Due to rising concern about radioactive fallout from increasingly big nuclear tests underwater, in space, in the atmosphere and underground,…
Chipping Away at Czechoslovak Communism: The Helsinki Final Act and Charter 77
The Solidarity Movement. Perestroika and Glasnost. The fall of the Berlin Wall. All of these movements, policies, or events had…
Teaching the Foreign Service to Speak Foreign Languages
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institution to prepare American diplomats to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests,…
Establishing an Escape Network in Post-War Hungary
Throughout most of World War II, Hungary operated in conjunction with the Axis Powers and actively contributed to the Nazi…
The Siberian Seven: Escaping Religious Persecution in the U.S.S.R.
From its inception, the Soviet Union became the first state in the world to actively attempt to eliminate religion from society.…
Anatomy of an Overthrow: How an African Leader was Toppled
A council of combined security forces known as the Derg staged a coup d’état on September 12, 1974 against Ethiopian…
“The Cold War Was Truly Over” — The 1986 Reykjavik Summit
After the 1985 Geneva Summit, where President Ronald Reagan and leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, met for the first…
When the Life of the Party Became Ambassador to France
An effective diplomat, dazzling socialite, and the mother of Winston Churchill’s grandson, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman won the respect…
“The Wild West” — Peshawar and the Afghan Mujahedeen
In the late 1970s, the USSR had been supporting the Afghan government in its fight against rebels, who had made considerable…
When Archaeology Meets Diplomacy: The Dig at Herculaneum
When Vesuvius erupted on August 24, 79 AD, it famously engulfed the Roman town of Pompeii and, less famously, the…