The Untold Story: Hillary Clinton & Naina Yeltsin

The contrast could hardly be greater. In the US-Soviet honeymoon of the late ‘80s, the relationship between First Ladies Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev was a constant source of embarrassment for their husbands. In today’s less harmonious times, Hillary Clinton and Naina Yeltsin seem to have hit it off. Helen Boldyreff Semler reports on a truly productive friendship.  Photos by the author.

In the early days of October 1993, a group of American medical specialists checked into Moscow’s Hotel Mir, overlooking the ‘White House,’ then Russia’s parliament building. The Americans had brought US Army dental and medical equipment to Russia from military hospitals in Germany.