What do you think?
Rate this book
Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts
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.
and academe, connecting the Pentagon with the ivory tower in ways that still matter today.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published October 23, 2009
7 people are currently reading
204 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 31, 2014
After World War II revealed the Soviet Union to be a major international player and rival to the United States, US government and academia felt an urgent need to learn as much as possible about this hitherto neglected country. David C. Engerman's Know Your Enemy follows the field of American Sovietology from its postwar beginnings and “bonanza years” to its decline and ultimate collapse. As someone whose own field (Uralic and Altaic linguistics) received contributions from Americans who claimed to seek an understanding of the Communist enemy, I was curious about the intersections between Soviet areal studies and American national defense concerns, and the difficulty of studying a part of the world that was largely closed to foreigners.
Engerman begins by describing the establishment of institutions dedicated to understanding the Soviet Union, from the important university departments at Columbia and Harvard to Ford Foundation grants and academic-government liaison projects. From there, to a large degree the book is a listing of American experts on the Soviet Union with their notable books, and Engerman describes their unique positions on the USSR, their rivalries with other scholars or institutions, and their collaboration (or lack thereof) with the US government. There's lots of academic drama, as well as some interesting axes to grind: I had no idea that among American sovietologists there so many Communists (of a non-Stalinist or non-Bolshevik stripe) or even an Eurasianism chauvinist. Engerman gives a rather dismal view of most scholars’ qualifications: sovietologists often moved in different circles from other scholars, and dedicating so much time to language learning meant they could spend less time on other, interdisciplinary themes.
While I had noticed that American contributions to the study of Russia’s minorities and Central Asian peoples mainly stopped after 1991, when the Soviet Union was no longer a big bogeyman, Engerman describes the real decline of the field as coming already in the early 1970s. The American economy slump reduced funding for research, the years of détente reduced the image of the USSR as an urgent threat, and many important scholars retired or passed away without leaving clear successors. The late 1960s and early 1970s are also a turning point in the relationship between academia and government; early sovietologists didn't think twice about accepting military funding or consulting for the CIA, but after the upheavals of the 1960s academics were more wary about working for the state.
The downside of this book is that while it begins with describing the whole breadth of Soviet studies – with humanities like literary and areal studies too – in its last chapters it becomes too focused on political strategists. Engerman claims that the secession of the union republics took American sovietologists by surprise, because these figures had ignored national themes, but this is only because Engerman had come to focus only on those scholars and pundits who weren't working with nationality themes. As someone who got this book wanting to read at least something about Soviet areal studies, I was disappointed by the small amount of space ultimately dedicated to this. Also, Engerman gives very little impression of how sovietologists got on during visits to Russia; there's some discussion of what restrictions American directors of exchange programmes put on young scholars (such as not getting frisky with other Americans studying in Russia), but no coverage of how the Soviet state treated these foreigners.
Still, this book was a fairly entertaining overview of an interesting era in American history. Plus, it offers some fine background to the zany portrayal of Sovietology in Hollywood films (e.g. Dr. Strangelove).
Engerman begins by describing the establishment of institutions dedicated to understanding the Soviet Union, from the important university departments at Columbia and Harvard to Ford Foundation grants and academic-government liaison projects. From there, to a large degree the book is a listing of American experts on the Soviet Union with their notable books, and Engerman describes their unique positions on the USSR, their rivalries with other scholars or institutions, and their collaboration (or lack thereof) with the US government. There's lots of academic drama, as well as some interesting axes to grind: I had no idea that among American sovietologists there so many Communists (of a non-Stalinist or non-Bolshevik stripe) or even an Eurasianism chauvinist. Engerman gives a rather dismal view of most scholars’ qualifications: sovietologists often moved in different circles from other scholars, and dedicating so much time to language learning meant they could spend less time on other, interdisciplinary themes.
While I had noticed that American contributions to the study of Russia’s minorities and Central Asian peoples mainly stopped after 1991, when the Soviet Union was no longer a big bogeyman, Engerman describes the real decline of the field as coming already in the early 1970s. The American economy slump reduced funding for research, the years of détente reduced the image of the USSR as an urgent threat, and many important scholars retired or passed away without leaving clear successors. The late 1960s and early 1970s are also a turning point in the relationship between academia and government; early sovietologists didn't think twice about accepting military funding or consulting for the CIA, but after the upheavals of the 1960s academics were more wary about working for the state.
The downside of this book is that while it begins with describing the whole breadth of Soviet studies – with humanities like literary and areal studies too – in its last chapters it becomes too focused on political strategists. Engerman claims that the secession of the union republics took American sovietologists by surprise, because these figures had ignored national themes, but this is only because Engerman had come to focus only on those scholars and pundits who weren't working with nationality themes. As someone who got this book wanting to read at least something about Soviet areal studies, I was disappointed by the small amount of space ultimately dedicated to this. Also, Engerman gives very little impression of how sovietologists got on during visits to Russia; there's some discussion of what restrictions American directors of exchange programmes put on young scholars (such as not getting frisky with other Americans studying in Russia), but no coverage of how the Soviet state treated these foreigners.
Still, this book was a fairly entertaining overview of an interesting era in American history. Plus, it offers some fine background to the zany portrayal of Sovietology in Hollywood films (e.g. Dr. Strangelove).
August 7, 2017
The story of Cold War Sovietology, how it came to prominence from an unprofessional academic environment to being the training ground for top level policy advisors to how it all fell apart. The book can be seen as a set of instructions, it can be seen as a history, and it can be seen as a warning. In many ways we see how academia interacts with the broader population, but, also, we see how the population and its imperatives interact upon academia; we see the opportunities and the strictures.
It's a useful book, particularly one that I would recommend to budding social scientists and people beginning study of some kind with policy impact on their mind.
It's a useful book, particularly one that I would recommend to budding social scientists and people beginning study of some kind with policy impact on their mind.
September 17, 2013
It may be a bit dense, but Know Your Enemy should be essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet studies. Engerman manages to summarize, with surprising grace and narrative flair, the dominant works and figures in Soviet historiography from the Cold War period in a relatively short book. I highly recommend reading this alongside Catriona Kelly's critique "What Was Soviet Studies and What Came Next?" in the Journal of Modern History.
December 13, 2022
This book is great. How to analyze your enemy. From economics to literature to history, how American scholars analyzed Soviet Union. One key takeaway from the book is that you should have an ass, by what I mean being able to patiently analyze something for weeks and even months. It's sometimes even more important than intellect. Having an ass is sometimes more useful than having a brain.
Read
September 13, 2015A foundational text for histories focusing on "productions of knowledge." Traces the rising influence of the United States' experts on the Soviet Union as they gained prominence after the Russian Revolution, even more during the Cold War, and then began to fall out of favor during the era of Gorbachev and after the Cold War's end. Focuses particularly on the history of Soviet studies in the academy. A great book that demonstrates the new ways today's historians are analyzing the Cold War.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews