U.S. Support for Perestroika

Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Students and Faculty at Moscow State University
May 31, 1988

The President. Thank you, Rector Logunov, and I want to thank all of you very much for
a very warm welcome. It's a great pleasure to be here at Moscow State University, and I
want to thank you all for turning out. I know you must be very busy this week, studying
and taking your final examinations. So, let me just say zhelayu vam uspekha [I wish you
success]. Nancy couldn't make it today because she's visiting Leningrad, which she tells
me is a very beautiful city, but she, too, says hello and wishes you all good luck.

Let me say it's also a great pleasure to once again have this opportunity to speak directly
to the people of the Soviet Union. Before I left Washington, I received many heartfelt
letters and telegrams asking me to carry here a simple message, perhaps, but also some of
the most important business of this summit: It is a message of peace and good will and
hope for a growing friendship and closeness between our two peoples.

As you know, I've come to Moscow to meet with one of your most distinguished
graduates. In this, our fourth summit, General Secretary Gorbachev and I have spent
many hours together, and I feel that we're getting to know each other well. Our
discussions, of course, have been focused primarily on many of the important issues of
the day, issues I want to touch on with you in a few moments. But first I want to take a
little time to talk to you much as I would to any group of university students in the United
States. I want to talk not just of the realities of today but of the possibilities of tomorrow.

Standing here before a mural of your revolution, I want to talk about a very different
revolution that is taking place right now, quietly sweeping the globe without bloodshed or
conflict. Its effects are peaceful, but they will fundamentally alter our world, shatter old
assumptions, and reshape our lives. It's easy to underestimate because it's not
accompanied by banners or fanfare. It's been called the technological or information
revolution, and as its emblem, one might take the tiny silicon chip, no bigger than a
fingerprint. One of these chips has more computing power than a roomful of old-style
computers.

As part of an exchange program, we now have an exhibition touring your country that
shows how information technology is transforming our lives -- replacing manual labor
with robots, forecasting weather for farmers, or mapping the genetic code of DNA for
medical researchers. These microcomputers today aid the design of everything from
houses to cars to spacecraft; they even design better and faster computers. They can
translate English into Russian or enable the blind to read or help Michael Jackson
produce on one synthesizer the sounds of a whole orchestra. Linked by a network of
satellites and fiber-optic cables, one individual with a desktop computer and a telephone
commands resources unavailable to the largest governments just a few years ago.

Like a chrysalis, we're emerging from the economy of the Industrial Revolution -- an
economy confined to and limited by the Earth's physical resources -- into, as one
economist titled his book, ``The Economy in Mind,'' in which there are no bounds on
human imagination and the freedom to create is the most precious natural resource. Think
of that little computer chip. Its value isn't in the sand from which it is made but in the
microscopic architecture designed into it by ingenious human minds. Or take the example
of the satellite relaying this broadcast around the world, which replaces thousands of tons
of copper mined from the Earth and molded into wire. In the new economy, human
invention increasingly makes physical resources obsolete. We're breaking through the
material conditions of existence to a world where man creates his own destiny. Even as
we explore the most advanced reaches of science, we're returning to the age-old wisdom
of our culture, a wisdom contained in the book of Genesis in the Bible: In the beginning
was the spirit, and it was from this spirit that the material abundance of creation issued
forth.

But progress is not foreordained. The key is freedom -- freedom of thought, freedom of
information, freedom of communication. The renowned scientist, scholar, and founding
father of this university, Mikhail Lomonosov, knew that. ``It is common knowledge,'' he
said, ``that the achievements of science are considerable and rapid, particularly once the
yoke of slavery is cast off and replaced by the freedom of philosophy.'' You know, one of
the first contacts between your country and mine took place between Russian and
American explorers. The Americans were members of Cook's last voyage on an
expedition searching for an Arctic passage; on the island of Unalaska, they came upon
the Russians, who took them in, and together with the native inhabitants, held a prayer
service on the ice.

The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage
to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small
enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They
are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal
computer firms in the United States was started by two college students, no older than
you, in the garage behind their home. Some people, even in my own country, look at the
riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the
entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several
times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they'll tell you it's all that they
learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it's what they learned from failing. Like an
athlete in competition or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest
teacher.

