When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (60 page)

Meanwhile, Soviet Jews continued dropping out in ever greater numbers, topping 50 percent in 1977. And HIAS and the Joint continued helping them find their way to the United States. The sound of Russian could now be heard all over the Roman suburbs of Ostia and Ladispoli as these new refugees awaited their American visas.

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The issue of human rights was beginning to dominate all coverage of the Soviet Union in the American press. In November of 1976, the
Washington Post
had three stories that touched on the Soviets' human rights record; the
Los Angeles Times
ran five. In January of 1977, after Carter took office and the Helsinki Watch Group was repressed, this number jumped to thirteen and nine, respectively. In March, they were at twenty-eight and twenty-nine, almost one a day. But this did not come close to the
New York Times,
which in March had fifty-eight stories about the dissidents, constituting almost all its news from the Soviet Union that month. So prominent was this coverage that it caused a backlash. Writing in the
Columbia Journalism Review
in 1978, Peter Osnos, the Moscow correspondent for the
Washington Post,
wondered if Western journalists were blowing the dissident movement's importance out of proportion, whether their personal affinity for people like Shcharansky and Sakharov was influencing their coverage: "Are these dissidents really as important as our attention to them would indicate? What actually is their constituency among Russians? Are we encouraging dissent merely by writing about it? Indeed, do we sometimes act more as spokespersons for dissidents than as reporters?"

But doubts like these became irrelevant in the summer of 1977, when the Soviets finally announced the charges against Anatoly Shcharansky. He would be tried for treason, which carried a minimum of ten years in prison and could mean the death penalty. In the beginning of June, after Shcharansky had spent almost three months locked up and interrogated at Lefortovo Prison, his arrest made it onto the front pages of all the major American papers. Ida Milgrom, his mother, had received a letter from the state prosecutor informing her that Shcharansky would be charged under Article 64 of the criminal code, "rendering aid to a foreign state in carrying out hostile activity." Sanya Lipavsky's false accusation that Shcharansky was a CIA agent was going to be the basis of their case against him. As David Shipler put it in the
New York Times,
the move against Shcharansky had "few precedents since the days of Stalin."

The American government became involved as never before. Not only did the State Department immediately denounce the charge and praise Shcharansky as "well-known and respected," but a week later Carter himself called an unusual press conference. In front of a bank of television cameras, he said he had asked the State Department and the CIA if Shcharansky had ever been in their employ. "The answer is no," the president announced. "We've double-checked this and I have been hesitant to make that public announcement, but now I'm completely convinced that, contrary to the allegations that have been reported in the press, Mr. Shcharansky has never had any sort of relationship, to our knowledge, with the C.I.A."

The entire incident put Carter in a difficult situation. His two priorities—human rights and arms control—were coming into conflict. Throughout 1977, Carter held out the promise of passing SALT II, a treaty that would build on the nuclear arms reduction agreement that Nixon had signed in 1972. He wanted to show that he was continuing the de-escalating trend of détente. But to make progress, he needed to establish a good rapport with Brezhnev and his circle, as Kissinger had, and this became increasingly difficult every time the State Department pointed out a human rights violation. Shcharansky's arrest only added to this tension. It was a direct rebuke to Carter's outspoken human rights rhetoric. If the president took no position on the arrest, he would appear to be turning his back on the idealism of his inaugural address. So Carter made slight compromises. He gave the press conference denying Shcharansky's connection to the CIA but at the same time refused a symbolic photo op with Shcharansky's wife, who was then traveling the world trying to solicit support for her husband.

He walked the same fine line during a September 23 meeting at the White House with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister. Carter gingerly broached the topic. "We have different approaches to the question of human rights," he told Gromyko. "And I know that some of our statements on this question provoked L. I. Brezhnev's displeasure. However, adhering to our position on this question, we do not want to interfere in the domestic affairs of any state or to put you in an awkward position." But then Carter began to provide some examples of human rights violations, starting with the most celebrated case at the moment: Shcharansky. He explained that even before he took office, Congress had "linked the development of trade with the Soviet Union with the problem of the Jewish emigration from the USSR." His hands were tied. Unless Gromyko could do something to "ameliorate this source of tension and misunderstanding," he would not be able to overcome these "limitations established by Congress."

