Dmitry Mikheyev, a former political prisoner, talks with his former captor Philip Bobkov, an ex-Deputy Director of the KGB's Fifth Directorate, at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow

The theme of this discussion was the annual U.S. Captive Nations Week, the third week of July aimed at raising public awareness of the oppression of nations ruled by Communist and other non-democratic regimes. It was declared by a Congressional resolution and signed into law (Public Law 86-90) by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959.

At that time, the resolution was welcomed by the majority of East European and Baltic ethnic groups in the U.S., but was strongly opposed for different reasons not only by the Soviets but by such diverse anti-Communist groups and individuals as the Congress of Russian Americans, the Andrei Sakharov Institute, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the famed American foreign policy expert George Kennan, to name just a few. Kennan felt that the United States had no reason to pass such a resolution, which in effect called for the overthrow of all the governments of Eastern Europe and made this call a part of the U.S. public policy.

The Congress of Russian Americans objected mainly to the use of words like "Russian Communism" and "Communist Russia" and to the fact that Russia was omitted from the list of captive nations. In their opinion the Russian people, who had suffered the most from international Communism, were unfairly singled out and accused of crimes committed by the Communists. Moreover, in their numerous letters to Congress and the media they indicated that the list of "captive nations" had the unmistakable markings of Nazi propaganda. The non- existent "nations" of White Ruthenia, Idel-Ural, Cossackia, had all been invented by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's notorious minister for "Eastern Regions." Rosenberg's nationalities policy in those regions had been to dangle the carrot of independence before the various ethnic groups of the Soviet Union.

Here is what the leadership of the Congress of Russian Americans wrote to the White House in one of their numerous appeals to modify the text of the Captive Nations Resolution:

"We know from history that Rosenberg's theory was proven wrong and that it backfired. By invoking Russian patriotism, Stalin was able to deceive the Russian and other peoples within the Soviet Union and induce them to fight for their Motherland. Let us recall that in playing the 'Russian patriotism card,' a year after World War II began and Germans were approaching the Volga River, Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church (including the office of Patriarch, vacant since 1925); revamped the Soviet military to resemble the old Czarist army, reinstated its officer corps; introduced a series of medals and orders named after famous Russian generals and military leaders; and applied Czarist regimental names to Soviet regiments and divisions, suggesting their right to succession; and so on. "Most of these concessions were rescinded after the war. But it was the Russian patriotism card that brought victory over Hitler's Germany. It was proven to the entire world that the victory was won by Russians and other peoples (later listed as 'captive nations' in P.L. 86-90) who lived in Russia for generations — not by the Communists and their Marxist theory."

Cold War - a map of Europe and the USSR in 1985

As expected, the discussion at the Academy quickly switched from the Captive Nation Resolution to the present political situation between the U.S. and Russia. Ironically, the East European and Baltic participants were pretty mild in their statements and went out of their way to insist that they had nothing against the Russian people and would welcome Russia's integration into a common European home. The scholars most critical of the past Soviet and present Russian realities were Russian intellectuals who, by the way, are not affiliated with any particular political party or with the Limonov – Kasparov types so admired in the West. They were scholars representing leading Russian universities and Academy of Sciences institutes.

According to Andrei Zubov, when in 1991 Russia declared itself the successor state to the USSR, it had a moral responsibility to go through the process of de-Communization similar to de-Nazification in postwar Germany. One should add that at that time the United States was one of the most popular countries in Russia, and it could have used its influence with President Yeltsin and Russia's elites to push them in that direction. However, the George H.W. Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton administrations, as well as America's European allies, concentrated on ensuring that Russia acknowledged its huge legacy of Soviet foreign debt, instead of offering a broken country the opportunity to cancel these debts, and thus assist in the difficult transition to a free market economy.

In his introductory remarks the author of these lines told the gathering that in the Soviet times the use of soft power in the East–West confrontation was justified. Things like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the Kontinent magazine and other underground publications funded by the CIA and smuggled into the USSR, as well as Congressional hearings and resolutions, were a legitimate part of ideological warfare. However, the Captive Nations Resolution did more harm than good even then, since it split the anti-Communist forces in the U.S. and was used by Soviet propagandists and others as proof of persistent Western Russophobia.

