that he and Soviet private citizens saw “no need for any other party.” “We have

built up a new atmosphere in the country, an atmosphere of glasnost, openness, and we

have plans to move forward the process of democratization and glasnost. All this is being

done on the initiative of the Communist Party.” During the Nineteenth Party Congress,

he outlined how a strong communist party working together with responsible private

citizens would produce “the sort of democracy that has never been dreamed of by” other

nations “who present themselves as a model of democracy.”999

Since societies do not behave like well-oiled machines, the task of enforcing

“socialist pluralism” proved almost impossible in practice. Heeding Gorbachev’s call for

a “revolution from below,” thousands of informal, open associations (nyeformaly) began

to form in both official and non-official circles.1000 While an in-depth summary of these

999 Gorbachev, At the Summit, 92; and CDSP 40, no. 28 (10 August 1988): 7. See also Gorbachev and Mlynar, Conversations with Gorbachev, 115.

1000 For a good description of this process, see U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, Nyeformaly: Civil Society in the USSR (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch Report, 1990). See also Vladimir Brokvin, “Revolution from Below: Informal Political Associations in Russia, 1988-1989,” Soviet Studies 42 (April 1990): 233-57; Geoffrey Hosking et al., ed., The Road to Post-Communism; Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union, 50-75; Petro, “Perestroika From Below: Voluntary Sociopolitical Associations in the RSFSR” in Alfred J. Rieber and Alvin Z. Rubinstein, ed., Perestroika at the Crossroads (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991); Judith B. Sedatis and James Butterfield, “The Emergence of Social Movements in the Soviet Union,” in 503

groups lies outside the scope of this work, many of them at least in part linked their agenda to democratizing Soviet society and/or improving the government’s respect for basic human rights. Near the beginning of 1987, a group of liberal-minded reformers in

Moscow who “had been arrested in 1982” for “propagating unorthodox socialist ideas”

became active participants in a discussion group known as Klub Perestroika (KP). Loyal

to the general contours of Gorbachev’s reform program, they organized “specialist

sections” on socialist “’self-administration’” and “’citizens’ diplomacy.”1001

Without heeding official registration requirements, a group of Jewish activists,

former Helsinki monitors, and Moscow Trust Group members “set up a seminar in

Moscow entitled Humanism and Democracy” in July 1987. Around the same time,

former political prisoners announced that they would exercise “public oversight of the

Soviet judicial system” by establishing an independent group called Civil Dignity.1002

Over the course of the next two years, this group and the Democracy and Humanism

Seminar formed links with other like-minded associations and held public demonstrations in defense of themes such as “glasnost for legislators” and “Ideology has no place in the

Constitution.”1003

Judith B. Sedatis and James Butterfield, ed., Perestroika From Below: Social Movements in the Soviet Union (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991); Jim Butterfield and Marcia Weigle, “Unofficial Social Groups and Regime Response in the Soviet Union,” in Ibid., Thomas, Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War; and Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 200-17. Even handicapped individuals began to demonstrate to defend their rights and rise awareness of their plight. See David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House, 1993), 56.

1001 Hosking et al, ed., The Road to Post-Communism, 13-5.

1002 U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, Nyeformaly, 25-6, 50-3; and Hosking et al., ed., The Road to Post- Communism, 11, 15-6, 17, 19.

1003 See USSR News Brief 19/20 (October 31 1987): 13. 504

This neat division should not obscure how the line between non-official and

official opinion often became blurred in practice. Still worried about the existence of

political prisoners and the slow pace of perestroika, a group of intellectuals, including

Sakharov, joined forces with some of Gorbachev’s academic advisers to form the

Moscow Tribune in October 1988. 1004 In practice, the leadership of KP proved unable to

reconcile or contain the conflicting views of its members. Reflecting the appearance of numerous articles in the official press denouncing Stalin’s crimes, some KP members

“started to collect signatures calling for a thorough examination of the illegal repressions of the past and the erection of a memorial to Stalin’s victims.” These efforts soon resulted in the creation of a separate organization called Memorial. Other members grew unhappy with the leadership’s emphasis on preserving socialism and working with bureaucrats to reform Soviet society. Because they preferred exercising independent oversight, they broke away and formed Perestroika-88. Against the wishes of local officials in Moscow, this new group worked with both Memorial and the Democracy and

Humanism Seminar to organize a large public demonstration commemorating “Stalin’s victims” on 6 March 1988.1005

The emergence of independent groups committed to internal reform coincided

with the reinvigoration of domestic human rights networks. In fashion similar to Helsinki

‘86, “veteran human rights” activists and other private citizens produced and distributed

1004 Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 201; U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, Nyeformaly, 64-8. See also Vladimir Brovkin, “Revolution from Below: Informal Political Associations in Russia 1988-89,” Soviet Studies 42, no. 2 (1990): 240-2.

1005 Hosking, The Road to Post-Communism, 13-4, 17; USSR News Brief 5/6 (31 March 1988): 7-8. See also Butterfield and Weigle, “Unofficial Social Groups and Regime Response in the Soviet Union,” 176, 180-1, 185-6, 189-90; and Sakwa, Gorbachev and his Reforms, 94, 98-99, 205-6, and 208. 505

samizdat literature across the Soviet Union that documented human rights violations and

“agitated for more fundamental reforms.”1006 Following the example of the Chronicle of

Current Events, set up Express-Chronicle and

founded Glasnost and its “off-spring” Daily Glasnost. These publications only

complimented other publications that documented Soviet human rights violations such as

Bulletin of the Christian Community, Information Bulletin of the Group of Long-Term

Refuseniks, and the Ukrainian Herald.1007

In July 1987, former Helsinki monitors and political prisoners announced the formation of a group called Press Club Glasnost (PCG). Although distrustful of bureaucratic authority, members invited Soviet journalists and “public figures” to attend and cover their meetings. They also pledged to help Soviet officials prepare for the proposed Final Act conference on humanitarian issues that Gorbachev wanted to take place in Moscow. Committed to the idea of ensuring “public participation” in the Soviet government’s handling of the Helsinki process, they also invited members of the IHF to attend their seminar on human rights. Despite the efforts of the KGB to disrupt the meeting, the PGB succeeded in holding discussions that addressed issues as diverse as human rights abuses, the Soviet judicial system, political prisoners, as well as national and emigration rights. The summarized report that members sent to the Soviet authorities represented “the first major [non-governmental] joint statement on civil rights and

political liberties in the glasnost era.” Its publication also became the first “means of

1006 Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 134.

1007 Ibid., 134-5; U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, Nyeformaly: Civil Society in the USSR, 32-4; and Hosking, The Road to Post-Communism, 4-7; and Brovkin, “Revolution From Below,” 242. 506 restoring the ties that the human rights movements had established” before the vast crack down on dissent began in 1979.1008

Once again ignoring official registration requirements, former Helsinki monitors and political prisoners in Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, and the Baltic republics formed committees in 1987 dedicated to securing the release of remaining political prisoners.

One year later, three of these groups merged to form an International Committee for the

Defense of Political Prisoners whose strong defense of national and ethnic rights became

“working fare” for “the Popular fronts” that later agitated for independence in republics such as Latvia and Ukraine.1009 One month after Reagan called for the legalization of the

Uniate Church during the Moscow summit, a group of former political prisoners and new activists formed the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. Much like the PCG, this group demanded that the Soviet government adhere to the provisions of the Final Act by respecting every

Ukrainian citizen’s right to and religious freedom and cultural autonomy.1010

1008 U.S. Helsinki Watch Group, Nyeformaly: Civil Society in the USSR, 18-21; U.S. Helsinki Watch, Dissidents Push the Limits of Glasnost: New Publications Reach the West (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch, 1987). For an in-depth examination of the conference, see Gilligan, Defending Human Rights in Russia, 72-5. See also International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, On Speaking Terms: An Unprecedented Human Rights Mission to the Soviet Union , January 25-31, 1988 (Vienna: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, 1988), 1-2, 5-7, 11; U.S. Helsinki Watch, “International Federation Mission to Moscow,” Vol. II, no. 1 (22 February 1988): 1-6; Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 291-4; and Laber, “Mission to Moscow,” The New York Review of Books 35, no. 9 (2 June 1988). This author purchased an electronic copy of this publication from this publisher.

1009 Hosking, The Road to Post-Communism, 4-5. See also Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 134.

1010 Taras Kuzio, Dissent in Ukraine under Gorbachev (London: Ukrainian Press Agency, 1989), 31-4. Members of the Moscow Trust Group also held demonstrations where participants held signs with slogans such as “’There is a Helsinki Charter of Human Rights’” and “Respect the Dignity of the Individual.”

507

The importance that organizations such as PCG and the Ukrainian Helsinki Union

placed on human rights shaped the behavior of the Democratic Union, “the Soviet

Union’s first oppositional party.” This group formed when members of Perestroika-88

and the Democracy and Humanism Seminar grew tired of Gorbachev’s constant praise

for Lenin and merged in May 1988. Instead of voicing any support for perestroika, the

founding congress passed resolutions that described how Lenin’s behavior during the

October revolution paved the wave for Stalinism and the totalitarian features of Soviet-

style socialism.1011 Because of the collective influence of former Helsinki monitors and

other human rights activists, the Democratic Union called for “genuine political pluralism

encompassing a multi-party system,” parliamentary democracy, free trade unions, “full

civil liberties,” and the right for each republic to secede from the Soviet Union. On 21

August 1988, members “organized public demonstrations” in Pushkin square to commemorate the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. On 10 December, they held a similar gathering in the same location to celebrate “the fortieth anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”1012

The explosive growth and continued existence of non-official groups operating in

public view once again illustrates that Gorbachev introduced fundamental changes in

how the Soviet system operated in practice. Official publications now contained articles

that discussed topics once considered off limits such as police brutality, the conditions of

Soviet prisons, psychiatric abuse, and Stalin’s heinous crimes. In addition to

1011 Michael McFaul and Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1993), 31. See also Brovkin, “Revolution from Below,” 242-44; Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 206-8, 213, 217; and Hosking, The Road to Post-Communism, 12, 19-20, 22.

