The Kremlin is no more representative of Russia than Washington DC is representative of the United States. Both capitals are filled with amoral opportunists, but we have the better chance to improve our situation. At least, until the Trump cabal stages a coup.
1
I am not a Bernie supporter, but this reminds me of the non-news story about Andrew Yang a couple of weeks ago that tried to take down Yang. It is clear the NYT is anti-Bernie, but stories like this are just ripe for social media memes and little else. They do nothing to promote an informed electorate and only provide more fodder for right-wing propaganda. NYT you are better than this!
8
More of the red scare fearmongering to try to slam Bernie. It's sad really. Are you also going to denounce all Russian collaborations, including the space program and the Muppets?
6
Everyone knows Putin has no bigger ally working on Russia’s behalf in Washington DC than Trump! Sanders has never come close.
22
Nixon went to the People's Republic of China in 1972 and actually met with Mao. Nobody -- or at least nobody sane -- accused him of being a "fellow traveler."
Today, Burlington maintains its sister city relationship with Yaroslavl: http://burlingtonyaroslavl.com. Good for Burlington and good for Bernie.
40
All roads lead to Russia. Odd, indeed.
Who goes to the Soviet Union on their honeymoon?
10
The more I learn about Bernie, the more naive and dangerous he appears. If he were president, we would be trading one Russian lackey for another.
10
People often thought that the soviet union was a communist/socialist country, and they kind of were, but they were also always a dictatorship.No matter what you claim your base ideology is, if your a dictatorship, you will fail because reality cannot be dictated. Many people, and Bernie was one, thought that the Soviet Union really wanted to be a successful communist nation. That was never going to happen. Human nature actually makes it impossible to be both kind and hard working, but more important in the Soviet case was that they had dictators.
Anyway, it's not the worst thing in the world to be young and idealistic, to be liberal. It really is a must for someone who claims to human to be liberal when they are young at least. They really should never become old and conservative and mean, but I understand why it happens. A young person who is not liberal should not be trusted because they are fearful, weak, and selfish. They should see all the possibilities and strive to change the world for the better, in true liberal fashion.
11
I admit it. I'm not interested in living in a country that in any way imitates or emulates the Soviet Union.
Maybe because I'm from West-Berlin, which was surrounded by the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic and I've seen what life in a socialist society is about.
If Bernie Sanders only wanted to visit Burlington's sister city of Yaroslavl on some kind of a cultural mission -- no problem.
But if he thinks he can transpose some of those Russian values on this country Americans should seriously think twice about what that means for example; having no access or option to private health insurance, because life in a socialist society is not as egalitarian as he makes it all sound.
In fact, it fits more into the capitalist mold of unequal wealth distribution than he'd have you believe -- with greater privileges going to party members, party chiefs and industrialists, while every day hard-working people must somehow get by.
That's why all his talk about imperialism and class struggle leaves me wondering why he can't even get the wholehearted support of African-Americans, easily one of the most discriminated and disenfranchised groups in this country.
Or why he still has three houses when rampant homelessness is a badge of shame for America, one of the wealthiest countries on the planet.
Bernie Sanders can keep his ties to Russia.
I've had enough.
15
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/31986a
White House Statement on the 30th Anniversary of Sister Cities International - March 19, 1986
The President met today with the leadership of Sister Cities International to mark their 30th anniversary and receive their award for his contribution to international understanding. The President is the Honorary Chairman of Sister Cities International.
[..]
Sister Cities programs have worked to eliminate barriers of culture and language and have enhanced the opportunities for mutual understanding. Because of Sister Cities programs, thousands of young people have the opportunity each year to expand their horizons, American know-how is made available to help people in dozens of developing countries, and thousands of people around the world can see the American volunteer spirit at work.
Sister Cities International is also an important part of our effort to expand and broaden contacts and communications between the people of the United States and the Soviet Union. The President and General Secretary Gorbachev agreed in Geneva on the utility of broadening exchanges and contacts and finding new ways to increase cooperation. People-to-people programs can help build better understanding and genuine constituencies for peace.
The Sister Cities programs are an outstanding example of citizen and private sector participation at their best in the field of international exchange, understanding, and cooperation....
37
Sanders is a naive idealist (depending on your own ideas of perfection) who never really worked until entering politics; a few decades later, he's a multimillionaire-telling.
I find it ironic that Sanders loves Russia and it's government (from his childish viewpoint), but that the entire dem party believes it is Trump that is/was in bed with Putin. Sanders is more dangerous than Trump, in my mind, but both are cut from the same fabric. Thank you Biden (or DNC) for pulling ahead.
8
Having been
part of such people to people exchanges in the 70s and later (Poland, Cuba) I know that the Communist officials fooled nobody in our groups. We laughed at them and their heavy-handed propaganda. Friends who went to China felt the same way.
Of course they wrote to their superiors saying how successful they were. What would you write to your Soviet superiors? Meantime we talked with people who listened to American radio beamed to them and others eager to meet Americans.
Meantime, the whole Soviet system was falling apart and we could see the cracks.
This article lacks historical context. Just for starters. The success was ours - American.
29
How long can Bezos hold on to his continuing animosity toward Sanders because of his successful insistence that Amazon pay its workers a decent wage?
16
And so?
I am beginning to agree with my son, who has long supported Sanders. The powers that be certainly have it out for Bernie.
This is false equivalency. And oh, it will be surely pointed out. See, we Democrat’s are really reds!
47
So apparently the only proper way American politicians can attempt foreign policy is through the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction? He was not fraternizing with Stalin (he had been dead for 30 years), he wasn't planning a revolution with Trotsky and Lenin, give me a break, attempting to bridge a gap between the citizens of two major contrasting nations through nonviolent diplomacy is exactly the type of thing you should be looking for in a president.
54
This looks like nothing more than an attempt to have Sanders portrayed as an out and out communist. There's nothing wrong with the sister city program and it did come in the era of detente.... so why is this coming up now? Do establishment Democrats plan to keep digging up "dirt" so as to make Sleepy Joe the nominee?
54
For the Soviets then, so easy to propagandize Sander's efforts and, of course, now the Republicans will do likewise. Had the Russian and American people been encouraged to believe that we had so much more in common, and had both countries spent resources on people rather than their respective military, everyone's life on our small planet would have been advantaged.
195
@James Landi You say "the Republicans" will propagandize Bernie's efforts. But of course the news was leaked during a critical point in the Democratic primaries so as to benefit Biden, the Democratic establishment's choice. The Republicans, for tactical reasons, are rooting for Bernie at this point. The Democratic establishment (represented as always by the NYT) is trying to drive a stake through Bernie's heart.
25
@James Landi
You mean that instead of our countries spending trillions on weapons to destroy the world you would have preferred the money going to address things like climate change and prevention and treatment of diseases.
How could anybody think such a crazy thing.
33
@Realist
Oh, stop with the "news was leaked" and the "Democratic establishment" and the "critical point in the Democratic primaries."
A Russian correspondent new to the NYT requested the file directly from the Yaroslavl archive.
It's called investigative journalism and it's still a wonder nobody thought to do any at all the critical points before we elected Trump the first time, so busy was everyone bellyaching about Hillary Clinton that it never occurred to them to take the possibilities of Sanders or Trump administrations seriously.
The Republicans are rooting for Bernie because they want a long, ugly fight lasting into the summer so that once again this infiltrator damages the Democratic candidate Republicans fear most.
Russia's character study of Bernie—and his Bros—show stubborn, angry and conspiratorial tendencies. They know they can count on him and his movement to splatter all over the primary right into the general, whomever our nominee may be, and push Trump over the top just like last time.
7
Sanders and his supporters portray the Burlington detente initiative as benign peace building rather than as influenced by support for the Soviet regime. Perhaps, or maybe there are elements of both. Further insight might be gained if we knew how Sanders responded to the presence in Vermont of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn during the years while Sanders was Burlington mayor. Solzhenitsyn, of course, was the dissident Russian author of the Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and other novels about the soviet system. He was exiled in the mid 1970s and settled in Vermont soon afterwards, living there for many years.
Did Sanders seek Solzhenitsyn out or did he ignore him? What, if anything, did Sanders say about the author's presence in the state and about his defiance of the USSR's brutal authoritarian regime. Answers to questions like these would help us interpret what was really going on when Sanders was working so assiduously to reach out to the Russians.
9
It is an honor to have had a humanist as a mayor of a small town in VT. His thoughts in this article seem to prove how consistent this man has been throughout his life. Worrying about a nuclear weapon decimating Burlington and finding a humanist approach to such a big problem only proves why he is the only right man for the presidency.
20
The Burlington, VT Yaroslavl, Russian partnership was part of a much larger exchange program initiated by the Reagan Administration in the 1980's to encourage détente between the two countries. The "General Exchange" Agreement was signed by Secretary Schultz in 1985. "The Reagan Administration established a broad-based people-to-people Initiative to expand contact between cities of both countries." In 1991, a conference was held in Cincinnati which hosted more than 200 citizens from the Soviet Union in a cultural exchange. "The mission of the Initiative was to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation." (Although I copied the link, it did not appear in the "paste" options. However, this information, which was taken from a compilation of sources available on the "Sister Cities" program, can be confirmed from many publications online, including but not limited to Wikipedia. The sources are consistent in their description of the Initiative and its goals).
Sadly, this piece appears as just another NYT attempt at red-baiting to thwart Bernie Sanders' presidential aspirations. This leaves U.S. citizens with the unhappy prospect of searching for straight news sources, free of bias influenced by the RNC, the DNC and other corporations.
The two biggest challenges I see facing the country at this time are campaign financing (legalized bribery) and a corporate media publishing propaganda with an agenda as a substitute for news.
50
@N ... Indeed, the lede is buried in in the 13th graph. Story, if printed, shoulda read, "Sanders criticized for Soviet tour, but it was part of
Reagan-sponsored program."
19
I am not a Bernie Devotee, but I have to say, WHO CARES? 1988 is lifetimes ago. Really, if this is all the mud there is to be thrown then there must be no mud at all.
40
@DairyFreeIsMe
The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. This is called vetting! We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
We do not need a DIVIDER! We need to heal our country! That’s the side we are on. I am a 66 year old grandmother.
Bernie Sanders has a record going back 30 plus years of having extreme positions. He can’t get himself to call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. Read about his activism in Central America over his life time. He will be such an easy target for Trump. I can already see the TV adds.
4
This contact was without any doubt entirely harmless, and Bernie is a patriotic American. But we all know that a rogue like Trump will weaponize this type of thing to the greatest degree possible, and to the right-leaning electorate in this country the facts won't matter a jot. This is a big reason why Bernie cannot be the Democratic candidate.
8
Great, let's get all this Bernie-Moscow nonsense out in the open so people have time to reflect on it before the election because Trump will be lying about it constantly. One would hope people could see the difference between Bernie and Trump: Bernie tries to work with average people, no matter their nationality, to make the world better whereas Trump tries to work with strongmen/dictator types, no matter their nationality, for his own benefit and our country be damned.
28
Having visited the Soviet Union myself in 1985 and 1986, I can confirm that there were many ordinary Americans in the USSR on citizen diplomacy trips, trying to establish links with ordinary Soviets in an effort to help defuse Cold War tension. At that time, the two countries had about 10,000 nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at each other -- pure insanity.
It does not surprise me that Bernie was there too, seeking friendlier relations and world peace, as we all were. It was also clear at the time, as this article reports, that the Soviet government was trying to use the citizen exchange as a means to spread their message with Americans. This was well-understood by Americans in the USSR -- we heard Soviet propaganda every day. Nobody was buying it.
When governments are on the path of mutual assured destruction, sane citizens (and government officials) reach out to their counterparts to wage peace. This should not alarm people -- it should reassure them.
What's alarming is that we are now seeing an upsurge in the red-baiting against Bernie Sanders in an effort to influence the primary process, and it will explode if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination.
By the way, I'm not a Bernie Bro. I voted for someone else in the primary.
53
@John PV
The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
We do not need a DIVIDER! We need to heal our country! That’s the side we are on. I am a 66 year old grandmother.
Bernie Sanders has a record going back 30 plus years of having extreme positions. He can’t get himself to call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. Read about his activism in Central America over his life time. He will be such an easy target for Trump. I can already see the TV adds.
3
Compare and contrast:
BERNIE:
"If we are going to be able to convert the hundreds of billions of dollars that both the United States and the Soviet Union are now wasting on weapons of destruction into areas of productive human development, there is going to have to be a significant increase in citizen-to-citizen contact."
TRUMP:
"But, what's the point of having Nuclear weapons if we don't use them?"
44
So Bernie Sanders is guilty of treating other human beings with curiosity, respect and friendship.
Was hate, fear and demonization really better then. or for that matter, now.
54
@T Smull Which human beings are Sanders treating with respect when he praises Fidel Castro?
1
This is what we mean when we say that the media does not exercise judgement over their political reporting.
36
Oh Bernie! Dangerously naive then and now. Lets all live in happiness with no guns, share the wealth and where there are no wealthy or billionaires. I have to admit it's an attractive idea with a siren song that many will be caught up in and for its detractors is hard to attack if you put aside the hard realities of life. You only have to see how the things turned out for the people under the presidents for life Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortego who were leaders Bernie admired. You see these leaders that spouted revolution of the people where all will share the wealth and where there are no wealthy or billionaires wound up with all the power and control of what wealth there is and never want to give up their power. It's called a dictatorship.
8
Oh Locke,
cooperation is a siren song, capitalism requires 74 secret police agencies, The surveillance state, mass incarceration, and a stacked court system.
18
@P Locke
Sanders didn't only admire those dictators then, he still does. Besides their leftism, their common characteristic is that they were anti-American.
When Bernie was Mayor of Burlington, where I lived at the time, there was a sister city initiative with Yaroslavl in the USSR. There was nothing nefarious about it, it was an exchange program aimed at promoting peace.
I'm sure republicans will use this in their red-baiting as they try to paint a picture of Sanders that is unflattering, but as usual they will fail. Ironic since Trump is Putin's lickspittle.
46
“reveal American imperialism as the main source of the danger of war.” - is it still propaganda if it’s true?
16
Oh, for heaven's sake.
In the 1950's, many towns, schools, etc., had sister cities, exchange students, etc., in Japan and Germany.
Nixon opened up China - losing America's job base.
Ronald Reagan tried to have sister cities in Russia, and negotiated with Gorbachov to bring down the Berlin Wall.
Such information of record can be turned right back on the Republicans.
Oh - one more thing...let's not forget that our current president is Putin's best friend.
33
@EB
The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
We do not need a DIVIDER! We need to heal our country! That’s the side we are on. I am a 66 year old grandmother.
Bernie Sanders has a record going back 30 plus years of having extreme positions. He can’t get himself to call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. Read about his activism in Central America over his life time. He will be such an easy target for Trump. I can already see the TV adds.
Other commentators have aptly noted the contextual issues that plague this article. However, I would posit that the US public will be both unwilling and unable to assume such a pragmatic understanding of Sanders’ actions.
13
I would ask that as a follow-up, the writer put in a Freedom of Information Act request for U.S. intelligence documents about these sister-city efforts, specifically this one and also the many other cases of this era. All the well-intended, peace-building intentions of those who built these relationships notwithstanding, these activities were allowed/encouraged because the US had its own "propaganda" purposes. Citizen diplomacy was a conscious PR strategy from both sides. In the short run, it worked out much better for the West. I would love to see some of those strategy documents. Surely there must be some research out there about this?
16
A man tried to convey a message that the common people in one country did not want war against the common people in another country.
It really is that simple.
The speech that all men are equal is heard often but actually means little in current reality.
34
I was stationed in Moscow and Leningrad during the 1970's and 1980's. At that time, normal contacts between Soviet and American citizens were still relatively rare. U.S-Soviet relations vacillated between detente and the verge of conflict.
Increased people to people contacts were a way to inject both societies, in particular, Soviet society, with a dose of reality, beyond the propaganda. The Sister Cities program, originally proposed by President Eisenhower and implemented by a U.S. nonprofit group, Sister Cities International, has been one of the more successful of these people-to-people efforts.
Of course, the Soviet intelligence services sought to use these contacts to their ends, but the calculation the USG made was that such considerations were far outweighed by the benefits. In particular, direct contracts made it much more difficult for Soviet propagandists to portray Americans as the enemy, and confirmed the serious doubts that many Soviet citizens already harbored about the line that was being fed to them every day about America and Americans.
I have a lot of problems with Bernie Sanders's politics, and his naive view of the Soviet Union in particular, but I have no problem at all with his efforts in the 1980s to establish a Sister Cities relationship between Burlington and Yaroslavl. It was in line with U.S. policy and was good for U.S.-Soviet relations.
27
@James
With great sincerity, I want to know, what in your opinion does the US have to fear from Russia.
Also, what is your opinion of the National Security Archive at George Washington University,
December 2017, posting,online declassified US, Soviet, German, British and French documents revealing promises made to Gorbachev in February 1990, that if he removed all troops from East Germany and agreed to the reunification of Germany, in the words of George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward”.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gor
What role does NATO expansion play
in the "new cold war", and, perhaps, the the US having NATO bases encircling Russia is a reasonable threat to Russia?
7
@James
I see your point. But the importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
We do not need a DIVIDER! We need to heal our country! That’s the side we are on. I am a 66 year old grandmother.
Bernie Sanders has a record going back 30 plus years of having extreme positions. He can’t get himself to call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. Read about his activism in Central America over his life time. He will be such an easy target for Trump. I can already see the TV adds.
I am not a Bernie Sanders fan, but I give him a pass on this reasonable diplomatic activity during this period of time. It seems appropriate to me for the Burlington mayor to reach out to USSR city leadership in an effort to develop a 'sister city' relationship. It was also consistent with President Reagan's policies toward the USSR during this time.
36
OK story except for the use of the word "propaganda." In American English it usually has a connotation of deception. In most other languages, it includes what we would call "public relations."
I wish the reporter had clarified the definition of the word.
21
@Norman In some languages it also means commercial advertising
As the cynic would say " no good deed goes unpunished "
30
Ok, so let me summarize this. Bernie Sanders made a trip to the Soviet Union during the era of détente when even President Reagan was reaching out to Gorbachev in the hopes of reducing the possibility of nuclear war and moving toward detente. Many other American cities had already set up "sister city" relationships in support of this goal. This is a terrible piece of "red baiting" down to the ridiculous picture of the room the Sanders stayed in - as if some terrible crime had occurred there, its lingering stain still recordable.
56
Why not find sister cities in countries with civilized governments, rather than dictatorships that would exploit naive Americans?
2
@Jonathan Katz you do know that in the 1980s, Pres. Reagan pushed for better relations with Russia under Mikhail Gorbachev, right?
21
@Jonathan Katz The only country that has actively put a Norwegian prime minister under illegal surveillance is the US. No other country. Similar stories from other European countries. And this at a time when the US and Norway was allies. Maybe the US is a democracy but internationally it has acted like the worst kind of bully for the last 70 years.
17
Great question. Because we weren't having an arms escalation with those other "civilized" nations, and we weren't trying to keep from mutually assured destruction with them...
Also, there are all kinds of other sister city relationships in the world, this is just a very specific one, initiated by Ronald Reagan, that pinko, and this is the one under discussion.
14
About two weeks ago a business acquaintance told me to watch what will happen if Sanders gets the nomination. He was aware of this effort by Sanders and said he was certain there will be video. documents, etc. that Russia has of an unguarded Sanders making favorable pro-communist statements of Russia that Putin will give to Trump to assist in his re-election. Sanders motives may be altruistic but it won't appear that way.
There is no telling what Sanders might have said or done while in Russia, sort of like what happens to people when they visit Las Vegas. I know some very decent people who have done incredibly stupid things while far away from home. And we know Russia keeps compromising documents on visitors. Trump is licking his chops over a Sanders nomination for a reason.
8
There was another politician, slightly more important than the Mayor of Burlington VT who supported the sister cities program in the 1980's. I struggle to remember his name ... oh yeah it was Ronald Reagan.
36
@FW Ronald Reagan never praises or campaigned for marxists.
Bernie Sanders might have just managed to dodge a bullet when it comes to his past relationships with Russia because the Republican attack machine was no doubt gearing up to jump all over him for it, and no doubt, they would have a ball red-baiting him on it.
Of course they and most Americans have no clue about what Socialism or Communism is because both terms have been so hardwired into the collective psyche as being synonymous, and BAD -- that it makes no difference.
Still, this revelation is going to make it just a little bit harder for Sanders to hold on.
His Revolution might have just ended,
2
The point of this article is that Bernie reached out to the Soviet Union. They did not reach out to him.
He knew he would be used for propaganda purposes. The USSR did this routinely with everyone in those days.
