Rudolf V. Perina

Rudolf Vilem Perina (; January 3, 1945 – June 14, 2018) was an American diplomat who specialized for more than three decades in European East–West relations during and after the Cold War, and on the Dayton Accords following the dissolution of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. This includes participating in the 1988 Moscow summit meeting between President Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, during the former's first visit to the USSR. He also served as ambassador to the Republic of Moldova, U.S. Special Negotiator for Eurasian Conflicts in the former Soviet Union (an ambassador-level position), Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Canadian Affairs in the State Department, director of European and Soviet Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, and was on the policy planning staff of the State Department under Colin Powell before and after the invasion of Iraq.

Following his retirement from the foreign service, Perina served as chargé d’affaires at U.S. embassies, including those in Chișinău, Moldova (2006), Yerevan, Armenia (2007), Reykjavík, Iceland (2010), Prague, Czech Republic (2013), and Bratislava, Slovakia (2015).

Early life and family Perina was born on January 3, 1945, in Tábor in what is today the Czech Republic. His father's family owned a large lumbermill serving Central Europe. His mother's family was subject to Nazi reprisals during World War II, including the execution of his grandfather and great uncle on June 10, 1942. The family members were executed in a coordinated purge of Czech nationalists and public figures that culminated in the razing of the village of Lidice.

Perina and his parents fled Czechoslovakia following the 1948 Communist takeover of the government. Rudolf's mother paid a Croat border smuggler to transport her son in January 1950 to the border into Austria and eventually to Zürich, where his father had escaped. The family lived as refugees in Switzerland and Morocco before immigrating to the United States via Le Havre, France, in 1951.

He grew up speaking Czech at home. In 1955, the family moved to Cleveland, and Perina obtained US citizenship the following year. He had also earned a Foreign Area Fellowship to research his dissertation at the library of Radio Free Europe for two years.

Perina was at Columbia during the 1968 student protests. While supportive of the US civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War, he maintained a moderate political position, saying later "I became suspicious of all political extremism and radicalism, whether right-wing or left-wing. It is a position I have held all of my life." ) They had a dozen meetings with the Serbian ruler with others around, then met him one on one because they found him more engaging in that capacity. Perina saw a "genuine lack of compassion that was truly frightening" and said that this feeling extended to his treatment of his countrymen, the Serbs. Perina also participated in the talks held in Dayton, Ohio, to which he credits Milosevic's assent, although mostly for self-serving purposes: The leader thought he would gain respectability in the international community and sanctions would be lifted. Perina also met with Ibrahim Rugova, the elected president of the Republic of Kosovo, whom along with Macedonia's Kiro Gligorov Perina found to be the most impressive leaders in the former Yugoslavia.

1=Milosevic could agree to the terms of the Dayton Agreement because he was not really a Serb nationalist. He did not care that much about Serbs. He cared about Milosevic. He thought that by helping to conclude an agreement at Dayton his past actions would be forgotten and he would gain legitimacy and respect. But he was wrong. Kosovo was still outstanding, and it would prove to be his downfall. — Rudolf V. Perina in 1996–97 the majority of his time was spent helping to execute the Dayton Accords from Washington, D.C. while John Kornblum travelled to implement them. This included the outer wall of sanctions that enraged the Serbs and did not satisfy Kosovar Albanians (They would form the Kosovo Liberation Army.) As the former USSR was now handled by the Office of Newly Independent States (NIS) and not the European bureau, the other third of Perina's time was spent on helping to expand NATO, which he said he felt ambivalence towards: The powerful organization did not help integrate the Russians into Europe and damaged the US's relationship to Russia. He has said "I fear the way we handled revanchism made it a self-fulfulling prophecy." He saw and was shocked by Sarajevo at the end of the war, which described as "miles and miles of just rubble." Perina has said European and Canadian Affairs was one of his least favorite because it was so bureaucratic and based in the US capital. over $50 million in assistance, the third highest amount given to a former Soviet republic, because of its cooperation and its efforts at reform. Several hundred Moldovans were sent to the US every year on exchange programs; Perina was also particularly proud of the Peace Corps contingent he saw there.

Moldova was a main source of the trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union: Many young women were lured into the trade with promises of jobs as nannies and waitresses in Western Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East. The embassy tried to combat this with educational programs and financing a documentary film with victim testimonies that were shown in schools, on billboards and on national TV.

He was in Moldova during the Transnistria War, and though the US was not one of the three official mediators (those being Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE), the heads of the OSCE mission were American because the Moldovan government wanted to counterbalance their former rulers. Regardless, Perina met with Moldovan Presidents Petru Lucinschi then Vladimir Voronin on policy toward Transnistria, even initiating dialogue with the breakaway eastern region's so-called president, Igor Smirnov.

Perina describes these half dozen talks with Smirnov as disheartening. This is because the disputed region had become a staging area for smuggling operations that avoided taxes and customs duties. Ukrainians and Moldovans alike profited off the illegal importation of cigarettes, liquor, and "many other commodities" that hurt the republic in lost tax revenue. Another problem was the 40,000 tons of aging Soviet ammunition stored at Cosbasna base in Transnistria: The US was a major contributor of several million dollars to a voluntary OSCE fund to aid in arms withdrawal and though there was a limited destruction of tanks and a half trainload of weapons and ammunition, Russian troops and old but still dangerous armaments were kept in the region for political leverage. The economic conflict of the region was also rooted in a lot of Moldova's industry being located in Transnistria, planned by Stalin. 2010 for Iceland, 2013 the Czech Republic, and 2015 for Slovakia.

Non-diplomatic appointments In 2007, Perina completed an oral history of his life and career for Frontline Diplomacy: the Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. It is available online through the Library of Congress.

He was the Scarff Visiting Professor of International Relations at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin in fall 2010

Personal life He met his wife, Ethel Ott Hetherington, at the 1968 Columbia student protests, and they married in Salzburg, Austria, on May 26, 1972. Ethel taught at the International School of Belgrade while he was chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy there in the 1990s. He was fluent in four languages: English, Czech, Russian, and French and knew Romanian. They have two daughters, Kaja and Alexandra, until his death on June 14, 2018.