For months politicians have been telling Americans what to think about emerging reforms in the Soviet Union. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) turned the prism the other day, telling them not what to think but how to think--without illusions, without a lot of stereotypes cluttering their minds but also with some hope.
The first thing that set Bradley's remarks apart from the pack was his focus on human beings and not on nuclear weapons; his discussion of the weapons simply gave urgency to the need for humans in both nations to think more clearly and rationally about themselves and each other. The second thing was a sense of Russian history rare in American politics that gave real depth to his portrait of what the people in both countries have in common and what makes them so different. They share a devotion to the land, a love of literature from Anton Chekhov to Saul Bellow, even of basketball and hockey. He spoke also of very real differences that mystify Americans, the Soviet denial of "many freedoms of expression" and their "preoccupation with secrets."