And that's why it's so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever
substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come
true. The fact is, bureaucracies are a problem around the world. There's an old story about
a town -- it could be anywhere -- with a bureaucrat who is known to be a good-fornothing, but he somehow had always hung on to power. So one day, in a town meeting,
an old woman got up and said to him: ``There is a folk legend here where I come from
that when a baby is born, an angel comes down from heaven and kisses it on one part of
its body. If the angel kisses him on his hand, he becomes a handyman. If he kisses him on
his forehead, he becomes bright and clever. And I've been trying to figure out where the
angel kissed you so that you should sit there for so long and do nothing.'' [Laughter]

We are seeing the power of economic freedom spreading around the world. Places such
as the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan have vaulted into the technological era,
barely pausing in the industrial age along the way. Low-tax agricultural policies in the
subcontinent mean that in some years India is now a net exporter of food. Perhaps most
exciting are the winds of change that are blowing over the People's Republic of China,
where one-quarter of the world's population is now getting its first taste of economic
freedom. At the same time, the growth of democracy has become one of the most
powerful political movements of our age. In Latin America in the 1970's, only a third of
the population lived under democratic government; today over 90 percent does. In the
Philippines, in the Republic of Korea, free, contested, democratic elections are the order
of the day. Throughout the world, free markets are the model for growth. Democracy is
the standard by which governments are measured.

We Americans make no secret of our belief in freedom. In fact, it's something of a
national pastime. Every 4 years the American people choose a new President, and 1988 is
one of those years. At one point there were 13 major candidates running in the two major
parties, not to mention all the others, including the Socialist and Libertarian candidates --
all trying to get my job. About 1,000 local television stations, 8,500 radio stations, and
1,700 daily newspapers -- each one an independent, private enterprise, fiercely
independent of the Government -- report on the candidates, grill them in interviews, and
bring them together for debates. In the end, the people vote; they decide who will be the
next President.But freedom doesn't begin or end with elections.

Go to any American town, to take just an example, and you'll see dozens of churches,
representing many different beliefs -- in many places, synagogues and mosques -- and
you'll see families of every conceivable nationality worshiping together. Go into any
schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of
Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights --
among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- that no government can justly
deny; the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,
and freedom of religion. Go into any courtroom, and there will preside an independent
judge, beholden to no government power. There every defendant has the right to a trial by
a jury of his peers, usually 12 men and women -- common citizens; they are the ones, the
only ones, who weigh the evidence and decide on guilt or innocence. In that court, the
accused is innocent until proven guilty, and the word of a policeman or any official has
no greater legal standing than the word of the accused. Go to any university campus, and
there you'll find an open, sometimes heated discussion of the problems in American
society and what can be done to correct them. Turn on the television, and you'll see the
legislature conducting the business of government right there before the camera, debating
and voting on the legislation that will become the law of the land. March in any
demonstration, and there are many of them; the people's right of assembly is guaranteed
in the Constitution and protected by the police. Go into any union hall, where the
members know their right to strike is protected by law. As a matter of fact, one of the
many jobs I had before this one was being president of a union, the Screen Actors Guild.
I led my union out on strike, and I'm proud to say we won.

But freedom is more even than this. Freedom is the right to question and change the
established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is
the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the
right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the
people. It is the right to dream -- to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if
you're the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person,
no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual
life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a
reason and has something to offer.

America is a nation made up of hundreds of nationalities. Our ties to you are more than
ones of good feeling; they're ties of kinship. In America, you'll find Russians, Armenians,
Ukrainians, peoples from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They come from every part
of this vast continent, from every continent, to live in harmony, seeking a place where
each cultural heritage is respected, each is valued for its diverse strengths and beauties
and the richness it brings to our lives. Recently, a few individuals and families have been
allowed to visit relatives in the West. We can only hope that it won't be long before all
are allowed to do so and Ukrainian-Americans, Baltic-Americans, Armenian-Americans
can freely visit their homelands, just as this Irish-American visits his.

