The Legacy of John F. Kennedy

15 May 1992

Today is the last day of my stay in the United States. During these weeks I have spoken a great deal and seen much which I must still assimilate. Before me has opened up an enormous, multi-faceted, and friendly country. And it is significant that I am ending this trip among those whom I hope I may call friends.

What is my impression of America?

I find it not to be self-satisfied, arrogant, or overconfident in its approach to the surrounding world, but rather a country which is thinking and reflecting on events.

America thinks about the present and the future. It is reflecting on its problems and thinking them through. It is guided by the idea of justice. Its thoughts go out to those whom the American dream has for the time being passed by. It thinks about leadership and what this means today for the country and for the world.

And as long as this society can remain dissatisfied, capable of critical analysis and evaluation, as long as it contains powerful wellsprings of social energy, as long as it does not give in to complacency, we may rest confident that America will overcome its problems and cope with its difficulties.

On this final day of my stay in your country, we wish America peace and prosperity.

We have been brought together in Boston by the desire I have long felt to meet you and pay tribute to the name and memory of John Kennedy. He was very close to many of you. To the world he was a personality of enormous charm but whose historical impact continues to grow even in our day. For myself and for many of my generation in Russia he was a figure of exceptional interest and attractiveness.

In the years when John Kennedy was accomplishing his ascent to the pinnacle of power in this country and during the short years of his presidency, we in Russia knew little of the Kennedy family. Today we know much more, and I cannot fail to speak here of that family's instructive and dramatic impact. They have given an example of civic and social service, of fulfilling a debt to their country and to the world.

Not everyone realizes that he owes a debt. Not everyone has the opportunity to discharge it. But both of these have become traditions in the Kennedy family. They have paid too high a price, but without this, as it were, dynastic tradition and without such striking examples, no nation can have a democratic political culture. Such a culture should not demand loss of life, but it cannot emerge without great courage.

The word, "courage," had a place of honor in John Kennedy's lexicon. "Profiles in Courage" is not only the name of his book, but it was, for him, a sort of motto. But this does not exhaust the legacy of this political figure and statesman. Politics reflects life and must encompass all its variety. And it is no accident that John Kennedy loved the aphorism: "politics is the greatest and most honorable adventure."

The fact that political figures and political ideas can become tarnished, the base passions which are part of political life, do not detract from the justice of these words. Their truth is confirmed by the enormous day-to-day work of seeking optimal decisions and arriving at concrete decisions for the benefit of one's country. Only those who are magnanimous and whose intentions are honest are worthy of this work. These are the people who should enter politics.

But one must realize ahead of time that the path is not an easy one. One must inevitably answer the question: why do we go into politics? To rise to the pinnacle of power? To demonstrate that the dogmas we have inherited are true? Or is there some other goal, one not yet clearly formulated? To be among people, to understand them and help them? Or, in essence, to act in the arena of history in the making.

In thinking about the political career and evolution of John Kennedy we cannot help but trace parallels with our own day. This is acceptable, since a politician must be able to deal not only with his own era.

In the words which John Kennedy pronounced at the outset of his presidential campaign I could not help but perceive parallels with my own purpose. At that time he stated that he saw his task as being to "reopen the channels of communication between the world of thought and the seat of power."

More than two decades later, at the helm of a great country, I saw the same task before me. It would have been impossible to restore civilization, democracy, and common human values to our country if we had held to the anti-intellectual traditions of our earlier power structures.

No politician taking a decision of principle, can see before him all the trials and tribulations which may follow. Hardly anyone would fail to subscibe to what John Kennedy stated two years after becoming President: "In the first place, the problems are more difficult than I had imagined they were. Secondly, there is a limitation upon the ability of the United States to solve these problems."

Today these words incite us to serious thought. The world even then was much in need of cooperation among states to meet the challenges of the time. The world needed thinkers who could forego the urge to dominate, to solve all problems unilaterally.

But most politicians were dominated by a different logic -- that of total confrontation in the arms race. Should we be surprised that John Kennedy also paid his dues in this respect? But we may be both surprised and gratified by something else: at the height of the "Cold War" he was able to wrench himself and his thinking out of this vicious circle. Kennedy's speech at American University on June 10, 1963, was a serious intellectual breakthrough to a new world vision.

His appeal -- "not to consider conflict inevitable, nor agreements impossible, not to transform contacts among nations into an exchange of threats" -- was indeed our own guide when, together with Presidents Reagan and Bush, we commenced the enormous task of changing the international climate. But what is even more contemporary is that this appeal was buttressed by a bold concrete step -- a proposal for a treaty prohibiting nuclear testing together with a U.S. decision not to conduct any further such tests in the atmosphere.

Against the background of the rapid conclusion of negotiations on the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Testing in the Three Environments, the fact stands out with particular clarity that many opportunities were lost in the next two decades. The politicians of this period were capable only of keeping the world from nuclear catastrophe; they could not break through the inertia of accumulating nuclear arsenals and the growing threat of catastrophe.

What is it that they lacked? I think it was the inability to see beyond the tasks of the moment, inability to make a moral choice and act on it.

Time and time again I go back to the words of John Kennedy: "We stand today on the edge of a new frontier --a frontier of unknown opportunities and paths, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. Today, almost thirty years later, we are even more acutely aware that it would be criminal to miss the chance to carry through the historic shifts which have been maturing for so long, and that we vitally need a policy worthy of the scientific and technical achievements of the times and of the new discoveries promised in the century to come.

It is very close, and many of us will live to witness its onset. They say that mankind is always seized by anxiety at the turn of a millenium. Today there is reason for that. The end of the "Cold War," the emancipation of my country and of Eastern Europe, have inspired all of us. But the manifestations of chaos, collapse, and loss of control demand that we bend every effort to seek the paths to an intelligent and necessarily democratic organization of our common abode.

I have no ready-made solutions. I do not believe in imposing models and schemes on society. I believe in the individual, in the potential of his intellect and conscience. Like the great American writer, William Faulkner, I refuse to accept the end of man, however severe his future trials may be.

In a political philosophy aimed at the triumph of the individual -- not of a country, an ideology, or a class, but of the individual -- we see testimony to the heritage of John Kennedy. I am grateful for the opportunity afforded me here today to make direct contact with this heritage.

Thank you.

Mikhail Gorbachev