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Three young American debaters are in Russia on a whirlwind tour.
They've come to debate the issues of war and peace.
Soviet reaction to the Americans?
Laughter.
Questions.
Disbelief.
But that is not right. That is not the way it is.
Everything you are saying, that is not true.
Tonight on Frontline, a journey to Russia.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
This is Frontline.
With Jessica Savage.
If one of us wanted to travel around the Soviet Union, see its small communities beyond the major cities, ride its roads and railways, talk freely with its people, it would be almost impossible.
Although we permit Soviet visitors to experience almost every facet of our open culture, the Soviet society is closed.
And it is becoming even more so.
Just last Friday, the Soviet government announced a new regulation requiring American news organizations to show all film and videotape to Soviet authorities before it can be shipped out of the country.
Tonight, a film made before that regulation was announced.
Three young Americans, students of Soviet culture and history, journey to Russia to debate their Soviet counterparts.
They debate in Russian, yet although they speak the same language, they find it hard to communicate differing ideas and ideals.
They're unprepared for the reaction of the Soviet audiences.
The Americans raise the familiar issues, Afghanistan, Poland, and Soviet adherence to the human rights agreement called the Helsinki Accords.
But this debate goes far beyond specifics.
For those confrontations provide a rare glimpse of how we view the Soviets and how they, in turn, see us.
This film is called A Journey to Russia.
It's produced and directed by Wayne Ewing for Frontline.
This is their version of Park Avenue.
Notice the tall buildings.
There's a disco in there.
There's a disco.
And here's Bumkinigi, which is where you buy all your posters over there.
And here are some really good magazines, really good stores, really good restaurants here.
Well, you know.
Good Soviet restaurants.
Oh, I checked to see what was at the Bolshoi Theater, and the calendar that they have posted only goes up to the 20th.
On the October eve of a long Russian winter, three young Americans arrive in Moscow.
They have come to the Soviet Union as a team with a coach and even a film crew to record their experience.
Margaret Ann Niles from Portland, Oregon, is a graduate of Harvard.
John Tokalish comes from a small town in New Jersey and is an aide to Senator Daniel Moynihan.
Bill Scudrich was born in Pittsburgh and specialized in Russian studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
While two weeks of travel to six Soviet cities will be a test of the team's endurance,
the competition they have entered will be a clash of minds and not bodies.
They will debate in Russian with teams of young Soviets the merits of American and Soviet values and their effect on war and peace.
Debate coach Mike Hazen of Wake Forest University does not speak Russian, but gives strategic advice before each debate.
Let's get some of those polled and get them into a short answer.
You know what the tallest building is in Moscow? That building, because it's the KGB headquarters from it.
You can see Siberia.
That's one of the most typical things of Soviet life right there, that huge banner.
Hail to the unbreakable unity of the party and the people.
This select group of Soviet medical students is awaiting a rare experience in a closed society,
a chance to hear an uncensored but not unchallenged American point of view.
This is Margaret's fourth trip to the Soviet Union. She has studied in Leningrad and traveled throughout Russia,
but after three years at Stanford Law School her Russian's a bit rusty.
Bill's Russian is so perfect that he's often mistaken for a Soviet, but once he speaks about politics there is no doubt where he comes from.
The son of Czech immigrants and a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Bill maintains close ties with the Russian emigre community in Pittsburgh.
John has also been to the Soviet Union before. He studied Russian at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow.
These discussions have been held for ten years by the Speech Communications Association of the U.S. and the Student Council of the USSR.
The Soviet opponents will change with each debate. Some, like these, will be students, but many will be teachers.
The debates will always be held before packed university audiences with never enough room for all who would like to listen.
The topic will remain the same, war and peace. The goal? Peace through mutual understanding.
Hello.
In the United States, personal liberties have always reigned supreme.
In our Declaration of Independence, we are guaranteed the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe that the exchange of opinions, such as this discussion, has a great significance and could very well play an important role in our mutual understanding, thanks to our personal contacts.
The test of war and peace in the value systems of a society is behavior and not government propaganda.
