The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the great hardships suffered by the Russian people in the 1990s offered new challenges to Western Friends. Moscow Representatives of Quaker Peace and Service (Britain) were re-appointed in 1991, and in 1992 Pacific Yearly Meeting (USA) asked representatives to consider the Russian relationship. A few years later, Friends from Alaska Yearly Meeting began pastoral visits to their ethnic brothers and sisters in eastern Siberia, and American Friends participated in the material aid programme of the ecumenical Alaskan Friends of Chukotka. Friends House Moscow opened on 1 January 1996.