Marketplace Diplomacy: The Political Economy of US–Soviet Sister‐City Relations, 1971–1991

Abstract This article situates US–USSR sister‐city initiatives within the history of Cold War trade and exchange, arguing that municipal twinning functioned not only as citizen diplomacy but also as a semi‐official mechanism for facilitating economic cooperation across ideological boundaries. Drawing on Soviet and American archival sources and periodicals, it demonstrates that Soviet cultural and diplomatic institutions actively courted US corporations, private donors, and municipal actors, challenging assumptions that exchange initiatives were primarily American‐driven. Although American and Soviet participants justified sister‐city partnerships through different ideological languages—capitalist prosperity on the one hand, peace and international friendship on the other—both sides viewed municipal exchanges as vehicles for material benefit, often easier to pursue than formal interstate agreements. Given the scope, this article focuses on representative sister‐city partnerships rather than a comprehensive survey of all US–USSR municipal exchanges.