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[MUSIC] Hello. This week the yearning is for peace which have gone with the leaders of the west on their path to Moscow.

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and the hopes and fears which have accompanied the Soviet succession. The new Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko, has said that the key to Soviet relations with the West

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will be what they were for Lenin-- the concept of peaceful coexistence. The Communists don't leave acceptance of their values to chance.

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What about the Christians? The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Habgood, of peaceful coexistence with the ideology of Marx and Lenin. Also this week, the issue of those Jews in the Soviet Union

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who wish to emigrate and who have been held hostage to the state of East-West relations. The right to leave or return to one's country is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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and the Helsinki Agreements, espoused by but not binding on the Soviet Union. while seeking understanding with the Soviet Union, not to view the situation there through rose-tinted spectacles.

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Few of those who've struggled over the years for the rights of dissidents and religious minorities in the Soviet Union would be led into that temptation. I'll be talking to the Oxford historian Martin Gilbert

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about his new book on Soviet Jewry and about the prospects for human rights. Every day in this past week has added to the welter of speculation of hunches, hypotheses, fears and hopes by the change at the top in Moscow

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and which queues of politicians from all around the world went to explore. At this level, moral issues become translated into practical imperatives.

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Henry Kissinger, the principal architect of détente in the 1970s, felt that personal goodwill was the great mirage of Western diplomacy and that sentimentality was not understood

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and the objective balance of forces. Yuri Vladimirovich lived a full life. Mr. Chernenko's first pronouncements included this about relations with the capitalist West.

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"Great Lenin bequeathed to us "the principle of peaceful coexistence of states "with different social systems. "We are invariably loyal to this principle."

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The party-family marches on the path on which it's embarked, To what extent is that peace to be resisted or accommodated by the peace of the Christian belief? What is the relevance of the Christian gospel

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to peacefully coexisting with the secular ideology of Marx and Lenin? What is a specific Christian attitude to peaceful coexistence as the Communists define it

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if the Christian message, language of Christianity, the gospel are to be taken seriously? Well, I think, first of all, Christians, like anybody else, have to be realists when it comes to these large political issues. And I think one has got to accept peaceful coexistence

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if that is all that the Soviets can offer us. But at the same time, I think one needs to realize how the ideology which is supposed to inform a nation does inevitably change over the years and have to come to terms with the realities of life. And I think one can see this happening in the Soviet Union, where more and more there's a disparity between

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the sort of theory by which people seem to be operating and the actual practice. But from what you say, do you think that they mean what they say? Because after all, I mean, they don't obscure from us their own definitions of what peaceful coexistence is.

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It does not mean conciliation of what they call our bourgeois ideologies. On the contrary, it means intensification of the class struggle and the use of revolutionary violence. So how can Christianity accept a relationship on those terms?

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I think one has to look at what happens in various parts of the world to answer this one. And I think if you look at Europe, talk of that kind is so much sound and fury because there simply are not the conditions in Europe, certainly not at the present moment, in terms

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of which this kind of revolutionary approach would make any sense at all. And I think the Russians recognize this. But I think one has got to recognize that in a whole variety of different parts of the world where there is great poverty or political oppression and so on, the Russians are certainly

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going to fish in troubled waters there. And that language of revolutionary violence is going to make a good deal of sense. And it seems to me that it is in those parts of the world that Christians have to be particularly alert to see that there is not the kind of injustice and poverty which can breed communist

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revolution. But the central point, it seems to me, is that peaceful coexistence does not mean, as the communists see it, live and let live. It means a breathing space in which communism can be consolidated, as they put it, in one

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country, as all the leaders from Lenin down have put it, until more are added. Well, indeed. But then you can take Christian language about the evangelization of the world. And both of us know that in actual practical terms, although you may have these aims to bring the whole world into the particular belief which you happen to profess, real life

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is somewhat different. And I suspect that basically the Russians are realists. How would you sum up, then, what is an appropriate general posture for a Christian believer to Marxism-Leninism?