1012 Thomas, “Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War,” 135. 508 rehabilitating Bolsheviks such as Nicolai Bukharin, the Soviet government backed away from enforcing Article 70 (anti-Soviet agitation and slander) of the Russian criminal code and continued to release political prisoners. In 1989, various official publications even began to serialize sections of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s monumental work Gulag

Archipelago1013

Despite these positive changes, the average bureaucrat nevertheless fell back on orthodox and conservative assumptions when dealing with non-official groups they deemed anti-socialist or tainted by links with former political prisoners. Over and over again, they harassed and broke up non-official demonstrations that criticized the Soviet

Union’s lack of democracy and poor human rights record.1014 They also wrote scathing

attacks on non-official publications and groups who they deemed as a threat to the

internal cohesion of the Soviet empire.1015 While they had every reason to worry about nationalist demonstrations in the Baltic republics and the dramatic rise in ethnic violence, some continued to pin domestic disturbances on the machinations of foreign intelligence

1013 For a good the positive changes that had taken place in the Soviet human rights record, see Memorandum, Lisa Jameson to Peter Robinson, N.D., Speechwriting Research Office, Box 26, Folder: Worldnet Address, 5/23/88, RRPL. On the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s work, see Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent, and Reform in Soviet Russia, 192-3 and David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, 264-76. See also CDSP 40, no. 5 (2 March 1988): 1-2; Ibid., 40, no. 32 (9 September 1988): 1-2; Ibid., 41, no. 10 (5 April 1989): 1- 5; Ibid., 40, no. 46 (14 December 1988): 10; and Amnesty International, USSR: Human Rights in Transition (February 1989): 5 and 11.

1014 There are countless examples of these practices. For contemporary accounts, see USSR News Brief 19/20 (31 October 1987): 1-2; and Ibid.., 19/20 (31 October 1988): 17. In December 1988, local authorities raided the office of a Democratic Union member and confiscated the paper used to create a party publication. See Ibid., 24 (31 December 1988): 4-5. See also Laquer, The Long Road to Freedom, 265-8.

1015 For example, see CDSP 39, no. 51 (20 January 1988): 1-5; Ibid., 39, no. 37 (14 October 1987): 6; Ibid., 40, no. 20 (15 June 1988): 11-12; Ibid., 40, no. 10 (6 April 1988): 16-17; 39, no. 27 (5 August 1987): 3-4; 40, no. 16 (18 May 1988): 5; Ibid., 40, no. 4 (24 February 1988): 15-16; and “Soviet Position on Human Rights and Dissent,” BBC, 4 February 1988. For another treatment of this subject, see Horvath, “The Dissident Roots of Glasnost,” 189-98. 509

services. Relying on their close connections to the CIA, an article noted, Grigoryants and

his colleagues feel “that they can guarantee the security of their enterprise by taking advantage of Glasnost.” Without shame, “they are waging a . . . propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the Soviet state and its social system.” In her well-known anti-

perestroika manifesto “I Can’t Forgo my Principles,” Nina Andreyeva excoriated the

ways in which “anti-socialist forces” exploited glasnost for their own selfish purposes. In

some cases” she warned, “”extremist elements” have begun to obtain leadership positions

in “grassroots organizations” and politicized them “on the basis of a pluralism that is far

from socialist.”1016

The KGB may have made some attempts to reconcile itself to Gorbachev’s reform

efforts, but the organization on the whole proved resistant to sanctioning anything

resembling freedom of expression and the free exchange of opinions.1017 Near the end of

1987, Chebrikov sent the Central Committee a memorandum that described the efforts

his agency had undertaken to prevent the PCG human rights seminar from taking place.

He also voiced his agency’s intention of devising “additional measures” that would

unmask “’the hostile . . . character of this organization’” and prevent similar meetings in

the future. On 28 September 1988, he defended such conduct when he told an official

journalist that the KGB still had a duty to “help a person who has gone astray dispel his

delusions and grasp the relationship between the interests of the . . . citizen and the state.”

1016 CDSP 40, no. 40 (2 November 1988): 24; and Ibid., 40, no. 13 (27 April 1988): 6. Another article reported how the Democracy and Humanism Seminar followed the orders of the CIA with alacrity. CDSP 39, no. 51 (20 January 1988): 4.

1017 See Garthoff, “KGB Reports to Gorbachev,” 239-242. 510

“I want to emphasize in no uncertain terms that the hostile elements and other people

who embark on a path of antistate activity will be held accountable under the law.”1018

Even as late as 30 June 1989, the KGB prepared a special report for Gorbachev that described the internal deliberations of the Moscow Tribune. Employing measured language, the document marshaled evidence to substantiate the charge that this group wanted to “challenge the leading role of the CPSU.” Not happy with the status-quo,

“[i]ndividual club members propagated the idea that it is necessary to counterpoise grassroots social groups and associations (including those of a nationalist and separatist persuasion) against the Party and state bodies on the subject of implementing perestroika.” They also supported the immediate goal of “uniting and politicizing the elements of an emerging civil society.”1019

The pervasive influence of orthodox thinking by no means confined itself to the

Soviet bureaucracy and the KGB. Such attitudes also continued to shape Soviet behavior

at the Vienna follow-up meeting. During his private meeting with Shevardnadze on 21

April 1988, George Shultz voiced his complaints about the attitudes of Soviet

representatives. “Religious freedom, he commented,” was one area where” they “had retreated from earlier expressions of flexibility.” Such behavior left U.S. delegates with

the impression that their Soviet counterparts were “taking positions from an earlier era”

1018 Gilligan, Defending Human Rights in Russia, 75-6. CDSP 40, no. 35 (28 September 1988): 2. For another account of Chebrikov’s belief in the close links between foreign intelligence services and non- official groups, see Ibid., 39, no. 37 (14 October 1987): 7-8. See also Laquer, The Long Road to Freedom, 254-5, 303.

1019 Rubenstein and Gribanov, ed., The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov, 336-9. See also Ibid., 335. For more examples of KGB reports written during the late 1980s and early 1990s that could have come from the mid 1970s, see Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, More ‘Instructions from the Centre’: Top Secret Files on KGB Global Operations, 1975-1985 (London: Frank Cass, 1992),125-8. 511

instead of “Shevardnadze and Gorbachev.” In response to these queries, the Soviet

Foreign Minister explained that “[w]e have a hard delegation in Vienna. “We tell them one thing,” but “[t]hey do something different.1020

Shultz had every reason to voice these concerns because even “liberal-minded”

Soviet reformers exhibited a reflexive distaste for former dissenters and non-official

activities that violated socialist “norms.” During an interview with a representative from

Marxism Today in February 1987, the “reformer” Fedor Burlatsky rejected any

suggestion that the Soviet Union would move in the direction of Western “political

pluralism.” He also hinted that Sakharov would receive better treatment than other former political prisoners because the Soviet scientist “has performed valuable service for the

Soviet Union . . . in the past.” Under the new conditions in the Soviet Union, he added, former political prisoners “will be given a chance to define their attitude to the

democratic changes now taking place in our country and some will come back to play

their part in society.” This narrow view of appropriate political behavior led Burlatsky to

form the Soviet Helsinki Commission a few weeks after PCG emerged. 1021 Serving as

head of this organization, he discounted the significance of dissenters and non-official

groups whenever he met with Western private citizens.1022

1020 Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “The Secretary’s Initial Meeting with Shevardnadze,” 9. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB251/7.pdf [8 June 2008].

1021 “The Gorbachev Revolution,” Marxism Today (February 1987): 14, 19. See also Cohen and Vaden Heuvel, Voices of Glasnost, 179-80. 185.

1022 See Laber, The Courage of Strangers, 285-6, 288. 512

Gorbachev may have hoped that grassroots support of his restructuring efforts

would discredit and weaken conservative and orthodox opposition, but he also shared

“liberal-minded” reformers’ distaste for dissenters and non-official groups that had links

with foreign NGOs. Just before the Washington Summit took place, he explained

emigration from the Soviet Union as a function of an organized American “brain-drain”

campaign. In private, he told Reagan that he saw little difference between conservative

and democratic critics. He even called the later “the equivalent of Red Guards in China .

. . who wanted to push ahead without thinking.” On the eve of the 1988 Moscow

summit, Gorbachev felt compelled to tell an American journalist that “our people know

that Grigoryants’s ‘organization’ is tied not only organizationally but also financially to

the West.” Such a development also “happens in nature: all kinds of parasites attach

themselves to a living organism and try to harm it.”1023 At a Politburo meeting five months later, he expressed alarm at the nationwide growth of Memorial. “Its latest efforts” to raise the issue of NKVD burial grounds “show that it is trying to get bigger than society.” “Party organizations in the localities should take all this business into their own hands” because Memorial is “a cover for something else.”1024

1023 Gorbachev, At the Summit, 89; Memorandum of Conversation, “President’s Meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev,” 8 December 1987, 2:30-3:15 PM, Executive Secretariat: NSC System Files, Box 8, Folder, 8791377, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; and Mikhail Gorbachev, At the Summit, 224-5. Dmitri Volkogonov has cogent observations on Gorbachev’s distaste for non-official democratic groups and anti- communist groups. See Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 484 and 509. See also Chernyaev, My Six Years With Gorbachev, 142; and Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond: 1986 to 1989 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 94.

