america's pastime essay

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When and how baseball became America’s Pastime: An interview with David Rapp

David Rapp has had a long career as a political journalist–including serving as editor of  Congressional Quarterly . But he’s always been as much a baseball fan as a politics junkie, and this spring we published his first foray in that realm:  Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America .  Booklist called it “a potent reminder of how American first fell in love with its national pastime,” while  Chicago magazine praised Rapp’s account of “a changing America that became suddenly and almost inexplicably gripped by baseball fever.” We asked Rapp some questions about baseball, then and now, and how it became what we’ll be watching in the playoffs tonight.

It’s almost hard to imagine America without baseball. But clearly the sport had to start somewhere. Can you talk about what baseball was like at the turn of the century?

After captivating American crowds with a freewheeling, if also rule-bending, form of entertainment in the 1880s, organized baseball turned cynical and sour in the 1890s. The players were crude and foul-mouthed. The fans were raucous, hungry for violence, and they cheered for mayhem on the field. And the owners were blatantly corrupt. Emerging fads like bicycling and “pedestrianism,” or walking races, were drawing bigger audiences than most baseball games, if only because they seemed more civilized and competitively honest. The surge of the urban middle class in American cities looked down their noses at baseball as a “rough and tumble game played by a nine of rowdies for the benefit of a crowd of hoodlums,” as one female writer put it.

So how did baseball make the transition into “America’s pastime”?

Two things happened in the early 1900s, both centered in Chicago, as it happened.  A visionary baseball impresario named Ban Johnson created the American League and declared war on the established, 25-year-old National League, which had a monopoly on the top players. Headquartered in Chicago, Johnson put his AL teams in big cities like Boston, Philadelphia and New York, poached big-name players, and began promoting a brand of “clean” baseball deemed suitable for women and children. Chicago’s NL franchise was the first in the senior league to respond in kind, led by a cerebral manager named Frank Selee. He assembled a collection of raw recruits (including young men named Tinker, Evers, and Chance) and slowly rebuilt the “Colts,” as they were called then, into a team that could contend for the pennant. The West Side Colts and the AL “White Sox,” which played their games on the South Side, began drawing fans from all across the city.

You include a quote from historian Gunther Barth who said, “In the ball park . . . men were exposed to the meaning of rules in the modern city and to that basic form of urban leisure, watching others do things.” What does Barth mean when he talks about baseball   teaching the rules of city life ?

Baseball is a highly structured game—“the most serious pleasure ever invented,” as the  Tribune’s  Hugh Fullerton put it back then. Three strikes, four balls, three outs, nine innings, nine players on a side—all laid out on a geometric “diamond” rather than a rectangular grid. Who knew where these rules came from? (We’re still learning that.) But baseball players and owners began accepting these constraints on competition and, rather than flouting the rules with impunity as was their custom in previous decades, showed off what they could accomplish within them. A reliance on teamwork and highly practiced role-playing became the examples of success. By 1906, when both the NL Cubs and the AL Sox met in the “World’s Championship,” the entire city had gone bonkers over baseball. The rest of the country would quickly follow suit.

Are there other ways that baseball at this time mirrored American culture, or vice versa?

Once baseball became “acceptable” in polite society, women and kids had reason to join in the fun. The ballpark became home to a festival of good cheer and ball players were touted as exemplars of decency and hard work. Their was no radio or TV at the time, but daily newspapers and advances in the telegraph made it possible to transmit game results to the entire nation in something close to real time. And countless magazines, the Internet of their day, found out that hagiographic feature stories on ball players and managers were like honey on a stick to all kinds of readers.

You write that “the phrase ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance’ became an American idiom as expressive—and as ubiquitous—as ‘slam dunk’ is today, conveying much the same meaning.” Yet this once-famous trio seems to have disappeared into baseball’s history. Can you tell us a little bit about why the ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance’ trio was so iconic? And why don’t we talk about them more today?

Shortstop Joe Tinker of Kansas City, second-baseman Johnny Evers of Troy, New York, and first-baseman (and player-manager) Frank Chance of Fresno, California, played as an infield unit for ten years, from 1903 to 1912—a tenure unprecedented and since unmatched for a trio of their caliber. Yet none of them were “stars” as we think of them today, even though they won more games together than any team in baseball history. Each had his own family and regional motivations for pursuing baseball as a vocation. Each had his own personal demons to confront and overcome. Their long-ago day in the sun rightly serves as the origin story of today’s Chicago Cubs.

It’s hard to say why they get little notice today. They were masters of the Deadball Era in baseball, soon eclipsed by lively-ball sluggers like Babe Ruth. The Cubs own century of futility since their last World Series title in 1908 also overtook the Tinker-Evers-Chance narrative of “invincibility”—the word often used for the Cubs back then. Now that the Cubs have finally returned to the pinnacle of baseball achievement, perhaps more people will realize this generation stands on the shoulders of giants.

  There has been some talk this season about baseball being in crisis—including lower attendance and games having more strikeouts than hits. Are there any lessons that the league could learn from the early years of baseball?

The ball was softer, and there were no outfield fences in early 20th century ball parks, so the game revolved around singles, bunts, stolen bases, and other “small ball” tactics designed to produce a precious, incremental run whenever the opportunity presented itself. In other words, a fan had to stay riveted on the field to catch the one pitch or play that might determine the outcome of game. Any single or  walk served as harbinger of a rally. It’s no curse today if a young major league ball player doesn’t know how to bunt or take an extra base. He spends more time readjusting his batting gloves than looking for signs from the third-base coach. That guy would never get a second look from managers Frank Selee or Frank Chance—might not get a first look if Joe Tinker or Johnny Evers had anything to say about it. Instead of focusing all our attention on the balls that leave the yard, keep an eye on the field itself, how defenders position themselves for different batters, how pitchers work inside and/or outside the plate, and how an alert runner anticipates a lazy throw from the outfield. The best teams still do all of that.

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15.4 Descriptive Essay

Learning objective.

• Read an example of the descriptive rhetorical mode.

America’s Pastime

As the sun hits my face and I breathe in the fresh air, I temporarily forget that I am at a sporting event. But when I open my eyes and look around, I am reminded of all things American. From the national anthem to the international players on the field, all the sights and sounds of a baseball game come together like a slice of Americana pie.

First, the entrance turnstiles click and clank, and then a hallway of noise bombards me. All the fans voices coalesce in a chorus of sound, rising to a humming clamor. The occasional, “Programs, get your programs, here!” jumps out through the hum to get my attention. I navigate my way through the crowded walkways of the stadium, moving to the right of some people, to the left of others, and I eventually find the section number where my seat is located. As I approach my seat I hear the announcer’s voice echo around the ball park, “Attention fans. In honor of our country, please remove your caps for the singing of the national anthem.” His deep voice echoes around each angle of the park, and every word is heard again and again. The crowd sings and hums “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and I feel a surprising amount of national pride through the voices. I take my seat as the umpire shouts, “Play ball!” and the game begins.

