Expert-Academic Amerikanistika in the system of Soviet foreign policy expertise (late 1960s – early 1970s)

By the end of the 1960s the first expert and academic centers had been established in the USSR. These centers were to submit position papers and reports containing deep multi-dimensional analysis of international processes. The Soviet leadership used these conclusions, forecasts and specific proposals in the process of making political decisions.

This article examines the place expert-academic Amerikanistika occupied in the system of Soviet foreign policy expertise. Expert’s reports related to international issues were sent to the General and International Departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU. This paper is based on these documents, which are stored in the Russian State Archives of Contemporary History.

The analysis of these primary sources allows us to first specify the range of those Soviet expert organizations that were carrying out research on the USA and then divide expert Amerikanistika into two parts. The notes left in the analyzed reports by the Central Committee staff as well as the memoirs give us an opportunity to examine the role of the expert-academic institutes within the system of the foreign policy of the USSR.

Basing on the study of the reports, the author formulates a hypothesis about the functioning of the expert-academic community as a special channel of information that could not be obtained from any other experts.

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