1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

part of the turbulence going on at the time. I don’t think the burgeoning of either NGOs
from the West affected the major thrust or useful work of the American committee or the
International Foundation. Our board members, testified on the Hill, they would see the
Secretary of State, as we all did. When we were back in the United States, there were a lot
of meetings to hold and reporting to do – there were a lot of interesting writing of reports
and analyses. I wrote “a letter from Moscow” for the American Committee journal, a
dozen or so articles which describe events in Moscow between 1988-1992.
The reforms in Moscow were encouraging our major American institutional – formal
institutional – structures to get involved in assisting those who were leading the systemic
changes. They reached to our executive branch, the legislature and the courts, because a
long needed systemic governmental change was underway in the Soviet Union, indeed it
was a systemic collapse. There was an openness and desire to have help from our three
branches of government, not to mention counterpart academic institutions, and scientific
institutions. The International Foundation was doing a lot of joint work with the
American Academy of Sciences, with the Academies in Moscow, St. Petersburg and
elsewhere in Russia. We helped them make their arrangements, initially, with the
American Bar Association, law schools, with universities, and museums. So much was
going on that it’s hard for me to recall it all.
Q: How much we were all doing …
MILLER: We were very fortunate to have an apartment right across the river from the
White House, the Parliament, just beyond the Kutuzov Bridge, the Ukraine hotel was a
street away. We lived in a pleasant sunny apartment in a rundown Khrushchev era
apartment house, Suzanne and I lived there very happily during those exciting years.
For us, it was total immersion and constant activity, taking part in this momentous change
with the most marvelous people, ranging from Gorbachev and Yeltsin to the oppressed
gulagis and the Human Rights Group. These human rights people who were able to
survive are so remarkable. They are our good friends to this day. I can recall at first we
were afraid to meet anyone in their apartment because it would be bugged and it was a
risk for them to have Americans in their home. We’d have to go outside and walk and sit
on park benches – it was at first, dangerous for our friends to talk to us. After 1988, there
were absolutely no inhibitions whatsoever. While sitting in kitchen apartments, we’d
point to the ceiling and say, “did you hear that” and go on.
Q: You’d sort of shrug.
MILLER: And just denounce the latest …
Q: I imagine, from what I know, what I’ve read about Soviet society, you must have been
deluged by conversation in the evening around the kitchen table.
MILLER: Oh, yes, we were enveloped in ideas and talk day and night. It was such a
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