1024 Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire, 518. These comments flew in the face of earlier comments suggesting that Gorbachev had resigned himself to the existence of Memorial. See “Chernayev Diary— 1988,” 41. See also David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, 119 . Gorbachev also retained a lukewarm toward Sakharov and threw a tantrum when a poll showed that he was less popular than the former political prisoner. See Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, 281. See also Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, 45-6. 513

The hostility many Soviet officials showed for non-official groups and one-time

political prisoners did not go unchallenged. In effect, transnational actors became

important democracy builders. With support of Western governments, they held Soviet

bureaucrats accountable and often gave them little choice but to participate in activities

that challenged their intolerance for diversity and pluralism. They challenged

Gorbachev’s restrictive understanding of glasnost and the average Soviet official’s reflexive distaste for political pluralism. We can see this process at work in a letter that

Yuri Orlov and Vladimir Bukovsky, as well as several Soviet cultural figures, managed to have published in Moscow News. Even though accompanying articles suggested that these individuals suffered from a “’personality cult,’” the letter challenged the official ideology of the Soviet regime. The authors defended the position that “glasnost essentially implies some public discussion where everybody can take part without fearing reprisals irrespective of views expressed.” “If Soviet leaders wish to enjoy trust among the public, it is necessary for them to recognize at least several independent publishers not subject to Party control.1025

Once released from prison, Natan Sharansky delivered speeches to countless

Western audiences that highlighted the shortcomings of Gorbachev’s glasnost vision.

Displeased with a new law passed in January 1987 that actually increased the difficulties

of emigrating from the Soviet Union, he delivered a speech at the U.N. Human Rights

Commission that called into question Gorbachev’s reputation as a committed reformer.

Behind the scenes, Sakharov continued to send the General Secretary letters calling for

1025 Quote is taken from Horvath, “The Dissident Roots of Glasnost,” 190. See also “Let Gorbachev Give Us Proof,” Moscow News, no. 13 (1987): 10. 514 the further release of political prisoners. On one occasion, he suggested that the Central

Committee hold a meeting concerning political prisoners with representatives of domestic human rights groups and various members of the “intelligentsia.”1026

After becoming an official member of the IHF, PCG sent a wide variety of petitions and documents to delegations attending the Vienna follow-up meeting. Given the attention these documents received from Western delegations, they went a long way in challenging the bureaucratic authority of Soviet officials and the shortcomings of

Gorbachev’s reform efforts. One of the appeals outlined how Soviet officials make “a point of refusing to engage in dialogue with independent public opinion” even as they utilize our ideas and pass “them off as their own.” No matter what Gorbachev says, “it’s high time for Soviet officials to understand that independent public opinion is by nature a far more powerful fountainhead of productive ideas than any official agency.”1027

The Ukrainian Helsinki Union endorsed a similar position. Once it became a member of IHF, this organization sent documents to international audiences and Vienna-

1026 “Rights Violations Have Worsened under Gorbachev,” The Toronto Star, 6 March 1987, F13; and “Around the World: Free More Jews, Gorbachev Urged,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), 6 March 1987, Press Release. Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond, 5. To read accounts of other letters he sent to Gorbachev about conditions in the Soviet Union, see Ibid., 47-8, 65, and 94. See also “Honoring a Small Giant,” Newsweek, 26 May 1986, 63; “Shcharansky: Soviet Union still Human Rights Tragedy,” United Press International, 10 December 1986; “No Real Change in Soviet System, Sharansky says,” The Toronto Star, 5 April 1987, A17; “Natan Sharansky: Challenging Glasnost, MacLean’s (Canada), 12 October 1987, 8B; “Sharansky Warns the West, The New York Times, 8 February 1987, Section 4, page 2; and “Sharansky urges West to help Jews,” 9 September 1987, The Globe and Mail (Canada), N.P.; and “Soviet Mission is Protest Target for Sharanskys,” 20 February 1987, B4. The U.S. News & World Report also published excerpts of Sharansky’s work Fear No Evil. For example, see The U.S. News & World Report, 30 May 1988, 34.

1027 “Appeal from Press Club Glasnost to the Annual Meeting of the International Helsinki Federation for Civil Rights,” Glasnost Information Bulletin, no. 5 and 6 (October 1987): 48. At a meeting called “Commission of Inquiry,” held in Washington in January 1987, Yuri Orlov called into question Gorbachev’s credentials as a reformer. See Mastny, ed., Soviet-Eastern Survey, 1986-1987, 342-4. 515

follow-up meeting that raised questions such as: Why do Soviet officials and KGB

agents born in Ukraine “hate freedom so much? Why don’t they permit their fellow

countrymen to gather for meetings to talk about common issues? Where do they get such

hate for everything that is Ukrainian and such blind persistence in destroying all that is ours?”1028 In December 1987, a group of Lithuanian Bishops managed to send a letter

abroad that they had sent to Gorbachev demanding genuine religious freedom.1029

After arriving in Moscow to discuss human rights issues with the Soviet Helsinki

Commission in January 1988, a delegation from the IHF held private meetings with members of their affiliate PCG. Disturbed at the arrests and harassment of non-official groups they witnessed, the delegates decided to drive home the point that “the Soviet government must listen to its own people.” To accomplish this goal, they brought representatives of non-official Soviet groups to their scheduled meeting with the Soviet

Helsinki Commission. This move enraged Burlatsky. After the proceedings began, he denounced the IHF for wanting to create a “confrontation” and “scandal.” He also commented “this is not an appropriate moment for meeting with” PCG. “It is like forcing a bride on us in a marriage we do not want.”1030

Bowing to the demands of IHF delegates, Burlatsky relented and allowed

Timofeyev to deliver a short address. The former political prisoner used this opportunity

1028 Kuzio, ed., Dissent in Ukraine Under Gorbachev, 21-3, 44-6. See also See USSR News Brief 5/6 (31 March 1988): 13

1029 CCCL 76 (14 February 1988): 7.

1030 International Helsinki Federation, On Speaking Terms: An Unprecedented Human Rights Mission to the Soviet Union, January 25-31, 1988 (Vienna: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, 1988), 5, 14-5. 516 to argue that the Soviet Helsinki Commission would not succeed in improving the government’s attitude toward human rights unless it worked in close concert with

“independent public opinion.” As the meeting drew to a close, Larissa Bogoraz, the widow of Marchenko, handed Burlatsky “a fifty-page report on the December [human rights] seminar of Press Club Glasnost and a list of political prisoners.” In a move that probably angered Burlatsky, a member of the Hare-Krishna sect passed out “homemade sweets” to all attendees without asking for permission.1031

Much like they held Gorbachev and other Soviet bureaucrats accountable for their behavior, Soviet private citizens and émigrés also evaluated the Reagan administration’s commitment to curbing Gorbachev’s attachment to a Leninist glasnost. Many drew inspiration from Reagan and his subordinates’ staunch defense of freedom and vocal support for reformers.1032 A former political prisoner told U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet

Union Jack Matlock that “’Reagan’s visit is one of the greatest events in all Russian history” because his “words and gestures had emboldened reformers throughout the country.”1033 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sharansky has time and time again praised Reagan for having the courage and vision to link improvements in U.S.-Soviet relations to dramatic changes in Soviet internal behavior.1034

1031 Laber, “Mission to Moscow.” See also Documents from the Moscow Trust Group Prepared by the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee (New York: U.S. Helsinki Watch, 1987), 10-18.

1032 For example, see The Jerusalem Post, Anatoly and Avital Shcharansky: The Journey Home (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 294-5, 281

1033 Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire, 124. See also Yuri Tarnopolsky, Memoirs of 1984 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 235; and , Change of Heart (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications; Rehovot, Israel: Balaban Publishers, 1992), 209-11.

517

During the late 1980s, Sharansky actually had a more ambivalent view of Reagan.

In the wake of Moscow summit, he rejected the President’s suggestion that the

continuation of Soviet human rights stemmed from bureaucratic inertia. He may have appreciated Reagan’s embrace of human rights, but he accused him of softening “his criticism of the Soviet Union’s human rights policies because he was ‘frightened to death by Western correspondents’ who were saying it was harmful to the atmosphere of the summit.” After holding a well-publicized meeting with other dissenters, he argued that no informed individual could advance the position that the evils of the Soviet system only stemmed from “bureaucratic” distortions. Like many of his peers, he also argued that the

“Reagan administration . . . is not yet ready to make the direct link between human rights” and other “aspects of U.S.-Soviet relations.”1035

These sentiments explain why many Soviet private citizens and émigrés placed

much more importance on the role global public opinion could play in transforming the

Soviet Union than either the firm resolve of the U.S. executive branch or Gorbachev’s

good intentions. As a PCG publication explained, “there is no government, no political

force in the world today whose destiny does not depend on international public opinion.”

In fact, “the impact of international public opinion on the political, social, legal and moral

climate in each country may be the most important feature of modern history.” At a rally

for Soviet Jews, Sharansky described how “the KGB often tried to convince me that my

1034 “The View from the Gulag,” 009, no. 39 (21 June 2004). Available [Online]: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/224ncdel.asp [10 September 2006]. See also Sharansky, The Case for Democracy, 11-12, 135-43

1035 “Activist Says Reagan aiding Kremlin’s Deceit,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), 3 June 1988. For a similar view, see “The View from Home,” MacLeans (Canada), 13 June 1988, 20. 518

life, like the lives of other prisoners of Zion, was in its hands and not in the hands of

‘students and housewives.’” “But an army of ‘students and housewives,’” he told the audience, “was able to prove the KGB wrong. Today, the Soviet leaders may again believe that the fate of Soviet Jews is entirely in their hands. Let us again prove them wrong.”1036

Soviet private citizens and émigrés had every reason to praise the value of international public opinion. The successes Western governments and private citizens had in “globalizing” the issue of Soviet human rights violations and the limitations of glasnost had important consequences for Gorbachev’s reform efforts. By definition, they raised questions about whether or not Moscow’s democratization efforts had done enough to protect the basic human rights of Soviet private citizens. They also undermined the international legitimacy of and trust in the Soviet Union that Gorbachev and other reformers hoped to build. Without generating favorable international public opinion in the area of human rights protection, they had little chance of completing the larger task of forging a new type of socialism that would one day result in the integration of Europe and a “universal reconciliation” in international affairs1037 The cumulative

impact of these concerns led Gorbachev and other reformers to link their restructuring

1036 Appeal from Press Club Glasnost to the Annual Meeting of the International Helsinki Federation for Civil Rights,” 47-8; and Natan Sharansky, “Jews’ Summit Message to Gorbachev,” The New York Times 30 November 1987, A19. See also The Jerusalem Post, Anatoly and Avital Shcharansky: The Journey Home, 296; Yuri Tarnopolsky, Memoirs of 1984, 230-33; , Grey is the Color of Hope, translated by Alyona Kojevnikov (New York : Knopf, 1988), 179, 311, 349; Lerner, Change of Heart, 201; and Valery Chalidze, The Soviet Human Rights Movement (New York : Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, American Jewish Committee, 1984), 36; and Orlov, Before and After Glasnost, 1-27.

