Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts [Hardcover]

David C. Engerman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195324862 | ISBN-13: 978-0195324860 | Publication Date: November 20, 2009 | Edition: 1St Edition

As World War II ended, few Americans in government or universities knew much about the Soviet Union. As David Engerman shows in this book, a network of scholars, soldiers, spies, and philanthropists created an enterprise known as Soviet Studies to fill in this dangerous gap in American knowledge. This group brought together some of the nation's best minds from the left, right, and center, colorful and controversial individuals ranging from George Kennan to Margaret Mead to Zbigniew Brzezinski, not to mention historians Sheila Fitzpatrick and Richard Pipes. Together they created the knowledge that helped fight the Cold War and define Cold War thought. Soviet Studies became a vibrant intellectual enterprise, studying not just the Soviet threat, but Soviet society and culture at a time when many said that these were contradictions in terms, as well as Russian history and literature. And this broad network, Engerman argues, forever changed the relationship between the government and academe, connecting the Pentagon with the ivory tower in ways that still matter today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The extraordinary range and depth of Engerman's research and the narrative arc knitting this book together from start to finish make Know Your Enemy a consummate work of scholarship and historical imagination. Engerman's critical assessment of all the diverse components within academic 'Sovietology' shatters one clich� after another. Soviet Studies never fashioned a single Cold War vision of the USSR and never served simply as an ideological arm of U.S. foreign policy-even when scholars were most closely linked with diplomatic and military operatives."--Howard Brick, University of Michigan

"Those in and out of the field of Soviet Studies will find genuine revelations in Know Your Enemy. Engerman combines thorough research with a firm footing in the sociology of knowledge of the post-World War II world in this remarkable story of the U.S.'s most successful area studies enterprise. The author sensibly and dispassionately navigates the reader through the maelstrom of conflicts and controversies that beset the field and is practitioners from the Second World War until the fall of the Soviet Union."--Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University

"Looking at both people and institutions, David Engerman has written the most complete and informative account of the rise and fall of Russian/Soviet studies. Sovietology arose out of world war and Cold War, but Engerman demonstrates that rather than simply ideologically driven, this scholarly field contained a variety of voices that contested with one another to influence colleagues, the government, and the public. The fate of the field, however, was intimately tied to the global conflict with America's adversary, and when Soviet socialism collapsed, Sovietology disappeared along with it. Yet the contours of understanding a distant and little known rival continue to influence new generations still perplexed by that part of the world."--Ronald Grigor Suny, author of The Soviet Experiment

"In his excellent history of Cold War Sovietology, which is solidly grounded in interviews and more than 100 archival collections, David Engerman has fashioned an important institutional and intellectual history of its academic dimensions. This clearly argued, fair-minded, and very illuminating volume reveals more interesting individuals and a more complicated story (as archives always do) than the oft repeated commonplaces about this history have revealed."--Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History

"[D]eeply researched new book."--Evan R. Goldstein, The Chronicle Review

"[E]ngrossing." -- Wall Street Journal

"[F]ascinating history." -- Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs

"Deeply researched, well-written, this is an important chronicle that explains much about how government and academia still interact, and it should be read not just by
Russophiles, but by anyone interested in new academic initiatives to focus on 'Islamic Studies.'"--Paul E. Richardson, Russian Life

"[An] essential book for any student of the former Soviet Union-and anyone who wants to understand how scholarship is made when it is intertwined with national security concerns."
--William W. Finan Jr., Current History

"In writing this very readable account of the rise and fall of Soviet Studies in teh United States, Engerman embodies the very type of scholar that might have, in greater numbers, saved the field...Know Your Enemy proves to be a good example of how scholars in the humanities can use their substantial research and teaching skills to combine a rigorous scholarly analysis of a subject with an engaging text in order to reach a wide and varied readership." --Belles Lettres

"It is a fascinating story, filled with colorful, outsized personalities from various walks of life, and Engerman tells it well, in clear and economical prose and with a keen eye for the telling anecdote and vivid quote. ...[A] penetrating investigation of the complex relationship between national security and intellectual life in Cold War America." --Journal of American History

