Book review: ‘Alaska and Magadan’ recounts citizen diplomacy that was magical in its time and potentially prescient

“Alaska and Magadan: The Cold War and Citizen Diplomacy”

By Lawrence H. Khlinovski Rockhill; Kindle Direct, 290 pages; $20 hardcover/$15 paperback

In the late 1980s, after 40 years, the Cold War simply ended. And with it fell the Ice Curtain, the impenetrable border between Alaska and the Russian Far East that had been erected by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1948, drawing a line between the United States and the Soviet Union where the two opposed nations abutted each other.

Those who lived through the time will remember the sudden surge of Americans, especially Alaskans, who crossed over into Russia and forged new relationships as the communist era came to its unexpectedly nonviolent close. Student exchanges commenced as both college and school-aged Alaskans and Russians visited each others’ countries, encountered each others’ cultures, and worked towards peace between the two nations. It was a magical period, one that seemed unimaginable just a few years earlier.

Lawrence H. Khlinovski Rockhill was one of the people who made those exchanges happen. A sixth-grade teacher in Soldotna, he launched a Soviet studies program in 1986. His students sent letters to their counterparts in the Soviet city of Magadan, and after a long wait, began receiving replies. The letter writing was part of a broader opening that quickly led to a visit by several of those students to the USSR.

This small move at citizen diplomacy sent Rockhill on an adventure that became central to the rest of his life, a story he tells in his wonderful memoir, “Alaska and Magadan.” The book not only recounts a now too often overlooked part of recent history, but also offers a possible roadmap for finding a way out of the renewed impasse that has come between America and Russia.

Rockhill tells the saga of how, one step at a time, the relationship between the two nations developed. In 1988, he reminds us, the famous Freedom Flight brought a delegation of Alaskans to Provideniya in Chukotka, accompanied by about 30 Alaska Natives who were reunited with relatives not seen since the border was closed. Soviet officials reciprocated with a visit to Nome, and Rockhill brought several of his students to the meeting.

Early the following year, the first student exchange between Alaska and Magadan took place, with Soviet schoolchildren visiting Soldotna and Rockhill leading a group of his students to Magadan on the other side.

Rockhill discusses at length what the group encountered as they toured the city and visited the school where they had many pen pals, exploring the stark differences and surprising similarities between the two systems. What’s remarkable is that these were sixth graders, far beyond their years, engaged in cultural exchange with their Soviet peers.

Magadan was once a key city in Stalin’s notorious Gulag. Rockhill notes how this legacy was reflected there at the time of their visit, both in a public monument and in the presence of survivors who continued living in the city after their release, one of whom they met with. It has since evolved into a small metropolis that serves as a commercial center for the far eastern regions of Russia.

Following the trip, Rockhill sent a letter to the Peninsula Clarion where he wrote, “The greatest potential for peace in this world lies in the minds and hearts of the children of the world.” That potential had also settled into Rockhill’s soul, and through a series of events, he subsequently landed a position as a visiting professor of English at the Magadan Pedagogical Institute, a job he would hold for two years.

The remainder of the book tells of Rockhill’s daily life in the city. The infamous shortages of the Soviet economy were a constant hurdle. Food items and other necessities were often absent from the shelves. When something like toilet paper arrived in Magadan, there was a run on it. The ruble was collapsing in value during the period he was there, sending many into impoverishment. As the Soviet system neared its collapse, people on the streets would sell their belongings for needed cash.

Despite such hardships, Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika programs were quickly bringing freedom to citizens. Rockhill’s students proved eager to learn, and the faculty at the Institute was welcoming and often surprisingly fluent in English. The Institute was strapped for supplies, the building he taught in was often cold (as was the small flat he lived in), and teachers still faced some governmental restrictions. Having grown up under communism, however, his colleagues knew how to get things done when roadblocks, bureaucratic and systemic, hampered their efforts. “As we know now,” Rockhill writes late in the book after overcoming a sudden difficulty, “it all worked out, the usual Russian adventure.”

Rockhill’s own Russian adventure makes for an intriguing story. He’s a delightful companion on this journey, expressing joy about so much of what he experienced, and offering fond memories and kind words for those he met along the way. These include Evegny Kokorev, president of the Institute, and Roman Tchaikovsky, Dean of the Foreign Language Department and a professor of German.

Those two and others visited Alaska during the summer between Rockhill’s two years in Magadan. Here they helped establish a since discontinued exchange program with the two main University of Alaska campuses. Rockhill, who guided the visitors, details how, like he had, they experienced culture shock, but were also met with enthusiasm by their Alaskan counterparts.

Rockhill, who returned from Magadan with a Russian wife and adopted daughter, is now barred from Russia. And despite the joy found in this book, there’s a sadness in reading it, knowing how relations have plummeted back to Cold War levels since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, and especially since the invasion of Ukraine. It can seem once again hopeless. But “Alaska and Magadan” presents a path that can hopefully one day restore what is presently lost. “Let us not forget that the children played a significant role,” he writes of the work that was done during those optimistic years.

Perhaps — and hopefully — children will once again lead both countries to a better place.