In the fifth inning of the game, I decide to find a concessions stand. Few tastes are as American as hot dogs and soda pop, and they cannot be missed at a ball game. The smell of hot dogs carries through the park, down every aisle, and inside every concourse. They are always as unhealthy as possible, dripping in grease, while the buns are soft and always too small for the dog. The best way to wash down the Ball Park Frank is with a large soda pop, so I order both. Doing my best to balance the cold pop in one hand and the wrapped-up dog in the other, I find the nearest condiments stand to load up my hot dog. A dollop of bright green relish and chopped onions, along with two squirts of the ketchup and mustard complete the dog. As I continue the balancing act between the loaded hot dog and pop back to my seat, a cheering fan bumps into my pop hand. The pop splashes out of the cup and all over my shirt, leaving me drenched. I make direct eye contact with the man who bumped into me and he looks me in the eye, looks at my shirt, tells me how sorry he is, and then I just shake my head and keep walking. “It’s all just part of the experience,” I tell myself.

Before I am able to get back to my seat, I hear the crack of a bat, followed by an uproar from the crowd. Everyone is standing, clapping, and cheering. I missed a home run. I find my aisle and ask everyone to excuse me as I slip past them to my seat. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry,” is all I can say as I inch past each fan. Halfway to my seat I can hear discarded peanut shells crunch beneath my feet, and each step is marked with a pronounced crunch.

When I finally get to my seat I realize it is the start of the seventh inning stretch. I quickly eat my hot dog and wash it down with what is left of my soda pop. The organ starts playing and everyone begins to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” While singing the song, putting my arms around friends and family with me, I watch all the players taking the field. It is wonderful to see the overwhelming amount of players on one team from around the world: Japan, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Canada, and Venezuela. I cannot help but feel a bit of national pride at this realization. Seeing the international representation on the field reminds me of the ways that Americans, though from many different backgrounds and places, still come together under common ideals. For these reasons and for the whole experience in general, going to a Major League Baseball game is the perfect way to glimpse a slice of Americana.

Baseball: the Enduring Legacy of America’s Pastime

This essay about baseball, dubbed “America’s pastime,” delves into its role as a cultural institution that reflects and shapes the American identity. It traces baseball’s evolution from immigrant bat-and-ball games to a unifying national sport, highlighting its capacity to mirror societal changes and foster community. The essay emphasizes pivotal moments like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, illustrating baseball’s impact on civil rights and American society at large. It explores how the game’s strategic depth and historical reverence connect generations of fans, maintaining its relevance amidst the rise of other sports and entertainment forms. The narrative concludes by asserting baseball’s enduring legacy as a reflection of America’s spirit, its adaptability, and its role in fostering a sense of continuity and belonging among its diverse fanbase. Baseball is portrayed not just as a sport, but as a vital piece of America’s cultural fabric, evolving with the nation while remaining a cherished tradition.

How it works

Baseball, commonly denoted as America’s pastime, transcends mere athletic endeavor. It embodies a cultural phenomenon that has not only mirrored but actively shaped the American ethos for well over a century. From its modest inception in the sandlots of rural hamlets to the grandiose arenas of metropolitan hubs, baseball has interwoven itself into the very fabric of American existence, encapsulating the aspirations, reveries, and principles of successive generations.

The genesis of baseball is veiled in a veil of myth, with fables attributing its creation to Abner Doubleday in 1839.

Though historical scholarship has debunked this narrative, the legend persists, lending to baseball’s aura as a quintessentially American conception. The veracity lies in its evolution from antecedent bat-and-ball diversions introduced to America by immigrants, gradually metamorphosing into the sport we recognize today. This metamorphosis symbolizes the amalgamation of diverse cultures that defines America, with baseball emblematic of unity amid diversity.

Across epochs, baseball has mirrored the ebb and flow of American societal currents. The breakthrough of the color barrier by Jackie Robinson in 1947, antecedent to the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling by seven years, marked not only a seminal moment in baseball history but a significant stride in the civil rights movement. Moreover, baseball has served as a reflective surface for America’s trials and triumphs, from the depths of the Great Depression, offering solace to multitudes, to the post-war era of prosperity, reflecting the nation’s buoyancy and expansion.

The essence of the game, characterized by its measured pace and strategic intricacies, embodies the quintessence of American resolve and ingenuity. Baseball is a narrative of instants, of interludes punctuated by bursts of activity, permitting aficionados to relish the suspense and exhilaration. It is a domain where antiquity is venerated, where numerical data and achievements hold sanctity, forging connections between successive generations of enthusiasts and athletes alike. This reverence for history, coupled with the communal camaraderie experienced at games, from the resounding crack of the bat to the communal ritual of the seventh-inning stretch, fosters a sentiment of perpetuity and camaraderie among spectators.

Notwithstanding challenges posed by alternative sports and entertainment avenues, baseball endures as a pivotal facet of American society. Its resilience underscores its adaptability and the profound affection harbored by millions for the game. Baseball has sustained its relevance through adaptation, be it via technological advancements such as nocturnal matches and instant replay, or by extending its global reach, introducing the sport to novel aficionados and athletes worldwide.

In summation, baseball’s epithet as America’s pastime is richly deserved. It transcends the realm of mere sport to embody a cultural touchstone that has evolved in tandem with the nation, reflecting its ethos, metamorphoses, and adversities. Baseball serves as a reminder of America’s past and a harbinger of its future, offering a glimpse into the nation’s collective psyche. Its legacy resides not solely in its statistical annals but in the memories it evokes, the communal bonds it fosters, and the cultural discourse it inspires. As America continues its evolution, so too will baseball, adapting to novel challenges while perpetuating its cherished traditions for generations to come.

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By a wide margin, Americans say football – not baseball – is ‘America’s sport’

Baseball is known as “America’s favorite pastime.” But for the largest share of the U.S. public, football is “America’s sport,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

In August 2023, we asked nearly 12,000 U.S. adults the following question: “If you had to choose one sport as being ‘America’s sport,’ even if you don’t personally follow it, which sport would it be?” The question was part of a broader survey about sports fandom in the United States .

More than half of Americans (53%) say America’s sport is football – about twice the share who say it’s baseball (27%). Much smaller shares choose one of the other four sports we asked about: basketball (8%), soccer (3%), auto racing (3%) or hockey (1%).

We also included the option for Americans to write in another sport. The most common answers volunteered were golf, boxing, rodeo and ice skating. Other respondents used the opportunity to have some fun: Among the more creative answers we received were “competitive eating,” “grievance politics,” “reality TV” and “cow tipping.”

Ahead of Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to find out which sport Americans see as the country’s sport.

This analysis is based on a survey of 11,945 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 7-27, 2023. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Address-based sampling ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here is the question used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

In every demographic group, football tops the list

In every major demographic group, football is the most common choice when the public is asked to identify America’s sport. It tops the list for men and women, for older and younger adults, and for White, Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans alike.

Still, some demographic differences emerge for certain sports. For instance, White Americans are more likely than other racial or ethnic groups to say the national sport is baseball, while Hispanic Americans are more likely than other groups to say it’s soccer. Black and Asian Americans, in turn, are more likely than White and Hispanic Americans to say America’s sport is basketball. In each of these racial and ethnic groups, however, by far the largest share of people say the national sport is football.

Most Americans don’t closely follow sports

Just because Americans see football as the national sport doesn’t mean they’ve been closely following the NFL season leading up to this weekend’s Super Bowl LVIII.

Most U.S. adults (62%) say they follow professional or college sports not too or not at all closely , and a similar share (63%) say they talk about sports with other people just a few times a month or less often, according to the Center’s August survey. In fact, only 7% of adults are what might be called sports “superfans” – people who follow sports extremely or very closely and talk about sports with other people at least every day.

Note: Here is the question used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

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John Gramlich is an associate director at Pew Research Center .