Throughout human history, many of the worst atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of the highest ideals.
Many revolutions which had at their base very noble ideas and ideals dissolved into torrents of blood. This is especially true of the Russian Revolution.
Quite recently, an advisor to President Reagan, Security Advisor Clark, who spoke about his views of strategic problems, declared,
Our interests are of a global character, and they go counter to the interests of the Soviet Union.
Our strategy should consist of using armed force to attain concrete strategic goals and to do it quickly and to do it under circumstances that would be favorable to the United States and our allies.
Well, what can I say about this? This is substantiation not merely of a political slogan, but it lies at the base of the foreign policy of one of the largest and most powerful nations of the world,
for it is within the confines of this policy that new forms of weapons have been devised.
Cruise missiles, new forms of chemical weapons, and war apparatus for use in space are being worked out, and at the same time, medium-range missiles are being placed in Europe.
I don't want to be put in a position of defending the arms race, because this position, of course, can't be defended.
But I would like to say that Soviet troops in Europe are twice as numerous as the troops of the United States,
and that sometimes the United States of America thinks that it will rectify this situation by means of new American technology, and this is why things such as cruise missiles appear and so forth.
John, you are not entirely correct. First of all, the number of Soviet troops in Europe is twice that of the United States, because we ourselves are located in Europe, and it is only natural that our troops are located on our territory.
Secondly, you are correct in saying that American troops are located in Europe, whereas Soviet troops, I don't know, is there even one soldier, I mean a soldier, on American territory. Do you think so?
We have no troops in Nicaragua, nor in Panama, nor in Cuba. We don't have Soviet troops anywhere.
And in Afghanistan? Have you forgotten about the 100,000 Soviet soldiers? Bill?
Alex, first of all, Afghanistan is in Asia, not America, and it is located on the Soviet border.
But you said outside the Soviet Union.
Yes, Bill, I agree, but Afghanistan, perhaps you have trouble telling where the Soviet border ends and Afghanistan begins.
Well, I thought they handled that quite well, actually.
Goodbye.
Yeah, I was stumbling on my words there. I was so embarrassed.
When am I going to learn to speak Russian?
I felt really good. I mean, they understand. The Russians like a good fight.
And they understand it, and as long as you keep it off of, you know, personalities, it will be interesting to see all of the reactions as far as our discussions of invasions of Afghanistan in the republics.
I mean, especially in Thailand, in Estonia, where the people really have difficulties with that, and I mean, that will be interesting to monitor their reaction to that.
That must be interesting in Moscow because they're closer to it, too.
I mean, their bitterness is still very much alive.
Less than 24 hours since arriving in Russia, the team leaves Moscow, wondering how Bill's hard line on Afghanistan will be received only 700 miles from the Afghan border.
They're on their way to Baku, an ancient city on the Caspian Sea.
But what was promised to be an easy trip turned into a 16-hour nightmare when Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, detoured to Armenia, reportedly for bad weather.
We were forbidden to film and with no food or water, left stranded overnight in an old airline terminal.
The team finally arrives in Baku after a sleepless night to a warm greeting from Misha, the student council host.
Well, at least you have the opportunity to see another city, Yerevan.
Okay, let's take a seat.
Look at that eggplant. That man's got a bag full of eggplants.
And look at those breads. I love those kind of breads. This is neat.
With no chance to sleep in sight, food and drink will be plentiful for the Americans in Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan Republic.
The people of this distinctly Muslim city produce an abundance of caviar, oil, and champagne.
Although exhausted, the team is swept up by the ancient city and rallies to enjoy Misha's generosity, beginning at a banquet deep in a medieval fortress.
Let us hope that in these two weeks you will spend in our country that the most terrible stone caves you will find in Russia will be these.
So, if you have no objections, I would like to raise my glass to those who are at home, for your loved ones and for your relatives, and I hope that they will not worry about you.
Thank you.
Don on the Caspian comes too soon for the Americans after a late night at Baku's Palace of Pleasure.
Today, the team will tackle their second debate, not knowing how combative their Azerbaijan opponents will be.
