Надежда

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В 1983-1985 американская студента Лиза Пол, изучающая Россию, получила возможность увидеть страну вблизи, устроившись няней в американскую семью в Москве. Для того, чтобы подучить русский язык, она нашла репетитора. Ее учительницей русского стала Инна Китросская-Мейман, автор университетских учебников английского и жена диссидента-отказника Наума Неймана. На молодую студентку знакомство с миром советских диссидентов произвело большое впечатление. Дополнительно она узнала, что ее учительница болеет раком шеи и медленно умирает, потому что ее не выпускают из страны для лечения за границей.

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Вернувшись в США, Лиза решила помочь своей учительнице и попытаться обратить внимание на ее судьбу. В декабре 2015 она объявила голодовку протеста и голодала 25 дней. Об этом написали в местной газете, затем сведения распространились дальше и закончились пресс-конференцией в Вашингтоне. В октябре 1986 обе палаты Конгресса приняли единогласную резолюцию:

"Expresses the sense of the Congress that the Soviet Union should abide by its international commitments under specified international human rights agreements and: (1) immediately approve the exit visa applications of Doctor Naum Meiman and his wife, Inna Kitrosskaya-Meiman; (2) resolve the outstanding divided spouses and separated family cases between the United States and the Soviet Union; and (3) guarantee to all Soviet citizens the right to emigrate to the country of their choice."
https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/404



В декабре 1986 Москву посетил сенатор из Колорадо Гэри Харт. Харт пришел на встречу с Горбачевым со своей 20-летней дочерью, которая тоже изучала русский язык. Встреча предполагалась короткой, но в итоге продолжалась три часа. Горбачев был обеспокоен неудачей переговоров с Рейганом в Рейкьявике и советовался о том, как вести новые переговоры. (В этой же обстановке, в январе 1987 официальное приглашение посетить Москву. получит Дональд Трамп.) Харт поднял вопрос об Инне Мейман и добился от Горбачева обещания отпустить ее на лечение.

Following an appeal by Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), Soviet cancer victim Inna Meiman, 54, will be allowed to leave the Soviet Union and receive treatment in the United States, her husband, Naum Meiman, said in an interview today.
But the 74-year-old Naum Meiman, who also has long sought and been denied a visa to leave for the West, will not be allowed to go, he said. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, in a meeting with Hart here Wednesday, told the U.S. senator that Meiman possessed state secrets and must stay in the Soviet Union.
"The news has left my wife in tears," Meiman said tonight. "But she has to go. It's her only chance to live."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/12/21/soviets-allow-cancer-victim-to-leave/245cf3ab-aab1-4536-8172-01171148cd3e/



В Колорадо жила дочь Наума Неймана от прошлого брака, художница Ольга Палм.

Инну Китросскую-Мейман привезли в Вашингтон и поместили в больницу. Она умерла через три недели. Ее 75-летнего мужа не отпустили из СССР на похороны. Еще через год, после отмены выездных виз он смог уехать в Израиль.



Вернувшись из Москвы, Гэри Харт объявил о том, что вступает в президентскую гонку 1988. По опросам он быстро вышел в заглавные кандидаты и намного опережал как своих соперников на демократических праймериз, так и кандидата от республиканцев, вице-президента Буша. Умный, молодой и харизматичный, Харт был идеальным кандидатом для демократов и для электората, уставшего от правления Рейгана. Его победа казалась неизбежной.

Back then, Hart was as close to a lock for the nomination - and likely the presidency - as any challenger of the modern era. According to Gallup, Hart had a double-digit lead over the rest of the potential Democratic field among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. In a preview of the general election against the presumed Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush, Hart was polling over 50 percent among registered voters and beating Bush by 13 points, with only 11 percent saying they were undecided. He would have been very hard to stop.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/magazine/how-gary-harts-downfall-forever-changed-american-politics.html

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О скандале, который вышиб Харта из президентской гонки, рассказывается в голливудском фильме прошлого года The Front Runner. Журналисты газеты Miami Herald получили сигнал о том, что Харта видели в Майами в компании молодой девушки и что эта девушка едет в Вашингтон. Они проследили за тем, как она вошла в дом к Харту и, не зная о заднем выходе из дома, решили, что она провела там ночь. Скандал о предполагаемой супружеской измене, возможно, удалось бы замять, но Харт решительно отказался позволять другим копаться в его грязном белье и подвергать издевательствам его семью.



