New Departure

Harvard's new Russian Research Center will operate almost without competition in a field of unquestionable and immediate importance. Postwar Soviet Russia has already been analyzed economically, politically, and militarily by newspapermen, professors, senators, trained observers, and other species of export. The result, as far as the non-expert observer is concerned, has been a collection of conclusive facts diametrically opposed by a collection of equally conclusive facts. Except for the Hoover Library at Stanford, the Research Center will be the only major organization devoted to a discovery, on a coldly academic basis, of the actual nature of modern Russian institutions. Should the project be successful, it may enable, or at least encourage, a return to the realm of enlightened opinion from the realm of doubt and uncertainty in which most persons have been roaming recently.

"Inter-disciplinary" is the word which Clyde M. K. Kluckhohn, professor of Anthropology and director of the project, uses to describe the nature of the study. It means that the Research Center will undertake an organized and cohesive study of modern Russian institutions. The project will not consist of financial grants for research to individual experts. It will bring individual experts to Cambridge, but they will work within a plan of study. Furthermore, this plan will include study not only of economic and political institutions, but also of sociological, anthropological, and psychological sides of Russian life. The findings of the Center will be valuable because they will form, in Kluckhohn's words, an "attempt to consider the workings of current Russian institutions as a system." They will be uniquely valuable, because this scope is unprecedented.

Before the Research Center can begin to consider delving behind the "iron curtain" in its search for material, it must determine exactly what sort of material it wishes to discover. This process will occupy the Center for the better part of the spring term, and will involve an analysis of what already is known about Russia. Even in this preliminary stage, the work can be valuable. A clear separation of truth from fabrication among available data, and an "inter-disciplinary" organization of that data, could clarify much of the current muddle.

Once past the preparatory stage, once the known has been separated from the unknown, the Research Center will face its great problem. It will have to decide whether or not an attack on the unknown would be feasible in view of the findings to date. Although the Carnegie Foundation's grant of $100,000 is intended to last only until July 1, should Professor Kluckhohn and his executive committee favor continuing the work, further grants will surely be accessible. The University has entered auspiciously into a vital field with a unique, non-political, non-partisan plan. The comprehensive nature of the work augments the hope that the Russian Research Center will find it possible to continue after next July.