will soon determine the fate of the country, rather than the party. I will tell you, though, that the engineers determine the fate of the economy just as much as our generals determine the fate of the Army. That means zero. Everything is done the way the party demands. That's our system. Judge it for yourself. It's a system where for 40 years there haven't been genuine elections but simply a comedy, a farce. Thus a system which has no legislative organs. It's a system without an independent press; a system without an independent judiciary; where the people have no influence either on external or internal policy; where any thought which is different from what the state thinks is crushed. And let me tell you that electronic bugging in our country is such a simple thing that it's a matter of everyday life. You had an instance in the United States where a bugging caused an uproar which lasted for a year and a half. For us it's an everyday matter. Almost every apartment, every institution has got its bug and it doesn't surprise us in the least - we are used to it. It's a system where unmasked butchers of millions like Molotov and others smaller than him have never been tried in the courts but retire on tremendous pensions in the greatest comfort. It's a system where the show still goes on today and to which every foreigner is introduced surrounded by a couple of planted agents working according to a set scenario. It's a system where the very constitution has never been carried out for one single day; where all the decisions mature in secrecy, high up in a small irresponsible group and then are released on us and on you like a bolt of lightning. And what are the signatures of such persons worth? How could one rely on their signatures to documents of detente? You yourselves might ask your specialists now and they'll tell you that precisely in recent years the Soviet Union has succeeded in creating wonderful chemical weapons, missiles, which are even better than those used by the United States. So what are we to conclude from that? Is detente needed or not? Not only is it needed, it's as necessary as air. It's the only way of saving the earth - instead of a world war to have detente, but a true detente, and if it has already been ruined by the bad word which we use for it - "detente" - then we should find another word for it. I would say that there are very few, only three, main characteristics of such a true detente. In the first place, there would be disarmament - not only disarmament from the use of war but also from the use of violence. We must stop using not only the sort of arms which are used to destroy one's neighbors, but the sort of arms which are used to oppress one's fellow countrymen. It is not detente if we here with you today can spend our time agreeably while over there people are groaning and dying and in psychiatric hospitals. Doctors are making their evening rounds, for the third time injecting people with drugs which destroy their brain cells. The second sign of detente, I would say, is the following: that it be not one based on smiles, not on verbal concessions, but it has to be based on a firm foundation. You know the words from the Bible: "Build not on sand, but on rock." There has to be a guarantee that this will not be broken overnight and for this the other side - the other party to the agreement - must have its acts subject to public opinion, to the press, and to a freely elected parliament. And until such control exists there is absolutely no guarantee. The third simple condition - what sort of detente is it when they employ the sort of inhumane propaganda which is proudly called in the Soviet Union "ideological warfare." Let us not have that. If we're going to be friends, let's be friends, if we're going to have detente, then let's have detente, and an end to ideological warfare. The Soviet Union and the Communist countries can conduct negotiations. They know how to do this. For a long time they don' t make any concessions and then they give in a little bit. Then everyone says triumphantly, "Look, they've made a concession; it's time to sign." The European negotiators of the 35 countries for two years now have painfully been negotiating and their nerves were stretched to the breaking point and they finally gave in. A few women from the Communist countries can now marry foreigners. And a few newspapermen are now going to be permitted to travel a little more than before. They give 1/1,000th of what natural law should provide. Matters which people should be able to do even before such negotiations are undertaken. And already there is joy. And here in the West we hear many voices, saying: "Look, they're making concessions; it's time to sign." During these two years of negotiations, in all the countries of eastern Europe, the pressure has increased, the oppression intensified, even in Yugoslavia and Romania, leaving aside the other countries . And it is precisely now that the Austrian chancellor says, "We've got to sign this agreement as rapidly as possible." What sort of an agreement would this be? The proposed agreement is the funeral of eastern Europe. It means that western Europe would finally, once and for all, sign away eastern Europe, stating that it is perfectly willing to see eastern Europe be crushed and overwhelmed once and for all, but please don't bother us. And the Austrian chancellor thinks that if all these countries are pushed into a mass grave, Austria at the very edge of this