Davis Center Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Impact of the end of communism still being felt by scholars

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

The Davis Center for Russian Studies celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this month.

During a weekend of panel discussions and celebratory dinners, more than 400 associates of the Center, past and present, gathered to discuss crucial issues in Russian studies and to talk over old times. With a variety of viewpoints represented, debate was lively and at times sharp, but there was one point on which everyone agreed -- a lot has changed in 50 years.

One change is the organization's name. Founded in 1948 as the Russian Research Center, it became the Davis Center in April 1996, in recognition of a pledge of $10 million from the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation.

More significant, however, is the name change of the political entity the Center was formed to study. The Soviet Union was the real object of the Center's original research effort, but in 1991 that union collapsed.

Now Russia is once again simply Russia, a nation struggling to replace its failed institutions with new ones and to forge a new identity. Although the Davis Center still funds research in former Soviet republics and bloc nations, it has been deeply affected by those changes, which have altered the scope and direction of much of the scholarship undertaken by its associates.

Peering Through the Iron Curtain

"In the early years, studying the Soviet Union was an all-absorbing task," said Davis Center director Timothy Colton, the Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies. "You didn't necessarily have to justify why you were studying one thing or another, but that has changed. Russia is no longer the archetype of a unique phenomenon -- communist dictatorship. As a result, scholars have to ask themselves, what is the reason for doing a particular study? And they have to work harder for funding too."

In 1948, researchers faced a very different Russia. Moving aggressively to bring large portions of eastern Europe under Soviet domination, Josef Stalin aroused growing apprehension among Western leaders. Winston Churchill warned of the "Iron Curtain" while President Truman urged the containment of Communism. East-West tensions grew during the Berlin Airlift. The Cold War, which was to dominate U.S.-Soviet relations for the next 40 years, was rapidly taking shape.

In this atmosphere of apprehension and hostility, the Carnegie Foundation came forward with a $100,000 grant to establish a research project at Harvard to amass information on America's sinister antagonist. Its method was to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to investigate the workings of the Soviet system and to enable Western leaders to better deal with Soviet behavior.

The emphasis was on the social sciences, particularly anthropology and social psychology. Scholars associated with the Center were not necessarily Russian specialists. The first director was Clyde Kluckholm, an anthropologist known for his work among the Navaho.

The Russian Research Center was one of several research projects established at universities around the country. According to many observers, the effort was hugely successful.

"In 50 years, the United States learned more about the Soviet Union than any country has learned about another country in the history of civilization," said Edward Keenan, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History and a longtime associate of the Center.

Struggling for Access

The achievement is remarkable, especially considering the limitations under which American scholars worked at the time. Through much of the Communist period, obtaining a visa to conduct research in the Soviet Union was difficult, and it was even more difficult to travel and communicate without strict supervision.

As a consequence, American scholars scoured newspapers and official publications, trying to read between the lines. In the 1950s the Center conducted an extensive series of interviews with Soviet refugees, creating an archive that still provides valuable information for historians.

But many intrepid researchers refused to be deterred by the Soviet regime's intimidating behavior.

"It wasn't really a distant planet," said Keenan. "I traveled all over the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. It was tricky. I had a few little problems, like getting arrested and harassed. And you had to worry about the vulnerability of your sources. But still, you could get the general lay of the land."

But access to Soviet information sources, difficult as it was to obtain, could be jeopardized if Soviet authorities did not like a scholar's work. Marshall Goldman, the Center's associate director, felt the harshness of Soviet disapproval after the publication of his 1982 book The U.S.S.R. in Crisis: The Failure of an Economic System.

Soviet authorities told Goldman that if he did not change the title of his book, he would no longer be invited to participate in scholarly exchanges. Goldman refused. An invitation to lecture in Moscow came the following year, after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, but this time Goldman was warned that he would be admitted into the country only if he promised not to talk to Russian dissidents. Again he refused, and his lecture was canceled.

"I was officially ostracized. It was not a pleasant experience," he said.

What made it worse was that Goldman's book was also attacked in the West by critics who accused him of encouraging the more hawkish wing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Others argued that it was the United States, not the Soviet Union, that was experiencing an economic crisis and that Goldman's criticism was misplaced.

But Goldman's ostracism did not last for too long. After Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, Goldman was invited back. Expecting a replay of the treatment he had been given two years earlier, he was surprised and gratified by what actually happened.

"I was treated like a conquering hero. People I'd never met before wanted to meet me and hear what I thought."

Goldman's experience was not unique. As censorship and repression eased as a result of Gorbachev's glasnost policy, Western scholars, including many associates of the Russian Research Center, were called upon to provide fresh perspectives on Soviet history and society.

"Those pages in the Russian history were either blank or tampered with. In a sense, we maintained their history," said Goldman.

An Era of Profound Change

But while the advent of Gorbachev and the collapse of Communism six years later vindicated the work of Soviet-era scholars who detected fault lines in the regime's foundations, it also marked a profound change in the nature of Russian studies. Now, seven years later, scholars are still coming to grips with the implications of those events.

"This is not just the 50th anniversary of the Russian Research Center, but a historical turning point," says Roman Szporluk, the Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute. "I feel that this new generation, those who are beginning their careers now -- their task will be to interpret what has happened. It is not a job that the older generation can do."

