The American Spectator : Summer of Appeasement: When Ford Snubbed Solzhenitsyn

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Summer of Appeasement: When Ford Snubbed Solzhenitsyn

By Paul Kengor on 8.10.10 @ 6:08AM

It was 35 years ago this summer that conservatives found themselves in a defining, epic moral struggle against…the GOP.

It was 35 years ago this summer that the conservative movement found itself in a defining, epic moral struggle not with the liberal left but with the moderate wing of the Republican Party. It's an issue worth revisiting, not merely because it's intriguing history, but because it reminds conservatives to always fight the good fight and be willing to stand against the establishment, even when that establishment is the GOP.

Here was the context: Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn had published (in English) his majestic Gulag Archipelago, blowing the whistle on the brutality of the Soviet system, a chilling, lengthy account by an eyewitness, himself a survivor. (See: "Witness: Solzhenitsyn vs. evil.") It was a stirring demonstration of the power of the pen and truth, casting light upon the darkness of what another unafraid anti-communist would dub an "Evil Empire."

Pravda judged the masterful testimony "slanderous." For his transgression, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the KGB, stripped of Soviet citizenship, and charged with treason. Unable to vanish or shoot him because of his international celebrity, the Kremlin's thugs, repulsed as they were by decency, expelled the great moralist to West Germany. The writer made his way further westward still, taking residence in the United States -- in Vermont.

Of course, everyone in America wanted to talk with him, to be with him, to meet with him. (Well, not everyone … more on that in a moment.) Such attention did not come naturally to the writer, more accustomed to expressing his thoughts in private -- in seclusion.

Then came the intense summer of 1975. On June 30, Solzhenitsyn acquiesced to a request from George Meany, the stalwart anti-communist labor leader, to speak at an AFL-CIO dinner in Washington. There, the former prisoner cut loose, freely blasting away not merely at the USSR but at any effort to accommodate it. Solzhenitsyn told the 2,000-plus labor delegates:

I have tried to convey to your countrymen the constrained breathing of the inhabitants of Eastern Europe in these weeks when an amicable agreement of diplomatic shovels will inter in a common grave bodies that are still breathing. I have tried to explain to Americans that 1973, the tender dawn of détente, was precisely the year when the starvation rations in Soviet prisons and concentration camps were reduced even further. And in recent months, when more and more Western speechmakers have pointed to the beneficial consequences of détente, the Soviet Union has adopted a novel and important improvement in its system of punishment: to retain their glorious supremacy in the invention of forced-labor camps, Soviet prison specialists have now established a new form of solitary confinement -- forced labor in solitary cells. That means cold, hunger, lack of fresh air, insufficient light, and impossible work norms; the failure to fulfill these norms is punished by confinement under even more brutal conditions.

This was naked reality. Its expression enraged the Kremlin and its hatchet-men and lackey propagandists, who viciously attacked the truth-teller in a series of brutal press releases and articles in their government-controlled media.

As this quote also suggests, Solzhenitsyn had much to say for America. He told the AFL-CIO that America was "a country of tremendous breadth of spirit; a country of generosity; a country of magnanimity." More trenchantly, he gravely warned against "unprincipled compromises," about sacrificing "conscience," and about making "deals with evil."

Here, more context is required: Notably, this was mere weeks before the Helsinki conference, where some 30-40 nations -- the United States among them -- met in Finland to sign a declaration to improve "relations" between the West and the communist world. On the surface, that may have sounded good. At closer inspection, however, it was capitulation.

Most hideous among the 10 points in the Helsinki declaration were the first and the sixth which, respectively, called for each side to respect the sovereign rights of the other and for "non-intervention in internal affairs." This was the not-so-clever language incessantly employed by the communist world to silence the West, to goad the likes of America into not protesting the jailing and executing and general repressions of hundreds of millions held captive behind the Iron Curtain.

Rubbing salt into the wounds, points seven and eight of the declaration pledged respect for basic freedoms among all parties, including "thought, conscience, belief" and "equal rights and self-determination."

The Soviets were not about to fulfill any part of the bargain.

