AP News, August 31st, 2007
Charles Vanik
CLEVELAND (AP) _ Former Rep. Charles Vanik, who during his years in Congress co-sponsored an effort to force the Soviet Union to allow more Jews to emigrate, died at his home in Jupiter, Fla. He was 94.
Vanik died Wednesday of natural causes. He had been in good health, considering his age, said Mark Talisman, former chief of staff.
The outspoken Democrat was a congressman from 1955 to 1981.
"He had an extraordinary career," said former Rep. Louis Stokes, a fellow Ohio Democrat. "At that time, he was one of the real liberals in the Congress, a leader in passage of social legislation."
Vanik had announced in early 1980 that he would not seek a 14th term in Congress that year, saying he disliked being forced to raise funds and then owe favors to donors.
Vanik and then-Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash., sponsored what became known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment in 1974. The amendment to the Trade Reform Bill tied the Soviet Union's trade status to whether it freely allowed Jewish emigration.
Emigration of Soviet Jews did increase in the years after it passed, but slowed to a trickle in the 1980s and became a major source of friction between the two nations.
In 1988, five years after Jackson died, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged the amendment to be scrapped, saying, "Why should the dead hold onto the coattails of the living? I mean the Jackson-Vanik amendment. One of them is already physically dead. The other is politically dead."
The New York Times reported that Vanik countered: "Lenin has been dead for a long time and they still live under his guidance." But he added that the amendment could be waived if Moscow continued making progress on emigration. Then-President Bush did waive the amendment in December 1990, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment is still on the books. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have criticized Washington for failing to repeal it, saying the refusal to do so undermined trust between the two nations.
Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called it a "relic of the Cold War'" and said it should be scrapped.