Anna Jackson is an editorial assistant at Pew Research Center .

Michael Rotolo is a research associate at Pew Research Center .

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President Reagan’s Speech at Moscow State University

Editor’s Remarks: The following speech, perhaps destined to be President Reagan’s most famous address, was given before an audience of students at Moscow State University on May 31, 1988. It embodies the sum of Reagan’s vision: that tyranny will one day be vanquished as Christian liberty advances across the globe. It was probably the first time that many of these Soviet students had ever been exposed to this idea. The speech has been edited because of length.

BEFORE I LEFT WASHINGTON , I received many heartfelt letters and telegrams asking me to carry here a simple message – perhaps, but also some of the most important business of this summit – it is a message of peace and goodwill and hope for a growing friendship and closeness between our two peoples.

First I want to take a little time to talk to you much as I would to any group of university students in the United States. I want to talk not just of the realities of today, but of the possibilities of tomorrow.

You know, one of the first contacts between your country and mine took place between Russian and American explorers. The Americans were members of Cook’s last voyage on an expedition searching for an Arctic passage; on the island of Unalaska, they came upon the Russians, who took them in, and together, with the native inhabitants, held a prayer service on the ice.

The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal computer firms in the United states was started by two college students, no older than you, in the garage behind their home.

Some people, even in my own country, look at the riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones. Often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they’ll tell you, it’s all that they learned in their struggles along the way – yes, it’s what they learned from failing. Like an athlete in competition, or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest teacher.

We are seeing the power of economic freedom spreading around the world – places such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have vaulted into the technological era, barely pausing in the industrial age along the way. Low-tax agricultural policies in the sub-continent mean that in some years India is now a net exporter of food. Perhaps most exciting are the winds of change that are blowing over the People’s republic of China, where one-quarter of the world’s population is now getting its first taste of economic freedom.

At the same time, the growth of democracy has become one of the most powerful political movements of our age. In Latin America in the 1970’s, only a third of the population lived under democratic government. Today over 90 percent does. In the Philippines, in the Republic of Korea, free, contested, democratic elections are the order of the day. Throughout the world, free markets are the model for growth. Democracy is the standard by which governments are measured.

We Americans make no secret of our belief in freedom. In fact, it’s something of a national pastime. Every four years the American people choose a new president, and 1988 is one of those years. At one point there were 13 major candidates running in the two major parties, not to mention all the others, including the Socialist and Libertarian candidates – all trying to get my job.

About 1,000 local television stations, 8,500 radio stations, and 1,700 daily newspapers, each one an independent, private enterprise, fiercely independent of the government, report on the candidates, grill them in interviews, and bring them together for debates. In the end, the people vote – they decide who will be the next president.

But freedom doesn’t begin or end with elections. Go to any American town, to take just an example, and you’ll see dozens of synagogues and mosques – and you’ll see families of every conceivable nationality, worshipping together.

Go into any schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights – among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – that no government can justly deny – the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

Go into any courtroom and there will preside an independent judge, beholden to no government power. There every defendant has the right to a trial by a jury of his peers, usually 12 men and women – common citizens, they are the ones, the only ones, who weigh the evidence and decide on guilt or innocence. In that court, the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and the word of a policeman, or any official, has no greater legal standing than the word of the accused.

Go to any university campus, and there you’ll find an open, sometimes heated discussion of the problems in American society and what can be done to correct them. Turn on the television, and you’ll see the legislature conducting the business of government right there before the camera, debating and voting on the legislation that will become the law of the land. March in any demonstrations, and there are many of them – the people’s right of assembly is guaranteed in the Constitution and protected by the police.

But freedom is more even than this: Freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to stick – to dream – to follow your dream, or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.

Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority of government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.

America is a nation made up of hundreds of nationalities. Our ties to you are more than ones of good feeling; they’re ties of kinship. In America, you’ll find Russians, Armenians, Ukrainians, peoples from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They come from every part of this vast continent, from every continent, to live in harmony, seeking a place where each cultural heritage is respected, each is valued for its diverse strengths and beauties and the richness it brings to our lives.

Recently, a few individuals and families have been allowed to visit relatives in the West. We can only hope that it won’t be long before all are allowed to do so, and Ukrainian-Americans, Baltic-Americans, Armenian-Americans, can freely visit their homelands, just as this Irish-American visits his.

Freedom, it has been said, makes people selfish and materialistic, but Americans are one of the most religious peoples on Earth. Because they know that liberty, just as life itself, is not earned, but a gift from God, they seek to share that gift with the world. “Reason and experience,” said George Washington, in his farewell address, “both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. And it is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

Democracy is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive: A system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family and faith.

I have often said, nations do not distrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they distrust each other. If this globe is to live in peace and prosper, if it is to embrace all the possibilities of the technological revolution, then nations must renounce, once and for all, the right to an expansionist foreign policy. Peace between nations must be an enduring goal – not a tactical stage in a continuing conflict.

I’ve been told that there’s a popular song in your country – perhaps you know it – whose evocative refrain asks the question, “Do the Russians want a war?” In answer it says, “Go ask that silence lingering in the air, above the birch and poplar there; beneath those trees the soldiers lie. Go ask my mother, ask my wife; then you will have to ask no more, ‘Do the Russians want a war?’”

But what of your one-time allies? What of those who embraced you on the Elbe? What if we were to ask the watery graves of the Pacific, or the European battlefields where America’s fallen were buried far from home? What if we were to ask their mothers, sisters, and sons, do Americans want war? Ask us, too, and you’ll find the same answer, the same longing in every heart. People do not make wars, governments do – and no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. A people free to choose will always choose peace.

Americans seek always to make friends of old antagonists. After a colonial revolution with Britain we have cemented for all ages the ties of kinship between our nations. After a terrible civil war between North and South, we healed our wounds and found true unity as a nation. We fought two world wars in my lifetime against Germany and one with Japan, but now the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan are two of our closest allies and friends.

Some people point to the trade disputes between us as a sign of strain, but they’re the frictions of all families, and the family of free nations is a big and vital and sometimes boisterous one. I can tell you that nothing would please my heart more than in my lifetime to see American and Soviet diplomats grappling with the problem of trade disputes between America and a growing, exuberant, exporting Soviet Union that had opened up to economic freedom and growth.

Is this just a dream? Perhaps. But it is a dream that is our responsibility to have come true.

Your generation is living in one of the most exciting, hopeful times in Soviet history. It is a time when the first breath of freedom stirs the air and the heart beats to the accelerated rhythm of hope, when the accumulated spiritual energies of a long silence yearn to break free.

We do not know what the conclusion of this journey will be, but we’re hopeful that the promise of reform will be fulfilled. In this Moscow spring, this May 1988, we may be allowed that hope – that freedom, like the fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoi’s grave, will blossom forth at least in the rich fertile soil of your people and culture. We may be allowed to hope that the marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising through, ringing through, leading to a new world of reconciliation, friendship, and peace.

Thank you all very much and da blagoslovit vas Gospod! God bless you.

19 Comments

He spoke about the world and technology, but the poor Soviet beggars just wanted to live as human beings. As a result, the U.S. won war and Russia was in great devastation.