Nonetheless, there lending support to this historical farce was America's president, Gerald Ford, signing the document alongside Western dupes like Helmut Schmidt of West Germany and Pierre Trudeau of Canada, as attendees like the hideous Erich Honecker of East Germany and Romania's insane Nicolai Ceausescu -- among other Eastern bloc tyrants -- licked their chops at the stunning display of naïveté. The pitiful scene reminded of Whittaker Chambers' observation that communists looked upon Western elites with "sneering contempt," cynically amazed at their willingness to fall prey to their own victimization.

Helsinki was the perfect byproduct, the wretched bastard child, of détente, perpetuated by the accommodationist Republican triumvirate of Nixon-Ford-Kissinger. This was not "rollback" or undermining of the Soviet empire, as Ronald Reagan would later pursue. It was not "We win, they lose," as Reagan ultimately dedicated himself and his country. No, this was pure accommodation, in its most quixotic, pathetic form.

As the likes of ex-governor Reagan publicly noted at the time, all of this -- Helsinki, détente, "non-intervention," respect for sovereignty and "territorial integrity" and so-called freedom of thought -- was merely a sham, a "one-way street" for the Soviets to continue to hold half of Europe in slavery and export communism around the globe without Western resistance. Worse still, it meant that the West, from Americans to Western Europeans, were complicit, essentially selling their brethren in Eastern Europe down the river. Détente was flatly "immoral," said Reagan.

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About the Author

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and the newly released Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century. His next book will examine Barack Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (31) | Leave a comment

Doctor Right| 8.10.10 @ 8:39AM

Ford was an incurable RINO. He was barely a Conservative.

RINOs are almost as much of a menace as liberals.

We cannot afford them any longer. Let the purge begin.

Finbarr Mora| 8.10.10 @ 8:53AM

Actually, I believe that RINOs are a bigger nuisance than liberal Democrats.

You know what to expect from liberals. You cannot predict when a RINO will sneak off the reservation.

Thank God Carter won. Otherwise it could have meant a RINO ascendency and we might never have had the Reagan years.

Stan Redmond| 8.10.10 @ 9:47AM

Actually you can predict RINOs They are LIBERALS and will always do what liberals do. Lie, cheat, steal, spend, limit your freedom, and grab as much power as possible.

Louis Jenkins| 8.10.10 @ 8:41AM

You left out Kissinger. Kissinger has played several presidents while remaining slightly recluse. I dare say had Kissinger recommended that Ford see Solzhenitsyn it would have happened. But he did not. Kissinger is a bad apple, and the truth is not in him.

Le Cracquere| 8.10.10 @ 9:00AM

A worthwhile reminder that an (R) after one's name guarantees NOTHING. It's also worth remembering that George H.W. Bush was the legitimate successor of men like Ford and his "brain trust," and the reasons that nearly toppled Ford in '76 were the reasons conservatives stayed home in '92.

Ken (Old Texican)| 8.10.10 @ 9:26AM

Mr. Kengor,

Thank you for the reminder.

Every single day, I pray for Sarah Palin to run. Heck even if she looses in the primaries, she will force her fellow Republicans to take some stands...
On Sharia
On Death panels
On Obamacare
Heck, on everything!

AMENBRO| 8.10.10 @ 11:53AM

AGREED sir. She has out-polled Boy Wonder since 2009.
Public Policy Polling, a claque as liberal as they come, could only muster a draw, 46% to 46%. In every strain of each sentence they implored, the polled to pick Obama. Mama Grizzle was chosen 1 fer 1
Dipshits they be, that are too smart to realize the intrinsic value a woman with LARGER BALLS then they. Sadly these idiots do so at the peril of the REPUBLIC for which it stands, One Nation Under God, Indivisible , with Liberty & Justice for all.

In short Get your Heads outta your asses fellers.

goatlocker| 8.12.10 @ 2:03PM

Right now, the only politicians with cajones are female, conservative Republicans. Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and Jan Brewer will be the salvation of our country. Why can't we raise our boys to grow up with this much spunk, character and integrity? Thank God that these great ladies are among us and willing to stand up and fight for truth!!!