Bernie seemed to have no problem with this.
Now it is a problem.
Actions have consequences.
99
This action had the consequence of reducing Cold War tensions, even if only slightly. What other consequence are you referring to? Please be specific.
163
@Simon Sez Sanders did not publicly (and privately) request assistance from Russia in a US election (as did Trump).
61
@Simon Sez
And now he is being used for propaganda purposes again, but this time by an establishment that wants to continue building nuclear weapons and profitting off fossil fuel instead of renewables in hopes of dominating the world.
And so it goes.
80
At first the article seem like exhibit B of Bernie Sanders’s claim that the Democratic establishment is out to get him. But there is no doubt in my mind that Trump will turn Sanders into a Communist even if it isn’t true. So it’s better the story comes out now rather than a week before Election Day.
8
My wife and I traveled to USSR on the Pushkin in 1971 and drove for three weeks in a rented Volga, making a stop in Yaroslavl. In those days, even before the opening, there had been a desire among progressives and leftwingers to imagine a transformation and end to the cold war.
This led some to overlook or marginalize the terrible history of the revolution and its aftermath. It was hard to advocate for peace and at the same time acknowledge the existence of a terror based sociiety. Solzhenitsyn tells the story of peace inspired Quakers visiting a gulag and desperately wanting to overlook what was really transpiring.
Unfortunately, our public education system has failed to give our younger progressives the historical perspective necessary to think deeply about the context in which these actions took place.
16
@Jerry Von Korff I agree: "Our public education system has failed to give our younger progressives the historical perspective necessary to think deeply about the context in which these actions took place." But that goes both ways.
I, as most of my generation (Millennials), was taught to dismiss the Russian Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky, and all the socioeconomic endeavors of communist Russia for being inherently wicked/ill-considered/autocratic. I was not taught to consider the anti-imperialist aims of Lenin, or the authoritarianism of Nicholas II, or the plight of the Russian peasants and factory workers. I was given the impression that Russia played a "minor" role in the winning of WWII (they lost around 27 million citizens and soldiers!).
It's true: Western intellectuals from the 50s onward wanted to see Russia actually fulfill its promised mission. They didn't look hard enough. But some, like Susan Sontag, publicly denounced themselves after they realized what was going on.
But most people, even people of my generation, now tend to run the opposite risk of those intellectuals. They look back on the Cold War as a battle between good (USA) and evil (USSR). We should strive to see the rise and fall of the USSR as completely as possible. We should consider the legitimacy (perhaps the necessity) of its initial creation and aims, even as we condemn its deviation from those aims.
19
@Noëlle
We should see revolution as bloody and terrible, and more often than not followed by something worse than what came before.
Our shallow and hyperbolic society should not be lulled into the false sense that the political use of words like "revolution" and "Socialism" are devoid of their original meaning and Democrats should not want our century-long history of winning progress besmirched and usurped by a presidential nominee who identifies himself with both of those names.
The fact that he went to Nicaragua and Cuba and the Soviet Union and praised what those systems were doing for those populations is relevant because he's not an ironic millennial hipster, he's an old-school Socialist revolutionary.
Democratic Socialists of America is an actual group with an actual ideology and people are giving him a free pass for using their moniker while acting like he's really just a tomcat version of Elizabeth Warren.
If he means something else, he should use other words and not these. And his supporters thinking he DOESN'T mean something else is what's naïve.
Even more naïve is thinking, when he can't control what his Bernie Bros and fellow Democratic Socialists of America do in his name now, that he'll be able to control them when he goes about installing thousands of them across all agencies of the federal government and as liaisons to every country around the world.
I'm sure most of his followers don't take the word "revolution" literally, but I fear his opponents do.
6
For reasonable people and people of good will it should be obvious that the establishment of sister city relationships between Americans and Soviets was a very good thing for the maintenance of peace during 45 years of Cold War. A very good thing surpassing the minor propaganda gains the Soviets might have made of it.
34
Numerous comments have pointed out the important context of the times which is somewhat lacking in the article.
Looming over it all was the threat of nuclear devastation, possibly through the mutual global suicide pact known as MAD or simply through a hideous mistake not being recognized in time to stand down force reactions that would have accidentally done the same.
Yes, Reagan was - finally - searching for a solid peace vs accelerating the arms race that already had far too many weapons pointed at our own heads as much as at Moscow due to the threat that fallout posed to a livable world. The Russians, under an economy broken by such competition, were wise enough to trust in diplomacy if Reagan would.
Sister cities projects were a big part of this. Earlier in the Cold War, it had been proposed that the best guarantee against the suicidal prospect of nuclear war would be to exchange delegations of notable citizens to effectively act as "peace hostages." The sister cities efforts exposed both sides at a person-to-person level to the humanity of each others peoples. It's hard to kill folks who you're broken bread with - and that is just good diplomacy when war is not a viable option of policy.
Most of all, for comparison purposes, we should compare the very public, very open, and not disingenuous efforts of Sanders to engage with the Russians and then compare that to the often concealed, self-serving, and distorted record of Trump. I'd trust Bernie over the Donald any day.
28
Bernie Sanders is a Republican media strategist's dream come true. His visit to Russia, regardless of what his intentions were, will provide more ammunition for the inevitable media onslaught to his candidacy. His campaign will spend a week trying to explain away this photo instead of focusing on the issues. Bernie Bros won't care but the impact it has on independents and suburbanites should be of concern.
4
Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist, was an elected official in Vermont. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the most notable critics of the USSR, lived in Vermont from 1976-1994.
Sanders worked hard to create a sister city relationship with Yaroslavl, but he never bothered to meet with Solzhenitsyn. This is remarkable.
Further, Sanders said that the people in the USSR seemed happy and content. This is a stunningly naive statement.
7
@Danusha Goska "Sanders...never bothered to meet with Solzhenitsyn." And where would that have been, at one of his monthly open house receptions? Or maybe during one of his many appearances at local bookstores? Problem is, those things never happened. Solzhenitsyn lived in self-imposed isolation. He bought an estate in Cavendish and fenced it off, receiving only those rare visitors that he invited. He did not do public events, he never really learned to speak English. He generally scorned his American hosts, except occasional praise for his Vermont neighbors "for leaving him alone." Thus, your criticism of Sanders for "never bothering to meet Solzhenitsyn" is just one more ill-informed and out-of-context comment.
Maybe somebody should criticize you for failing to note Solzhenitsyn's retrograde attitudes about women and minorities, or perhaps his Russian nationalism that advocated annexing Eastern Ukraine as historically Russian. Or have you never bothered to read "как нам обустроить россию"? Solzhenitsyn, the avatar of Great Russian chauvinism and Neo-imperialism. If Sanders had actually met with him, you'd probably be criticizing him for hobnobbing with the man who inspired Putin's annexation of Crimea.
24
@RDEnglish You list obstacles to Sanders' visiting Solzhenitsyn. No doubt Sanders faced obstacles in traveling to the USSR. And he overcame every one of those obstacles.
1
@Danusha Goska
White House Statement on the 30th Anniversary of Sister Cities International
March 19, 1986
The President met today with the leadership of Sister Cities International to mark their 30th anniversary and receive their award for his contribution to international understanding. The President is the Honorary Chairman of Sister Cities International.
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/31986a
7
For more than 40 years, Bernie has been fighting for peace and progress in the world and is a beacon of inspiration and humanity in a moment of such darkness in our country and world.
Yet in the face of our current corrupt and criminal administration, we seem to be intent on choosing fear instead of hope by selecting a deeply flawed Democratic nominee with demonstrable, obvious cognitive decline, a history of serial plagiarism, falsifying educational achievements, an unpopular record of supporting unnecessary wars, a poor record on racial justice and women's rights, criminal justice, trade, and consumer protection, and a history of family member trading on the Biden name opening his candidacy to claims of nepotism and corruption. Trump will make mince-meat of Biden in a general election. It would be a landside and a disaster.
21
A partial list of pre 1990 Soviet / American sister cities, excluding Burlington, with the year the relationship was established:
1989 - Long Beach, CA - Sochi
1984 - Los Angeles, CA - St. Petersburg
1982 - Gainesville, FL - Novorossiisk
1975 - Jacksonville, FL - Murmansk
1986 - Bloomington, IL - Vladimir
1988 - Dixon, IL - Dikson
1980's - Dubuque, IL - Pyatigorsk
1987 - Duluth, MN - Petrozavodsk
1988 - Minneapolis, MN - Novosibirsk
1989 - Buffalo, NY - Tver
1989 - Durham, NC - Kostroma
1988 - Eugene, OR - Irkutsk
1983 - Stevens Point, WI - Rostov Velikiy
In the cursory research done to compile this list, I noticed each one mentioned the mayor of the American town going to meet with the mayor of the Russian town to foster peace and understanding. The articles in hometown papers were written with pride.
So when can we expect deep dive articles about each of these cities? Or maybe we can just admit Sander's efforts were a good thing conducted in the open and was perfectly normal at the time based on precedence.
46
@MASH this article acknowledges the progressive leadership of Bernie in a time when Reagan was maintaining hardline policy against USSR, but it also reads as terribly misguided and reckless in its attempt to further halt Bernie's current momentum. Though the author seems to commend Bernie, he also went out of his way to slander Sanders here.
Bernie may have been a communist sympathizer but a) he was not alone; b) where is the evidence that his visit was wielded maliciously by the USSR who sought to use it for their own propagandistic purposes? I am not a Bernie bro but dare I say I gained some respect for him after reading this.
9
While I am definitely not on the Bernie-wing of the party, I think this article speaks very highly of Bernie and the title misdirects from the real takeaway of the story. It is arguably misleading in an attempt to make more out of the story than is warranted.
“It is my strong belief that if our planet is going to survive, and if we are going to be able to convert the hundreds of billions of dollars that both the United States and the Soviet Union are now wasting on weapons of destruction into areas of productive human development, there is going to have to be a significant increase in citizen-to-citizen contact,” Mr. Sanders wrote.
Yes.
41
Few seem to "get" that are battle at the time wasn't capitalism versus communism, rather it was democracy versus authoritarianism. The same battle we are fighting today.
12
@Kent R All Marxist nations are inherently authoritarian. Sanders may not be authoritarian but has shown support for it. That is not helpful to American foreign policy.
@John
All capitalist business are inherently authoritarian. Only democracy, regulation and respect for individuals liberty keeps them in check.
5
There is nothing at all sinister here. Many US cities had these sister-city relationships with cities in the Soviet Union & they enjoyed the support of Democratic and Republican presidents. Both sides had their respective propaganda objectives, but the primary purpose was as advertised -- to reduce tensions by encouraging people from both countries to get to know each other and to see beyond the caricatures each side had in their minds.
On his return to the US, Bernie reported on the accomplishments of the country he had visited. These were real and indisputable, even in 1988 on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the crack up of the USSR.
While the USSR was plagued by this time by shortages of various goods, ordinary people had a reasonable standard of living. Conditions of homelessness and and the sort of deprivations and misery associated with ghettos, barrios, trailer parks and reservations in the US were largely unknown. The average lifespan in Russia dropped by TEN YEARS following the fall of the USSR.
Bernie's controversial observation around this time that bread lines actually reflect a social commitment to manage shortages more fairly than "the free market" can be confirmed right now by anyone in the US trying to buy medical masks or a bottle of Purell. The point wasn't that bread lines were good, but that in the face of a shortage they were actually preferable to letting the rich bid up the price of bread by hoarding it all for themselves.
41
I would be much more concerned about Trump's connections with the present Russian government than what Bernie Sanders did over 30 years ago. The documents reviewed by the NY Times are interesting but the Times has not been able to determine the extent of Trump's financial relationship with Russia or describe the nature of the strange relationship between Trump and Putin. Of most concern is that Russia is carrying out a cyber war against the United States and Trump seems to be denying it is even occurring despite what he is told by US intelligence agencies. And Republican Party is siding with Trump. So to what extent does Russia have influence over the US government? It is all very puzzling and extremely troubling.
37
@Bob
This will be a huge Trump talking point. The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. This is called vetting! We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
At the time Sanders was making overtures to Yaroslavl I realize we were in a period of Glasnost. I thought maybe we could have a different relationship with the Soviet Union too but I wasn't naive about it. I realized that we couldn't just take Russia at its word. My objection to Sanders's current statements is that he is still praising autocratic leaders of autocratic countries. That is what we have been upset at Trump for doing. Diplomacy is good but we need to have our eyes open at the same time.
9
@Katherine Cagle
He doesn’t praise them. There is nuance. Even Obama said the education in Cuba was an achievement. Our politics is though because if people lose they are denied a voice and participation.
9
This is why I would never vote for Bernie Sanders. It is bad enough one party is now in the clutches of Putin. I will not vote for Putin's second choice, either. #GoJoe
6
@Karin President Reagan was negotiating with the Soviets, that is all that Senator Bernie Sanders needs to say to debunk this Trump talking point.
7
@JohnP
It won’t matter. They won’t get past the headline and will simply repeat the headline.
@Karin - Putin is not a communist he's an authoritarian. His concern is not for ideology is for control
1
President Eisenhower began the “Sister Cities” program in 1956 to foster relationships and understanding between the US and cities of the world.
There are currently 70 US and Russian sister cities. And the handwriting was on the [Berlin] wall in the mid-to-late 1980s that the Soviet Union was in collapse-mode.
I don’t understand why this is such a big deal.
50
@J L. S.
The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. This is called vetting! We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
@interpreter
I don’t believe I said I was in favor of a Sanders nomination over a Biden nomination. I simply indicated that I could not view this “big issue” for the nomination or the Presidential election.
Everyone knows Putin has no bigger ally working on Russia’s behalf in Washington DC than Trump!
5
That’s the line Corporate America is pushing very hard. Well balanced polls show the opposite.
Wealthy Americans have a LOT to lose if Bernie wins and Corporate Welfare comes to an end. Middle class and lower have so much to gain. Don’t fall for TV propaganda. Re-read this article in full.
THEN—
Go back and listen to Biden announce he’s running for the United States SENATE before the SC Democratic Debates last week - or any of the tons of other gaffs he makes on a regular basis.
9
Bernie will ride Scott free as long as he hurts the Democrats. If he is the nominee there will be an avalanche and Trump will be reelected.
4
This is disqualifying. Period. Mr. Sanders has repeatedly been seen to make excuses for illiberal governments, this is the nail in the coffin of his presidency.
6
Ok. I guess Biden should be disqualified for the Obama administration’s support of the murderous Sisi dictatorship in Egypt? Or for its relationship with Saudi Arabia? Or I guess we should disqualify Biden for his (much more recent) statements praising America’s authoritarians, all those segregationist Senators he chummed it up with? Yeah, those guys sure were committed to democracy and freedom.
3
I too went to the Soviet Union in 1988. I was in high school and Glasnost was in the air. You could feel it interacting with the Russians. We were working to realize peace through commonality and mutual understanding. A year later the Berlin Wall came down.
There is nothing special about Sanders' trip to the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan went the same year. Also to establish better relations.
37
It makes no sense to give a pass to Bernie on topics that we criticize Trump for. There should be a consistent message that Russia, China, and Cuba are not allies of the US and their treatment of their citizens is unacceptable. Our leaders should work to reform these nations, not defend and praise them.
5
Better get our own house in order before we undertake to reform other countries.
3
@John
Statement by Ronald Regan (the White House) linked but not quoted in the article:
“Sister Cities International is also an important part of our effort to expand and broaden contacts and communications between the people of the United States and the Soviet Union”
Your theory as well as this article is called ‘Red baiting’ and we should all talk about what this is and how it’s negative effects impact the American public.
34
@Mr Nin If this sister city information were a singular piece of information without any other incidents of support for Marxist regimes then you may have a point. That’s not the case though. His open platitudes for marxists is dangerous and does nothing to help the oppressed people of those nations.
3
@John
The only danger is red-baiting, based on innuendo, which reflects the McCarthy era. During that period, many people unfortunately conducted themselves as if we were a totalitarian state, ironically adopting the conduct of the very systems they decried. Our system purportedly includes due process, fair play and a "free" press, i.e., one not controlled by the government or private (corporate) interests.
16
@John Red baiting has never been a singular piece of information, it has been a propaganda tool for nearly a century. When the candidate who is most outspoken about injustice, and most critical of authoritarian regimes (Saudi’s Arabia, Russia, China) is criticized for saying a literacy program was good. It’s propaganda. It’s the same when Trump calls anything ‘Marxist”, (billionaires love that word) And most people see through it. I can give you countless examples of how people talking to people have broken down hostilities between nations or even political parties. Obama in Cuba, or you and I chatting about what red baiting is right now.
5
What stands out again is Senator Sanders' willing naivete about the Soviet system, and how its enforced socialist mediocrity denied peoples' natural impulse to strive for something better. It was apparently good enough for the Senator that the local population he saw was not "deprived", completely ignoring that they, along with everyone else on this planet, wanted more than that. It also chillingly makes one wonder if the Senator thought that the Soviet one-party system was justified by the low, but ostensibly equal results it produced for its people. I'm familiar with the group-think of American socialists from that time, and they would have universally said 'yes'. What did the Senator think?
4
Like it or not Trump will use Sanders engagement with the Russians to muddy the waters concerning his own entanglement with Putin. Do we really want to have a conversation about Soviet politics during our election? How will that help us get rid of Trump?
10
Would like to know what Sanders thought of the Soviet Union's harassment of Sakarov, Solzhenitsyn etc. Has he ever read all 3 volumes of The Gulag Archipelago? I caucused for Bernie in 2016 but both he and Trump use the same tired paranoid concepts of the Democratic Establishment and The Deep State. I like a lot of Bernie's ideas but we are fighting for the soul of this country. Perfection is the enemy of the possible. As long as we have the electoral college we can't we always get what we want. And ,thanks to the 60 Minutes interview, you can forget about Florida's electoral votes.
9
Completely agree. As a healthcare activist I worked with a lot of Bernie supporters & I was astonished that many of them thought that Russian interference was a “hoax” to justify to the “establishment” why Hillary lost. Conspiracy theories abounded and I could not get on board with their US vs THEM mentality. I still believe, support & work towards universal healthcare but wish there was a better messenger. One that didn’t divide.
*Many Bernie supporters I met refused to accept Hillary had tried to get comprehensive healthcare reform passed in the 1990s even though its easy to fact check.
The headline reads like a Trump campaign talking point. There is no doubt that the Soviet Union sought to use U.S. peace activists for their own benefit. But in the end the Soviet and the U.S. war hawks lost, and the peace activists won. We should be grateful to Senator Bernie Sanders and all the other activists who worked for years to end the cold war.
34
@JohnP
You are correct! This will be a huge Trump talking point! The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. This is called vetting! We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
@JohnP Not even close to a correct read of recent history. Reagan’s military expansion and the Soviet attempt to keep up broke their already failing economy. Peace activists had absolutely nothing to do with it and at the time they saw Reagan as a crazed warmonger about to start WW3.
1
It’s an unalloyed good that this information is coming out so Bernie can be properly vetted by voters. Those playing this down obviously have an agenda to not shine too harsh a spotlight on their candidate lest some unsavoury things come out. Let’s not forget that the Soviet Union was essentially a forced labour camp masquerading as a country and was responsible for multiple genocides and ethnic cleansings in the 20th century.
4
@Wonderer This is his second run. What could come out that is so devastating that didn't come out the first time around?
2
Fundamentally, the citizens of Russia and America should share ideals, interests, and goals. This is true for any pair of nations on this planet.
To establish sisterhood status between cities is not a sin but a step towards reducing friction and the likelihood of war.
That being said, for the President of this nation to enter into a private relationship with the Czar of Russia who is a known corrupt commodity and killer of enemies is unforgivable.
I think by now, we all know Trump entered into an agreement with Putin for Trump Tower Moscow and payments to Trump in exchange for election assistance. Once Trump got elected, his primary goal was to eliminate sanctions on Russia...quid pro quo.
I do not hate Putin personally but I think this man is misguided. He indulges in evil by killing his enemies, stifling dissent and promoting global warfare.
Trump, on the other hand is corrupt, self-serving and backwards to the core. Both dwell in darkness.
To disparage Bernie Sanders for his attempt to reconcile relations with Russians is misguided and short-sighted.
28
Bernie taking heat from Trump about Russian connections. How ironic.
17
@Steve L Well, I, for one, am in favor of more pond hockey.
2
I'm looking for the purpose of this "Expose". Over 30 years ago, Bernie Sanders did outreach to a Soviet City and...?
Funny how today's international relationships are such that- a Communist nation named China is one of our biggest trading partners and holds most of our debt. Funny how the U.S. has normalized relationships with another "evil empire" communist nation- North Vietnam...funny how our current president salivates at the notion of being BBF's with North Korea's murderous dictator...funny how this National Enquirer piece...ain't worth the space used to print it.
