The Foreign Service Journal, December 2011

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 55 a brand-new country. Every day brought historical firsts for Ukraine and for our rapidly growing mission. On the diplomatic front, Uk- raine suddenly emerged as a priority state. Secretary of State James Baker made an immediate visit to assess sta- bility in the nuclear-armed nation. As a newly arrived public affairs officer with no staff, I mobilized two volunteer expatriates and set up a makeshift press center for the media entourage, including Wolf Blitzer and Tom Friedman. Meanwhile, Ukrainians were clamoring for contact with the United States. I literally received my first offi- cial call within an hour of stepping on Ukrainian soil, and the minister of culture telephoned me at home a few days later to introduce herself. How on earth did she find me in a country with no phone book and no public informa- tion, I wondered? Answer: an amazingly efficient grapevine, a resource that I soon learned to use to good advantage. While opportunities to build public diplomacy pro- grams seemed boundless, working and living conditions absorbed a great deal of energy. The consulate’s first of- fice was the management officer’s living room. Eight of us shared four desks and four chairs, so we had to take turns sitting down. We had one reliable vehicle and one clunker, but still often had to hitchhike on the deserted streets because there was no gas. When food became scarce, we gratefully accepted donations of potatoes from Ukrainian well-wishers. We hoped, but could not be cer- tain, that local products were safe only five years after Chernobyl. Perhaps the most comical aspect of the job was my liv- ing situation. I would come home at night to find my eld- erly landlady, who never really understood the need to vacate her residence, sitting on her couch watching TV and making herself at home in “my” apartment. It was painful for both of us when I finally had to insist on some privacy — a concept completely foreign to her. Formal diplomatic recognition led to major advance- ments. Ukraine allocated a building for our embassy: a former precinct headquarters of the Communist Party. When we entered, it was clear that the previous occupants had left in a hurry. Calendars were frozen in time, papers were strewn on the floor, and busts of Lenin and the com- plete works of Stalin reigned from their usual places. The few rooms with heat became our offices and the chargé claimed space next to the big vertushka, a prim- itive Soviet phone that connected party bigwigs but continued to click and whir even after we supplanted the commu- nists. Our public diplomacy work took off with the announcement of major new educational exchange programs. As the public affairs of- ficer, I had the pleasure of negotiating the details with an old-school deputy minister, who invariably began our talks with a bottle of cognac. How many toasts did I drink in the service of my country? Suffice it to say that fending off his suggestions to circumvent merit-based selection principles and clearing away bureaucratic obstacles re- quired persistence and a few unorthodox maneuvers on my part. Those early days were a true adventure, but my col- leagues showed incredible good humor in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Many Ukrainians I met 20 years ago are still friends to this day. Most im- portantly, we built the mission together. I will refrain from naming names because so many people played a vital role, but one person particularly stands out in my memory. That was the first local employee in our U.S. Information Service office, the late Oleg Shaforost. It took courage to work for us then, but Oleg, who had experienced political harassment himself, was not easily cowed. Thanks to him, our decrepit vehicle stayed on the road during the harsh winter and USIS acquired cutting- edge innovations of the day like a computer network and e-mail. Oleg embodied the spirit of all of our first Ukrain- ian colleagues: creative, incredibly hard-working and ded- icated to building productive bilateral relations. Twenty years have now passed with many ups and downs between our countries, but the foundation we es- tablished remains firm. It was a privilege to be part of that special moment in U.S. diplomatic history. ■ Mary A. Kruger was the third branch public affairs offi- cer to be assigned to Kiev while it was still part of the So- viet Union, and opened the U.S. Information Service post in the new embassy. She went on to serve a series of tours in Russia and Ukraine and is now with the Foreign Serv- ice Board of Examiners. F OCUS The consulate’s first office was the management officer’s living room.