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Is it a struggle between the forces of good and evil? Is communism, for the Christian, Lucifer falling out of heaven? No, not in the least. I think there are forms of communism

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which are diabolical. But I think there are things within communist Marxist thinking which it's very important for Christians to listen to. And I think Christians over the years have begun to learn, for example, that we are affected in our thinking by income and where our income comes from. I think Marxist theory alerts us to the whole business of

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class in a way which it's far too easy to ignore. I think also one does need to be alerted to the presence of oppressive structures. And in all these sorts of ways, I think there's a lot to learn. And I would like to see much more dialogue between Christians and Marxists. that doesn't mean that one accepts the thing and says,

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"Here is something which I would really want to go along with in its present form." But doesn't it suggest, as I think some of the critics within the Church of England suggest, that religion is becoming politicised, that it's being seen increasingly, as I would have thought some of your words might lead one to suppose,

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seen as a scheme of political and social action, which leads one, of course, to have a sympathy with the moral emphasis the Marxists put upon a social scheme of order. I mean, is the confusion due to the fact that religion is increasingly politicized? Is that why we don't see this conflict in the sharp terms we once did?

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I don't think it's increasingly politicized. I think it always has had a strong political dimension. I think what has brought this to the fore is a recent understanding of the extent to which, as human beings, our individual beliefs and styles of life

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are dependent on the social setting in which we live. So if you take, for example, a recent utterance from the political and secular world of President Reagan's focus of evangelical speech,

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I think, of evangelicals in the United States, a church audience. You would not regard that as a legitimate strand of Christian thinking to see in the communist hegemony an essential evil. I think it's disastrous to speak in that kind of language

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because as soon as you polarise as sharply as that, then you actually stop listening to what people are saying. And surely one of the great needs in our political life, both national and international,

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is actually to listen to people. So, yes, if you clothe the Soviet Union in the robes of darkness and say this is beyond the pale, then there's nothing you can have

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except a politics of confrontation. What is a proper response, as you see it, to what the new leader, Mr. Chernyanko, said about religion itself?

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He gave the major ideological speech to the plenum of the Soviet Communist Party, the Central Committee, in June last year. This is what he says.

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"There were many ideological centers of imperialism "striving not just to support, "but also to spread religious belief in our country. "We should pay attention," he says,

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"to these religious extremists in our own country." Now, how is a Christian to respond to those warnings? How do you respond as Archbishop of York to what he calls the evils of godliness?

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Yes, well, I think this is worrying, not so much for international reasons, but for what this entails for Christians in Russia. I mean, on the positive side, one can say that plenty of Soviet leaders have said this kind of thing before, and on the whole, attacks on religion tend to strengthen it rather than otherwise.

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And one has to recognize that there are huge numbers of Christians in Russia who do seem to be surviving remarkably well, although there are, of course, the very sad cases of people imprisoned and dispossessed. And from the West, we need to give all the support to them that we possibly can.

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But isn't the watchword of the Christian faith historically to overcome? Would you agree that that is so, that Christians are there to overcome? To overcome by love. And in particular, the Russian church, with a long history of suffering,

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is never surprised when it is called upon to suffer, and it regards suffering in the name of Christ as its triumph. But it also means, doesn't it, to overcome? It means the faith's fidelity,

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and, if needs be, suffering and death, in what it saw as this eternal conflict with evil forces. Yes, but indeed, again looking at the thing through Russian Orthodox eyes, the overcoming is something which we only know about in heaven.

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You don't understand the Russian church unless you see that 3/4 of their life is spent in heaven. But it's a very, very otherworldly kind of faith. And that is why it manages to coexist with a communist state.

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But almost everything you've said, in my view this morning, points to the need for some sort of accommodation and compromise. But the faith which allows us to accept compromise, would you agree, must point beyond that to something else?

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Now, in this instance, to what does it point? I believe that in the end truth will out, and that I think one sees evidences of this in the Soviet Union, even in the darkest days, when the spirit of man cannot be suppressed, that God does seem to go on working in very surprising ways, in very hard conditions.

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Now, in the long run, this, I'm quite sure, is going to have an effect. But it is a very long run, and I don't think one can short-circuit the process. But how is it to win in the long run if we weaken or lessen the very exacting demands of the Christian imperatives, if you weaken the sense for the Christian that he is confronted

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by nothing less than God himself. Well the Orthodox Church in Russia would say that they are perhaps responding more faithfully to God himself than some of us in the West. And what they need from us is our prayers and support and love and understanding of their situation. I think we in the West can

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do a great deal to help them by making our own society less vulnerable to the sort of criticisms which a sincere communist can direct against it. I think, too, on a world scale, we can do a great deal to try to create a more just and peaceful world, and this will in turn have its own kickback on the common as well.

