Moscow's timing was extraordinary.
As Congress was in the final hours of polishing a major trade bill, which the Soviets and the Administration had sought for two years, the Russians proclaimed last week that they had not, after all, agreed to the crucial compromise that had made the deal possible.
That key issue was the demand by Senator Henry Jackson, who had wide bipartisan backing in Congress, that the Soviets liberalize their emigration policy. Though the Jackson Amendment nominally applies to most Communist countries, the principal beneficiaries would be Soviet Jews. In October, after long and delicate bargaining, Jackson announced that...