47
A bit unrelated, apologies, but where’s the article about signs of Biden’s cognitive degeneration? Everyone I know is talking about this in our daily political discussion but no major coverage in the Times.
Where’s the article about Biden’s inappropriate touching, when he threatened a questioner and called him ‘Fat’ or told another voter ‘you should go vote for someone else’? Just looking for full coverage of what is now a two man race.
36
@Craig
Where is the article Bidens medical plan costs more than Bernie’s single payer M4A?
8
“reveal American imperialism as the main source of the danger of war.” ...spot the lie...
6
Perhaps if Bernie had spent some time in the military, especially on October 22. 1962 he would have memories of how the Russians wanted to destroy us with their missiles rather that spreading his socialistic view at Brooklyn College that the student and faculty rejected.
4
@Tonjo
Maybe with him in the military we would have gone to war.
I have serious reservations about Sanders (electability, lack of pragmatism) and some of his most vocal supporters, but this is a non-story, very much in line with the NYTimes reporting on Hillary’s emails. Please focus on what matters or you’ll be handing the election to Trump again.
30
I grew up in a Communist family in Canada -- the Party was renamed LPP, Labor Progressive Party, after the CPC, the Communist Party of Canada, was banned in 1941. Two uncles, avowed Communists, were aldermen in Winnipeg, another became Attorney General of Manitoba for a short time. While their accomplishments for the province and city were admired and approved, overlaying those was their motivation: A communist – not socialist – society.
By every measure of promises and principles: Bernie, a self titled "progressive socialist", is, in policies and goals, a Fellow Traveler. Always was, always will be.
He would weaken America's international resolve, our standing among our allies -- even as does Trump, but for a different motive. He would destroy our country, leaving the world easy pickings for Russia and China.
That's why the Russians support Bernie and are working to promote his candidacy, even compromising Democratic primary voting systems. Trump is paid for. Bernie comes free.
Bernie vs. Trump in 2020? A disaster for our nation. Either of them.
4
@Austin Liberal
So Bernie is going to overthrow American democracy?
1
We all know that Sanders has been particularly influenced and impressed with Marxists. He has a history of defending them. People want to overlook that fact.
3
Excuse this reader but if the N.Y. Times had this information. “what were you waiting for to reveal it?” Even if true, which it seems to be, this smacks of Editorializing through the choice of what and where and when to print information. Frequently that choice is subtle and doesn’t hit one in the face. This is something, like a person’s past sexual history (especially with women), put in the paper for its irritant, “attention must be paid” quality.
I get it. Bernie tends to be a lefty and reaches out to try to “make peace.” And Americans are all for peace but usually it has to be on our terms. This is a disrupter. It should have been out there months ago, but I guess the corporation was afraid that it would be lost in the vast amount of information on all the other candidates. I don’t even like Bernie and still think this is not news NOW; it’s the kind of thing you might expect from Trump.
21
Really? This is an attempt to create something from nothing. Even by the standards of the Times' constant Bernie bashing, this is a new low. As I recall, the time period this occurred in was when it was the policy of the United States to create a better relationship with the Soviet Union. Let's see, who was president at that time? Oh, yeah, Ronald Reagan.
40
Today's WSJ has an in-depth analysis of the economic results of Bernie's proposals. It's a radical restructuring of our society which would entail a massive expansion of the government and huge increases in taxation. With the 16% increase in Middle Class taxes that Bernie proposes the WSJ estimates, based his health care plans alone, we would be $17 trillion short even with cuts to the NIH and other public health agencies.
Super Tuesday demonstrated the Democratic party rejects these plans. The party of JFK won't laud Castro. The party of "ask not what your country can do for you" will not demand those without a college education pay the debts of those who chose to get worthless expensive degrees.
Bernie has every right to spew his plans, but he doesn't have the right to complain when he's beaten at the ballot box that someone is "stealing" from him. Too many of his followers are prone to violence and the rules were made based on his objections. If he loses, he has to accept it.
There is very little in common between Medicare for All, calling the killing of Suleimani a "war crime", and calling Israelis racist and the positions of the Democratic party. The party that killed bin Laden and recognized Israel has nothing in common with Sanders' Marxism. The Democrats can't win elections taking insurance from people that purchased it and jobs from people who work hard.
Bernie-take your message to the people and out of the Democratic Party. Run as a 3rd party candidate!
7
@HGreenberg
Clearly neither one of us is a swooning fan of Sanders, but it is possible to offer a critique that does not misrepresent what he has actually said, or taunt him into doing something that would not turn out well for us.
It was Netanyahu whom Sanders called a "reactionary racist", not Israelis. In that he is precisely correct. This strategy of portraying right-wing Likud policies as having broad Israeli support is a ruse belied by three recent elections in which Netanyahu has been unable to win a governing majority. Clearly half of the country is not with him.
And encouraging a third-party run would be disastrous for Dems. It would guarantee a second term for Trump. We need to win Sandersistas over by appealing to their reason, not send them into exile.
Finally, why insult people who are trying to improve themselves by referring to their degrees as “worthless”? I hold degrees in History and Engineering. My career was in the latter field, but the former made me an educated individual. I value the former far more highly than I do the latter.
5
How should we pay for things? Little time is devoted in the media to discussion of how pay for a bloated military budget. Partly because I am married to a citizen of a foreign country, I live outside the United States. I am happy to pay lower taxes than I would have to pay in the US for national health insurance and excellent public transportation, among other things. You can also get a test for coronavirus here easily. Although I rarely schedule appointments to the doctor, I do not wait long when I go and it only costs a few dollars for the visit and a few dollars for the visit. I am not scared to go to the doctor because of expenses as I was in the US. It’s no paradise by any means here and I miss many things in he US, but my point US could pay for these things if they desired to do so. It’s just a matter of not letting Amazon not pay any taxes and letting defense spending get so needlessly out of control. We are in a Second Gilded Age, a system of socialism for the rich in which we shamelessly support authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia and Apartheid Israel.
4
Trump supposedly colluded with the Russians was the narrative. A 3 year investigation ensued.
Bernie has been a Russian admirer since the '60's and is now a serious contender for Democrat nomination...
7
Where are the articles about Biden wanting war with Iraq and his comments over the years about reducing Social Security? And what about that bankruptcy bill he championed??
24
Reagan encouraged Bernie to reach out to prevent nuclear war.
You buried that information in your article to create a misleading title.
37
@Mike Because Sanders has a good relationship with marxists.
I am the last person believing in conspiracy stories and I always dismissed statements by Bernie claiming that the establishment is conspiring against him.. until now. Shame on you NY times. Starting by the headline, this article is trying to paint Sanders as a naive pupet from the russians.
This is obviously an effort to push Bidens' candidacy forward. Biden, good job on alienating Bernie's supporters.
39
Digging through archives of the @nytimes, I found evidence of Reagan meeting with Gorbachev in 1980s and discussing improving US-Soviet relations. Will you wrote a story?
22
@David Waskow Reagan was the President and the official face of our government. President’s often meet with enemies as a part of foreign policy.
This article is unconscionable. The photographed document outlining the "information-propaganda" work reveals absolutely nothing nefarious as the headlines and articles insinuate. As your fact-checkers should have discovered, "propaganda" in the Soviet context referred to PR rather than political agitation. "Information-propaganda" is PR. What we in English refer to as propaganda is called agitprop, or "agitation-propaganda." I have done a hasty translation here and welcome any corrections:
Riabkov will talk about the peace-loving politics of the USSR and the ongoing perestroika in all spheres of life ... Yaroslavl as an example of perestroika and the process of democratization and glasnost and plans for developing Yaroslavl.
Verkhovets will talk about operation of enterprises and research on new economic conditions: self-financing, cost-accounting, self-sufficiency.
Novikov will talk about public services in the USSR and training medical personnel ... about the USSR's efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons, about progress in implementing the treaty between the USSR and the USA on medium-range missiles in Europe, and about the work on the treat to reduce strategic nuclear missiles by 50%.
Verkhovets will talk about the results of the 19th party conference.
Riabkov will talk about Yaroslavl's international connections.
During the stay, members of the delegation will answer any questions about the internal and foreign policy of the CPSU and the Soviet state.
18
How about a NYT article of the same length which details Trump's meeting with Putin with just the translator and Trump's taking of the translator's notes after the meeting.
Let's beat that drum
I am much more interested in what was said by those two
then what Bernie said in 1989
What about other contact between Putin and Trump
can't you expose every contact and how much documentation there is of the conversations
Who was there? Who took notes?
Telephone calls? Any of those calls in that special vault they have?
This is where I want the NYT to spend their time and money - expose those contacts down the line
20
A fascinating bit of journalism. I fear, though, that rightwing zealots and *anti-Bernie Democrats* will use it as disinformation propaganda! They'll claim it shows Sanders was a Soviet “stooge”.
The clickbait headline reinforces that: “As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity.”
They'll overlook key passages:
“Nothing in the documents suggests that Mr. Sanders was the only local American official targeted for propaganda, or even that he was particularly receptive to it.”
“This was also the era of perestroika and glasnost, economic and cultural changes promoted by Mr. Gorbachev that had sparked optimism among some in the West”
“Some of the Yaroslavl residents involved in the relationship with Burlington still look back wistfully at the heady circumstances of Mr. Sanders’s visit in 1988—a time when the Iron Curtain was starting to crumble, the Soviet Union seemed poised for democratic change, and interactions with Americans felt new and fascinating.”
Something else could help counter rightwing distortions.
“At the time of Mr. Sanders’s announcement in 1987 that Burlington would seek a Soviet sister city, several dozen other American cities already had such a relationship or had applied for one.”
So, let's learn more about those “several dozen” cities! Which ones, who were their mayors, how many years did the programs run, and what did their participants think?
More on the widely acclaimed Sister Cities program would help, too!
25
The feeling that we've been here before brings to mind Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" -
Well, I quit my job so I could work all alone
Then I changed my name to Sherlock Holmes
Followed some clues from my detective bag
And discovered there was red stripes on the American flag!
That ol’ Betsy Ross . . .
Now Eisenhower, he’s a Russian spy
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy
To my knowledge there’s just one man
That’s really truly an American: George Lincoln Rockwell
I know for a fact he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus
Well, I finally started thinkin’ straight
When I run outta things to investigate
Couldn’t imagine doin’ anything else
So now I’m sittin’ home investigatin’ myself!
Hope I don’t find out anything . . . hmm, great God!
18
@Esther
I had the great pleasure of telling off Robert Welch, one of the founders of the John Birch Society, gesturing in a way quite familiar to many Boston are drivers ;)
It was over a parking space, not politics, in the aftermath of the Blizzard of ‘78, but never-the-less the sentiment would have been similar.
Interesting, an encounter of just a few minutes with Welch, showed his extreme paranoia. I remember it vividly.
The John Birch Society was then headquartered in Belmont, MA, 2 buildings down from where I worked. They moved to Appleton WI in the mid ‘80s, but still maintain some presence in the form of a little bookstore or something like that.
7
@Bill in Vermont I'm young enough that this song has been my only real exposure to the existence of John Birchers, but I would consider it an honor and privilege to gesture at one in the manner of Boston area drivers!
6
In 1988 we knew this
The Gulag Archipelago was published in 1974.
Czechoslovakia 1968
The East German Revolt. 1953
The suicides of Russian POWs freed by the west who refused to be repatriated to Russia.
The Show Trials of the thirties.
Raoul Wallenberg.
Russia was holding American POW's from WW2, Korea, and Vietnam at that point.
He was a tool then and is a tool now. And refuses to apologize for any of it.
1
Really? Dredging up this tenuous 1988 Russia connection to slow Bernie's political momentum when the man in the White House publicly appealed to the Russians for 2016 campaign help?
19
My view of Sanders has always been that he is a utopian dreamer lacking the realist gene. My view of Sandersistas is that they are blind to this, and have somehow convinced themselves that if they can just elevate him to the presidency, all our problems would be solved.
Never mind the obstructionists in the Senate, never mind that with him at the top of the Dem ticket we would almost certainly lose the House, never mind that the Supreme Court is poised to declare the ACA (which only survived because Chief Justice Roberts unexpectedly voted to uphold it in a 5-4 decision eight years ago) unconstitutional later this year, if we can just get Sanders into the White House, a new day will dawn. We will have M4A, free college tuition, and student debt forgiveness.
Sandersistas believe that politics is a question of magic performed at the top in presidential election years, not of hard work and persistence in building a foundation by seizing control of city councils, state houses and Congress from obstructionist Tea Party wing nuts in off-years. They want to elect Sanders as President, and declare the problem solved.
It has been clear for some time that the Republican attack machine has been preparing to come after Sanders with a 1950’s-style scare campaign portraying him as a communist sympathizer were he to win the Dem nomination, though they have gone easy on him so far to encourage that outcome.
I never expected to see the NYT beat them to the punch with this hatchet job.
11
It was a feature of American policy throughout the Cold War to engage the USSR both with the threat of force and also with cultural outreach. Any of these efforts at exchange were to the propaganda benefit of both sides, which was precisely the argument of the whole endeavor; peace will bring greater good to both sides. That this is now being blatantly used to smear Bernie is ludicrous.
19
The importance of this article is that if Sanders is nominated Trump will trounce him in the general election and we will lose the House. This is called vetting! We need to unite our country and defeat Trump. This is the big picture. Please let’s not forget!
4
@Interpreter It isn't vetting. This is making a sensation out of nothing. It's isolating Sanders and leaving out the other dozen or so U.S. cities and their mayors who also participated in this U.S. government sanctioned program.
5
@Curious One
I see your point but Bernie Sanders, particularly, has had a record of extreme positions going back 30 years. He can’t get himself to call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. Read about his activism in Central America over the years. He would be such an easy target for Trump. I can already see the TV political adds. We can’t afford another 4 years of Trump!
1
Rather than get into the origins of the program, which can be a cover for more sinister motives, let's get into the effects.
What I want to know is, did Sanders make contact with our agents on the other side and retrieve the microfilm? How about establishing the backdoor channel from their Euro-based moles to the secret payment accounts?
Or maybe it really is all about pond hockey.
4
Oh great, now it's Bernie's "Russia connections." It seems cold war establishment Democrats pull that card out of their sleeve for anything that threatens.
26
@John Doe There is zero harm to Sanders in discussing this subject. Is there anything even slightly damaging in the article? Just get it out now, researched exactly as this article has, before the campaigns put their spin on it.
The Sister City program was created by Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 to further US foreign policy. As an elected official, Sanders participated in the program exactly within its scope and goals.
He facilitated pond hockey. That's the scoop.
6
@The Way It Is and Will Be
That’s not the purpose. The headline and title will be what most boomer generation see. And it causes fear. The number one reason they voted for Biden mentioned in exit polls was fear. Fear of Trump and fear Bernie is a red commie to far left.
We see nothing about massive weaknesses in Biden.
4
This only reinforces that Sanders is the one candidate who will fight for the American people and not the Military Industrial Complex.
By the time of this visit (1988), the Cold War was a stupid, archaic vestige that had only been kept alive by hawks and hardliners on both sides.
Thankfully, liberal voices on both sides -- such as Sanders an Gorbachev -- were able to talk and deescalate, walking us back from the brink of nuclear war.
25
What if...
“Mayor Sanders was proud to join dozens of American cities in seeking to end the Cold War through a Sister Cities program that was encouraged by President Reagan himself,”
...was the title of this article?
32
“It is my strong belief that if our planet is going to survive, and if we are going to be able to convert the hundreds of billions of dollars that both the United States and the Soviet Union are now wasting on weapons of destruction into areas of productive human development, there is going to have to be a significant increase in citizen-to-citizen contact.”
THIS is what ended the Cold War, not trying to out-apocalypse the USSR by commissioning enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on earth 10,000 times over to their 5,000.
I can’t object enough to the inflammatory headline (that most people won’t look past) or the cartoonishly ominous tone of this article. Your coverage of the Sanders campaign has generally been atrocious, having evolved from apathy to DNC propaganda and now McCarthy-style red baiting. Whether it’s fear of what a Sanders presidency would do to the Times’ business interests or misguided belief that only Biden can beat Trump and make things “normal” again, it’s making me question the worthiness of my subscription.
31
And what did the US state department think of these sister city ties?
7
For reporting fairness sake, please put a list of all of the US towns/cities, and their contact people, who also instigated sister city relationships.
This article has the appearance of targeting one individual for whom the NYT has shown a certain skepticism.
38
@Vinnie K
I see your point but Bernie Sanders, particularly, has had a record of extreme positions going back 30 years. He can’t get himself to call Nicolás Maduro a dictator. Read about his activism in Central America over the years. He would be such an easy target for Trump. I can already see the TV political adds. We can’t afford another 4 years of Trump!
Way to go, NYT. Another hit piece on Sanders. And you wonder why so many of those who are left behind doubt the Democratic establishment. You daily disparage the only candidate left in the race who has, for his entire political career, hewed true to the legacy of FDR's new deal and LBJ's Great Society, sewing fear over Bernie and thereby blatantly favoring Biden.
42
This persistent red baiting of Bernie Sanders is lazy and ridiculous. It appears to serve no other purpose but to continue the narrative that Sanders is a secret totalitarian (or useful rube) who has an affinity for evil communist governments around the world. It does nothing to inform voters about the issues Bernie Sanders cares about or his long history as a participant and leader in (small “d”) democratic movements for justice. I guess we’ll just continue to dig up
30
This article is an interesting twist on using Russia to influence our elections, in this case subverting Sanders to give Biden a boost. Only the ruinous but useful simplifications will persist from this article, as the NYT knows full well. The pro-Biden "centrists" continue to mobilize, elevating wealth care above health care. Really, is the status quo so cozy that it's ok to let tens of thousands of people die each year because they can't afford treatment? Evidently so.
25
What this simply shows is that Bernie is and has been an idealog for a long time. It also shows that he has bad judgment and is caught up in his own sense of self importance. Simply a flawed character who may even believe in the massive lies as well as false promises he is making to the desperate American progressives who have anointed him their leader. Humm, sounds like the Maxists who put Lenin into power. How did that work out?
1
No. This article doesn't show any of that. It's clear that you read the headline and immediately moved to the comments.
7
Marcel,
NYT, you don't have to be afraid of Sanders, Biden will be the next democratic nominee.
3
Will the NY Times examine in depth Joe Biden's vote in support of giving Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld the authority to invade Iraq?
I mean we get to hear ad nauseam about Sanders' attempt as a small city mayor to defuse Reagan era saber-rattling with the Soviet Union. Why don't we hear the back story about how Biden with his vote in the Senate facilitated the greatest foreign policy blunder in the history of our republic? 5000 American dead? Five trillion dollars? The middle east destabilized for 17 years and counting?
Will it revisit the Biden orchestrated hearings that replaced Thurgood Marshall with... wait for it... Clarence Thomas while simultaneously denigrating Professor Anita Hill?
Or is it only Sanders' record that warrants scrutiny?
25
@Julian Fernandez How about Joe’s support of NAFTA, the bankruptcy bill, cutting Social Security and deregulating the financial industry?
14
Pretty awesome. When the world powers were rattling their sabers, Bernie reached out to some people on the other side and connected on the basis of our shared humanity. We're all in this together, folks.
30
Just think how our world would be better if the USA had really worked to help the Russians after the USSR failed. But we didn’t. Instead, we worked to extend NATO to their borders. And we got Putin as blowback. I don’t support Bernie’s agenda but he has raised very serious issues about health care, the problems of student debt and our defense posture and he deserves credit for it.
11
@Abbott Hall
And yet we see no positive articles about his stance on peace compared to Joes support for wars.
3
Conveniently timed released in corporate interests.
24
Sanders is very much like Trump in terms of turning a blind eye toward human rights abuses. The only difference is that they coddle different dictators for their own political points, which are a little different.
It isn’t like Sanders hasn’t maintained a pro-Russian stance well after the end of the Cold War. He opposed having the Baltic States join NATO, because he favored Russian imperialism over the right of people to live in peace. He was very soft on the invasion of Ukraine. Apparently he is quite pro imperialism, it turns out.
The problem here is that for one ,Sanders is a self avowed and completely unrepentant communist ,who cannot self confess in public while campaigning for office.The comparisons to President Reagans platform in Russia are really moot because these two individuals are political opposites.Reagan was only interested in ratcheting down the conflict,Sanders is interested in adopting standards of socialism,nationalization of banking and industry,open borders and the nanny state on the backs of the US taxpayer.As President ,the trillions Sanders would need to appropriate would be unattainable without nationalization of banking and industry. UN type weapons confiscation is also extremely necessary to halt american weapons owners who would then quickly become subversive as they have become in all socialist Nations.So we are only seeing the outside of the wrapper with Sanders true intentions.
