The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project RUSSELL SVEDA Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: June 28, 2000 Copyright 2007 A ST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in New Jersey Georgetown University; Columbia University Entered Foreign Service 197, The Peace Corps; Seoul, .orea; England language instructor 196701969 1ietnam 2ar issue Environment Course of instruction Travel to Soviet Union Training at the University of Hawaii Seoul, .orea; 3otation Officer4Staff Aid to the Ambassador 197,01977 1isa and citi5enship problems Ambassador and 6rs. 3ichard Sneider Sinai Field 6ission 81olunteer9 197701979 Purpose and duties of the mission Composition of UB Truce :one Personnel 3ay Hunt murder Egypt ; Israeli relations 3elations with Egyptians and Israelis Camp David Accords Frederick 2iseman=s film >Sinai Field 6ission? Israeli military organi5ation State Department; 2atch officer, Operations Center 197901981 ational Intelligence daily Teheran Embassy sei5ure Intelligence reporting Iran Hostage 3escue Br5e5inski 1 Secretary Cyrus 1ance Boycott of 6oscow Olympics Afghanistan State Department, FSI; 3ussian language training 198101982 Garmish ; Partenkirechen, Germany; 3ussian language training 1982 2orking with the military 6oscow, USS3; Science Officer 198201984 Soviet Stagnation 3elations Afghanistan Succession issue Bre5hnev Andropov Ambassador and 6rs. Hartman Soviet Scientists .GB capabilities and antics Embassy radiation >Bugging? of the Embassy Science reporting Soviet economy Soviet military hardware State Department; China Desk Officer 198401986 President 3eagan=s view of China President Ci Diannian visit China ; Soviet Union relations U.S. ; China relations Peace Corps issue 3elations with the American Institute in Taiwan Chinese students to the US Personal security issue 198601987 Seconded to the National Science Foundation 198701989 Central and Eastern European programs Communication with the Soviet Scientists International Science foundation ational research Council State4Foundation relations Gay0Cesbian organi5ation issues 19920199E Clinton election 2 Grievance appeals State Department; Dulles Airport Unclassified Pouch mail 199E0199, Sherman Funk Blocked Promotion Cegal issues Cegal statement 3etirement 199, American Foreign Service Association Gay0Cesbians organi5ation Gay Cesbian issues INTERVIEW ": Today is June 28, 2000. This is an interview with Russell Sveda. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I(m Charles Stuart Kennedy. Russ and I are old friends. Could you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family) S1EDA: I was born on December 27, 194, in Passaic, ew Jersey. 6y mother and father were both born in the United States but were of immigrant parents. 6y father=s family was from a small area called Papapelrusse. They actually have an Internet web site, the nation of Papapelrusse. It is a small nation that is really very obscure. It=s between Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, and Hungary in the Carpathian 6ountains. It is a place that has been exchanged between one or the other for a while. 6y father=s family is originally Swedish and they somehow got dropped off here. One of my cousins who invented artificial sweeteners did some research on this. He said that it was in the 17th century. So, my mother=s family is absolutely Polish, no Huestion. 6y father died when I was just shy of my fourth birthday, so my mother=s family and that influence was really strong on me. 6y mother=s family is Polish and therefore very Catholic. 6y father=s family is 3ussian Orthodox. I had one foot in each tradition. I went to Catholic schools from third grade on. 6y mother was a public school teacher. 6y father was a high school teacher. 6y mother thought it would be better for me to go to Catholic school, but specifically to a Catholic boarding school, a Catholic military boarding school, in Upstate New Iork run by Italian nuns on the 2est Point reservation. It was a completely FelliniesHue experience. Fellini had films with many bi5arre characters and, believe, me, that was my growing up. ": Did you have brothers or sisters) S1EDA: No, I was an only child. E ": In Passaic, was there a fairly large Polish community) S1EDA: There was a very large Polish community in the northern New Jersey area ; Passaic, Patterson, Garfield, what have you. In fact, Codi is where my mother lived until her death. She lived across the street from a very large Polish convent run by sisters. The reason I mention this is because when I met the Pope in 1978 at a large audience with everybody yelling, >PapaJ PapaJ PapaJ? as he came into the audience hall, I yelled