• May 13, 2010

@Mhunter, well you weren’t there and you don't know how Soviets felt??? It is the most horrible country in the world – both economy and life quality wise. People were treated as meat… And everything was scarce you even have no idea how wonderful it was to buy something…

• July 14, 2010

et vous n‘étiez pas là et vous ne savez pas comment Soviétiques senti??? Il est le pays le plus horrible dans le monde – à la fois l‘économie et sage qualité de vie. Les gens ont été traités comme de la viande … Et tout était à peine vous avez même pas idée combien c‘était merveilleux pour acheter quelque chose …

• September 13, 2010

They seek to share that gift with the world.

• December 14, 2010

It is so nice to see multiple ethnic people living in our nation. Gives you a feeling that the world is changing and that peace will be more prevalent in the coming years. That is where we want to live.

• single parents
• January 5, 2011

Et vous n‘étiez pas là et vous ne savez pas comment Soviétiques senti??? Il est le pays le plus horrible dans le monde – à la fois l‘économie et sage qualité de vie. Les gens ont été traités comme de la viande … Et tout était à peine vous avez même pas idée combien c‘était merveilleux pour acheter quelque chose …

• watch tv on the internet
• February 23, 2011

Gives you a feeling that the world is changing and that peace will be more prevalent in the coming years. That is where we want to live.

• daily mail showbiz news
• March 4, 2011

Thank you for posting such article. Its great to see such eye opening post. There are still many things to learn and more surprises to come.

• tenant Screening
• March 11, 2011

Wow, how the times has passed…imagine that notice 25 years ago !! Thnigs chages a lot!

• March 18, 2011

You can’t live in internet world without such kind of articles left behind.

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• March 25, 2011

Awesome speech. God bless you too! Essay writing service

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• April 8, 2011

I got to see Ronald and Nancy Reagan as president when he was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.

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• April 12, 2011

Reagan has still got it!

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• April 22, 2011

My first visit your blog. This is a great article on this topic. I really impress your work

• May 13, 2011

I don’t think this is a fair statement. Although bigotry exists, there are a number of variable why someone is sentenced harsher than others.

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• June 1, 2011

Yesterday, I could hear the conversation of people on the train. They talk about this. However, I do not quite understand about this until I read this article.

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• July 25, 2011

You made some great points here with your post. I got to say i like visiting and reading your opinion Please maintain the good work.

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• September 27, 2011

Well you weren’t there and you don’t know how Soviets felt? It is the most horrible country in the world – both economy and life quality wise. People were treated as meat. And everything was scarce. You even have no idea how wonderful it was to buy something…

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• March 14, 2012

I would like to attend such a performance, I think that this is very useful. In general, this cold war between the two countries is already almost boring for everyone. And I am glad that in this speech we recalled the message of the American people “this is a message of peace and goodwill and of hope for the growing friendship and closeness between our two peoples.” In fact, I’m sure most of the sound population of these two countries are already waiting for some kind of reconciliation and adequacy, is not it? :) And I agree with the first comment, the majority of the Russian territory is now in decline, and the Russian people have not gained anything from this confrontation.

• March 19, 2018

Your comments are welcome

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Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Students and Faculty at Moscow State University

May 31, 1988

The President . Thank you, Rector Logunov , and I want to thank all of you very much for a very warm welcome. It's a great pleasure to be here at Moscow State University , and I want to thank you all for turning out. I know you must be very busy this week, studying and taking your final examinations. So, let me just say zhelayu vam uspekha [I wish you success]. Nancy couldn't make it today because she's visiting Leningrad , which she tells me is a very beautiful city, but she, too, says hello and wishes you all good luck.

Let me say it's also a great pleasure to once again have this opportunity to speak directly to the people of the Soviet Union. Before I left Washington , I received many heartfelt letters and telegrams asking me to carry here a simple message, perhaps, but also some of the most important business of this summit: It is a message of peace and good will and hope for a growing friendship and closeness between our two peoples.

As you know, I've come to Moscow to meet with one of your most distinguished graduates. In this, our fourth summit, General Secretary Gorbachev and I have spent many hours together, and I feel that we're getting to know each other well. Our discussions, of course, have been focused primarily on many of the important issues of the day, issues I want to touch on with you in a few moments. But first I want to take a little time to talk to you much as I would to any group of university students in the United States . I want to talk not just of the realities of today but of the possibilities of tomorrow.

Standing here before a mural of your revolution, I want to talk about a very different revolution that is taking place right now, quietly sweeping the globe without bloodshed or conflict. Its effects are peaceful, but they will fundamentally alter our world, shatter old assumptions, and reshape our lives. It's easy to underestimate because it's not accompanied by banners or fanfare. It's been called the technological or information revolution, and as its emblem, one might take the tiny silicon chip, no bigger than a fingerprint. One of these chips has more computing power than a roomful of old-style computers.

As part of an exchange program, we now have an exhibition touring your country that shows how information technology is transforming our lives -- replacing manual labor with robots, forecasting weather for farmers, or mapping the genetic code of DNA for medical researchers. These microcomputers today aid the design of everything from houses to cars to spacecraft; they even design better and faster computers. They can translate English into Russian or enable the blind to read or help Michael Jackson produce on one synthesizer the sounds of a whole orchestra. Linked by a network of satellites and fiber-optic cables, one individual with a desktop computer and a telephone commands resources unavailable to the largest governments just a few years ago.

Like a chrysalis, we're emerging from the economy of the Industrial Revolution -- an economy confined to and limited by the Earth's physical resources -- into, as one economist titled his book, "The Economy in Mind,'' in which there are no bounds on human imagination and the freedom to create is the most precious natural resource. Think of that little computer chip. Its value isn't in the sand from which it is made but in the microscopic architecture designed into it by ingenious human minds. Or take the example of the satellite relaying this broadcast around the world, which replaces thousands of tons of copper mined from the Earth and molded into wire. In the new economy, human invention increasingly makes physical resources obsolete. We're breaking through the material conditions of existence to a world where man creates his own destiny. Even as we explore the most advanced reaches of science, we're returning to the age-old wisdom of our culture, a wisdom contained in the book of Genesis in the Bible: In the beginning was the spirit, and it was from this spirit that the material abundance of creation issued forth.

But progress is not foreordained. The key is freedom -- freedom of thought, freedom of information, freedom of communication. The renowned scientist, scholar, and founding father of this university, Mikhail Lomonosov , knew that. "It is common knowledge,'' he said, "that the achievements of science are considerable and rapid, particularly once the yoke of slavery is cast off and replaced by the freedom of philosophy.'' You know, one of the first contacts between your country and mine took place between Russian and American explorers. The Americans were members of Cook's last voyage on an expedition searching for an Arctic passage; on the island of Unalaska , they came upon the Russians, who took them in, and together with the native inhabitants, held a prayer service on the ice.

The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal computer firms in the United States was started by two college students, no older than you, in the garage behind their home. Some people, even in my own country, look at the riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they'll tell you it's all that they learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it's what they learned from failing. Like an athlete in competition or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest teacher.

