On October 15, 1987, I was asked to be available for a phone call from Jerusalem that afternoon.  At 3:18 p.m., the call came through: “This is Ida Nudel.  I’m in Jerusalem.  I’m home.”  My eyes filled with tears, and they still do when I think of that moment.  How did this happen and how was it that so many other Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate?  That is our question this evening.  I know that all of you here have thought a great deal about this question.

          I’m honored by your invitation to make a contribution to the answer and by receipt of the Emma Lazarus Award.  I will provide what insights I have gained from my own involvement.

          We are also here to commemorate a great victory.  After hundreds of years of persecution and oppression, the Jews of Russia were permitted to leave.  Over a million have done so since the doors opened in 1989.  So grand an outcome deserves to be remembered.  Those who worked to make this modern Exodus possible – many of whom are here tonight – must help make as complete a record as possible, so this story can be told and retold.  That is how new generations learn from the past.  That is how they understand the pain of oppression and the importance of freedom.  We must therefore support the American Jewish Historical Society, under Ken Bialkin’s leadership, in building a comprehensive archive of the effort to save Soviet Jewry.

          The individuals who worked with me in the Department of State from 1982 to 1988 to help free Soviet Jewry have agreed to cooperate.  Several of them are here tonight, and I ask them to stand and be recognized.  Max Kampelman, Dick Schifter, Roz Ridgway, Elliott Abrams, Charlie Hill, Abe Sofaer.

          I want to call your attention first to two ideas and to some outstanding people. 

          Two ideas played a big part in the ultimate success that came out of the Reagan era.

          Ronald Reagan knew that the Soviet Union was “an evil empire,” that Communism would be relegated to “the ash heap of history,” and that the internal failures of the Soviet system would bring about its demise.  His vision saw that change was possible and he worked to bring that about.  I agreed and did my utmost to help.  Remember, most experts on the Soviet Union scorned the idea that change was possible, so Ronald Reagan’s belief was bold, exciting, and motivating – even as many ridiculed it.

         In the Reagan era, we inherited a Soviet relationship tied to the concept of linkage.  When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, President Carter was surprised, distressed, and angered.  In reaction, he shut down everything:  from athletes’ participation in the Moscow Olympics to negotiations on arms control and even to the annual visit of Foreign Minister Gromyko to Washington prior to the opening of the UN General Assembly.

          As I took office, my friend, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, counseled me: “George, the situation is dangerous; there is no human contact.”  To put it another way, linkage had been vastly overdone.  President Reagan understood that linkage could work against the right outcome.  Linkage could encourage the Soviets to do something bad just so they could agree to give it up in order to get something else they wanted.  And if the Soviets did something good, linkage put pressure on us to go along with something else they were doing wrong.  Above all, Ronald Reagan was determined to pursue freedom for Soviet Jewry no matter what else was going on.

          I put a lot of store in individual leadership.  Senator Scoop Jackson had a clear and uncompromising view of the Communist threat.  President Ford and Secretary Kissinger were far-sighted in recognizing the potential for human rights embodied in the Helsinki Accords.  My hero is Ronald Reagan, who put human rights and Soviet Jewry at the top of his agenda.

          Leadership mattered on the Soviet side as well.  General Secretary Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze turned out to be people with whom you could have a real conversation.  When you combine new ideas, the leverage of Helsinki, and leadership convinced that change is possible, then something big can happen. 

          My own attitude had been profoundly shaped when I was a Dean at The University of Chicago.  The 1967 War had just broken out when I learned that my favorite student, Joseph Levy, had been killed in action.  As a Dean, I gave a little party for the students who made the honors list at the end of each quarter.  Joseph Levy and his wife were always there.  Joseph was intellectually gifted, but far more than that, he was one of those savvy young men who you just knew was destined for leadership.  Beyond the pain of the moment, I thought to myself, “What an amazing country to command such instinctive loyalty from such a gifted human being.”  For me, Joseph Levy’s heroism came to symbolize the state of Israel. 

