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.

Introduction: Knowing the Cold War EnemyPart I: A Field in Formation1. The Wartime Roots of Russian Studies Training2. Social Science Serves the State in War and Cold War3. Institution-Building on a National ScalePart II: Growth and Dispersion4. The Soviet Economy and the Measuring-Rod of Money5. The Lost Opportunities of Slavic Literary Studies6. Russian History as Past Politics7. The Soviet Union as a Modern Society8. Soviet Politics and the Dynamics of TotalitarianismPart III: Crisis, Conflict, and Collapse9. The Dual Crises of Russian Studies10. Right Turn into Halls of Power11. Left Turn in the Ivory Tower12. Perestroika and the Collapse of Soviet StudiesEpilogue: Soviet Studies after the Soviet UnionEssay on Sources