My Friend “Mikhail”

I have previously discussed many of the wonderful things that happened at the Society’s first conference in 1971, but I did not mention what was for me the most wonderful of all because it seemed to validate my epiphany that the World Future Society would be a useful instrument for achieving world peace.

Shortly before our first conference was to open, I was contacted by a Soviet official stationed in Washington. I will call him “Mikhail” because I don’t feel comfortable mentioning his real name.

Mikhail wanted to attend our conference, and I assured him he would be most welcome. In fact, I was absolutely delighted that a Soviet dignitary would show an interest in what we were doing. After all, it was my existential dread of thermonuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States that originally set me thinking hard about the future and led eventually to the founding of the World Future Society.

Mikhail introduced himself almost the moment I arrived at the conference, which was being held in the Washington Hilton Hotel. It was then that we had the first of a number of conversations in the hotel’s hallways.

As the conference proceeded, I anxiously rushed around, popping briefly into the breakout sessions being held simultaneously in different meeting rooms to make sure everything was going smoothly. In doing so, I got the impression that Mikhail had some supernatural power to be everywhere at once, and each time he noticed me, he would come out with me into the hallway, and we would have a chat. By the time the conference closed, I may have spent more time with Mikhail than anyone else.

I now remember little of what Mikhail and I talked about during our hallway conversations, but one thing made a deep impression on me. Near the end of our conference, Mikhail said very emphatically, “I see no sign of war.” He seemed to be genuinely surprised at the peaceful nature of our conference, and I was surprised that he was surprised. Just what had he expected? Angry speeches denouncing the Soviet Union? Chants of hatred (as in George Orwell’s book 1984)? Displays of U.S. weaponry? Naturally, there was nothing of the sort.

Following the conference, Mikhail invited me to his office, which was not in the Soviet Embassy but in a nearby office building. I was not clear about what Mikhail wanted, but nothing could keep me from going. When I arrived, Mikhail greeted me in a friendly manner but remained at his desk during our conversation, while I sat wondering when he would get to the point. Our meeting did not seem to be just a social occasion. I don’t remember him ever smiling, laughing, or saying anything humorous or personal. And he never offered me a drink, which I thought a little odd for a Russian.

We just sat and talked. He did not ask me probing questions about the Society or anything else. Instead, he meditated aloud about abstract economic and political matters. At one point, he said that he believed that private property was the basic cause of social problems. However, he expressed his view of private property in a way that suggested to me that he was not really sure of his opinion and wanted me to either confirm or challenge it.

I didn’t feel like challenging any of Mikhail’s views, and he did not push me to reveal my own. Instead, he simply continued to meditate aloud while I sat, mostly silent, waiting to find out what he wanted. I could not invite him to my home because my wife and I were far too busy on our World Future Society work and taking care of our young sons to socialize. In addition, our house was too much of a mess to entertain a Soviet dignitary. What would he think if he discovered that the great World Future Society’s “offices” consisted of nothing more than the back porch and one adjacent room in a shabby house in the suburbs?

After about an hour, Mikhail seemed ready to bring our meeting to an end. We parted company cordially but rather formally, and I went away still wondering what our meeting was all about. Why had Mikhail attended our conference and what did he want with me? Was our conversation being secretly recorded?

I never learned the answer to those questions. But I believe Mikhail’s stiffness and caution was due to the fact that he — like other citizens in Communist nations at the time — had to conform rigidly to Communist Party doctrine or suffer dire consequences. At the same time, Mikhail was genuinely concerned to know the real truth about what was happening in the United States and world at large and hoped that the Society’s conference and his conversation with me would help him to clarify his thoughts.

Mikhail and I never saw each other again. I never had either the time or the money to visit him in Moscow, and if he ever came to Washington, he didn’t let me know. But several years after our meetings in 1971, he sent me a copy of a book he had written on the future. Unfortunately, it was written in Russian and my knowledge of that language is so rudimentary that I could not judge its content without spending far more time on it than I could afford.

But after Mikhail returned to Moscow I made a point of inviting him to the Society’s conferences in 1975 and 1980. He responded very kindly with letters written in Russian, which I did translate laboriously with the help of a dictionary. Though friendly, the letters were rather formal — just as his manner had been when I met him. In each case, he said he could not attend personally but one or more of his colleagues would attend, and I believe they did though they did not make themselves known to me in the way Mikhail did.

After 1980, I became so busy that I stopped sending Mikhail special invitations, but whenever I encountered a Soviet representative — at one of our conferences or elsewhere — I would ask if he knew anything about Mikhail. From them I learned that Mikhail had risen high in the Soviet government.

During the 1980s — in the midst of those extraordinary events that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union — I noticed Mikhail’s name in newspaper stories about what was happening, and I was very impressed. My work always kept me too busy to pay close attention to what the press was reporting, but I got the feeling that Mikhail was playing a very difficult but very constructive role in world history. I like to think that the World Future Society helped him to do that.