Publishing Institution: American Diplomacy / Political Geography: Soviet Union

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:: 01-2017
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: American Diplomacy
Institution:: American Diplomacy
Abstract:: After five good years in our Rome embassy, my family and I were transferred in late 1971 to the American embassy in Prague. This was three years after the Soviet army had crushed Alexander Dubček’s “socialism with a human face.” It had not crushed the Czechs and Slovaks. We made a number of friends; we had never known a people with such a liking for Americans; but the StB, the Státní bezpečnost or state security police, were an oppressive presence. People understandably had their heads under their wings. It was only later, in 1976, that future President Václav Havel and others organized the Charter 77 dissident movement.
Topic:: Diplomacy, Sports, Surveillance, and Memoir
Political Geography:: Soviet Union, Czech Republic, and United States of America

Author:: Norma Brown
Publication Date:: 01-2017
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: American Diplomacy
Institution:: American Diplomacy
Abstract:: It was early-1980s Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known under communism, practically on the doorstep of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but so deep in the slough of communism that nobody would have considered it possible that a monumental change was in the offing. Bustling Moscow, where my then-future husband was serving at the same time, had a reasonable KGB to foreigner ratio. In the backwater of the one-time capital of the Russian Empire, the ratio was out of sight, more than 10-1. Still, it didn’t matter if you had five KGB thugs in black leather jackets dogging your footsteps or fifty. They always got what they wanted in the Soviet Union.
Topic:: Communism, Diplomacy, Courts, Surveillance, and Memoir
Political Geography:: Russia and Soviet Union

Author:: Robert Baker
Publication Date:: 04-2017
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: American Diplomacy
Institution:: American Diplomacy
Abstract:: The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and 1964’s Belgian paratroop drop from U.S. C-130s in the Congo were the most interesting events in my five year intelligence career. Lowly intelligence analysts like me working for the U.S. Information Agency had to sit in the Director’s chair about three weekends every year as part of the job. Our building near the White House was almost empty on weekends. Nobody else was on duty except the front door guards and the cable/code room guys. If some critical action telegram came in during Saturday or Sunday, my job was to phone the Director on his red, secure phone immediately, wherever he might be.
Topic:: Cold War, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, and Memoir
Political Geography:: Soviet Union, Cuba, Caribbean, North America, and United States of America

Author:: Robert Baker
Publication Date:: 10-2016
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: American Diplomacy
Institution:: American Diplomacy
Abstract:: Vienna was snowed in when I first visited there in 1972. Twenty years later I was back in Vienna to relax and to direct the Regional Program Office’ excellent staff. Then Moscow melted and the Office had huge amounts of new work to help set up new embassies in former communist countries and to produce translations in languages for the Baltics, the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe.
Topic:: Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:: Soviet Union, Austria, and Vienna

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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