Petronius| 8.10.10 @ 9:43AM

Outside of common sense, Ford never had a lick of gravitas. He was just another beltway bastard who made sure he wore the correct shade of brown lipstick in front of the camera. As to books and ideas, he was allergic to both. During Reagan's first term he would vet the President's mail, always discarding the complimentary copies of Human Events and dare I say TAS?
A meeting with such a colossal nonentity as Gerry Ford would have frustrated any man with serious intentions all the more when the only concern of a President like Ford is tomorrows headline in the Washington Post announcing to the rest of the world that his choice of belle letters is the society section. Gerry got to be President by knowing his place and taking orders from the beltway establishment which wanted to do to us then what Obama is doing to us now.

Tom| 8.10.10 @ 11:07AM

Ford vetted Reagan's mail? Ford didn't work for Reagan, hell they could barely stand each other.

TURK| 8.10.10 @ 9:55AM

What Kengor writes about, has a separate thrust to it, that being how the gutless country club/rino's put this country in the great jeopardy it finds itself with the communist cadre doing its best to destroy our foundations as a great nation. They leave America at the brink.

Ford was typical of the rot within the republican party. The democrats; the party of the far left have ridden roughshod over republicans like ford for decades. Only recently did they decide they had virtually no opposition for their leftist schemes. In the 40s and 50s I can remember the pipe smoking ford leading the republicans in the house. He was a bumbler with no core of substance. Harry Truman made light of him with the remark about fords football days, observing-he played without his helmet too much. But it wasn't mental deficiency, but (in Sarah's word) the lack of cojones. Like all country clubbers/rinos, ford just hated waves. It was ANYTHING to avoid the contest with nasty democrats (or the russians). Recently, Carl Rove admitted it was a mistake for Bush to spend 8 yrs being genteel in the face of the lying-vituperative democrats. W was for 'compassionate conservatism' whatever in hell that was: his daddy, in his inaugural address spoke of "a kinder gentler nation'. Further daddy joked of 'that vision thing' (one thinks he meant conservatism).

The fate of this nation rests, for now with the Republicans. Aint THAT scary!

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 8.10.10 @ 10:32AM

Gerald Ford secured his place in history by becoming the only chief executive to get the job without benefit of a vote of the people. Given a chance to vote, the people punished us with 4 years of the smiley face peanut farmer. This points out the troubling truth that the only real difference between the dumbo-crats and the rino-kons is whose ‘friends’ get the loot.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a valiant hero of World War II in which he “served as the commander of a sound-ranging battery in the Red Army, was involved in major action at the front, and twice decorated.”
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....itsyn#WWII ]. In the kommie mind of Nazi collaborator, Iosif Dzhugashvili (aka joe stalin), this made Solzhenitsyn and most of his co-patriots traitors to the kommie movement. These valiant soldiers were the first to enter Berlin ending the third reich. Their crime against the reds was nothing more than meeting soldiers from the West. These dangers to the purity of stalin’s version of hype and chains were rewarded for their noble sacrifice on behalf of Mother Russia by life-time positions slaving in the Siberian salt mines. In his masterpieces: ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ and ‘Cancer Ward’ Solzhenitsyn provides us with a glimpse of the wonderful life found under the boot of a kommie utopia. Surely, all similarities between stalin’s treatment of genuine Russian Patriots and current dumb-ocratic opinion of OURs are merely coincidental.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
Don’t Tread on Me.
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Only 894 days to go

Doctor Right| 8.10.10 @ 11:23AM

"Gerald Ford secured his place in history by becoming the only chief executive to get the job without benefit of a vote of the people."

Ummmm....

Andrew Johnson: Sworn in on April 15, 1865, the morning after Lincoln's assassination

Chester A. Arthur: Sworn in on September 19, 1881 after the death (by assassination) of President Garfield.

Theodore Roosevelt: Sworn in on September 19th, 1901, after the death (by assassination) of President McKinley.