Gromyko responded with disdain: "If we would like to make a list of all violations of human rights in the USA or, say, in England, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany, and in many other countries, it would be a long and impressive list. We are not doing it, however, because we do not want to interfere in other people's affairs." As far as Shcharansky, he told Carter, the case was of "infinitesimal significance." The president could harp on it all he wanted, but "such position of yours on this question can only harm the climate of our relations." Carter offered a weak rebuttal. Rather than claiming the cause of Shcharansky as his own, he pointed to his constituency. "We do not believe that the Shcharansky affair lacks significance," he answered Gromyko. "I did not blow it up. It concerns broad segments of the American public."

Carter was doing more than any past president had—and he really did believe that Shcharansky's case was one of the Soviets' most egregious human rights abuses. But he wasn't willing to allow it to completely destroy his relationship with the world's only other superpower. The ultimate test of Carter's commitment to a new kind of foreign policy had not yet presented itself. This would happen in the fall of 1977, with the opening of the first Helsinki monitoring conference. It was to take place in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in October. If Carter genuinely wanted to hold the Soviets accountable for their human rights violations, that would be the place to do it.

The first indication that there might be a showdown in Belgrade was the September 1977 appointment of Arthur Goldberg to head the U.S. delegation. Goldberg, now nearing seventy, had suffered a number of disappointments in the previous decades. Lyndon Johnson had asked him to step down from the Supreme Court in 1965 to become ambassador to the United Nations (and to make room on the court for Johnson's ally Abe Fortas), and this had turned out to be an unfortunate move for him. He found himself in constant disagreement with the administration over its Vietnam policy and became disenchanted by his limited role at the United Nations. At the end of Johnson's tenure, Goldberg resigned in frustration. For a time in the late 1960s he was president of the American Jewish Committee, then he worked at a Washington, D.C., law firm, and in 1970 he ran, unsuccessfully, for governor of New York, losing badly to Nelson Rockefeller. His appointment to head the delegation to Belgrade happened almost by chance. In the first few months of Carter's presidency, at Hubert Humphrey's suggestion, Goldberg was brought into the Oval Office to share his expertise on the Arab-Israeli conflict (he had helped compose the controversial UN resolution 242 following the Six-Day War). Carter was so impressed with Goldberg that he immediately offered him a position as chief Middle East negotiator. When Cyrus Vance, the new secretary of state, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser, heard about the spontaneous appointment, they complained that the outspoken Goldberg would undermine their efforts to make progress in the Middle East. In order to save face, another respectable position was found for Goldberg; the Belgrade conference was on the horizon, and he was named an ambassador at large and given the task of leading the American delegation.

Throughout his career, Goldberg had been a vocal defender of labor and human rights. He was one of the few public figures who'd been at the center of the Soviet Jewry movement since the early 1960s. He had spoken at the first American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, in 1964, and had received at his Supreme Court office the small delegation of Jews from Cleveland who eventually formed the nucleus of the Union of Councils. Goldberg had tried to prod Kennedy to take action on Soviet Jewry early on. Over several decades, whether in the United Nations or in private practice, he had never ceased advocating for individual Soviet Jews and for the cause as a whole.

Carter's decision to appoint him—as blundering as it might have been—immediately raised the profile of the American delegation. It indicated a drastic departure from the past. In the negotiations leading up to the initial signing of the Helsinki Accords, in 1975, the Americans had tried to stay as low-key as possible, letting the Europeans take the lead. For the career officers in the State Department, the goal was to avoid confrontation and accusation, to work within the well-established boundaries of quiet diplomacy. Goldberg's appointment was a complete rejection of that approach. The man who'd been pushed aside to make room for Goldberg was Albert "Bud" Scherer, the State Department's chief negotiator at the initial Helsinki meetings and for years the point man for anything having to do with the Helsinki Accords. His name had already been sent to the Senate for confirmation. After he was replaced, Scherer had planned to quit the delegation com pletely, but some colleagues convinced him to stay on as Goldberg's deputy. This institutionalized the tension that already existed between Carter's bold public commitment to human rights and the quieter, nonconfrontational approach that was embedded in the culture of the State Department.