Freedom, it has been said, makes people selfish and materialistic, but Americans are one
of the most religious peoples on Earth. Because they know that liberty, just as life itself,
is not earned but a gift from God, they seek to share that gift with the world. ``Reason
and experience,'' said George Washington in his Farewell Address, ``both forbid us to
expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. And it is
substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.''
Democracy is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government
limited, unintrusive; a system of constraints on power to keep politics and government
secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family
and faith.

But I hope you know I go on about these things not simply to extol the virtues of my own
country but to speak to the true greatness of the heart and soul of your land. Who, after
all, needs to tell the land of Dostoyevski about the quest for truth, the home of Kandinski
and Scriabin about imagination, the rich and noble culture of the Uzbek man of letters
Alisher Navoi about beauty and heart? The great culture of your diverse land speaks with
a glowing passion to all humanity. Let me cite one of the most eloquent contemporary
passages on human freedom. It comes, not from the literature of America, but from this
country, from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Boris Pasternak, in the novel
``Dr. Zhivago.'' He writes: ``I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held
down by threats -- any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death -- then
the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not
the prophet who sacrificed himself. But this is just the point -- what has for centuries
raised man above the beast is not the cudgel, but an inward music -- the irresistible power
of unarmed truth.''

The irresistible power of unarmed truth. Today the world looks expectantly to signs of
change, steps toward greater freedom in the Soviet Union. We watch and we hope as we
see positive changes taking place. There are some, I know, in your society who fear that
change will bring only disruption and discontinuity, who fear to embrace the hope of the
future -- sometimes it takes faith. It's like that scene in the cowboy movie ``Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,'' which some here in Moscow recently had a chance to
see. The posse is closing in on the two outlaws, Butch and Sundance, who find
themselves trapped on the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the
raging rapids below. Butch turns to Sundance and says their only hope is to jump into the
river below, but Sundance refuses. He says he'd rather fight it out with the posse, even
though they're hopelessly outnumbered. Butch says that's suicide and urges him to jump,
but Sundance still refuses and finally admits, ``I can't swim.'' Butch breaks up laughing
and says, ``You crazy fool, the fall will probably kill you.'' And, by the way, both Butch
and Sundance made it, in case you didn't see the movie. I think what I've just been talking
about is perestroika and what its goals are.

But change would not mean rejection of the past. Like a tree growing strong through the
seasons, rooted in the Earth and drawing life from the Sun, so, too, positive change must
be rooted in traditional values -- in the land, in culture, in family and community -- and it
must take its life from the eternal things, from the source of all life, which is faith. Such
change will lead to new understandings, new opportunities, to a broader future in which
the tradition is not supplanted but finds its full flowering. That is the future beckoning to
your generation.

At the same time, we should remember that reform that is not institutionalized will
always be insecure. Such freedom will always be looking over its shoulder. A bird on a
tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back. And that is why, in my
conversation with General Secretary Gorbachev, I have spoken of how important it is to
institutionalize change -- to put guarantees on reform. And we've been talking together
about one sad reminder of a divided world: the Berlin Wall. It's time to remove the
barriers that keep people apart.

I'm proposing an increased exchange program of high school students between our
countries. General Secretary Gorbachev mentioned on Sunday a wonderful phrase you
have in Russian for this: ``Better to see something once than to hear about it a hundred
times.'' Mr. Gorbachev and I first began working on this in 1985. In our discussion today,
we agreed on working up to several thousand exchanges a year from each country in the
near future. But not everyone can travel across the continents and oceans. Words travel
lighter, and that's why we'd like to make available to this country more of our 11,000
magazines and periodicals and our television and radio shows that can be beamed off a
satellite in seconds. Nothing would please us more than for the Soviet people to get to
know us better and to understand our way of life.

Just a few years ago, few would have imagined the progress our two nations have made
together. The INF treaty, which General Secretary Gorbachev and I signed last December
in Washington and whose instruments of ratification we will exchange tomorrow -- the
first true nuclear arms reduction treaty in history, calling for the elimination of an entire
class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles. And just 16 days ago, we saw the beginning of
your withdrawal from Afghanistan, which gives us hope that soon the fighting may end
and the healing may begin and that that suffering country may find self-determination,
unity, and peace at long last.