The question is, will the debaters at Baku's Foreign Language Institute in this warm and friendly climate so distant from Moscow hold strictly to the party line?
It's true that in the West a lot of noise has been raised about the events in Poland, even though every year martial law is declared in many developing and capitalist countries.
Martial law existed for a long time in Greece, now there is martial law in Turkey.
Why is it that the government of the United States treats this problem rather two-sidedly?
I personally don't treat this matter two-sidedly.
My conception of this is absolutely clear.
What is happening in Poland, it is purely a worker's movement, and I personally can't understand why it was suppressed.
After all, communism in my understanding, and I admit that perhaps I incorrectly understand it,
but in my understanding, communism stands for the power of the workers, and after all, these are all workers, they created this movement.
This is a worker's movement in its purest form, and it was cruelly repressed by a socialist government.
Recently, I came across some statistics which shocked me.
Your journal, U.S. News and World Report, wrote that 23 million Americans, that is to say one out of every five Americans,
does not know how to read and write well enough to cope with the demands of everyday life.
What can you say in regards to this?
Can it really be that this is possible in such a developed country as the U.S.A.?
Well, what can I say? I can simply say that it's not true.
I mean, look how many Americans we have with us here today.
According to those figures, one of us would have to be illiterate.
Perhaps you're saying I'm the one.
I don't know.
There's mixed feelings in this country.
I mean, you know, on one side I want to sympathize with them,
on the other side I want to say, oh, you know, let them.
If they put up with it, let them put up, let them have to deal with it, you know?
Less than 16 hours after the Baku debate, the team arrives in Volgograd.
Tired after a long night of traveling, they will face their third debate at the end of another day of sightseeing.
But the Americans are not prepared for the emotional impact of the sights of Volgograd.
Once known as Stalingrad, it is a living monument to the Soviet struggle for survival in World War II.
At the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans were stopped, but the cost of victory was great.
After 200 days of fighting, the Russians reclaimed a destroyed city.
Twenty million Soviets died during World War II, and no one here will ever forget them.
On this post are representatives of the very best schools of Volgograd, the best members of the Komsomol and pioneers.
On the post are two boys as watch guards, and they carry in their arms the weapons of participants in the Stalingrad battle, and the girls are their aides.
Despite the great victory here, after the Battle of Stalingrad, our city was in fact completely destroyed.
And therefore, the love that we harbor for our city is understandable.
Every person loves the place where they were born, where they grew up, and where their children live and grow.
But we love our city in a very special way.
We literally are in love with it because we have done this with our own hands.
And this love is given down from us to our children.
At the foot of the towering Mother Russia statue stands the Hall of Military Honor,
on the walls of which are inscribed the names of so many who have died.
It is no accident that in this hall we hear the music of a German composer.
In doing so, our Soviet people wanted to emphasize that we were fighting not against Germany, but against fascism.
All of this is testimony to the fact that nothing has been forgotten and no one has been forgotten.
I don't know, it really hit me to see all the names.
I don't know why, but it just suddenly made me realize, you know, these are real people.
I had something like that in my speech.
These are the people, if anybody, who are not going to buy any of our...
I'm not even going to mention...
They know what war was, you know.
I don't think they're going to mention Stalin today.
Oh, you don't know?
I don't know.
Through all these monuments that we saw today, we can see that these people really, really don't want war, that they want peace.
They know better than us, the horrors of war.
So I don't think we should stand there and try to teach them about the need for peace, because they understand it.
And yet, nonetheless, this threat of war does exist.
And why?
It's because we fear each other, and we fear each other because we don't trust each other.
And why don't we trust each other?
Because it goes to the highest values.
It goes to the highest values because of violations at the Helsinki Games, because of Stalinism and their inability to stop us.
Well, that's exactly right.
What we need to do is try to bridge the gap of misunderstanding.
And the only way we can bridge that gap is if we talk about the things that separate us.
See, the thing is, I can't write this out.
It cannot be read.
It is impossible for this to be read, or else it has to be said directly to them.
We in the USA know that the Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in World War II.
