On Saturday, March 29, 2025, The Carmel Institute organized a trip to the International Spy Museum. Tour guide Ben Duwell and Professor Fedyashin gave the students a 90-minute tour of the museum’s impressive holdings and introduced the students to how the Cold War stimulated the production of narratives that have profoundly affected contemporary culture. 

The visit was an extension of Dr. Fedyashin’s course called “The Cold War & the Spy Novel,” which examines spy novels as both primary and secondary historical documents to deconstruct the Cold War’s most important ingredients—smokescreens and stereotypes. The class has spent the semester discussing the books in the context of the era during which they were written and published and comparing them to their cinematic interpretations. 

The museum fleshes out the story of the Cold War with unique artifacts that reflect the stages of the Cold War and the evolution of national identities of the countries it affected, first and foremost the superpowers. The students explored information collection and the story of the Berolin Tunnel. They heard about the connection between the U-2 program and early space flight. Dr. Fedyashin introduced the group to several cultural figures who came out of the World War Two intelligence field to become American icons, such as John Ford and Julia Child. And the group took some time examining the unique artifacts from Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels. 

The group then proceeded to the special “Bond in Motion” exhibit where it saw the original props from about ten Bond films. This included one of the boats used in the filming of Live and Let Die (1973), which the students read and watched for Dr. Fedyashin’s class. 

Museum visits, concert attendance, and study trips have been part of the Carmel Institute’s programming since its inception. As Professor Fedyashin has always reminded his students, although our knowledge of the past depends primarily on reading, history must also be walked and seen. The visit to International Spy Museum gave students the chance to experience the history of US-Russian relations.