When the U.S. Congress passed the «Captive Nations Resolution» (PL 86-90) on July 17, 1959 , it prescribed that the President of the United States should publish a Proclamation concerned with those Captive Nations every year during the third week of July. The time is upon us now.

That Law, contrary to historic facts, accuses the Russian people of «enslaving» all those other sovereign nations, like Latvia , Estonia , Czechoslovakia , and many others, total number around 30.   By placing the blame upon «Russian Communism» and «Communist Russia,» the Law completely disregards the fact that the Russians were also among those ethnic groups enslaved by International Communism.

One only needs to take a look at history books about the 1917 October Bolshevik Revolution to see that the ideology, the leaders, and the fighters were from many different ethnic groups and their ideas were a misconstrued distortion of Karl Marx’s teachings. Contrary to the assertions regarding «Russian communism,» the Russian people fought the internationalists in a long and bloody Civil War following that revolution.   Russia , along with other Soviet republics and East European countries, suffered the Communist yoke for 74 years, and one should not forget that in absolute numbers the Russians suffered much larger losses than any other ethnic group within the USSR . And in 1991, it was Russia who liberated the world from Soviet communism and worked to ensure the independence of all those Captive Nations.

There is a second flaw in the «Captive Nations Resolution»: some of those nations – like White Ruthenia, Idel-Ural, or Cossackia – have never been sovereign entities or even existed on the map. Others, like Georgia and Ukraine , joined Russia voluntarily during the past centuries to obtain protection against external enemies.

Today, the leftover Communist regimes in Cuba , North Korea , China and a few others are certainly not enslaved by the Russian Federation . This is why the «Captive Nations Resolution» became even more irrelevant, while it still retains its insulting and offensive substance towards Russia , as well as towards Russian Americans. Other problems of totally different nature have arisen in the world, and the United States needs the cooperation of Russia to solve them.

The Russian American community has been trying for many years to initiate the repeal or at the very least a change in the language of PL 86-90. However, it appears that Cold War mentality, nearsighted politics, or thinly veiled Russophobia are preventing any changes that might bring this Law in conformity with the realities.   This is why we appeal to President Bush and to the U.S. Congress to recur to this question once again and to make the necessary corrections in the Law in order to restore historic justice and thus make an important contribution to American-Russian relations.

Eduard D. Lozansky

President, The American   University in Moscow

George B. Avisov  

Congress of Russian Americans