“I had always dreamed of playing the Soviets…”

It was just before the time of glasnost and perestroika, and soon Gorbachev would open the windows and begin to air out the old Soviet Union. A fatal move for Gorbachev; a fateful move for MIR founder Douglas Grimes. A young man with a passion for volleyball, Doug had dreamed of playing the Soviet team, which had long dominated his favorite sport. His enthusiasm led to a behind-the-scenes meeting with members of the Soviet Olympic volleyball team at an exhibition match in Seattle. He was instrumental in imagining and organizing a goodwill volleyball tour of the U.S.S.R. While the American teams proved to be no match for the Soviets on the court, Doug excelled at making Russian friends and stepping into the daily lives of his hosts and their families.

During Soviet times, ordinary citizens took a calculated risk in speaking with Americans. But once they invited Doug into their homes, they threw caution to the wind. Their far-ranging all-night conversations in countless Russian kitchens surprised him in their intensity and in his open-hearted reaction to them. Doug fell hopelessly in love with Russia.

Doug’s personal journey inspired him and his small crew to begin, tentatively at first, to bring other special interest groups to the U.S.S.R. to meet their counterparts in visits that, up to that time, they could only dream about. As Cold War stereotypes and beliefs began to shift, Doug and his team began to believe that their own Soviet encounters and experiences could be shared on a larger scale. They decided to found a company to do just that, naming it MIR, a Russian word meaning both “world” and “peace,” and plunged into the pioneering world of travel to the Soviet Union.

Far from the familiar

A few years later, fresh out of university and armed with an obscure, but useful, degree in Russian Studies, Annie Lucas, MIR’s future Vice President, joined up with Doug and his growing team. One of her first undertakings was a month-long foray into the Soviet Union, far from the familiar, that changed the course of her life. She was hooked, too.

Beginnings

Embracing Doug’s commitment to connecting people, the fledgling company supported NGOs and special interest organizations in their attempts to negotiate the red tape that snarled travel to the Soviet Union. Some early MIR efforts included helping Hawaiian hula dancers take part in a local Siberian dance festival, bringing LAPD officers to meet with Soviet police on the Moscow beat, and
facilitating “healing through humor” missions that gained access to Russian hospitals and orphanages for Patch Adams and his troupe of amateur clowns. An early mission to build a small peace park in Tashkent for the Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association inspired MIR to open the first accredited travel office of an American firm in Uzbekistan, still flourishing today.

Transitions and transformations

Much has changed in the past 30 years. We’ve come a long way from the days when telegrams or telexes (remember them?) were the only means available to communicate with the U.S.S.R. – and they were subject to a reply time of almost two months. Today our network of key field affiliates is strategically located at the gateways to the crossroads of Europe and Asia: specifically, in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Irkutsk, Ulan Ude, Kiev, Tashkent and Tbilisi. The principals of MIR have, over time, assembled and developed an exceptional team of on-the-ground experts, each with a decade or two of specialized experience under their belts. As a group, we have an incredibly rich body of personal knowledge and expertise to draw from and a vast network of contacts to call upon to execute even the most challenging of requests.

Our destinations are still vastly under-explored, yet they offer an abundance of enticements: Lake Baikal, the earth’s deepest and oldest freshwater lake, teeming with wildlife found nowhere else; the soaring mountains and fruitful valleys of the South Caucasus countries; and the welcoming oases of the Silk Road, their mosques, madrassahs and minarets clad in ceramic tiles the color of the desert sky.