Europe
The Soviet Union: Refugees Who Became U.S. Diplomats
From The Soviet Union to the service of the United States.
Soviet Jewish refugees
For decades, Soviet Jews who sought to leave faced official harassment and refusal. The Jackson-Vanik amendment of 1974 tied U.S. trade benefits to freedom of emigration. As the Soviet Union opened up in the late 1980s, large numbers left, and the Lautenberg Amendment of 1989 eased refugee admission to the United States for Jews and other religious minorities from the Soviet Union.
From refugee to Foreign Service
Children of that emigration, who arrived speaking Russian, later brought those languages and that experience into the Foreign Service.
Diplomats from The Soviet Union
Anya Yakhedts BrunsonA Jewish refugee from Minsk who became a Foreign Service Officer.Timothy EydelnantLeft Minsk at sixteen as a refugee and later coordinated U.S. aid to Syrian refugees.William D. KrimerTwice uprooted as a boy, he became the voice of American presidents in summits with Soviet leaders.Vladimir I. ToumanoffThe son of White Russian exiles, carried out of Constantinople as a baby, who later served in Moscow.