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

在20世纪70年代末和80年代，数以千计的美国公民开始与苏联公民建立个人关系；除了冻结的官方外交关系，他们还想了解敌人的面孔，根据里根总统的说法，邪恶帝国就是为了这个努力而被称为公民外交的。航天桥(1982-1989)是苏联和美国人民通过卫星技术实现的第一次现场接触，成为一种新的直接交流形式。但在两个超级大国的各个社会阶层之间，发展了许多私人和机构的联系和项目。科学家和商人、艺术家和记者、私人和外交官都同样参与了这一网络，该网络在1985年已有230多个组织。这些项目的范围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。这些活动包括苏联-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议。在这方面发挥主导作用的是加利福尼亚州埃萨伦研究所，这是人类潜力运动的一个私人中心，旨在推动社会变革。1980年，以Track II的名义在埃萨伦成立了苏美交流计划，随后成立了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尔·什梅列夫的领导下，设法整合了100多个私人档案中的大多数，这些档案已纳入斯坦福大学胡佛图书馆，从而可供学术研究使用。我的研究项目是从美国和俄罗斯两个方面重建迄今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打开了第三个视角，对双方都是开放的和关键的。此外，这种分析应该以经验材料为基础，并通过对以前参与者的当代采访来丰富，为项目提供一个主题维度。通过这种方式，将解决与当前公民外交倡议的关系的连续性和变化性问题。有一些证据表明，这种合作是许多参与者民主参与的早期形式，接触到了当今的活动。这种今天被遗忘或看不见的合作是否产生了长期影响，以及产生了多大程度的影响，这个问题只有在公民外交的历史被书写后才能得到回答。它的重建项目被视为对冷战文化交织的历史的贡献，但它也可以被视为对跨文化、跨学科的俄罗斯研究的贡献。

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.