1
This is old news that the Times seems to be adding to the fire at just the right time. The spin is pretty obvious, but I'm not really surprised. Fox and Friends (the GOP) will have a field day with this just like they will with Biden and the Ukrainian story. Except this was at least an attempt at building bridges, regardless of what a Soviet in 1988 thought he could do with it.
13
I'm very disappointed in the NYT for the misleading headline for what is essentially a positive story. What Sanders initiated then is exactly what we need more of in this country. Why frame it as something sinister?
28
We will always be at war with Russia. No matter what they do it is just a clever plot to put us off our guard. We will always be at war with Russia and any who oppose this war and the military spending that it supports and the wars that it spwans are traitors.
Asking to live in peace and be friends: too radical for me. Asking a de facto enemy in public and in secret meetings to join forces to crush political opposition: really, that’s the best way forward. Making the opposition “disappear” is the best of all. That’s what comes next.
5
I studied the USSR in 4 college courses with a Ukraine professor who lived in the US. By 1985 everyone knew about the failure of the USSR economic system, its terrible human rights record, and its aggressive foreign policy. For Berne Sanders to have thought it was a good idea to emulate any of this, or thought the people were doing "fairly well", shows wishful thinking at best and ideological blindness at worse.
Why he didn't create a sister city in Finland or a social democrat country I cannot fathom. I recognize he was looking for peace, but to have assumed the USSR was too, is bizarre. He is an ideologue, as unthinking left as Trump is right.
1
I’ve been traveling to, living and working in Russia and the Soviet Union for decades, since the late 80s.
These sister city programs are a feature of probably every city and town in the US. Most cities have multiple. The Soviet Union was a focus for decades because this was seen an an opportunity for “citizen diplomacy”. So many US cities, large and small, have these relationships with Russian counterparts.
*Any* engagement with the west was seen by the Soviet Union was as an opportunity to propagandize. In a totalitarian state this comes from the top, and so it did.
And we saw these the exact same way. What we as a country were selling, though, was exactly what Bernie was doing - America as a free and open society, with a diversity of views, and no central control. And that view won, for a time at least. Maybe Bernie helped that happen.
So, really, there is no news here. One of thousands of sister city relationships, most of which still exist. A mayor who supported it, like most would have back then. And Soviets who propagandized a failing system every time they had a chance.
Why, exactly, was this a headline so important that it was flagged on my phone as a top NYT alert for the day?
411
@Baffled This piece is targeted toward the people who still view the world through a Cold War lens, to help gin up opposition to Sanders.
77
@Baffled I think it's perfectly fine to discuss it. There's plenty of confusion on the subject of Sanders' positions, and this helps to clarify them.
The article largely echos your points. I'd rather have a journalist do real research and get the story out now, rather than leave it to a competing campaign to spin it into something it wasn't.
12
@Baffled the news is how Bernie could have been so naive to trust the soviet's good intentions and ignore their machine of propaganda?
3
Focusing on a gesture of international goodwill from nearly 40 years ago and trying to politically weaponize it against Senator Sanders is a new level of disguised partisanship masquerading as news.
32
I love that this article was meant as a negative take on Bernie and the commenters see right through it. How is this bold diplomacy a bad thing? Democrats have now become the party of Cold Warriors and it’s absurd.
26
@Daniel Blair
The problem is the headline. I’m sure Fox News and Trump can use it to attack and most Boomers won’t read the article.
Public documents, previously unseen because no one cares, demonstrate that Bernie Sanders has been consistent in his goal of world peace since the 1980s.
30
"Don't look at the flash"
When I was in elementary school in the 1960's the school held "atomic bomb drills." We were taught to hide under our desks, to "not look at the flash" and to get to a bomb shelter if possible. We even practiced this!
Later as a young adult in the 1980's, now after the Vietnam war, Yes, the idea of finding international peace through outreach to citizens directly with the goal of increasing familiarity and friendships was the basis of citizen peace bridge building efforts. Finding peace and reduction of the risk of nuclear war was desired through most any means.
Now we can look back and evaluate the effectiveness of the program however somehow casting Sanders leadership in an effort to find peace in the world as sinister is misplaced.
I am not a Bernie supporter, but I do respect his belief in an active citizenry and vision of a peaceful world. Isnt that what democracy looks like?
Don't we all prefer that our children, and for me now grandchildren can live in peace and go to school without such idiocy as being told: "Don't look at the flash?"
15
I was part of a Sister Cities delegation to the Soviet Union the same year, 1988. There were several different delegations between my city and our sister city there, consisting of business people, city government representatives, students, etc. The delegations included conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between. No one came back wanting to institute Communism at home nor impressed by its overall results, but everyone came back appreciating the beauty of the country and the warmth, hospitality, and humanity of Soviet citizens themselves. Our cities still maintain ties to this day.
The Sister Cities program was founded on the idea of people-to-people exchanges encouraged by Dwight Eisenhower, who, after witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, believed that the key to peace was encouraging private citizens to understand one another through direct personal contact, saying, "If we can get people talking to each other, I am certain that most of the world’s troubles would be over.”
25
There are countless ways to rationalize this but it’s still a huge liability and they’re going to hammer him with it relentlessly. And it will bear fruit.
A bit of context on Sister Cities is in order. Sister Cities was an initiative of President Eisenhower . It was launched in 1956, at the apogee of the Cold War, along with People-to-People. General Eisenhower's two initiatives stemmed from his "Peace Through Understanding" idea that he promoted early in his first term. Locating PTP and SC outside the government was deliberate. President Eisenhower wanted these programs to be locally-driven and genuinely represent the people of America.
Although I have no direct knowledge, I'm absolutely confident that President Eisenhower and the people around him, such as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, weren't naive. It would have been impossible for them to conclude that the Soviets would not use SC and PTP for propaganda. Regardless, President Eisenhower had enough faith in the decency and patriotism of ordinary Americans to initiate these programs.
None of the disclosures about Moscow's control of messaging by Yaroslavl authorities surprises. The opposite would have been the surprise.
Eisenhower was unafraid to contrast American democracy with Soviet autocracy through citizen diplomacy. He thought our ideals, being superior, would prevail. Obviously, programs like SC and PTP were subject to manipulation. That was, and is, a small price to pay for the vastly greater benefit of President Eisenhower's concept of Peace Through Understanding.
22
We have to admit that the world order that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, was not what most of us had hoped for, and it did not turn out to be the "end of history". What we have ended up with is an order still threatened by the arm race, nuclear proliferation, global warming, entrenched poverty, and deadly endemics. It could have been quite different with a visionary political leadership in the West, which unfortunately we did not have.
6
So Bernie Sanders engaged in very forward-looking international diplomatic efforts 32 years ago when he was a 46 years old mayor ?
Sounds like he's a fine human being and he'd make a great President and a good, experienced leader.
Of course the radical right Grand Old Propagandists will portray the events as treasonous, but lies, distortions and neo-McCarthyism are the bedrock of America's radical right.
Meanwhile, back in 2020 reality, Trump-Manafort-Stone are all Russian oligarchic sympathizers.
The framing of this article is unsurprisingly lame.
55
@Socrates The framing of this article is more than lame, along with the headline, and a lack of a clearly stated context, the intent is to smear Bernie Sanders as an ideologically sympathetic dupe for the Soviet government. During that period of the Cold War, dozens of American cities and their mayors participated in sister-cities programs, supported by the Reagan administration. It was commonplace for cities to participate in these programs, and still is to this day. So, if Sanders was a dupe for the "commies", then he was only one of dozens of duped mayors and cities across the country. A few weeks back George Will and his bowtie dishonestly used this same sister-city program between Burlington and Yaroslavl to claim that due to his ideological admiration for Soviet communism, the newly wed Sanders chose to spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.
GOP propagandists need not worry, the MSM, including the
NYTs, is doing the job for them.
14
Why is it of concern? Didn’t Trump ask Russia for assistance and republicans approved?
23
Oh, no! Bernie tried to create peaceful ties with a Soviet city during the Cold War. The horror, the horror!
40
This is just more anti-Sanders efforts by the NYT. Of course, it is a good thing for US cities to have sister cities in other countries.
39
“Previously unseen documents from a Soviet archive show how hard Mr. Sanders worked to find a sister city in Russia when he was a mayor in the 1980s. Moscow saw a chance for propaganda.”
That sounds like a “hook” from The National Enquirer.
One should expect more from the NYT.
The context of US and USSR (Gorbachev and Reagan) attempts at better relationships at the time is not emphasized.
Gratuitous writing.
33
Democrats: Vote blue no matter who!
Also, Democrats: Not that guy, though.
It would funny if it wasn't so pathetically sad. Generations of voters are being lost thanks to hit pieces like this and comments from the entitled boomers.
32
NYT chased Warren out of the running by obsessing about her healthcare plan being "unpaid for", while it has never had the same fussing over wars being 'unpaid' for. Now they are after Sanders and what he did or didn't do decades ago.
Sure, let's have Biden so we can spend the next 8 months discussing who is more corrupt, Biden and his son or Trump, instead of issues ailing the American people. Yeah, let's continue letting the oligarchs loot the country by sending our jobs abroad and forcing us to take medications manufactured in China or India.
No thanks.
39
Sanders efforts seemed laudable at the time albeit naive. He was dealing with the Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev ( Glasnost and all that ) Theoretically he might have to deal with that Soviet regressive Vladimir Putin. A different kettle of fish altogether.
2
The Berlin Wall was just a year from falling and the USSR was on its last legs, it was a good time for Sanders and others to move from beyond the Cold War.
Dialogue is always good.
19
Looking forward to seeing how the right wing spins this article, ignoring the fact that their hero Ronald Reagan was all for increased US-USSR relations at the local level. Incredible that boomers who love to claim that they understand socialism because they lived through the cold war can't even comprehend perestroika.
Bernie was on the same page with Ronald Reagan on this one.
14
And you know what? We never went to war with the Soviets, did we? Obviously, Sanders cannot take full credit for that, but throughout the decades he's been actively part of the solution, not part of the problem.
"The goal is to not have a nuclear war, not to plan and prepare for it."
How people can vote for the opposite of these values is beyond me.
22
Sanders actions must be viewed in the context of the times. The 1980s were a time of hope in the Soviet Union - recall Perestroika and that Gorbachev was the leader - the last leader - of the Soviet Union. Much has happened since then but in the 1980s many could imagine a different future than what has come to pass.
13
Shame on the Times for presenting this in the headline as something nefarious on the part of Sanders. The report itself only shows a man trying to bridge divides through cultural outreach.
I’m not a huge fan of his, but you better believe I would vote for him if he was the nominee. This effort to paint him as a subversive is gross.
69
@Maple Surple
I wrote something similar and it has been blocked so far.
13
@trblmkr I’ve also had comments perfectly in line with their guidelines which have never been published. Trying to find out why is like consulting the Oracle at Delphi.
9
My sentiments exactly. I’m not an enthusiastic supporter of Bernie’s campaign (though of course I would vote for him in the general), but he was completely on the right side of this issue. I don’t generally buy into the narrative of the “mainstream corporate media” conspiring against Sanders, but this is really poor (and yes, suspect) journalism.
11
There's nothing worthy of an article here accept maybe one stating that Bernie's interactions with the former-Soviet Union were harmless. They way they bend empirical facts to suit their narratives seems boundless.
28
This article makes me think of the biography of Robert J. Oppenheimer, "American Prometheus", and now would be a good time to read it if you haven't.
2
Yeaa, so, this is a good article for Bernie. Even though the Times had no intention of it being that way; it shows how out of touch the Plutocrats really are. Their own ignorance works against them. #resist
29
I am no Sanders supporter, but I think his efforts as mayor of Burlington to link with a sister city in Russia were admirable and an ideal vehicle for forging mutual understanding between global rivals. What I object to are Sanders’ proposals to institute socialist reforms to the American economy and way-of-life. Let’s face it, the only socialist countries that are prospering today are those who have embraced much of the capitalist system — like China and Vietnam.
9
Candidate Trump continually said, "Wouldn't it be nice to get along with Russia?" and that was OK. Bernie tried to foster good will during the Cold War and its a bad thing?
21
This just reveals that Russian efforts go way back to gain inroads with American political leaders. And it demonstrates that those efforts are not confined to either party.
Trump is reachable because he personally admires strong authoritarian leaders. Sanders was/is even more reachable because the socialist dogma he worships is so similar to the economic dogma of Russian, Cuba, and similar dictatorial largely socialist countries. That is why Sanders not only initiated efforts to establish close relationships with Russian leaders but still is as Sanders' recent praise and defense of Cuba's socialist dictators.
2
Oh yes, Bernie the Soviet agent. I just wish Russia would actually help Bernie now as rumored. Because your centrist candidate Biden is not going to make it.
22
Exchange the word "propaganda" by "diplomacy" in the text and see what it sounds like.
18
Sanders participated in a twin cities program approved of by Reagan, along with dozens of other mayors.
USSR thought it was a great propaganda opportunity. I presume the US did as well.
So... where’s the scandal?
34
Someone get the tissues for the Sanders crowd! They’re not going to like this one. Latest poll has Biden up 50 points on The Bern in Florida - 50!!! Turns out the America. People just don’t see the upside of the Castro regime after all. Who could have guessed?!
Bernie has brought it all on himself. This piece is 100% fair game.
3
The entitlement of Democrats never fails to turn off the voters they need in the general.
Enjoy your losses in November.
9
@Mike - As Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee did not call up for testimony Scott Ritter who had found no WMD’s in Iraq just before the Iraq War
- Voted for the Iraq War
- Failed to call witness’ that supported Anita Hills testimony
- voted in favor of one of the most ruthlessly anti-worker bills in modern legislative history, the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, depriving millions of the protections provided by Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
- Championed 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which gave us an era of mass incarceration
- 1999 voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial and investment banking, paving the way for the financial crisis
- Corporate centrist Democrat, who looks after his constituents - the Banks and Wall Street
“I’ve done some dumb things,” Mr. Biden conceded at a stop-the-bleeding news conference at the Capitol. “And I’ll do dumb things again.”
12
@Good Job
If you would rather defeat Democrats than beat Trump, I wish you true pleasure I’m enjoying the next 4 years, and indeed 4 decades of misery this President will reap. All he’s going to do to me is cut my taxes.
Godspeed.
2
Bernie trying to bring good-will between two nuclear armed super-powers, is all that is palpable from this piece.
23
It is important to see this in context.
At this time Bernie was mayor of Burlington. He actually advertised himself as the Socialist mayor. It was not some stealth agenda.
He had previously been a member of the youth wing of the Socialist Party while in the university. In 1980, 1984 he volunteered to be an elector of the Marxist-Leninist Socialist Workers Party ( Trotskyite).
He announced he wanted to have a sister city for Burlington. With over 100 countries to choose from to find such a city he picked the USSR.
At the time, the Soviet Union was the leader of world communism. They promptly used his approach for propaganda purposes.
Bernie is not a fool. He has always been a proponent of what he calls Socialist Revolution.
He knew he was being used.
You can try to spin it any way you like but those are the facts.
4
I much prefer Sanders’ relationship with the Soviets to Trump’s with the Russians.
19
Well, Uncle Bernie will really take it on the chin for this one. Can’t you see Trump nicknaming him Comrade Bernie.
But the real story here is what it tells you about the man. Bernie is an arrogant ideologue who thinks he can punch way above his weight class. Here the mayor of a tiny city decided he could change the world only to be duped into becoming an unwitting part of the Soviet era propaganda machine. Now, he wants to enact single payer and other radical unworkable solutions because in his dream world he can do anything.
Although optimistic ideologues are fun and their rhetoric may inspire us, they do not create workable solutions. And it is that which makes Bernie unfit to be President.
3
I’m flabbergasted by the ignorance of history contained in this piece. Sanders was doing what many other public officials were doing at the time with Reagan’s blessing. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such an excessively researched and poorly analyzed article in the Times.
38
So, the " new news" about Bernie's interest in the Soviet Union is that it's communist leaders capitalized on his interest for propoganda purposes.
Decades later, it is now the gop and media echo chambers spewing twisted propoganda about what in reality was simply Bernie's belief that working towards better relations with the USSR was preferable to nuclear war.
7
“Amid thawing relations with the Soviet Union, Sanders sought to establish ties with sister-city for greater mutual understanding”
I like this headline better. Words matter, especially when more than half the people reading the paper don’t go beyond the headline. Your headline lacks context and is misleading. Buried in the story is the fact that Sanders wasn’t the only American official targeted or that he was receptive to it, that several other American cities had already established such ties and that these ties were encouraged by none other than President Reagan. Some context in the headline could have helped explain Sanders’s motives.
20
If the court rules of evidence applied to newspapers, this story would probably be ruled inadmissible as more prejudicial than probative. The story itself states he was only doing what many others were.
14
@Paul Bonner I think the news is exactly that - that his activities were very much in line with what non-Socialist mayors in the US were doing at the time.
2
So Bernie tried to avoid nuclear war by showing people in two different cities in two wildly different nations that they weren't all that different? Wow. Excellent story. This piece is so unapologetically desperate in trying to make Sanders look like a Russian sympathizer and communist it makes me sick. Where is the objective reporting? This is clearly trying to upset your aging readers into and further galvanize their ignorant fear and hatred of a candidate that is far stronger than Biden in terms of character and political track record.
34
Dear Anton,
Your photo looks like you're too young to actually remember those times and I question the breadth of your history education. In the 1980's Cincinnati, hardly a bastion of liberalism or a place where a pro Soviet candidate would get far in the public sphere, even Cincinnati had a sister city relationship with a Soviet city, Kharkiv. That Sanders would establish a similar situation with a Russian city points to his sanity, not disloyalty, as you imply. Your article does a disservice to the concept that the NYT is a neutral source of information.
30
Good reporting, and whatever the intent, the article proves that Sanders’ work with Russia was to prevent nuclear war and promote diplomacy and peace. The Teflon candidate... incorruptible. The opposite of Trump who each day whittles the US more recognizably into a corrupt, mafia state.
14
What's wrong if Bernie Sanders favoured good ries with the erstwhile Soviet Union? Didn't Ronald Regan who once described the SU as the evil empire later come to realise that peace was essential with the Soviet Union for a better future beyond the cold war rivalry, specially when Gorbachev came to the helm to herald the new era of glasnost and perestroika?
14
How is it that the Times came to learn of the existence of these documents and to request to see them last week? Was the Times tipped off to their existence by one of Bernie's political opponents? Did "the Russians," who are claimed to favor Bernie, for some reason tip off the Times? This information would be more important to a lot of readers than the rather unsurprising content of the documents.
7
Way to go New York Times. Perfect timing and portrayal to prove to our anti-establishment twenty-somethings that there really is an “establishment” out to kill fundamental change. You’ve lost yet another generation to disillusionment. I’m not a Sanders voter but I can see perfectly why they will be angry at us.
17
This is a ridiculous headline for a story that boils down to: "Bernie genuinely built a lasting connection in the ruins of the Soviet Union, whether it was what Soviet officials planned or not."
17
This was 1988 when Glasnost was in full bloom. Contacts between Soviet citizens and Western citizens/organizations were suddenly permissible. What Sanders did was not unusual and can even be commended. The sister city arrangement gave Yaroslav a channel to the outside world that mostly avoided the interference of the central government.
PS - I'm not a Bernie supporter but this article seems to be a minor smear job based on a non-story.
20
I wonder if the Biden and/or the Trump campaign will use these photos and facts against Mr. Sanders. My prediction is that if he gets the nomination all you'll hear him referred to from July to November is "Comrade Bernie," and it will stick to him like flypaper.
2
@baldinoc Trump already has a nickname for Bernie and Biden.
Bernie is Crazy Bernie and Biden is Sleepy Joe. I don't think his nickname of Bernie will hurt him much.
3
The problem with Bernie’s facination with Russia is that he seems to have missed the part that they failed for a cery specific reason: an econmy based on the lie that you can get something for nothing is not going to work out.
It didn’t help that being forced to lie constantly about economic matters bled into lying about... everything else. You got some very warped stuff coming out of the eastern block.
To be clear: americans have lied and continue to lie to themselves about many things (cough civil war cough) but not the fundamental idea that something for nothing is possible. And that matters.
3
Sounds like collusion to me.
1
Nice Red Scare headline. I look forward to the critical news articles and think pieces on Joe Biden now that he’s the front runner.
19
@Nbd
Indeed, and at cross-purposes with the article.
I wonder how much and how often the reporters rebel at this? My journalist mother used to throw the occasional fit.
They probably don't push back as often in this tough job market for reporters.
I note it is particularly egregious where the campaign is concerned, especially with my hero Elizabeth Warren.