It's my fervent hope that our constructive cooperation on these issues will be carried on to
address the continuing destruction and conflicts in many regions of the globe and that the
serious discussions that led to the Geneva accords on Afghanistan will help lead to
solutions in southern Africa, Ethiopia, Cambodia, the Persian Gulf, and Central America.
I have often said: Nations do not distrust each other because they are armed; they are
armed because they distrust each other. If this globe is to live in peace and prosper, if it is
to embrace all the possibilities of the technological revolution, then nations must
renounce, once and for all, the right to an expansionist foreign policy. Peace between
nations must be an enduring goal, not a tactical stage in a continuing conflict.

I've been told that there's a popular song in your country -- perhaps you know it -- whose
evocative refrain asks the question, ``Do the Russians want a war?'' In answer it says:
``Go ask that silence lingering in the air, above the birch and poplar there; beneath those
trees the soldiers lie. Go ask my mother, ask my wife; then you will have to ask no more,
`Do the Russians want a war?''' But what of your one-time allies? What of those who
embraced you on the Elbe? What if we were to ask the watery graves of the Pacific or the
European battlefields where America's fallen were buried far from home? What if we
were to ask their mothers, sisters, and sons, do Americans want war? Ask us, too, and
you'll find the same answer, the same longing in every heart. People do not make wars;
governments do. And no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial
gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. A people free to choose will always choose
peace.

Americans seek always to make friends of old antagonists. After a colonial revolution
with Britain, we have cemented for all ages the ties of kinship between our nations. After
a terrible Civil War between North and South, we healed our wounds and found true
unity as a nation. We fought two world wars in my lifetime against Germany and one
with Japan, but now the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan are two of our closest
allies and friends.

Some people point to the trade disputes between us as a sign of strain, but they're the
frictions of all families, and the family of free nations is a big and vital and sometimes
boisterous one. I can tell you that nothing would please my heart more than in my
lifetime to see American and Soviet diplomats grappling with the problem of trade
disputes between America and a growing, exuberant, exporting Soviet Union that had
opened up to economic freedom and growth.

And as important as these official people-to-people exchanges are, nothing would please
me more than for them to become unnecessary, to see travel between East and West
become so routine that university students in the Soviet Union could take a month off in
the summer and, just like students in the West do now, put packs on their backs and
travel from country to country in Europe with barely a passport check in between.
Nothing would please me more than to see the day that a concert promoter in, say,
England could call up a Soviet rock group, without going through any government
agency, and have them playing in Liverpool the next night. Is this just a dream? Perhaps,
but it is a dream that is our responsibility to have come true.

Your generation is living in one of the most exciting, hopeful times in Soviet history. It is
a time when the first breath of freedom stirs the air and the heart beats to the accelerated
rhythm of hope, when the accumulated spiritual energies of a long silence yearn to break
free. I am reminded of the famous passage near the end of Gogol's ``Dead Souls.''
Comparing his nation to a speeding troika, Gogol asks what will be its destination. But he
writes, ``There was no answer save the bell pouring forth marvelous sound.''

We do not know what the conclusion will be of this journey, but we're hopeful that the
promise of reform will be fulfilled. In this Moscow spring, this May 1988, we may be
allowed that hope: that freedom, like the fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoy's grave,
will blossom forth at last in the rich fertile soil of your people and culture. We may be
allowed to hope that the marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising through,
ringing through, leading to a new world of reconciliation, friendship, and peace.

Thank you all very much, and da blagoslovit vas gospod -- God bless you.

Mr. Logunov. Dear friends, Mr. President has kindly agreed to answer your questions.
But since he doesn't have too much time, only 15 minutes -- so, those who have
questions, please ask them.

Strategic Arms Reductions

Q. And this is a student from the history faculty, and he says that he's happy to welcome
you on behalf of the students of the university. And the first question is that the
improvement in the relations between the two countries has come about during your
tenure as President, and in this regard he would like to ask the following question. It is
very important to get a handle on the question of arms control and, specifically, the
limitation of strategic arms. Do you think that it will be possible for you and the General
Secretary to get a treaty on the limitation of strategic arms during the time that you are
still President?

