Commentary : In the Search for World Peace, It’s the Stereotypes That First Must Go

When I heard that Sergei Plekhanov would be appearing at UC Irvine on May 8, my thoughts immediately flashed back to one wintry morning last December when I was breakfasting in the dining hall of the Ukraine Hotel in Moscow.

It was my first trip to the Soviet Union. I vividly remember meeting with Plekhanov, who is a leading voice in the Soviet Union on perestroika, glasnost and human rights and is the deputy director of the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies, the leading Soviet think tank on American affairs.

During that trip there were moments when I wondered whether I was being unpatriotic by being there. “These people are a bunch of Communists,” I thought to myself. After all, I’m a middle-aged, churchgoing American family man who has spent the bulk of his adult life teaching American history and political institutions to community college students in conservative Orange County.

Then the realization struck me: I was being hit by stereotypes and prejudices I had been carrying around since childhood. Growing up during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, I had been influenced far more than I realized by the prevailing climate of distrust and hatred of the Soviet Union--whose brutal invasion of Hungary in 1956 is one of my earliest political memories. The Soviet government is still more totalitarian than democratic.

Though well-founded, my earlier preconceptions did not prepare me for what I witnessed during my visit: the expression of a range of opinion and dissent; the friendliness toward Americans, and the interest of some leading Soviet officials, like Plekhanov, in promoting human rights in their country. Significantly, I came to see that my old Cold War stereotypes and prejudices needed to allow for change.

An attempt at building a global partnership with the Soviet Union in the area of human rights had brought me to that country for 17 days last December, accompanied by three other California men. One is a cardiologist and professor at Stanford Medical School. The other two, a former executive of an architectural firm and a former attorney, had taken early retirement to work for the prevention of nuclear war. We were in the Soviet Union representing the Beyond War Foundation.

We worked on laying the groundwork for what may become the first public dialogue on human rights in the Soviet Union. The premise of the project--still in the planning stage--is that until people are treated with respect by each other and their governments and basic human needs are met, violence and war will continue.

With weapons of mass destruction now at humanity’s disposal, the entire planet has been put at risk by war, caused ultimately by people’s mistreatment and exploitation of each other. Because human rights abuses are worldwide, no nation by itself can solve the problem. A global partnership is needed, and the place to begin is with the superpowers.

During our stay, we conducted about 70 lengthy interviews with prominent writers, scientists and officials in Moscow and Leningrad. Nearly 20 were invited to the United States to work with American human rights experts on a brief statement setting forth the principles of human rights and human dignity. The brief statement would then be taken to Los Angeles, Tacoma and Boston to be discussed by business, civic, educational, and religious groups. They would make suggestions and revisions, after which are planned several citizen exchanges between the American cities and Moscow and Leningrad, featuring vigorous public dialogue among thousands of people--possibly with television coverage.

Citizens of our two countries would be able to give grass-roots input into the revision of the original statement and apply its principles to such actual problems as environmental cleanup, unemployment, hunger, homelessness, medical care, imprisonment of dissenters, and restrictions upon traveling and disseminating information. The result, by the end of this year, could be a living human rights document reflecting, in large part, whatever shared understanding and commitment Soviets and Americans would be able to reach.

We knew that for such a project to be effective and have credibility in the United States it would have to include a significant faction of Soviets who were critical of their own government’s handling of human rights--those not representing the Establishment. So we interviewed a number of such people, including a Jewish anthropologist working for the preservation of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. Jailed and exiled for his organizing activities, he asked us questions about who we were for nearly half an hour before talking more freely. Speaking fluent English, he noted that things were finally improving for his people. The government now allows him to travel outside the Soviet Union and to speak about Jewish concerns more openly. “Now for the first time we can publish an article on the problems of Soviet Jewry in the Soviet press,” he said. Still, there were “no grounds for euphoria.” He told us we could count him in on the human rights project.

After having received much encouragement for the project at the American embassy in Moscow, we discussed administrative responsibilities and Soviet funding for their side of the project with a top official at the Soviet Committee for European Security and Cooperation (which oversees the Human Rights Commission). He gave “provisional approval” for the project and funding request.

The project is not yet a certainty. Anything could still happen in a country like the Soviet Union, where a democratic tradition is lacking and individual initiative has been punished up until now. But if the Soviets we talked with offer any indication of what is going on there, this is their moment--and ours too--to promote human rights and human dignity in order to tip the scales for life on our endangered planet.