In 1989, H. Lucas Ginn, then a California high school student, wrote to a Soviet magazine saying he was seeking a pen pal in the Soviet Union. Ginn’s letter and address were published in Studencheskii meridian, a youth magazine; he subsequently received some two thousand missives from young Soviet citizens. The era of glasnost had just begun, making corresponding with their peers in the West a novelty for Soviet youth, which explains the exuberance with which they responded to Ginn’s letter.
Most letters, which came from all over the USSR, are brief (and in Russian) but do allow some glimpses of the interests of Soviet youth at the time, including music, current events, and AIDS. Historians and sociologists will find the letters interesting for what they tell us about how Soviet youth, ranging from fourteen to sixteen years old, viewed the world, the United States, and their own society in the crucial years preceding their state’s collapse.
