New society, new scholarship: Soviet studies programmes in interwar America

Minerva

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 25-43

  Engerman, David C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33750873888     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1004599118173     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. See, e.g., Cohen, Stephen F., "Sovietology as a Vocation", in his Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 8-9;
2. O'Connell, Charles Thomas, "Social Structure and Science: Soviet Studies at Harvard", PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990, ch. 1;
3. White, Stephen, "Political Science as Ideology: The Study of Soviet Politics", in Chapman, Brian and Potter, Allen (eds), W.J.M.M.: Political Question: Essays in Honour of W.J.M. MacKenzie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974), esp. pp. 253-255;
4. Wallerstein, Immanuel, "The Unintended Consequences of Cold War Area Studies", in Chomsky, Noam et al., The Cold War and the Universities: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (New York: New Press, 1997), esp. pp. 200-210;
5. and Berman, Edward H., The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), ch. 4.
6. A useful "insider" critique is Dallin, Alexander, "Bias and Blunders in American Studies on the USSR", Slavic Review, XXXII (April 1973), pp. 560-576.
7. Transformations under the Soviets in the 1920s and Bolshevik goals are well outlined in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1932 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
8. These accusations have been effectively rebutted by at least one practitioner: see Breslauer, George, "In Defense of Sovietology", Post-Soviet Affairs, VIII (1992), pp. 197-238.
9. On the nature of American expertise on Russia in the interwar period, see Manning, Clarence A., A History of Slavic Studies in the United States (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1957), ch. 6;
10. and Coleman, Arthur P., "Slavonic Studies in the United States, 1918-1938", Slavonic and East European Review, XVIII (1938), pp. 372-388.
11. The Russian Provisional Government's ambassador to Washington, Boris Bakhmeteff, was among those who called Coolidge the dean of the field. See Bakhmeteff to Coolidge, 9 January, 1925, Archibald Cary Coolidge Papers (Harvard University Archives), HUG 1299.5, box 1.
12. On Coolidge's achievements, see Byrnes, Robert F., Awakening American Education to the World: The Role of Archibald Cary Coolidge, 1966-1928 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), esp. chs 8-10.
13. For a brief synopsis of Harper's career, see Poster, John B., "A Warmth of Soul: Samuel Northrop Harper and the Russians, 1904-1943", Journal of Contemporary History, XIV (1979), pp. 235-251.
14. Counts' career is summarised in Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, "Prophecy or Profession? George S. Counts and the Social Study of Education", American Journal of Education, C (1992), pp. 137-165.
15. A future article will trace in fuller detail the many wartime efforts from which post-Second World War Sovietology eventually emerged.
16. Hall, Robert B., Area Studies: With Special Reference to Their Implications for Research in the Social Sciences (Social Science Research Council Pamphlet no. 3, 1947), p. 1.
17. On the general context of international studies in this period, see McCaughey, Robert A., International Studies and Academic Enterprise: A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), chs 3-4;
18. and Gumperz, Ellen McDonald, Internationalizing American Education: Innovation and Structural Change (Berkeley: Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, 1970), ch. 1.
19. Precursors for area studies programmes are exhaustively catalogued in Arum, Stephen Marshall, "Early Stages of Foreign Language and Area Studies in the United States, 1915-1941", EdD dissertation, Columbia Teachers College, 1975.
20. For more specific information on the intellectual content of early programmes, see Vanderbilt, Kermit, American Literature and the Academy: The Roots, Growth and Maturity of a Profession (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), ch. 21;
21. and Berger, Mark T., Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas, 1898-1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 35-65.
22. This section draws heavily on Byrnes, Robert R, "The American Institute for Slavic Studies in Prague: A Dream of the 1920s", in his A History of Russian and East European Studies in the United States: Selected Essays (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), ch. 2.
23. Einstein to Oliver Wendell Holmes, 2 August, 1923, in Peabody, James Bishop (ed.), The Holmes-Einstein Letters: Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein, 1903-1935 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1963), pp. 210-211.
24. On Einstein's life, see The Holmes-Einstein Letters: Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein, 1903-1935 (1963), pp. 210-211. ibid.,
25. editor's introduction, and Gelfand, Lawrence E., "Lewis Einstein: American Diplomatist", in Einstein, Lewis, A Diplomat Looks Back (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
26. See list from organisational meeting minutes, 14 November, 1924, Coolidge Papers, series HUG 1299.5, box 1.
27. See William R. Castle to Coolidge, 17 April, 1925, and Coolidge to Castle, 21 April, 1925, in Coolidge Papers, series HUG 1299.5, box 1.
