Word: humanize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...leave the Soviet Union to undergo cancer treatment last January, he thought it was a sign that his twelve years as a Jewish refusenik were about to end. But his wife died in Washington a few weeks later, and since then Meiman, 76, a founder of the Soviet human-rights movement, has remained, isolated and in need of surgery he cannot get in the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities point to his once classified work for the Soviet Academy of Sciences 30 years ago as an excuse to prevent him from joining his only relative, a daughter in Colorado...
Meiman's story encapsulates the human-rights situation in the Soviet Union. Those who apply to leave risk harassment, loss of jobs and the prospect of years of empty waiting. Although Jewish emigration has grown from 914 in 1986 to about 8,000 this year, it is only a fraction of the 51,322 permitted to emigrate in the peak year of 1979. The State Department estimates that 400,000 Jews, out of a population of 1.8 million, would like to leave. To focus worldwide attention on Soviet human rights, a large Washington demonstration is being planned by a coalition...
...President has called the Soviet dissidents the "unseen guests" at the summit, and his Administration has made human rights a crucial test of U.S.-Soviet relations. State Department officials note the surge in Jewish emigration and point with satisfaction to the even larger burst in Armenian emigration, which is expected to grow from fewer than 247 Armenians last year to more than 6,000 in 1987. By year's end an estimated 12,000 ethnic Germans will have been allowed to move to West Germany, vs. only 783 in 1986. In a pre-summit gesture of goodwill, Soviet officials told...
...officials observe that the Soviets are showing a new willingness to discuss human rights. Says a State Department analyst: "When we met with ((former Foreign Minister)) Andrei Gromyko, we'd try to raise human rights and he would say it was an internal matter. Now the Soviets bring up the issue." To be sure, they often seek to turn it to their advantage by complaining of what they consider American abuses, including unemployment, homelessness and the imprisonment of anti-nuclear protesters...
...Kremlin's new eagerness to discuss human rights spawned a meeting in Moscow last month between Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead and Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Adamishin -- the highest-level direct talks ever held on the subject. Although such a dialogue was an encouraging sign, Whitehead came away skeptical about the degree of Soviet progress. "Are people free to move about the country," he asked rhetorically, "to listen to free media, to leave when they want, to take jobs where they want? No, the freedoms we treasure in this country do not exist there." Until that glaring imbalance...