To the Editor:

We would like to correct an oversimplified impression of Citizen Exchange Corps given in Paul Hollander’s review of The Giants: Russia and America by Richard J. Barnet [Books in Review, May]. CEC does not believe that “. . . the problems between the two countries [the Soviet Union and the United States] would be practically eliminated” by means of contacts among individuals. We encourage Americans to meet with Soviet citizens so that both may speak their minds on issues important to them. Problems between our countries will not be “eliminated,” as Mr. Hollander suggests, but we believe that direct contact will help to uncover areas of similarity and put differences in perspective.

CEC’s aim in providing opportunities for American citizens to deal directly with Soviet counter-parts is to inform both about each other’s lives and professional concerns. Since the USSR is a significant factor on the international scene, we believe that it is important for as many Americans as possible to get some first-hand information on Soviet life and on that society’s economic and political organization. Also, since citizens in a democracy are asked to help shape foreign policy, we feel that it is a civic obligation to be well-informed about world affairs.

CEC offers Americans more than “good food, drinks, and talk” with Soviet individuals, Mr. Hollander’s interpretation of our “philosophy” notwithstanding. Participants in the visits we organize to the USSR go to offices, homes, schools, and other places where Russians live, work, and play. They hear lectures by Soviet professionals on topics of interest to the professional focus of the particular CEC group. Of even greater importance is CEC’s emphasis on giving participants a chance to ask questions and engage in discussions.

There are indeed informal get-togethers, parties, and the like, and these offer still more opportunities to understand significant aspects of life in the Soviet Union. CEC wishes it were possible to eliminate world problems by means of some quick and easy formula, but realizes that the resolution of such problems depends on a great many more factors than individual contacts. Still, persistent misunderstanding between these two dynamic world powers undeniably constitutes a danger to us all. CEC proceeds on the belief that person-to-person communication may, in the long run, help to reduce this danger through informed dialogue enhanced by the human dimension of a multitude of individual contacts.

C. Grant Pendill, Jr.
President, Citizen Exchange Corps
New York City

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Paul Hollander writes:

I have always regarded the Citizen Exchange Corps as a well-meaning and idealistic organization handicapped by certain illusions, the key one being that the Soviet approach to the exchanges is in any way comparable to its own. Mr. Pendill, in his comments on my review, reaffirms this opinion.

The basic problem of these exchanges, apparently overlooked by Mr. Pendill (and generally unacknowledged in the philosophy of the CEC), is that visiting Americans do not “deal directly with [their] Soviet counterparts” except perhaps in the most superficial or formal sense. American schoolteachers and coin collectors may indeed meet Soviet schoolteachers and coin collectors. But a crucial difference remains: Americans are self-selected and their Soviet “counterparts” are not. Both groups are atypical but in completely different ways. The Americans are atypical because of their unusual interest in Soviet society and the initiative they have taken to gratify it. The Soviet citizens are atypical because they have been selected to exemplify Soviet civic virtue and to convey whatever the Soviet authorities wish to convey about Soviet life. Unauthorized interest in things American would be the last thing that would enable Soviet citizens to be selected by their government for these exchanges. I suspect that another difference between the two groups may lie in the well-developed critical conscience of Americans about their own society, which is not matched by similar dispositions in their Soviet “counterparts.”

As far as “first-hand information on Soviet life” and “informed dialogue” with Soviet citizens are concerned, I believe that modest expectations are in order. Certainly the organized parts of the exchanges try to insure that Americans will learn primarily what the Soviet authorities want them to learn about Soviet life. Perhaps there is some value in this. But the important thing is not to confuse these lopsided and limited exchanges with more spontaneous, unofficial contacts and communications between private citizens on both sides, and not to assume that the asymmetrical interaction between self-selected Americans and officially primed and selected Soviet citizens will make a significant contribution to understanding.

There is by now a mountain of evidence (going back to the 1930’s as far as the Soviet setting is concerned) to show that visiting a country and talking to some of its citizens are often compatible with learning little about it. Accessible “first-hand experience” can be both trivial and misleading: “being on the spot” may mean being on a very small spot indeed.