1037 Levesque, “The Messianic Character of Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking,’” in Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, 162. 519

efforts to a broad-based international movement designed to improve every government’s

human rights record. While he still spoke about punishing “hooligans” and working within the confines of “our socialist choice,” Gorbachev used the Nineteenth Party

Congress to point out the organic link between democratization and protecting every

individual’s basic human rights in the Soviet Union. Because human rights issues have

become “internationalized,” he told the audience, “we are prepared to cooperate actively

with all other countries . . . to scrupulously fulfill the commitment we have made.”1038

As part of the on-going process of severing Soviet-style socialism’s links with

Stalinism, Gorbachev outlined the close link between internal reform and human rights

when he appeared before the United Nations in December 1988. Since the USSR has

“gone substantially and deeply into the business of constructing a socialist state based on

the rule of law,” we hope to codify a series of laws that will go a long way in “ensuring

the rights of the individual.” In contrast to the recent past, “there are now no people in places of imprisonment in . . . [the USSR] who have been sentenced for their political or religious convictions. Just as important, “the problem of the so-called ‘refuseniks’ is being removed.” After announcing these changes, Gorbachev voiced his intention to

“expand the Soviet Union’s participation in the United Nations and . . . the pan-European process.” “Within the Helsinki process, we are also examining an end to jamming of all foreign radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union.”1039

1038 CDSP 40, no. 26 (27 July 1988): 12-13.

1039 Mikhail Gorbachev, “43rd U.N. General Assembly Session, December 7, 1988.” Available [Online] http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/23/documents/gorbachev/ [10 December 2006]. 520

Heeding international public opinion, Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded”

reformers took a number of steps designed to create a law-abiding socialist state and

improve the Soviet Union’s human rights record. In addition to allowing Jewish

emigration levels to reach record high levels, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

eliminated the provisions of the criminal code (Articles 190 and 70) used to penalize

dissenters for their political convictions. Reformers also secured passage of a law that at

least on paper allowed individuals to appeal the “unlawful acts” of Soviet officials and

created commissions designed to fight against unlawful psychiatric detention. Along

similar lines, they also began the process of creating new laws that protected press

freedoms and an individual’s right to hold non-official opinions.1040

Well aware of the upcoming one-thousandth anniversary of Kievan Rus’s acceptance of , Gorbachev took unprecedented steps to repair the

government’s relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church and other religious groups

in 1988. In greater numbers than ever before, authorities allowed the importation of

bibles and other religious literature; they also permitted groups as diverse as Pentecostals

and Hare Krishna sects to hold open public meetings. As part of the process of building a

law-abiding socialist state, reformers decided to hold meetings with U.S. Congressional

members about human rights issues and attend meetings with U.S. representatives that

addressed topics such as judicial reform and criminal procedures. They even ended up

1040 Jerome Shestack, Glasnost and Human Rights (London: University College, 1989), 8-10, 12, 15-16; See also Amnesty International, “USSR: Human Rights in Transition,” (February 1989): 4-12; Ibid., USSR Human Rights in a Time of Change: A Survey of the Issues that Concern Amnesty International, including information collected on a visit to Moscow from March to April 1989 (October 1989): 8-28; and U.S. Helsinki Watch, “News From the USSR,” 15 September 1987, 19. 521

allowing representatives of Western NGOs to visit psychiatric institutions and meet some political prisoners.1041

Soviet reformers placed importance on holding these meetings for two

fundamental reasons. Although sensitive to the issue to “false” accusations of human

rights violations, Soviet Foreign Ministry officials used the information they received

about political prisoners and emigration refusals to make “other agencies of the . . .

government” resolve long-standing cases.1042 Well aware of domestic critics, they also

wanted to portray themselves as equal participants in a human rights dialogue that flowed

in both directions. Both of these attitudes surfaced during Shevardnadze’s private

conversations with Shultz. On one occasion, after hearing U.S. complaints about Soviet

internal behavior, the Foreign Minister expressed his satisfaction with the cooperative

exchanges on human rights that had taken place and lauded the “visits by unofficial U.S.

groups, including psychiatrists.” These sorts of exchanges meant that “the U.S. now had

a more realistic understanding of the need for a . . . ‘two-way’ street’” on human rights

issues.1043

Not content with letting Shultz’s charges stand without a firm response,

Shevardnadze proceeded to criticize the U.S. government’s behavior. He accused the executive branch and Congress of relying on out-of-date information about conditions in

1041 Jerome Shestack, Glasnost and Human Rights, 12; and Twenty-Fifth Semiannual Report, 8-12; Twenty- Fourth Semiannual Report, 6-11; Twenty-Third Semiannual Report, 5-9; and Twenty-Second Semiannual Report, 5-9.

1042 For descriptions of this mindset, see Richard Schifter, “American Diplomacy, 1985-1989,” 145; David K. Shipler, “Dateline USSR: On the Human Rights Track,” Foreign Policy 75 (Summer 1989): 169.

1043 Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “The Secretary’s Initial Meeting with Shevardnadze,” 10-11. 522

the USSR and overestimating the number of Soviet political prisoners. “The role of ministers’ experts on human rights,” he explained, “should be to provide their chiefs with

solid, accurate information which could lead to practical results.” With good reason, he also complained about the executive branch’s tendency to brush aside the validity of

Soviet complaints about U.S. human rights violations.1044 Just as troubling, the

executive branch had not yet followed Soviet advice and ratified the “international human

rights covenants which could provide the basis for bilateral and multilateral cooperation

in the field.” At the Moscow summit, Shevardnadze took these criticisms one step further

and told Shultz that American and Soviet experts needed to discuss charges that eleven-

thousand political prisoners existed in U.S. jails.1045

Gorbachev behaved in a similar fashion. At the Washington summit, he told

Reagan about the “Soviet readiness” to participate in reciprocal human rights discussions

that involved members of the U.S. Congress and Supreme Soviet. In defense of this

vision, he described how “it would be unacceptable for one side to assume the role of a

prosecutor and other side that of the accused.” “One side” should not assume “the role of

teacher and the other that of the student.” At their next private meeting in Moscow,

1044 Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “The Secretary’s Initial Meeting with Shevardnadze,” 11, 13. In a private memorandum to George Shultz, Deputy Secretary Richard Schifter suggested that “the Soviets continue the charade of raising U.S. human rights cases. We go through the formalities of responding in a serious fashion. But it is clearly understood that both sides are aware that this is a charade.” See Memorandum, Richard Schifter to George Shultz, “Human Rights Group at Moscow Summit, “ 1 June 1988. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB251/25.pdf [7 June 2008]. Ronald Reagan’s briefing book for the Moscow took the same position. See Department of State, Background Book, “President Reagan’s Meetings with General Secretary Gorbachev,” 29 May-2 June 1988, N.P. Available [Online]: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB251/10.pdf [7 June 2008].

1045 Memorandum of Conversation, “First Shultz-Shevardnadze Meeting, Evening of May 29,” 6, Fritz Ermath Files, Box 1, Folder: 1988 U.S.-Soviet Memcons (3/3), RRPL. 523

Gorbachev reiterated that “the Soviets had many comments to make about U.S. human rights problems such as “political rights, the rights of blacks and colored people, social and economic rights, [and] the treatment of anti-war protestors and movements.” 1046

Not impressed with Reagan’s spirited defense of existing conditions in the United

States, Gorbachev responded that “he had not been inventing figures” and “was [only] citing facts from the American Congress.” He then tried to relay the message that the

President might have something to learn from the “self-critical” Soviet society.1047 He repeated similar sentiments in a private letter he sent to Reagan a few months after this meeting ended. “We seem to have agreed, he wrote, “that these [human rights] problems require an in-depth consideration and clear understanding of the true situation in both the

United States and Soviet Union. Traffic along this two-way street has begun and I hope that it will be intense.”1048

The emphasis Soviet reformers placed on holding a “two-way” human rights dialogue worked in tandem with the larger goal of engaging in peaceful ideological competition with the United States. Since he hoped to forge a superior “synthesis between socialism and democracy,” Gorbachev rejected suggestions that he had embraced the Helsinki process only to emulate successful capitalist countries. At a

Kremlin banquet held to celebrate Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Moscow in March 1987,

1046 See “Memorandum of Conversation, 9 December 1987, 10:35-10:45 A.M.,” 8.

1047 Memorandum of Conversation, “The President’s First One-on-One Meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev, 29 May 1988, 3:26-4:37,” Executive Secretariat: NSC, Box 10, Folder: 8890497, RRPL.

1048 Letter, Gorbachev to Reagan, 20 September 1988, USSR: General Secretary Gorbachev, Box 41, Folder: 8890725-8890750, RRPL 524

he explained his willingness to discuss human rights issues at Final Act forums. He

hoped that Soviet voices would be heard in the West

by the millions of unemployed, homeless and destitute, by those beaten by the police and victimized in court, and by those whose civil rights and human dignity are subjected to glaring discrimination simply because of the color of their skin.1049

He voiced similar sentiments a few hours after Reagan left the Moscow summit. At a conference that included Western peace activists and Native American representatives, he

insisted that “[w]e do not need anyone else’s model. We don’t need anyone else’s

values.” Gorbachev also “autographed a copy of the work “‘Perestroika’” for Leonard

Peltier.1050

While always willing to voice familiar Soviet critiques of U.S. domestic behavior,

Gorbachev and other reformers also made a conscious effort to move away from the

crude Marxist-Leninist human rights propaganda of the past. 1051 In a private

memorandum he wrote to the General Secretary, Yakovlev favored such a course because

the Soviet government had more than enough ammunition to counter “propaganda that is

hostile to socialism and to our country.” Because we are “giving socialism back to the

world,” we now have the ability to work with “our friends” abroad to “globalize” the

“creative potential of socialism” and rehabilitate the international prestige of the Soviet

Union.1052

1049 M.S. Gorbachov, Volume II, 187.

1050 “Gorbachev Defends Soviet Human Rights Record,” The Associated Press, 2 June 1988.