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But doesn't that again place the emphasis on the imperfections in society rather than the inward perfection of each individual? I mean, doesn't Christianity direct itself to the inward soul of man rather than the imperfections of the society around him?

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Isn't that confusing, the purposes of God, with these shifting values in contemporary society? Well, no, because a person's soul is not something which is independent of the whole physical and social life

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which makes up the life of a human being. And what one has to do as a Christian, trying to make sense of one's Christian faith in a very confusing world, is to hold on to both these poles.

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And Christian life is lived between this tension of the individual making his or her response to God and the very down-to-earth realities with which we have to wrestle. Your Grace, thank you very much. While the West ponders the future of détente and deterrence, there remain the fascinating

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issues of how the new regime will deal with religious dissidence to Soviet orthodoxy, whether abroad from Muslims in Afghanistan and Catholics in Poland, or from Jews within the Soviet Union. The anti-Semitism of Tsarist Russia was one of the many evils the Bolshevik revolution

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sought to end. But since the early days of hope before Stalin, there have been recurrent waves of repression, both in terms of human and religious rights within Russia and on the issue of emigration. Martin Gilbert is the biographer of Winston Churchill, but he's also a Jewish historian,

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And his latest book is about those Jews who seek to leave Russia for Israel and who are refused permission so to do. It is called The Jews of Hope. Dr. Gilbert, that title, The Jews of Hope, refers to the hopes of those who want to leave

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Russia. What about the majority of Soviet Jews who wish to remain? The hopes are tied up. The 360,000 and more who have begun the very difficult process of trying to leave do so

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because they can't express their Jewishness or study or become Jewish in any way inside the Soviet Union, the million and a half and more who haven't yet sought the path of immigration look, as it were, to the fate of the 360,000 to see which way they should turn. And what has the effect of this repression of Judaism been on the community in the Soviet Union?

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Has there been mass secularization? Yes, indeed, as throughout all Soviet society, the pressures of more than 65 years of communist teaching, of anti-religious teaching, of active atheism have taken their toll, as have the physical repressions against any attempt to practice religion.

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As you know, it's a criminal offense in the Soviet Union to teach religion to anybody under the age of 16. Well, you can't begin to become religious with ease from the age of 16. I think that the incredible thing about the Jews in the Soviet Union is that they have

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somehow maintained links with their Judaism despite these repressions. And yet there's always this difficulty, isn't there, between theory and practice. The Soviet constitution also guarantees the freedom of religion for adults. They signed the Helsinki Agreement.

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And the theory is all there, and yet the practice is very different. As many of those whom I met in the Soviet Union said to me, many of the Jews, the Soviet constitution is perfect. All we seek is that it should be exercised according to its letters and its words.

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For example, according to the Soviet-signed Helsinki Agreement, any divided family can and must be reunited. Helsinki actually talks about the speedy reunification of divided families. But several thousand Soviet Jews are trapped in the Soviet Union and not allowed to join

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their families outside. Can I ask you about anti-Semitism in Russia in a historical perspective? I mean, anti-Semitism has always been a feature of Russian society, has it not? Do you think that this is a modern manifestation of the tsarist pogrom, or is it something

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different? Is it to do with-- more to do with dissidents from Soviet communist orthodoxy? The Jews are not actually dissidents. They seek to leave the Soviet Union, of course, and not to change it.

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And the anti-Semitism, I believe, as you've suggested, it comes from historic roots, and it's been there all the time. And it derives partly because the Jews are different. They have a different ethical code.

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They have a different history, the Jewish history, which goes back, say, to Masada and the Romans, and a different modern history, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. They have links with Jews outside. There is a world, Jewry, with whom many are, of course, related, even personally related.

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I think that one of the real problems for Soviet Jews in this regard is that they are not seeking much as they would like to live in a more liberal society, not seeking to change the society, but to leave it. Is that tied up with the issue of nationality?

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Because Jewishness is considered a nationality rather than a religion, isn't it? That's how it's recorded on a Russian passport. And yet the nation state for the Jews is not the Ukraine. It's not a part of the Soviet Union.