The President. Well, the arms treaty that is being negotiated now is the so-called START
treaty, and it is based on taking the intercontinental ballistic missiles and reducing them
by half, down to parity between our two countries. Now, this is a much more complicated
treaty than the INF treaty, the intermediate-range treaty, which we have signed and which
our two governments have ratified and is now in effect. So, there are many things still to
be settled. You and we have had negotiators in Geneva for months working on various
points of this treaty. Once we had hoped that maybe, like the INF treaty, we would have
been able to sign it here at this summit meeting. It is not completed; there are still some
points that are being debated. We are both hopeful that it can be finished before I leave
office, which is in the coming January, but I assure you that if it isn't -- I assure you that I
will have impressed on my successor that we must carry on until it is signed. My dream
has always been that once we've started down this road, we can look forward to a day --
you can look forward to a day -- when there will be no more nuclear weapons in the
world at all.

Young People

Q. The question is: The universities influence public opinion, and the student wonders
how the youths have changed since the days when you were a student up until now?

The President. Well, wait a minute. How you have changed since the era of my own
youth?

Q. How just students have changed, the youth have changed. You were a student.
[Laughter] At your time there were one type. How they have changed?

The President. Well, I know there was a period in our country when there was a very
great change for the worse. When I was Governor of California, I could start a riot just by
going to a campus. But that has all changed, and I could be looking out at an American
student body as well as I'm looking out here and would not be able to tell the difference
between you.

I think that back in our day -- I did happen to go to school, get my college education in a
unique time; it was the time of the Great Depression, when, in a country like our own,
there was 25-percent unemployment and the bottom seemed to have fallen out of
everything. But we had -- I think what maybe I should be telling you from my point here,
because I graduated in 1932, that I should tell you that when you get to be my age, you're
going to be surprised how much you recall the feelings you had in these days here and
that -- how easy it is to understand the young people because of your own having been
young once. You know an awful lot more about being young than you do about being
old. [Laughter]

And I think there is a seriousness, I think there is a sense of responsibility that young
people have, and I think that there is an awareness on the part of most of you about what
you want your adulthood to be and what the country you live in -- you want it to be. And
I have a great deal of faith. I said the other day to 76 students -- they were half American
and half Russian. They had held a conference here and in Finland and then in the United
States, and I faced them just the other day, and I had to say -- I couldn't tell the difference
looking at them, which were which, but I said one line to them. I said I believe that if all
the young people of the world today could get to know each other, there would never be
another war. And I think that of you. I think that of the other students that I've addressed
in other places.

And of course, I know also that you're young and, therefore, there are certain things that
at times take precedence. I'll illustrate one myself. Twenty-five years after I graduated,
my alma mater brought me back to the school and gave me an honorary degree. And I
had to tell them they compounded a sense of guilt I had nursed for 25 years because I
always felt the first degree they gave me was honorary. [Laughter] You're great! Carry
on.

Regional Conflicts

Q. Mr. President, you have just mentioned that you welcome the efforts -- settlement of
the Afghanistan question and the difference of other regional conflicts. What conflicts do
you mean? Central America conflicts, Southeast Asian, or South African?

The President. Well, for example, in South Africa, where Namibia has been promised its
independence as a nation -- another new African nation. But it is impossible because of a
civil war going on in another country there, and that civil war is being fought on one side
by some 30,000 to 40,000 Cuban troops who have gone from the Americas over there
and are fighting on one side with one kind of authoritative government. When that
country was freed from being a colony and given its independence, one faction seized
power and made itself the government of that nation. And leaders of another -- seeming
the majority of the people had wanted, simply, the people to have the right to choose the
government that they wanted, and that is the civil war that is going on. But what we
believe is that those foreign soldiers should get out and let them settle it, let the citizens
of that nation settle their problems.

And the same is true in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has been -- Nicaragua made a promise.
They had a dictator. There was a revolution, there was an organization that -- and was
aided by others in the revolution, and they appealed to the Organization of American
States for help in getting the dictator to step down and stop the killing. And he did. But
the Organization of American States had asked, what are the goals of the revolution? And
they were given in writing, and they were the goals of pluralistic society, of the right of
unions and freedom of speech and press and so forth and free elections -- a pluralistic
society. And then the one group that was the best organized among the revolutionaries
seized power, exiled many of the other leaders, and has its own government, which
violated every one of the promises that had been made. And here again, we want -- we're
trying to encourage the getting back those -- or making those promises come true and
letting the people of that particular country decide their fate.

