[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11803]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HOW ONE MAN REMEMBERS REAGAN

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, a few years ago I had the privilege of 
visiting with Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident who is now an 
Israeli cabinet minister. I asked him what his reaction was, as he was 
in the Soviet Gulag at that time, to the ``Evil Empire'' speech. Here 
is his reaction as expressed in a recent quotation:
  ``In 1983 I was confined to an 8 by 10 foot prison cell on the border 
of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the 
latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a 
condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call 
the Soviet Union an `evil empire.' Tapping on walls and talking through 
toilets, word of Reagan's `provocation' quickly spread throughout the 
prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the Free 
World had spoken the truth, a truth that burned inside the heart of 
each and every one of us.
  ``At the time, I never imagined that 3 years later I would be in the 
White House telling the story to the President. When he summoned some 
of his staff to hear what I said, I understood that there had been much 
criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between superpowers 
as a battle between good and evil. Well, Reagan was right and his 
critics were wrong.''
  There is no doubt that Natan Sharansky speaks for millions of people 
who today are free. A great President, with a great legacy, Ronald 
Wilson Reagan.

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