What can connect people from two opposing nations amid political hostility, entrenched ideologies, and increasingly fortified borders? Sometimes, it is something as seemingly minor as a series of letters, argues Alexis Peri in her new book, Dear Unknown Friend: The remarkable correspondence between American and Soviet women. The book uncovers a little-known episode in Cold War history: a pen-pal exchange between Soviet and American women that lasted from 1943 into the early 1950s. Organised by the Antifascist Committee of Soviet Women in collaboration with the National Council of Soviet-American Friendship, the programme anticipated the citizen diplomacy initiatives that would emerge during the Khrushchev Thaw and beyond. The correspondence, preserved but largely forgotten in Russian archives, offers a rare window into the international engagement—which unfolded despite the oppressive climate of Stalinist anti-western campaigns and American McCarthyism—and involved many women with little or no ties to political circles or activism. The letters reveal how personal curiosity and a spirit of goodwill could counterbalance the ideological antagonism characteristic of the early Cold War, offering an alternative vision for relations between the two countries.

Dear Unknown Friend examines the pen-pal project through close analysis of the correspondence itself, as well as archival materials from the institutions that organised the exchange and interviews with descendants of the original letter writers. The book is structured into five chapters. The first chapter traces the historical development of the project, highlighting both its inception and the challenges involved. Peri claims that a key turning point in launching this project was the Red Army’s 1943 victory at Stalingrad, which significantly increased American interest in the Soviet Union and its people. This chapter also contextualises the women’s conversations within broader wartime diplomacy: it explores the brief but notable period of Soviet-American cooperation during and immediately after World War II. This temporary thaw in relations, fostered by the shared struggle against fascism, created the necessary political conditions for the launch of the pen-pal initiative.

The second chapter captures the tone and spirit of Soviet-American women’s exchanges in the immediate postwar years, with particular emphasis on the participants’ conceptions of peacebuilding. Letter writers envisioned the emotional bonds forged through correspondence and the decision to maintain those connections despite ideological divides as a foundation for lasting peace in the world. Peri demonstrates how this vision anticipated later feminist discussions on peacemaking. It also engaged earlier currents in the women’s movement, such as the maternalist thinking prominent in western feminist thought of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many American participants expressed the belief that women, as life-givers and caretakers, were naturally suited to foster peace. This biologically deterministic view, however, was challenged by Soviet correspondents, who tended to reject essentialist conceptions of gender. In exploring this, Peri’s study reveals the contrasting understandings of women’s involvement in peacemaking and gender roles in Soviet and western contexts—differences that animated the intercultural dialogue at the heart of the project.

The third chapter explores how American and Soviet letter-writers discussed women’s paid labour—one of the main topics in the correspondence. Despite significant differences in the women’s career opportunities and socio-economic contexts, the chapter reveals notable commonalities in the aspirations of women on both sides of the ‘iron curtain’. Many expressed a desire for self-realisation beyond the confines of domestic life and motherhood. Both American and Soviet women grappled with the challenges of postwar ‘normalisation’, seeking ways to balance traditional family roles with professional ambitions.

The strategies employed by the western versus the Soviet letter writers diverged significantly, underlines Peri. Soviet women tended to rely on state-provided childcare and social services to facilitate workforce participation. Their American counterparts, however, often placed their hopes in consumer technologies, such as dishwashers and other domestic appliances, as a means of alleviating household burdens. American women were also more likely to adopt a sequential approach to career and family: postponing professional advancement until their children were older. The conversations about these strategies and choices foreshadowed the more widely publicised ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon in 1959, reflecting later discussions on the intersection of domestic life, labour, and ideology.

The fourth chapter examines divergent views on childrearing, as articulated in the correspondence. It highlights the contrast between the values prioritised by Soviet and American women, particularly in terms of individualism and collectivism. While American women tended to emphasise independence and personal growth, Soviet correspondents often stressed collective responsibility and social cohesion as essential personal values to be cultivated in children. These differing approaches to parenting and education were deeply informed by broader national ideologies and imaginaries. Nevertheless, the women demonstrated a willingness to engage in open dialogue across ideological lines, offering insights into how private life became a site of both difference and connection in the letters.

