ABSTRACT
Amnesty International's report on Soviet human right's practices "observed no improvement in the harsh and arbitrary treatment of prisoners of conscience in 1986." But since the middle of 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev's policies have changed the world's perception of the human rights issue in his country. During the two decades preceding Gorbachev's accession to leadership, a demand that the Soviet Union honor certain fundamental human rights became embedded in the politics of the United States and, to a lesser degree, Western Europe. The human rights legacy left to Gorbachev, however, was the work not only of Stalin, but also of the men who led the Soviet Union throughout most of his adult life—Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. In no area was the failure of the Brezhnev human rights policy more apparent than in the area of emigration rights. Brezhnev inherited a policy that generally denied Soviet citizens the right to leave their own country.
