Basic Causes

Abstract

So far we have said very little about the second part of the extrinsic argument, which posits that Western governmental and public pressure on the Soviet regime has been the fundamental cause of the emigration movement. According to this widespread opinion, ‘a prime Soviet motivation for allowing more Jews to emigrate stems from a keen desire to obtain “most-favored nation” treatment and extensive trade credits from the United States’ (Sawyer, 1979: p. 188). In fact, some episodes surrounding Soviet-American trade negotiations from 1972 to 1974 might even give the impression that ‘the Soviet leadership accepted that it must trim its emigration policy to meet the demands of American critics’ (Litvinoff, 1975b: p. 1).