David Ramseur in a 2017 visit to Magadan City Hall and a sign which marks Anchorage-Magadan Sister-City relations. He was on a book tour across the Russian Far East. Dmitry Motovilov, photographer. Courtesy of David Ramseur.

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Join us for a Cook Inlet Historical Society lecture series event.

Where: In person at the Anchorage Museum Auditorium or online via Crowdcast.

To register for the online event, click here. No registration required if attending in person.

Free and open to the public. Please use the museum’s 7th Avenue entrance.

Speaker: David Ramseur

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Persistent Alaskan and Russian “citizen-diplomats” helped end the Cold War in the Bering Strait region in the 1980s, launching a thirty-year era of prolific progress. They established joint businesses and cultural ties and about a dozen Alaska communities established sister-city agreements with their Russian counterparts. Today under President Putin, much of that progress has eroded as US and Russia relationships deteriorate. David Ramseur, author of “Melting the Ice Curtain: The Extraordinary Story of Citizen Diplomacy on the Russia Alaska Frontier,” will examine the heyday of Alaska-Russian relations and the new growing Cold War between the US and Russia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

A 46-year Alaskan, David Ramseur worked for Governors Steve Cowper and Tony Knowles and U.S. Senator Mark Begich. He has traveled to Russia more than a dozen times since his first visit on the 1988 “Friendship Flight.” A former journalist, Ramseur serves as the Alaska Historical Society’s president and newsletter editor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina Ashville and a master’s in journalism from the University of Missouri.