1051 David K. Shipler was right on the mark when he made this observation in 1989. See Shipler, “Dateline USSR: On the Human Rights Track,” 170-1.

525

Confident in the global appeal of a reformed Soviet Union, Yakovlev and other officials concluded a wide variety of exchange agreements that in practice increased the level of “information flows” between the United States and the Soviet Union. Taking advantage of this new climate, an official Soviet journalist of African descent wrote a

series of articles in the Christian Science Monitor describing her impressions of the

African-American community in Boston. Employing arguments more reminiscent of an

American liberal-Democrat than a committed Marxist, she explained the validity of the well-known argument that “there are black fields of achievement and white ones” in the

United States.1053

During the first official U.S.-Soviet seminar on human rights that took place in

November 1988, a Soviet representative attempted to tap into the transnational human rights network so he could strengthen his contentions about U.S. human rights shortcomings. After criticizing U.S. laws that violated the Final Act’s “Third Basket,” he utilized a letter from an American “defense attorney” to substantiate charges that

“’prisoners of conscience” existed in the United States. Familiar with how human rights

criticisms gained legitimacy in Western countries, he told Steny Hoyer (R-MD) that this

letter deserves your attention because the author supported her charges with citations

from a number of legitimate sources, including “the Amnesty International organization,

1052 “Notes for Presentation to Politburo, December 27, 1988. Available [Online]: Eduard Shevardnadze’s account supports this view. See Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom, 63. See also Shipler,”Dateline USSR,” 165; CDSP 41, no. 8 (22 March 1989): 15; Ibid., 40, no. 41 (9 November 1988): 18; and “Soviet Spokesman on Human Rights,” TASS, 31 July 1987.

1053 “Soviet-US Meeting on Information Exchanges addressed by Yakovlev,” BBC, 8 October 1988; and Yelena Hanga, “What a black Soviet found out about American blacks,” The Christian Science Monitor 24 February 1988, 5. See also “U.S., Soviets to Exchange Movies,” The Associated Press, 22 June 1988; “USSR-USA: Widening of Book Exchange,” TASS, 10 November 1988; and “A U.S.-Soviet Cultural Rapprochement,” The New York Times, 17 February 1988, C17. 526 minutes from Congressional hearings in 1984 and 1985, broadcasts on National Public

Radio, [and] the 20/20 analytical news program produced by ABC.”1054

The CSCE Endgame

The decision of Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers to sign the concluding document of the Vienna follow-up meeting grew out of their larger goals of strengthening the Soviet Union’s international legitimacy and ability to engage in peaceful ideological competition with capitalist nations. By agreeing to clear-cut stipulations that allowed private citizens and signatories to challenge Soviet internal behavior, they could combat any suggestion that the USSR stood outside the mainstream of Western debates about what legitimate governments owed private citizens. In light of the Soviet and Russian past, they had also taken an important step toward creating a law- abiding socialist state that had an obligation to respect the basic freedoms of each private citizen. The sections of this agreement that called on signatories to respect the right of private citizens to organize and disseminate information without governmental interference represented an important move toward the creation of “a pluralistic democracy based on a revived civic society” and “equal citizenship.”1055

The creation of a well-functioning civil society and law-abiding socialist state that many hoped would emerge in the wake of the Vienna agreement never took place because of bureaucratic inertia and the inherent instabilities of the Soviet empire.

Gorbachev may have agreed to relinquish the Soviet Communist Party’s leading role and

1054 CDSP 40, no. 47 (21 December 1988): 15.

1055 Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 230. 527

the reunification of Germany in 1990, but he never fully relinquished his preference for

Leninist glasnost and hostility toward democratic critiques. During a meeting with

“media bosses” in October 1990, he “denounced a variety of eminent reformers ‘who in their chase after popularity, are ready to speak out against their mother.’” Even though a new law appeared guaranteeing freedom of the press in June 1990, party officials still refused to register Grigoryants’s publication Glasnost. Instead, “the Central Committee” launched a new publication of the same name “that was combined with ‘political vigilance and implacability toward views that are alien to us’ and ‘ideological work that is creative and aggressive.’” Facing a substantial economic downturn, ethnic violence,

and independence movements, Gorbachev asked legislators to suspend press laws

because “only the Supreme Soviet” can “‘ensure complete objectivity in the media.’”1056

The inability of many Soviet officials to repudiate past traditions and the

unraveling of the USSR that accompanied Gorbachev’s reform campaign had predictable

consequences. The Soviet government never managed to pass or institutionalize the

basic laws and practices necessary to “transform the social relationships between state and society into a stable pattern of democratic bargaining” associated with “interest group activity.”1057 As the Soviet Communist party’s authority disintegrated, the hundreds of

“parties, groups, and political movements” that grew out of Gorbachev’s “revolution from below” proved too divided and sectarian to create any sort of viable alternative

1056 Horvath, “The Dissident Roots of Glasnost,” 196-7.

1057 Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 229. 528 structure.1058 In hindsight, the failure of Gorbachev and other reformers to create a new type of socialism capable of generating either international or domestic admiration confirms the validity of Yakovlev’s bold prediction in 1989 that the failure of perestroika would result in “the death of socialism.” Now resigned to the reality that he failed to turn an empire with totalitarian aspirations into a well-functioning socialist model, Gorbachev can now only muster the enthusiasm to call socialism a broad, flexible idea related to the

“gradual realization of . . . equality and self-determination.”1059

1058 Alexander Yakovlev, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, The Fate of Marxism in Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 212-4.

1059 See Cohen and Vaden Heuvel, ed., Voices of Glasnost, 69; and Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mylnar, Conversations with Gorbachev, 167 and 51. 529

CHAPTER 12: CONCLUSION

During a conference that took place at Georgetown University in 1977, the Soviet historian Richard Pipes spoke about the growing importance that global public opinion attached to human rights concerns. This issue, he argued, “probably disturbs the Soviet

Union far more than American” missiles “or bombers.” Unlike the Vietnam War, which

“was only a sideshow in the overall strategic picture,” human rights “is a fundamental issue.” Soviet policymakers “are afraid of the millions who want something” that they

“cannot” give them: the right to tell the “truth” and do normal activities like traveling abroad or teaching their children religion without state interference. Because they fear their people, Pipes said he “would be terribly upset” if the U.S. government only used human rights as a “public relations device” instead of exploiting the issue to weaken the prestige of the USSR.1060

This dissertation has shown that private citizens played an important role in

shaping how the United States and Western European governments used the issue of

human rights to challenge the legitimacy of Soviet internal behavior. With little power,

they used the Final Act to “globalize” the issue of Soviet human rights violations and

change the “moral climate of the world.”1061 This development was neither preordained nor easy. According to Yuri Orlov, dissenters “had to beat against a wall of silence and

1060 Center for Strategic and International Studies, Williamsburg Conference IV, From Helsinki to Belgrade: Issues and Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, 1977), 33-8.

1061 Orlov, Before and After Glasnost, 22-3. The words “moral climate of the world” come from Sakharov’s statement in Chapter V. 530

even indifference in the West” during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite a number of setbacks, the individual efforts of transnational human rights actors

finally made a difference. President Carter became the first U.S. president to raise the issue of human rights to the level of international politics and diplomacy. At the 1986 Vienna Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, practically all Western delegations energetically criticized the USSR, citing it by name. . . . And President Reagan made human rights in the Soviet Union a centerpiece of his agenda during his summit trip to Moscow in May-June 1988.1062

Even someone as cynical as Henry Kissinger expressed sentiments similar to those

Orlov’s in 1994. After explaining the important role “Basket III” played in undermining

the international legitimacy of the Soviet empire, he wrote that “human rights activists”

rather governments “deserve tribute” for this development. “Without the pressures which

they exerted, progress [in the Helsinki process] would have been slower, and there

probably would have been less of it.”1063

This work has devoted considerable attention to the behavior of the Carter and

Reagan administrations. While sometimes obscured, the ways in which these two

Presidents approached the task of challenging Soviet internal behavior had many commonalities. Each used the issue of human rights as a way of engaging in peaceful ideological competition with the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Each also employed a mixture of “public” and “private” human rights diplomacy to support dissenters. Each generally refrained from using rigid linkages on a consistent basis to punish Soviet leaders for repressing non-official activities.

1062 Ibid.

1063 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 759. William Korey also uses this example. See Ibid., NGOS and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 247. 531

The commonalities do not end there. The Carter and Reagan administrations took

a number of steps to satisfy the demands of private citizens and the U.S. Helsinki

Commission concerning the promotion of human rights in the USSR. Each became

active participants in the Helsinki process and utilized international institutions such as

the UNHRC to challenge Soviet internal behavior. Just as important, each recognized that governmental efforts alone could only go so far in changing the behavior of systematic human rights violators. This attitude explains why each of them encouraged

transnational actors to challenge Soviet internal behavior.

Despite a number of important similarities, the behavior of the Carter and Reagan

administrations had important differences. Instead of holding up the United States as an

unblemished democratic model, the former placed more importance on enhancing the

credibility and international legitimacy of U.S. human rights criticisms. The strength of

this mindset accounts for why Carter agreed to sign a number of international human

rights covenants and proved amenable to writing a comprehensive report on the U.S.

