2017 Reports

Gay Humphrey Matthaei and Francis B. Randall Collection at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

In August 1954, four graduate students from Columbia’s Russian Institute—Gay Humphrey, Ted Curran, Jeri Lidsky, and Francis B. Randall—set off on an eight-week journey across the Soviet Union. They became, effectively, the first student tourist group to visit the USSR, just seventeen months after the death of Stalin and before Khrushchev had consolidated power.