We know, or we can try to understand, how you suffered, how you fought,
and how you, perhaps more than anyone, know the horrors of war.
We don't have to convince you that we need peace.
You, of course, already know this only too well.
But we must, during such debates, try to understand each other and try to see each other's point of view.
The young Soviet regime proclaimed its love for peace.
However, the number of executions since Lenin seized power is many times greater than the number during the last 50 years of Tsarist rule.
The terrible tragedy of the rule of Stalin, under which millions of innocent Soviet citizens met their end at the hands of their own government,
indicates that the historical tradition of rule by coercion of the Tartars and the Tsars has not disappeared even in the Soviet period.
And it highlights the impotence of the Soviet people before their government.
In Helsinki watch groups throughout the Soviet Union, there had been more than 70 people.
Today, more than 40 of them are in prison or internal exile.
The combined total of their sentences is 220 years of internment and 125 years of exile.
Over the course of its existence, the Moscow Helsinki watch group published 194 documents dealing with violations by Soviet authorities of the Helsinki agreement.
There is no trust between America and the Soviet Union.
Over the course of 60 years, we have seen a differing America.
We have seen an America rocked by the fear of McCarthyism.
We have seen an hysterical America of the times of Dulles and Forstall.
We have seen an angry America and an America that was rocked with protest against the adventure in Vietnam.
We have seen an America crushed by Watergate and a series of political assassinations.
We see now an alarmed America, an America thinking about the fate of the world and about its own fate in that world.
We would like to see a mature America, a balanced America, an America which understands its responsibilities before today's immature generation,
an America which realizes that politics is the art of possibilities.
It is possible that our opponents will not agree with our conceptions of peace.
So what of it? Let's argue about it. Let's argue this point.
When has our government ever violated an agreement?
I've already told you about these violations of the Helsinki Accords.
What concretely are you referring to?
I have in mind the many thousands of people, for example, who are waiting for the right to immigrate.
The Soviet government will not allow them to immigrate.
But you yourself have said that in your country Soviet people are standing in line.
No, I didn't say in our country. I said in other countries they are standing in line in order to come to America.
I know that these immigrants are filling out the army of the unemployed,
and I know very well that these foreigners, and they, by the way, are now called in the American press the Stokers of Europe.
These foreigners do not have the same rights as Americans.
They receive a lower wage for the same amount of work.
And for this reason now, in particular, very many Spaniards are demanding their return from the United States of America due to the sharp decrease of their welfare.
That is to say, discrimination against foreign workers, which is taking place in the United States as a clear result of Reaganomics.
What is your opinion?
Why has the United States of America refused to complete negotiations for the complete ban of the testing of nuclear weapons?
As you know, in America, in the American Senate, when talks were being held on SALT II before the invasion by Soviet troops into Afghanistan,
there was every reason to believe that these proposals would have been accepted.
But after the invasion by Soviet troops into Afghanistan, and after events in Poland, the American government decided that it would be better to wait.
May I answer?
In my opinion, as you all know, Ronald Reagan thinks that the United States of America is weaker than the Soviet Union.
Yes, you have heard what he said in regards to the arms race and so forth.
And in order to catch up with the Soviet Union, I think that he thinks that we need to test new arms.
And that is an explanation and not a defense, OK?
And that is why he has done this.
This is my guess.
I'm not sure about his reasons.
Do you really believe what you said?
Of course I believe it.
What you were saying about us, it sounded nightmarish to us.
It was awful and funny.
It sounded so wild, so crazy.
It was all so strange.
We couldn't believe it.
You shouldn't take this as a personal attack.
It was all in the line of our debate.
But in our point of view, it is correct.
It is very difficult to understand why you signed these agreements.
And then, as I said, it wasn't we who were saying this, but the Helsinki watch groups in Moscow and Odessa.
Why, for example, was Sakharov exiled?
Why was Solzhenitsyn exiled?
This is very difficult to understand because there is no such thing in the United States.
But that is not right.
That is not the way it is.
Everything you are saying, that is not true.
But what about Sakharov, who has done so much for the Soviet Union?
Why is it that all of a sudden he has become a slanderer of the state?
