Douglas C. Nord. Sister City Diplomacy: Community Engagement in U.S.–Russian Relations from the Cold War to Today.

Douglas C. Nord's book on sister city diplomacy in the late Cold War era and beyond has many merits. It represents an important turn from the traditional study of diplomacy and strategic competition toward a focus on non-state actors. The emergence of such actors—especially in the Soviet/Russian context, where they were never fully independent—signaled more than the growing influence of grassroots initiatives or the weakening of the state. It underscored the exhaustion of great-power rivalry itself: the inability of professional diplomats to move beyond strategic gridlock, the arms race, and mutual fear. Not surprisingly, Nord includes the story of Samantha Smith, the young schoolgirl from the U.S. state of Maine who wrote to the Soviet leader Yurii Andropov and became a symbol of popular efforts to foster peace and mutual understanding. By highlighting municipally based initiatives of bilateral engagement, Nord's study opens one of the alternative pathways available in this period and makes a valuable contribution to Cold War history.Nord brings a particularly valuable perspective as both participant and observer. Personally involved in the early Duluth–Petrozavodsk contacts, he maintained friendships in both cities for decades and was able to draw on them as sources. Particularly important is his grasp of the mechanics of U.S. civic initiative and his conclusion that enthusiasm, resources, and institutional support at the city and regional levels are necessary to sustain such partnerships. His discussion of the role of educational exchanges—notably, the contributions of the University of Minnesota Duluth and the College of St. Scholastica on the U.S. side and Petrozavodsk State University on the Soviet—is especially insightful. Professors’ participation and student engagement, as Nord demonstrates, left a lasting legacy, poignantly captured in the testimony of a former Petrozavodsk student with which the book concludes. The narrative of these institutions and individuals illustrates how local universities and cultural actors could, in practice, substitute for formal diplomacy in maintaining dialogue when interstate channels were closing.Several limitations, however, should be noted. First, although the title promises a comprehensive history of U.S.-Soviet and U.S.–Russian sister city diplomacy, the book focuses almost exclusively on Duluth–Petrozavodsk. Yet the Russian Sister Cities site lists more than 70 U.S.–Russian partnerships (not including those in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine; further details can be found in Mezhdunarodnaya assotsiatsiya “Porodnennye goroda,” available online at: http://goroda-pobratimy.ru/porodnennye-goroda). A broader comparative approach would have been particularly valuable in tracing both the variety of experiences and common obstacles these partnerships faced.Second, although Nord takes care to contextualize his narrative within the larger framework of U.S.–Soviet/Russian relations, he does not engage the history of U.S.–Soviet city partnerships that predated Duluth's involvement. Situating the story within the explosive growth of sister city diplomacy during the perestroika era under Mikhail Gorbachev—followed by its slowing in the 1990s and its effective end after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine—would have been a better approach to take.A more serious limitation is the book's reliance almost entirely on U.S. and other English-language sources. With the exception of a few Russian voices cited near the conclusion, Nord makes no use of Russian archival materials and disregards Russian-language scholarship. This is unfortunate because Russian historians have written extensively on the subject, including studies focusing on the Duluth–Petrozavodsk program itself, which Nord does not cite and seems unaware of. See, for example, A. V. Sheremet, “Petrozavodsk–Dulut: iz istorii razvitiia pobratimskikh sviazei sovetskikh i amerikanskikh gorodov v 1970–1980-e gody Petrozavodsk–Duluth: From the History of Sister City Ties between Soviet and American Cities in the 1970s–1980s,” Vestnik Severnogo Federal'nogo Universiteta, Series on Humanities and Social Sciences, No. 2 (2017), pp. 37–45. Moreover, Nord's book omits a systematic analysis of Soviet and Russian governmental involvement, even though official institutions often determined both the scope and the permissible fields of cooperation., as highlighted in V. B. Maksimov, “Mezhdunarodnye kontakty gorodov SSSR kak chast’ vneshnei politiki pravitel'stva International Contacts of Soviet Cities as Part of the Foreign Policy of the Government,” Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, Series on History, Regional Studies, and International Relations, No. 2 (2012), pp. 96–102. Incorporating these perspectives would have provided a richer, more balanced account, showing how such partnerships were simultaneously encouraged and constrained by state priorities.In sum, Sister City Diplomacy is a valuable and engaging study that offers unique insights into a neglected dimension of Cold War history. At the same time, it highlights the need for future research that integrates Russian sources and perspectives more fully into the story of community diplomacy across the U.S.–Russian divide.