And that's why it's so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true. The fact is , bureaucracies are a problem around the world. There's an old story about a town -- it could be anywhere -- with a bureaucrat who is known to be a good-for-nothing, but he somehow had always hung on to power. So one day, in a town meeting, an old woman got up and said to him: ``There is a folk legend here where I come from that when a baby is born, an angel comes down from heaven and kisses it on one part of its body. If the angel kisses him on his hand, he becomes a handyman. If he kisses him on his forehead, he becomes bright and clever. And I've been trying to figure out where the angel kissed you so that you should sit there for so long and do nothing.'' [Laughter]

We are seeing the power of economic freedom spreading around the world. Places such as the Republic of Korea , Singapore , Taiwan have vaulted into the technological era, barely pausing in the industrial age along the way. Low-tax agricultural policies in the subcontinent mean that in some years India is now a net exporter of food. Perhaps most exciting are the winds of change that are blowing over the People's Republic of China, where one-quarter of the world's population is now getting its first taste of economic freedom. At the same time, the growth of democracy has become one of the most powerful political movements of our age. In Latin America in the 1970's, only a third of the population lived under democratic government; today over 90 percent does. In the Philippines , in the Republic of Korea , free, contested, democratic elections are the order of the day. Throughout the world, free markets are the model for growth. Democracy is the standard by which governments are measured.

We Americans make no secret of our belief in freedom. In fact, it's something of a national pastime. Every 4 years the American people choose a new President, and 1988 is one of those years. At one point there were 13 major candidates running in the two major parties, not to mention all the others, including the Socialist and Libertarian candidates -- all trying to get my job. About 1,000 local television stations, 8,500 radio stations, and 1,700 daily newspapers -- each one an independent, private enterprise, fiercely independent of the Government -- report on the candidates, grill them in interviews, and bring them together for debates. In the end, the people vote; they decide who will be the next President.But freedom doesn't begin or end with elections.

Go to any American town, to take just an example, and you'll see dozens of churches, representing many different beliefs -- in many places, synagogues and mosques -- and you'll see families of every conceivable nationality worshiping together. Go into any schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights -- among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- that no government can justly deny; the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Go into any courtroom, and there will preside an independent judge, beholden to no government power. There every defendant has the right to a trial by a jury of his peers, usually 12 men and women -- common citizens; they are the ones, the only ones, who weigh the evidence and decide on guilt or innocence. In that court, the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and the word of a policeman or any official has no greater legal standing than the word of the accused. Go to any university campus, and there you'll find an open, sometimes heated discussion of the problems in American society and what can be done to correct them. Turn on the television, and you'll see the legislature conducting the business of government right there before the camera, debating and voting on the legislation that will become the law of the land. March in any demonstration, and there are many of them; the people's right of assembly is guaranteed in the Constitution and protected by the police. Go into any union hall, where the members know their right to strike is protected by law. As a matter of fact, one of the many jobs I had before this one was being president of a union, the Screen Actors Guild. I led my union out on strike, and I'm proud to say we won.

But freedom is more even than this. Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream -- to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you're the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.

America is a nation made up of hundreds of nationalities. Our ties to you are more than ones of good feeling; they're ties of kinship. In America, you'll find Russians, Armenians, Ukrainians, peoples from Eastern Europe and Central Asia . They come from every part of this vast continent, from every continent, to live in harmony, seeking a place where each cultural heritage is respected, each is valued for its diverse strengths and beauties and the richness it brings to our lives. Recently, a few individuals and families have been allowed to visit relatives in the West. We can only hope that it won't be long before all are allowed to do so and Ukrainian-Americans, Baltic-Americans, Armenian-Americans can freely visit their homelands, just as this Irish-American visits his.

Freedom, it has been said, makes people selfish and materialistic, but Americans are one of the most religious peoples on Earth. Because they know that liberty, just as life itself, is not earned but a gift from God, they seek to share that gift with the world. "Reason and experience,'' said George Washington in his Farewell Address, "both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. And it is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.'' Democracy is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive ; a system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family and faith.

But I hope you know I go on about these things not simply to extol the virtues of my own country but to speak to the true greatness of the heart and soul of your land. Who, after all, needs to tell the land of Dostoyevski about the quest for truth, the home of Kandinski and Scriabin about imagination, the rich and noble culture of the Uzbek man of letters Alisher Navoi about beauty and heart? The great culture of your diverse land speaks with a glowing passion to all humanity. Let me cite one of the most eloquent contemporary passages on human freedom. It comes, not from the literature of America , but from this country, from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Boris Pasternak, in the novel "Dr. Zhivago .'' He writes: "I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats -- any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death -- then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But this is just the point -- what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel, but an inward music -- the irresistible power of unarmed truth.''

The irresistible power of unarmed truth. Today the world looks expectantly to signs of change, steps toward greater freedom in the Soviet Union . We watch and we hope as we see positive changes taking place. There are some, I know, in your society who fear that change will bring only disruption and discontinuity, who fear to embrace the hope of the future -- sometimes it takes faith. It's like that scene in the cowboy movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,'' which some here in Moscow recently had a chance to see. The posse is closing in on the two outlaws, Butch and Sundance, who find themselves trapped on the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the raging rapids below. Butch turns to Sundance and says their only hope is to jump into the river below, but Sundance refuses. He says he'd rather fight it out with the posse, even though they're hopelessly outnumbered. Butch says that's suicide and urges him to jump, but Sundance still refuses and finally admits, "I can't swim.'' Butch breaks up laughing and says, " You crazy fool, the fall will probably kill you.'' And, by the way, both Butch and Sundance made it, in case you didn't see the movie. I think what I've just been talking about is perestroika and what its goals are.

But change would not mean rejection of the past. Like a tree growing strong through the seasons, rooted in the Earth and drawing life from the Sun, so, too, positive change must be rooted in traditional values -- in the land, in culture, in family and community -- and it must take its life from the eternal things, from the source of all life, which is faith. Such change will lead to new understandings, new opportunities, to a broader future in which the tradition is not supplanted but finds its full flowering. That is the future beckoning to your generation.

At the same time, we should remember that reform that is not institutionalized will always be insecure. Such freedom will always be looking over its shoulder. A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back. And that is why, in my conversation with General Secretary Gorbachev, I have spoken of how important it is to institutionalize change -- to put guarantees on reform. And we've been talking together about one sad reminder of a divided world: the Berlin Wall. It's time to remove the barriers that keep people apart.

I'm proposing an increased exchange program of high school students between our countries. General Secretary Gorbachev mentioned on Sunday a wonderful phrase you have in Russian for this: "Better to see something once than to hear about it a hundred times.'' Mr. Gorbachev and I first began working on this in 1985. In our discussion today, we agreed on working up to several thousand exchanges a year from each country in the near future. But not everyone can travel across the continents and oceans. Words travel lighter, and that's why we'd like to make available to this country more of our 11,000 magazines and periodicals and our television and radio shows that can be beamed off a satellite in seconds. Nothing would please us more than for the Soviet people to get to know us better and to understand our way of life.

Just a few years ago, few would have imagined the progress our two nations have made together. The INF treaty, which General Secretary Gorbachev and I signed last December in Washington and whose instruments of ratification we will exchange tomorrow -- the first true nuclear arms reduction treaty in history, calling for the elimination of an entire class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles. And just 16 days ago, we saw the beginning of your withdrawal from Afghanistan, which gives us hope that soon the fighting may end and the healing may begin and that that suffering country may find self-determination, unity, and peace at long last.

It's my fervent hope that our constructive cooperation on these issues will be carried on to address the continuing destruction and conflicts in many regions of the globe and that the serious discussions that led to the Geneva accords on Afghanistan will help lead to solutions in southern Africa, Ethiopia, Cambodia, the Persian Gulf, and Central America. I have often said: Nations do not distrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they distrust each other. If this globe is to live in peace and prosper, if it is to embrace all the possibilities of the technological revolution, then nations must renounce, once and for all, the right to an expansionist foreign policy. Peace between nations must be an enduring goal, not a tactical stage in a continuing conflict.

