Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

December 8, 2021

When Bob Dole Told Gorbachev to Let the Jewish People Go

“The freedom of enslaved people is America’s business.”

Bob Dole, a thrice-decorated veteran of World War II who served in the Senate for 30 years, and was the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, died on Sunday at the age of ninety-eight. Among the causes to which he was deeply committed was the plight of Soviet Jewry, as Jacob Kornbluh recounts. At a 1987 rally, with Natan Sharansky and other refusenik leaders present—and just before Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in the U.S. for arms-control talks—Dole spoke vigorously on behalf of those Jews still trapped behind the iron curtain. (Video, four minutes.)

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