Russian Center Plans Fund-Drive

Harvard's Russian Research Center will launch a multi-million dollar fund-raising drive this spring in an effort to invigorate an institution perceived to have slipped in national prominence. University officials said yesterday

The new campaign, set to begin in mid-May will seek to counter recent criticism that the Center is no longer the premier institution in its field, having gradually fallen behind Soviet studies programs at other major universities because of a lack of funds, officials said

While he refused to specify the exact financial goals of the campaign. Center Director Adam B Ulam said the campaign planned to raise "several million dollars" from individual contributions, and grants from corporations and foundations

Funds raised in the campaign will "help train a new generation of Soviet specialists a group very badly needed in this country today," Ulam said

Soviet studies programs across the country have suffered steady declines in public and private funding in the last 15 years as tensions toward the Soviet Union subsided and major benefactors have shifted their donations to domestic projects.

Discussion of Harvard's deteriorating status in the field of Soviet studies increased last December when Columbia University's Russian Research Institute received an $11.5 million contribution from the family of W. Averell Harriman, former ambassador to the Soviet Union and governor of New York.

Admitting that the fundraising drive is "long overdue," Marshall Goldman, associate director of the center, said that the campaign "gained competitive momentum" after the Harriman gift to Columbia was announced.

Goldman noted, however that planning for the fundraising drive began many years ago--even before the Harriman contribution was made.

Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky authorized the campaign last fall, said Thomas W. Stephenson, the Harvard Development Office's director of corporations and foundations.

The University's approval of the campaign marks a reversal of previous University policy forbidding special fund-raising efforts during the ongoing $ 350 million Harvard Campaign.

The campaign has generally encouraged donors to give money without targeting funds to any particular project.

The University has finally given us the green light to begin out own efforts," Ulam said