In a conference in Washington last week sponsored by his presidential library, former president Richard M. Nixon called for increased action by the United States to aid democracy in Russia. Following are excerpts from his speech, based on a transcript prepared by Federal News Service.

We meet at a very challenging time, a challenging time in American history. We meet at a time when we have been through three years of events that have changed the world. I refer, of course, to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, to our victory over aggression in the gulf war. As a result of those events, we live in a new world, and the question now is: What should the leadership position of the United States be in that New World?

I'm going to direct my remarks in this political year not just to what our policy should be, but what is possible politically. In that respect, incidentally, I should point out that if you follow political campaigns, it's rather standard practice for the candidate to get up and say, "This is the most important election in history." I know. I said it a lot of times.

Now over the past 44 years I have had the opportunity to observe 12 presidential elections. I have been a candidate in five of them, and in that period of time there has never been a campaign . . . in which foreign policy was less discussed, and there has never been a time in which foreign policy was more important, because whoever is president in the next four years will provide the leadership that will make the difference as to whether peace and freedom survive in the world. Since that is the case then, it is vitally important that foreign policy be front and center, front and center in our considerations.

We have been on a roller-coaster ride as far as foreign policy is concerned. After the communist victory in Vietnam, the attitude of most Americans was that there was nothing we could do in foreign policy. Then after our victory in the gulf war, the conventional wisdom was that we could do anything. And then after the collapse of communism, particularly in the Soviet Union, the conventional wisdom was that there was nothing left to do.

As a result of these events we see developing a new isolationism in both of the political parties. The general theme . . . [is] that the United States no longer should play or can play a leadership role in the world. There are some who say we can't afford to, there are others who say it is not necessary for us to play that role, and there are still others who say that others should play that role.

. . . What they fail to realize, those who take that line, is that foreign and domestic policy are like Siamese twins; neither can survive without the other. . . . We can't be at peace in a world of wars, and we can't have a healthy American economy in a sick world economy. For example, we all can recall -- I can at least; you've read about it, I lived through it -- the great Depression. It began as a recession . . . [and] became a depression in great part because the United States adopted a protectionist policy. . . .

[Boris] Yeltsin is one who has repudiated not just communism but socialism, as well. He is one, too, who has completely vetoed all of the foreign aid programs that he inherited from [Mikhail] Gorbachev, which in the year 1990 took $15 billion from the Russian budget, which provided aid to a number of countries including Cuba which were antagonistic to the West and to the United States. And we all know that in the field of arms control . . . he has not only matched what President Bush has courageously taken the initiative on, he has exceeded it.

So what do we find? We find that Yeltsin is the most pro-Western leader in Russian history. Under those circumstances, then, he deserves our help.

What does he need? He needs a number of things. Just to tick off a few of them, he needs, for example, help from the [International Monetary Fund] and other sources, and that will take billions of dollars, to stabilize the ruble. He needs more open markets for the exports which Russia would want to make, the new Russia, to the West and to other parts of the world.

He needs, in addition, the help of the West insofar as humanitarian aid is concerned. And there needs to be, without question, one facility, a Western group which would analyze and assess all of the needs and then would develop a program for working out with private enterprise and with governments how they meet those needs.

. . . The New York Times in its editorial today [Wednesday] estimated that the cost of the aid to cover some of these items . . . would be approximately $20 billion a year over five years. That's a great deal of money. However, the London Financial Times, in its report yesterday, pointed out that $20 billion a year has to be compared with 20 times that much that the West spent even last year, before the collapse of communism, to defend against Soviet communism. So under the circumstances this puts it all in perspective.

Now we come to the hard political questions. What does the United States do? How do we meet this problem, particularly when we are in the middle of a presidential campaign and in the middle of a recession?

And the first argument that is made, and it is one that is well taken, is that the United States has carried this burden long enough, it is time for others to take it, that after World War II we provided aid to our allies of course, but also to our defeated enemies and enabled them to recover from World War II. Now it's time, therefore, for those we helped . . . recover from World War II [to] help [the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe] to recover from the Cold War. They are right.

The major burden for meeting the needs . . . must be carried by the countries in Europe and Japan that we helped after World War II. But the United States is the richest and strongest nation in the world, and we must provide the leadership. We cannot provide the leadership unless we have a seat at the table. . . . And we have to have enough chips to be a serious contender for that leadership role.

Now we come to . . . a fundamentally basic question in an election year: What's in it for us? What's in it for us to help the Russians, Ukraine, the other independent countries in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe? And the answer is that a great deal is in it for us.

Charity, it is said, begins at home, and I agree. But aid to Russia, just speaking of Russia specifically, is not charity. We have to realize that if Yeltsin fails, the alternative is not going to be somebody better, it's going to be somebody infinitely worse. We have to realize that if Yeltsin fails, if freedom fails, the new despotism which will take its place will mean the peace dividend is finished. We will have to rearm, and that's going to cost infinitely more than that would the aid. . . .

It would also mean, if Yeltsin failed, that freedom fails in Russia. It means that a great wave of freedom that has been going all over the world in these recent two or three years, that it will begin to ebb, and that dictatorship, rather than democracy, will be the wave of the future.

On the other hand, if freedom succeeds in Russia, let's see what it means. It means that Russia will be an example to others, particularly China. . . .

We come now, however, to another political question, and I understand that people are interested in politics these days. And the political question is this: All of the pollsters are telling their candidates, "Don't tackle foreign policy, and particularly not foreign aid, because foreign aid is poison as a political issue." They're wrong, and history proves it.

. . . Harry Truman's popularity in [1947] was 35 percent. The Congress was overwhelmingly Republican. He has suffered an enormous defeat, electing the 80th Congress in the previous November. And yet, I remember as if it were yesterday, Harry Truman, jaunty -- some said a little cocky -- coming down before a joint session of Congress and asking for millions of dollars in aid to Greece and Turkey to prevent communist subversion and possibly communist aggression . . .

That was an indispensable act. The following year, Harry Truman, who had been 35 percent in January of 1947, won the election for president. What is more important, however, is that that action by a Democratic president, supported by a Republican Congress . . . laid the foundation. It was the indispensable step toward containing communism. . . .

As we look, then, to the future, I think it is important for us to recognize that we have this great responsibility, but it's also a very great opportunity. Consider this: The 20th century will be remembered as a century of war. By our leadership at this time, we can help make the 21st century a century of peace and freedom. That is our challenge.

In his Iron Curtain speech, Winston Churchill said, "America at this time stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for American democracy, because with primacy in power is joined an awesome responsibility for the future."

. . . This is our moment of greatness. It's our moment of truth. We must seize this moment because we hold the future in our hands.