Why is it that all his life he devoted all his efforts to help the Soviet government,
and then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, he becomes a traitor?
Well, yes, what you are talking about, we know that we have had some shortcomings.
What was it that incited him to become a traitor when all his life he gave to...
Tell me, please, before the Great October Revolution, the Russian people weren't happy with their life.
Not so, and that is why they overthrew the government.
But now the Soviet people are satisfied with their government.
So why should they hold differing views?
Sakharov, that was just one person.
My dear boy, should our revolution have been bloodless?
You spoke about blood being spilled.
That was a revolution. It was a war.
But I never said that it wasn't proper.
No, it was a revolution.
The same thing happened in your American revolution.
And in certain instances this is justified.
I agree with you that a revolution is the spilling of blood,
but it is difficult for Americans to understand the bloodshed under Stalin,
the spilling of Soviet blood by their own government.
But the revolution was continuing.
Robespierre, the great Frenchman, he was killed by his own government.
It was a revolution. He gave his life to the revolution,
but it doesn't mean that the significance of the revolution was any less.
But Soviets who were sent to concentration camps, they were absolutely innocent.
Well, my dear boy, that's as we say.
With Bill's question left unanswered,
the team leaves Volgograd for a long night's journey by plane
and then train to Leningrad.
Filming is forbidden on any train or within any railroad station in the Soviet Union
for reasons of state security.
A curious precaution in an age of satellite surveillance,
but a constant reminder that the Soviet Union is still a highly controlled and secretive society.
In Leningrad, the debaters must devise a strategy to penetrate this closed perspective.
You know, the need for information that we see,
the need for openness is not apparently obvious to them all the time.
And a lot of times you've got to put up a reason with that argument about the need for information.
You know, how is it going to help the society to have that kind of information there?
You see, that to me just seems so obvious.
I know what that is.
If the plane goes down and people are killed,
it seems to me that in any civilized country the need for that would just be self-evident,
that you have to, you need a passenger list because how else can you identify bodies and notify the families?
Because, let's say, they don't.
They keep track of things like that.
They know where people are.
You study Russian literature and history, you know this desire for secrecy.
It's a whole part of the whole history.
And see, they just project the same things on us, just like we project our things on them.
It's only if we can try and get out of that that we've got a chance here.
Okay, all right?
The press or newspapers, Lenin said, is an arm of propaganda and agitation.
But what disturbs me in this quote is he doesn't speak about the most important thing.
Because for the American newspapers the most important thing is not propaganda or agitation.
The most important goal, the main goal, is to inform.
It is to tell what is happening and not to interpret it as is seen fit by that publication.
But Lenin does not say anything about the main goal of the newspaper being to inform.
He doesn't even use the word.
The thing is that the bourgeois American media begins from birth to get its readers used to the idea
that the Soviet Union is in essence an aggressive country
and that the Soviet Union is merely waiting for the right opportunity to attack the United States.
It often reaches a point of paradox.
Recently I read an issue of the U.S. News and World Report from September 20th.
And this article talked about a special part of the American armed forces which is based in California at Fort Irving.
They were dressed in Soviet uniforms and armed with Soviet weapons,
and they were asked to play the role of the Soviet aggressor in American military maneuvers.
Naturally, after reading such an article, many may begin to think that the Soviet Union is in fact getting ready to attack the United States.
I would like to know, how can you talk about the American mass media?
After all, we don't have just one organ of the press.
There are conservative journals.
There are journals which are very friendly towards the Soviet Union in general.
I simply don't understand how you can make such a generalization.
I will try to answer your question.
When I was introduced, you were told that I am a teacher of the Russian language to foreigners.
In particular, I work with students from the United States.
And once we were having a discussion about how the Soviet Union is portrayed in the American mass media
and how America is portrayed in the mass media of the Soviet Union,
American students tried to prove to me precisely what you are saying in your question,
and I asked them to document this.
They brought to me all the American publications for the past month they could find in Leningrad, a whole stack.
From among those publications, there were approximately 40 articles about the Soviet Union.
We looked through them together.
