Speech #930135474

What we must seriously consider is whether or not the Soviet Union genuinely merits such treatment at the present time. or whether recent evidence suggests that the current drift of affairs within the U.S.S.R. indicates that some reciprocal action on their part must accompany further trade concessions. Rather than dealing with all aspects of this complicated problem. I wish to focus my attention on the problems of emigration and internal dissent in the Soviet Union and their relationship to any trade concessions by the United States. Almost all of the Members of this body should be quite familiar with the restrictive emigration policy of the Soviet Government. Thus I do not feel that it is necessary to present any detailed exposition of this extremely restrictive measure. However. several comments on the policy need to be made so that it can be placed in the much broader framework of domestic suppression that still characterizes Soviet society. Just 14 months ago the Soviet Government reimposed the emigration "education" tax on individuals seeking to leave the country in order to allegedly compensate the government for both the investment made in them through education and also for the loss of their talents. No argument ever quite so strikingly acknowledged publicly the Communist notion that the individual is simply the ward of the state and consequently all the fruits of his labor belong to the state. The tax itself consists of a multiple of the individuals total income. Obviously the real motivation for the imposition of the tax was designed to reduce the emigration of the better educated citizens. particularly Jews. and at the same time raise funds with which to buy foreign goods which the Soviet system could not produce. The willingness of the Soviet authorities then to exchange people for goods contrasts sharply with their current position that their emigration policy is an internal affair which ought not to be related to any trade agreements with the United States. As we know. only pressure brought about by Members of the U.S. Congress during the past year led to the reluctant suspension by the Soviets of the education ransom. Nonetheless. a not insubstantial 900ruble fee still remains for every departing emigrant. Moreover. it must be noted that the "education tax" was not abolished but only suspended. The past record of the Soviet rulers indicates that the tax quite likely will be reimposed once they have secured the concessions they desire. For example. last year prior to the West German general elections. Russianborn ethnic Germans were released from the Soviet Union. but once the authors of "Ostpolitik" secured reelection to power the restrictions returned. Thus. only by firmly attaching any trade agreement to free emigration can one guarantee any permanence to what might be but another simple Soviet tactical ploy. The education tax only represents a small part of a broad policy of restrictive emigration and internal persecution that characterizes contemporary Soviet society. If anything. too much of our attention became diverted by the tax and thus its subsequent suspension caused unwarranted optimism about the direction of Soviet policy. Even without the emigration tax those seeking to escape from the Soviet Union find themselves constantly thwarted by endless bureaucratic delays. rejections. harassment. and often dismissal from jobs or arrest. A basic question that must concern us is what precisely has been happening in Soviet society in recent months that has intensified the demands by so many people to leave the country or to criticize publicly the Communist government even at possibly grave personal risk. Our best information concerning internal developments in the Soviet Union continues to come from either emigrants or the "internal political emigrees" as one Communist commentator has referred to dissidents such as Solzhenitsyn. From the Russian dissidents a much less sanguine portrait of contemporary Soviet society emerges than that drawn by many Westerners so anxiously attracted to anything that seemingly vindicates preconceived notions of some "convergence theory" or detente. Instead real horror stories have appeared such as those related earlier this year to the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security by Mr. Avaham Shifrin. One of the fortunate Russian Jews able to emigrate to Israel this year. Shifrin recounted his own experiences imprisoned in the Soviet Union and testified: That there are millions of prisoners in the concentration camps and prisons of the Soviet Union today. that the camps. far from having disappeared number into the thousands. and that the conditions are just as bestial as they were in the days of Stalin. Stalin himself has made something of a comeback in recent years.