Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote - PDF document

Chapter Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidotetory, that congressional travel to the Soviet Union would slow the arms raceVisiting the Soviet Uniontranquilized the hawks.Theysaw,immediately,a totally unexpected third-world poverty andlongstanding,deeply felt,Russian fear of war.At the same time,visiting the Soviet Union disabused the doves.Nothing about theundemocratic and totalitarian way in which Russia operated coulddo anything but stir the apprehensions of dovish visitors.1937AndrŽ Gide,the French sympathizer with the Soviet rev-olution,wrote a disabused report that was a sensation,asserting,ÒInthe USSR,everybody knows beforehand,once and for all,that onany and every subject there can be only one opinion.Ó1948Soviet bureaucrat told John Steinbeck,ÒWe are very tired of peoplewho come here and are violently pro-Russian and who go back tothe United States and become violently anti-Russian.We have hadconsiderable experience with that kind.Ó,as noted earlier,my father had come back and writtensomething about Russia,in italics,that he knew would startlemany of his left-wing readers and,perhaps,jeopardize his publica- 130 Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 130 tion:ÒThis is not a healthy society,and it is not run by honest men,a liberal journalist couple,Delia and Ferdinand Kuhn,wrote,ÒLooking back on our journey,we were more troubled by the closednature of Soviet society than anything else we saw or heard.Ó1976,Robert Kaiser of TheWashington Post,reviewing his three yearsin Moscow,reported that the Russians were Òless formidable than wehave imagined,more vulnerable and more nervous.ÓAnd he went onto say that our exaggerated fear of Russia and its expenditures was,inpart,Òa tribute to our own foolishness.ÓThese sorts of reactions were evident to me from my trips to theSoviet Union in the sixties.And later research revealed similar sen-timents in the statements of the few American senators who visitedthe USSR.The conservative John Stennis (D,Mississippi) hadgone to Russia in and reported,ÒFrankly,I was not prepared forwhat I saw.ÓHe doubted that ÒRussia now plans a direct militaryattack upon usÓand talked of its inefÞciency.Senator WilliamRoth (R,Delaware) concluded,in 1974,that Communism is aÒhighly inefÞcient economic system.ÓWhen Senator Sam Nunn(D,Georgia) came back in 1978,he announced,ÒIt is difÞcult forAmericans to grasp the terrifying slaughter and suffering that befellthe Soviets during World War II,which left a permanent andindelible scar on the Russian psyche.ÓFrom my point of view,the situation was perfect:Congressionaltravel to the Soviet Union would slow the arms race.ÒTrust themless and fear them lessÓbecame the slogan of the campaign to getcongressmen to visit the Soviet Union.It was also pretty obviousthat the reverse was true:When Soviet leaders visited the UnitedStates,they saw a democratic society that was poised to attackthem (leading them to trust us more) while observing wealthbeyond anything that they had imagined (leading them to respectand even fear us more).My campaign began in Moscow when I introduced SenatorMike Gravel (D,Alaska) to some friends in September 1969.At adinner at the home of Revaz Gamkrelidze,an associate (Òcorre- 131 Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 131 spondingÓ) member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences,Gravelmade a toast to the idea,which he intended to champion,of spon-soring leadership visits.Back in Washington he talked to Sovietambassador Dobrynin about it and proceeded to introduce a bill onNovember 1969Our main point was that visits by nonpolitical citizens could goon forever without making much difference:The percentage ofpeople seeing the otherÕs society would remain minusculeemain minusculeandthe political effect negligible.The problem was that the of the two sides had little idea of what the other sideÕs society waslike.We needed to stop sending only athletes,doctors,educators,and scientists and begin sending political leaders.But GravelÕs enthusiasm for this idea,which could not be con-tained,embraced more than just the two houses of the national gov-ernment:He wanted to subsidize trips for local and state ofÞcials aswell.He proposed dispatching a thousand political leaders and theirspouses for up to two weeks (half would be from Congress,and theother half would be made up of Þfty governors,the mayors of thehundred largest U.S.cities,and the majority and minority leaders