          I had watched the issue of Soviet Jewry from my post as Secretary of the Treasury in the early 1970s.  The US government, of course, supported freedom for Jews to emigrate from the USSR.  Many US leaders believed that the most effective way to bring this about was through quiet dialogue.  At times, diplomacy seemed to work.  After President Nixon and Henry Kissinger succeeded in securing important arms control agreements, the Soviets for a few years released Jews in unprecedented numbers. 

          By 1973, however, the demand for dramatic change had taken hold and the effort to save Soviet Jewry took on new urgency.  Supporters in Congress tied Soviet/US trade directly to emigration in the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. 

          The Amendment was a formidable achievement for its supporters, and in principle for human rights.  But this highpoint in US government support for free emigration led almost immediately to a low-point in practical consequences.  After reaching unprecedented numbers in 1973 and 1974, with over 30,000 Jews departing each of those years, emigration plummeted from 1975 on to an average of about 1000, with the exception of 1979, when 51,000 were allowed to leave.  Soviet hostility toward dissidents increased, as well its vehemently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda. 

          Meanwhile, the Soviets had unknowingly laid a foundation for emigration separate from economic sanctions.  In proposing the Helsinki Accords, the Soviets sought to secure legitimacy for their illegally acquired empire; in exchange they agreed to human rights principles, including the rights of family reunification and to leave and return to one’s country.  They also agreed to periodic conferences at which states could comment on each others’ performances, having no idea that this would enable the US to send the likes of Arthur Goldberg and Max Kampelman into the fray against them.

          When I became Secretary of State in 1982, Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union had virtually been halted.  In 1983, only 1,300 Jews emigrated.

          As I prepared for my first meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko shortly after taking office, I focused on human rights practices in the Soviet Union.  I assembled lists of people who had been denied permission to emigrate, reviewed the special problems of Soviet Jewry, and expanded my knowledge of the full range of our human rights concerns.  I met with Avital Shcharansky, the intense and compelling wife of the famous dissident.  Afterward, I was wrung out.  The woeful treatment of her husband, his courage, and my inability to provide any real assurance about his release made for immense frustration.  Avital’s pleas dramatized the human side of the tension in U.S.-Soviet relations.  ‘The president and I will never give up on pressing the cause of human rights and the case for your husband’s release,’ I told her.

         Early in 1983, we achieved something of a breakthrough on the human rights front.

         By the luck of a snowstorm that kept President Reagan and Nancy unexpectedly in Washington, my wife and I were invited to the White House for an informal supper.  I could see the president’s interest in direct and personal contact with the Soviet leadership and arranged a meeting between him and the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, the following Tuesday.  In almost two hours of talk about the full range of issues, Ronald Reagan made clear that human rights and Soviet Jewry were at the top of his agenda.  He pointed to the Pentacostals in our embassy as a glaring illustration of the problem.  Let them emigrate, he emphasized.  You won’t hear any crowing from me.  Dobrynin and I made this our special project and, in the end, with strong help from Max Kampelman, we succeeded.  When sixty Pentacostals were allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Israel, Ronald Reagan didn’t crow.  So our first deal with the Soviets was a human rights deal and the Soviets got the message that President Reagan cared about the fate of Soviet Jewry in a nonpolitical way.

          On October 22, 1984, the National Assembly of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry gave me an award for our efforts.  I was honored but embarrassed.  We had achieved very little.  The situation of Soviet Jews remained, as I said, “very grim.”

          Human rights activists were dying in labor camps and prisons, and the small group of idealists who monitored Soviet compliance with its obligations under the Helsinki Final Act were imprisoned and exiled.  Foreign tourists attempting to assist Refuseniks or activists were hounded and sometimes jailed.  My late friend, Congressman Jim Scheuer of New York, was arrested and imprisoned for participating in a demonstration in Moscow.  (He often expressed his gratitude to the Soviets for the boost this gave his political career.)

