Thirty Years Ago, a Soviet-American Seminar Was Held in Vladivostok

Abstract

Precisely thirty years ago, in June 1990, an international scientific seminar dedicated to cooperation between the countries of the North Pacific was held in the then Soviet Vladivostok. The seminar was initiated by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Fletcher is one of the oldest and leading international training institutions in the United States. The main inspiration for the seminar, which was supported by the Soviet Peace Committee and its Primorsky branch, was the head of the North Pacific program of the Fletcher school, Professor John Curtis Perry. The core of the participants of the ten-day seminar in Vladivostok, held in the House of Negotiations at the suburban Sanatornaya station, were students and professors of Fletcher, as well as young Soviet scholars and diplomats. There were also representatives of Japan and China. Among the Soviet participants of the seminar there were many very well-known names. These are Alexander Yakovenko (the recent Russian Ambassador to the UK, and now the rector of the Diplomatic Academy), prominent political scientist Boris Makarenko, historian and writer Konstantin Pleshakov, and historian Amir Khisamutdinov.