ofthe Þfty state legislatures).This program,we estimated,would costonly millionÑone-half of an intercontinental missileÕs cost.Gravel also wanted to facilitate trips to the United States for morethan a thousand members of the Soviet leadership,with theirspouses,under procedures for Þnancing that were to be negoti- to be negoti-On its introduction,Senator Robert Byrd (D,West Virginia)found the idea ÒintriguingÓand Senator Mike MansÞeld (D,Mon-tana),the democratic majority leader,used the same word.At apublic hearing on February ,Averil Harriman and GeorgeKennan,our two most distinguished former ambassadors to theSoviet Union,gave favorable testimony.Of the American publicpercent responded favorably,and only percentwere opposed.The Soviet state newspaper Izvestia carried an articlereporting favorably on the bill. ÒEvery Man Should TryÓ 132 Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 132 On April ,the Senate Foreign Relations Committeeapproved the bill with only one dissenting voteÑthe million wasto be spent for the thousand visits over Þve years.But predictably,the right wing began to attack the bill as ÒjunketingÓÑalthoughwhy anyone would want to go to Moscow for its nonexistent night-clubs,sun,and beaches was unclear.In fact,our tabulations showedthat six times as many congresspeople were going to WesternEurope and Þve times as many to the Far East.Nobody wanted togo to Moscow.Congressional Quarterly was keeping close track of all foreign vis-its of all members of Congress and wrote a detailed article aboutthem annually.This was,they told me,the issue that invariablyattracted the most media attention.Pandering to local cynicismabout their representativeÕs desire to travel,these reports could turnThe Gravel bill was brought to the ßoor on April ,and Sena-tor Robert Dole (R,Kansas),who was then serving as a kind ofinformal watchdog for the Nixon administration,championed theopposition,saying,ÒI do not believe that going to any country aslarge as Russia or as small as Israel would engage one to learnenough to give us more guidance in voting in Congress.Ó(Fifteenyears later,in a change of heart,Senate Majority Leader Dole waswriting President Reagan urging the president to arrange withGorbachev ways Òto institute [parliamentary exchanges] on a moreregular basis.Ó)It looked like this rallying of conservatives by Dole would defeatthe bill,but the majority leader,Mike MansÞeld,was found andbrought to the ßoor.He rounded up the supporters,and we won The bill was,however,bottled up in the House Committee ofInternational Relations because,we gathered,the White House didnot want it.It feared that the legislators might get out in front ofthe president in the organization of dŽtente and might complicateits efforts.So the State Department announced that if members of 133 Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 133 Congress really wanted to go,State would be happy to oblige themif only the bill were killed.In November I wrote Henry Kissinger observing that PresidentNixonÕs effort to Òturn confrontation into negotiationÓhad now pro-ceeded apace.Could Nixon now let down the ßoodgates on suchexchangesÑperhaps proposing them himself during his upcomingvisits to Beijing and Moscow?1971,with regardto China,Kissinger was still talking of the importance of gettingexchange Òin other than political Þelds.ÓAnd KissingerÕs Sovietpolicy was even more determined to avoid political travel.1974President Nixon had himself been not only to Moscowbut also to Beijing.I wrote Kissinger again,asking him to Òlet mypeople go.ÓA week later I got my answer on a car radio:HenryKissinger was saying,ÒWe are all in favor of having scientists,sportsmen,tourists,artists,and other persons travel tothe Soviet Union.Ó(emphasis added)1977we decided to analyze the voting records of the senatorswho had been to the Soviet Union.We concluded that percentof the thirty-three senators who had voted dovishly had visited theSoviet Union.But only percent of the forty-four senators withintermediate voting records had visited there.And of the twenty-three senators who voted hawkishly all of the time,only percenthad made the trip.Senator Strom Thurmond (R,South Carolina)told a colleague that of course he could not go there because he wasso anticommunist that they would throw him in jail.In an articlepublicized in The Washington Post conveying these statistics,weeven played the China card,observing that Òat the present rate oftravel,it seems likely that within a very few years more senators willhave been to [Beijing] than Moscow.