          On March 10, 1985, General Secretary Chernenko died.  I went with Vice President Bush to Moscow for the funeral.  We met with the new Secretary of the Communist party, Mikhail Gorbachev.  He said to Vice President Bush that the Soviets respected “your right to run your country the way you see fit.”  He insisted that, in the same way, it is up to the Soviet people to make such decisions on behalf of the USSR.  Vice President Bush assured Gorbachev that “we have no aspiration of dictating to the Soviets.”  But he immediately argued against the denial of Jewish emigration, the persecution of Hebrew teachers, and the treatment of dissidents such as Shcharansky, Sakharov, Begun, and Orlov, which he said violated the Helsinki Accords.  Gorbachev flushed but offered to think about appointing rapporteurs on human rights to discuss the issue.  Bush seized on the idea, and another small step was taken.

           At the Geneva meeting in November 1985, we made significant progress on arms control issues but, more importantly, changed the atmosphere of U.S.-Soviet relations.  On February 11, 1986, Anatoly Shcharansky crossed the Glienicke Bridge to West Berlin, as part of a careful deal that carried no implication that he was a spy.  That deal demonstrated that we could bargain successfully with the new leadership.  We made another deal under tense circumstances in September 1986 after the Soviets arrested Nicholas Daniloff, a reporter whom they entrapped to exchange for a Soviet scientific attaché named Zakharov.  We secured Daniloff's freedom, the freedom of Yuri Orlov and his wife, and a promise by Shevardnadze that he would work on getting other dissidents and Refuseniks released.  Zakharov, after a plea of nolo contendere, returned to the Soviet Union.  Shevardnadze followed through over the next year:  all the people on a list I had given him were released or pardoned.  Perhaps the biggest bonus from this exercise was the increased trust it created between Shevardnadze and me.

          Then came the extraordinary meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev on October 11-12, 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland.  While no full agreement was consummated there, great progress was made on major arms control issues and the prospect of a world free of nuclear weapons was seriously discussed.  Not so well noticed was the agreement by the Soviets, achieved in an all-nighter by Roz Ridgway, to make human rights a recognized and regular part of our agenda. 

          The Soviets, meanwhile, had formed a new Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs.  Work on new regulations to govern emigration was underway in earnest when the two leaders met at Reykjavik.  I told Shevardnadze: “If you can do 51,000 once [in 1979], you can continue to do it.”  That they intended to move was not just in his eyes.  It was the message of the new regulations issued in January 1987, narrowing the vyzov requirement to first degree relatives; cutting the waiting period to one month; providing a right to appeal; and limiting the state-secret prohibition to five years. 

          On Monday, April 13, 1987, I met Shevardnadze in Moscow.  Specific negotiating groups were formed, including one on human rights.  Dick Schifter, as chairman on our side, did a magnificent job.  I sensed greater openness.  When I got to Spaso House that evening, everything was ready for Passover seder.  The fancy ballroom had been transformed into a warm and welcoming sanctuary.  Dozens of the most famous Jewish Refuseniks were there.  I put on a yarmulke, met them all, and then said exactly what all of us felt:

          You are on our minds; you are in our hearts.  We never give up, we never stop trying, and in the end some good things to happen.  But never give up, never give up.  And please note that there are people all over the world, not just in the United States, who think about you and wish you well and are on your side.         

          Their determination amazed me.  We held the seder to encourage them.  But I realized that they had given me far more strength and resolve than I could possibly have given them.

          Negotiations with Shevardnadze resumed after seder, and I reverted to human rights.  I focused on Shevardnadze’s position, as he had expressed it to me in an earlier meeting, that the Soviets would change their policies to suit their own interests, not in response to U.S. pressure or “to please you.”  Speaking very slowly so his note-taker could write down every word, I read him a prepared statement on the reasons why allowing human rights to flourish in the Soviet Union would “stimulate the creativity and drive of individuals,” which was the key, in the fast-moving information age, to enhanced economic well-being and stability in international affairs.  Shevardnadze told me privately in September 1989 that he went over the notes of this meeting “carefully with Gorbachev and others in the leadership,” and that what I had said “had a profound impact.”