Final Act compliance record. It also explains why his administration attempted to frame

their human rights criticisms as part of an even-handed, universal campaign directed at

both authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Members of the Reagan administration placed less importance on this

consideration for one simple reason. They believed that the very existence of Marxist-

Leninist regimes negated any suggestion that an international consensus on human rights

existed. As a result of this position, they were less interested in strengthening the ability

of multilateral institutions to pass judgments on human rights violators than Carter had 532

been. They placed more rhetorical importance on the need to make the creation of

democratic institutions the cornerstone of U.S. government’s approach to human rights

promotion. This choice meant that most members of Reagan administration felt little

need to calibrate their rhetoric about Soviet human rights violations in response to short-

term trends in Soviet behavior. To a greater degree than their predecessors, they judged

progress in the Moscow’s respect for universally recognized human rights as function of the specific steps that policymakers took to limit the power of the CPSU and their

willingness to tolerate the development of an autonomous civil society. They were also

much more vocal about the need to defend the right of Soviet nationalities to exercise

their right of self-determination.

This argument does not mean that Carter found these goals unworthy or was somehow oblivious to them. In reality, he held a firm belief in the inherent superiority of

democratic governments and appreciated the ways in which Marxist-Leninist regimes

violated human rights on a regular basis. He also made numerous public statements

about Soviet human rights violations and ensured that the United States was an active

participant in the Helsinki process. Well before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took

place, he had spoken about “prevailing” in the Cold War and had endorsed a wide variety

of proposals designed to improve the U.S. ability to engage in more “assertive”

ideological competition with the USSR. By the time Carter left office, members of his

National Security Council had drawn up memorandums that described how Soviet

nationality, religious, and economic problems called into question the permanence of the

USSR. They also advocated a wide array of proposals designed to strengthen the U.S. 533

government’s support for dissenters on the grounds that such activities played an important role in undermining the internal legitimacy of Soviet-style socialism.

The distinctiveness of the Carter administration’s approach to promoting human rights in the USSR sometimes obscured these positions. In practice, Carter and other officials felt uneasy about drawing attention to Soviet nationality problems in public settings. No example better illustrates this reality than the following episode. When preparing for a “briefing session” associated with the public human rights seminar that took place in December 1978, Brzezinksi and Derian received a State Department

“question” and “answer” memorandum. This document contained information on how they should respond to questions that guests were likely to ask. Here is the pertinent language:

Q: Since 1959, U.S. Presidents have issued a proclamation observing “Captive Nations Week.” Why did President Carter decide not to issue a proclamation?

A: The strong positions that have been taken by this administration on the subject of human rights are well-known and well-established. Under the circumstances, the President felt that this proclamation was not required.1064

For the most part, Carter also felt uncomfortable making the specific argument that human rights violations grew out of defective governmental institutions. Instead, he chose to act on the assumption that the global appeal of human rights would convince rational Soviet leaders to make their internal behavior more consistent with international

standards over the long term. Because these individuals were capable of moderating their

1064 See Memorandum for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski: The White House, “Questions and Answers for Human Rights Days Briefing Session,” NSABM, Box 78: Folder, Human Rights, 12/78-3/79, JCPL. There can be little doubt that Carter examined internal reports that outlined Soviet nationality problems. See Memo, ZB to Carter, “Soviet National Problems,” 3 June 1977, NSABM, Box 78: Folder 6/77, JCPL. 534

behavior, he reasoned that a mixture of “carrots” and “sticks” represented the best way of

encouraging Soviet internal reform. This attitude explains why he and other

policymakers viewed increases in Jewish emigration as important signs of “moderation”

in Soviet behavior; it also played a role in the belief that signing SALT II would help improve Soviet internal behavior.

Even though Carter often had unrealistic expectations, he was not always less

“confrontational” on the issue of Soviet internal behavior than Reagan. Soviet leaders

detested the ways in which Carter made frequent public statements about their human

rights violations and continued to demand concessions on dissenters behind closed doors.

Reagan may have had no trouble calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” or rebuilding

U.S. military capabilities, but he worried well into his second term about the negative

consequences of engaging in too much “public” diplomacy concerning Soviet human

rights violations. Much more so than Carter, he chose to project a pragmatic attitude

toward Soviet human rights violations during private meetings with Soviet officials and

took a number of steps to ease Soviet sensibilities on the issue. Reagan also enacted

fewer specific punitive measures to penalize Soviet leaders for their imprisonment of

dissenters than Carter had.

The wide array of punitive measures that Carter passed in the wake of the Soviet

invasion of Afghanistan left Reagan with the job of rebuilding U.S.-Soviet relations. In

spite of his harsh anti-Soviet rhetoric, he adopted a flexible negotiating agenda (“four-

sided” dialogue) designed to improve U.S.-Soviet relations that had some important

commonalities with the Helsinki process. Since he refrained from trying to change 535

Soviet internal behavior through rigid linkages, he chose to sign cooperative agreements with Moscow without any noticeable improvement in Soviet internal behavior. His

administration also undertook a conscious effort to expand reciprocal exchanges and

pursued agreements aimed at ending the average Soviet citizen’s isolation from the outside world.

Any balanced evaluation of Reagan’s accomplishments must take several considerations into account. After several visible missteps on the issue of human rights, he embraced the Helsinki process for the same reason that Carter had. For all his bluster,

Reagan had little choice but to recognize that the U.S. government only had a limited ability to shape Soviet domestic developments. Unlike Carter, he had the good fortune of working with a General Secretary who took the language of the Final Act far more seriously than his predecessors did. Before Gorbachev appeared, Reagan’s mixture of projecting a pragmatic attitude toward Soviet human rights violations, emphasizing the importance of Final Act, and stressing democracy promotion failed to bring about significant improvements in Soviet human rights practices.

While Carter should have never made an “absolute” commitment to human rights, he would not have been more successful changing Soviet internal behavior if he had behaved more like Reagan. The pervasive influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thinking placed severe limits on the degree of change that could have taken place in the

USSR before Gorbachev rose to power. As both internal and public documents reveal, many Soviet policymakers regarded Carter’s statements about dissenters and Soviet human rights violations as provocative attacks on their regime’s internal and international 536

legitimacy. They also worried about the ways in which he encouraged transnational

human rights activities and supported efforts designed to make the UNHRC investigate

the Kremlin’s treatment of dissenters. Even if Carter had only viewed the issue of human

rights as a “humanitarian aid program,” as one critic alleges, such a policy would still

have done more than enough to set off Soviet alarm bells.1065 No example better

illustrates the collective strength of this hostility than how officials like Andropov linked the activities of AI to a vast international conspiracy bent on destroying the foundations of Soviet power.

These considerations raise important questions about what role U.S. governmental policy played in convincing Gorbachev to undertake a reform campaign. The best way of

addressing this issue involves taking “a global perspective that looks across national

boundaries and within societies at the same time.”1066 The manifest economic failures of

the Marxist-Leninist project do not fully explain why Gorbachev decided to take on the task of revitalizing and transforming Soviet-style socialism. He recognized that bureaucratic distortions had permeated all levels of Soviet society. In particular, he saw

that Soviet leaders had become increasingly unable to prevent “‘the . . . erosion of the

ideological basis of the regime’s [internal] legitimacy.’” This development reinforces the

position that “the partial opening of the iron curtain and growing opportunities for

international travel and exchange” had a profound impact on Soviet society. It helped

1065 See Moynihan, “The Politics of Human Rights,” 23.

1066 Suri, Power and Protest, 262. 537

reduce “Soviet xenophobia, militarism, and ideological collectivism” among many

“educated elites” and even some bureaucrats.1067

In the international arena, dissenters and Western private citizens used human rights as a way of tarnishing the internal reputation of the USSR in the eyes of parties by no means inherently anti-Soviet such as AI and Western European communist parties.1068

The importance of this development should not be underestimated. Given the manifest failures of Soviet economic performance, orthodox Soviet policymakers had no other way of justifying the international and domestic legitimacy of their regime besides speaking of the ideological correctness and global appeal of Soviet-style socialism.

Richard Pipes had every reason to suggest that human rights critiques represented a far more worrisome development for Soviet leaders than the defeat in Vietnam had been for their American counterparts. Since the Soviet Union found no task more important than competing with Western nations, “a decline of prestige” in the eyes of potentially

“progressive” forces became a noteworthy “setback” for leaders who felt as if their nation had found the best way of modernizing and globalizing the world.1069

The larger transformations of life in the USSR and the international “normative”

environment explain Gorbachev’s behavior far better than accounts that privilege the

influence of the Reagan administration. He did not take steps to make Soviet human

rights practices more consistent with international standards as a direct result of Reagan’s

1067 Zubok, A Failed Empire, 340.

1068 For example of how Soviet leaders feared Eurocommunist activities, see “Moscow and the Eurocommunists: Where Next?,” 3. Available [Online]: http://www.foia.cia.gov/ [10 June 2007].

1069 Orlov, Before and After Glasnost, 22; and Zubok, A Failed Empire, 343. 538

hard-line policies or private statements about the inherent strengths of American-style

democracy. If anything, he found suggestions that the United States should serve as a

democratic model for the rest of the world repugnant. While he never relinquished his

hostility toward non-official democratic critiques, Gorbachev proved willing to address transnational human rights critiques because he did not define international legitimacy in

terms of orthodox Marxist-Leninist thought. For all his notable shortcomings, he acted in

ways consistent with the larger goals of gaining the legitimate trust of Western

democratic nations and transforming the USSR into a non-Marxist socialist model

capable of generating universal emulation.1070

From this angle, the U.S. executive branch played a key role in effecting Soviet

internal reform because it proved better equipped to handle the “diversification of power”

that took place when human rights became a global concern during the 1970s and 1980s.

Instead of hiding behind their bureaucratic authority and discretion, the Carter and

Reagan administrations worked with private citizens and Congress to hold the Soviets

accountable for their violations of the Final Act. The Helsinki process gave officials an

excellent way of holding Soviet bureaucrats, including Gorbachev, accountable for their

pledges to “democratize” the USSR and make the internal behavior of their regime

consistent with international human rights standards. It also provided the U.S.

government with visible and legitimate forums to call for the institutionalization of laws

and democratic institutions that checked the power of the CPSU. Because of the

1070 Even a strong Reagan defender such as Joshua Muravchik agrees with position. See Ibid, “Obama's ‘Talking’ Cure,” Commentary 126 (September 2008): 28. For a similar view that describes how Gorbachev undertook reforms because of the ways in which Soviet-style socialism piqued his conscience. See Leon Aron, “The ‘Mystery’ of the Soviet Collapse,” Journal of Democracy 17, no. 2 (April 2006): 21-5. 539

explosive growth of public non-official activities that accompanied Gorbachev’s reform

campaign, the Helsinki process put the Reagan administration in a strong position to help

private citizens create an autonomous civil society in the Soviet Union.

