The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy: Interview transcipts

The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, by Metta Spencer, published by Lexington Books

Over the past 28+ years, hundreds of interviews with officials, activists, and scholars — both within the then-Soviet Union and outside it — were recorded for this book.

Here you will find links to those transcripts which are already online. Some of the interviews also include the audio file from which the transcript was taken (in either English/English or English/Russian, depending on whether an interpreter was used).

Please note that many of these documents are uncorrected transcripts, edited in some cases to remove less relevant material. The transcripts may show gaps (indicated by rows of dots or underscores), unclear names, or other minor transcription errors.

The section headed “Gwynne Dyer’s transcripts” are taken from a series of interviews, most of them recorded in Moscow and the Baltic republics in 1990-91. Many thanks to Gwynne for making the original tapes available. In some cases there is a brief summary by Metta Spencer (indicated with the initials MS) rather than a full transcript.

You may also be interested in the list of interviews on John Feffer’s website, johnfeffer.com, which includes a wide range of Balkan, Central, and Eastern Europe informants, many of whom he interviewed both in 1990 and 2012/13.

Links to additional interviews, profiles, and articles by Metta Spencer (as edited for publication in Peace Magazine) can be found on the Links page.


The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, by Metta Spencer, published by Lexington Books
mspencer@web.net