President Clinton was morally right to go to Moscow to celebrate V-E Day.

It has become popular in Washington to describe the current moment in U.S.-Russian relations as "difficult" or "strained." The Russian army's brutal repression in Chechnya has earned well-deserved condemnation. Politics in Moscow and Washington over prospective Russian support for Iran's nuclear ambitions have grown very complicated. All elements in the Russian leadership appear united against NATO's expansion into Central Europe along the former Soviet border, and the stakes on this policy are very high.

On all of these issues, Clinton must pick his path carefully. He cannot afford to give his political opponents at home any leverage on such an important foreign-policy question as American relations with Moscow. He must avoid mistakes not only for domestic political reasons but also because the fuse on Russian parliamentary and presidential elections is set to coincide with the President's own reelection campaign. Mistakes carry the double risks of triggering undesirable trends in Russia and political trouble at home.

Despite the delicacy of his task, it was a morally important act for an American President to go to Moscow to honor the sacrifices and success of the Russians against the common Nazi foe. Bill Clinton is the first President sufficiently free of Cold War prejudices to give this long-needed recognition.

This is a moral act because it attests the truth, a truth that has been distorted by 50 years of Cold War struggle. Telling the truth in this way sets the record straight for millions of younger Americans and Russians who know only the adversarial relationship between their countries. Two generations of Americans have been born who hardly know at all that our own wartime leaders--Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower--all honored the heroism of the Russian people and the great victories of the Red Army as it drove the Germans from native soil. It is important for Americans who can to remember the joy inspired by Russian successes in those dark years before Allied forces landed at Normandy in 1944.

The truth that President Clinton spoke in Moscow pays a debt long-ignored and offers a cleansing of our national consciousness.