Research Center Studies Soviet Social System

During an age when distrust and hatred hang over mention of the word Russia, when investigation into Communist activities have descended on American government, education and churches, when the nickname of the Cincinnati baseball team is changed, a group of scholarly men, working out of dark offices on Dunster Street are heading the study of modern Russia.

For over five years now, the staff of the Harvard Russian Research Center has investigated the entire Soviet system, from Stalin to Satellite, from social mobility to Soviet medical care. It has filled files with thousands of questionnaires, interviewed over 2000 refugees, and in the process opened up new ideas on the strong and weak points of Russian life. This work will never have the devastating, headline-making effect of a bomb, nor will it even have so direct a result as the work of propaganda men in Radio Free Europe. The job of these men is collecting information about a country enveloped in a great silence, and thus help determine where this country is susceptible.

The Russian Research Center was set up on an original Carnegie Corporation grant in 1948. The Corporation felt the U. S. needed more knowledge of Russia, and it picked Harvard because of the strong social relations department, Russian scholars such as professors Michael Karpovich and Wassily Leontieff, and anthropology leaders such as Clyde Kluckhohn, who had already applied anthropology to the study of Japan in the second world war.

Even then Kluckhohn, executive, director, characterized the purpose of the project as the study of "Russian institutions and behavior in an effort to determine the mainsprings of the international actions and policy of the Soviet Union."

Besides the 11 professors chosen for the executive committee, the staff includes Staff Research Associates, and graduate students writing theses on some aspects of the Russian situation. The Staff men are often assistant professors who also lecture in a course.

Particular Problems

The Center also has specialists from other institutions who are working on a particular problem. This year, Professor Herbert Marcuse from the Columbia Russian Research Center is doing work in Russian philosophy. The other senior fellow, former State Department economist Alexander Eckstein is completing a thesis on the economics of the Russian satellite countries and what happens to these countries during the period of Russian domination.

"It's very hard over to predict what we'll be doing the next year," Kluckhohn said, "because of the large turnover in staff that we have. But the turnover is part of our policy. It keeps us alive to bring in men each year with ideas of their own. That's the reason that we can't plan too far in advance. These men have topics of their own, and that's healthy.

Law and the Church

"If people seem outstanding we let them go outside the few main areas. Currently we have work going on in Soviet language, literature, law and a study of the Orthodox church," Kluckhohn added.

Right now the biggest project over at the Center, is the study of the Soviet Social system, directed by two of the regular staffers, Dr. Alex Inkeles, and Dr. Raymond A. Bauer. Supported by the Air Force, it is a long range program designed for a better understanding of how the Soviet system works and particularly as a basis for firmer predictions on how the regime and its citizens will react to certain situations.

It is the three-month-old hearings of the Air Force's support of this program which were recently blown up in the Boston Post. The Post ran some of the testimony of Senators whose primary objection to the Research Center seemed to stem from their belief that the Harvard faculty couldn't be trusted to do research work on Russia.

The Center's workers took the stories relatively calm, with Bauer, wondering about some of the Post's exclusive factual evidence. "They quoted expenditures on a particular project as $45,000. I don't know how they arrived at the figure. Here we certainly don't know exactly how much it cost but if we could name a figure, it would be closer to $8,000."

Water Pump

Because lack of understanding, or deliberate misinterpretation occurs frequently, the Center must be particularly careful about press relations, requesting right to check copy for facts on all feature stories.

But even so, mistakes happen. Bauer, explaining in a lecture that the Russian youth's mind was sharp but lacking in access to information, compared it to a water pump filled with air, which cries for water. The next day's headlines however, read, "Says Mind of Soviet Youth Like Vacuum."

For the study itself, 15, to 20 men interviewed refugees, trying to get the men's life history, combined with their political and social attitudes and their reactions toward the regime. The Center interviewed over 600 people and used a mnemonic phrase as a guide to get experiences and attitudes in a certain area: "We Guarantee Free Expression Concerning Soviet Problems." The W stands for Work experience, the G for Government, F for Family, E for Education, S for Statification, while the P stands for Philosophy of life.

"There was really no outstanding problem in getting the Russians to talk," Bauer recalls, "We had difficulties because the people were in a delicate position and were afraid both of prejudicing there chances or getting into the United States, and they were also wary of Soviet agents. We were quite successful, although many came in suspicious."

"But," as Inkeles adds, "Bauer's team broke through the suspicion with its sincerity and convinced the people that this was a scientific scholarly work and that we weren't the NVKD or FBI." The refugees, both Bauer and Inkeles agreed, wanted to talk to someone they trusted. "Once they became convinced of our scholarly purpose they became enthusiastic." In fact, as Inkeles points out, the problem then became stopping them. "The Russians are big talkers, very voluble, and they like to reminisce. We tried to hold interviews down to 12 hours, two hours in the morning, two in the afternoon for three days," Bauer added. The Center granted all refugees complete anonymity, and no names were kept.

The interviewing for the study has been completed, and the project officially ends next year. But the vast files in the Center attest to the work still left. The questionnaire material has been transferred to IBM cards, while a cross file with 100 major divisions contains the research data. More than 600 people were interviewed, while over 2,800 people filled out 11,000 different questionnaires.

Everyday Life

The main purpose of the project, according to Inkeles, is understanding Soviet institutions and capabilities. "We didn't have the feeling of everyday life before, and we may never get inside the Politburo. What we want to know is what it means for the ordinary citizen to live in Russia.

"Joseph Berliner's report on the Soviet factory, for instance, exposes problems of the factory which the Russians had wanted to keep secret and which might hurt them if the opportunity arose."

As the Senators found, the practical value of such a program could seem quits intangible until one is in a position to apply research material into psychological warfare or economic planning., "People must realize the problem in translation between basic research and operational research," Bauer says. "We're getting at the basic principles for psychological warfare, not writing radio scripts. We're trying to find where the Russians can be shaken and where they can't be shaken."

Among the refugees there is only hatred for the convinced Communist. Most refugees felt that the convinced Party man will have to be dealt with drastically in the event that the regime is overthrown. According to one man interviewed, "The MVD will be torn to pieces by the population, no Army could every protect them."

"Cruel" and "Bloody"

Stalin was seen as the force behind the existence of the police and the party, and he was held directly responsible for their activities. Most common description of Stalin by the refugees included the words, "cruel," "stubborn," "bloody," "merciless." The refugees felt that his motto was "Go forward without changes, even if people are hungry, even if millions die."

Considering the intensity of their reaction to the Soviet system and the widespread dissatisfaction which the refugees report, one would expect the escapees from Russia to play up the instability of the regime. It is quite striking therefore, according to Bauer and Inkeles, that the informants were almost unanimous in agreeing that there are virtually no chances for an internal revolution or any other form of marked change in the Soviet system brought about spontaneously from within the country. Only by application of force from the outside, the refugees insist, will it be possible to overthrow the present regime.