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It is, in fact, Israel. Yes, the double tragedy for the Jews of the Soviet Union is that in the days of the Tsarist pogroms, however unpleasant anti-Semitism, they could leave,

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and did leave. Actually, more than three or four million Jews left Tsarist Russia. Now, when the Russians say, you are a nationality,

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and write in their internal document, nationality Jew, they don't give them the basic national rights, which every other nationality has, and which is enshrined in Helsinki, the right of every person to leave any country and go

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to any other country. Was the creation of the state of Israel, therefore, a point in the history of Soviet Jewry that caused an additional problem? Because as well as the traditional anti-Semitism, you then had the overlay of anti-Zionism. And how much-- I want to separate, if you can, the two elements.

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You know, how much of the treatment of Jews today is down to anti-Semitism and how much is down to anti-Zionism? Well, anti-Zionism is, of course, not a Soviet policy. Mr Gromyko, who we've seen recently quite a lot on our screens, welcomed the establishment

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of the State of Israel in 1948 and was one of the world's statesmen who spoke most strongly in favor of Israel. And this, of course, sent a thrill of excitement through the Jews of the Soviet Union. Anti-Zionism in the Soviet Union is a very recent phenomenon, but it's been used very

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cruelly against the Jews of Russia, because of course what they are told in the press and openly and again and again is that any Jew in Russia who aspires to go to Israel, aspires to join the enemy, aspires to join an enemy of the Soviet Union. Whereas of course all they really seek to do is to express their basic Jewishness, their

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basic Hebrew language, which of course is not taught in the Soviet Union, and to have some links with their own people. You said earlier that the refuseniks, those who want to leave, don't seek to change Soviet society.

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And yet, isn't there an element that the Jewish intelligentsia, which was so important in the seeds of the Bolshevik revolution, have withdrawn their support, whether it's by wanting to practice their religion within a secular Russia, or by seeking, by their support for for Helsinki and for human rights. And is that a particularly difficult phenomenon for

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a Marxist-Leninist government, or one that says that it's Marxist-Leninist, to cope with? Well, I don't think they've actually withdrawn their support. The minority of Jews who supported the Bolshevik Revolution and indeed were leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution were all executed by Stalin. So they have, as it were, no say in the equation. I think what you say is very

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true that had the Jews been able to find themselves at home with communism, they would have been a very important support for the general system. And in the immediate post-Stalin era, I'm sure the Soviet authorities hoped that Jews, with a relaxation of the Stalinist type of persecution, would regard the regime as their friend. But perhaps the anti-Semitism you

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also spoke about earlier made this impossible, that somehow the regime could not accept that those Jews, like Yosef Begum, the Hebrew teacher, who wanted just to express within the Soviet Union their Jewishness. It couldn't accept this, and therefore it made them pariahs in society. Every Jew who applies to leave is thrown out immediately from his professional

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work, is not allowed to make his contribution, becomes a boiler worker, a night watchman, is given humiliating work. So that in a way, the Soviets themselves have created the impossible barrier between a Jewish contribution to communism and Jewish national aspirations to leave. What about the future? The rate of emigration has always been tied up with international

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events and international relationships, has it not? We're now at a period of change. There's change in the leadership. There are enormous changes in Lebanon, which have their own repercussions through the Middle East to Russia. What do you think the future holds? I mean, are we right to look back on the '70s as the golden age, if you can call it that.

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Well, I've called my book The Jews of Hope, and I wrote it, of course, in the Andropov era, when people said, look, there is no hope. This is an absurd title. What hope is there?

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And I was told by my Soviet Jewish friends in Moscow, in Leningrad, in Minsk, please, we do have hope, so you must reflect it. And I think now that Mr. Chernenko has taken over for Mr. Andropov, we must all hope, and hope that there will be a change, although of course it may take time.

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And briefly, what about this perennial question, what in the West should one do? Does one do good by stealth, or is it important? Are the demonstrations, the constant barrage of criticism, is that important to those people within the Soviet Union? Oh yes, I think they need to know that we care, that we're doing things, whether publicly

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or privately. They know that we are, and the more signals we can give them of concern, the better they will be able to hold on until one day the immigration gates are opened again. For their psychology it's good, but for the effect on the Soviet government? I think it's even better.

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Thank you very much. And that's all for another seven days. We'll look at more of the religious and moral considerations and events and issues of the week at the same time next Sunday. And until then, goodbye. [Music plays]

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