7
And how is this worse than Trump's cozying up to Putin (and KJ Un, and Xi)? Sanders' moves were out of wide-eyed idealism, not personal financial gain. Yes, the visits play into the propagandists' hands and will not help his chances in November (he won't get past the convention), but a nefarious attempt to undermine democracy (which Fox and Fiends will contend) they were not.
3
Let me see. Back in the late 80s, at a time when the Soviet Union was beginning to open up to the world. Mayor Sanders decided to take advantage of a program that was approved of by none other than Ronald Reagan himself to seek out a sister city relationship with a similar community in Russia. He made a personal visit there which the Russians naturally prepared for and tried to use for propaganda purposes. Sanders, apparently didn’t provide the desired praise. A polite guest, reported what he personally saw, nothing more. The article even showed the room where he and his wife stayed—suggesting what? That the Russians may have video of a newly married couple in their forties having sex.
Oh the horror!
He should have been paying attention to his job at home, you argue. well apparently the citizens of Burlington didn’t share your opinion. They re-elected the guy. He’s still wildly popular there.
Seriously, guys. The Bernie haters will be all over this. And should he become the nominee Trump will no doubt try to use it but if you want to talk about judgment this is pretty mild stuff compared to that a president in hock up to his ears to Russian oligarchs or even a former Vice President who as a Senator blindly accepted the rationale of a duplicitous administration for going to war with Iraq.
16
I’m curious about the inclusion of not one, but two photos containing depictions of Lenin in an investigative piece about Sanders. The bias against Sanders - a la Bernie-is-a-communist - feels at least implicit in this article.
16
"Unbeknown to him, his desire for friendship meshed with the efforts of Soviet officials in Moscow to “reveal American imperialism as the main source of the danger of war.”"
American imperialism IS the main source of the danger of war. The United States is routinely engaged in more wars than any other nation on earth.
So how is this an example of "Soviet propaganda"? If anything, it's an example of pro-America propaganda -- and the anti-Sanders propaganda that's so common in this newspaper.
11
Nice, red-baiting in 2020. I thought it was a lost art. If I remember correctly, pretty much most people in America were (perhaps naively) hopeful about becoming closer to the Soviet Union and its people during the glasnost era.
I hope you'll feature coverage of Donald Trump's far more shady 1987 trip to the USSR.
23
I'm an avid NYT reader, but I'm taken aback by the Times' choice of headline, phrasing and timing. There's a valid topic here, but running it now when the information has been available for years is clearly intended to influence upcoming primaries.
13
Good for Sanders! This was after Gorbachev. And yes we were meddlesome.. We still are
6
Wouldn't you like to see the CIA files on Bernie and his Soviet counterparts from the time? Their archives are interesting. Could ours be any less so?
1
People who were not alive at this time might not understand the context. After a decade of "détente", the Cold War entered a very dangerous period during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who took a very aggressive military posture towards the Soviet Union, e.g., deploying new nuclear missiles in Europe. The two sides came very close to nuclear war (and therefore the end of most life on Earth) during a NATO exercise in 1983.
Against this backdrop, many Americans looked for ways to engage in "citizen diplomacy" to build better people-to-people relations between the countries,. Sister cities were one of the main vehicles. By 1989, there were 36 US-Soviet sister city pairings. Burlington was hardly the first --- that honor goes to Seattle, which sistered Tashkent in 1973. Diane Feinstein, as mayor of San Francisco, tried to establish a sister city relationship with Leningrad (the proposal was dropped under opposition).
With all due respect for your crack investigative reporting, no one participating in this movement would be surprised to learn that the national governments of both sides (news flash: the U.S. also engaged in propaganda) would try to use the sister city relationships to promote their point of view. This doesn't make the promoters of sister cities dupes --- does anyone really think that Americans were going to go communist by meeting and talking with a few Russian visitors? To suggest this is just a modern form of red-baiting.
23
Mr troianovski might be interested in this: Burlington VT established Sister City relationships with a city in Israel and one in Palestine and regularly invented delegations of students from both at the same time. I don’t know whether Sanders was mayor at the time.
10
Bernie Sanders has worked to better the lives of working people in America and all over the world for his entire adult life.
As mayor of Burlington Vt He provided leadership and vision that turned a post industrial impoverished city around, and has made Burlington into a model of meeting human need without gentrification and displacement.
At the same time he took the threat of war very seriously, and was working for peace. With dozens and dozens of other Mayors, Sanders articipated in sister city programs, initiated by Ronald Reagan, with the Soviet Union.
Of course the Soviets wanted Americans to think of them favorably. They wanted to avoid war. Is the desire to use the sister city program to help Americans see Russians as human beings nefarious?
13
The problem isn't that Sanders wanted to establish a relationship with a sister city in the Soviet Union. As the article points out, he was not the only one, and thawing relations went all the way up to the top with Reagan and Gorbachev. No, the issue is him being blind to what the Soviet Union was and walking away thinking that "people there seemed reasonably happy and content" and that he "didn't notice much deprivation."
As someone who came from the Soviet Union, I can say that no, Mr. Sanders, people were not "content." Sanders didn't "notice" deprivation because he either wasn't paying attention or more than likely his delegation was tightly controlled so that they saw only what the Soviets wanted them to see. What they didn't see was people waiting in lines to get toilet paper. Or doctors having to sterilize tools that should have been thrown away. Or not having freedom of movement. Or bus drivers with a party connection having significantly higher salaries than highly educated engineers. And the list can go on and on. But hey, our literacy rates were great...we all knew how to read the teachings of 'Grandpa Lenin.'
Fast forward to today: All of that can be forgiven because people get misled and fooled. It happens to the best of us, but the hope is that people learn from their errors, especially when those errors become abundantly clear.
The REAL problem is that Senator Sanders still hasn't opened his eyes and refuses to do so.
1
@Realist
Biden believed Rumsfeld when he lies to him.
I was part of UNESCO cultural exchange in this era, and there was nothing nefarious about visits like Bernie's.
Imagine my generation - born after WWII and witnessing nuclear escalation year after year. The Cold War demonized the USSR and Eastern Bloc. The forces of liberalization that led, in short order, to Gorbachev, were on the move in the USSR.
Meanwhile, in the United States, we liberal and artistic souls who wanted to do something, anything, to stop the world from ending with a bang were highly motivated to be personal ambassadors of cross-cultural understanding and peace.
Our snarky social-media world today prizes cynicism, but we were children of the Sixties. We believed, as I still do, that love, empathy and peace were powerful in confronting domination and aggression.
My experiences as being the only American many fellow Soviet artists had met was transformational for both sides. I came away with a nuanced understanding of geopolitics, and I hoped that, just as the USSR was embracing Gorbachev, we might emerge from under the yoke of Reagan.
Bernie, in my opinion, is annoying and sometimes one-dimensional, and I enjoy criticizing him at times. However, on this subject he appears to be absolutely nothing but honorable.
Trump and that devious Putin, on the other hand clearly wish nothing but self-enrichment and strife to the US.
9
I don't think any of this information is particularly relevant to the 2020 presidential campaign (I am a Biden supporter).
But I suppose it is good to read about it now rather than this September, if Senator Sanders is the nominee. I think we can all agree on that.
6
This effort on Sanders' part conveys the essence of his progressivism. Yet taken 30+ years out of time and context, and with its misleading headline (which is clearly open to misinterpretation), it is just one step above fake news.
23
This is good reporting by NY Times and nothing else.
I’ve been a republican since I voted in the 2016 election. I’ve heard my fair share of criticism of The NY Times, The President, conservative commentators, and even US representatives. That being said, for my tenure as a subscriber to The NY Times it has been an incredible source to me for real, hard fought, and unbiased reporting.
I find it quite ironic how fast the other end of the political spectrum is willing to blast the president for believing there is a media bias against him, but then turn around and condemn those same media outlets as “fake” or “hit pieces” the moment they question the motives or actions of the left.
Asking why a candidate why he choose to spend his honeymoon in 1988 Soviet Moscow is a legitimate question. Asking why a mayor in 1988 would want to be sister cities with a soviet city is a legitimate question. Bernie’s history is a hot topic and that cannot be avoided.
Just my 2 cents.
2
@Jack Baldwin Asking why Reagan supported these sister cities as well is another good question. It was an opportunity to build peace with our enemy. Why is that so suspect?
6
@susan gioia - it's suspect because Bernie is not Ronnie, and everybody knows it.
If you're trying to protect the profits of the insurance companies, I suspect you're going to have to find much better material than this to undermine Americans's deep desire for a fair society.
15
Big deal. The Soviet Union disintegrated two years later.
8
Maybe you can find a few more voters to scare away from Sanders “the Soviet,” and then the purpose of this non-story can be fulfilled. Is this what our country and our country’s journalism has been reduced to? Are we supposed to fear and scorn a leader of people, trying to build bridges rather than walls?
In the 1980’s there were plenty of civic leaders and educators who made an effort to reach out and connect our people with the people of our Cold War enemy nations in the interest of good will and mutual recognition of shared humanity. Conflating that with some kind of collaboration on Bernie’s part with the Soviet regime or it’s police state would be ignorant, lazy and irresponsible.
19
The timing of this article demonstrates a strong editorial bias. I guess I've been fooling myself by relying on the Times as a source of unbiased information. If Bernie is so threatening to those with power that the Times feels compelled to do this, then maybe I'll have to vote for him. Thanks for helping me make up my mind for our primaries next week.
29
Yep, we’ve got a choice between a man who has promoted citizen to citizen diplomacy to increase trust & understanding and we have a man who just says “bomb them.” For all the use of the word propaganda to get people to close their ears and eyes to anything our government doesn’t want us to see or hear, the true message of Bernie’s international activities is clear, understanding is needed and needed most with respect to those our government would vilify.
14
Why this endless red-baiting of Sanders? Let me have a scion of a founding family, who was no leftwinger, and who is one of the leading historians we have ever produced explain:
"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved." - Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918) Letters of Henry Adams
23
If there is an insidious import to this article, then I must say that it is a new low in the efforts to cast doubt on Sanders. If anything, the article proves that Sanders is anti-war and believes in diplomacy. Meanwhile in 1987, Joe Biden was caught plagiarizing, inventing details about his own family, and embellishing his involvement with civil rights movements.
What a contrast!
Biden ended his presidential run that year by claiming that "the exaggerated shadow" of his errors had made it impossible for him to continue his campaign. Can dishonesty and deception be considered "exaggeration"? If Trump had plagiarized we would be livid, if Bernie had plagiarized he would be shamed in a top headline in the NYT.... but with Biden it was just a failed attempt and now he is back as the preferred nominee.
Therefore, if we are supposed to consider Bernie's attempt at diplomacy as a reflection of how awful he is ... then, ladies and gentleman, we have a clear case of "exaggerated shadow".
24
Thank you for this article! I had no idea how instrumental Sanders was in helping end the Cold War and bringing at least a couple decades of peace and goodwill between the US and Russia! The headline could use some work though...
24
What is the difference between this and Trump’s love affair with Putin? Republicans don’t seem to care about Trump. This shouldn’t matter about Bernie.
4
@Emily The difference is that Trump is corrupt and in cahoots with dictators and oligarchs and doesn't care about the citizens of any country, while Sanders actively reached out to citizens of Russia in the interest of peace and nuclear disarmament.
6
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." Nelson Mandela
I want to make friends with everyone, especially if they have nukes. I've met Russians, and like other people in the world, they want the same things I do. Generals and politicians start wars, not the people. Power to them.
12
So what is the point of this article exactly? To try and publicly shame Sanders because he dared to try to work for peace and understanding at a time in history when the West and Russia had hundreds of nuclear missiles pointed at each other? If anything, rhe fact that he had the courage to buck jingoism at a time when it was deeply unpopular to do so and tried to build a bridge between peoples makes me admire him all the more and convinces me he would be the right man to be in the oval office.
19
The headline of this piece does not match the body of the article -- discerning readers, please keep reading!
This mismatch between headline and body reveals two major problems: 1) The trove of documents reveal that Bernie attempted nuclear deescalation through diplomacy and the cultivation of a relationship (Can you imagine?!), and 2) It demonstrates the media's inclination to place their thumb on the scale in favor of Biden.
Any student of American history knows that the Cold War involved a combination of nuclear brinksmanship AND diplomacy. Thus, Bernie played the role that he could as the mayor of a small VT town. I fail to see how this trove of articles is as damaging as the headline wishes. In fact, I had to read it a second time because I finished reading the article without any negative takeaways! (Quick, take it down, the plan isn't working!)
I, for one, left this article with a sense of hope and pride that one of the current political candidates sees diplomacy as a viable alternative to brinksmanship and war.
27
@Law Student - a town mayor has no business trying to set international policy. Let's start with that. The very reason he thought he should is suspect.
@laguna greg The Sister City program was set up by Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 to further US foreign policy. Nobody has one iota of information that suggests the Sanders participated in any way outside the scope and goals of the program.
So before anyone gets too excited, maybe it really is all about pond hockey.
7
The headline of this piece does not match the body of the article -- discerning readers, please keep reading!
This mismatch between headline and body reveals two major problems: 1) The trove of documents reveal that Bernie attempted nuclear deescalation through diplomacy and the cultivation of a relationship (Can you imagine?!), and 2) It demonstrates the media's inclination to place their thumb on the scale in favor of Biden.
Any student of American history knows that the Cold War involved a combination of nuclear brinksmanship and diplomacy. Thus, Bernie played the role that he could as the mayor of a small VT town. I fail to see how this trove of articles is as damaging as the headline wishes. In fact, I had to read it a second time because I finished reading the article without any negative takeaways! (Quick, take it down, the plan isn't working!)
I, for one, left this article with a sense of hope and pride that one of the current political candidates sees diplomacy as a viable alternative to brinksmanship and war.
7
The Sister City program is far from unusual, and extends US policy, rather than subverts of it. It's a non-profit created by Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, to extend worldwide cultural exchange and understanding.
It takes a special kind of cynicism to suggest that Sanders is unfit for high office because as mayor, he participated in a program created by the Federal gov't for the furtherance of US foreign policy. He cannot be faulted for taking the goals of the program at face value, and participating seriously and genuinely.
So, by all means, let's discuss this. Perhaps a bit more detail on the origins and extent of the program, then and now, would make for a more educational article.
11
Just curious....did Bernie ever try to establish sister cities in in non-communist countries? His preoccupation with communist countries like Cuba, Russia and others seems baffling. If one replaces his "working families" nomenclature with the word "workers," the speeches sound quite similar to those heard in less friendly nations in decades past.
3
@Tom Q The Vietnam War began largely due to the belief in "the domino theory"- if we didn't fight against the Communists they would take over the world. (The Red Scare of the early 1900s continued.) After the Vietnam War ended, and even before when Nixon visited China, the other big enemy, it looked like we could step back from the threat of nuclear annihilation. So yeah, making peace with countries that were communist was the priority and seen as a way to promote peace in the world.
5
The central message of Bernie 2020 is: "fight for someone you do not know". That's a call for compassion, a call to love thy neighbor; that's about asking a nation to rise above fear and, together, lift up the millions of homeless, uninsured, poorly educated, and debt laden. And, its about joining together to fight climate change.
But, we as a nation, and you as a newspaper, seem to be afraid of our best selves; instead, as rampant inequality grows and the climate is on fire, we choose to embrace the illusory and selfish safetynet of "moderation" and "economic growth".
Bernie Sanders is a prophet and to ignore his call to "transformation" - indeed not even to address it -- would be a spiritual failure on a Biblical scale.
11
Truly excellent reporting and even more impressive journalistic skills in uncovering the documents. This is why I willingly pay my monthly subscription.
This report reinforces my always perception of Sanders as someone with an image to sell that he is a larger fish than reality dictates, as well as his lifetime willingness to be a Russian/USSR tool because uber leftist is his brand. Glad our decision for November does not appear it will be limited to a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin, Inc. vs. a guy Putin just has an option to lease.
1
Few, except those like Bernie, have ever bothered to imagine what rural
and urban life in America would be like if half the amount that is spent on defense were applied to improving conditions there.
13
Yes comrade Bernie, the Soviets were so happy, they were overwhelming willing to leave and come to the USA.
I am of Russian descent and work with many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, all of who say God Bless America daily no matter how hard it is to build a new life from nothing
Bernie is like trump in that he likes the idea of an authoritarian government leader telling the people what’s best for them.
1
I'm amazed that so many commentators, Sanders supporters, think this is a negative article designed to sabotage his campaign by the evil NY Times and Democrat "establishment. I read the first paragraph, didn't find it that interesting, and then looked at the comments. They piqued my interest and I went back to an read the entire article. I found it to be mildly supportive of Sanders. He has every right to be proud of his efforts to try, in that small way, to reduce tensions between the superpowers and the likelihood of nuclear war. What world do you commentators live in who think the Times is trying to sabotage Bernie. FYI, I supported Warren and would happily have Bernie as my President. Frankly, we should want all bad factual information to come out now so that candidates can deal with it before the general election. Think of the alternative - that our political adversaries comes out with surprise negative information when a candidate is less able to address it before the election. I wonder if those commentators are really Trump functionaries, or Russians, trying to make Sanders supporters disillusioned.
1
So this is how it starts, the sorrow, the pity, the bloodletting. They don't call it "vetting" for nothing.
Those who don't see the relevance of this information are in for a really big shock.
Let the games begin!
1
@laguna greg
Except Sanders has no media beyond the internet and youth shouting as loud as possible.
All the articles on Joe just don’t materialize. And he has a lot of baggage that republicans won’t overlook unlike the times. And without the internet to support Joe it’s going to be a major problem. Imagine all the republicans, Russians, moderates such as yourself attacking the youth of Joe wins.
Right now we are in a race that is a tie. We need each other to win. Joe said bold faced to the rich and powerful if he wins nothing would change. Status quo Joe is what they call him.
Sanders has the reverse problem if he wins. He has the internet but both Fox and corporate media will pile on to destroy him.
It also explains the sharp divide in voting from the age 45. Biden has nearly zero youth in many places voting for him. If they are denied a voice and attacked 24/7 if Joe wins they may throw over the table.
I don’t blame them either.
1
I was a child in Minnesota in the 1980s. Our public schools did similar outreach as a part of glasnost in the USSR and the peace movement in the US. In the 1994 I traveled to Kaliningrad with a bunch of other 14 years after a school group had visited our small town the year before. The vision of the school teachers who organized this exchange sticks with me today as an example of what can be accomplished when dedicated people work for peace and a better future, and understand that human understanding and cooperation across borders is key to that.
Of course there was propaganda on both sides. You should have seen what temporary splendor our local MN town government trotted out when the Russian students came to stay with us. But anyone who misses that the point of these exchanges was humanitarian, and that they played a role in the democratization of the Soviet Union, is a fool or has ulterior motives.
9
I don’t usually do what about-isms, and that is why I have read your article here. But if we are going to be exposing weaknesses of the candidates, I hope in good faith, then I still have to point out something that is getting no play in mainstream media. It’s about Joe Biden’s history of telling absolute untruths concerning a number of issues, but most specifically, about having involvement in the civil rights movement. As recent as last month, he was making such claims while giving speeches at black churches during Sunday processions. This history of dishonesty and these episodes of lying directly to the faces of black people pose substancial risk of hurting his candidacy if he were nominated, as well as alienating the very voters whose support stand as his strongest bulwark for landing his nomination and possibly defeating Trump in the general election.
13
@Ernesto A. Taylor Yes, the man does have a bad habit of talking out of both sides of his mouth. He's the closest thing to a "Teflon politician" and should not be taken seriously on any given issue, and especially civil rights.
4
Sister cities, a created form of co-existence, ranges in types, levels, qualities, functions, potential/actual outcomes, and sustainability.
During a given time.
To what extent these enabled political pairings achieve(d)their shared public objectives may or may not be measurable.
Nor does measurability = GOOD! Desirable.
Numbers, like words, created to express a range of functions,
however clearly, or not, are NEVER the actual function!
Just as the map is not the area it graphically presents,
no number is the actual quality-of -life criteria enumerated.
An interesting issue to consider:
to what extent, if any, did this implemented “ pairing” influence the
WE-THEY daily cultures in each of these cities?
Although seeking a sister city in another country, including Russia is not intrinsically a negative point the fact that it will be used to the nth degree by the Trump campaign is very important. His supporters are craving for this kind of news and evidence against Sanders and this, and other stories make him less likely to win against Trump.
5
If one reads this and the accompanying explanation by Mr. Troianovski, it is really an exoneration of the work Bernie did in working for peace and reconciled international relations as many comments pointed out. Thank you for the positive conclusions.