the three words that I knew would rivet the Pope to the floor. The three words were, >Codi, ew Jersey.? The Pope stopped and said, >2ho=s from Codi? and I said, >I=m from Codi.? It seems that he had spent two summers there as Archbishop of .rakow across the street from my mother=s home, playing tennis in the tennis courts cattycornered from my mother=s house, and living in the rectory that was for priests who were attached to this convent of several hundred nuns. So, he knew the place very well. He knew all the Polish parishes of the region, but he didn=t ask me about my mother=s parish. He asked me about all their rival parishes. ": At home and with your relatives, were you getting a good dose of Polish nationalism) S1EDA: Oh, yes, absolutely. 6y mother=s family was largely absent in that regard. They were very Americani5ed and they didn=t really want to discuss anything about the old world. In fact, I once asked one of my aunts what village her mother was from. She said that she had asked her mother once and her mother had refused to answer because she said she never wanted to hear the name of that place again. She knew if she told her daughter, she would hear it again. So, they were absolutely adamantly turning their back on Central and Eastern Europe and wanted to be American. 6y mother=s family, on the other hand, was very different. 6y grandfather was a very successful businessman. In 1927 on his 2,th wedding anniversary, he made a triumphal visit back to his home village. He had worked on the estate of a great noble, as he kept telling my grandmother, and the family had been trusted administrators of this great noble up until that visit. After that visit, my grandmother told with great delight how the estate was really a rundown place. This great noble, who was wearing a fur jacket, was smelling from not having bathed and he asked for a handout from my grandfather. He had contributed as a very patriotic Pole a lot to the resuscitation of the Polish state after 1919 and before 19E9. One of the things I=ve inherited is a gold medal from the Polish state which says in Polish, >For the rebirth of the nation? and honors him for his contributions. 6y grandmother=s family was a bit unusual. Her father had been a soldier fighting with France in the Franco0Prussian 2ar. He was a Polish soldier who, like many Poles, was a mercenary. He lived in France for a while. To our horror in recent years, we have found that he fathered a family in France. Then he went back to Poland and started my grandmother=s family. There were several girls. 6y grandmother decided to come to America after she became a schoolteacher at about age 16 or 17. She said this was because she hated lentils. She had lentils in the morning, lentils in the afternoon, lentils in 4 the evening. She hated lentils and she wanted to go to a place where nobody knew what lentils were. She had read about Odysseus, who settled ultimately in a place where nobody knew what a war was. So, she carried in her pocket a little purse filled with lentils. If people knew what they were, she moved on. She first landed in Boston. They knew what lentils were. She got to Passaic, New Jersey, eventually. They did not know what lentils were. She stayed. ": One always thin,s of the Orthodo- Church as stic,ing to lentils all the time. S1EDA: 2ell, she wasn=t Orthodox. She was Catholic. Her brother was supposed to have come over to New Iork for the New Iork 2orld=s Fair in 19E9. Because of the brewing possibility of Poland getting involved in the war that year, he decided to forego this trip and come the following year. It was a bad decision in personal terms, although in national terms maybe not. He was a major general in the Polish army and a cavalry commander ; and I don=t mean mechani5ed cavalry ; I mean horse cavalry. He has the distinction of having led one of the last cavalry charges in history. People mock this not knowing that in 19E9 German tanks ; any tanks for that matter ; were not very good. They got stuck in the mud. Horses did not. He survived the charge. Unfortunately, he was executed later at .atyn Forest by Stalin=s people. 6y mother=s other uncle on her father=s side was killed by Stalin=s troops when he refused to give up a cow which was the mainstay of his family=s survival. He was bludgeoned to death by the Soviet troops. So, there is a feeling in the family, a rather personal feeling, of anti0communism. ": I would imagine that at least at the home at this time, before .901, you were getting very strong anti2communist and anti2Russian strains and also a very strong Catholic upbringing. S1EDA: Actually, 3ussian. As far as my grandfather was concerned, my mother had married a 3ussian.