The fifth and final chapter recounts the eventual dissolution of the pen-pal project, despite the organisers’ and participants’ desire to continue the exchange. Unfortunately, the growing strain in international relations between officials, and the political witch hunts being carried out domestically ultimately curtailed the initiative. In the United States, some participants became targets of political persecution amid growing anti-communist sentiment and suspicion of any Soviet affiliations. Meanwhile, Soviet women risked accusations of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘servility toward the West’ as Stalin’s postwar repressive campaigns intensified. These mounting pressures from both governments brought an abrupt end to a project rooted in personal diplomacy and the desire for mutual understanding. The book’s conclusion offers a brief reflection on the effect the interrupted project had on its participants and the organisations involved in its implementation.

Peri’s book opens a new chapter in the history of women’s participation in peacemaking and international dialogue during a period often regarded by historians as inhospitable to such initiatives. In doing so, it extends the argument made by historian Juliane Fürst, who first described late Stalinism as a historical period that, in many ways, anticipated and laid the groundwork for the transformations of the Khrushchev Thaw.[1] While Fürst explores hidden shifts in everyday practices inside the USSR, Peri expands this framework into the realm of international exchange and citizen diplomacy during the Cold War. Her research also contributes significantly to feminist debates on peacebuilding, which move beyond institutional or elite-driven diplomacy, instead foregrounding the everyday, emotionally charged interactions that shaped cross-cultural connections. Peri underscores the importance of affect—though she does not explicitly use this term—in shaping political engagement.[2] Notably, in Peri’s book, this rehabilitation of emotion in politics is not merely theoretical, but embedded in the narrative style and the author’s careful attention to the lived experiences of the women she studies. Their stories are recounted in a deeply compelling manner, making Dear Unknown Friend a model of how engaging storytelling can be when effectively paired with rigorous historical analysis.

The book excels in contextualising the correspondence it analyses, offering a richly textured account of both international relations and women’s everyday lives. However, it would benefit from a more nuanced comparison of how postwar normalisation unfolded in the United States and the Soviet Union. Peri’s focus on the similarities between the two societies, which enabled mutual understanding between the letter-writers, sometimes comes at the expense of acknowledging the stark demographic, ideological, and socio-economic divergences. The Soviet Union, devastated by war and undergoing mass reconstruction, contrasted sharply with the relatively unscathed and increasingly conservative United States. Soviet women had broader access to state-supported employment and childcare, while many American women faced systemic barriers to economic independence, including difficulties in opening bank accounts or accessing credit without male co-signers. These structural differences did not prevent women from forging meaningful connections, but a further exploration of how they navigated these disparities would offer a deeper understanding of the project’s complexity. More comment on the differences in correspondence conventions between the USSR and the USA would also shed light on how Soviet and American women negotiated the contrasting lifestyles and worldviews through familiar writing practices.

The levelling of difference is particularly evident in Peri’s discussion of postwar transformations in schooling and civic education for children and youth in the United States and the Soviet Union. She draws a parallel between the American Truman-era initiatives in citizenship education and Soviet wartime and postwar reforms, such as the introduction of new rules of conduct in secondary schools and changes to school curricula. Peri describes these as instances of a ‘similar recalibration’ driven by a shared goal: fostering civic responsibility in the postwar generation (p. 136). However, in the Soviet case, the development of many of these reforms predated the war with Nazi Germany and were rooted in distinct political, ideological, and institutional imperatives. They were influenced not only by the escalating threat of war and the desire to cultivate patriotism, but also by internal pressures. One such pressure stemmed from the dramatic expansion of mass education in the 1930s, which led to overcrowded classrooms and increased student insubordination, prompting efforts to restore discipline in secondary schools.[3] Historian Ann Livschiz has also shown that the emphasis on discipline in Soviet education during the 1930s and 1940s aligned with broader Stalinist goals of reasserting control over the population—including children and youth—and reinstating strict vertical structures across society.[4] Moreover, personal preferences of influential policymakers such as Andrei Zhdanov and Vladimir Potemkin, who openly admired the structure and ethos of pre-revolutionary gymnasiums, also shaped these reforms.[5] Such factors complicate the notion of a shared trajectory between the two countries and highlight the differing origins of superficially similar developments. Including these nuances would have brought additional insight to the rich comparative analysis.