          The next day, April 14, 1987, I met with Gorbachev.  We were making progress on arms control, and when Gorbachev completed his comments on that subject, he invited me to raise any subject of interest to me.  I raised human rights.  I thanked him for the progress being made and said we hoped for further moves.  He said the “Soviet side is prepared to consider any proposal that emerges in the humanitarian area,” but then attacked me for holding the Passover seder at our embassy the night before.  I was stimulating discontent, he said, and dealing with only “a certain group of Jews, people who don’t like it here and have complaints,” while showing no interest in the millions of other Jews “who are out of your field of vision.”  I said the only way anyone could know who wants to leave is to give them the right to do so.  “Try it,” I urged.  “I’ve got a great big airplane.  If you don’t want [the Refuseniks who were at the seder] … you can just put them all on and get rid of them.  We’ll take them.”  He responded by attacking the United States for mistreating its own minorities, but I regarded the exchange as real progress.  He was now willing to discuss human rights so long as he created a transcript in which he hit back.  That was OK with me.  (As an important matter of fact, all of the prominent Refuseniks at the seder had been allowed to emigrate by the time of Passover the following year, 1988.)

          By the end of October 1987, I knew the Soviets were in a major shift on Soviet Jewry.  I had given Shevardnadze a chart brought to me by Morris Abram that showed how many Soviet Jews were waiting to emigrate.  I found out that Shevardnadze later showed it to Shimon Peres, which indicated he was taking it seriously.  On October 15, Ida Nudel called me from Israel, where she had just arrived.  Her name was on the list of courageous individuals I had given Shevardnadze in concluding the Daniloff affair.  She gave Ronald Reagan and me a lot of credit for the positive developments that were now unmistakable.  We could not be sure what was causing the changes, but certainly the Soviets had come to believe that it was in their interests to allow emigration. 

          Our efforts were followed by dramatic consequences, so dramatic that the US, and the Jewish leadership in the US and Israel, were faced with some difficult issues.  In US Fiscal Year 1987, from October 1, 1987 to September 30, 1988, about 11,500 Jews were allowed to emigrate; and the year after that over 30,000.  Even higher numbers became certain.  What became uncertain was where they would go. 

          By 1988 a high proportion of Jews wanted to go to the US instead of Israel. Israel and many of its American supporters reacted negatively to this trend.  They argued that Soviet Jews left the USSR on visas for Israel, that they were needed there, and that they would go there but for the offers of assistance by Jewish agencies in the US funded in significant part by US government money.  American Jews were torn on the issue.  Some in Congress supported legislation to allow as many Soviet Jews into the US as sought to come. 

          The increased size of the emigration forced government officials to take seriously the requirement in U.S. law that refugees from any foreign state be allowed to come to the United States only if they lacked a firm offer to immigrate to another state in which they would not be subject to persecution.

          I was sympathetic to the principle of choice.  We believed, of course, that Jews within the Soviet Union should be able to choose to leave.  Also, those entitled to come to the US, as relatives of Americans for example, were free to choose the US.  But those who qualified for refugee status, while eligible to come to the US for that reason, were not legally entitled to do so, because they had firm offers of resettlement in Israel.  To allow Soviet Jews to come to the US as refugees implied that Israel was somehow deficient as a destination compared to all other states to which refugees were required to go.  Treating Israel as a place that did not qualify under US law as a refuge, and in particular for Jews, was, as my Legal Adviser Abe Sofaer explained, legally unsupportable.

          As a result of applying US law fairly and humanely to the situation, many Soviet Jews without relatives in the US went to Israel, though many also came to the US. 

          The effect of allowing Israel to absorb much of Soviet Jewry was brought home to me vividly as these events unfolded.  I was part of the effort to raise money to help Israel with the substantial costs involved.  Back at my home on the Stanford University campus, I gave a party for a few of my economist friends.  We were intently discussing this financial issue.  At one point, Herb Stein, who, with Stan Fisher, had worked with me on the successful effort to stabilize Israel’s economy in 1986, announced: “Israel just struck oil.”  He got everyone’s attention.  Really?  Where?  How much?  “Not real oil,” he said.  “Something even better, Soviet immigrants: engineers, scientists, doctors, musicians, Jewish boys and girls.  Human beings.  The ultimate resource.”  He raised his glass, and we drank to that.