There was not one article that had even one positive thing to say about the Soviet Union, not anything positive.
Then we looked at the Soviet press for the same period, the essential Soviet papers,
and we found several articles which spoke about the achievements of the American people culturally and economically.
Please, show us these articles.
They have asked for examples.
Please, let me show them.
Here is the newspaper Pravda from October 15.
In Washington, the creation of an anti-military coalition has been announced against the nuclear threat.
It is comprised of many American peace supporters.
And as we can see in this small column, there is positive information about the anti-military movement and its participants.
And we can read from a fresh newspaper.
Here, you can look at it.
Perhaps I didn't pose my question quite clearly enough.
Show me something positive, anything positive about my government in the Soviet press.
I think that from the speeches of our three American colleagues, there was one main thought.
We know that the American people are for peace, but we have such a government.
If it is difficult for you to find something positive in the actions of your government, it is even more difficult for us.
I would like to say that in Pravda, it has also been written that the Soviet government respects the Helsinki Accord,
but the 40 members of the Helsinki watch group who are now sitting in prison do not agree with this, and these are Soviet citizens.
Everyone whom I know that left, they were forced to renounce their Soviet citizenship.
Of course, that is not true.
How can you say no? They signed. They had to sign.
Jews, when they leave, they have to sign. They have to renounce their Soviet citizenship. That is a fact.
But they leave not because they ask that they be let go.
But they don't ask that their Soviet citizenship be taken away.
Yes, yes, they ask that they themselves renounce their Soviet citizenship.
No, that is not it. I know.
No, they renounce their Soviet citizenship themselves.
No.
Well, wait now. I have to tell Michael a little bit about the Aurora, the ship.
It's a shame that they can't leave and then come back the way you can in so many other countries.
In other countries, you can leave and go live in another country for a while and come back, and it's not considered any sort of a crime.
But here, if you decide you want to go live somewhere else, you are labeled a traitor and you're stripped of your citizenship.
Frustration mounts as the team prepares to leave Leningrad.
The debater's schedule is so tightly planned that an early morning jog is Margaret's only free time to explore the city she once knew as a student.
Next stop, Estonia, and an on-the-bus strategy session to prepare for the fifth debate.
We're constantly in our arguments, arguing for the value of different points of view, free speech, et cetera.
We've never, though, anywhere justified that value.
Otherwise, what does it do for us as a society to have multiple points of view?
Because you're getting arguments, like yesterday, from the Soviet point of view.
I'm trying to say that.
Just a second.
The Soviets argue, like, for the individual to run counter to the state is a drawback.
Now, what it assumes at all points of view is that the state knows best.
And the usual justification that we will give is simply that we don't know.
It's only out of multiple points of view you can find the best point of view because human beings are fallible.
I see what you're saying. How did you phrase it?
I simply said that the argument is that we're not perfect.
We don't know what's right for a government.
One person doesn't.
There's a couple more like that I want to bring up, too.
The National Liberation Wars.
History shows that whenever the Soviet Union, so-called, liberates a country,
usually that country falls under the domination of the Soviet Union.
And a terrific example is Estonia. It was first liberated, then annexed.
Bill has been to Estonia before and suspects that here, if anywhere in the Soviet Union,
his views might find a receptive audience.
This small republic on the Baltic Sea has its own distinct language
and a history of hundreds of years of intellectual freedom prior to annexation by the Soviet Union during World War II.
The debate is at Tartu State University, the 300-year-old academic center of Estonia.
Both teams share an equal disadvantage.
Russian is a foreign language for everyone.
In Berlin, there stands a monument built by the Soviet Union.
It is a monument to the Soviet system of values, the Soviet rule by coercion.
I am speaking of the Berlin Wall.
This wall testifies more eloquently than anything as to the Soviet system of values,
which does not give people the right to choose where they want to live.
Between America and the Soviet Union, there is no trust.
Americans cannot understand the violence perpetrated on the Soviet people by the Soviet government.
It seems to us, correctly or incorrectly, that the Soviet people are not capable of restraining their government.
