Letters from pen pals in the Soviet Union, relating to social conditions and youth culture in the Soviet Union.

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.

4 manuscript boxes (1.6 linear feet)

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