28. See also Byrnes, "American Institute", op. cit.
29. Bulmer, Martin and Bulmer, Joan, "Philanthropy and Social Science in the 1920s: Beardsley Ruml and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, 1922-1929", Minerva, XIX (Autumn 1981), pp. 347-407;
30. Fisher, Donald, Fundamental Development of the Social Sciences: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the United States Social. Science Research Council (Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Press, 1993);
31. and Social Science Research Council, Decennial Report, 1923-33 (New York: SSRC, 1934).
32. Kovelevskii, P.E., Zarubezhnaia Rossiia: istoriia i kul'turno-prosvetitel'naia rabota russkogo zarubezh'ia (Paris: Librarie des Cinq Continents, 1971), pp. 96-102;
33. Riha, T., "Russian Emigre Scholars in Prague after World War I", Slavic and East European Journal, XVI (Spring 1958), pp. 22-27;
34. and Postnikov, S.P. (ed.), Russkie v Prage 1918-1928 gg. (Prague: "Volia Rossii", 1928), pp. 69-114.
35. Coolidge to Stephen Duggan, 21 January, 1926; Coolidge to Einstein, 25 February, 1926; Coolidge to William Phillips, 8 April, 1926, in Coolidge Papers, series HUG 1299.5, box 1.
36. My account is based on documents from Russian archives and the Rockefeller Archive Center, and on Dubie, Alain, Frank A. Golder: An Adventure of a Historian in Quest of Russian History (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1989), ch. 8, and sources cited below.
37. No adequate history of this relief mission exists in English, but see Weissman, Benjamin M., Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921-1923 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1974);
38. and esp., Tsikhelashvili, N.P., "Amerikanskaia pomoshch' narodam Rossii v nachale 20-kh godov XX veka", Dissertatsiia na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh nauk, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1997.
39. Golder, Frank, introduction, Documents of Russian History, 1914-1917, tr. Emanuel Aronsberg (New York: Century, 1927), p. vii.
40. Golder, Frank, Documents of Russian History, 1914-1917, 1927), p. vii. Ibid.
41. "Program for a Study of the Russian Revolution", in Ray Wilbur (Stanford president) to Beardsley Ruml (Social Science Research Council), 5 April, 1926,
42. Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Records (Rockefeller Archive Center), series 3, subseries 6, box 69, folder 723.
43. All documents cited are in this folder (hereafter LSRM Records). Golder called the group with Coolidge the "Harvard Committee": Golder to Guy Stanton Ford (LSRM), 16 March, 1925, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Records ibid.
44. "A Plan for the Study of the Russian Revolution", 3 March, 1925, LSRM Records.
45. See also draft agreements from 1927 in Gosudarstvennyi arkiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF) f. 5283 s.ch, op. 1a, d. 80, 1. 113 and d. 104, 1. 34.
46. Arthur Woods (LSRM acting president) to Wilbur, 28 May, 1925; Ford to Wilbur 19 May, 1925, LSRM Records. The LSRM, like other foundations, often insisted on maintaining a low profile on potentially controversial grants: see Karl Barry D. and Katz, Stanley N., "The American Private Philanthropic Foundation and the Public Sphere, 1890-1930", Minerva, XIX, (Summer 1981), pp. 262-267.
47. See, e.g., Golder Diary, 21 September, 1921, in Emmons, Terence and Patenaude, Bertrand M. (eds), War, Revolution and Peace in Russia: The Passages of Frank Golder, 1914-1927 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1992), p. 316; Golder (from Paris) to Wilbur, 15 November, 1925, LSRM Records.
48. Litoshenko, L.N., "The National Income of the Soviet Union", Quarterly Journal of Economics, XLII (1927), pp. 70-93.
49. Golder to Wilbur, n.d., cited in Dubie, A., Frank A. Golder, op. cit., p. 182.
50. Sokolnikov, Gregory Y. and associates, Soviet Policy in Public Finance, 1917-1928, tr. Elena Varnek, ed. Lincoln Hutchinson and Carl C. Plehn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1931).
51. Sokol'nikov's "associates" were other Soviet finance officials.
52. Hutchinson in his preface acknowledged that the book was "much less a scientific, objective study than an ex parte statement", ibid., p. vii.
53. The book had positive reviews by Hoover in Slavonic and East European Review, XI (1933), pp. 212-214,
54. and Journal of Political Economy, XL (1932), pp. 281-282;
55. and by Robert Kerner in American Historical Review, XXXVII (1933), pp. 801-802.
