Studying the Soviets

George Kennan has always been fascinated by the Soviet Union, which Winston Churchill characterized as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." A former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, Kennan, 72, is now engaged in his most ambitious effort to solve that riddle. With Princeton Colleagues James Billington and Frederick Starr, he has set up the first major center for Russian studies to open in the U.S. in more than a decade.

Located in the Smithsonian Institution's Victorian-Gothic headquarters building and affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, the new Kennan Institute will bring experts from round the world to Washington for all-expense-paid weekend seminars, short-term research projects and yearlong fellowships. Its goal: to deepen U.S. understanding of the Soviet Union. Says Kennan: "This is the only truly national institution devoted to Soviet studies. It can serve as an anchor in bad times and a channel for improved communications in good times."

Company Money. Applications have been pouring in for the first full fellowship program, slated to begin this fall. Among the proposals: studies of Soviet society under Stalin, Russian nationalism, Soviet biological research and 19th century Russian ideology.

The institute is already sponsoring a full schedule of conferences on Soviet history, politics and culture. Last week, for example, experts gathered to assess the work of the Soviets' recently concluded 25th Congress of the Communist Party. This spring the center will sponsor a festival of silent Soviet films rarely seen in the West.

Kennan began planning the institute five years ago when he realized that "Russian studies were in for a bad time. Money was drying up; resources and facilities were scattered. Many leaders in the field were dead. It was felt that if I didn't do something, nobody else would." So as not to drain foundation money from existing university centers* for Soviet studies, Kennan approached companies that do business with the Russians, including PepsiCo, Chase Manhattan, Bank of America and General Electric. They responded with enthusiasm--and generous grants.

Soviet officials are also impressed. Says one: "We do not have entirely fond memories of Ambassador Kennan himself [the Kremlin declared him persona non grata after he denounced Stalinism in 1953], but we regard the formation of his institute as a positive development." Indeed, the Russians feel that in the Institut Imyeni Kennana the U.S. finally has a worthy counterpart to Moscow's U.S.A. Institute--a think tank for Americanologists in the Soviet Union.

* Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and Duke.

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