Mandel's radio program on KPFA was titled "The Soviet Union: a closer look" Until the early 1970s, Mandel was a vocal supporter of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia on this program. During the 1970s and 1980s he vigorously denied the existence of state-directed anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, despite extensive evidence from Soviet emigres in the Bay Area and dissidents like Nobel prize winner Joseph Brodsky; his common refrain during KPFA broadcasts was "the Soviet Union is 100 races living together in harmony". The denial of Soviet anti-Semitism was maintained as late as his 1985 book "Soviet but not Russian: The Other Peoples of the Soviet Union" which claimed that at most 10% of Soviet Jews would want to leave the Soviet Union. Approximately 290,000 Jews left the Soviet Union from 1970 to 1988, when emigration was restricted but over 224,000 left in 1990 alone, the first full year when emigration was liberalized.