56. See, e.g., Litvinov to Kameneva, 25 February, 1929, GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 104, 1. 27; Litvinov to Petrov, 25 September, 1929; Rotshtein to Petrov, 3 November, 1929; Litvinov to Molotov, 9 October, 1929. All in GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 125, ll. 60-62, 66; numerous other letters in that delo [file folder] refer to the Stanford institute: ll. 29-30, 32, 36-36ob 42-43 51-53ob, 59, 67-69, 75-76, 86).
57. Petrov to H.H. Fisher, 4 November, 1929, GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 125, 1. 68.
58. Litvinov to Stalin, 20 October, 1928, GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 104, ll. 98-99.
59. Rotshtein to Kameneva, 13 October, 1928, GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 104, 1. 96. Protocol of NKID American Commission, 21 March, 1928, GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 104, 1. 35.
60. Petrov to H.H. Fisher, 4 November, 1929, GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 125, 1. 68.
61. Eatwell, John, Milgate, Murray and Newman, Peter (eds), The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1991), s.v. "Cobb-Douglas Function".
62. See Chase, Stuart, Dunn, Robert W. and Tugwell, Rexford Guy (eds), Soviet Russia in the Second Decade: A Joint Report by the Technical Staff of the First American Trade Union Delegation (New York: John Day, 1928).
63. Douglas contributed "Labor Legislation and Social Insurance", "Wages and the Material Condition of the Industrial Workers", "The Consumers' Cooperative Movement", and (with Dunn) "The Trade Union Movement".
64. Gitlow, Benjamin, I Confess: The Truth about American Communism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1940), pp. 295-297; Gitlow incorrectly dated the trip as in summer 1926.
65. A scholarly retelling which supplements Gitlow with one unnamed but "well-informed" source and Paul Douglas' denials, is Margulies, Sylvia R., The Pilgrimage to Russia: The Soviet Union and the Treatment of Foreigners, 1924-1937 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 48-52.
66. On Dunn's Communist Party connections, see Klehr, Harvey, Haynes, John Earl and Anderson, Kyrill M., The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 187-190.
67. See Douglas' incomplete memoirs, In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), pp. 49-54,
68. for his version. His interest in Russia did not wane immediately after his initial failure; he expressed interest in a joint study in 1932 of Russia sponsored by VOKS's American affiliate, the American-Russian Institute: see "Proekt dokladnoi zapiski NKID," GARF f. 5283, op. 3, d. 181, 1. 18. He was on the executive committee of the Chicago branch of this institute as late as 1933: clipping from Chicago American, n.d., in GARF f. 5283, op. 3, d. 246, 1. 15. Douglas' voluminous papers include nothing on his 1927 trip or the proposal to the Soviets: see Paul H. Douglas Papers (Chicago Historical Society), boxes 330-332.
69. See Gitlow, B., I Confess, op. cit., p. 296;
70. and Flynn, George Q., American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932-1936 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968), p. 131.
71. See Harper, Paul V. (ed.), The Russia I Believe In: The Memoirs of Samuel N. Harper, 1902-1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 157.
72. Harold Kellock to H. Parker Willis, n.d., Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter AVPRF) f. 508, op. 5, pap. 9, d. 21, ll. 94-94ob.
73. See Bulmer, M. and Bulmer, J., "Philanthropy and Social Science in the 1920s", op. cit.
74. The paragraphs which follow are based on the Russian translation of Douglas' proposal, "Proekt nauchnogo issledovaniia sovetskogo khoziaistva i politicheskogo opyta", GARF f. 5283 s.ch., op. 1a, d. 104, ll. 72-79ob. No English copy was found.
75. Litvinov to Molotov, 11 August, 1928, AVPRF f. 04, op. 3, pap. 15, d. 217, ll. 4-6.
76. Litvinov to Molotov, 23 August, 1928, AVPRF f. 04, op. 3, pap. 15, d. 217, ll. 9-11; Litvinov to Politburo members, 22 August, 1928, AVPRF f. 04, op. 3, pap. 15, d. 217, 1. 8.
77. Filene, Peter G., Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 287.
78. On the change in business forecasts, see Romer, Christina D., "The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression", Quarterly Journal of Economics CV (August 1990), pp. 597-624.
79. A Moscow-based journalist, who frequently lectured in the United States on Soviet affairs, also noted the change in attitude between 1929 and 1931: see Lyons, Eugene, Assignment in Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), p. 399.
80. See De Santis, Hugh, The Diplomacy of Silence: The American Foreign Service, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 30.
81. "Page School Project . . .", 20 October, 1931, in Samuel Northrop Harper Papers (University of Chicago), box 16, folder 16.