Lyndon Baines Johnson: Sworn in on November 22nd, 1963, after the death (by assassination) of President Kennedy.

Ford was the FIFTH President to obtain the White House without benefit of an election.

Akaky| 8.10.10 @ 11:57AM

Doc, sorry, but all of the men you bring up ran as the second half of a presidential ticket. The people voted for them. Ford was appointed Vice President by Nixon after Agnew's resignation and became President after Nixon's resignation. Nobody except the people in Ford's congressional district ever voted for him for anything other than Congress until 1976, when he'd already been President for two years. Gill got it right.

Doctor Right| 8.10.10 @ 12:30PM

Actually, you got it right by clarifying the statement.

Gil's original comment was not as clear.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 8.10.10 @ 1:36PM

Akaky, thanks for backing me up!

Doctor Right, just because you lack a basic understanding of the turmoil of the Nixon years does not make my statement in any way unclear. Try checking your facts. A simple glimpse at the first paragraph of Wikipedia’s Gerald Ford would have revealed your error.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
Don’t Tread on Me.
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“As the first person appointed to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment, when he became President upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, he also became the only President of the United States who was elected neither President nor Vice-President.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford
Only 894 days to go.

Alert1201| 8.10.10 @ 2:35PM

I understood what Gil meant.

Finbarr Moran| 8.10.10 @ 6:10PM

We're all on the same side, aren't we gents?

Let's not act like RINOs :)

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 8.11.10 @ 6:44AM

Are we all on the same side? The fact is what I know about most of those who comment here is limited to whatever they have written. Nor do any of you know that much about me. Which side am I on? Many think I’m a respubly-kon; whereas, I dislike that crowd almost as much as I hate the other guys. Consider the handles we each chose for posting here. How many of them are assuredly the actual name of the poster? And there is nothing preventing anyone else from using my nom de AmSpec and posting comments here. AmSpec doesn’t care. All it asks is for an email address. I’m not even sure whether they check if that e-address is valid.

What I do know is that there are many loonie lemmings who corrupt this and similar sites. One of their techniques is simply to complicate the argument. Nothing in my first comment was in error other than maybe the spelling or grammar. Yet Doctor Right made a rather lame attempt to create a tempest in an empty pot by posting a demonstrably inaccurate reply. Either he really is that clueless, which I have no way of proving, since I do not know him (I don’t even know for certain Doctor Right is a him) or he’s playing mind games. Either way, I’m not on his side.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
Don’t Tread on Me.
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence” - John Adams
Only 893 days to go.

Joe Oliva| 8.10.10 @ 12:59PM

All except Ford were legitimately elected as VP, which implies if the the President dies, resigns, or is impeached, he would become President.

Ford was APPOINTED as VP and became President without the benefit of receiving the votes of his countrymen.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 8.10.10 @ 1:54PM

I should have included you in my 1:36 PM reply to Doctor Right when I thanked Akaky. My only excuse is that I first voted during the Nixon years. Well, maybe I was voting already in Chicago - just not in person.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
Don’t Tread on Me.
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“Good evening. I'm Gerald Ford and you're not.” - Gerald Ford, possibly to Chevy Chase who had made a career of lampooning Ford’s stumbling down the steps of Air Force One in 1975, at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in 1975.
Only 894 days to go.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 8.10.10 @ 3:26PM

Not to put too fine a point on this, but in all there were eight Presidents who died in office:
1) William Henry Harrison succeeded by John Tyler;
2) Zachary Taylor succeeded by Millard Fillmore;
3) Abraham Lincoln succeeded by Andrew Johnson;
4) James A. Garfield succeeded by Chester A. Arthur;
5) William McKinley succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt;
6) Warren G. Harding succeeded by Calvin Coolidge;
7) Franklin Delano Roosevelt succeeded by Harry S. Truman; and
8) John F. Kennedy succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson.

With the exception of Taylor, the others were all elected in years evenly divisible by 20. A coincidence that gave the loonie left great hope during the Reagan era.

