On the recordJanuary 5, 2011
I am speaking today on a very important international foreign policy issue. That will be the subject of my address today. I wanted to come down here the first day of this legislative session, this 112th Congress, and talk about the deteriorating situation with regard to oppression and the rule of law in Russia. I have come to this floor a number of times to share my concern on this subject. I wish to begin this Congress by once again expressing my deep concern for what we see happening just in the recent days in Russia. I remember looking back in 1990 and 1991 at the hope we had, the optimism we in the West had as we watched the Iron Curtain fall, as we watched the wall tumble in Berlin, and we watched with hope that this would be a new day for people behind the Iron Curtain and a new opportunity for freedom and openness in that society. Unfortunately, year after year, month after month, we have seen since the fall of the Soviet Union a very regrettable and disturbing deterioration in the rule of law in Russia and a move back to the authoritarian rule of old we all remember so well.
