Adventures in Russian Historical Research--Reminiscences of American Scholars from the Cold War to the Present (review)

Between about 1956 and 2001 several hundred American graduate students and scholars did research work in Russian archives and libraries. Complicated arrangements agreed upon by Soviet/Russian and American authorities provided the institutional framework and set the terms under which American scholars and students would be permitted to use Russian academic facilities. Samuel H. Baron and Cathy A. Frierson solicited and received accounts of their Russian experiences from twenty historians, ranging from eminent scholars to graduate students working on their doctoral dissertations: N. V. Riasanovsky, S. H. Baron, P. Roosevelt, J. T. Alexander, R. Stites, S. F. Starr, H. Ragsdale, J. Cracraft, L. Engelstein, B. W. Menning, D. J. Raleigh, N. S. Kollmann, E. K. Wirtschafter, E. Levin, R. Weinberg, C. A. Frierson, P. R. Josephson, N. Kizenko, G. Alexopoulos, and S. A. Barnes (in chronological order of their first Russian sojourn).

What was intended as a record of research work in Russia turned out also to be a series of vignettes of the intellectual and professional development of individual American historians of Russia. The editors wisely imposed neither constraints nor directives on the authors, so that each chapter is very personal in its approach, focus, and conclusions. While precluding broad generalizations, the book makes for very interesting and suggestive reading.

A striking feature of the Russian situation is how basically unchanging it remained throughout the existence of the Soviet system. The students and scholars on exchange were confronted throughout with a rigid bureaucracy, centrally controlled, unwilling to make allowances for cultural and intellectual differences or to accommodate unexpected requirements. Underlying ignorance, political and ideological suspiciousness of everything novel, as well as the fear of oversteppingnarrow boundaries and competences permeated the psychology of archivists, librarians, and even some faculty members. While the system collapsed in 1991, the psychological and cultural attitudes did not always follow suit—far from it. In their introduction the editors are quite right to stress the importance of these traits of Russian/Soviet mentality that played and continue to play as restrictive a role as did specific regulations and the fluctuations of the political climate.

All this accounts for the importance of personal contacts and relationships in circumventing formal prohibitions of access and restrictions on topics and approaches of research. The inevitable consequence was that the individual researcher's personality, nimbleness of wit, and pragmatic flexibility became the major factors of success or failure. Therein lies the book's real interest, as each contribution offers insight into the background, personality, and intellectual path of each author and affords a glance into American political culture, more specifically that of its academic sector over the span of fifty years.

The book thus offers a broad spectrum of personalities and their responsesto the challenges presented by research tasks in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. At one end of the spectrum is a dutiful and discreet acceptance of the institutional framework in order to devote all energies and time to the accomplishment of the task at hand. At the opposite extreme is an individualistic (not to say anarchic), freewheeling taking in of the novel environment and total relianceon personal contacts and the vagaries of chance opportunities. The result isa variegated array of accounts. Some are merely lists of incidents told without comments; some tell the stories of how research was shaped and evolvedunder the impact of unforeseen discoveries of documentation; still others offera genuine intellectual bildungsroman of personal and professional develop-ment. Naturally, in the process of describing the role of the Russian research experience, some contributors also shed interesting light on the process oftheir intellectual and political maturation, pointing to the influences andprejudgments that stimulated their interest in Russian history and choice ofresearch topics.

Specific illustrations are not in order—they might not escape being invidious, and they would exceed...