USSR 1984: A Memoir

The Soviet Union was an important part of the 20th century. Yet few Americans know or understand this period. Born in the blood of the First World War, the USSR survived the Nazi invasion and World War Two. The Cold War, a global conflict that tested the social, political and economic fiber of all nations, left a landscape of war and the continuing specter of nuclear Armageddon. I was one of the few Americans travelling inside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1984. This included all the major Russian cities as well as brief trips inside Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany. In this memoir, I try to provide some background and in doing so help make sense of it all for myself. The experience changed my life in many ways driving me to a graduate degree in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Washington and devote 40 years to studying Russian history and language. I graduated the year the Soviet Union disbanded. The "Containment" solution crafted by George Kennan worked. Life would proceed in a unipolar world. The "Soviet Problem" was solved. Russia fell off the American foreign policy radar and important time and lessons were lost as the world drifted into chaos and war. But it was only a matter of time before Russia resumed its mission to reestablish Russia’s place in the world. Russia it seems wouldn’t just go away. Today, America faces a Russia more determined than ever not to forget its past. It is important to remember the Soviet period if only to relearn the lesson that history repeats itself. Discovering what forces created the Soviet Union, the power of Russian nationalism and war, is critical for understanding Russia today. From the early Muscovite state to the last speech by Mikhail Gorbachev, we see that Russian history is cyclical. Timeless authors like Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Boris Pasternak, Anton Chekhov and others, describe a universal Russian experience which withstood the Soviet experiment. These humanist themes are still part of the Russian story unfolding today.