"An exciting odyssey into Cold War Sovietology." --Slavic Review

"A work of remarkable breadth and depth...Know Your Enemy brings together institutional and intellectual history to add fresh insights to the field of Cold War Studies...This important book brings back into view the problematic role of the academy at the intersection of scholarship, epistemology, and national security."--Reviews in American History

About the Author

David C. Engerman is the author of Modernization from the Other Shore, named a best book on Russia by Foreign Affairs. He is an Associate Professor of History at Brandeis University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1St Edition edition (November 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195324862
• ISBN-13: 978-0195324860
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,110,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Relevant Expertise, January 2, 2010

By 

Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (Hardcover)

This is an entirely fascinating book that is masquerading as a dull study of those unique scholars, mostly social scientists, who in the wake of WWII and in the early Cold War developed and participated in Soviet studies. Engerman with the narrowness which is characteristic of modern academic research only vaguely mentions that in point of fact the post-WWII period saw the creation and growth of the area studies concept for all regions. Although he focuses only on Soviet experts much of what he recounts of their experiences, particularly their involvement in national policy, was replicated by area studies experts in general.

The use of academic expertise to understand complex and different, but hostile societies began in WWII particularly with Japan, when cultural anthropologists, such as Ruth Benedict, were asked to examine Japanese culture and society. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had a research and analysis division along with a host of academic experts began various Russian studies programs at first to better understand an important ally and towards the end of the war a potential enemy. Although far from perfect the application of various social science disciplines to `real world' problems during WWII proved useful enough in strategic planning that the newly created U.S., Department of Defense and CIA wanted this sort of work to continue. Also various private foundations, such as the Ford Foundation, recognized the need for the U.S. to become much more aware of foreign affairs that was the case prior to WWII so were willing to fund scholarly research into the social, political and economic details of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR), as well as other foreign countries. The U.S. Air Force was particularly interested in such studies for strategic planning purposes and CIA in its early days used scholarly research to supplement its production of finished intelligence. All this gave Soviet Studies both the financing and relevance to blossom across the country although Engerman focus primarily on the Centers established at Harvard and Columbia Universities. This also was the halcyon days for the Rand Corporation which served principally as the semi-private think tank of the Air Force and from which a good deal of good scholarship emerged on Soviet issues. Interestingly enough when CIA produced a controversial 1974 National Intelligence Estimate of Soviet strategic capabilities it was subjected to a competitive review by an outside group (a "B Team") that included Academic Soviet Experts who effectively questioned its accuracy.

According to Engerman Soviet Studies not surprisingly came to an end when the USSR collapsed. Although he implies that Russian studies have ceased to be important, many scholars would disagree and would argue that the opening up of Russian archives have opened entirely new vistas to scholars.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply researched and well written, April 21, 2010

By 

Paul E. Richardson "Russian Life" (Montpelier, VT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (Hardcover)

It is astounding to realize how few Russian experts (barely beyond single digits) there were in the United States before the 1917 revolution and even before World War II. Indeed, in 1948, when the war with Hitler was won and the Cold War just begun, the U.S. government only had about a dozen Russian speakers in its employ.

What followed was an explosion of government funding for academic programs and institutes around the country, the development of Soviet Studies and Kremlinology, and a strenuous effort to "know thine enemy."

Engerman shows that this effort forged a unique relationship between government and academia. It was a relationship not limited to the hard or social sciences, as it bled over into literature, creating a web of interaction between spies, academics, generals and politicians that somehow linked Pushkin to the Pentagon, yet mostly failed to predict, half a century later, the sudden collapse of the organism under study.

Deeply researched, well-written, this is an important chronicle that explains much about how government and academia still interact, and it should be read not just by Russophiles, but by anyone interested in new academic initiatives to focus on "Islamic Studies."

As reviewed in [...].

3.0 out of 5 stars A bit of a slog, April 2, 2010

By 

W. R. Nelson "bookkeeper" (Glenview, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (Hardcover)

I'm interested in the subject, but I found the book pretty dry. Everything seems well documented but reads pretty much as a recitation of facts. This is probably better suited for the more "hard core" student of this area of history, and not the general history buff looking for a little more insight into this era.