The appointment of Goldberg, with his owlish black glasses, thick white hair, stylish black suits, and fast-talking manner, was a public declaration that the game had changed. Goldberg considered the accords contractual, even though none of the signatories were bound by any form of law. The fact that the agreements were arrived at consensually made him even more convinced that no country should be spared criticism if it violated the act. Helsinki, as he saw it, had to be an ongoing series of meetings in which the countries' actions were judged against the principles to which they signed on. And he put the emphasis squarely on the human rights provisions, the third basket, the one the Soviets wanted to shove aside. When he started organizing his delegation, Goldberg stacked it with people who shared his approach, filling nine important spots with staffers from the Helsinki Commission. The State Department diplomats looked at these developments with dismay. They were threatened by the zealousness of these outsiders. Dorothy Goldberg, the ambassador's wife, recorded their reaction in her diary, writing that "some of our foreign service people" regard the commission as a "dubious element whose very outspoken commitment to the Helsinki process appears unduly enthusiastic, even a bit rash."

Goldberg arrived in Yugoslavia in early October. The presence of his delegation exploded the normally cordial, backroom, anticlimactic air that characterized these international gatherings among career diplomats. He brought with him citizens' representatives, including an Eskimo rights activist, a Roman Catholic monsignor, and a Polish American political science professor. No other country's delegation boasted such a colorful group. Goldberg promised to give a regular press conference after each session, especially those that were closed to the public. His notion of Helsinki as a process demanded that as many people as possible play a part. But he also believed that one of the purposes of the conference was to provide hope to dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries, and this way they would hear him on the BBC or the Voice of America.

The first two weeks, modeled on the United Nations' General Assembly gatherings, were filled with long, showy speeches. Everyone watched Goldberg carefully. Mostly, the Soviets wondered if he would dare break one of the cardinal rules of international diplomacy: when speaking about human rights violations, a diplomat never condemned a country by name or referred to specific individuals or incidents. It was considered uncouth. UN ambassadors had learned the art of making veiled references that were still perfectly clear to the audience. And it wasn't just the Soviets who wanted to uphold the rules. The Western European countries in the NATO alliance, in closer proximity to a belligerent Soviet Union, also had an interest in keeping things civil. The State Department staffers in the American delegation warned Goldberg not to act too impetuously. They feared that if the Soviets were offended, they would leave the negotiating table.

In those first days, the fears about Goldberg seemed overblown. He did give a forceful opening speech, focusing almost entirely on human rights, but he named no names. He spoke generally of his inability to understand "restrictions on the rights of individuals to travel or emigrate." A few days later, in his final public speech, he went a small step further, asking, "Is it consistent with the humanitarian provisions of the Final Act to harass or imprison people for peaceful, nonviolent political dissent or religious belief?" But he didn't break the taboo. Observers at Belgrade thought this had to do with talks on SALT II then taking place at the White House between Carter and Gromyko. It seemed that quiet diplomacy was winning out after all.

Even without naming names, though, Goldberg was still ruffling feathers in Belgrade. A story in the
Washington Post—
based entirely on anonymous sources—was headlined "Goldberg and Aides Differ on Tactics at Belgrade Parley." While professional diplomats had a "natural inclination to work within narrowly defined limits," Goldberg's tactics "appear to have been to try to extend those boundaries by trying to shame the Soviets into a dialogue on human rights." The anonymous quotes in the story betrayed a slight anti-Semitic tone, portraying Goldberg as overly emotional and incapable of separating his personal feelings from the task at hand. "Most of us tend to leave our human instincts at the door when we walk in," one Western delegate was quoted as saying. Goldberg's "style" was described as "alternately hectoring, charming and whimsical." The only positive appraisal came from someone identified as a member of the Helsinki Commission who called him a "gutsy old man." In the halls of the Belgrade convention center, Goldberg was gaining a reputation for being self-righteous and sanctimonious. The Soviets nicknamed him, contemptuously, the Judge.