However, if one is a foaming at the mouth cold warrior (like Hannity or Chris Matthews!) you will only see communist collusion. I am afraid that is what many would take from this. Often people are not carful readers, especially TV news reporters. So, I am somewhat suspicious of the timing which coincides with a large two-party anti-socialist freakout. Also the choice of photographs with multiple shots of Lenin and one of Stalin. Was that necessary? Why not the famous churches? But yes, the take home message is that the whole episode was harmless and possiblly helpful.
11
In the 1980s many Americans travelled to the Soviet Union. I was one of them, traveling alone for a couple of weeks in 1983. You would have been extremely naive not to notice attempts by over-friendly individuals, young, pretty girls, especially, to lead you on the path of clandestine behavior. And you didn't go along. Sometimes I would get into discussions on a train, or sitting on a bench by a fountain or statue (say, of Pushkin) and argue that there was a third way: not communism, not entirely capitalism, and that the Soviet Union should follow the example set by the Scandinavian countries. This neutral attitude of mine allowed me to keep my distance, and yet still be open to meeting people. There was a huge desire during that period to break the mindset of the Cold War and go into a new era. What we didn't know was that the new era in what soon became the former Soviet Union would be one of corruption, not based on failed Communist ideals, but a magnification of the worst of the West.
6
@Charles Kaufmann Funny I thought we wanted the USSR to open up back then. Now we want to complain about it and act like capitalist Russia of today is the same thing.
1
The author of this story said he thought it was "worth it" to look into the files. He never explained why. What is the point of this story? It says almost nothing but makes a connection between Sanders and a Russian City. Were there other sister cities? Did something untoward happen? Sadly I think I do know the point of this story. If only we had done more in the Gorbachev and Yeltsin era to open up communications and help to build democracy in Russia.
11
@blunz Out "help" included a man who introduced "shock capitalism " that effectively impoverished Russia. Matt Talib of the Rolling Stone Magazine documented a lot about how Western media ignored signs that Russia was failing. Yeltsin was an awful and incompetent leader.
I want to read more about President Trump’s financial and political connections to Russia. I am less interested in reading about how Senator Sanders reached out to form a sister city relationship as a mayor during a period when the U.S. was successfully thawing the cold war. Unless there are accusations that Senator Sanders made a lot of money from Russia, received loans, or was potentially filmed by the Russians in a compromising situation this does not feel newsworthy to me.
25
When we engage one to one with people we construe as "other", we often, if not always, find they are like us. It is government that separates people, rarely ordinary citizens.
12
I applaud Bernie's attempt to defuse tensions. With similar motivations, I myself went to the USSR as a high school student in 1987 as part of an outreach program.
But lets be honest here about his motivations. If it were just about increasing peace, he would have been visiting right wing countries as well. But his choice of countries shows that his motivations were as much about supporting his ideology as it was about nurturing peace.
Unlike Bernie, the adult that I am today can see the naiveté in the child that I was. My open-ness to the USSR was not based on the reality of the Soviet Union. My feelings were wishful thinking based in the fact that I abhorred Reagan and Thatcher and the history of McCarthyism.
Bernie's choices as to who to reach out to, were based on the same tendencies. And this does a disservice to those who were victims of what was a brutal regime that kept a fifth of the globe under house arrest behind the iron curtain.
It also unwittingly re-enforced the opinion amongst many that progressives cannot be trusted to steer clear of totalitarianism, and thus effectively SETBACk the US's willingness to achieve Bernie's own (and mine) socialist goals.
I share his goals but I will not be voting Bernie. I want to improve the lives of flesh and blood people, and if doing so means I need to compromise, so be it. Bernie's childlike need to indulge his righteousness, has pushed this country to the right .
2
Another time, another place Sen. Sanders may have been the right person. The problem remains what is the best way of keeping the Russian, or any other foreign government of the US elections? Making sure the Russian backed candidate(s) don't win. Sorry Bernie, both you and the Donald are the Russian based candidates.
2
I am not a Bernie fan, but I find this look at his past efforts to improve relations with the then Soviet Union unfair and a blatant attempt to undermine his candidacy. I spent six weeks as a visiting scientists at the Pavlov Institute in St Petersburg in 1984, an exchange paid for by the National Institutes of Health. My biggest impression was the average Russian's isolation and/or ignorance of the modern world and American life. Total strangers would invite me into their home to ask "how many cars, wives and homes had I had". I believed then and still believe that my visit and efforts by folks like Mayor Bernie helped turn the tide that resulted in collapse of the soviet system.
36
@Pat Cleary Agreed. Not so much the material but the slant. Many cities have sister cities including my own, Asheville, NC.
4
If the intent behind this sudden rash of NY Times articles, opinions. etc. is to shed doubt on Sen. Sanders' loyalty and patriotism to his country of birth, there's no doubt in our mind Bernie has been a beacon of truth and honesty in the American political arena, something which can hardly be said of most of his competitors with the shining example of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Would that we elected a leader like him in order to bring back honor and dignity to public governance in this deeply aggrieved country of ours.
28
I am a voracious reader of the New York Times, Despite some pushback from family and friends. I am at this moment I am trending toward Joe Biden. However, I am deeply disturbed by this article. If it is our goal to have a fair and impartial election for president, is it really necessary to dredge up something that happened in the early 1980s? Is it relevant today? Does it inform the 2020 race? I remember those times, but many many voters are too young to understand what was happening in the early 1980s. It is likely to prejudice younger voters against Sanders. People evolve. I suggest that this paper use its vast resources to report on matters relevant to today. Let’s not make it more difficult for any politician who has a long history in public service to have to answer to actions of 40 years ago, unless they impact us right now.
40
@SK - that's why they call it "vetting." Now the public gets to decide. You apparantly already have.
Not sure the story's point? The second graph referring to "propaganda" suggests something sinister, an allegation never fleshed out. In fact, these were heady and hopeful times. Despite the Reagan Administration's cynical rhetoric, thousands of American and Soviet citizens joined together in highly publicized American Soviet Peace Walks promoting an end to the nuclear arms race. Propaganda? Maybe. Another way to look at it is that former enemies had a chance to share a mutual vision for a better and friendlier world.
31
The thing is most of the stuff was ready to go in 2016, but because he didn't win the nomination no one pulled the trigger on it. Democrats most certainly were not going to, and Republicans didn't end up needing to. And the media didn't do so because he wasn't a candidate. I'm not saying that it can't be explained, but that's not what you want to do during an election. It would have been much better for all of this to have been known Long Ago by everyone.
7
The biggest takeaway from this article for me is that Bernie successfully negotiated the start of a long and productive sister city relationship that has increased personal ties between people who live in nations that consider each other enemies. Seems like a strong testament to the power of diplomacy instead of saber rattling.
91
Thank you for the hard work it took to bring this information to light. THIS is what vetting looks like and we voters should all appreciate it.
8
Not sure what you’re getting at because, as alarmist as the headline is, I’m going to try to guess a few things about you:
1. You did not read the article fully. If you had, you will have known that in 1977, five American cities had ‘sister’ relation with five Soviet cities.
2. You might be a Trump supporter who blatantly asked Russia to find the missing Clinton emails - a direct request to get involved in a US election.
Despite what you might think, Sanders is a patriotic American who is not susceptible to machinations of a ‘strong man’ like Putin - unlike our current president who seems to really like undemocratic tyrants.
1
Interesting read. Bernie appears open to discussing his 32-year-old relationship with Russia. Let's hope this will encourage our current President to tell us about his relationship with Putin.
32
Even better, maybe Obama and Trump can both talk to us about how they are reviving the cold war. May be Obama and Trump can both talk to us about why we will be spending close to 2 trillion dollars to refurbish our nuclear arsenal including all new nuclear submarines.
Maybe some policy experts could spend some time talking about the peace dividend and how we never got it.
Maybe we could talk about the history of neoliberals like Joe Biden and their attempts to keep the military industrial complex flush, and how that's now culminated in president Obama initiating this insanely expensive reboot of the cold war.
And maybe we could discuss the horror that it was to grow up with the shadow of of nuclear annihilation hanging over our lives and how Obama and Trump have worked together to continue that particular horror.
But no let's concentrate on Bernie Sanders nefarious activities as a peacemaker.
3
@charlotte scot - what you're really saying to the world, and how they will see it, is the bernie is finally comfortable admitting even tactily that he's always been a communist and still is one.
@laguna greg What does that make Trump? The fact that Sanders has no problem openly discussing his relationship with a foreign power 32 years ago is a major plus. He is NOT a Communist and your ignorance is showing when you conflate Democratic Socialism with Authoritarian Communism.
Our current leader admires authoritarian governments especially leaders trained and indoctrinated by the KGB.
Trump pals up with greedy Russian oligarchs and he is OK? Sanders tries to make ties with the needy people of Russia and he is criticized. What utter nonsense! Our enemies are not the Russian people, or even socialism. The real threat to society is the looting band of billionaires putting dictators in power all over the world for their own benefit. The NY Times must stop enabling them. A new twist on the French Revolution: "Let them eat McDonalds."
54
So the choice for the general election would be: A candidate who has a lifetime commitment to making World Peace. Through person to person relationships, education and the arts.
And our present "leader" who has shut down our border, abandoned Nuclear Agreements and has brought nuclear weapons back to the US defense budget.
In all of this please remember our "goodwill ambassador" Samantha Smith the Maine teenage peace activist who also reached out to the Soviet Union, and desperately sought peace through thoughtful relations. This when the US govt. was ramping up Reagan's Space Force, escalating a 40 year old nuclear arms race.
505
@sginvt
You falsely characterize Sanders. He does not make the efforts you claim for the reasons you claim. If he did, then he would not be so selective in what foreign countries he befriends.
For example, his commitment to "World Peace" extends to Israel-haters, both foreign and domestic. But it does not extend to Israel. Sanders definition of "world peace" is victory in conflict by the side he favors. That definition is little different that the definition of "world peace" by just about every political leader in the US and worldwide.
6
@sginvt
Right, but you can only imagine what the Repubs would make out of this if Bernie were to be the nominee. Thank goodness that's not going to happen, for many reasons. We don't need another president whose zealous, deranged supporters would do absolutely anything for him.
2
@sginvt
Bernie Sanders has a lifetime commitment to flapping his gums. That’s it. The man has done absolutely nothing in 30 years in Washington. Nothing.
6
Bernie is now, and was then, a visionary. There is no doubt that he would promote peaceful cooperation on the world stage. He would not promote communism but he would promote cooperation on Climate accords and reduction of nuclear arms.
657
@ZA ...Visionary or delusionary? His stump speeches sound like a call to class warfare. First we have to take down billionaires, then millionaires, then anybody who has more than I have.
14
@ZA
Then why doesn't he promote peaceful cooperation on the stage he has now? We sure don't need another ego-driven president with rabid, ill-informed supporters.
I'm not a died-in-the wool Biden fan, but he's practical, he has a good heart and empathy to spare, and he cares about this country enough to compromise when doing so is in this country's interest.
9
@ZA promote peace? This is a guy who blithely waved off objections to Russian imperialism in the Ukraine. He would stand by and do nothing while thugs and dictators run rampant. Can anyone seriously imagine Sanders intervening to stop a genocide? I can’t. He doesn’t care about human rights at all
6
Young, and even middle aged people will not understand this story because they won't recognize the times.
I do recognize those times.
At the time, I was managing a large software development for an intermountain gas and oil company. The president of our company took the initiative, much like Bernie Sanders, to reach out to a parallel gas utility in the heartland of Russia. Our company hosted a delegation of employees of the Russian utility. I was just barely high enough in the hierarchy to be invited to some of the lunches to meet them. From our perspective "in the trenches", we wondered what our company president was doing and why. This article brings it all back.
People should remember that Ronald Reagan was meeting with Gorbachev in Iceland (1988) and a wave of reconciliation was sweeping the country. Whatever the motives of Russian leaders, I have no doubt that the motives of Sanders and Reagan were sincere and positive.
Just as I have no doubt that today, Trump's motives are greed, power, and ego.
837
@Dan Mabbutt
Yes! That was a time of optimism and we all hoped for friendship and democracy with the Soviet Union. As the article stated many cities were pursuing sister city relationships with USSR cities. Glasnost etc. To turn this into something else shows a lack of historical memory and to use it against Sanders is the usual tactic these days of the Democrats (which I find very upsetting, whoever you support).
66
@Dan Mabbutt Many thanks for sharing this perspective on the context. I am in my mid 30s and I support Bernie, but had wondered about the Soviet outreach. My feeling was that it was surely well intended but probably naive and maybe a little weird. To hear that business leaders were also making inroads at the time completely changes that position, and I will try to learn more about it. This is why I read the comments section.
34
@Simon Sez How is Bernie on the wrong side of history? He was, among many others at the time, a person who sought peace through dialogue. For me, this is the right side of history. Would you prefer the world to have destroyed itself through a nuclear war? I would not be alive then probably. This article wrongly portrays, through subtle choices in its language, as if he was doing something sinister - a view many others here have expressed. Facts in the article, on the other hand, show how normal Bernie’s trip was. I am a young person, I know history. History is not an ideology. It is built around facts. USSR-Bernie stories are a part of a public opinion manipulation attempt. Please don’t buy it.
28
I think this article should be called out for what it is: a hit piece.
Bernie wasn't alone in making a sister city program with the Soviet Union. This program, promoted by Reagan, was implemented in cities all across the United States to help improve relations.
As well, what Sanders did, revealed one of the values that Sanders hold deeply: that all human beings are equal. That's why he held these trips, to show that the Russian and American people were not so different compared to their governments. Sanders was also very critical of the USSR's undemocratic government and he isn't the "fan" that this article tries to portray him as.
If you read beneath the red scare sentiment, you can clearly see that this article is trying to criticize Sanders on what really is a non-issue.
145
Bernie has a vision of a far better world for all people, not just Americans, and he works to accomplish that end.
“The enormous spending on the military by both countries strangles their local economies.” said Bernie. Is he wrong? How much has been spent on this since the Cuban missile crisis? Why are there over 800 U.S. military bases scattered throughout the world? What has this accomplished?
This has resulted in an oligarchy with a healthcare system whose main function is to enrich the oligarchy. An education system that leaves people in debt, educated enough to serve the interests of the oligarchy but not so educated that they threaten the oligarchy. A country stripped of its manufacturing base and more destruction of the environment because that's most profitable to the oligarchy. A country with more of its citizens in prison than any other. No modern rail nor public transportation system and a crumbling infrastructure. 35,000+ gun deaths per year with a populace that debates whether or not guns are the cause of this. Endless debates about the cost of providing for citizens while a huge, increasing military budget is rubber stamped without question.
The Democratic party, the Republican party and mainstream media are owned by the oligarchy. They see Bernie as a huge and credible threat who must be derailed in order to maintain the status quo. And the oligarchy will use any and all means at their disposal to do this.
64
The New York Times has a strong bias against Bernie and this hit piece makes that clear. When I was a kid in the early 90s, I benefitted personally from the Burlington-Yaroslavl sister city connection that Bernie set up: I got to travel to Russia on a tour with the Vermont Youth Orchestra. It was a novel and fascinating experience for me and opened my mind to the world beyond small town rural life. I admire Bernie's long history of standing in opposition to US imperialism. (And he's hardly cozying up to Russia today, unlike our current president!)
196
When you talk about U.S. imperialism can you provide a list of countries that we now rule because of that imperialism?
1
This piece is obviously intended to imply that Senator Sanders was some sort of tool of the Soviets. On its own terms, it fails, as it notes Gorbachev’s reforms leading to optimism and other cities’ efforts at sister city status. Of course the Soviets would have planned to exploit it for propaganda. That is what they did. The US did, too, would certainly have used any relationship with Yaroslavl to advertise a Cold War victory, if it thought there was one or one could be claimed. This is on the one hand a non-story, but on the other seems destined to become a decontextualized sound bite on Fox News, where the pretense that Soviet “collaboration” is bad but Putin collusion is fine will be the subtext and that Sen. Sanders is a wild-eyed communist Manchurian Candidate will be the content. Given that, what does the Times add to the record that is of any value here, unless the point is to be the legitimate source for the fake news distortions.
84
Good work on the editorialized headline. Congratulations to the Democratic establishment for not only tearing down the last person standing who can form coherent sentences, but also driving away independent voters in droves.
Your spite of the progressive wing and inability to appeal to independents will elect Trump again, and you've played right into his hands.
I hope the Dems enjoy six months of Burisma and Hunter Biden stories, followed by four years of investigations, should Biden win and Dems not win the Senate. What a disaster.
130
I don't give up on Bernie so easily,
Yes it's obvious that the entire establishment, as he says, is going for him, and this piece is certainly evidence of that period but hes out there fighting and so are his supporters.
6
This should benefit Bernie if he was able to show a closer relationship than Trump. Right?
5
Bernie Sanders was one of millions who visited the Soviet Union in 1988. Thousands from this continent visit that area much as many also come to this country...to learn.
Mr. Sanders, in 1988 was not a ballet dancer, writer, chess grandmaster or musician. He was a Mayor, interested in world peace. He still is. That his wife accompanied him is a negative? What a crazy thought? Mr Sanders has honed his thinking over the years. I am sure that Burlington's continued relationship with a Russian city continues to play a role in his unblinkered view of our increasingly varied society. Not a bad perspective for the POTUS.
58
What are the odds that the KGB has recordings of Bernie off mic and in his room saying things he would like buried forever. An October surprise for the ages.
4
What are the odds that somebody has recordings of anyone saying something they shouldn't? Probably infinitely higher than the odds that Bernie Sanders said something in a Soviet hotel Room.
Why? Back then we were aware and appropriately conducted ourselves when we were in the Eastern bloc. Because we knew were being recorded and we had not yet become used to it. So we were on our best behavior.
Now we're under surveillance 24 hours A-day because we carry Big Brother in our pockets. It's much more likely that somebody has evidence
Of the average citizen under the age of 50 has for retreated some kind of gaffe or thought crime than Bernie Sanders In the Soviet Union in the eighties.
3
@j. g. What are the odds that the KGB has recordings of Trump saying things he would like buried forever.
2
"The bombing starts in 5 minutes" - Ronald Reagan.
"The enormous spending on the military by both countries strangles their local economies" - Bernie Sanders.
29
The real significance is the year it happened, much more so than a US Mayor visiting the USSR. He did this when Reagan and Gorbachev were busy transforming US Soviet relations and reducing nuclear stockpiles. It helps to remember the context before projecting any of this to the 2020 election cycle. And a year later the Wall in Berlin came down; a time of hope for a better world.
39
It's not what he did. It's what the masses here think about. The appearance of impropriety is a death knell for him.
2
Nixon and Reagan welcomes and hobnobbed with the Soviets. Sanders did not make foreign policy.
15
I counted seventy (70) sister cities between the United States and Russia at the present time. I practiced medicine in Iowa at that time, in the late 1980’s. We established a cordial relationship with the city of Stavropol in southern Russia, exchanging information and encouraging visitor exchanges between our sister cities. It was a time of great hope for peace and an end to the nuclear war threat. Bernie was ahead of his time and is not a Soviet or Russian stooge. Can’t say the same for our present president.
60
The only relevant questions today are whether or not Bernie Sanders, like Donald Trump, would be inappropriately receptive to Vladimir Putin’s meddling in the 2020 campaign and, if Sanders were elected, whether he would then compromise our national security by favoring Putin’s aggressive regime, as Donald Trump has done and would surely continue to do.
As far as Trump, every informed American knows the answer. For Sanders, unless American intelligence services know something additional, it is sheer speculation.
Those of us Democrats who oppose Bernie Sanders have more obvious examples of his recklessness to worry about.
4
The visit might have been harmless or even noble, but the graphics on this are terrible, especially since Trump's playing footsie with a former KGB agent in one arrow in the Dems' quiver for the upcoming campaign.
3
This article is mostly fair, and it mainly paints a favorable view on Bernie’s interactions with Russia. I cannot help but wonder if all news outlets will take the same view. Also, this relationship requires more inquiry, which will surely be done.
Savvy journalists will find an angle here.
Perhaps a person who was already looking beyond the Cold War in 1988 might deliver a foreign policy that is fit for the 21st century. Again, the generational gap shows itself -- those raised on Cold War propaganda cannot bring themselves to support a candidate who was immune to it.
9
This piece made me nostalgic for a past when such sister city programs were possible. Remembering the end of Soviet rule and the promise of a new beginning for Russia, which then turned into the kleptocracy of Vladimir Putin, combining all the bad of communism with the evil of corruption, makes me sad.
Sanders, idealistic and driven, was simply trying to reduce tensions in an era where nuclear threats hovered over all parts of government.
I can only imagine how Trump will reframe this if Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee. Which will be interesting to watch, given how much help Trump himself has recently received from the man who upended the Russian dream of creating a new society.