Szporluk, who has been an associate of the Davis Center since coming to Harvard in 1991, believes that younger scholars -- those who have limited personal memory of the Cold War -- will be the ones to spearhead areas of study that did not even exist a decade ago, focusing on Russia's developing democratic institutions, legal procedures, market-based economy, relations with its former republics and satellites, and other issues.

"There is enough to keep many Ph.D. candidates busy," he says. "But the problems are not totally new. There are things that older scholars can teach."

One reason for this generation gap among Russian scholars, particularly those in government and other social sciences whose job is to study the workings of contemporary society, is that the breakup of the Soviet Union came so abruptly and unexpectedly, catching even old Russia-hands off guard.

Many senior scholars came of age at a time when the Soviet Union was a massive world force, representing a philosophy and way of life seen as inimical to that of the United States. To view the "Evil Empire" of the Reagan-Brezhnev years as something that might vanish overnight seemed the height of scholarly irresponsibility. Even on the eve of its collapse many respected scholars remained skeptical that any significant change would come about in the foreseeable future.

"But don't blame people for not predicting things," cautions Szporluk. "There were many who gave too much credence to the status quo, who assumed the Soviet Union was stable and would last forever."

For younger scholars working in the post-Soviet era, studying Russia is a whole new ballgame. Secrecy and censorship have given way to a laissez-faire attitude toward information that in some ways presents problems of its own. But there are few researchers who regret the loss of the old regime.

Drowning in a Sea of Data

One younger scholar who has taken advantage of the research possibilities of the new Russia is historian Terry Martin, a postdoctoral fellow in the Davis Center who was recently appointed assistant professor of history.

"The collapse of the Party in 1991 opened up enormous opportunities and brought a lot of excitement to the field," he said. "Virtually anyone who wants to can go and work on materials no one has worked with before. Often you'll be the first person signing your name on a given file."

Martin is conducting research on the role of information in the Soviet Union during the Stalin regime. His is interested in how the government learned what was happening in Soviet society without the benefit of a free press and free speech. The answer is that the secret police employed a vast network of informants to report on gossip, overheard conversations, and the general mood of the times. These classified reports are now available for general perusal.

"It used to be so difficult to study the Soviet Union because it took a great deal of effort just to figure out what happened. Now you can just leap into this sea of data. The only drawback is that you can drown in it."

Less Political, More Scientific

For researchers studying 20th-century Soviet history, the collapse of Communism has brought a disorienting wave of new data, but for social scientists, recent political changes have brought about new perspectives and models as well.

"Some of my advisers studied Soviet institutions that no longer exist. When Communism collapsed, some of the essential questions that people had studied suddenly became irrelevant," said Yoshiko Herrera, a graduate student at the University of Chicago who will be coming to Harvard in January 1999 as an assistant professor in the Government Department.

Herrera's own research is indicative of the kind of work being done by political scientists in today's Russia. She has compared two Russian regions or oblasts, Samara and Sverdlovsk, in order to determine how the inhabitants of each region define or construct their political and economic identity.

Such a study could never have been done under the Soviet regime. The central government would not have allowed an outside researcher access to these outlying regions. And even if it had, there was no way of accurately determining people's real feelings or opinions since democratic institutions did not exist.

But now that Russia has joined the family of democratic nations, it has also gained admission into the large group of societies regularly scrutinized by social scientists who are interested in the workings of democratic institutions.

"By 1994-95, Russian studies had moved into the mainstream of political science, and Russia had become just another case, although still a highly interesting case. The whole field has become less political and more scientific," Herrera said.

The Importance of the Past

But some caution that these new approaches should not be carried too far, that even studies of emerging democratic institutions must take account of specifically Russian cultural and historical factors.

"I'd find it very hard to study the Russian economy, for example, without a background in history and language. You can't approach the society as a blank slate and apply the same standards and procedures as you would in your own environment," said Fiona Hill, associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project (SDI) at the Kennedy School and a graduate student in Russian history who will receive her Ph.D. this June.

Hill's dissertation compares the identity crisis suffered by Russian elites in the years 1991-96 with similar problems facing the Russian ruling class in the early 20th century. In both cases she found that these elites sought stability by looking back toward the glories of the past.

But in addition to being a historian, Hill also has practical experience with SDI in building support for democratic institutions in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. She is also the recipient of a 1991 master's degree in area studies, which is administered by the Davis Center. She feels that her value both as a scholar and a practitioner has been immeasurably enhanced by this training.

"Russia has become a major emerging market, and, as a result, most of the approaches toward Russia have been through the prism of economics and investment. It's beginning to be seen as much more 'normal,' more like everywhere else. But it's also not like everywhere else. It's shaped by the past. And I don't believe I could do this work without a grasp of history."

But for some scholars a further dimension is necessary. Svetlana Boym, professor of Slavic languages and literatures and of comparative literature, believes that in order to truly understand Russia one must know its literature and culture.

"The opening of the archives is wonderful, but you have to know how to read them. It's not just a matter of language competence. You must be aware of the nuances of how things are expressed. Even statistics must be understood in the light of cultural mentality."

Most scholars agree that the multiplicity of viewpoints and the sharper focus that younger scholars have brought to Russian studies are healthy developments for the field.

"There are lots of younger scholars who are forging ahead," said Colton, "and that's terrific."

And as those new disciplines and approaches grow and multiply, Colton is confident that the Davis Center will continue to encourage and nurture their development.

"Over the past 50 years, Russian studies has had the capacity to attract interest, and I believe this will continue to evolve over the next 50 years."