The Center for Citizen Initiatives is the brainchild of an American citizen, Sharon Tennison, who in the early 1980s determined in a period of desperation to try to reduce tensions between the two superpowers. Tennison and a growing group of business and professional Americans made the decision to try their hands at diplomacy and began putting together their first trip to the "land of the enemy."
The Cold War was at a peak - the KAL 007 airliner had just been downed by Soviet Interceptor Jets killing all passengers aboard, and the US and the USSR had 50,000 nuclear weapons on launch pads aimed at each other. Scientists predicted if 10% of the weapons were detonated, nuclear fallout would shortly leave planet Earth lifeless.
At that time few Americans had ever seen a Soviet citizen, nor had Soviets met any real Americans - and there was no precedent or pattern how it might happen. Upon arriving in Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi, CCI travelers spread to Soviet sidewalks, market places, schools and to rare apartments at the invitation of the Soviets who risked chancing encounters with the KGB. CCI's first trip changed the lives of the travelers - each came back to America committed to be public educators. Following the first trip, CCI started a travel program, which took over a thousand Americans to the USSR as citizen diplomats. Each traveler agreed to do six months of public education upon returning to their home cities. This work began to spread the citizen diplomacy concept and the education of ordinary American citizens regarding the risks at stake. See citizen diplomacy
Citizen diplomacy
Unbeknownst to CCI's small collection of concerned citizens, a new movement was about to be born. Groups of Americans in Washington state, upstate New York, Tucson, Arizona, Chicago, Florida and other places around the United States, were meeting in homes, universities and churches to determine how they could take the nuclear nightmare into their own hands.
On September 16, 1983, twenty would-be "citizen diplomats" and a film crew of four left the United States and headed for Moscow. Note: Originally the organization was named the Center for U.S.-USSR Initiatives (CUUI). With the dissolution of the USSR in 1990, the organization took its present name. See CCI's history
Starting AA in Russia
From 1983 forward, Russian citizens questioned CCI travelers if Americans had a solution for alcoholism. AA Big Books began being smuggled in suitcases by citizen diplomats. In 1985, Tennison knocked on the doors of the Ministry of Health of the USSR to try to get permission to bring the AA philosophy to the Soviet Union. Eventually, the request was taken to the USSR's new Party General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. He reportedly said, "Our problem is so great that we must try anything the west has to offer." On April 10, 1986, the first ever AA meeting was held in Kiev, Ukraine by 20 southern California recovering alcoholics, and within three days the second AA meeting was held in Moscow. The starting of AA was a bit rocky in the beginning, but they celebrated AA's twentieth anniversary in Russia in 2006.
Soviets Meet Middle America
In 1988, CCI started a first-ever, non-governmental citizen exchange program, Soviets Meet Middle America (SMMA). In the early stages CCI had to partner with the Soviet Peace Committee. After they failed to allow CCI to choose the citizens to travel, they were terminated. Fortunately, Gorbachev had just appointed a young change maker, Gennady Alferenko, to give exit visas to any Soviet citizen who had an invitation to travel abroad. CCI immediately partnered with Alferenko and soon ordinary Soviet citizens whom CCI travelers had met on their streets were flying across the US to four different cities. Over a two-year period, 400 Soviet citizens in small groups of four persons traveled to 265 American cities, where they stayed in some 800 private homes, and were interviewed by thousands of American newspapers, radio and TV programs. They returned home to the USSR and spread the news that America was a great and luxurious country and full of friendly host families. They became America's finest ambassadors.