Ówe geared up the campaign again.To provide the neces-sary materials,we got the backing of President Fordand twentyformer senators,along with some former secretaries of state andies of state andOur research showed that since Russia opened itself upto travel,there had been visits by 284different senators but only ÒEvery Man Should TryÓ 134 Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 134 ninety-Þve senatorial visits.Typically they were going to interpar-liamentary conferences in Moscow or somewhere in that direction(e.g.,New Delhi).If one subtracted presidential aspirants,SALT IItreaty investigations,and interparliamentary union visits,therewere only about twenty-Þve senators in the last twenty-Þve yearswho had taken the trouble just to go and look around.On March ,we sent a news release on our survey to theAP and UPI wire services.It showed that over percent of theHouse of Representatives and percent of the Senate had neverobtained ÒÞrst-hand impressions and informationÓabout Russia.The names showed that twenty-two of the thirty-six members ofthe House Foreign Affairs Committee had not been to the SovietAnd we listed all of the names to draw attention to thesituation.We also announced that percent of the Soviet Polit-buro had never been to the United States.The publication of our release resulted in some forty newspapereditorials in support of congressional travel to the USSR.published an article in The Washington Post entitled ÒLet Our Sena-tors Go! (to Russia).ÓThen-congressman Paul Simon (D,Illi-nois) promptly issued a press release lauding this article and sayinghe had never before seen a Ònewspaper or magazine,radio or televi-sion station criticize senators or representatives for traveling.ÓIn July ,a few months later,Senator Dole became a sup-porter of sorts.He introduced a Senate Resolution (182it was the sense of the Senate that travel by senators to the SovietUnion Òserves the interests of the United States and should be,andis hereby,encouraged.ÓBut this was to give senators ÒprotectionÓfrom junketing charges;it did not help them Þnance the trips.The Women Volunteers Put It Over the Top1984my wife and I were dining with our friends TownsendHoopes and his wife,Ann.Ann was the longstanding cochairperson 135 Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 135 of the McLean Foreign Policy Group,an orga-nization of women who met monthly to discussforeign affairs and to hear distinguished speak-ers.Motivated,she later told me,by concernabout ReaganÕs ÒStar WarsÓproposal,she askedme whether there was anything these womencould do.I asked her if she could organize aCongress who had not been to the SovietUnion to prod them into doing so.She agreed,and we met on July to get it started.From this chance conversation came theÞnal and by far most successful effort to promote congressionaltravel to the USSR.We formed the Project for Congressional Travelto the Soviet Union.Beginning in November 1984,a team of abouta half dozen female D.C.residents,led by Ann,systematically visitedthe ofÞces of all congresspeople who had not yet traveled to theSoviet Union.At that time,percent of the House members andpercent of the senators had made such visits.The women were ner-vous at Þrst,but their social skills served them well as they learnedLobbying :how to go door-to-door in Congress.On February ,the team organized an FAS lunch fortwenty senators.The eventÕstheme was underscored by Rus-sian dolls and bowls,homemadecookies,and Russian bread andßower arrangements.Marvin Kalbof the State Department was thefeatured speaker.Majority LeaderDole attended.When senators be-gan telling their favorite trip anec-dotes,Senator John Warner (R,Virginia) explained,with somepride,that his toast in Moscow ÒEvery Man Should TryÓ 136 Ann Hoopes lobbying HoopeÕs team in action: gressional staffer, Martha Newell, two staffers,Kathy Kenety, Betsy Marshall; Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 136 had so angered the admirals who were receiving him that theythrew their drinking glasses into the Þreplace.(Warner had no ideathat this showed enthusiasm,not anger.)On March ,the project hosted forty-Þve members of Congressfor the same purpose.William Colby was the featured speakerÑasa former director of the CIA,he was perfect for a Òknow-your-enemyÓcampaign.No one said even one unkind word about thisproject,and as an outgrowth of this lunch,Representatives Clau-dine Schneider (D,Rhode Island) and Morris K.Udall (D,Ari-zona) introduced a resolution that paralleled the one introduced byDole in the Senate.At about this time,the project decided to write a brochure and toorganize a grass-roots campaign;Ann wrote a letter to ÒTheWomen of AmericaÓwith this conclusion:ÒWe are going for thenerve here.A few hundred such visits can change the political andpsychological map of the personalities that have the power.Help usnudge the existing system into sanity.