grave will survive and not fall into it also. And we, from our lives there, have concluded that violence can only be withstood by firmness. You have to understand the nature of communism. The very ideology of communism, all of Lenin's teachings, are that anyone is considered to be a fool who doesn't take what's lying in front of him. If you can take it, take it. If you can attack, attack. But if there's a wall, then go back. And the Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt and laugh at persons who continually give in to them. Your people are now saying - and this is the last quotation I am going to give you from the statements of your leaders - "Power, without any attempt at conciliation, will lead to a world conflict." But I would say that power with continual subservience is no power at all. But from our experience I can tell you that only firmness will make it possible to withstand the assaults of Communist totalitarianism. We see many historic examples, and let me give you some of them. Look at little Finland in 1939, which by its own forces withstood the attack. You, in 1948, defended Berlin only by your firmness of spirit, and there was no world conflict. In Korea in 1950 you stood up against the Communists, only by your firmness, and there was no world conflict. In 1962 you compelled the rockets to be removed from Cuba. Again it was only firmness, and there was no world conflict. And the late Konrad Adenauer conducted firm negotiations with Khrushchev and thus started a genuine detente with Khrushchev. Khrushchev started to make concessions and if he hadn't been removed, that winter he was planning to go to Germany and to continue the genuine detente. Let me remind you of the weakness of a man whose name is rarely associated with weakness - the weakness of Lenin. Lenin, when he came to power, in panic gave up to Germany everything Germany wanted. Just what it wanted. Germany took as much as it wanted and said, "Give Armenia to Turkey." And Lenin said, "Fine." It's almost an unknown fact but Lenin petitioned the Kaiser to act as intermediary to persuade the Ukraine and, thus, to make possible a boundary between the Communist part of Russia and the Ukraine. It wasn't a question of seizing the Ukraine but lather of making a boundary with the Ukraine. We, we the dissidents of the USSR, don't have any tanks, we don't have any weapons, we have no organization. We don't have anything. Our hands are empty. We have only a heart and what we have lived through in the half century of this system. And when we have found the firmness within ourselves to stand up for our rights, we have done so. It's only by firmness of spirit that we have withstood. And if I am standing here before you, it's not because of the kindness or the good will of communism, not thanks to detente, but thanks to my own firmness and your firm support. They knew that I would not yield one inch, not one hair. And when they couldn't do more they themselves fell back. This is not easy. In our conditions this was taught to me by the difficulties of my own life. And if you yourselves - any one of you - were in the same difficult situation, you would have learned the same thing. Take Vladimir Bukovsky, whose name is now almost forgotten. Now, I don't want to mention a lot of names because however many I might mention there are more still. And when we resolve the question with two or three names it is as if we forget and betray the others. We should rather remember figures. There are tens of thousands of political prisoners in our country and - by the calculation of English specialists - 7,000 persons are now under compulsory psychiatric treatment. Let's take Vladimir Bukovsky as an example. It was proposed to him, "All right, we'll free you. Go to the West and shut up." And this young man, a youth today on the verge of death said: "No, I won't go this way. I have written about the persons whom you have put in insane asylums. You release them and then I'll go West." This is what I mean by that firmness of spirit to stand up against granite and tanks. Finally, to evaluate everything that I have said to you, I would say we need not have had our conversation on the level of business calculations. Why did such and such a country act in such and such a way? What were they counting on? We should rather rise above this to the moral level and say "In 1933 and in 1941 your leaders and the whole western world, in an unprincipled way, made a deal with totalitarianism." We will have to pay for this, some day this deal will come back to haunt us. For 30 years we have been paying for it and we're still paying for it. And we're going to pay for it in a worse way. One cannot think only in the low level of political calculations. It's necessary to think also of what is noble, and what is honorable - not only what is profitable. Resourceful western legal scholars have now introduced the term "legal realism." By legal realism, they want to push aside any moral evaluation of affairs. They say, "Recognize realities; if such and such laws have been established in such and such countries by violence, these laws still must be recognized and respected." At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality - law is something which is worked out and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. That isn't the case. The opposite is rather true! Morality is higher than law! While law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth and present it in a form of laws. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes you actually have a caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned. We must accept it with heart and soul. It is almost a joke now in the western world, in the 20th century, to use words like "good" and "evil." They have become almost old-fashioned concepts, but they are very real and genuine concepts. These are concepts from a sphere which is higher than us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, shortsighted political calculations and games we have to recognize that the concentration of World Evil and the tremendous force of hatred is there and it's flowing from there throughout the world. And we have to stand up against it and not hasten to give to it, give to it, give to it, everything that it wants to swallow. Today there are two major processes occurring in the world. One is the one which I have just described to you, which has been in progress more than 30 years. It is a process of shortsighted concessions; a process of giving up, and giving up and giving up and hoping that perhaps at some point the wolf will have eaten enough. The second process is one which I consider the key to everything and which, I will say now, will bring all of us our future; under the cast-iron shell of communism - for 20 years in the Soviet Union and a shorter time in other Communist countries - there is occurring a liberation of the human spirit. New generations are growing up which are steadfast in their struggle with evil; which are not willing to accept unprincipled compromises; which prefer to lose everything - salary, conditions of existence and life itself - but are not willing to sacrifice conscience; not willing to make deals with evil. This process has now gone so far that in the Soviet Union today, Marxism has fallen so low that it has become an anecdote, it's simply an object of contempt. No serious person in our country today, not even university and high school students, can talk about Marxism without smiling, without laughing. But this whole process of our liberation, which obviously will entail social transformations, is slower than the first one - the process of concessions. Over there, when we see these concessions, we are frightened. Why so quickly? Why so precipitously? Why yield several countries a year? I started by saying that you are the allies of our liberation movement in the Communist countries. And I call upon you: let us think together and try to see how we can adjust the relationship between these two processes. Whenever you help the persons persecuted in the Soviet Union, you not only display magnanimity and nobility, you're defending not only them but yourselves as well. You're defending your own future. So let us try and see how far we can go to stop this senseless and immoral process of endless concessions to the aggressor - these clever legal arguments for why we should give up one country after another. Why must we hand over to Communist totalitarianism more and more technology - complex, delicate, developed technology which it needs for armaments and for crushing its own citizens? If we can at least slow down that process of concessions, if not stop it all together - and make it possible for the process of liberation to continue in the Communist countries - ultimately these two processes will yield us our future. On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs. The Communist leaders say, "Don't interfere in our internal affairs. Let us strangle our citizens in peace and quiet." But I tell you: Interfere more and more. Interfere as much as you can. We beg you to come and interfere. Understanding my own task in the same way I have perhaps interfered today in your internal affairs, or at least touched upon them, and I apologize for it. I have traveled a lot around the United States and this has been added to my earlier understanding of it; what I have heard from listening to the radio, from talking to experienced persons. America - in me and among my friends and among people who think the way I do over there, among all ordinary Soviet citizens - evokes a sort of mixture of feelings of admiration and of compassion. Admiration at the fact of your own tremendous forces which you perhaps don't even recognize yourselves. You're a country of the future; a young country; a country of still untapped possibilities; a country of tremendous geographical distances; a country of tremendous breadth of spirit; a country of generosity; a country of magnanimity. But these qualities - strength, generosity and magnanimity - usually make a man and even a whole country trusting, and this already several times has done you a disservice. I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust and prevent those wise persons who are attempting to establish even finer degrees of justice and even finer legal shades of equality - some because of their distorted outlook, others because of short-sightedness and still others out of selfinterest - from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat - one which has never been seen before in the history of the world. Not only in the history of your country, but in the history of the world. And I call upon you: ordinary working men of America - as represented here by your trade union movement - do not let yourselves become weak. Do not let yourselves be taken in the wrong direction. Let us try to slow down the process of concessions and help the process of liberation!