being smuggled in suitcases by citizen diplomats. In 1985, Tennison knocked on the doors of the Ministry of Health of the USSR to try to get permission to bring the AA philosophy to the Soviet Union. Eventually, the request was taken to the USSR's new Party General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. He reportedly said, "Our problem is so great that we must try anything the west has to offer." On April 10, 1986, the first ever AA meeting was held in Kiev, Ukraine by 20 southern California recovering alcoholics, and within three days the second AA meeting was held in Moscow. The starting of AA was a bit rocky in the beginning, but they celebrated AA's twentieth anniversary in Russia in 2006. Soviets Meet Middle America In 1988, CCI started a first-ever, non-governmental citizen exchange program, Soviets Meet Middle America (SMMA). In the early stages CCI had to partner with the Soviet Peace Committee. After they failed to allow CCI to choose the citizens to travel, they were terminated. Fortunately, Gorbachev had just appointed a young change maker, Gennady Alferenko, to give exit visas to any Soviet citizen who had an invitation to travel abroad. CCI immediately partnered with Alferenko and soon ordinary Soviet citizens whom CCI travelers had met on their streets were flying across the US to four different cities. Over a two-year period, 400 Soviet citizens in small groups of four persons traveled to 265 American cities, where they stayed in some 800 private homes, and were interviewed by thousands of American newspapers, radio and TV programs. They returned home to the USSR and spread the news that America was a great and luxurious country and full of friendly host families. They became America's finest ambassadors. Environmental Initiative In 1987 CCI's Environmental Initiative began by partnering with young Soviet-era environmentalists to defeat a Communist party-promoted Dam in Leningrad's famous Neva River. The program grew and eventually moving into water quality cleanup, nuclear cleanup campaigns around weapons installations, and eventually was awarded the opportunity to map and create a sustainability plan and cleanup program for Russia's acclaimed Lake Baikal, the world's largest and deepest lake. George Davis, an expert in restoring large damaged American sites, was hired to oversee the restoration of the Lake Baikal basin. Francis Underhill Macy was CCI's first environmental director and went on to found the Center for Safe Energy (CSE) after CCI lost USAID