July 3, 1988

Under the auspices of the United States Information Agency and the American Council of Teachers of Russian, 21 Soviet and 17 American teenagers lived together on the Vassar campus in the first exchange of secondary school students between the two countries. On a trip to the Capitol at Albany, 15-year-old Sasha Popov told reporter Grace O’Connor from The Albany Times Union, “I have very good impressions so far,” and Chris Turner, 16, an award-winning student for Russian from Tamarac High School in Troy, NY, praised the classroom discussions. But, he said, the best talk was in the residence halls where everyone is very frank: “They ask about us and we ask about them.”

Asked about the implication of his visit to the United States, Soviet student Oleg Kachalov said, “We shall do our foreign policy and Americans will do their foreign policy, and this friendship will be very useful then.”

Under the exchange program, a similar delegation of American students studied with their Soviet counterparts in Moscow.

The Albany Times Union