Suddenly, the Soviets Open the Door : Reversal on Emigration Proves Power of the Human Rights Argument

It was only a couple of years ago that numerous treatises were being written on why the Soviet Union did not, and presumably never would, permit large-scale emigration.

No one would have guessed then the emigration figures of the past 16 months. Nearly 20,000 Jews were allowed to leave in calendar 1988, up from only 8,000 the year before, and a mere 914 in 1986. And early indications are that the number will more than double again in 1989. In the first four months of this year it has already reached 14,000. If the April figure of 4,557 is multiplied by 12, the result--54,684--is well above the annual postwar high of 51,320, set in 1979.

More surprising still is the largely unnoticed outflow of ethnic Germans. The figure for 1988 was an astonishing 47,000, with another 12,000 in the first two months of 1989. Mainly from the Volga River basin, they have settled in West Germany where they are immediately granted citizenship. The ancestors of these people went to Russia mostly during the reign of Catherine the Great. Still fluent in German, they are returning after two centuries to what is actually their real home.

The emigration of Armenians has also risen, totaling about 11,000 in 1988. And about 1,000 Christian Pentecostalists were also allowed to leave during the year.

What accounts for this turnabout, predicted by practically no one? There were so many counterindications: historical reluctance, the brain drain, leaking of intelligence secrets, the ripple effect, the psychological impact, the equating of emigration with betrayal, damage to the Soviet image, undercutting the standard propaganda line, revealing books and articles written by people after they left. All of these factors still exist and their impact is just as great as before. But apparently the government has decided that other broader considerations must now take precedence.

A listing of these considerations must be prefaced by one overriding fact. While the Soviet Union has come probably less than 10% of the way toward what we know as democracy, it is simply not the same country that it was two or three years ago.

The policy on emigration since the beginning of this decade had been to “tough it out.” Criticism was dismissed as anti-Soviet propaganda, interference in internal affairs and attempts by the capitalist countries to cover up their own failings such as unemployment, poverty and the like. When agreements on trade and arms control were made conditional on progress in human rights, this was dismissed with the argument that the ruling classes in these nations really didn’t want such agreements in the first place.

The stalemate looked like it would last indefinitely. But new factors came into play. The Soviet economy continued to decline. The gap with the countries of the West, Japan, and even South Korea continued to widen. The fatal weaknesses of the Soviet system could no longer be papered over. More and more it had come to resemble a Third World country.

At the same time a new realization was beginning to sink in. In the 1980s the world entered the era of the global economy. The old dictum, a favorite theme of Mao Tse-tung, that a country could be economically self-sufficient, that it could rely entirely on its own resources, had been discredited. If the Soviet Union could not somehow “plug in” to the world economy, it would be doomed to even greater backwardness and decay.

But emigration, and human rights in general, clearly stood in the way. Years of lecturing and exhortation by presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and ambassadors--not to mention negotiators at every level--finally drove the point home. Democratic countries could not develop normal relations with the Soviet Union until it started to behave like a civilized nation. A change in the government’s whole approach to the question of human rights could no longer be avoided.

Under the tired old leadership, such a shift was out of the question. And even for Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the new approach meant a revolution in his own thinking. It is unlikely that he had serious doubts about the way Leonid Brezhnev and his successors had been handling human-rights issues in their day. In the Politburo and Central Committee, independent thinkers have always been few and far between.

A shift in emigration policy involved considerable risk. There was a great deal of opposition to allowing large numbers of people to leave. There is still a lot even now. Two years ago it was argued that increased emigration was highly destabilizing to Soviet society. It still is. But what choice did Gorbachev have?

We should therefore credit him with courage rather then benevolence, with being a bold innovator rather than a great humanitarian. We should not, in other words, make a virtue out of necessity. Hundreds of families are still forbidden to leave on security grounds. Other would-be emigres are still in prison or in psychiatric hospitals.

Nor can we consider the new changes permanent. Gorbachev may be more or less committed to them but how long will he remain in power? And what his successor will do is anybody’s guess.