Author: Birgit Menzel

When Gigi Coyle was invited to visit the USSR in 1982 as a citizen diplomat, part of the Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program, tensions between the superpowers were at a high point. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the nuclear arms race had built up massively, Western countries had boycotted the…

“A Life Worth Living” is the title given by Jim for a biographical brochure (Hickman 2019). Jim Hickman (1937–2025) devoted his life to the massive grassroots movement of Soviet-American citizen diplomacy in the 1980s and 1990s to bring an end to the Cold War, in which he was one of…