PREFACE

I propose in this volume to analyze academic exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as some of the states of Eastern Europe, from 1958 through 1975 in the framework of Soviet-American cultural relations and of the larger Soviet-American relationship. Academic exchanges with the Soviet Union, which began formally in 1958 and which continue under many of the principles then established, have increased our understanding of the Soviet Union and have created new relationships between our universities and our government. They have often provided the closest and most significant form of personal contact between American and Soviet citizens. They have also played an important political role, although they are called the "neglected aspect" of our foreign policy. They reveal the basic philosophies and policies that separate the two systems and the adversary character of Soviet-American relations.

Negotiations on the issues involved in these exchanges reflect the same Soviet policies and attitudes and create the same problems as do those over SALT. The right of an American scholar who is a guest in the Soviet Union under agreed-upon conditions to travel from Moscow to Leningrad, and the endless actions that he and an American organization must take to secure that right, reflect as clearly the nature of the Soviet system and the Soviet-American relationship as does the prolonged wrangle over West Berlin’s relationship with the Federal Republic of Germany. They reveal the benefits each state derives and the costs it must pay for these new relations, which create critical dilemmas for both parties. Moreover, the skill with which American academic administrators negotiate with the centralized Soviet system affects the total relationship, as does the effectiveness with which our businessmen complete commercial agreements with Soviet state agencies.

I have written this book not only because the subject is interesting and significant, but also because I was deeply involved in the Inter-University Committee from its first days in 1956 until it transferred its activities to the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) in May 1969. I helped found the Committee, a league of American universities that established and administered the principal American exchange programs with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. I served on the policy committees that defined the principles under which these exchange programs began. I participated in countless meetings of scholars and academic administrators to discuss principles, policies, and procedures, and to prepare requests for funds to the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State. I attended the alumni meetings the Committee organized in the early years and all of the Committee’s annual conferences. I profited throughout these years from discussions on campuses in every part of the country with alumni and with all those engaged in any way with academic and other cultural exchanges.

I was a participant in the original travel program to the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1957. In 1963 I enjoyed four months of research in the Institute of History in the Soviet Academy of Sciences as a participant in the program that the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Soviet Academy of Sciences established in 1961. I spent much of the summer of 1974 in Eastern Europe on a grant from IREX to help make arrangements for one institution in each country to provide Indiana University with a copy of every important book and journal published, in return for copies of American books in which they were especially interested.

Above all, I served as chairman of the Inter-University Committee from July 1960 through May 1969, when the administrative offices were at Indiana University. Throughout those years, with many others, I represented American universities in discussions with the Department of State and the Ford Foundation. I also dealt frequently, in person and through correspondence, with officials in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Education in Moscow, Moscow State University, Leningrad State University, and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. I made eleven trips to the Soviet Union for reviews and negotiations and to visit universities from which the Committee accepted scholars and in which we hoped the Soviet government would allow our scholars to study.

After 1962, when I was among a group of Committee representatives who visited Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria to discuss initiating exchange programs, I enjoyed the same kinds of experience in Eastern Europe. Between 1956 and 1969 I also served on a number of occasions on selection and advisory committees of the Foreign Area Fellowship Program, ACLS, and the National Academy of Sciences. In the 1960s I served on committees the Ford Foundation sent to Eastern Europe, in particular to Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, to help choose scholars from those countries for research opportunities in the United States. I spent the summer of 1967 reviewing the work of the Ford Foundation’s International Affairs Division, both here and abroad. From 1957 through 1974 I made fourteen different trips to Eastern Europe for periods from two to seven weeks in duration.

Over the years I talked informally with a good number of American participants in the various academic exchange programs, and with perhaps forty Soviet participants, and I became well acquainted with a number of Soviet officials and scholars. In addition, I have enjoyed long conversations with Jesse Clarkson, John Shelton Curtiss, Merle Fainsod, Calvin Hoover, Philip E. Mosely, Ernest J. Simmons, and Geroid T. Robinson about their experiences as scholars in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. I benefited from long talks with Schuyler Wallace concerning his role in the Foreign Area Fellowship Program and in establishing the Committee. Frederick T. Merrill and Frank Siscoe often described for me their experiences in the Department of State in the early years of academic exchanges, and our Embassy officials in Moscow were equally helpful. Conversations with Richard Speaight and George West of the British Council concerning their experiences and practices, and less-frequent ones with Wolfgang Kasack of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, provided insight concerning the British and German academic exchange programs. Gordon Skilling and Donald V. Schwartz have been equally candid concerning the University of Toronto’s program. Indeed, Skilling for a number of years attended the Committee’s annual meetings. Throughout the 1960s, in particular, Shepard Stone and Stanley Gordon of the Ford Foundation, Frederick Burkhardt and Gordon Turner of ACLS, and Lawrence Mitchell of the National Academy of Sciences were generous in sharing experiences and in responding to queries, as Allan Kassof of IREX has been since 1969. In fact, all of those in organizations that had exchange programs with these countries have showered me with information and views.

In short, I have been active, with many others, in the main element of the exchanges I seek here to analyze. I have therefore written with a particular sense of responsibility. I have learned again from this effort how difficult it is for a historian, perhaps especially one writing about an activity in which he has been engaged, to ascertain the facts, to understand the points of view involved, and to appreciate the hazards created by the climate or atmosphere in which he lives and the assumptions under which he works.

I have tried to be complete, candid, accurate, objective, and resolutely fair. I have attempted to describe what has happened, not what I wish had happened. I have written nothing I would not repeat in the Soviet Union or defend there. At the same time, I have not provided any means for identifying Soviet citizens who were notably helpful or who were critical of their government or its policies. I therefore cannot thank many Soviet scholars, men and women of great professional ability and of the finest human qualities.

I take especial pleasure in expressing warm appreciation to those officials of the Department of State involved in Soviet-American cultural relations. The greater my knowledge of the Soviet Union and of the difficulties our diplomats face negotiating with Soviet representatives, the deeper my admiration has grown for them. I would like to commend in particular Boris Klosson and the late Frank Siscoe, who were directors of the Soviet and East European Exchanges Staff during most of the period from 1958 until 1969, and Guy Coriden of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. These men showed a profound understanding of our national interests, of the nature of Soviet-American relations, of the character of American higher education, and of the need to preserve the independence of our universities and scholars.

I refrain from thanking several scholars and administrators well-informed on this subject who have made helpful critical comments concerning this volume, but they know how grateful I am. John Gallman of the Indiana University Press provided candid insight. Robin Byrnes served as a dedicated and immensely conscientious copy editor, and Emily Sharrow typed the final manuscript.

My wife and children uncomplainingly tolerated my trips to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and my struggle with this volume when it competed with other responsibilities. I could have accomplished nothing without their full understanding and support.

Robert F. Byrnes

Indiana University