I've been told that there's a popular song in your country -- perhaps you know it -- whose evocative refrain asks the question, "Do the Russians want a war?'' In answer it says: "Go ask that silence lingering in the air, above the birch and poplar there; beneath those trees the soldiers lie. Go ask my mother, ask my wife; then you will have to ask no more, `Do the Russians want a war?''' But what of your one-time allies? What of those who embraced you on the Elbe? What if we were to ask the watery graves of the Pacific or the European battlefields where America 's fallen were buried far from home? What if we were to ask their mothers, sisters, and sons, do Americans want war? Ask us, too, and you'll find the same answer, the same longing in every heart. People do not make wars; governments do. And no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. A people free to choose will always choose peace.

Americans seek always to make friends of old antagonists. After a colonial revolution with Britain, we have cemented for all ages the ties of kinship between our nations. After a terrible Civil War between North and South, we healed our wounds and found true unity as a nation. We fought two world wars in my lifetime against Germany and one with Japan , but now the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan are two of our closest allies and friends.

Some people point to the trade disputes between us as a sign of strain, but they're the frictions of all families, and the family of free nations is a big and vital and sometimes boisterous one. I can tell you that nothing would please my heart more than in my lifetime to see American and Soviet diplomats grappling with the problem of trade disputes between America and a growing, exuberant, exporting Soviet Union that had opened up to economic freedom and growth.

And as important as these official people-to-people exchanges are, nothing would please me more than for them to become unnecessary, to see travel between East and West become so routine that university students in the Soviet Union could take a month off in the summer and, just like students in the West do now, put packs on their backs and travel from country to country in Europe with barely a passport check in between. Nothing would please me more than to see the day that a concert promoter in, say, England could call up a Soviet rock group, without going through any government agency, and have them playing in Liverpool the next night. Is this just a dream? Perhaps, but it is a dream that is our responsibility to have come true.

Your generation is living in one of the most exciting, hopeful times in Soviet history. It is a time when the first breath of freedom stirs the air and the heart beats to the accelerated rhythm of hope, when the accumulated spiritual energies of a long silence yearn to break free. I am reminded of the famous passage near the end of Gogol's  "Dead Souls.'' Comparing his nation to a speeding troika, Gogol asks what will be its destination. But he writes, "There was no answer save the bell pouring forth marvelous sound.''

We do not know what the conclusion will be of this journey, but we're hopeful that the promise of reform will be fulfilled. In this Moscow spring, this May 1988, we may be allowed that hope: that freedom, like the fresh green sapling planted over Tolstoy's grave, will blossom forth at last in the rich fertile soil of your people and culture. We may be allowed to hope that the marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising through, ringing through, leading to a new world of reconciliation, friendship, and peace.

Thank you all very much, and da blagoslovit vas gospod -- God bless you.

Mr. Logunov . Dear friends, Mr. President has kindly agreed to answer your questions. But since he doesn't have too much time, only 15 minutes -- so, those who have questions, please ask them.

Strategic Arms Reductions

Q . And this is a student from the history faculty, and he says that he's happy to welcome you on behalf of the students of the university. And the first question is that the improvement in the relations between the two countries has come about during your tenure as President, and in this regard he would like to ask the following question. It is very important to get a handle on the question of arms control and, specifically, the limitation of strategic arms. Do you think that it will be possible for you and the General Secretary to get a treaty on the limitation of strategic arms during the time that you are still President?

The President . Well, the arms treaty that is being negotiated now is the so-called START treaty, and it is based on taking the intercontinental ballistic missiles and reducing them by half, down to parity between our two countries. Now, this is a much more complicated treaty than the INF treaty, the intermediate-range treaty, which we have signed and which our two governments have ratified and is now in effect. So, there are many things still to be settled. You and we have had negotiators in Geneva for months working on various points of this treaty. Once we had hoped that maybe, like the INF treaty, we would have been able to sign it here at this summit meeting. It is not completed; there are still some points that are being debated. We are both hopeful that it can be finished before I leave office, which is in the coming January, but I assure you that if it isn't -- I assure you that I will have impressed on my successor that we must carry on until it is signed. My dream has always been that once we've started down this road, we can look forward to a day -- you can look forward to a day -- when there will be no more nuclear weapons in the world at all.

Young People

Q. The question is: The universities influence public opinion, and the student wonders how the youths have changed since the days when you were a student up until now?

The President. Well, wait a minute. How you have changed since the era of my own youth?

Q. How just students have changed, the youth have changed. You were a student. [Laughter] At your time there were one type. How they have changed?

The President . Well, I know there was a period in our country when there was a very great change for the worse. When I was Governor of California, I could start a riot just by going to a campus. But that has all changed, and I could be looking out at an American student body as well as I'm looking out here and would not be able to tell the difference between you.

I think that back in our day -- I did happen to go to school, get my college education in a unique time; it was the time of the Great Depression, when, in a country like our own, there was 25-percent unemployment and the bottom seemed to have fallen out of everything. But we had -- I think what maybe I should be telling you from my point here, because I graduated in 1932, that I should tell you that when you get to be my age, you're going to be surprised how much you recall the feelings you had in these days here and that -- how easy it is to understand the young people because of your own having been young once. You know an awful lot more about being young than you do about being old. [Laughter]

And I think there is a seriousness , I think there is a sense of responsibility that young people have, and I think that there is an awareness on the part of most of you about what you want your adulthood to be and what the country you live in -- you want it to be. And I have a great deal of faith. I said the other day to 76 students -- they were half American and half Russian. They had held a conference here and in Finland and then in the United States, and I faced them just the other day, and I had to say -- I couldn't tell the difference looking at them, which were which, but I said one line to them. I said I believe that if all the young people of the world today could get to know each other, there would never be another war. And I think that of you. I think that of the other students that I've addressed in other places.

And of course, I know also that you're young and, therefore, there are certain things that at times take precedence. I'll illustrate one myself. Twenty-five years after I graduated, my alma mater brought me back to the school and gave me an honorary degree. And I had to tell them they compounded a sense of guilt I had nursed for 25 years because I always felt the first degree they gave me was honorary. [Laughter] You're great! Carry on.

Regional Conflicts

Q. Mr. President, you have just mentioned that you welcome the efforts -- settlement of the Afghanistan question and the difference of other regional conflicts. What conflicts do you mean? Central America conflicts, Southeast Asian, or South African?

The President. Well, for example, in South Africa , where Namibia has been promised its independence as a nation -- another new African nation. But it is impossible because of a civil war going on in another country there, and that civil war is being fought on one side by some 30,000 to 40,000 Cuban troops who have gone from the Americas over there and are fighting on one side with one kind of authoritative government. When that country was freed from being a colony and given its independence, one faction seized power and made itself the government of that nation. And leaders of another -- seeming the majority of the people had wanted, simply, the people to have the right to choose the government that they wanted, and that is the civil war that is going on. But what we believe is that those foreign soldiers should get out and let them settle it, let the citizens of that nation settle their problems.

