Born on January 19, 1994, Friends and Partners is one of the first Internet services developed jointly by citizens of the United States and Russia. Resulting from a chance meeting on the Internet (you can read our story here), it is but one of many examples of how the Internet, itself rooted in the Cold War separating our nations, can provide an effective means of bringing us together.

Friends and Partners now represents a community of people all over the world who provide information and communications services to promote better understanding, friendship and partnership between individuals and organizations of the United States (and, more broadly, "the west") and countries of the Former Soviet Union.

We wish to help others build upon the "Friends and Partners" framework -- to create and link together information on our nation's histories, our art, music, literature, and religion, our educational and scientific resources, our geography and natural resources, our languages, and our opportunities for communicating, travelling, and working together. Please help us! Additional information is available if you are interested in contributing. You can read more about our server here, and learn of a few awards and honors it has received.

This project owes any success it has realized to many, many individuals and organizations. While we cannot possibly thank everyone here, we do want to thank our sponsors, the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Eurasia Foundation, US State Department, NATO, Sun Microsystems, the International Science Foundation, Esper Systems, RELARN, and Stack, Inc. We want to express special appreciation to our home institutions -- the Pushchino Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms and The University of Tennessee -- who have done so much to sustain this effort.

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