Studying the Enigmas of the Soviet Union

1947 was a year of awakening for the West, a year when the United States and its allies finally realized that the war with the Axis powers had been succeeded almost immediately by a more subtle struggle with Soviet Russia. Signs of this awakerning included Winston Churchill's phrase "the Iron Curtain," first used in his speech at Fulton, Missouri late in 1946, and the President's response to the Communist challenge in Greece and and Turkey, the Truman Doctrine.

Russian became more than a power to reckon with; it was a nation that Americans needed desperately to study and to understand. Academic circles realized that American scholarship in the Russian field had been sporadic, disorganized and incomplete. And thus, in the spring of 1947, the Carnegie Corporation proposed the establishment of a program in Russian studies which would lay additional stress on the often neglected areas of psychology and anthropology.

The result was Harvard's Research Center, which began operations February 1, 1948, under the direction of Clyde Kluckhohn, professor of Anthropology. The initial staff of the infant organization consisted of the director, and associate director, six faculty members on part time appointments, two research associates, and five graduate student fellows.

This rather humble project has grown, over a 12-year period, to number a staff of nearly 50 people, to publish a series of books now totaling 35 and to occupy a position of unquestioned world-wide eminence in the Russian field. Scholars come from all over the world to use Harvard's excellent collection of Soviet documents and publications and to consult with the personnel of the Center.

The Russian Research Center is exactly what its name indicates. It is a scholarly establishment dedicated to research, not to popularization; it is a center, and not a coordinating agency for team projects. Although members of the staff--particularly Professor Merle Fainsod, the current director--are frequently requested by journalists to comment upon Soviet events, they regard the Center's function not as communication with public or press, but as contribution to scholarly knowledge of Russian society, government, economy and history. Marshall D. Shulman, associate director of the Center, notes with justifiable pride that each volume in the Russian Research Center series published by the Harvard University Press represents a solid, thoughtful piece of scholarship.

These volumes, in general, are studies by individual scholars within a certain area of Soviet life. Although the Center believes in what the socal relation people call interdisciplinary "cross-fertilization," it does not seek to accomplish this through collaboration or group projects. As Kluckhohn observed in the foreword to Joseph S. Berliner's Factory and Manager in the USSR (No. 27 in the Russian Research Center series), the Center thinks that such an inter-disciplinary approach is most successful when it takes place "under one skull."

For this reason, the scholars at the Russian Research Center generally work next to each other, not together. They meet in the lunchroom at 16 Dunster Street, and participate in periodical seminars on selected topics in the Soviet field. The interdisciplinary cross-feritilization is thus stimulated by constant exposure to different approaches and not by collaboration and attempts at synthesis.

The only exception to this rule against team projects was the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, a large undertaking leading to three books so far--How the Soviet System Works: Cultural, Psychological, and Social Themes, by Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles and Clyde Kluckhohn, the Berliner volume, and Mark G. Field's Doctor and Patient in Soviet Russia--and numerous articles. In this study, carried on in co-operation with the United States Air Force, a team of twenty interviewers spent nearly a year in Munich collecting material from former Soviet citizens who had fled the U.S.S.R. The results were processed and studied by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, economists and political scientists at the Center. Fifty major reports were sent to the Air Force as a result of the Center's work.

The appointment of Fainsod as director this fall, to succeed Professor William L. Langer, is significant since Fainsod is the first real Russian specialist to occupy the position. His predecessors, Kluckhohn and Langer, specialized in cultural anthropology and European history, respectively, with special though only peripheral interest in the Russian field. Fainsod, on the other hand is perhaps the nation's foremost authority on Russian government, and his How Russia is Ruled (No. 11 in the Russian Center services) ranks as the definitive volume in its area.

The Carnegie Corporation has continued to offer generous support for the writing of this book and the other work of the Center. From the funds available, the Executive Committee (appointed by the Corporation) can allocate money for individual research projects submitted by scholars both inside and outside the University. The Committee does not seek to plug gaps in Soviet research systematically but merely accepts the most worthwhile projects that are suggested.

Similiarly, the seminars are not intended to meet specific needs but are scheduled as interesting topics and speakers become available. Sessions within a given year may include Joseph Korbel on The Weimar Republic documents, Michael Petrovics on Historical Writing in Communist Yugoslavia, E.H. Carr on Classes and Party under NEP, Mark Slonim on Recent Developments in Soviet Literature, and a panel discussion on recent trips to the Soviet Union. The field which the Center covers, properly speaking, is immense: the staff tries simply to center local activity, and not to co-ordinate it under any general plan. The most recent seminar was led Monday by Isaac Deutscher on The Historian and the Russian Revolution. Almost 50 people--from second year graduate students to senior faculty members--crowded into a seminar room at 16 Dunster Street built for 20. The occasion for Deutscher's visit illustrates the center's important position in its field. Deutscher came to the United States to study certain Soviet archival documents available only at Widener. The "richness of Widener's collection," according to Shulman, is one of the keys to the Center's pre-eminence.

For the past three or four years, the flow of information from the Soviet Union to the West has be- come much easier in many respects.

When the Center opened in 1948, American scholars could obtain the compilations of Ministerial decrees. This access was cut off in Stalin's tightening up of 1949 and 1950, and has not yet been restored, although individual decrees are now available. Since about 1956, there has been a "greater flow of materials" from the Soviet Union to the West, Fainsod says. But very often, however, the key documents come through fortuitous accidents, like the Smolensk archives Fainsod used for his Smolensk under Soviet Rule. These documents were captured intact by Nazi forces invading the U.S.S.R. during the Second World War.

In addition to the increased accessibility of written materials, the recent "opening up" of Soviet Russia has enabled Western scholars to visit the country, to establish contacts at Russian universities and to confirm or correct their previous impressions. The first step in this process, came in 1956 with the 30-day tourist visa. Fainsod made his first visit to the U.S.S.R. in that year and has returned several times since. Almost every person connected with the Center has been to Russia at least once in the last three years.

But these one-month visits offer only a limited opportunity for scholars. Fainsod says that the visitor generally must follow the route set up by Intourist, the state travel agency.

Although he can get a library card its spectacular growth. Although great progress has been made, the Russian field, Shulman points out, and can meet academic and governmental officials, he has no chance for protracted research.

An important second step in the "opening up," Fainsod feels, is the exchange of pre-Ph.D. graduate students for entire academic years, a program which started last year with half-a dozen Harvard people participating. These students had some opportunities to interview Soviet personnel and could study in the libraries (though not in the governmental archives). This problem of access has yet to be resolved. American scholars now can read the Soviet equivalent of doctoral dissertations, and negotiations for further access and further exchange agreements will take place soon. According to Fainsod, a very important third step in the exchange process would be an agreement enabling "more senior people to spend longer periods of research" in the Soviet Union. He hopes that some such arrangement will emerge from the Harvard-Leningrad exchange agreement.

Under Fainsod's leadership, the Center can be expected to continue has scarcely been covered. Large areas still remain untouched; in others, only scant research has been completed. Rather than pointing with pride at their considerable achievements, most people connected with the Center feel that the task of scholarship has just begun and that--with the greater opportunities for research provided by the "opening up"--the next few years will see a tremendous advance in the Russian field. Whatever the scope of the progress, the Russian Research Center, having established its international pre-eminence over the past decade, will no doubt see a tremendous advance in the Rusplay a crucial role in adding to Western understanding of the Soviet system