No Rush in Russian

The complete absence of a coordinated Russian area study at Harvard appears today to be the result of a short nap taken by University planners over a year ago. While other colleges moved early and fast to get a program centering around the-most-talked-about nation into motion, plans here are still in the drawing board stage and there is yet no promise that the important hole will be plugged by next fall.

At least a part of the blame for Harvard's tardiness must be assigned to the belief, widespread in the '30's, that the new experiment in the land of the Czars would not work, or, alternatively, if it did work, that the people and government would be so vitiated that they could never again become a first class power. The utter fallacy of this belief seeped slowly into the world of academic planning, and it was not until December of 1944--six months before the Soviet Army marched into Berlin--that the idea of an area study that would include Russia was broached to the Committee on Education Policy of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The idea and techniques of concentration in a single region were new. A full year of study and planning was put in before the Subcommittee on Languages and International Affairs reported back to its parent body. The report was accepted favorably. The only trouble was that almost a month before the Harvard report was made, Columbia, aided by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, had most effectively implemented its own plans by signing up what amounted to the cream of the men available in the country to teach such a program.

So it is today that the University program on Russia is stalled for lack of men to teach it. In the Harvard faculty are some of the best men on various aspects of the Soviet Union, but they have heavy departmental duties and could not carry the load alone. The recent death of Samuel H. Cross has severely crimped the vital language side of the regional study. According to those in charge of the plan, men just cannot be found either in sufficient quantity or quality.

But intimate knowledge of Russia can come in packages other than those marked with academic degrees. Particularly over the past few years journalists, writers, and economists have come out of Russia in good, if not a wholly satisfying, number. Men capable of teaching the language, where particular ideological beliefs cannot enter importantly, are available. If the Harvard plan is ever to get off paper and into the classroom these and every other source must be tapped.

The plans now on the drawing board are good, but being premised on the presence of top-notch teaching talent, they should be scaled down some-what to include men of admittedly stop-gap timber. At all events, the Russian area program should get under way even while the University searches for the scarce teachers. Otherwise, for lack of material in Cambridge, the Harvard graduate must continue to turn to other institutions.