The absence of trust leads to fear. Fear leads to a military buildup.
The arms race is complete insanity.
When will it cease? Only when we love our children more than we fear each other.
We simple American and Soviet people must exert an influence on our governments to put an end to this threat of war.
Then the slogan, peace unto the world, will cease being merely a slogan and will become a reality.
Thank you.
I am a student of geography.
I would like to ask the American team.
The remark of Alexander Haig was pointed out here.
He said that there are things that are more important than world peace, than peace throughout the world.
What do you think? What did he mean by this?
Well, I don't know what Haig had in mind.
But what is your opinion?
For me, for example, there is something more important than peace, and that is freedom.
If I can't live the way I want to, if I am not free to say what I want and write and read and discuss things freely with others,
then I would struggle against anyone who wants to take this freedom away from me.
The team revels in the positive Estonian response,
but John and Margaret, feeling sympathy for kindred spirits, chide Bill for not moderating his standard attack on the Soviet system.
I was probably saying many of the things that they would like to say.
What are we having now?
They have been dying for 30 years to say it.
Well, Bill, somebody stabbed me on the hall and said,
tell Bill Skunderich that when he becomes president, to come back to Tartu.
Okay, start it over in a lower key.
This is probably the greatest here.
This is probably the greatest here, which I expected it to be.
I remember even the last time I was here, even our Soviet guide told us to speak English rather than Russian,
because of attitudes here towards the Russians.
But as far as the debate, I think this was one of the more successful ones.
I mean, they were clearly sympathetic.
I think we'll face something very different here.
Naturally, the Soviet Union does not want a war with America.
But the absence of nuclear war is not peace.
When Soviet leaders and newspapers repeat constantly that the ideological struggle shall continue,
it's hard for us to believe that what they have in mind are philosophical debates and not all sorts of subversive activity.
Soviet leaders openly declare that they will always support wars of liberation.
For us, this incitement to war is nothing more than a euphemism for Soviet domination.
At the same time, the Soviet Union constantly talks about its efforts for peace.
But such rhetoric would be more convincing if at the present time the Soviet Union was not flooding the Yemens with arms,
or was not supporting the takeover of Indochina by Vietnam,
or if there were not approximately 100,000 Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan,
where even according to the most modest estimates, Soviet bombardment, mines and poisonous gases have killed nearly a million peaceful citizens
simply because they did not submit to their invaders.
You perhaps find this amusing, but mothers are crying over the bloody bodies of their sons.
My question is for Skandrich.
He just spoke about, he continuously asserts,
this is the second time already that he has said that during the Stalinist repression millions of people died.
Could he cite the precise figure?
Because for some reason in our literature we don't encounter this.
Some historians say 12 million.
Solzhenitsyn, for example, who I know is not very respected here, says it was up to 60 million.
So it really depends on the sources.
But you know, we always have a problem when it comes to statistics.
Because as you have seen, our respected colleagues in their speeches often cited statistics which they got from American sources,
American newspapers, American journals.
But this is harder for us because even though we have Soviet journals and Soviet newspapers,
we don't have the statistics.
Because in your newspapers they simply don't write the statistics.
So therefore we simply can't cite them.
I will perhaps be a modest, but I would like for you, upon your return to America,
to ask this question in the South Bronx of New York,
where there are 800,000 unemployed and disposed people living,
a region which has declared a national disaster area in the United States of America,
an area which, if I can state it this way, looks like Kiev in 1943,
where there are destroyed buildings and children who are running among the bricks.
Pose this question to those people and then take them to 52nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas,
to the Playboy Club, and let those people that you take there discuss this question with members of that club.
And let them recall the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in which it is stated.
Let them recall that all people are born equally for God.
They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yet every tenth man in America is unemployed.
We know about this.
Remember, give the Pittsburgh delivery.
I mean, you don't have to be angry, but don't be...
I don't think I was apologetic.
Not apologetic, no.
My reaction was I was just laughing at them because of their hot response.
They just knew how they were going to react.
They're just a really predictable audience.
That is quite something in the snow.
