Citizen DiplomacyA Project of Soviet-American Exchange and Understanding in the 1970s and 1980s

公民外交20世纪70年代和80年代苏美交流与理解的工程

• 批准号: 243094162
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Birgit Menzel
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsbereich Russisch
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-31 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/243094162?language=en
• 关键词: Citizen; DiplomacyA; Project; Soviet; American

In the late 1970s and 1980s, thousands of American citizens began to establish personal relations with citizens of the Soviet Union; beyond the frozen relations of official diplomacy they wanted to get to know the face of the enemy, the Evil Empire according to president Reagan, for which effort the term of Citizen Diplomacy was found. The Space Bridges (1982-1989), the first live-encounters of Soviet and American people made possible by satellite technology, became a new format of direct communication. But numerous contacts and projects, private as well as institutional, developed among people of all social strata of both superpowers. Scientists and businessmen, artists and journalists, private persons and diplomats were equally involved in this network, which in 1985 comprised already more than 230 organizations. The projects ranged from book fairs of independent publishers in Moscow to encounters of writers, physicians, sportsmen and parapsychologists. They included Soviet-American youth-theatre performances and Rock-concerts, as well as the first personal meetings of Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts. Playing a leading role in this was the California Esalen-Institute, a private center of the Human Potential Movement, aiming at social change. In 1980, under the name of Track II, the Soviet-American Exchange Program was founded at Esalen, which was followed by the Soviet-American Physicians Group and the Association of Space Explorers. Within the past decade the Citizen Diplomacy Archive Project has managed to integrate the majority of more than 100 private archives, under the leadership of Anatol Shmelev, which has been integrated into the Hoover Library of Stanford University and thus made accessible for scholarly research. My research project is to reconstruct the hitherto unknown history of the Soviet-American relations of citizen diplomacy from the American as well as the Russian side. The study of both sides with the eyes of a German opens up a third perspective, open and critical to both sides. Also, this analysis shall be grounded with empirical material and enriched by present day interviews with former participants, lending the project a topical dimension. In this way questions of continuity and changes, with relationship to present initiatives of Citizen Diplomacy, will be addressed. There is some evidence for the assumption that this cooperation was an early form of democratic engagement for many participants, reaching out into present day activities. The question whether and how far this cooperation, which is forgotten or invisible today, has had a long-term impact, will only be answered after the history of Citizen Diplomacy has been written. The project of its reconstruction is seen as a contribution to the culturally entangled history of the Cold War, but it can also be seen as a contribution to intercultural, trans-disciplinary Russian Studies.

20世纪70年代末和80年代，成千上万的美国公民开始与苏联公民建立个人关系;在官方外交的冰冻关系之外，他们想了解敌人的面孔，根据里根总统的说法，邪恶帝国，为此，公民外交一词被发现。（1982 - 1989），苏联和美国人民的第一次现场接触，成为一种新的直接通信形式。 但是，两个超级大国的社会各阶层人民之间发展了许多私人的和机构的联系和项目。科学家和企业家、艺术家和记者、私人和外交官同样参与了这一网络，该网络在1985年已包括230多个组织。这些项目从莫斯科独立出版商的书展到作家、医生、运动员和超心理学家的会面。 其中包括苏联-美国青年戏剧表演和摇滚音乐会，以及苏联宇航员和美国宇航员的第一次个人会面。在这方面发挥主导作用的是加州伊萨伦研究所，这是一个旨在社会变革的人类潜力运动的私人中心。 1980年，在第二轨道的名义下，苏美交流计划在Esalen成立，随后是苏美医生小组和太空探索者协会。 在过去十年中，公民外交档案项目在阿纳托利·沙夫夫的领导下，成功地整合了100多个私人档案中的大部分，这些档案已被纳入斯坦福大学胡佛图书馆，从而可供学术研究使用。我的研究课题是从美国和俄罗斯两个方面重建迄今为止不为人知的苏美公民外交关系史。用德国人的眼光研究双方，开辟了第三个视角，对双方都开放和批判。 此外，这一分析将以经验材料为基础，并通过对前参与者的采访来丰富，使项目具有专题性。通过这种方式，将解决与目前公民外交倡议有关的连续性和变化问题。有一些证据支持这样的假设，即这种合作是许多参与者民主参与的早期形式，并延伸到当今的活动中。 这种合作是否以及在多大程度上产生了长期的影响，这个问题今天被遗忘或看不见，只有在公民外交的历史被写下来之后才能回答。 它的重建项目被视为对冷战文化纠葛历史的贡献，但它也可以被视为对跨文化，跨学科俄罗斯研究的贡献。