Author: Peter Bridges / Political Geography: Russia

Author:: Peter Bridges
Publication Date:: 04-2018
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: American Diplomacy
Institution:: American Diplomacy
Abstract:: Putin’s recent expulsion of hundreds of our colleagues serving at our embassy and consulates in Russia reminded me of my own service in Moscow in the 1960s. You may call this ancient history, though it doesn’t seem so ancient to me. Stalin had been in his grave for a decade, and dear Nikita Khrushchev was now in charge. Under Stalin, two and a half million people had been prisoners in the deadly Gulag camps. Thousands of poor haggard people had been released, and some of the system’s more notable deceased victims were even “posthumously rehabilitated.” The Gulag had officially been closed down in 1960—but an estimated three-quarters of a million inhabitants of the USSR were still in the horrid camps. And nothing had been done to lessen the role of the KGB, at least so far as we could see.
Topic:: Cold War, Diplomacy, Economy, and Memoir
Political Geography:: Russia, Soviet Union, North America, and United States of America

Author:: Peter Bridges
Publication Date:: 01-2016
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: American Diplomacy
Institution:: American Diplomacy
Abstract:: Back in the late 1950s, when Stalin was not long gone and the Soviet state remained our militarily powerful and dangerous adversary, the State Department’s basic office for dealing with the Russians was a Soviet desk composed of just four members of the Foreign Service and four from the Civil Service, the latter including an archivist and two stenographers. There were of course other Washington offices that had to do with the USSR, in State as well as in CIA, Commerce, the FBI, the Pentagon, and USIA; but we were the primary interface wth the two embassies, the Soviet in Washington and ours in Moscow. Shortly before Christmas in 1957 I became the junior Foreign Service officer on the Soviet desk, after completing the then three-month orientation course for new FSOs at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute.
Topic:: Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:: Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

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