The Foreign Service Journal, May 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2023 43 Developing a Cadre of Russia and Other Area Specialists Laura Kennedy Agriculture USA / Kiev, Tselinograd, and Dushanbe / 1978 My 1978 participation as a guide on the Agriculture USA exhibit was a small link in the 50 years of official U.S.- Soviet exchange exhibits. U.S. exhibits garnered huge crowds and even greater word of mouth over the half century of the program, made famous by the Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” engineered by William Safire at the 1959 inaugural exhibit. I had thousands of conversations with Soviet citizens over the course of six months in the cities of Kiev (now Kyiv, capital of independent Ukraine), Tselino- grad (now Astana, capital of independent Kazakhstan), and Dushanbe (now capital of independent Tajikistan). These were multiplied thousands of times more by my fellow guides over the decades in one of the most successful U.S. government public outreach programs conducted in one of the modern era’s most rigidly controlled countries. This type of face-to-face public diplomacy may seem obsolete in today’s digital world, but it had extraordinary reach behind that old iron curtain. Because of the Soviet state’s monopoly of information means and its citizens’ skepticism about the veracity of often false official report- ing, conversations with these exotic emissaries from the outside world were eagerly traded and amplified privately by Soviet citizens. When I returned years later to the newly independent states in Central Asia, I met countless citizens (including some who became senior officials in these former Soviet republics) who remembered the exhibits and had saved the little pins we gave out there. We may not have changed minds, but we certainly gave these Soviet citizens a direct sense of the freedom, individuality, and dynamism of American society. Most effectively, the American guides represented a range of backgrounds, spoke without a script, and certainly exploited their license to speak freely and critically of their own government. This lack of an official line and the guides’ candor made a distinct impression on our audiences, who were eager to hear our views on all manner of topics, including opin- ions on the USSR. Of course, many Soviet citizens were hoping to hear validation of their own lives. While I may have been critical of Soviet government policies, I always sought to speak honestly about American shortcomings and find something positive to say about the (often dreary) lives of our citizen hosts (e.g., the richness of host nation culture, the generous hospitality shown us by host nation citizens). All of us citizen diplomats found our own ways to build rapport with our interlocutors and disarm hostile exchanges. The most effective means of deflecting the officially directed “provocateurs” was by developing a rapport with your audi- ence so that they would turn on the attackers and tell them to “let the young person talk” and “show some hospitality to our guests.” In fact, despite the fact that the Cold War was a hard reality, there was a basic reservoir of popular Soviet interest in their American guests that surely frustrated Soviet propa- ganda officials. I encountered very little animosity among Laura Kennedy demonstrating a seeder to opening day crowds for Agriculture USA in Dushanbe, September 1978. The crowds were scant at first, because many citizens were still doing enforced cotton picking during the all-important harvest. COURTESYOFLAURAKENNEDY