ÓOur campaign began to show signs of progress.In there wasan upsurge in congressional travel to the Soviet Union,with Þfty-Þverepresentatives and thirteen senators traveling individually or withcommittees,as opposed to 1984,when only three senators and threerepresentatives had done so.Both the U.S.embassy in Moscow andthe Soviet embassy here reported large increases in applications bymembers of Congress for travel to the Soviet Union.The Sovietembassy told Ann that twenty-six delegations had applied for tripsand that enough was enough,Òcall off your dogs.ÓWe also now had something that individual citizens could do.Ahandsome brochure for citizen actionÑprepared at FAS by ourstaff associate Ned HodgemanÑwas entitled ÒRaising the Rate ofExchange.ÓOn its cover was our key injunction to citizens:ÒAll youhave to do is ask:ÔCongressman,in light of your pronouncementson appropriate U.S.policy toward the Soviet Union,may I ask ...have you ever been there?ÕÓÓThe Russians had long wanted,along with many other countries, 137 Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 137 bilateral parliamentary exchanges with the United States,no doubtto enhance the international image of their parliament,which,obviously,the United States viewed as a fraudulent rubber-stampoperation.And they no doubt thought,also,that this would be away of approaching the U.S.government through that Òsoft under-bellyÓof our legislature.I was still for such exchangesÑany methodof fostering Soviet and U.S.leadership visits was okay with me.Although parliamentary exchanges with any country could takeplace,U.S.law requires them only with our immediate neighbors,Mexico and Canada.I observed and pressed the idea that the SovietUnion was,also,an immediate neighbor across the Bering Straits.President Reagan.In April ,when I was visiting Moscow as part of theFASÐSoviet Academy traveling ÒschoolÓon arms control,EvgenyVelikhov arranged for me to meet with Lev R.Tolkunov,the chair-man of the Soviet UnionÕs Council of the Union (its House of Rep-resentatives).There I pressed for parliamentary travel.(Tolkunov1974,Majority Leader Mike MansÞeld had ex-plained to Tolkunov that he could not organize a parliamentaryexchange group with the SovietsÑas we had with the Mexicans andthe CanadiansÑbecause the United States would then be obliged toorganize them with all other countries.)Tolkunov may have briefed Gorbachev,because when the Sovietleader received Speaker of the House Tip OÕNeill the very nextweek,the issue Þnally got the spin and prominence we wanted.Gorbachev stated,ÒWe know the role played by Congress in Amer-icaÕs political life,and we attach great importance to developingcontacts along the parliamentary line as one of the elements ofinvigorating Soviet-American relations.The time is such now thatpeople,shaping the policy ofthe two countries,should by all meansconverse with one another.ÓWhen Gorbachev said he considered parliamentary exchange tobe a central method of invigorating U.S.-Soviet relations,I decided ÒEvery Man Should TryÓ 138 Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 138 to try to create a Soviet analogue of the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations,which had done so much to handle the logistics ofChinese travel.In the summer of ,I retained a former undersec-retary of state,Benjamin H.Read,who knew,and was respected by,everyone in town.In Þfty interviews of relevant Washington policymovers and shakers,Ben found little or no opposition and muchenthusiasm.He concluded that moneys secured through legislationand from foundations could set up such a thing.But at this point we ran into delays and obstacles that obliged usto abandon the project.Soviet fears of incidents,perhaps,or thedesire of some Russians,perhaps of ArbatovÕs Institute,to monop-olize the exchanges,may have done us in.Where we wanted anexchange that was as open and frequent as possible,the Soviet sidemight have wanted it to be controlled and limited.The last strawwas an interview I had in the Soviet Foreign Ministry in July with an ofÞcial who made it clear that nothing would happen onwhat we considered to be a worthwhile scale.In April ,en