The team returns to Moscow fueled only by the knowledge that their odyssey will be over
after the last debate at Moscow State University.
Well, here is the beginning of the end.
The most important thing in America is the individual,
whereas in your country, it turns out, the most important thing is the state.
This difference is reflected in our social value systems and consequently in the capability of the people
to exert an influence on war and peace in regards to the foreign policies of our countries.
I thank you.
Here it should be said that our two sides have a somewhat different approach.
The thing is, as John has said many times,
the American people often find it necessary to protest against their government,
and we can only pity them that the American people do not have the kind of government
which they can completely trust and which would answer for their interests.
And as far as the Soviet Union is concerned,
then I as a simple Soviet citizen can tell you that the Soviet people,
Soviet citizens have no need to criticize their government because we trust it.
You have spoken about our military strategies,
and you said that supposedly your country has no such strategies.
I would like to know, how do you know that you don't have any similar strategies?
Because where are your war strategies ever published?
Where are your military expenditures ever published?
We have the opportunity to express our own opinions and our attitudes towards policies of the press,
and therefore our strategies are a strategy towards peace.
This, in my opinion, is known everywhere.
And the strategies which have been openly declared by the American administration
naturally cannot go without arousing the indignation of the American people themselves,
because in my opinion it would simply be madness to support a government
which puts forth the concepts of first nuclear strike or a limited nuclear war.
Not a single Soviet political or social figure has ever put forth such proposals.
You have said that war propaganda is prohibited by law in the Soviet Union,
but apparently military actions are not prohibited
in as much as you are now fighting in Afghanistan.
So my question is the following.
What good is such a law if it doesn't inhibit military action?
I would like to remind you as a historian that neither our leadership
nor figures of our Communist Party have ever said that we completely refuse to acknowledge war.
We acknowledge wars of liberation.
The war which is being conducted by the Afghan people is a war of the people for their own liberation.
Therefore, this war we support without question.
They've heard what we had to say, we've heard what they think,
and now it's up to all of us to just think about what we've all heard on both sides,
and that process is a slow one.
So I don't think we could even expect any immediate results from anything we've done here,
and yet I think a mark has been made.
We're not trying to change the Soviet Union, we're just trying to open their minds a little bit,
open the minds of the people.
Maybe help them understand why we think the way we do, even if they still disagree with it,
if they understand why we have this point of view.
I think the hardest part was that if we actually reached somebody,
if we made them think, no one was going to come up and say,
I liked your speech and I thought that you made some really good points about your government.
You changed my mind about my country.
No one's going to do that.
But I'm sure that somewhere in those eight audiences that we had some effect,
and I guess that's all we can hope for.
That final handshake, the word, druzhba, it means friendship.
But friendship must come from understanding.
Maybe it's easier for the Soviets to learn about us being at open society,
but how much of an effort are we really making to learn about them?
Severe budget cuts by government and foundations have affected virtually all Soviet studies programs.
Take language.
Enrollment in Russian language courses has declined by more than one third in the past ten years.
Classical Latin is now more popular than Russian on college campuses,
and by contrast, it's almost routine for English to be taught in Soviet high schools.
One positive note, however.
Tomorrow, Congress begins hearings on legislation to train more specialists in Soviet affairs.
It may not seem like much, but as Bill Scudrich,
the student from Pittsburgh said at the close of his Russian journey,
the process of understanding is a slow one, but perhaps we've made a start.
Next week on Frontline, the story of a remarkable woman.
Her name is Daisy.
You will never forget Daisy.
Are looks important to men or are they?
Yes, definitely.
So when you see five women, ten women,
the first impression is what makes you selective, isn't it?
Yes.
Before you open the package, you look at the wrapping, don't you?
Yes.
Daisy is getting older.
Like thousands of others, she is thinking of having cosmetic surgery.
She is asking, how much does attractiveness matter in our society, especially for a woman?
Look, marriages come and go.
Everyone knows children come and go.
Body comes and goes, careers come and go.
The only thing you're stuck with is yourself.
The program is called Daisy, Story of a Facelift.
It is next week on Frontline.
I'm Jessica Savage.
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