David Ramseur with his book. Ramseur worked for both governors Steve Cowper and Tony Knowles. One of his slides shows him and Cowper standing next to a somewhat unairworthy Aeroflot helicopter, which ferried the pair across the Bering Sea. Cowper autographed the photo, “To David, Rank has its privileges.” (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)
Thirty years ago Russia was all over U.S. headlines, but for much different reasons than it is today.
Beginning in the mid-1980s Russia and Alaska made regular news for thawing Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Author David Ramseur calls it “extraordinary citizen diplomacy” in his new book Melting the Ice Curtain.
Ramseur spoke to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce this week (7-19-17).
Note: Author David Ramseur will give a presentation on his work tonight (Wednesday 7-19-17) at 7 pm at Harrigan Centennial Hall, as part of the Alaska 150th Anniversary Speaker Series. Listen to his full presentation to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce.
Something people occasionally forget is that the United States and the Soviet Union were pretty good friends for a while, around World War II. In Alaska, there was relatively unrestricted movement of indigenous families across the border. And the U.S. sent 8,000 aircraft by way of Nome and the Bering Strait during the war itself, to aid the Soviets in their battle against the Nazis.
Josef Stalin brought an end to the warm relations in 1948. And so things would remain until reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as leader in the mid-1980s, prompting a string of sometimes bizarre efforts to reopen the border.
One was by a quirky realtor from Nome, Jim Stimpfle. Stimpfle was married to a Native woman, and he had heard from her family of Native visits to Russia long ago, and he decided to do something to help reunite them. So one day he was at the Nome dump and he noticed a stiff wind blowing West across the Bering Strait. So he had an idea: instead of using a message in a bottle to send to Russia, how about some weather balloons? So he went to the National Weather Service and got these big balloons, blew them up with his car exhaust, hooked a little gift basket of goodies — sewing needles, chewing tobacco, tea, and a couple of notes of friendship in Russian — and launched the balloon toward Russia.
Stimpfle’s balloons didn’t make it, but the winds of change were definitely blowing. Ramseur goes on to describe how Juneau musician and peace advocate Dixie Belcher organized a performing arts tour of the Soviet Union for 67 traditional dancers in 1986. Belcher was accompanied by Alaska’s former governor Jay Hammond, generating international media attention.
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Other efforts followed: An Alaskan physician, Ted Mala, became celebrated in Russia as the son of legendary Eskimo film star Ray Mala and (the story goes) and a Russian princess. In 1987, endurance swimmer Lynne Cox became the first person to swim between the two countries — from Little Diomede to Big Diomede Island — in 38-degree water without a wetsuit. And then in June 1988, Alaska Airlines made its so-called “Friendship Flight” to Provideniya: 82 journalists, business people, government officials, and Alaska Natives — one with a Sitka connection.
And one of the Natives on this flight was this young Siberian Yup’ik woman here named Darlene Pungowiyi Orr grew up on St. Lawrence Island in a now-abandoned village within sight of the Soviet Union. And she grew up sort of spooked by the Soviet Union. She dreamed as a child of Soviet frogmen swimming up on the beach, and they found old military debris on the beach. And so she was really affected by her proximity to the Soviets, and she was sort of inspired to learn Russian. And so she was the only person on the flight who could speak Siberian Yup’ik, Russian, and English. And when she landed in Provideniya and walked into the airport terminal she immediately met a guy who was of the same Native clan she was from. Darlene now lives in Sitka.
Ramseur was also on the 1988 Friendship Flight, as press secretary for Gov. Steve Cowper.
Alaska Airlines subsequently began regular service between Anchorage and the Russian Far East. In 1993, Russian and Alaskan relations peaked with the creation of the $26 million American Russian Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Oddly, the dissolution of the Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin did not energize citizen diplomacy. Quite the opposite. Relations began to cool in the 1990’s, and by the time Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the two nations had reverted to a Cold War-like posture.
Under Yeltsin and Gorbachev, they extended authority to the regions to negotiate business deals and cultural relationships with Alaska. But Putin pulled all that back to Moscow, recentralized everything, and cracked down on Westerners.
The last Alaska Airlines flight to Russia was in October 1998.
Although Ramseur’s book is fresh off the press, he doesn’t think this is the end of the story. The possibility for resuming the friendship between Alaska and Russia still remains. He’s been interviewing and collecting stories from some of the oldest Alaska Natives who remember Russia as a neighbor, a place you can actually see from the backyard. “It’s really citizens who can make these connections,” he says. “We did a breakthrough at the height of the Cold War in the mid-1980s.”