9 мая 1987 он вышел из гонки и сделал пророческое заявление:

"Politics in this country - take it from me - is on the verge of becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match. We all better do something to make this system work or we're all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say: I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve."
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/09/us/transcript-of-hart-statement-withdrawing-his-candidacy.html



В прошлом году стало известно о том, что незадолго до смерти движимый раскаянием Ли Этуотер, архитектор победы Буша-старшего, позвонил своему демократическому коллеге и признался, что скандал с Гэри Хартом был одним из его грязных трюков.

One of the campaigns they met to discuss afterward was that 1988 presidential race, which Atwater (with Bush) had of course ended up winning, and from which Hart had dropped out. But later, during what Atwater realized would be the final weeks of his life, Atwater phoned Strother to discuss one more detail of that campaign.
Atwater had the strength to talk for only five minutes. “It wasn’t a ‘conversation,’ ” Strother said when I spoke with him recently. “There weren’t any pleasantries. It was like he was working down a checklist, and he had something he had to tell me before he died.”
What he wanted to say, according to Strother, was that the episode that had triggered Hart’s withdrawal from the race, which became known as the Monkey Business affair, had been not bad luck but a trap. <...>
“I thought there was something fishy about the whole thing from the very beginning,” Strother recalled. “Lee told me that he had set up the whole Monkey Business deal. ‘I did it!’ he told me. ‘I fixed Hart.’ After he called me that time, I thought, My God! It’s true!”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/

Трудно представить, как сложилась бы судьба и Америки, и всего мира, если бы Гэри Харт не попал в западню и в 1988 стал бы президентом.



Лиза Пол опубликовала книгу Swimming in the Daylight: An American Student, a Soviet-Jewish Dissident, and the Gift of Hope в 2011, через 25 лет после описываемых в ней событий.

Она сравнивала советских диссидентов, сумевших пронести лучи надежды через темноту безнадежного времени, с Нельсоном Манделой.

"I try to explain to young Americans who the Soviet dissidents were in a way that is tangible to them and I like to say they were the Nelson Mandelas or the Martin Luther Kings of the Soviet Union. Andrei Sakharov, Naum Meiman, Irina Grinina, Larisa Bogoraz, just to name a few, were extraordinarily brave and beautiful people, who suffered greatly because they advanced the fight for human rights against an inhuman and brutal government-a fight that ultimately changed the course of history."
https://leazeltserman.com/an-interview-with-swimming-in-the-daylight-author-lisa-paul/

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Год назад о надежде во мраке безнадежности и о способности молодых людей нести новый свет говорил Барак Обама на праздновании столетия Манделы в Южной Африке.

It is tempting to give in to cynicism: to believe that recent shifts in global politics are too powerful to push back; that the pendulum has swung permanently. Just as people spoke about the triumph of democracy in the 90s, now you are hearing people talk about end of democracy and the triumph of tribalism and the strong man. We have to resist that cynicism.
Because, we've been through darker times, we've been in lower valleys and deeper valleys. Yes, by the end of his life, Madiba embodied the successful struggle for human rights, but the journey was not easy, it wasn't pre-ordained. The man went to prison for almost three decades. He split limestone in the heat, he slept in a small cell, and was repeatedly put in solitary confinement. And I remember talking to some of his former colleagues saying how they hadn't realized when they were released, just the sight of a child, the idea of holding a child, they had missed - it wasn't something available to them, for decades.
And yet his power actually grew during those years - and the power of his jailers diminished, because he knew that if you stick to what's true, if you know what's in your heart, and you're willing to sacrifice for it, even in the face of overwhelming odds, that it might not happen tomorrow, it might not happen in the next week, it might not even happen in your lifetime. Things may go backwards for a while, but ultimately, right makes might, not the other way around, ultimately, the better story can win out and as strong as Madiba's spirit may have been, he would not have sustained that hope had he been alone in the struggle, part of buoyed him up was that he knew that each year, the ranks of freedom fighters were replenishing, young men and women, here in South African, in the ANC and beyond; black and Indian and white, from across the countryside, across the continent, around the world, who in those most difficult days would keep working on behalf of his vision.
And that's what we need right now, we don't just need one leader, we don't just need one inspiration, what we badly need right now is that collective spirit. And, I know that those young people, those hope carriers are gathering around the world. Because history shows that whenever progress is threatened, and the things we care about most are in question, we should heed the words of Robert Kennedy - spoken here in South Africa, he said, "Our answer is the world's hope: it is to rely on youth. It's to rely on the spirit of the young."