Editing 76-17-A4 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Representatives of 35 countries, all signatories of the Helsinki agreement,
met in Belgrade to decide whether they were living up to the term of that
agreement. By way of a reminder, the Helsinki pact was something the Soviet
Union had wanted for more than three decades. In effect it was an acceptance
by all the other nations, including the U.S., that the Soviets could keep the
several countries we call Iron Curtain satellites, which they took by force,
in violation of more than 50 promises made during and after World War II.

We rationalized our signing away of freedoms (not ours to give) on the
grounds of one clause in the document wherein all signatories agreed to provide
basic human rights for their own citizens.

These are rights we take for granted. The everyday right to go where we
want to go, say what we want to say, and be presumed innocent of wrong doing
unless and until guilt can be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

If the Belgrade meeting didn't take up the names of Rudenko and Tykhy
(among many others) then it only compounded the hypocrisy of signing the
Helsinki agreement in the first place. I mention these two because they were
being tried in a Soviet court at the time the Belgrade meeting was held.

Mykola Rudenko and Oleksiy Tykhy are Ukrainians. We tend to forget that
U.S.S.R. stands for United Soviet Socialist Republics, and that some of those
so-called republics are every bit as much captive states as are Poland, East
Germany, Czechoslovakia and the others; none more so than the Ukraine.
Solzhenitsyn has written that the great majority of prisoners in the Soviet
Gulag are Ukrainians. It would seem that love of freedom still lives in the
Ukraine.

Immediately after the Helsinki agreement was signed, a group was formed in
Kiev to promote the implementation of the accords. Mykola Rudenko was chairman;
Oleksiy Tkyhy a member. They were arrested last February 5th and held without
charges until their trial which only took a few days and ended with them being
sentenced on July 1st. Rudenko was given seven years in a concentration camp,
Tykhy 10 and both were given an additional five years of exile. Exile in the
Soviet Union doesn't mean they send you out of the country. There wouldn't
be any punishment in that. You are moved to another type of prison -- very
little different from the one you have been in.

In the case of these two men, their sentences are in reality for life.
One suffers from war wounds and the other, a school teacher, is in very poor
health. Friends say it is doubtful they can survive their imprisonment.

They were tried several miles from Kiev in a factory building, used as a
courtroom for the occasion. The charge was vague -- just that they were
anti-soviet. The court appointed their lawyers. Rodenko chose to defend
himself. Tykhy's lawyer agreed with the prosecution most of the time.

The trial was held behind closed doors with about 70 spectators handpicked
by the K.G.B. Even news that the trial was being held was hushed up. Family
and friends who journeyed there were arrested and held in jail for three days
and then forcibly sent home.

Only government-selected witnesses were allowed to testify in the trial.
The sentences were a forgone conclusion. Can any at the Belgrade meeting offer
one reason why the civilized nations of the world shouldn't scrap the Helsinki
agreement? 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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