82. See the budget enclosed in MacMurray to Edward Day (director for social sciences, Rockefeller Foundation), 23 September, 1931, J.V.A. MacMurray Papers (Mudd Library, Princeton University), box 120; also MacMurray to Day, 24 September, 1931; MacMurray to Owen Young, 3 October, 1931, both in ibid.
83. MacMurray form letter, 11 August, 1931, MacMurray Papers, box 120. MacMurray, Harper, Hoover, and Morris met in early August 1931 to decide the participants; see MacMurray to Treasurer, 11 August, 1931, ibid.
84. MacMurray to Arthur W. Page, 11 August, 1931, MacMurray Papers, box 120.
85. See MacMurray to Page, 11 August, 1931; and MacMurray to Edward Day (Rockefeller Foundation), 23 September, 1931, in MacMurray Papers, box 120. MacMurray's papers do not contain responses to his letters to the State Department.
86. Revd Edmund Walsh, SJ, founder of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, was dropped at the insistence of Samuel Harper; MacMurray to Morris, 5 August, 1931, MacMurray Papers, box 119. On Robinson, see Harper to Calvin Hoover, 4 September, 1931, Calvin Bryce Hoover Papers (Duke University Archives), box 16.
87. See MacMurray to Morris, 2 October, 1931; MacMurray to F.P. Kepell, 3 October, 1931; Macmurray to Raymond Fosdick (Rockefeller Foundation), 8 October, 1931; MacMurray to Arthur Page, 1 October, 1931, in MacMurray Papers, box 121.
88. While foundation support for the social sciences declined precipitously because of the Depression, the effects were not felt strongly until well after 1931, when this proposal was declined One scholar calculates foundation grants for the social sciences as increasing slightly from 1931 to 1934 but falling drastically between 1934 and 1937: Geiger, Roger L., To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 253-254.
89. See Arum, S.M., "Early Stages", op. cit., p. 500;
90. Manning, C. A., History of Slavic Studies, op. cit., p. 58.
91. See Mosely, Philip E., "The Growth of Russian Studies", in Fisher, Harold H. (ed.), American Research on Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), pp. 2-5.
92. The founding members of the ACLS committee included George R. Noyes (literature, University of California-Berkeley), chairman; Samuel H. Cross (literature, Harvard University); Philip E. Mosely (history, Cornell University), and Geroid T. Robinson (history, Columbia University). Its pre-war activities amounted to initiating bibliographic projects and starting a Slavic Studies journal, a task interrupted by the temporary adoption of the British journal Slavonic and East European Review. See ACLS Bulletin, XVII (November 1938), p. 161;
93. ACLS Bulletin, XXX (May 1940) pp 259-260;
94. ACLS Bulletin, XXXIII (October 1941), p. 47.
95. See Simmons, Ernest J., "The Study of Contemporary Russian Civilization", Journal of Higher Education, XIV (November 1943), pp. 439-440.
96. The pieces were also published separately as Simmons, Ernest J. (ed.), USSR: A Concise Handbook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1947).
97. On the intellectual history of the Soviet Union division, see Katz, Barry M., Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), ch. 5.
98. On the group's impact on wartime diplomacy, see Dessants, Betty Abrahamsen, "The American Academic Community and United States-Soviet Union Relations: The Research and Analysis Branch and Its Legacy, 1941-1947", PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1995.
99. See also the synopsis on the occasion of the semicentennial of the leading American association for Slavic Studies: Naimark, Norman, "On the 50th Anniversary: The Origins of the AAASS," AAASS Newsnet 38 (November 1998), pp. 1-5.
100. On the military programmes, see Fenton, William Nelson, Area Studies in American Universities (Washington: American Council on Education, 1947),
101. and his Report on Area Studies in American Universities, 6 vols (Washington: Ethnogeographic Board, Smithsonian Institution, 1945);
102. McCaughey, R., International Studies, op. cit., ch. 5.
103. Matthew, Robert John, Language and Area Studies in the Armed Services: Their Future Significance (Washington: American Council on Education, 1947), chs 5, 6, 10.
104. For a spirited critique of modernisation theory as applied to the Soviet Union, see Malia, Martin, "From under the Rubble, What?", Problems of Communism, XLII (January-April 1992), pp. 89-106;
105. on totalitarianism, see Cohen, S.F., "Sovietology", op. cit.;
106. and Gleason, Abbott, Totalitarianism: An Inner History of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch. 7.
107. See Meyer, Alfred G., "Coming to Terms with the Past . . . And with One's Older Colleagues", Russian Review, XLV (1986), pp. 401-408.
108. Minerva 37: 45-62, 1999.