DISSENT AS AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE: THE CASE OF THE SOVIET UNION.
Item
-
Title
-
DISSENT AS AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE: THE CASE OF THE SOVIET UNION.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8103956
-
identifier
-
8103956
-
Creator
-
POPADIUK, ROMAN.
-
Contributor
-
Howard Lentner | Henry Morton
-
Date
-
1980
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Political Science, International Law and Relations
-
Abstract
-
This study analyzes the development of the human rights issue in United States foreign policy and the impact the issue has had on United States-Soviet relations as regards two specific types of dissent, namely Jewish emigration dissent and Ukrainian nationalism. The Jackson Amendment serves as a case study in the examination of the Soviet Jewish emigration issue.;The dissertation posits that four factors may have played a role in conditioning United States behavior towards Soviet dissent. These are: the politics of detente in the United States, the rise of moralism in United States foreign policy in the 1970's, the goals of the dissidents concerned, and the Jewish and Ukrainian ethnic groups in the United States.;While detente was progressing under the Nixon Presidency there was criticism in the United States that detente was basically benefitting the Soviet Union. At the time there was also a movement in Congress toward an emphasis on moralism in United States foreign policy as a reaction to the Vietnam War and Watergate.;The basic hypothesis of this dissertation is that the politics of detente and the growth of moralism in United States foreign policy combined in such a way that the critics of detente in the United States seized upon the issue of human rights as a means to pressure the Soviet Union and to gear detente in a manner they favored. The Jewish emigration issue became the most convenient tool for exercising this pressure because of the historical tradition in the United States for speaking out against Russian persecution of Jews, because emigration is a widely recognized international right and because emigration does not pose a major threat against the Soviet Union as another form of dissent might.;Support was not forthcoming for Ukrainian nationalist dissent because it presents a direct threat to the stability of the Soviet Union; thus, support of it might lead to great friction between the two states. Therefore, the goals of the dissidents played a role in conditioning United States behavior over the dissent issue.;With respect to the American-Jewish community and the Ukrainian-American community it can be said that both played a minimal role in shaping United States policy. The passage of the Jackson Amendment was due to the fact that the American-Jewish community was congruent in its goal with the attitudes of a majority of the American people at the time and was able to ride this crest on behalf of Soviet Jewry. The Ukrainian-American community did not possess this congruence.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Political Science
