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I was very much a child of the Cold War.

I had studied Russian in college. I had gotten into it first through literature and then just really found it kind of fascinating; of course, this was during the Cold War. So they were kind of the other great enemy that you grew up hearing about.

I started like many young Russian people in the beginning of perestroika when it seemed that everything was possible.

I grew up reading the classic novels of Cold War espionage, and I studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy.

Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.

Throughout Soviet times, I understood what was really happening in the world around me.

Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt.

My parents were angry, but they were relieved that I was in good condition. They had been afraid the Russians would torture me. They told me not to do it again!

In the post war period I began again to have my doubts about Russian policy.