And the same is true in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has been -- Nicaragua made a promise. They had a dictator. There was a revolution, there was an organization that -- and was aided by others in the revolution, and they appealed to the Organization of American States for help in getting the dictator to step down and stop the killing. And he did. But the Organization of American States had asked, what are the goals of the revolution? And they were given in writing, and they were the goals of pluralistic society, of the right of unions and freedom of speech and press and so forth and free elections -- a pluralistic society. And then the one group that was the best organized among the revolutionaries seized power, exiled many of the other leaders, and has its own government, which violated every one of the promises that had been made. And here again, we want -- we're trying to encourage the getting back those -- or making those promises come true and letting the people of that particular country decide their fate.

Soviet MIA's in Afghanistan

Q . Esteemed Mr. President, I'm very much anxious and concerned about the destiny of 310 Soviet soldiers being missing in Afghanistan. Are you willing to help in their search and their return to the motherland?

The President. Very much so. We would like nothing better than that.

U.S. Constitution

Q. The reservation of the inalienable rights of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution faces certain problems; for example, the right of people to have arms, or for example, the problem appears, an evil appears whether spread of pornography or narcotics is compatible with these rights. Do you believe that these problems are just unavoidable problems connected with democracy, or they could be avoided?

The President. Well, if I understand you correctly, this is a question about the inalienable rights of the people -- does that include the right to do criminal acts -- for example, in the use of drugs and so forth? No. No, we have a set of laws. I think what is significant and different about our system is that every country has a constitution, and most constitutions or practically all of the constitutions in the world are documents in which the government tells the people what the people can do. Our Constitution is different, and the difference is in three words; it almost escapes everyone. The three words are, " We the people.'' Our Constitution is a document in which we the people tell the Government what its powers are. And it can have no powers other than those listed in that document. But very carefully, at the same time, the people give the government the power with regard to those things which they think would be destructive to society, to the family, to the individual and so forth -- infringements on their rights. And thus, the government can enforce the laws. But that has all been dictated by the people.

President's Retirement Plans

Q . Mr. President, from history I know that people who have been connected with great power, with big posts, say goodbye, leave these posts with great difficulty. Since your term of office is coming to an end, what sentiments do you experience and whether you feel like, if, hypothetically, you can just stay for another term? [Laughter]

The President. Well, I'll tell you something. I think it was a kind of revenge against Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected four times -- the only President. There had kind of grown a tradition in our country about two terms. That tradition was started by Washington, our first President, only because there was great talk at the formation of our country that we might become a monarchy, and we had just freed ourselves from a monarchy. So, when the second term was over, George Washington stepped down and said he would do it -- stepping down -- so that there would not get to be the kind of idea of an inherited aristocracy. Well, succeeding Presidents -- many of them didn't get a chance at a second term; they did one term and were gone. But that tradition kind of remained, but it was just a tradition. And then Roosevelt ran the four times -- died very early in his fourth term. And suddenly, in the atmosphere at that time, they added an amendment to the Constitution that Presidents could only serve two terms.

When I get out of office -- I can't do this while I'm in office, because it will look as I'm selfishly doing it for myself -- when I get out of office, I'm going to travel around what I call the mashed-potato circuit -- that is the after-dinner speaking and the speaking to luncheon groups and so forth -- I'm going to travel around and try to convince the people of our country that they should wipe out that amendment to the Constitution because it was an interference with the democratic rights of the people. The people should be allowed to vote for who they wanted to vote for, for as many times as they want to vote for him; and that it is they who are being denied a right. But you see, I will no longer be President then, so I can do that and talk for that.

There are a few other things I'm going to try to convince the people to impress upon our Congress, the things that should be done. I've always described it that if -- in Hollywood, when I was there, if you didn't sing or dance, you wound up as an after-dinner speaker. And I didn't sing or dance. [Laughter] So, I have a hunch that I will be out on the speaking circuit, telling about a few things that I didn't get done in government, but urging the people to tell the Congress they wanted them done.

American Indians

Q . Mr. President, I've heard that a group of American Indians have come here because they couldn't meet you in the United States of America. If you fail to meet them here, will you be able to correct it and to meet them back in the United States ?

The President . I didn't know that they had asked to see me. If they've come here or whether to see them there -- [laughter] -- I'd be very happy to see them.

Let me tell you just a little something about the American Indian in our land. We have provided millions of acres of land for what are called preservations -- or reservations, I should say. They, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way of life, as they had always lived there in the desert and the plains and so forth. And we set up these reservations so they could, and have a Bureau of Indian Affairs to help take care of them. At the same time, we provide education for them -- schools on the reservations. And they're free also to leave the reservations and be American citizens among the rest of us, and many do. Some still prefer, however, that way -- that early way of life. And we've done everything we can to meet their demands as to how they want to live. Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, no, come join us; be citizens along with the rest of us. As I say, many have; many have been very successful.

And I'm very pleased to meet with them, talk with them at any time and see what their grievances are or what they feel they might be. And you'd be surprised: Some of them became very wealthy because some of those reservations were overlaying great pools of oil, and you can get very rich pumping oil. And so, I don't know what their complaint might be.

Soviet Dissidents

Q. Mr. President, I'm very much tantalized since yesterday evening by the question, why did you receive yesterday -- did you receive and when you invite yesterday -- refuseniks or dissidents? And for the second part of the question is, just what are your impressions from Soviet people ? And among these dissidents, you have invited a former collaborator with a Fascist, who was a policeman serving for Fascist.

The President. Well, that's one I don't know about, or maybe the information hasn't been all given out on that. But you have to understand that Americans come from every corner of the world. I received a letter from a man that called something to my attention recently. He said, you can go to live in France , but you cannot become a Frenchman; you can go to live in Germany , you cannot become a German -- or a Turk, or a Greek, or whatever. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in America and become an American.

You have to realize that we are a people that are made up of every strain, nationality, and race of the world. And the result is that when people in our country think someone is being mistreated or treated unjustly in another country, these are people who still feel that kinship to that country because that is their heritage. In America, whenever you meet someone new and become friends, one of the first things you tell each other is what your bloodline is. For example, when I'm asked, I have to say Irish, English, and Scotch -- English and Scotch on my mother's side, Irish on my father's side. But all of them have that.

Well, when you take on to yourself a wife, you do not stop loving your mother. So, Americans all feel a kind of a kinship to that country that their parents or their grandparents or even some great-grandparents came from; you don't lose that contact. So, what I have come and what I have brought to the General Secretary -- and I must say he has been very cooperative about it -- I have brought lists of names that have been brought to me from people that are relatives or friends that know that -- or that believe that this individual is being mistreated here in this country, and they want him to be allowed to emigrate to our country -- some are separated families.

One that I met in this, the other day, was born the same time I was. He was born of Russian parents who had moved to America, oh, way back in the early 1900's, and he was born in 1911. And then sometime later, the family moved back to Russia . Now he's grown, has a son. He's an American citizen. But they wanted to go back to America and being denied on the grounds that, well, they can go back to America , but his son married a Russian young lady, and they want to keep her from going back. Well, the whole family said, no, we're not going to leave her alone here. She's a member of the family now. Well, that kind of a case is brought to me personally, so I bring it to the General Secretary. And as I say, I must say, he has been most helpful and most agreeable about correcting these things.

