Article

2004-06-09 Russia

Evil Empire speech was welcomed by prisoners in Siberia

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Posted by Super Hose 2004-06-09 03:59|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, who at the time was confined to an eight-by-10-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia, said his jailers gave him the special privilege of reading the communist newspaper Pravda.

Splashed across the party organ's pages after Reagan's March 8, 1983, speech to the National Association of Evangelicals was condemnation of the president for having the gall to label the Soviet Union in such terms.

But a far different take on the speech quickly began to echo among the dissidents, who spread the story by tapping on walls and talking through toilets.

"We dissidents were ecstatic," Sharansky wrote in a column for the Jerusalem Post.

"Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth â a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us," said Sharansky, a Russian Jew.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-06-09 2:43:26 PM|| 2004-06-09 2:43:26 PM|| Front Page Top

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