The successes the Reagan administration had in promoting human rights in the

Soviet Union would not have been possible without the contributions of private citizens.

They played an important role in showing the inherent limitations of Gorbachev’s

preference for a “Leninist” glasnost. By convincing Western governments to embrace

their goals, they helped move the Soviet government in the direction of adopting a

universal glasnost that required “the redistribution of power, rights, and freedoms” within

the USSR. This change in Soviet internal behavior revealed that the “built-in

conservatism” of Leonid Brezhnev and his successors had “been well-founded.”1071

Because Gorbachev and other “liberal-minded” reformers felt obligated to treat their

private citizens in a more humane fashion, transnational actors in effect unleashed a revolt against the CPSU that revealed the artificiality of the multinational, multiethnic

Soviet empire.1072

The recent behavior of the Russian President only confirms the

proposition that Gorbachev’s identification with Western values and desire to make his

country a legitimate Western European nation mattered a great deal. Strengthened by

economic growth based on natural gas and oil profits, Putin and his entourage of former

1071 Connor, “Soviet Society, Public Attitudes, and the Perils of Gorbachev’s Reforms,” 74.

1072 As Richard Sakwa writes, “the failure to transform and channel dissent into a “loyal opposition” ultimately turned the whole society into dissenters” and swept away the USSR in a “tidal wave of opposition.” See Sakwa, Soviet Politics in Perspective, 214. 540

KGB officials have relied on an amalgam of Russian nationalism, anti-Westernism, and

“centralized” democratic rule to justify their international and domestic legitimacy.

While not Marxist-Leninist ideologues, they very much believe that replacing rigid

centralized rule with Western-style democracy or allowing an autonomous civil society to

develop would prove ruinous for their country.

Determined to keep the population quiet and obedient, the Russian government

has reverted to a number of practices that were commonplace during the Soviet era.

Policymakers have once again begun using psychiatry for political purposes,

manipulating election laws, and passing statutes that give government officials the ability

to put critics in jail under the charge of “‘humiliating [Russian] national pride.’” The

government has also passed a series of laws that have given the authorities the ability to

dismiss independent judges and shut down transnational NGOs such as the “Russian

Research Centre on Human Rights.” Furthermore, authorities have made every effort to

punish individuals for engaging in non-official protests and to sponsor “public” groups

that glorify the Soviet past as well as the unique accomplishments of the Russian

people.1073

Of course, nations that violate human rights with impunity will not become law-

abiding democratic states once they have rulers who identify with Western values. The

1073 For an excellent account of the current Russian government’s determination to punish dissent, see Edward Lucas, The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 73-113. For the quotes, see Ibid., 80 and 97. See also Lilia Shevtsova, trans. by Arch Tait, Russia—Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Years (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for the Peace, 2007), Chapters 4 and 8; and Richard Pipes, “Putin & Co.: What is to Be Done,” Commentary 125 (May 2008): 30-6; Ivan Krastev, “Democracy’s ‘Doubles,’” Journal of Democracy 17 (April 2006): 52-62.

541

success of such a complex task depends just as much on the creation of an autonomous

civil society and viable democratic institutions. These developments will not take place

without the active participation of a sizable contingent of private citizens who identify with liberal values and have a healthy skepticism of bureaucratic authority and discretion.1074 In the case of Russia, the activities of dissenters and the independent

groups that emerged during Gorbachev’s reign proved unable to accomplish these tasks

because of the cumulative effects of the Soviet experiment, the disastrous economic

conditions of the 1990s, and centuries of centralized rule.1075 According to recent work

on cotemporary Russian policies, the authoritarian policies of Putin and his “successor”

Dmitry Medvedev remain popular because:

For many Russians, dissenting views and minorities of all kinds are not a vital ingredient of political pluralism, but a subversive and unpatriotic menace that is at best tolerated grudgingly, and if necessary squashed. . . Though the political pluralism of the Yeltsin era lasted for years, not months, it also failed to put down real roots.1076

Although a depressing evaluation, U.S. policymakers can still draw important

lessons from the task of promoting internal reform in Soviet Union and current conditions

in Russia. Neither example suggests that punishing human rights violators with punitive

measures such as economic sanctions or the cancellation of exchange and cooperative

agreements will have any long term impact on a government’s behavior. Even though

1074 For a cogent account of the pitfalls involved in building democratic governments, see Francis Fukuyama, “The Primacy of Culture,” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 7-14. See also Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (New York: Henry Holt, 2008). In his work, he makes the cogent observation that “one of the paradoxes of democracy is that sustainable self-governance must be respectful of government authority yet also distrustful of it, ‘watchful’ but not ‘blindly submissive.’” See Ibid., 155.

1075 See Pipes, “Putin & Co.,” 32.

1076 Lucas, The New Cold War, 90. 542 they might help induce short-term pragmatic concessions, they do little to address the reasons why leaders feel obligated to engage in systematic human rights violations or find the creation of democratic institutions so objectionable in the first place. Along similar lines, nothing suggests that privileging either “public” or “private” diplomacy represents a superior way of promoting human rights in a foreign country. For the foreseeable future, American officials will have to employ a mixture of both depending on circumstances and competing interests. The former still plays an important role in strengthening the resolve of political prisoners and focusing attention on the violator.

The latter plays a crucial role in resolving sensitive cases and reinforcing the U.S. commitment to promoting internal reform.

Because of the inherent limitation of governmental efforts, U.S. policymakers should go out of their way to support activities that have the best chance of challenging how foreign leaders and private citizens view the world and domestic surroundings (i.e., identity). While by no means an easy task, they should work closely with the private sector to conclude as many “people-to-people” and cultural exchange agreements as they can. As the Soviet example helps show, these measures are important because they help break down a regime’s monopoly of information and broaden peoples’ horizons, including those of government officials who participate. The U.S. government should also not overlook the importance of working with and defending the right of private citizens to publicize and document an offending regime’s human rights abuses. These efforts not only play an important role in tarnishing the international reputation of systematic human rights violators, but also remind policymakers that people are watching 543

them. This reality explains for why Russian government officials and spokespeople go out of their way to portray their nation as a strong democratic state that respects universal human rights, no matter how much internal behavior belies such a position.1077

The importance that Carter placed on strengthening multilateral human rights

institutions and the legitimacy of U.S. criticisms have an obvious resonance given all the

controversies surrounding the current war in . According to the democracy-

promotion expert Tim Carothers: “the damage that the [George W.] Bush administration

has done to the global image of the United States by repeatedly violating the rule of law at home and abroad has further weakened the legitimacy of the democracy promotion cause.” “When Bush and his top advisers single out ‘outposts’ of tyranny,” he wrote,

“the governments they invariably list are those that also happen to be unfriendly to the

United States. Meanwhile, friendly but equally repressive regimes, such as that of Saudi

Arabia, escape mention.”1078

While competing interests will always place limits on the ability of the U.S.

government to promote human rights and democracy, Carothers’ arguments deserve

attention for a number of reasons. At least in part, the popularity of such sentiments

accounts for why a number of recent works have stressed the crucial importance of taking

steps to make American behavior more consistent with international law and

strengthening the ability of multilateral institutions to rectify the internal behavior of

1077 See Pipes, 30-3; and Krastev, “Democracy’s ‘Doubles.”

1078 Thomas Carothers, “The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (2006): 55 and 62. Some staunch defenders of Bush admit this problem. See Adam Wolfson, “Between Idealism and Realism,” The Claremont Institute. Available [Online]: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1102/article_detail.asp [10 October 2008].

544 nation states, including the United States. Some even go further and praise the virtues of creating mechanisms “of global governance that bypass or minimize the role of national political orders” or stress the importance of forging a “transnational” identity not contaminated by nationalist prejudices.1079 When taken as a whole, these treatments deserve credit for reminding readers how international “norms” and ideals shape the behavior of countries. They also help show how international human rights standards have eroded state sovereignty and highlight the obvious reality that foreign audiences do not always see the United States as a universal democratic model. Furthermore, they make the important point that many foreign leaders see American democracy and human rights promotion as a convenient excuse for regime change.1080

Despite these strengths, works that focus on the positive results that will flow from strengthening multilateral institutions and making U.S. behavior more consistent with international law tend to overstate their cases. While the appeal of ideals should never be underestimated, leaders determined to rule in a totalitarian or authoritarian manners will remain so even if the United States joined the International Criminal Court.

1079 See Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World, Chapters 9 and 10; and David P. Forsythe, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). The quote comes Marc F. Plattner, Democracy Without Borders?: Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 130. See also Ibid., 118-130; and John Fonte, “Beyond the Nation State,” Claremont Review of Books 8 (Summer 2008): 43-5. Some of the more notable works that advocate “global governance” include Strobe Talbott, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008); and John Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47 (Winter 1993): 139-74. For a good account of authors who favor the development of a “transnational” or “post-identity” to replace such retrograde concepts such as nationalism and nation-state allegiance, see Natan Sharansky, Defending Identity: The Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 68-79.