As with any distinguished work of historical scholarship, Peri’s book prompts readers to reconsider aspects of its subject—not only key moments in the history of Stalinism, postwar normalisation in the USSR and the USA, and the early Cold War, but also pressing questions about the present. Dear Unknown Friend is a profoundly timely publication. It appeared in a moment when the world is again fractured by both visible and invisible borders. We inhabit an era of instant communication, enabled by social media, digital platforms, and global networks. Yet, paradoxically, these technologies often fail to foster genuine understanding between nations and individuals with different political views, institutions, and lifestyles. Rather than bridging ideological divides, online communication frequently exacerbates them, fragmenting public discourse and facilitating the spread of disinformation.

Reading Peri’s account, I was struck by the enduring relevance of handwritten correspondence in the world of increasing digitalisation. Many people still turn to physical letters and postcards as a meaningful way to establish authentic human connection, even in an era dominated by instant online communication. In my own daily life, letter-writing has even become a necessary political act and a gesture of solidarity. Those who follow contemporary Russian politics know that sending letters or postcards remains one of the only ways to connect to hundreds of political prisoners, serving disproportionately long sentences in jails and penal colonies for speaking out against the crimes of the Russian government and the invasion of Ukraine. For these activists, oppositional politicians, and just ordinary citizens imprisoned for street protests, online-posts, and even personal conversations, such letters serve as their only tangible link to the outside world.

Moreover, the act of writing such letters connects not only the sender and the recipient, but also broader communities of resistance to the Russian dictatorship. Across the globe, members of the Russian diaspora and their allies host regular events dedicated to writing letters to political prisoners. These gatherings serve as sites of solidarity, and raise awareness about the abuses of the Russian state. Peri’s book made me reevaluate this practice—one I had come to see as routine—and realise it can be tool for building dialogue and sustaining networks through deeply personal exchanges and the material act of handwriting. More importantly, it helped me once again recognise the significance of emotions and small gestures and their deeply political, transformative potential, so often overlooked by politicians and official institutions.

[1] See Juliane Fürst, ‘Late Stalinist Society: History, Policies and People’, in Late Stalinist Russia: Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention, ed. Juliane Fürst (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1–13, Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

[2] An explicit engagement with contemporary affect theory would arguably enhance the book’s analytical framework, allowing the author to link the historical cases with the discussion of emotional and personal investment in political relationships now developing in contemporary feminist theory. See Marianne Liljeström, ‘Affect’, in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, ed. Lisa Disch and Mary Hawkesworth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 16–37, Patricia Clough, ‘The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia and Bodies’, in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 206–225.

[3] E. Thomas Ewing, Separate Schools: Gender, Policy, and Practice in Postwar Soviet Education (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), pp. 24, 26.

[4] Ann Livschiz, ‘Pre‐Revolutionary in Form, Soviet in Content? Wartime Educational Reforms and the Postwar Quest for Normality’, History of Education 35, no. 4/5 (2006): pp. 546, 549.

[5] Maria Mayofis, ‘Predvestiya “ottepeli” v sovetskoy shkol’noy politike pozdnestalinskogo vremeni’, in Ostrova utopii: Pedagogicheskoe i sotsial’noe proektirovanie poslevoennoi shkoly (1940-1980-e), ed. Il’ia Kukulin, Mariia Maiofis and Petr Safronov (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2015), pp. 49–53.

See also Maria Mayofis, ‘“Individual Approach” as a Moral Demand and a Literary Device: Frida Vigdorova’s Pedagogical Novels’, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 13, no. 1 (2015): pp. 19–41.