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Monday, June 7, 2004

Natan Sharansky, for whom President Reagan was person of great impact (and who's memoir is highly recommended and available through my right side-bar) shares his recollections:

Israel21c: Reagan Spoke the Truth

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth -- a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil.

Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

Those same critics used to love calling Reagan a simpleton who saw the world through a primitive ideological prism and who would convey his ideas through jokes and anecdotes. In our first meeting, he told me that Soviet premier Brezhnev and Kosygin, his second-in-command, were discussing whether they should allow freedom of emigration. "Look, America's really pressuring us," Brezhnev said, "maybe we should just open up the gates. The problem is, we might be the only two people who wouldn't leave." To which Kosygin replied, "Speak for yourself."


What his critics didn't seem to understand was that the jokes and anecdotes that so endeared Reagan to people were merely his way of expressing fundamental truths in a way that everyone could understand.

Reagan's tendency to confuse names and dates, something I, too, experienced first-hand, also made him the target of ridicule. In September 1987, a few months before a summit meeting with Gorbachev in Washington, I met with Reagan to ask him what he thought about the idea of holding a massive rally of hundreds of thousands of people on behalf of Soviet Jewry during the summit. Some Jewish leaders, concerned that if the rally were held Jews would be accused of undermining a renewed hope for peace between the superpowers, had expressed reservations about such a frontal challenge to the Soviet premier.

Seeing me together for the first time with my wife Avital, who had fought for many years for my release, Reagan greeted us like a proud grandparent, knowing he had played an important role in securing my freedom. He told us about his commitment to Soviet Jewry. "My dear Mr. and Mrs. Shevardnadze," he said, "I just spoke with Soviet Foreign Minister Sharansky, and I said you better let those Jews go."

Not wanting to embarrass the president over his mistake, I quickly asked him about the rally, outlining the concerns raised by some of my colleagues. His response was immediate: "Do you think I am interested in a friendship with the Soviets if they continue to keep their people in prison? You do what you believe is right."

Reagan may have confused names and dates, but his moral compass was always good. Today's leaders, in contrast, may know their facts and figures, but are often woefully confused about what should be the simplest distinctions between freedom and tyranny, democrats and terrorists.

The legacy of president Reagan will surely endure. Armed with moral clarity, a deep faith in freedom, and the courage to follow his convictions, he was instrumental in helping the West win the Cold War and hundreds of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain win their freedom.

As one of those people, I can only express my deepest gratitude to this great leader. Believe me, I will take moral clarity and Shevardnadze any day.


2 Comments

The truth is: neither Americans win WW2 nor the Cold War.
As we all know D-day was a turning point only in Europe liberation not in WW2, simply because in 1944 Germany was doomed. A somewhat similar happens the with Cold War. America did oppose Soviet Union and did support dissidents - true. But "perestroika" has been carefully planned deeply in Communist party. And there were mostly economical reasons for that - they just realised that it is stumbling down too fast that they lost control of it. There are documents confirming it (one of the dissidents - Bukovskii, brought from Russia some time ago). It is just happen again that perestroika got out of control too. And the ideological system broke together with the economy. Reagan did a great deal of work for braking taboo, for calling spade a spade. We shouldn't underestimate this. But there is no danger of underestimation because Americans tend to overestimate every petty achievment of theirs.

Any turning point, or "tipping point" requires someone to continue applying pressure or it may take a looong time to turn if it ever does. History is always complex and there are almost always many factors at work in big events - like the Cold War or WW2.

I agree that some people think that the US won both by them(our)selves, but believe me, there are others who don't want to give us any credit at all.

Don't underestimate how big a deal Reagan's strength was at the time. Very similar in ways to the current administration - an unwillingness to apologize for being American, an understanding of the need for strength and that there were real foes out there who wanted to do us harm. There were people here who believed that the threat of the USSR and international Communism were completely fabricated, phantom threats only maintained as an illusion to keep the people here at home in line and help our corporations abroad.

Reagan refused to go along with that, and people HATED him for it. I know, because I was one of them.

What if the USA would have unilaterally disarmed and stopped conducting a confrontational foreign policy? What if we had treated the old Soviet regime as we have some Middle Eastern despots, as better than the devil we don't know, and actually helped prop them up (not an altogether irrational choice)?

Well, we'll never know, because that's not the turn history took, in part because Ronald Reagan's principles would never have allowed it.

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