Part I
STANFORD, Cal.—On April 14, the Hoover Institution of Stanford University hosted a conference on the Soviet dissident movement in the 1980s and its support by the U.S. government.
The conference, "Soviet Dissident Movement and American Foreign Policy During 1980s," provided insight into and gave an example of the success of "a nonviolent resistance to the most violent regime that had collapsed in 1991 without a single shot," as the initiator of this conference Yuri Yarim-Agaev, a Hoover distinguished visiting fellow and a former Soviet dissident, put it.
Participants analyzed the joint efforts of the Soviet dissidents, Western democratic governments, NGOs, media, and the academic and cultural community to put an end to the communist regime in the former USSR.
Some attendees concluded that their successful experience could and should be applied to countries currently controlled by totalitarian regimes, such as North Korea, Iran, and China.
The opening statement was made by former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Mr. Shultz said he was privileged to play some part, with President Reagan's leadership, in bringing the Cold War to an end. While in office, he worked hard on the subject of human rights, particularly the problems of human rights in the Soviet Union, including the emigration of Russian Jews.
Shultz said in his speech, "In many respects, accomplishment, for me, anyway, usually comes down to something human. I worked on the problems of people who were not allowed to emigrate from Russia, one of whom was a woman named Ida Nudel. And I kept at it. In the Soviet system, you don't know if you're ever going to get anywhere, but things did begin to break. One day I was sitting in my office and the phone rings. On the other end: 'This is Ida Nudel, I'm in Jerusalem. I'm home.'"
Among the participants of the first panel of the conference called "Toppling Totalitarianism" was an architect of Reagan's Soviet policy, Mark Palmer, a vice chairman of the Board of Freedom House, U.S. Ambassador to Hungary (1986–1990), and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European affairs (1982–86).
In his speech, Palmer stressed the crucial role of Western governments in denying legitimacy to totalitarian regimes, considering their total replacement, and resisting their expansion to other regions. He emphasized the necessity of "no constructive engagement and minimal interaction with the regime."
He also stressed the use of "peaceful offensive, public diplomacy and communication directly to people over the heads of their governments."
Mark Palmer talked about an important role of small Western NGOs in giving political and moral support to dissidents, and helping that their grievances be heard through radio and television broadcasts and publications.
He admitted Ronald Reagan's important role in not acknowledging the current Soviet regime's legitimacy, but challenging it. Palmer stated that Reagan did not compromise on the issue of human rights, but capitalized on it as a weapon more powerful than anything that exists in the military arsenals of countries.
In 1982, in a speech to the members of the British Parliament, Reagan said that the Soviet Union was a country that "runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens."
The West, therefore, should insist "that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings." What was needed was "a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy that would leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history."
No American president had ever before spoken like this in public. National Security Decision Directive 75, completed in January 1983, laid out a strategy of "contain[ing] and over time revers[ing] Soviet expansionism by competing effectively on a sustained basis with the Soviet Union in all international arenas."
And a culmination of this trend was the President's March 1983 claim that the Soviet Union was "the focus of evil in the modern world."
On June 12, 1987, Mr. Reagan, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall, expressed his well-known appeal to Mikhail Gorbachev, which set the terms for the end of the cold war: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
Palmer narrated that after his famous speech on the nature of freedom before students of Moscow State University in the USSR on May 31, 1988, "Reagan was named as 'a Man of the Year,' getting more voices than Gorbachev, and only giving way to Andrei Sakharov."
Sakharov, a famous Soviet scientist and dissident, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Nobel citation called him "the conscience of mankind" and said that he "has fought not only against the abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms, but has in equal vigor fought for the ideal of a state founded on the principle of justice for all."
After the first session, the participants of the conference toured the impressive exhibition "To Choose Freedom: Soviet Dissidents and Their Supporters," which features documents, photographs, posters, books, and audiovisual materials from the collections of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. It illustrates the various aspects of the struggle for human rights in the Soviet Union from the 1960s onward.
The exhibit is open to the public from Apr. 15, 2008, through Oct. 25, 2008, in the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion (at Stanford University) and is free of charge. Please see this website for more information: www.hoover.org
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