From Fear to Friendship

Dixon, Illinois, is the boyhood home of President Ronald Reagan. Dickson (or Dikson), Siberia, is the northernmost town in the world, a place where polar bears are a traffic hazard, and, at the beginning of this story, a restricted area of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, closed to foreigners. In 1984 the London "Sunday Times" published an unsympathetic article about economic difficulties in Dixon, Illinois, symptomatic of the failure of Reaganism. The article was picked up and given an even more anti-capitalist slant by the Soviet press, under the title "Dixon: A Community of Broken Hearts". Two Siberian journalists conceived the idea of linking Dixon, Illinois, with Dickson, Siberia, and wrote to Bill Shaw, editor of the Dixon local newspaper, enquiring about contacts between the two small towns. Shaw almost misfiled the letter in his waste basket, but fished it out on second thought, and enlisted the Mayor of Dixon in the effort to develop friendship between the two communities. The local Soviet newspaper for the Taimyr peninsula, where Dickson is situated, produced an edition in English, which was sent to Dixon, and reproduced as a supplement in the local newspaper, eliciting an intense response from many people in the town. Yet there were sceptics who insisted that Dixon community leaders were becoming dupes of the Soviets, and at any earlier period these sceptics might have been proved right. No one could then know for sure that many of the 15,000 residents of Dixon were becoming personally involved in one of the most momentous events of modern history: the rapid disintegration of the USSR. The story of this cultural contact, in which misunderstanding, suspicion, and lack of candour gave way to understanding and friendship, at a time when the Cold War was coming abruptly to an end, is told in alternating segments by Boris Ivanov and Bill Shaw, two newspapermen viewing the unfolding situation from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Ronald Reagan's own reminiscences of Dixon and of his earliest reactions to the Russian Revolution and the expansion of Communist influence form the epilogue to this story.