Rebecca Matlock - Second Moscow Tour (1974-78)

Second Moscow Tour (1974-78)

Matlock would organize reading groups for the Foreign Service dependents at each post.

Karen Joyce, whose husband is now the Deputy here, came to me one day and said, “Don't you think it would be nice if we organized the women a little bit to try to have some special interest groups?” We remembered that there had at one point been an American women's organization. We went about the business of trying to make it possible for women to come together by reviving that organization. This was extremely successful.

We had lots of special interest groups. The one that I was most concerned with was the two-year seminar in Russian literature which I coordinated, but we did it ourselves. And then when a visitor would come such as Ambassador Kennan or someone worked at the Embassy who knew the subject we were discussing, we would invite them to be a guest speaker and their reward was dinner with us afterward. Since we had a good Finnish cook, IREX professors and students were happy to conduct our sessions.

The wife of the Canadian Ambassador who was Trudy McLean tried to organize the Canadian ladies to do something that was similar because they were having some morale problems. One does in a dark and cold country. She asked me to help her with this, so I went to the organizational meeting and we talked about what we Americans did, and she thought about what was needed to do the same on a wider level internationally.

You can imagine my amazement when I came back in 1981 and found that there was an international ladies group going with 500 members!

Matlock started taking photos in 1977, during a major fire at the American Embassy in Moscow.