The Sakharov-Medvedev Debate on Détente and Human Rights from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Helsinki Accords
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The Sakharov-Medvedev Debate on Détente and Human Rights From the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Helsinki Accords ✣ Barbara Martin Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/23/3/138/1955783/jcws_a_01009.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 In the early 1970s, Soviet dissidents’ support of détente between the Soviet Union and the West may have appeared as a given. Andrei Sakharov, usually considered the “father” of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, had become an outspo- ken advocate of “convergence” between the two blocs with the publication in 1968 of his essay Reflections on Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Free- dom, which quickly drew worldwide attention.1 In 1970, along with the dis- sident historian Roy Medvedev and the physicist Valentin Turchin, Sakharov published an open letter to the leaders of the Communist Party of the So- viet Union (CPSU) demanding the gradual democratization of the Soviet regime.2 Medvedev further developed his program of reform along reform Com- munist lines in his essay On Socialist Democracy, published in the West in 1972.3 Both texts conveyed the idea that democratization of the Soviet Union would engender détente and thus provide the basis for lasting peace. However, neither Sakharov nor Medvedev envisaged a process of détente initiated on a narrow commercial basis, which would not be preceded by democratization of the Soviet system or make it a prerequisite for further rapprochement. The on- set of détente, which coincided with a resurgence of repression directed against Soviet dissent, therefore presented the two activists with a moral and political dilemma, which they solved in different ways. In Medvedev’s view, détente 1. Andrei Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). 2. Roy Medvedev, Andrei Sakharov, and Valentin Turchin, “Appeal for a Gradual Democratization,” in George Saunders, ed., Samizdat: Voices of the Soviet Opposition (New York: Monad Press, 1974), pp. 399–412. 3. Roy Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy (London: MacMillan, 1975). The Russian and French edi- tions were published in 1972. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 23, No. 3, Summer 2021, pp. 138–174, https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01009 © 2021 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 138 The Sakharov-Medvedev Debate on Détente and Human Rights was a positive phenomenon in and of itself—a phenomenon that would ulti- mately lead to the democratization of the regime—whereas Sakharov believed that a serious rapprochement between the two blocs would be impossible un- less Western governments first extracted concessions from the Soviet Union on human rights. This article examines the two dissidents’ debate on détente and human rights in the Soviet Union. That debate, which lasted through the 1970s, was triggered by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974. In an Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/23/3/138/1955783/jcws_a_01009.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 open letter to the U.S. Congress in September 1973, Sakharov voiced sup- port of the amendment, which made the granting of Most Favored Nation status to non-market economies conditional on the liberalization of their em- igration policies.4 Two months later, Medvedev made public his opposition to Sakharov’s position and to the amendment in an article published in the West- ern press.5 What set Sakharov and Medvedev apart was not just their goals but the strategies they proposed to reach them. Should the United States demon- strate firmness on important moral questions and use its economic leverage to compel the Soviet Union to respect human rights? Or were such mea- sures counterproductive? Should one instead hope for progressive democra- tization of the Soviet system through increased contacts with the Western bloc? The different responses the two men gave to these questions reflected the differences in their approaches to political change in the Soviet Union. Whereas Sakharov, along with many Soviet dissidents, adopted the language of human rights and supported the linkage of international and domestic is- sues, Medvedev believed in systemic reform—within the framework of the CPSU’s monopoly on power—to achieve more humane Communism and fa- vored “change through rapprochement” in alliance with left-wing forces in the West. 6 The debate on the Jackson-Vanik Amendment constituted a turning point (not only in Sakharov’s trajectory but also for the Soviet human rights movement as a whole) from a belief in the progressive liberalization of So- viet society through reforms from above and détente, to a more offensive “boomerang strategy” relying on pressure exercised indirectly by the USSR’s Cold War adversaries and international organizations in order to obtain 4. Andrei Sakharov, “Open Letter to the United States Congress,” 14 September 1973, transcribed in U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 13 December 1974, p. 39837. 