The Formation of American Studies in the USSR as an Expert and Academic Discipline in the 1950s – 1960s
Abstract
The article discusses the emergence of American studies in the Soviet Union (Amerikanistika) as a special expert-analytical discipline in the 1950s–1960s using a social constructivist approach. The author attempts not only to write the history of A American studies, but for the first time to comprehend it as a phenomenon and factor of the “cold war” using the socio-constructive approach and the analysis of the socio-political demand for expert- academic knowledge in the USSR in the second half of the 1950s and 1960s.
This demand shaped the Soviet American studies in a particular way: it was focused simultaneously on both academic and practical knowledge. American studies has constructed a certain image of the American “Other”. That image was subsequently used in the development of foreign policy towards the United States and in domestic policy to construct a Soviet identity different from the American “Other”. Studying the processes of academic construction of the United States and the use of the construct contribute to better understand the features of the Soviet-American relations in a bipolar world.
About the Author
I. M. Tarbeev
Russian State University for the Humanities
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
postgraduate student
bld. 6, Miusskaya sq., Moscow, 125993, Russia
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Review
For citations:
Tarbeev I.M. The Formation of American Studies in the USSR as an Expert and Academic Discipline in the 1950s – 1960s. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin Series "Political Science. History. International Relations". 2018;(3):77-92. (In Russ.)
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