17
What on earth is the point of this story? To paint Sanders are some sort of flaming radical? (And Sanders was not my first choice, by the way.)
Lots of US cities had and have sister cities - my own city has a sister city in Russia, and groups go there. This story seems to subtly imply, with no ground in reality, that there was something nefarious in this exchange when in fact this was a common and government sanctioned initiative. There have been and are cultural exchange programs between the US and the former USSR/current Russia for quite a while now, folks.
Let's hope "citizen diplomacy" continues and thrives. If the word "Russia" makes you want to dive under your bed, don't participate in one.
As an aside, I visited Yaroslavl two years ago as part of a tour group. Our guide, who had a wonderful dry sense of humor, pointed to the statue of Lenin pictured in this story, told us how the town council talked about taking it down, but didn't have the funds to do it. And he said after all, it was part of their history, and history should be remembered. Then he cracked us up by saying, "Lenin. See how the statues of him are always pointing? We followed where he was pointing for seventy years, and found out he was pointing to nothing." So much for communist propaganda.
36
@Deb - if you can't see the point of this you will lose the election, and the next ones too.
So is your conclusion that if Fox News can issue its inevitable propaganda about an action, the politician shouldn't take the action, no matter how well-intentioned and useful? Is that the standard now? Must we all live safe enough to deprive spin doctors and lobbyists of potential accusations? Must we all give lip service to anti-Communism and other planks of what Republicans call conservatism, which is actually far more radical than the Left?
One of the best things about Sanders is that despite all his years in the Senate, he's not cynical.
22
The NYTimes is doing whatever it can, with seeming sophistication, to counter the rise of Bernie Sanders. Just as they did four years ago. It's disturbing.
As others have commented, there were many, many Sister City outreaches to the Soviet Union and its Republics in the late 1980's. I was part of one when I lived in Traverse City, Michigan. Several exchanges between people in Traverse City and the soon-to-be-free Soviet Republic of Georgia. Our Sister City effort was predicated upon both regions being wine producing areas.
51
I have absolutely no issue with Sanders' efforts to reach out to Russian citizens to promote better relations between our peoples. The documents referenced, however, show how naive he was to think that that would somehow change the fundamental nature of the Soviet government. I thought this quote was telling:
“People there seemed reasonably happy and content,” Mr. Sanders told reporters in Burlington about Yaroslavl, a city of about 600,000. “I didn’t notice much deprivation.”
2
Nuclear war did not happen between the Soviet Union and the US because of geopolitical fundamental realities and not because of low-level activism. The first reality was that neither side wanted it and the second was that the two were the only powers then capable of truly global strikes. There are now three, but the first reality is still true and the second still applies with three powers because the smaller ones have limited nuclear resources. If it ever becomes a free-for-all, then the situation will be truly threatening.
2
Well-meaning efforts by Sanders that will no doubt be distorted by Trump. Sanders was trying to make it a safer world while Trump was doing what?
31
@Jim
Distorted? Hardly, more likely just to see the light of day. Bernie's embrace of communists is his own doing and should be known to the public.
@Jim hanging out in Studio 54?
This era was prime time for lots of us to engage with USSR. As a professor at (then) Glassboro State College, the site of a relatively unremarkable Summit Conference between Johnson and Kosygin in 1967, I organized a 20th Anniversary Soviet American festival which brought the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Ballet, singers from the Stanislavsky Theatre and composers from the Soviet Composers Union to little Glassboro. It was a heady time, and even though the FBI came to interview me a few years later, wanting to know if ballerinas were photographing bridges ("uh, no--they were heading to KMart") these types of exchanges were flourishing around the country. Anyone with interest in international relations remembers this era and probably found some way to participate. Glasnost at Glassboro was our effort. Bernie Sanders was just doing what lots of others were doing.
94
Thank you for this. I was about to write something similar, including the fact that Sister Cities is an official program run out of the U.S. Department of State. This article really presents a distorted view of the program and Burlington’s participation in it. This looks like an attempt to make something out of nothing. Younger people or those less informed might need more context in order to understand that there is nothing unusual here at all. And nothing unusual about protest on the part of many, many Americans in support of movements to overturn oppressive regimes in Central America. What’s your point here, NYT?
3
In 1988, efforts to reach out to the Soviet Union made sense, and, in retrospect, were probably prescient.
.
Russia in 2020 is a far less hopeful place for the establishment of good relations and democratic norms than the Soviet Union in 1988. But that window closed with the arrival of Vladimir Putin.
45
Friend speaks my mind. Appropriately, Russian was popular language to take in college and even some high schools in that era. These programs were about the desire to increase the connection to an isolated nation and people.
30
@M Yin
No, these programs were to appeal and help train people to work in govt to better protect our country. Were some heady, naive students thinking we could all hold hands and sing "we'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony..." while wearing our coca-cola pants or tie-dye? Certainly. Others were thinking of helping protect our country from a legitimate threat at the time.
My american daughter is learning Arabic. Why? Because she wants to better be able to serve and protect our country from a more current threat against it.
3
Bernie might have been a small town mayor but he was a big time thinker. Attending the University of Chicago can have that effect on you. Rather than plan for surviving nuclear war he came up with another plan. And people in these comments are criticizing him for it?! I have now cast two votes for Bernie for president, both in losing causes so it appears but I am proud of Bernie and satisfied with my votes. I still have friends from the 60’s who are as liberal today as they were back then. I lose most arguments with them, they are usually arguing from the moral high ground while I sling pragmatic stones up at them. It does bother me.
52
This may be one reason the Dems we’re pushing Biden so hard.
5
And now decades later Russia still wants to use our politicians for their own purposes.
9
This story fits in my mind to a bit of historical trivia, interesting but, unless proven otherwise, meaningless. Was Bernie naive or foolish? Or was he seriously leaning toward Communism? I prefer to believe the former and neither of the latters. In a sense was he any different than Nixon establishing relations with China during the Cold War in the belief that we could persuade them out of communism? The Soviet Union long ago fell to be replaced by a dictatorship while China remains a Communist dictatorship which has a stranglehold on our economy even in the midst of a potential pandemic that started in China apparently.
17
@vincentgaglione - since when was the USSR not ruled by one dictator or another?
"Donald Trump plans to show Mr. Gorbachev a swimming pool inside a $19 million apartment" reads an article in these pages, published December 1, 1988...
December 7, 1988 (Infamy Day, no less!) "Thousands of cheering residents and tourists lined Broadway, cheering and waving and giving thumbs-up signs behind the police barricades."
Sanders was way ahead of his times.
I'm grateful the NYT has provided just how insightful he was then and how pragmatic he would be for us as president.
40
This seems framed as a red scare hit piece. Bernie Sanders sought to offer a counter view to “Star Wars”, a massive defense budget and weapon program that was undertook just as the Soviet’s were collapsing. It was a move towards peace and diplomacy. Butter over guns. Please change the headline.
204
Wow, this article really seems like a reach in terms of newsworthiness. News flash: all sister city relationships are about a city and country promoting its own interests! That Sanders did so in the spirit of nuclear de-escalation seems laudable, maybe even quaint, and yet this article makes it almost seem sinister. Of all the things going on, this is worth NYT attention?
291
@Andrew Yang - why yes, it is worthy of attention, very much so. those who don't see the relevance here will lose this election, and all those that come after.
@laguna greg
It's actually a quaint story and something Sanders should be proud of. But if you never read past the article's initial editorial set up, it does read as entirely sinister. It's a game that much of the mainstream media is playing, and it's quite dangerous: Using incendiary headlines for quite benign stories, realizing that a significant number of people will just see the headlines and form opinions based on those.
As a 1980s journalism student, we were taught that readers should be able to get an accurate read on the day's news even if they only had time to read the headlines. That is no longer possible today where, even in the NYTIMES, headlines resemble only vaguely the actual reporting.
17
No matter what the story is here (and it appears to be complicated), the timing of this on the NYT front page is the real issue.
Obviously someone promoted this to bring Bernie down. This kind of dirty politics is what is turning off younger (and older) voters.
Bernie is sincere about helping the working class. The fact that so many are against this is the real story.
234
@TJ oh my goodness you didn't think this was going to happen, at some point?
It's called "vetting" for a reason.
1
@TJ
The many people who are against Bernie include a slew of working-class African-American voters who came out in force for Joe Biden on Tuesday.
2
@Jeff But why? Joe has never done a thing for working people. He's on record as being open to cuts in SS. medicare/caid and his bankrupcty bill was a disaster for working people.
Joe's commitment is to the credit card and insurance corps that fund his campaign and have post office box addresses in Delaware.
4
Isn't it interesting that Russia is no longer a Communist country (closer to classic Fascism today), but we still have poor relations with Russia. Yet, China continues to be ruled by a Communist Party and the politicians in both parties and CEOs worked hand in hand to replace good jobs with pensions in our country in return for less expensive labor in China, where labor unions are illegal.
Sanders never sold out to the Soviets. But too many of our political and corporate leaders did sell out to the Communist Chinese. Today China is emerging as the most powerful industrial center in the world. Sanders voted against those foolish trade deals.
Setting up a sister city relationship was at worst a harmless exercise in which both sides gained intelligence about the other.
68
This is a story about wanting peace, not singing the praises Of communism. That some people can read this and not understand that is one problem With our country.
93
Wait - he tried to create a cultural bridge between two countries locked in an endless, mutually damaging cold war? The horror!
193
This bears repeating:
“It is my strong belief that if our planet is going to survive, and if we are going to be able to convert the hundreds of billions of dollars that both the United States and the Soviet Union are now wasting on weapons of destruction into areas of productive human development, there is going to have to be a significant increase in citizen-to-citizen contact,” Mr. Sanders wrote.
I hope readers will read beyond the headlines and use critical thinking skills while digesting this piece.
While the headline smacks of red-baiting, better we get it out of the way now.
I, for one, support Sanders for his dedication to diplomacy.
126
@Steven Van Haren
Unfortunately, a vast number of Americans do not have critical thinking skills; that is why articles like this and Fox News can so easily sway Americans: Russia had it all figured out in 2016.
1
Other than appearing to smear a candidate with this non-news story this seems to make what was clear from the beginning, corporate media will do its part to bring down Sanders. If only you had been this diligent in 2016. Back then you covered HRC’s emails out of proportion to the importance of the story and provided a great amount of free media coverage to our current incompetent president.
Stop with the noise and focus on the signal.
56
@FDRT - Pride goeth before a fall, FD. If tidbits like this seem unfair to you, then your political visions, and your candidate, are built on the shakiest of ground and will fall.
This article seems to me to be a media hit job on Sanders.
This is especially egregious given Trump’s almost treasonous embrace of Russian interference and his choice to ignore US intelligence warnings about Russian interference in our electoral processes.
While Trump has ceded our influence in foreign policy to Russia, we bemoan Sander’s efforts similar to other outreaches at the time, and our nation’s attempts to normalize relations with Russia.
Shame on the Times for its interference in the 2020 election in favor of Biden.
78
Laudable. Heroic. Brave. Idealistic.
I say, Nonsense. Or perhaps Narcissist.
He was elected as a mayor, not a diplomat, clearly had other motives all along. He does not believe in capitalism, despite overwhelming evidence that it is superior (although far from perfect) to all other alternatives.
13
There were hundreds of sister cities between the United States and the old, now non-existent USSR. My town in Maine had one until the year 2000. We went for HRC in 2016 and Bidden last week. Our mayor has went to Russia and visited our sister city (maybe she's a secret Red too).We hosted a nice young woman from our sister city for a year. Perhaps I'm a Red too!
15
This kind of Soviet practice is out of date- The world outside the USA has changed, nobody remembers the soviets anymore.
4
@L.G. "This kind of Soviet practice is out of date- The world outside the USA has changed...."
I guess those efforts to influence our election in 2016 and today don't count.
4
The US Sister City program began in 1956. Republican President Eisenhower proposed a people-to-people, citizen diplomacy initiative. Doubtless all parties had their own agendas, but nevertheless, Sister Cities was and remains a positive effort to facilitate people-to-people cultural and economic exchanges. As such, Sister Cities is a good thing, and Bernie Sanders is to be commended for waging peace during the Cold War.
In 1983, the Times reported on efforts by New Haven, Connecticut, to establish sister city relations with Novorossiisk, Russia. The Times noted,
"If New Haven does manage to set up the program, it would join several other American cities in exchanging official visits and maintaining regular communications with a Soviet city. Detroit and Seattle, for example, recently found sister cities in the Soviet Union.
The idea of sister cities began in the United States in the mid-1950's under President Dwight D. Eisenhower."
The framing of the 1983 article was neutral to positive. But the framing of the sister cities program in the present article makes it sound like Sister Cities was some kind of Soviet propaganda plan to dupe unwitting Americans, aided and abetted by Bernie Sanders. Nothing in the history of the Sister Cities program from its inception until now supports such a sinister, misleading framing of this story.
The lede is heavy-handed: "Moscow saw a chance for propaganda." Really?
Or: "Eisenhower saw a chance for peace and international cooperation."
75
Sanders peace efforts were laudable. Now we live in an age where everything Russian is sinister. They want to demoralize US democracy the story goes. The USs behavior at the end of the Soviet Union was one of taking advantage of their decaying political power. As we see with the USs relentless drive of NATO to the Ukrainian border. The USs outrage that the weak alcoholic president Yeltsin, that the US intervened in a Russian election to help him win, could be replaced by Putin has driven the neo cons batty. Sanders made an honorable effort to engage locally in the USSR as Gorbachev was involved in perestroika and glasnost. In the neo con dominated neo cold war that includes neo McCarthyism Sanders is a breathe of fresh air.
36
@c harris - you are far too young to remember what it was like. But the past was quite a bit worse. In comparison, this is quite relaxed.
Bernie is America's Jeremy Corbyn, his fate at the polls will be the same should he win the nomination. Why do you think Trump wants to run against him?
10
I commend Bernie for his vision - his efforts show the best of what America is all about.
Citizens taking action on their own - for sale of their own community - but not to the detriment of America.
Of course, the Soviets expected it to be propaganda. But let's remember, this is Burlington and in Vermont.
Most Americans would have problem locating even Vermont on a map.
I also think Bernie's efforts show that he has not changed stripes.
I worked and lived in Russia - a country I am fond of, especially it's people. Throughout my dealings - which were oil patch related - I always found Russians warm, forthright and admirers of America.
His efforts to improve relations with the Soviets are not different from a citizen POTUS that we now have. Unfortunately, the politics and the optics of it has totally detailed his efforts.
And if folks will remember - Reagan actually attempted to deliver Bernie's vision of no nuclear arms - when Reagan and Gorbachev privately agreed - only to be scuttled by their own advisers.
Finally, I found this amusing - ”Mr. Sanders sent an electronic message ..'
This was a telex - a technology I well remember.
And it was hardly electronic as what we think today. It was a printed ”voice call” over a telephone line.
27
I commend Bernie for his vision - his efforts show the best of what America is all about.
Citizens taking action on their own - for sale of their own community - but not to the detriment of America.
Of course, the Soviets expected it to be propaganda. But let's remember, this is Burlington and in Vermont.
Most Americans would have problem locating even Vermont on a map.
I also think Bernie's efforts show that he has not changed stripes.
I worked and lived in Russia - a country I am fond of, especially it's people. Throughout my dealings - which were oil patch related - I always found Russians warm, forthright and admirers of America.
His efforts to improve relations with the Soviets are not different from a citizen POTUS that we now have. Unfortunately, the politics and the optics of it has totally detailed his efforts.
And if folks will remember - Reagan actually attempted to deliver Bernie's vision of no nuclear arms - when Reagan and Gorbachev privately agreed - only to be scuttled by their own advisers.
Finally, I found this amusing - ”Mr. Sanders sent an electronic message ..'
This was a telex - a technology I well remember.
And it was hardly electronic as what we think today. It was a printed ”voice call” over a telephone line.
5
It's heartwarming to read that Bernie partook of a taxpayer program with bi-partisan support to support 'grass roots' diplomacy. He must be proud as I'm sure so many on this thread are, that Bernie helped support Reagan's Soviet policies that ultimately ended the Cold War. Isn't it amazing what bi-partisanship and working toward mutual goals can achieve.
56
He’s cooked! Bernie should end his campaign for the sake of the country. But he can’t see how flawed he is, or how much damage he is doing and will do if he continues. And I REALLY wish he’d stop blaming the democrats and the media for the voting choices he is inspiring people to make (for Biden). He’s starting to sound like Hillary, Trump, and the GOP—take responsibility for your own actions! That’s leadership!
10
@Carlotta
What did he steal?
3
Yup. Everybody's a russian asset.
Apparently the democratic establishment found blaming the russian bogeyman worked so well covering their faults and bad judgment in 2016 that they are going use it against anyone they dislike from now on.
34
Many cities and towns had sister cities in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. People were trying to promote peace and “warm up” from the Cold War by emphasizing our common humanity instead of our differences. It was not in any way an embrace of communism. Focusing on this now seems a politically-motivated attempt to smear Sanders. It’s not news.
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@D Spear
My little rural- and extremely Republican city has had a Sister City in COMMUNIST China for decades...I guess I'd better look keenly at those Red MAGA hats.
Seriously, it is truly sad the writer of this piece goes out of his way to tie Sanders to the Russian government rather than the people he sought outreach.
4
The title seems nefarious and is to be expected from establishment organizations such as the NYT. Many, many cities create sister cities around the world. Ofcourse, everyone has their idea about the outcomes, but I personally trust Bernie Sanders. I do not see a reason with creating ties with a country in transition, to help build relationships and increase the peace. Look at who the US is friends with now - Saudi Arabia who murdered and cut a journalist apart in an embassy and most of 9/11 attackers were from there and many countries who are doing atrocious things to their citizens, but we have no issues with our relationships with those regimes. Unfortunately, we are at such a low place that articles like this attempt to tear down genuine efforts of peace while exonerating state-sanctioned murder squads as long as they have money and are willing to engage with the US. Our country is soul sick - maybe it has always been.
62
Since it appears that the Sanders' campaign wishes to dig through Biden's old voting record it's only fair that a look at Sanders' political past should also be in order.
12
Complete non story. We were openly starting to explore business opportunities during glasnost. My father a chemical engineer visited same time .. with team from DuPont.
62
Every time Bernie screams "revolution" I cringe. The US had it's revolution over 200 years ago, we don't need another. Why doesn't Bernie get together with Biden and make a deal that he will be in charge of healthcare reform that is done as a team effort not an overthrow of the country... Let's show Trump how it's done in the US, as a team, all included.
12
@Missy
I think Bernie’s answer would be that America can’t change healthcare Sander’s style without himself being President. Paying for it would involve a total revamping of the tax system first, including middle class individual rates rising to Scandinavian levels of 48-60%.
3
@Missy It would be helpful to the country because to my knowledge, Biden is sorely lacking in any kind of plans for his administration if he should win.
5
@Missy Why doesn't Biden get together with Bernie and make a deal that Biden will be in charge of Financial Reform? Oops, won't work. Education? Oops, wont work. Ummm . . . I could go on, but do you get the picture?
Biden is not into change unless it is to increase profits for his wealthy donors. He is Republican-lite. Increasing Obamacare means increasing insurance company profits, not reducing healthcare costs.
Biden's philosophies are part of what is wrong with the Democratic party. Whether it is R's or D's, loyalty to party is a BIG problem. The loyalty should be to the people of this country and the world.
3
Is this what is meant by “Russian intrusion in the US Elections?”
After several miscalculations by Russian intelligence, does this now mean they see Bernie is Trump’s greatest obstacle to a second term?
Look, those of us who’ve been in various protests movements since the 1960’s, Bernie types have always shown up but people learned to push them aside since their revolutionary rhetoric was always misappropriate—pie-in-the-sky—while the goals of the protest movement were more immediate and attainable.
Bernie and Biden are nice old men, but in their present stage, neither is a serious threat to Trump—A Biden-Warren ticket might be.
3
The article does not do justice to the historical period involved. This was a period of Glasnost, and the Soviet Union was a few years from its ignominious collapse. While the Reagan arms build up, viewed from this historical perch, seems to have hastend the end of the Soviet Union, at the time, it was very controversial. The early '80s under Reagan were a time of great tension, and the stationing of intermediate range, nuclear missiles in Europe under tremendous opposition from the people of Europe. In the aftermath of that period of tension, and the increasing openness under Gorbachev, Mr. Sander's efforts would seem to be extremely positive and not at all unusual. I am already seeing the beginnings of a new Red Scare beginning in this country, and it would be ashamed if articles like this contributed to that.