          Helping save Soviet Jewry was a gratifying achievement.  We cannot be certain how this result was secured.  It is worthwhile, though, to examine the tactics that appear to have contributed. 

          The single most important reason for the Soviet Jewish Exodus was the determination of the Soviet Jews themselves, and of those non-Jews who shared their desire for freedom.  Anatoly Shcharansky, his devoted wife Avital, their many colleagues and allies, Andrei Sakharov, every Hebrew teacher, every person jailed, beaten, or punished for reporting violations of human rights, brought strength and durability to the cause.

          Just as they never gave up, they had supporters within and outside other governments who also did not give up.  We persistently raised and pressed the case of those oppressed by the Soviet regime.  At least equally important were the public, even raucous, efforts by American Jews to make the denial of freedom a costly policy.  As I said in 1984, “it is not the advocacy of human rights, but rather their denial, that is the source of tension in world affairs.”  Every form of advocacy had its skeptics and even opponents among those seeking the same outcome.  Yet, in retrospect we should be happy to see all the lawful efforts utilized by human rights advocates and their supporters repeated again and again to secure such positive results. 

          It is much easier to live with the charge that we went too far, made too much noise, caused too much trouble, than with the bitter realization after the fact that we did too little.  As Elie Wiesel said at the famous December 1987 rally in Washington, D.C.: if we had rallies in the 1940s “millions of Jews would have been saved.”

          On the diplomatic side of things, certain of our policies were essential in delivering our message effectively.  To begin with, our commitment to diplomacy was part of a strategy based on strength, including the use of force to defend against all forms of aggression.  We had no illusion that verbal threats could substitute for real pressure.  But at the same time, we believed that change was possible.  We therefore pursued our objectives in arms control and human rights through diplomacy, adopting principles that kept us from tying ourselves up with our own rhetoric. 

        ·First, while we condemned Soviet misconduct, we deliberately abandoned the notion that we would refuse to talk to them if they behaved badly.  Our purpose after all was to convince them to alter their behavior.  We had our own agenda, which we could not advance if we refused to engage.

        ·We abhorred the Soviet regime, and we let them know it.  But we worked to bring about real change based ultimately on convincing the Soviets that the changes we sought were in their own best interests.

        · We curbed our desire to claim small victories in order to encourage larger ones.  Instead of taking public credit for Soviet behavior we had encouraged, President Reagan promised not to “crow.”  It is difficult enough to get leaders of hostile regimes to agree to alter their conduct, without making them seem to have capitulated to our demands.

         It may feel good to refuse to engage diplomatically with an enemy.  But the test of successful diplomacy is whether objectives are accomplished.  While diplomacy without pressure is idle talk, refusing to talk is no substitute for the pressure essential to elicit change. 

         Effective diplomacy remains important.  Enemies of freedom continue to wield power in the world.  We can count on having to face new threats.

        I will not pretend, in this regard, to hide my concern for Israel.  Yes, Israel is strong, and any effort to destroy it can be overcome.  But no such effort must be allowed to reach the stage where the remaining population of Jews in the world is threatened with mass murder.  Palestinians have elected people devoted to Israel’s destruction, who kill Jews because they are Jews.  The President of Iran challenges the truth of the Holocaust, while at the same time swearing that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth.  What should one conclude from these positions other than that he is denying the last Holocaust in order to rationalize a new one?

          So, the best of all reasons to record and remember how the Soviet Jews were saved is to be prepared to act again when the need arises.  If we are ever to live in a civilized world, what was accomplished for the Soviet Jews must become the rule rather than the exception.  We must not only preach the doctrine of human rights.  We must learn how actually to be our brothers’ keeper.

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