H I S T O R Y

Together, the Russian-American Center and the Esalen Institute Russian-American Exchange Center:

• 1982: pioneered the first spacebridges, allowing Soviet and American citizens to speak directly with one another via satellite communication. These spacebridges inspired subsequent satellite teleconferences between Soviets and Americans, including an ongoing Congress-to-Supreme Soviet teleconference.
• 1983: initiated the Erik Erikson Symposia on the political psychology of Soviet-American relations with career diplomat Joseph Montville and psychologists Erik and Joan Erikson. It was at one of these conferences that Montville coined the term "track-two diplomacy" to refer to the burgeoning private-sector initiatives between Soviets and Americans.
• 1983: co-sponsored a conference entitled "Faces of the Enemy." Speakers, including Sam Keen, Ashley Montagu, Robert Bly, and Soviet diplomat Valentin Berezhkov, discussed the psychology and politics of enmity, propaganda, and projection.
• 1985: helped create the Association of Space Explorers, the first forum in which Russian and American astronauts and cosmonauts could share their experiences in space and their hopes for the future of space exploration.
• 1985: signed one of the first agreements between an American private sector group and the USSR Ministry of Health. This agreement has facilitated work in the areas of health promotion, productivity in the work place, and non-pharmacological methods of treating disease and stress.
• 1986: co-produced a spacebridge on Chernobyl and Three Mile Island with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the USSR Academy of Sciences, and Internews.
• 1988: hosted Academician Abel Aganbegyan for his first visit to the United States as one of Gorbachev's chief economic advisors. This led to the development of a management training program with senior executives from across the Soviet Union. * 1989: coordinated, in conjunction with the United States-based International Center for Economic Growth and Moscow State University, a conference called "Entrepreneurship in the World Economy."
• 1989: hosted Boris Yeltsin on his first trip to the United States. Esalen arranged meetings for Mr. Yeltsin with President Bush, former President Ronald Reagan, and many leaders in business and government.
• 1990: conducted the Furth Ruble Prize, an international competition for the best proposal offering a practical solution to the question of ruble convertibility in international trade. Award recipients were chosen by a panel of Soviet and American scholars, including Abel Aganbegyan, Joseph Brada, Ed Hewett, and Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief.
• 1990: sponsored the first Russian conference on psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), an interdisciplinary field concerned with the relationship between psychological processes and the functioning of the immune system. This conference led to productive Russian-American collaborative research in the field and to a follow-up conference, held in 1991 at Leningrad's Institute for Experimental Medicine.
• 1992: organized a conference in Moscow to address the resurgence and persistence of neo-Bolshevism in Russian society. Russian and American participants confronted the Bolshevist mentality and discussed ways to alter it to embrace democratic pluralism rather than totalitarianism.
• 1992: played an instrumental role in a conference, held at the Vatican in Rome, to raise awareness of the emotional and physical needs of people with disabilities.
• 1993: hosted a major conference at Stanford University, entitled "Toward the Further Reaches of Sport Psychology," where prominent coaches, athletes, and sport psychologists from the CIS and the United States discussed current trends in theoretical and applied sport psychology.
• 1994: sponsored an ethnic conflict resolution conference in Washington, DC to influence the political climate in Russia. Civil liberties and civil rights in a democratic society were addressed.
• 1995: continued to work with Chernobyl Children's Project. A group of children from the areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and their American peers worked together to develop new skills, confidence, and lasting personal relationships.
• 1996: conducted a leadership conference, which developed alternative scenarios for the future of RussianAmerican relations.