American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century

2. To Moscow and Back: American Social Scientists and the Concept of Convergence

2 To Moscow and Back: American Social Scientists and the Concept of Convergence David C. Engerman T h e field o f Soviet Studies greJv from practically nothing into a major intellectual enterprise in the decades afterTlVorld Tl'ar 11.T~Vllile the field clearly benefited from the desire to lzno~vthe Cold Tl'ar enem7; the ,hesican intellectual encounters wit11 the USSR had effectsfar beyond foreign policy Indeed, scholars in Soviet Studies fashioned or refashioned some o f the central concepts o f ,hesican social sciences in the postJvar period. Even terms typically connected to Western society took neJv life and new forms as a result o fintellectual encounters~vith the So~iet cnion. "Industrial society" is one such term. As leading sociologists sought to define modern life, they turned increasingly to the Soviet cnion, ~vhich they saw as an industrial society similar in many \rays to western societies, especially the United States. Studying the Soviet cnion, then, could teach us about ourselves as well as the Cold War adversary. T h e broad intellectual implications o f studying the Soviet Union were hardly lost o n ,hesican scholars and foundation executives, even in the early years o f the Cold Tl'ar. TlVl~enthe Carnegie Corporation provided a grant to create Harvard University's Russian Research Center (RRC) in 1947, it had far grander aims than merely influencing foreign policy T h e Carnegie Corporation ~vantedto advance research in the social sciences using Russia as a case study T h e first director o f the center, not surprisingl7 ; echoed its benefactor's concerns; he saw Harvard's contributions "both from the point o f vie~v o f scholarship and the national interest."' These dual ambitions, scholarly and political, go a long ray in explaining how it came to be that ,herica's best-funded institution for S o ~ i e t studies Jvas initially led by a group containing n o experts in Russian and Soviet affairs,and indeed n o one who could spealz or read Russian. T h e main attraction for the Carnegie Corporation was Harvard's neJv Department o f Social Relations (DSR),~vhich brought together social psychologists, sociologists , and cultural anthropologists in the ill-defined but well-fundedfield o f the behavioral sciences. Both administrative and intellectual leadership in this field came from sociologist Talcott Parsons, ~vllose ~vorlzso f social theory dominated postwar social scientific thought in the United States. 48 David C. Engerman Carnegie officials secured Parsons's participation in the Russian Center's Executive Committee;he remained a member until retiring from Harvard in 1973. In part to redress its oJvn laclz o f expertise o n Russia, the RRC devoted its first semester, spring 1948, to an ongoing seminar about future research possibilities. Inviting a variety o f guest spealzers, center members engaged in serious if unsystematic (and occasionally desultory) analyses o f how different fields o f scholarship could contribute to American knowledge o f the USSR-and how that knowledge would contribute to the different social sciences. Existing scholarship o n the cSSR offeredfew ideas in line with the RRC's plans. American understandings o f the Soviet Union emphasized its great distance from and differenceswit11 the West. Could one apply any general rules (associal scientists did) to the society that TlVinstonChurchill famously called a "riddle ~vrappedin a mystery inside an enigma"? O n e common vie~v o f the cSSR saw Stalin's rule as but one chapter in a seemingly eternal history o f despotism in Russia, stretching baclz to Ivan the Terrible or even earlier. Other vie~vsemphasized instead the Soviet commitment to Marxism, making the cSSR not so much a society as an incarnation o f a political i d e a . F e ~ v scholars suggested that Russia had anything in comm o n ~vith the capitalist world. In contrast to these approaches, Harvard's Russian Research Center sought to root its ~vorlz in the latest techniques o f social science. Behavioral scientists, especially in the Department o f Social Relations, ~vorlzed~vith the RRC in pursuit o f a testing-ground for new approaches to the social sciences .' Clyde Kluckhohn-a founding member o f the DSR and the first director o f the RRC-noted that the Center's principal goal \\.as "interdisciplinary research o n a high academic l e ~ e l . " ~ This agenda ~vould pay o f f handsomely Harvard trained many o f the leading...