So Ford was the Ninth Vice President to assume the highest office in OUR land due to His President’s leaving office before completion of his current term.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
Don’t Tread on Me.
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
kommie: "Excuse me, what time is it right now?"
Tea Partier: "It's 11:25PM."
kommie: (confused look on face) "You know, it's the weirdest thing, I've asked that question thirty times today, and every time someone gives me a different answer." modified from http://www.ahajokes.com/blo020.html
Only 894 days to go.

Al Adab| 8.10.10 @ 3:36PM

Gill, et al:
Nixon considered Goldwater for the VP appointment. Had he been picked instead of Ford, what a future. Nixon misjudged and thought that Ford, being a nonentity would secure his, Nixon's, Presidency. Goldwater would have. They would have dropped "Watergate" like a hot potato with Goldwater in the Vice Presidency.

mike ames| 8.10.10 @ 10:46AM

Ford stood in a long line of testosterone deprived RINOs. Men who lived not by honor or principal but by public funding u0on which rests thier livlihood making them no beter than the Marxist they claim to stand against.

Al Adab| 8.10.10 @ 11:19AM

The so called Moderate or accomodationist wing of the Republican party was, and continues to be, the biggest problem for GOP success. They are more interested in their own position and their own "nest padding" than the principles to which they should adhere. The battle against the luke warm Republicans continues. They fear the loss of their perrogatives and another 1964. Yet it was from 64 that the American renewal began.

Don't forget that Bush opposed Reagan in 80 and that Cheny and Rumsfeld backed Ford over Reagan in 76. Romney opposed Goldwater in 64. Yet, what these events demonstrate is that it is only when the Conservative Movement preponderates in the GOP that the party enjoys success. Those who fail to stand for something, stand for nothing.

Petronius| 8.10.10 @ 3:58PM

Good pt. Al
If we look at presidential election results starting in 1960 with Nixon's loss, it was because the hard case conservatives stayed home even after Goldwater had at them to contribute to the team they claimed to be on. When Goldwater lost in '64, the RINO's returned the favor and so it has remained. The Demoncrats win because they play for keeps united to the end. The Republicans only care about who controls their party; not their country. Every time conservatives in my state tried to challenge the power of the plutocrats of the Republican state committee the chair would recess the meetings and they would all get in their Caddys and drive off. The reason is simple enough, as it is their one commonality with the Demoncrats. They too are snobs first: and will do anything to prevent ordinary Americans from accumulating enough wealth where they might have to treat with just one of us who earns his position the hard way. The RINO loves socialism because it is such a convenient means of keeping the proles in their places.

David Shoup| 8.10.10 @ 5:25PM

When foxes ( Democrats) kill our chickens, we are saddened by the loss, but foxes are wild animal that are expected to cause damage. When rogue guard dogs (liberal Republicans) cause damage, we are righteously indignant, because guard dogs are supposed be protectors. The rogue guard dogs (we could name many names, past and present) deserve special contempt.

Bill| 8.11.10 @ 4:37PM

Solzhenitsyn was indeed "kind of a horse's ass." He was also the clearest, most compelling, and loudest voice trumpeting the vicious brutality of Soviet communism, and President Ford should have done everything he could to have Solzhenitsyn address a joint session of Congress.

Ford was a good man, but unlike Reagan, he was too much of a politician and not enough of a diplomat.

bernardo| 8.11.10 @ 6:30PM

Some people have said that RINOs such as Ford are almost as bad as the leftists. Actually, except in unusual circumstances such as 1964-1966 and the last two years when the left is in nearly full control, the RINOs are often worse than the leftists in their effect if not in their intentions, at least in domestic policy.
When Democrats are in power, we can count on the Republicans to oppose their worst ideas and often to block them. When RINOs are in power, we can count on most Republicans to be good team players and go along with wage and price controls, creating the EPA, the ADA, higher taxes, TARP, creating the TSA, or whatever other bad schemes the RINO in the White House comes up with.
Generally in foreign policy even RINOs do better than the anti-American Dems of the last forty years. However that is not saying much. Ford was less of a disaster than Carter, but he was still a failure