ABSTRACT
In December 1987, on the eve of the summit that would bring together Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington, DC, a crowd of two hundred thousand people demonstrated on the Mall, demanding that the secretary general of the Communist Party allow Jews to leave the Soviet Union. This mass rally was an expression of the incredible support enjoyed by Soviet Jews in the United States at the end of the Cold War. The notion that the United States has a democratic mission—a notion that found its most eloquent expression under Woodrow Wilson—was strengthened by World War II. The adoption of a constraining measure toward the Soviet Union with a humanitarian aim required a particular configuration in the relations between the United States and both the Soviet Union and the State of Israel. However, the state of Israeli-American relations was not always favorable to such a commitment.
