Launched in 1984 after Jamestown's late president and founder William Geimer's work with Arkady Shevchenko, the highest-ranking Soviet official ever to defect when he left his position as undersecretary general of the United Nations, the Jamestown Foundation rapidly became the leading source of information about the inner workings of closed totalitarian societies.
Jamestown's work has contributed directly to the spread of democracy and personal freedom in the former Communist Bloc countries. In the 1980s the foundation assisted such key experts as former high-ranking Soviet diplomat Arkady Shevchenko, and former top Romanian intelligence officer Ion Pacepa, whose revelations about their governments -- which then directly challenged the United States -- were unprecedented and singularly important.