route with Velikhov to a Carter-Ford arms-control meeting,I organized a lunch for Velikhov and Congress-man John D.Dingell,the chairman of the House Committee onEnergy and Commerce.Velikhov,who was the chairman of theEnergy Commission of the Soviet Union,promptly invited Din-gellÕs whole committee to come visit the USSR.This was,wethought,our Þrst success in our efforts to link the standing com-missions of the Soviet parliament to the committees of the U.S.Congress.However,at the last minute,Secretary of Defense CasparWeinberger withdrew permission for use of the plane the commit-In February ,I was again in Moscow and had the opportu-nity to talk to Valentin Fallin,the former Soviet ambassador to EastGermany.He was then the inßuential director of the Novosti pressagency and a candidate member of the Central Committee.Heremembered my interviewing him when he was at Izvestia.Prolixand sometimes vague,he nevertheless seemed well meaning.I 139 Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 139 asked him to tell Gorbachev that the Soviet leadership would notunderstand the necessity for his reforms (perestroika) without a tripto the West themselves.Could he,Fallin,poll the Central Commit-tee concerning their visits to the West,or lack of them,and presentGorbachev with the results showing how few ofÞcials had had thisexperience? We gave Fallin our statistics on such Soviet visits byhigh U.S.ofÞcials.He was cautious,saying,ÒIf people speak on these visits,they willbe critical.Your side will forget about internal disagreements if ourpeople come.ÓHe added,ÒAccording to Gorbachev,our aim is notto quarrel.ÓBut on hearing that the leaders could come as ÒtouristsÓand not just to discuss policy,if they wanted,he was encouraged.Politburo member.In any case,we did not give up on our basic campaign.In Junewe were advertising for Þfty interested and committed individ-uals who would lead,on a state level,a national campaign to getsenators and congresspeople to travel to the Soviet Union.By Julywe had them mailing our booklet (Raising the Rate ofExchangetheir members of Congress.In November I could be found testify-ing on our efforts to the Helsinki Commission,and I tried to gettheir support at least for an Òexchange of parliamentariansÓif notfor Òparliamentary exchange.ÓIn other words,we were quite pre-pared to have reciprocal visits of parliamentarians without formalexchange.The commission had a very good record for having trav-eled to the Soviet Union,and it knew that such travel would helpwith human rights.In the end,of course,although we catalyzed the travel of quite afew delegations,we never got the sort of exchange program we hadhoped for.A formalized program of regular Soviet visits here wasmore than the Soviet Union was ready for.Their parliament was sophony that many of its membersÑmilkmaids and StakhanovitesÑwere,in the eyes of their government,completely inappropriate for ÒEvery Man Should TryÓ 140 Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 140 a visit to the United States.So I do not feel that my failures withside were due to ineptitude.With regard to the American senators and representatives who didtravel,it is difÞcult to gauge how much overall effect these visits had,but it could have been very real in some cases.One dramatic and rel-evant example of the effect on Americans of exposure to the SovietUnion was revealed in in the case of General George Lee But-ler,who had been in charge of the Strategic Air Command that tar-geted Russia.Asked to explain his psychological evolution fromnuclear warrior to disarmament champion,he mentioned his Þrst visitto the USSR,where he saw Òsevere economic deprivation....Morethan that,it was the sense of defeat in the eyes of the people....Itall came crashing home to me that I really had been dealing with acaricature all those years.ÓEven one senator,speaking privately about a visit,can exercise apowerful inßuence on the group mind that is the Senate.At onepoint,through Velikhov,I was able to arrange a visit to the SovietUnion for then-senator William Cohen (R,Maine;now the secre-tary of defense),who had never been there,and Senator JosephBiden (D,Delaware),who had.On his return,Cohen took measide at a meeting and pulled out a poem that he had written.Aquick examination showed that for him one trip was quite enough:His poem reßected the essence of Russia,and I told him so. Congressional Travel to the USSR:Cold-War Antidote Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 141 Stone/Every r3P 089Ð188 10/3/08 11:57 AM Page 142