1080 See Carothers, “The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion.” Francis Fukuyama also recognizes that foreign audiences do not see the United States as a disinterested state working for the good of the world. See Ibid., America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 111-3. 545

Carter’s signing of international human rights covenants did nothing to make U.S. human

rights criticisms more palatable in the eyes of Soviet leaders. Critics have every reason to

suggest that recent U.S. behavior has made the task of democracy promotion more

difficult. Nevertheless, evidence still shows that multilateral human rights institutions

like the UNHRC will remain corrupt, politicized, and “unaccountable” forums for the

foreseeable future regardless of U.S. international and domestic behavior.1081 For the

foreseeable future, the best way of improving a nation’s human rights record will involve

the building of democratic institutions, habits, and identities. As one author writes, the

“observance of human rights requires democracy,” limited government, and populations and politicians who accept the legitimacy of liberal and Western values.1082

When viewed in this light, the Helsinki process proved effective because of the

ways in which it conformed to the American historical preference for “liberal

internationalism” rather than the strategy of “global governance.”1083 To put this insight

another way, the language of the Final Act does not reflect the attitude that

“unaccountable” bureaucrats and institutions can protect human rights better than liberal-

1081 See Jeremy A. Rabkin, The Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome American Independence (Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 2004), 114-5 and 124-9; and Law Without Nations?: Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 184-5. For focused accounts on the problems of multilateral institutions and the United Nations, see Fonte, “Beyond the Nation State”; and Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 155-80.

1082 Plattner, Democracy Without Borders?, 45, Chapters 3 and 4. For a good discussion of the commonalities between democracy and human rights promotion, see Carothers, “Democracy and Human Rights: Policy or Rivals?,” in Carothers, ed., Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 9-22.

1083 For a detailed explanation of the differences in these viewpoints, see Plattner, Democracy Without Borders?, 118. 546

democratic “political orders.”1084 Instead, it accepted the fundamental reality that democracy cannot “work outside or across the framework of a sovereign state . . . over the long run.”1085 Utilizing consistent and visible negotiation sessions, Western signatories backed up by vigorous public opinion worked to convince their Eastern counterparts to undertake permanent reforms consistent with the document’s requirements and international human rights standards. From this angle, the Helsinki process left signatories and private citizens in charge of persuading their counterparts to create “the civic architecture of [a] free and pluralistic society.”1086

The success of the Final Act will prove difficult to replicate given the hostility so

many leaders have for Western values and views of civil society. Nevertheless, the

agreement stands out as example of what they can accomplish without succumbing to the

“global governance” temptation. The Helsinki process proves that that the United States

can forge multilateral arrangements consistent with the position that the nation-state

remains “the only source of power that can enforce the rule of law.” It also shows that

international cooperation can make important contributions to the larger goal of working

toward the emergence of as many “liberal democratic governments” in the rest of the

world “as possible.”1087

1084 See Rabkin, The Case for Sovereignty, 106; and See Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 83-4.

1085 Plattner, Democracy With Borders?, 112 and 129-30.

1086 Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy, 130.

1087 Plattner, Democracy With Borders?, 129; and Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 10. My argument has much in common with his definition of “multi-multilateralism.” See Ibid., 158-9 and Chapter VII. I also agree with his observations about the shortcomings of the position that “the creation of international institutions . . . will democratize the relationship among countries.” See “Democracy and 547

Perhaps even more important, the Final Act demonstrates that multilateralism can

help empower private citizens to assert their individual identity within the confines of a

democratic choice. Drawing upon his experiences of living in the Soviet Union and

becoming a political prisoner, Natan Sharansky reminded readers that he and many other

dissenters did not exploit the issue of human rights to become “cosmopolitan” citizens of

a “single global society.” Instead, they utilized the issue so they could express their

identity in a system “anchored” by democratic practices.1088 This position led him to lambaste the idea that forging artificial “transnational” identities across the globe represented the best way of defending the cause of human freedom over the long term.

As he rotted away in a Soviet prison, he learned that “those with strongest identities were

the least likely to succumb to tyranny.” At the end of the day, “it was . . . those who

valued difference that united in a common purpose to defeat the mass murdering ideology

[of Marxist-Leninism] that killed in the name of a utopian world without difference.”

“One of history’s greatest ironies,” Sharansky mused, “is that the only unhistorical

identity proved to be Homo Sovieticus.”1089

These poignant words have much in common with the vision that Andrei

Sakharov defended before his death in 1989. He believed that a universal glasnost would

not be possible until private citizens with liberal values all over the world succeeded in

the larger task of exercising firm democratic control” over the behavior of

‘The End of History’ Revisited,” in Heraldo Munoz, ed., Democracy Rising: Assessing Global Challenges (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2006), 119.

1088 Sharansky, Defending Identity, 72 and 16.

1089 Ibid., 61-2. 548

governments.1090 The world is no closer to this state of affairs now than it was twenty years ago. It will probably be no closer in the year 2076. Nevertheless, it would be a

shame if the U.S. placed more faith in unaccountable bureaucrats rather than private

citizens to make this world a more humane place to inhabit. As the collapse of the Soviet

Union helps show, “isolated decision making” cannot take the place of working with

private citizens in ways that defend liberal values and advance the cause of democratic

self-government.1091

1090 See Andrei Sakharov, “A Sick Society,” The New York Times, 23 January 1980, A23. For similar arguments, see Sakharov, “Towards Democracy,” in Barry Rubin and Walter Laquer, ed., The Human Rights Reader, 2nd ed. (New American Library, 1989), 445-8; and “Struggling for Human Rights: A Talk with Valery Chalidze,” The New York Times, 29 July 1973, SM12.

1091 For a similar argument, see Suri, Power and Protest, 264-5.

549

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Vogelesang, Sandy. American Dream, Global Nightmare: The Dilemma of U.S. Human Rights Policy. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1980.

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Zivs, Samuel. Human Rights: Continuing the Discussion. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980.

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Articles and Pamphlets

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Brooks, Stephen G., and William C. Wohlforth. “Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas.” International Security 25 (Winter 2000–2001): 5–53.

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Cmiel, Kenneth. “The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States.” The Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999). Available [Online]: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/cmiel.htm [16 July 2007].

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Conner, Walter D. “Soviet Society, Public Attitudes, and the Perils of Gorbachev’s Reforms: The Social Context of the End of the USSR.” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 4 (2003): 43-80.

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English, Robert. “Power, Ideas, and New Evidence on the Cold War’s End: A Reply to Brooks and Wohlforth,” International Security 26, no. 4 (2002): 70-92.

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Fagan, Patricia Weiss. “The United States and International Human Rights, 1946-1977.” Universal Human Rights 2, no. 3 (1980): 19-34.

Fascell, Dante. “The Helsinki Accord: A Case Study.” Annals, AAPSS 442 (March 1979): 69-76.

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Finnemore, Martha and Kathryn Sikkink. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52 (Fall 1998): 887-917.

Fireside, Harvey. “Dissent and Soviet Society.” Problems of Communism 35, no. 4 (1986): 93-8.

Flaherty, Patrick. “Perestroika Radicals: The Origins and Ideology of the Soviet New Left.” Monthly Review 40, no. 4 (1988): 19-33.

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Fonte, John. “Beyond the Nation State.” Claremont Review of Books 8 (Summer 2008): 43-5.

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Fukuyama, Francis. “The Primacy of Culture.” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 7- 14.

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Gooding, John. “Gorbachev and Democracy.” Soviet Studies 42 (April 1990): 195-231.

Gould-Davies, Nigel. “Rethinking the Roles of Ideology in International Politics during the Cold War.” Journal of Cold War Studies 1 (Winter 1999): 90-109

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Huntington, Samuel. “Trade, Technology, and Leverage: Economic Diplomacy.” Foreign Policy 32 (Fall 1978): 63-106.

International Helsinki Federation, “International Helsinki Federation Mission to Moscow” Vol. II, no. 1 (22 February 1988): 1-6.

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Jackson, William D. “The Soviet Reassessment of Ronald Reagan, 1985-1988,” Political Science Quarterly 113 (Winter 1998): 617-44.

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Lefever, Ernest W. “The Trivialization of Human Rights.” Available online at Lexis- Nexus.

Maeching, Charles. “Human Rights Dehumanized,” Foreign Policy 52 (Autumn 1983): 118-35.

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Medvedev, Roy. “Andropov and the Dissidents: The Internal Atmosphere under the New Soviet Leadership.” Dissent 31, no. 1 (1984): 97-102

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Moynihan, Daniel P. “The Politics of Human Rights,” Commentary (August 1977): 19- 26.

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Podhoretz, Norman. “The Reagan Road to Détente.” Foreign Affairs 63 (Winter 1984/1985): 447-64.

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Reddaway, Peter. “Soviet Policies on Dissent and Emigration: The Radical Change of Course since 1979.” no. 192 (28 August 1984).

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______. “Dissent in the Soviet Union.” Problems of Communism 32 (November- December 1983): 1-15.

Risse-Kappen, Thomas. “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War.” International Organization 48 (Spring 1994): 185-214.

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Ruechel, Frank A. “Politics and Morality Revisited: Jimmy Carter and Reinhold Niebuhr.” Atlantic History 37, no. 4 (1994): 32-44.

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Schlesinger, Arthur M. “Human Rights and the American Tradition.” Foreign Affairs 57, no. 3 (1979): 505-26.

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Sikkink, Kathryn. “Human Rights, Principle Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America.” International Organization 47 (Summer 1993): 411-41.

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Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. “Misconceptions about Russia are a Threat to America.” Foreign Affairs 58 (Spring 1980): 797-834.

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Taagepera, Rein. “Citizens’ Peace Movement in the Soviet Baltic Republics.” Journal of Peace Research 23 (June 1986): 183-92.

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U.S. Helsinki Watch, “News From the USSR.” 15 September 1987.

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Zubok, Vladislav. “New Evidence on the End of the Cold War: New Evidence on the ‘Soviet Factor’ in the Peaceful Revolutions of 1989.” CWIHPB 12-13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 5-26.

Dissertations

Hodgman, Edward Bailey. “Détente and the Dissidents: Human Rights in U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1968-1980. Ph.D., University of Rochester, 2003.

Multimedia

Avital Shcharansky, My Husband, the Soviet Dissident. CBS Tape Recording, July 1978, no.2. New York: Encyclopedia Americana/CBS News Resource Library, 1978.

592

Jimmy Carter: American Experience. DVD. Directed by Adrianna Bosch. Washington D.C.: Public Broadcasting Corporation, 2002.