Among the recipients of President Bush's Medals of Freedom was Robert Conquest, the English-American historian, poet, and all-purpose truth-teller.

Among the recipients of President Bush's Medals of Freedom was Robert Conquest, the English-American historian, poet, and all-purpose truth-teller. His books about the Soviet Union helped to topple that empire. In the 1930s, when he was a student at Oxford, Conquest was a Communist, but an open one, not a secret one, which is typical of the man. He quickly threw off his illusions to become one of the greatest of all anti-Communists. Not one for such designations as "liberal" and "conservative," he describes himself as a "law-and-liberty man." He takes those words from Orwell, whom he resembles in many respects. In 1989, as glasnost was melting the Soviet Union, Conquest returned to that country for the first time since his student days. Practically everyone there had read Conquest's classic study The Great Terror, under the pillow, so to speak. One man asked to pinch him, just to reassure himself that he, Conquest, was really present, on Russian soil. And another man--a poet--came up to him on the street and, wordlessly, handed him a rose. President Bush has handed him another one. Well done.