Soviet MIA's in Afghanistan

Q. Esteemed Mr. President, I'm very much anxious and concerned about the destiny of
310 Soviet soldiers being missing in Afghanistan. Are you willing to help in their search
and their return to the motherland?

The President. Very much so. We would like nothing better than that.

U.S. Constitution

Q. The reservation of the inalienable rights of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution
faces certain problems; for example, the right of people to have arms, or for example, the
problem appears, an evil appears whether spread of pornography or narcotics is
compatible with these rights. Do you believe that these problems are just unavoidable
problems connected with democracy, or they could be avoided?

The President. Well, if I understand you correctly, this is a question about the inalienable
rights of the people -- does that include the right to do criminal acts -- for example, in the
use of drugs and so forth? No. No, we have a set of laws. I think what is significant and
different about our system is that every country has a constitution, and most constitutions
or practically all of the constitutions in the world are documents in which the government
tells the people what the people can do. Our Constitution is different, and the difference
is in three words; it almost escapes everyone. The three words are, ``We the people.'' Our
Constitution is a document in which we the people tell the Government what its powers
are. And it can have no powers other than those listed in that document. But very
carefully, at the same time, the people give the government the power with regard to
those things which they think would be destructive to society, to the family, to the
individual and so forth -- infringements on their rights. And thus, the government can
enforce the laws. But that has all been dictated by the people.

President's Retirement Plans

Q. Mr. President, from history I know that people who have been connected with great
power, with big posts, say goodbye, leave these posts with great difficulty. Since your
term of office is coming to an end, what sentiments do you experience and whether you
feel like, if, hypothetically, you can just stay for another term? [Laughter]

The President. Well, I'll tell you something. I think it was a kind of revenge against
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected four times -- the only President. There had
kind of grown a tradition in our country about two terms. That tradition was started by
Washington, our first President, only because there was great talk at the formation of our
country that we might become a monarchy, and we had just freed ourselves from a
monarchy. So, when the second term was over, George Washington stepped down and
said he would do it -- stepping down -- so that there would not get to be the kind of idea
of an inherited aristocracy. Well, succeeding Presidents -- many of them didn't get a
chance at a second term; they did one term and were gone. But that tradition kind of
remained, but it was just a tradition. And then Roosevelt ran the four times -- died very
early in his fourth term. And suddenly, in the atmosphere at that time, they added an
amendment to the Constitution that Presidents could only serve two terms.

When I get out of office -- I can't do this while I'm in office, because it will look as I'm
selfishly doing it for myself -- when I get out of office, I'm going to travel around what I
call the mashed-potato circuit -- that is the after-dinner speaking and the speaking to
luncheon groups and so forth -- I'm going to travel around and try to convince the people
of our country that they should wipe out that amendment to the Constitution because it
was an interference with the democratic rights of the people. The people should be
allowed to vote for who they wanted to vote for, for as many times as they want to vote
for him; and that it is they who are being denied a right. But you see, I will no longer be
President then, so I can do that and talk for that.

There are a few other things I'm going to try to convince the people to impress upon our
Congress, the things that should be done. I've always described it that if -- in Hollywood,
when I was there, if you didn't sing or dance, you wound up as an after-dinner speaker.
And I didn't sing or dance. [Laughter] So, I have a hunch that I will be out on the
speaking circuit, telling about a few things that I didn't get done in government, but
urging the people to tell the Congress they wanted them done.

American Indians

Q. Mr. President, I've heard that a group of American Indians have come here because
they couldn't meet you in the United States of America. If you fail to meet them here, will
you be able to correct it and to meet them back in the United States?

The President. I didn't know that they had asked to see me. If they've come here or
whether to see them there -- [laughter] -- I'd be very happy to see them.