5. Roy Medvedev, “Democracy and Détente,” in Political Essays (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1976), pp. 13–29. 6. The German formula “Wandel durch Annäherung” was used by Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr in the context of their Ostpolitik in the early 1970s. 139 Martin Soviet compliance in the field of human rights.7 This turn was made possible by a global shift in awareness of human rights violations and toward humani- tarian diplomacy, exemplified by the intense public mobilization on behalf of Soviet Jews that prompted the Jackson-Vanik Amendment’s adoption in the United States. The research presented in this article draws on Samuel Moyn’s theory about the rise of human rights as a global ideological paradigm in the 1970s.8 Unlike Moyn, who explains this rise by pointing to the failure of so- cialist utopias after 1968, I emphasize the strategic dimension of the shift. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/23/3/138/1955783/jcws_a_01009.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 Soviet dissidents, who had initially believed that liberalization of the regime could result from reformist policies on the domestic and international scene, turned thereafter to Western political actors and groups to put pressure on Soviet leaders. Although Medvedev’s continued advocacy of détente made him a minor- ity in the dissident movement, his vision still enjoyed support in Western Eu- rope in the 1970s, particularly in socialist circles, and the proclaimed success of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik testifies to the appeal of this approach of “bridge- building” between the East and West. Ultimately, the Helsinki Accords were a success thanks to both the process of détente that made their conclusion possible and the activism of human rights groups who called on the Soviet government to implement the Helsinki Final Act’s provisions. The promises of détente, however, could not be achieved until after a new generation of leaders had come to power in the Soviet Union. The plausibility of such a sce- nario was central to the Sakharov-Medvedev debate in the mid-1970s, but in those years a “perestroika” launched from above seemed an unlikely outcome to a generation of dissidents who had witnessed the crushing of the Prague Spring by Soviet troops in August 1968. Sakharov’s and Medvedev’s Calls for Détente On 10 July 1968 Sakharov called Medvedev and asked him to turn on the BBC. The radio was broadcasting Sakharov’s essay Reflections on Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom.9 Having initially avoided public debates, 7. Daniel C. Thomas, Boomerangs and Superpowers: The “Helsinki Network” and Human Rights in US Foreign Policy, EUI Working Papers, RSC No. 99/23, European University Institute Florence, San Domenico, 1999. 8. Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). 9. Roi Medvedev, “Iz vospominanii ob A. D. Sakharove,” in Zhores Medvedev and Roi Medvedev, eds., Nobelevskie laureaty Rossii (Moscow: Vremia, 2015), p. 42. 140 The Sakharov-Medvedev Debate on Détente and Human Rights he had become increasingly active in the 1950s and 1960s, lobbying Nikita Khrushchev to end atmospheric testing of thermonuclear weapons and advo- cating against Trofim Lysenko’s spurious biological theories and Joseph Stalin’s rehabilitation.10 Sakharov’s friendship with Medvedev, an independent histo- rian who was conducting research on Stalinism, further opened his eyes.11 When Sakharov decided to expound his views on contemporary problems in an essay, in early 1968, Medvedev provided feedback and technical assis- tance, typing and circulating the text among his friends to collect reviews Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/23/3/138/1955783/jcws_a_01009.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 and comments.12 Sakharov reworked the text and sent it to the leader of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, but earlier versions circulated broadly in samizdat and crossed the Iron Curtain. The essay was published in a Dutch newspaper on 6 June 1968 and two weeks later in The New York Times.13 The publica- tion brought Sakharov worldwide fame. In that year of student upheaval, his manifesto for world peace hit a chord, selling 18 million copies the first year. Overall, 65 editions of the essay appeared, with translations into seventeen languages.14 In the essay, Sakharov presented for the first time his ideas about world peace, détente, and the convergence of the capitalist and Communist sys- tems. As a pioneering nuclear weapons scientist, Sakharov could understand better than anyone else the destructive power of modern nuclear armaments. He argued that “enough warheads have already been accumulated to destroy mankind many times over” and that no effective defense system could be devised, and he concluded that the only solution was for humanity “to over- come its divisions.”15 In the international arena, he pointed to two sore points: 10.