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Wow. Really? What exactly is the point of this hard hitting investigative report? I remember 1988 very well. As high school students, we had been raised on fear and anxiety about nuclear war. Somehow we all managed to catch glimpses of "The Morning After," when we were younger, even though our parents had forbidden it. In the late 1980s, when these kinds of delegations began to form, this gave us hope. We wanted to get past Cold War rhetorics and we thought that we should do so by trying to understand what it was really like there. I knew people that went on this kind of trip. What is your point, exactly--that such people were naive pawns of the Soviets? I think most people involved had a good understanding that both governments would milk what they could for propagandistic purposes, but that this should not stop us from seeking peace and mutual understanding. Absent any compelling rationale for digging into this journey, I cannot avoid concluding that this piece is just another version of the same old smear tactics and red baiting we have seen throughout this season-- one with a veneer of sophistication. Really, that is low, and we are done with this. Enough.
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@Matthew Sower And the title is misleading. It's mostly about what happened not the USSR goals which I'm not sure what they were to be honest. Now let's talk about Trump Moscow hotel plans shall we?
24
I too traveled to the Soviet Union in 1987 as part of a "people -to-people" citizen diplomacy effort during the Glasnost/Perestroika era that immediately preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our visit reciprocated the one our hosts in Novosibirsk had made to our homes in the USA the year before. This was precisely the right time to engage the Soviet Union in that moment of flux and opening. Whatever your opinion of the senator today, his trip to the USSR in the context of the 1980s thaw was prescient and laudable.
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I knew right from November 2016, after Hillary lost to Trump, that A Female Presidential Candidate Will Not Win in 2020 Because People Are Suffering From Hillary's Lost Post-Traumatic Syndrome (HLPTS). I said right from November 2016 that it's going to be Bernie versus Biden, and I know that Democrats Will Lose If Bernie Sanders Is Not The Nominee just as it was in 2016. I said the same in Summer 2016 after Bernie Sanders dropped out, that Trump will become the President. And It Came To Past because most Sanders' Independent supporters that I met here in Pennsylvania chose Trump as their second choice. They Have No Love For Either Republican or Democratic Establishment; just like Bernie Sanders himself who's also Independent.
10
@Ukosi - " just like Bernie Sanders himself who's also Independent."
Really?
If he is an independent than why is he running as a Democrat? Why is he trying to usurp the party just as Trump usurped the Republican party? If he is a man of his convictions why not run as a real independent? Is expediency the best we can do?
@Ukosi - "chose Trump as their second choice"
I guess it is true, Bernie voters and Republican voters vote on the basis of spite.
8
I chose Donald Trump as my second choice because voting for Hilary Clinton meant voting for more of the same failed policies, not out of spite. Don’t you get it? There is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats in our government.
@SH - "There is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats in our government."
I do not agree with that premise. Neither does my pocketbook after the Republicans increased my taxes by over $4000/year. Nor does the quality of my air, water, or land agree. Nor do the rights of those in my family that Trump seeks to erase.
There is no lack of evidence that Bernie's voters will spite the Democratic candidate if he isn't elected:
https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-poll-warren-biden-2020-nominee-emerson-college-1483831
3
You can't doubt Bernie's sincerity, and idealism is good aspirationally, but the electorate is looking for evolution, not revolution. The bubble appears ready to burst, so the pressure needs to be reduced. Hopefully, when the history is written, the US won't be dubbed a 21st Century Weimar Republic.
8
That is exactly what it will be dubbed! And like in German the media is played a substantial role by undermining progressive ideas and supporting do nothing moderates.
11
Every American of note who visited the Soviet Union during the Cold War was propagandized. Bobby Fischer, who visited as a teenage chess prodigy, was used to demonstrate Soviet intellectual superiority. While I am not a Sanders supporter, in fairness, he visited the Soviet Union for the noble reason of promoting peace. In contrast, President Trump has an unrequited bromance with Vladimir Putin stemming from his love of totalitarian dictators who can pull off large military parades on their capital squares.
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@Eric F And personal gain. Promises from Putin and his pack of Oligarchs for Trump Moscow and other business support. Where did Trump get his funding anyway?
8
Are you saying that everyone who supports Sanders is a dupe of Russia? Bernie has never advocated unilateral disarmament or done anything to undermine our country. To the contrary, he espouses a stronger America, stronger communities and --perhaps--a world that does not destroy itself burning fossil fuels or going over the brink into nuclear war. How many US presidents signed treaties with Russia to prevent mutually assured destruction? But maybe, NYTimes, people are not falling for this kind of attack anymore.
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I am 64, and am not supporting Bernie this time around... though i do admire him greatly. For the Times to condemn Bernie Sanders for his outreach to the Soviet Union back in the 1980's is a crime. I thought one purpose of diplomacy was to engage those we don't agree with and find the common good. And to those of us who were alive back then, let's not forget Samantha Smith. Please, everyone, look her up. Should we now condemn a schoolgirl from Maine who wrote a hopeful letter to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov? May her memory help keep those times in perspective!
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I understand the idealism of then Mayor Sanders and the spirit of the times of the late 1980s and the general notion of openness and seeking common bonds. Sister cities is generally a good thing.
I think Senator Sanders has always meant well but is a bit naive (“I didn’t notice much deprivation there.”). The optics are not good here. Fox would have a field day with this.
9
@Hamilton Lagrange The whole optics thing is exactly our problem: the quick label slapped on, the failure to read and learn and value learning. I too, like Sanders and many others was happy at the possibility of the end of the Cold War, before the dictator Putin came to power. It was largely the fear of Communist takeover that started the Vietnam War and the USSR was our enemy. Why wouldn't Bernie and others want to seize the opportunity to promote peace and regain some kind of sanity? So Russia used his attempts for propaganda, don't all countries do this? I thank the NYT for posting this article, and by the way, what was Biden doing at the same time about promoting peace? Talk about proactive vs reactive. This is why I'll stick with Bernie until I have to vote for the other guy.
6
@Hamilton Lagrange But the optics should not play well that Trump hid from the public well into his presidential term his deal with Russia for a Trump Moscow hotel!
4
@Hamilton Lagrange
Naive? I doubt it. Even if things were horrible in the Russian sister city, Sanders would not have been shown such conditions.
Naive is what you call people who read this article and don't consider the source or timing.
3
Why is this an issue?
What do you think North Korea did when their leader met with Trump?
What do you think Russia does every time Trump is caught smiling with Putin?
The only difference is, Bernie was probably trying to start a conversation that would lead to a friendship and/or diplomacy.
69
But is raises the suspicion, likelihood, certainty, reinforced by the recent reporting that Russia is already trying to influence the election for Sanders, that they have compromising material on him. Why were some pages of the report kept secret? Given their infection of the present president, can we take yet another chance?
2
What really caught my eye in this story appears at the end: Sanders's support for the Sandinistas and Ortega. It fits a pattern, like his praise for Castro (not all of Castro, I know, but praise, nonetheless). I spent much of my time during the 70s and 80s in Germany, especially in Berlin. The Russian agenda there was, to say the least, loathsome, and I fear that Sanders's view of the future includes much more government control than most Americans want. He has a sneaking admiration for government centrality along those lines, for reasons quite different than Trump's (who loves the oligarchy and Putin's repressive control). Both are to be shunned.
19
@WiltonTraveler
You need to learn a bit more about the history of those times. Specifically, the type of oppressive right-wing regimes (supported by the U.S. at the time) that were in control at the time. Look up dictator Fulgencio Batista from Cuba who stole hundreds of millions when he left the country. He was in tight with the mafia as well, and used his secret police to stifle dissent using murder, torture, and public executions to hold on to power. At the time, Castro was a godsend for the people of Cuba.
SImilarly, Anastasio Somoza was a U.S.-supported dictator in Nicaragua. Same story, only he left the country in even more debt than Batista did Cuba (and Nicaragua was a smaller country). Ortega and the Sandanistas were a welcome change.
In both countries the celebrated change took time to turn corrupt. We now see them same thing happening here. But don't blame it on Sanders.
6
@WiltonTraveler - truer words have not yet been written in this column today. thank you.
1
I wasn’t a Sanders fan until I read this article. It was courageous and hopeful to build a sisters city partnership. And nothing in the article suggests Sanders was played by the Soviets. Not sure why the Times chose to run this story, but I think it is a moving testament to idealism. Granted, I’m not sure we can afford idealism right now, but if Sanders wins, my 1980s peace-yearning teenage self will be joyful.
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@James Sanders has been consistently on the right side of history. what a heroic act this was for the time.
43
@James
Meantime, as Sanders was touring, Soviet Jews by the thousand were fleeing or trying to flee the iron grip of Russia’s oppressive policies toward them. Sanders was not an idealist. A fool and a true believer, maybe.
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/14/opinion/remember-the-refuseniks.html
Didn't Nixon visit China in 1972, and helped open up relations with what was at the time a pretty hardcore communist country? Actually sounds like Sanders was being fairly avant-garde here, considering that relations with the USSR opened up pretty soon after. It was Gorbachev in power then, and many western leaders were reaching out at the time. I think Canada's Trudeau visited both countries before the US did, and even had business delegations visit during the dark Brezhnev era. The 80's was a pretty peak time for nuclear confrontation, and I'd even give my kudos to Thatcher for being open to dialogue at the time.
84
You named Nixon, Trudeau, and Thatcher as leaders of their countries who did or should have opened up relations with the two communist empires of the time. Did you notice the difference between those three people and Bernie Sanders? Bernie was a small-town mayor, without the resources, responsibility, or authority to play at foreign relations.
I think Bernie's motives were pure, certainly with none of the corruption that we've seen from the current administration in its international dealings. However, while this is not Jane Fonda laughing while sitting in an anti aircraft gun in North Vietnam, that's how it's going to be spun against Sanders. The only good thing about this story coming out to add to the other facts about his involvement with the Soviet Union is that it will hurt Bernie and help Biden in the primary, instead of helping trump in the general election.
3
@Cameron Skene yes Trudeau did have business delegations ; my father, a chemical engineer, went with DuPont
6
@Cameron Skene
Nixon also did back door dealing with the Viet Cong to delay any peace treaty until after the election so he could take credit for it. At an average of $00-500 American lives a week, I wonder what the total loss was that he caused us.
1
I'm not a Bernie-fan, but I would suggest these initiatives were ok in 1988. Gorbachev was in power, and struggling to change the USSR for the better. Which it did. No harm in some American liberals trying to give him a hand, however naively perhaps. My guess is the censored pages in the Yaroslavl-file do not so much concern 'personal information' but have to do with the KGB-appreciation of things - nothing surprising there either, just the way things were organised in the USSR. It would of course be great fun to know what the KGB thought (or knew) about Sanders, but this in itself does not discredit his attempt at initiating ties with a Soviet city. Hundreds of European cities and even villages did the same thing, at the time. It was simply a good idea, trying to replace animosity by friendly humanity. And Soviet citizenry was certainly hungry for anything that could help taking them out of the nightmare of Soviet history. It also worked, to a certain extent: whatever today's problems and authoritarian tendencies, Russia today is a far more 'normal' and connected country than the USSR of the late 80's. I guess valid criticism is possible about Sanders' general approach of different authoritarian regimes, over the years. But the city-sisterhood of 1988 is not a case in point. Interesting story though, good thing the reporter went out there.
59
I’m more outraged at the notion of nominating someone who championed disastrous unilateral invasions, job-siphoning trade deals and ill-conceived crime bills. But hey, if you’re still fearful of an insidious Soviet takeover in 2020 that you’re willing to overlook the above, you do you.
329
So you wait until Warren quits and there is only one progressive candidate left, and the day after that you start attacking that candidate?
479
@Elisabeth it’s called vetting and we should have done this with Trump. We should have seen his taxes, gotten health records and should have been more explicit about his personal business failures. And more.
13
@GG you can call it vetting. I call it a smear job by the establishment to keep their power and privilege, no matter the cost. They know Senator Sanders is more interested in fair and decent treatment for the majority of people in this country rather than the private profit of a few billionaires/corporate CEO types who don't care about the rest of us at all.
17
@Elisabeth
According to the article, "The Times requested the file from the archive on Thursday of last week. Archive employees said the documents had to first be checked for personal information, and they made the file available on Tuesday."
3
Interesting timing.
Now that Bernie is suddenly a threat to win, The Establishment wing of the Democratic Party has decided to destroy him.
And to betray his supporters.
373
This is reporting. This matters. Bernie needs to be vetted.
5
@Dr. John
Bernie was a threat to win before Super Tuesday. He is struggling mightily now. Had this story come out before Super Tuesday, I would question the timing. Now, this article makes no difference to the primary electorate. Bernie and Biden have baked in support. Few will be moved either way by this article.
4
@Dr. John
Bernie is no longer a threat, actually, because a slew of non-establishment grass-roots Democrats, especially African-Americans, came out to vote for Joe Biden on Tuesday.
6
‘ In a statement, the Sanders campaign said the candidate was “proud” of his grass-roots diplomatic efforts and noted that the idea of bringing together Soviet and American cities had the highest-level support at the time.’
Nice touch putting “proud” in quotes as if it’s something to be suspicious of.
270
Three years after WWll and exhaustive efforts to blunt Soviet dictator rule in Europe’s nation’s, Truman said “the only thing Stalin understands is how many divisions do you have”. Nation’s are like people. Each comes with a genetic coding of its fore fathers. “The whole is equal to the sum of its parts”. Sanders means well. But rhinos and elephants don’t mix or mate. They stick to themselves never changing their social habits. Sanders represents a socialist alternative to Trump, a dictator wanna be. Our nation is still genetically a Democracy. Great and interesting article. It should never be used in misinformation. It should give pause in debates to come; dictator, socialism vs. democracy. Let readers decide which path to choose. I’m one vote for democracy, messy as it can be.
4
I wonder when trump became a russian asset.
Sanders did nothing in russia for which he could be blackmailed.
The Steele dossier, my friends.
The russians control trump.
61
Who gets to decide when a politician reaching out to the Soviet Union/Russia is a good thing or a bad thing? Is it purely based on one's perception/view of the politician?
36
It's hard to overestimate my opposition to Senator Sanders and most of his policies (especially his domestic agenda). But I see this as a sincere effort to broaden ties and promote peace. Sanders certainly held (holds?) some silly ideas about "socialist" countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and the USSR, but he isn't an active tool of any foreign country. Trump on the other hand. . . .
128
What an indictment of the media. Sanders has been running for president for almost five years and this is the first time a reporter actually did some investigative work.
33
Investigative work that yielded nothing. Sanders, like many other mayors who initiated sister city relationships, was trying to avert nuclear war and reduce Cold War tensions. The content of this puff story doesn’t support the headline’s ridiculous claim that Sanders’s efforts were somehow a conduit for Soviet propaganda.
4
I have been following the trail of Bernie's involvement in these things for many years. I, too, in the 60s-70s was very involved in the left as were many of us.
Sanders speaks like many of us did in those days when he mentions the 1%, the establishment and capitalism as the enemies, the emphasis on class warfare, the need for a Revolution.
I was an organizer in Indiana in 1966 for SDS ( Students for a Democratic Society) and was involved with the Socialist Labor Party. There were other socialist parties such as the Marxist-Leninist Socialist Workers Party ( Trotskyite) which Bernie volunteered to be an elector for in 1980 and 1984 and the Socialist Party of which he was a youth member.
We all considered the Democratic party to be sell outs to capitalism. Bernie still does since he refuses to join it. Many of us moved on. He never did.
Sanders says that his Socialist vision is that of Denmark. But he did not go to Copenhagen for his honeymoon. He chose Moscow.
When he wanted to have a sister city for Burlington he had over 100 lands to choose from. He chose the USSR.
They in turn used him for propaganda purposes.
We need to get rid of Trump.
This next election cannot be a referendum on a Socialist Revolution.
We need to keep our eyes on the prize.
Get rid of Trump.
23
Much Ado About Nothing. This story — while I’m sure completely factual — unfortunately plays into the characterization that Republicans and “establishment” Democrats want the general public to have about Sanders. The idea that Bernie is anti-capitalist and dangerous is ludicrous. What worries the entrenched mega-beneficiaries of the uber capitalist system in place now is that he wants a more equitable sharing of the wealth. They see it as “their” wealth — an entitlement — which it is most definitely and objectively not. But projecting that fallacy is fundamental to the survival of their meme.
224
@John Figliozzi
I came here to suggest your opening line as being more realistic a title for this piece! You beat me to it. Unfortunately it's a fair bet there will be other opportunities for me to apply it to articles in the days ahead. I hope the NYT can grasp it's not a score they should want to rack up.
1
Well said, John.
1
Trump wants to make this election a referendum on a Socialist Revolution which is what Bernie has been calling for his entire career.
This is tailor made for him.
With over 100 countries to choose a sister city from, Bernie chose the USSR.
It is pretty easy to see that they embraced him and used it for propaganda purposes.
There is no way to deny this.
It will be used against us.
6
@Simon Sez - oh I think it's many, many more people aside from Donald who want that kind of referendum.
Nothing surprising here, it was to be expected. I'll never vote for someone like him, and I'm glad to see Biden moving ahead in the primaries.
12
You'll never vote for someone who promotes peaceful cooperation?
5
This is not a non story, it shines a light on Sanders beliefs about countries and governments, and how he would try to shape policies today based on those beliefs.
If you as a voter share his admiration of Soviet style communism and his belief that its citizens were well served because they were fed and educated, overlooking the fact that millions were imprisoned and died in the gulags for their ideas and writings of non conformity with existing ideology.
24
@John
The United States is FAR from being an agent of peace and democracy. It has aided and abetted—especially during the Reagan years—several corrupt and criminal Latin American governments and their military in committing torture, genocide, and murder at least a million people. The United States was a proxy player in many wars and “cleansing campaigns” in that region.
Look up the history of El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras during the Reagan Doctrine period.
The actions our country took in these and other nations caused lasting damage whose effects are still being felt by the citizens of those countries.
13
@ATOM - not relevant to this election and Bernie as a candidate.
3
@John
Looks like I hit submit without finishing my sentence. In case you are wonder what I was going to say, here it is,
"then vote for him"
I'm not a Bernie supporter, and although I wonder about the timing of this article (the investigative work began at a time when he looked to be the likely Democratic candidate), it's really just about a very good reporter uncovering fairly accessible records to add more more information to a non story. I'm waiting for his byline over a story exposing Trump's hidden debts to Russian oligarchs and the use of kompromat against Trump by the FSK. Mid-October would be excellent timing...
464
@Ed
Sorry, this is not a “non-story” - he was a mayor of a small American City, and clearly had other priorities than doing the job he was elected to do. The fact that the Soviets viewed him as a pawn shows how he was blinded by ideology. His motives should be no more above reproach than Trump’s.
13
@Ed Good Point--We are still waiting for Trump's taxes, medical records and the immigration paperwork for wives 1 and 3.
22
@Chuck There were dozens of sister city programs being created during this time period. The Reagan administration had promoted and praised this program to improve the relations between the USA and the USSR.
Now, did the Soviet Union try to push their propaganda efforts in these sister city programs? Yes, but that does not mean Bernie was influenced by this propaganda. In fact, Bernie seemed pretty clear the Soviet Union was an authoritarian, undemocratic nation.
30
The framing of this story is all the “establishment” Sanders complains about could want. While I do not want Sanders to be president, his apparently sincere efforts to reach out to the government of a Soviet leader Margaret Thatcher famously said she could do business with does not seem to me to be a bad thing—especially when one considers Sanders’ motive: ‘lIt is my strong belief that if our planet is going to survive, and if we are going to be able to convert the hundreds of billions of dollars that both the United States and the Soviet Union are now wasting on weapons of destruction into areas of productive human development, there is going to have to be a significant increase in citizen-to-citizen contact,” Mr. Sanders wrote.‘“ Come on, establishment. Pick apart Sanders’ current policies, not his sincere efforts to do his bit to prevent nuclear war.
687
@Mike
Diplomacy between countries especially between adversaries, is something that is handled at a national level, it is not for idealogical mayors and citizens to interfere with, no matter how well meaning.
This also boosts my existing theory of Sanders fascination of Soviet style communism and his belief that it is a better system than US capitalism. So in short it amplifies the perception that his statements about Castro and Cuba were not just about education.
45
@Mike While I agree with your sentiments, that's not how politics is pursued these days. If Sanders were to have been the nominee, do you think the trump campaign would focus on his policies?
11
@Mike The problem is twofold. For those of us who were stationed in Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, these types of visits- unsanctioned by the US govt - were seen as toeing the line of treason at the time. At best, it was reckless.
Second, a US President is generally considered the leader of the free world. One cannot simply choose to not be involved in foreign affairs, which Sanders seems to repeatedly do, and then claim one is pure as the driven snow. These are extremely difficult choices. Time again, Sanders says he has voted against doing nothing, which is also a choice that has long-term consequences.
25