Let me tell you just a little something about the American Indian in our land. We have
provided millions of acres of land for what are called preservations -- or reservations, I
should say. They, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way
of life, as they had always lived there in the desert and the plains and so forth. And we set
up these reservations so they could, and have a Bureau of Indian Affairs to help take care
of them. At the same time, we provide education for them -- schools on the reservations.
And they're free also to leave the reservations and be American citizens among the rest of
us, and many do. Some still prefer, however, that way -- that early way of life. And we've
done everything we can to meet their demands as to how they want to live. Maybe we
made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that
kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, no, come join us; be citizens
along with the rest of us. As I say, many have; many have been very successful.

And I'm very pleased to meet with them, talk with them at any time and see what their
grievances are or what they feel they might be. And you'd be surprised: Some of them
became very wealthy because some of those reservations were overlaying great pools of
oil, and you can get very rich pumping oil. And so, I don't know what their complaint
might be.

Soviet Dissidents

Q. Mr. President, I'm very much tantalized since yesterday evening by the question, why
did you receive yesterday -- did you receive and when you invite yesterday -- refuseniks
or dissidents? And for the second part of the question is, just what are your impressions
from Soviet people? And among these dissidents, you have invited a former collaborator
with a Fascist, who was a policeman serving for Fascist.

The President. Well, that's one I don't know about, or maybe the information hasn't been
all given out on that. But you have to understand that Americans come from every corner
of the world. I received a letter from a man that called something to my attention
recently. He said, you can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman; you
can go to live in Germany, you cannot become a German -- or a Turk, or a Greek, or
whatever. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in America
and become an American.

You have to realize that we are a people that are made up of every strain, nationality, and
race of the world. And the result is that when people in our country think someone is
being mistreated or treated unjustly in another country, these are people who still feel that
kinship to that country because that is their heritage. In America, whenever you meet
someone new and become friends, one of the first things you tell each other is what your
bloodline is. For example, when I'm asked, I have to say Irish, English, and Scotch --
English and Scotch on my mother's side, Irish on my father's side. But all of them have
that.

Well, when you take on to yourself a wife, you do not stop loving your mother. So,
Americans all feel a kind of a kinship to that country that their parents or their
grandparents or even some great-grandparents came from; you don't lose that contact. So,
what I have come and what I have brought to the General Secretary -- and I must say he
has been very cooperative about it -- I have brought lists of names that have been brought
to me from people that are relatives or friends that know that -- or that believe that this
individual is being mistreated here in this country, and they want him to be allowed to
emigrate to our country -- some are separated families.

One that I met in this, the other day, was born the same time I was. He was born of
Russian parents who had moved to America, oh, way back in the early 1900's, and he was
born in 1911. And then sometime later, the family moved back to Russia. Now he's
grown, has a son. He's an American citizen. But they wanted to go back to America and
being denied on the grounds that, well, they can go back to America, but his son married
a Russian young lady, and they want to keep her from going back. Well, the whole family
said, no, we're not going to leave her alone here. She's a member of the family now. Well,
that kind of a case is brought to me personally, so I bring it to the General Secretary. And
as I say, I must say, he has been most helpful and most agreeable about correcting these
things.

Now, I'm not blaming you; I'm blaming bureaucracy. We have the same type of thing
happen in our own country. And every once in a while, somebody has to get the
bureaucracy by the neck and shake it loose and say, Stop doing what you're doing! And
this is the type of thing and the names that we have brought. And it is a list of names, all
of which have been brought to me personally by either relatives or close friends and
associates. [Applause]

Thank you very much. You're all very kind. I thank you very much. And I hope I
answered the questions correctly. Nobody asked me what it was going to feel like to not
be President anymore. I have some understanding, because after I'd been Governor for 8
years and then stepped down, I want to tell you what it's like. We'd only been home a few
days, and someone invited us out to dinner. Nancy and I both went out, got in the back
seat of the car, and waited for somebody to get in front and drive us. [Laughter]

[At this point, Rector Logunov gave the President a gift.]

That is beautiful. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. in the Lecture Hall at Moscow State University.
Anatoliy A. Logunov was rector of the university.

Ronald Reagan, "Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Students and Faculty," Moscow State University, Moscow, Soviet Union, speech, May 31, 1988, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Public Papers, Reagan Library (accessed September 7, 2006).