Of course, American Congressmen could plead ignorance for their use of the word "Russian" in this resolution since in the English language this word refers both to ethnicity and to the country. Russian has two different words: russkiy "ethnically Russian" and rossiyskiy, referring to any citizen of Russia of whatever ethnicity. However, the man who wrote that resolution and lobbied Congress to accept it certainly knew the difference and all the linguistic peculiarities only too well. He was Ambassador Lev Dobriansky, a Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, who recently passed away. Dr. Dobriansly had Ukrainian roots, and it was he who insisted on using the word "Russian" instead of "Soviet" in this resolution.

It is interesting to note that Katherine Chumachenko, another Ukrainian American who replaced Dr. Dobriansky as chairperson of the National Captive Nations Committee and is now the wife of Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, also knew the terminology difference. In her August 23, 1983 letter to The Washington Times she dismissed the appeal of the Russian Americans to replace the word "Russian" with "Soviet" and add Russia to the list of Captive Nations. Ms. Chumachenko produced several reasons for that but all of them did not have any validity at all, as proved, clearly and comprehensively, by Professor Zubov in his remarks at the seminar.

Still, the Russian Americans had some success during the Reagan times when Congress adopted the new House Resolution 555 designating November 7, 1988 as a "Memorial Day for the Victims of Communism." This resolution uses all the right words and expresses solidarity with all "captive" peoples of the USSR, including the Russians.

"The U.S. Congress Resolution on Captive Nations of July 17,1959 certainly was a product of the Cold War and reflected the acute standoff between the Western free world and the Soviet totalitarian system", said Yevgeny Volk, the Moscow-based Russian analyst for the Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think-tank.

"The Russian people also suffered from the Communist rule and, objectively speaking, should have also been included in the list of 'captive nations.' But after the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991 the new Russian leadership missed a historic opportunity to denounce the Communist rule as illegitimate and criminal and to get the Russian people recognized as a victim of Communism. This failure had dramatic repercussions for Russia and the whole world."

On a positive note, everyone agreed that the new Cold War should be avoided at all cost and that Russia is a part of the European civilization. Even hard-line Communists, who in their lengthy statements concentrated on American and British evil intentions during the Cold War, and who did not miss a chance to say that the Captive Nations Resolution was just another attempt to break Russia apart, agreed that there remains no alternative to Russia cooperating with the West in meeting the global economic and security challenges of the 21st Century.

The final interesting point was made by Dr. Alexander Kapto, former Politburo member of the Ukrainian Communist Party. He said that his native Ukraine should be forever grateful to the Soviets: being one of its "captive nations," it gained some territories like Western Ukraine and the Crimea. [What Dr. Kapto forgot to mention was the fact that a vast region known as Novorossiya, never part of Malorossiya, or the Ukraine proper, was also included in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic at the will of the Soviet Union's Communist rulers.] If it had not been for "Soviet occupation," said Dr. Kapto, Western Ukraine most likely would have ended up as part of Poland. No one in the audience, not even Professor Tomasz Zarycki of Warsaw University, could find any argument to contest this innovative observation.

The lively discussions continued for at least two more hours during the reception featuring lots of Russian vodka and Ukrainian gorilka-with-pepper. When people were already leaving reluctantly, two participants still kept talking and gesturing. One was former KGB captive Dmitry Mikheev, who served six years in the Gulag, was afterwards allowed to emigrate to the U.S. where he worked for the Voice of America (VOA) and the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, and finally went back to Russia to teach business management. The other was his KGB captor Philip Bobkov who remembered the Mikheev case from the inside and even prompted Mr. Mikheev the name of his interrogator. Both were so excited over their reminiscences that they ignored polite hints from the Academy of Science personnel who were anxious to lock the doors.

The seminar was organized by the American University in Moscow, the Institute of Social and Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Kontinent U.S.A. Publishing House.

Edward Lozansky is President of the American University in Moscow.