Now, I'm not blaming you; I'm blaming bureaucracy. We have the same type of thing happen in our own country. And every once in a while, somebody has to get the bureaucracy by the neck and shake it loose and say, Stop doing what you're doing! And this is the type of thing and the names that we have brought. And it is a list of names, all of which have been brought to me personally by either relatives or close friends and associates. [Applause]

Thank you very much. You're all very kind. I thank you very much. And I hope I answered the questions correctly. Nobody asked me what it was going to feel like to not be President anymore. I have some understanding, because after I'd been Governor for 8 years and then stepped down, I want to tell you what it's like. We'd only been home a few days, and someone invited us out to dinner. Nancy and I both went out, got in the back seat of the car, and waited for somebody to get in front and drive us. [Laughter]

[At this point, Rector Logunov gave the President a gift.]

That is beautiful. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. in the Lecture Hall at Moscow State University . Anatoliy A. Logunov was rector of the university.

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On Northern Border, Permission to Fire Into Russia Buoys Ukraine

After weeks of entreaties, Ukraine won permission to hit targets inside Russia with American-made weapons, a tactic that it says will help it defend territory in the northeast.

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By Andrew E. Kramer

Reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine

Lt. Denys Yaroslavsky, a Ukrainian intelligence officer, was visiting military positions near the Russian border on Friday when he met an artillery commander whose American-made howitzer was pointed toward Russia.

The commander was in a buoyant mood, Lieutenant Yaroslavsky said, recounting the episode. Russian territory was within range. “He was happy, and he said, ‘Now we can finally hit them.’”

For weeks Ukrainian officials had cited the need to remove the shackles on their commanders as they appealed to allies to allow a more effective defense, using Western weaponry. That consent finally came in a significant way on Thursday when the United States amended its policy after months of resistance, saying Ukraine could use American-provided weapons to hit military targets in Russia.

The shift is narrow in scope, granting Ukraine permission to use American air defense systems, guided rockets and artillery to fire into Russia only along Ukraine’s northeastern border. Fighting has been raging there near the city of Kharkiv for the past three weeks after Russian troops poured over the border to open a new front in the war.

But hitting targets with American weapons inside Russia had been a red line drawn by the Biden administration because of worries about escalation into a broader conflict. Ukrainian officials tried to assuage that fear by framing the use of Western weapons as a purely defensive tactic, pointing out how Russia has been launching missiles and gathering forces in the safety of its own territory, out of range of Ukraine’s Soviet-era weaponry.

Indeed, in granting permission, U.S. officials said the weapons should be used only in self-defense in the border region.

The peril to civilians near the border was underscored once again on Friday when a Russian missile tore into an apartment block in Kharkiv in the early morning, killing three and wounding two dozen more, including a medic and a police officer, regional officials said.

Ukraine hopes the reversal in policy will be pivotal in helping it regain its footing in a war that Russia is now dominating. It was a historic moment for the United States as well: It appeared to be the first time an American president had allowed the limited use of American weapons to strike inside the borders of a nuclear-armed adversary.

At a news conference in Sweden, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called the decision “a step forward” to the goal of defending “our people who live in the villages through the borderline.”

Lieutenant Yaroslavsky, the intelligence officer, said he had met on Friday with fellow commanders who felt buoyed by the Biden administration’s decision. He said his understanding was that Ukraine had permission to launch strikes stretching to about 24 miles inside Russia.

This range, he said, will allow Ukraine to hit garrisons for Russian troops, logistics hubs for weaponry and ammunition depots but not the airstrips Russia uses to send bombers headed toward Ukraine, which are farther from the border. A number of weapons systems from NATO allies, including M777 howitzers from the United States, are already positioned within range of Russian territory, he said.

Speaking Friday afternoon, Lieutenant Yaroslavsky declined to clarify if Ukraine had already opened fire into Russia.

Other officers also welcomed the decision. “Do the Ukrainian defense forces know from where the occupier is attacking Kharkiv?” said Col. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force officer, referring to the launch sites of missiles across the border in Russia. “Obviously, we do,” he said in a text message, noting that until now Ukraine had been unable to strike back.

Russian officials have been proclaiming all week that NATO countries risk escalation if they provide Ukraine greater freedom to shoot into Russia. On Friday, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, claimed Ukraine had earlier in the war fired American weapons into Russia and “it proves the extent to which the U.S. is involved in this conflict.”

With nearly every new Western weapon system delivered in a show of support for Ukraine’s war effort, Russia has threatened ominous consequences for the West, though so far it has not delivered any.

Bending to Russian threats of escalation, said Col. Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, would only signal “weakness” by Europe and the United States. That would surely be noticed in other contexts in the world, he said, including the tensions between China and Taiwan.

He said the policy shift was needed to deter attacks elsewhere along the Ukrainian border. Russia could swiftly mass troops at any point, he said, and “it’s important to hit them before they cross.”

Ukrainian officials had said allowing the use of Western weaponry could help turn the tide of the fighting along the border and defend against attacks on Kharkiv, whose city center is just 24 miles from Russia, by hitting missile launchers and airplanes inside Russian territory.

The Russian missile strike on an apartment block in Kharkiv happened on Friday just hours after American officials announced the change in policy. A fire broke out, and a few minutes after the first missile hit, another struck the same location in a tactic known as a double tap, which is intended to target emergency responders.

For residents of Kharkiv, the bombardments are a menace overshadowing most aspects of their lives.

The short trajectories of the bombs and missiles mean civilians have little warning, or sometimes none at all, leaving them with no choice but to sleep and go about their days knowing that they could be hit by a missile at any time.

“It was all instantaneous,” said Andriy Kolenchuk, a production manager at a printing company hit on May 23. Explosions rang out, the lights blinked off and debris fell from the ceiling, he said. Dust and smoke swirled about, and “everybody was running around covered in blood.”

The city’s vulnerability had fueled Kyiv’s frustration with Western hesitation.

Officials in Britain, France, Poland and Sweden had already voiced support for the use of their countries’ weapons to strike inside Russia before the Biden administration shifted its stance, and NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, had spoken in favor of allowing Ukraine to use weapons from members of the alliance to strike targets within Russia

Ukraine has been striking targets deeper in Russian territory with a homegrown fleet of long-range exploding drones. The American weapons will help Ukraine’s army in the ground fighting north of Kharkiv and Ukraine’s air defense forces in defending the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said before the announcement in Washington.

Also on Friday, Russia and Ukraine announced the release of 75 prisoners from each country, the first such exchange since February, and a rare example of dialogue between the warring nations. “We remember everyone. We make every effort to find each and every one,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on social media .

Direct communications between Moscow and Kyiv have been infrequent since the early days of the war, but the two sides have regularly exchanged prisoners of war through deals often brokered by third parties such as the United Arab Emirates or Turkey.

Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said on Friday that there had been 52 exchanges, including Friday’s, with 3,210 Ukrainians returned. Russia has not disclosed a total number.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kharkiv, Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014. More about Andrew E. Kramer

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

The decision by the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia  with American-made weapons fulfills a long-held wish by officials in Kyiv  that they claimed was essential to level the playing field.

In recent days, Ukraine has conducted a series of drone attacks inside Russia  that target radar stations used as early nuclear warning systems by Moscow.

Top Ukrainian military officials have warned that Russia is building up troops near northeastern Ukraine , raising fears that a new offensive push could be imminent.

Zelensky Interview: In an interview with the New York Times, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine challenged the West  over its reluctance to take bolder action.

Russia’s RT Network : RT, which the U.S. State Department describes as a key player in the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus, has been blocked in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. Its content is still spreading .

Striking a Chord: A play based on a classic 19th-century novel, “The Witch of Konotop,” is a smash hit among Ukrainians who see cultural and historical echoes  in the story of what they face after two years of war.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .