The Inquiring Mind; The Soviet Union: An Historian's Perspective

from the center for telecommunication services the university of texas at austin this series inquiring mind produced by public station kuhf fm in association with the news and information service at ut austin these discussions examining ideas and activities of a major university community he says the soviet union for many americans the name conjures up a threatening dark blob poised to envelop the globe for others there's no image at all with me as dr sheela fitzpatrick professor of history at the university of texas in austin and sovietologists dr fitzpatrick was born in australia and received her phd from oxford she has been appointed to the national council for soviet and east european research has written several books including education and social mobility in the soviet union and the russian revolution for fitzpatrick what were your first

impressions the first time you went into the soviet union well i think my friend first impressions this is when i went as a student and i was to be there for you oh we're the huge news of the doormen tree into which i was dumped it's that dark gray big building and then he knows how houses i don't know how many thousands of students and there are two wings had got either side and they're identical which somehow adds to the geo feeling of possible confusion and and also that's the very first memory that i can spend on diesel for instance no more than rushing students and for instance that the majority would be russian we're prepared to attend classes were deal with the language what normal classes were not sitting in my schedule it is normal sort of course we're tight prices own i did it kinda language classes because my mobile fluency was just not very good when i first arrived they were the kind of language

classes that are for foreign students and they're all in russian if you could take me and i went to some other images that i saw relevant i just you know pumping to a lecture and here what about your feelings about this cd that you were in was a frightening are threatening were you surprised by anything to seem different than what you might've expected to be very fond of moscow or it's a place of enormous contrast and i think that's why i like it in a way to play sabine could goodies intimate in a way it's a very ugly place but you find a great big concrete start including from the nineteen thirties or the nineteen forties and the next story you find a little church and then behind it maybe they'll be a little courtyard and stew with some little two story wooden houses and these contrasts so through the city except in a very new new product would you say that americans have

much of the perception of what the soviet union's like an even just the environment the atmosphere i've heard people say that you know that they were very excited and going and somehow the moment they stepped off the plane they were very aware of the state university to sort of feel the fact that it's so very different country can we have here yes well i know with american reactions sometimes your reactions are pre programmed in other words i mean you are prepared to be as strong aged cheeses that does happen our but there's a range of reactions americans have some americans who have very much taken in the notion that the soviet union in so are a terrible place you know a place of a non natural place in place of evil whatever they will have the reaction my goodness the russians at people people like us

which is a pretty primitive reaction that some americans well then why did you decide to study the soviet union had to get into i think that was i think i'd have to say that really was an accident i'm at the university melbourne where i went as an undergraduate there was a foreign language requirement and for various reasons why didn't wanna go on with the language is and i had happened couldn't start german and but i could start russian one and so i studied russian one for fun i was easy student and then i came i finally i had to write it began say that senior essay was one of a major project and i chose to write it on there are soviet topic because i had this little bit of russian when really very good and then i was hooked really went on from there what interested you that was at the language than that sort of true union would you say it's the fact that i had the language meant that i

started you know playing a run in that area whereas i might otherwise have sort of carnegie german history of french history or whatever but i was always attracted with barbara got to russian and kitty kitty soviet history i was attracted by the fact that so little seem to be known so little real historical work with that i could recognize him eating professional standards just it hadn't been done there were a lot of sort of our journalistic and propagandist a kind of studies of the soviet union but just not a lot of scholarship in that i saw as a kind of challenge your area of study focuses on some very specific periods in soviet history not focuses on the stalin period of the nineteen thirties but here i did work on the car nineteen twenties and even the very first is often a revolution of seventeen that carney the stalin period would there be more right now on the revolution then perhaps other periods you're not people started westerners have started working on their own nineteen

seventeen and their cycling quite good work and gaining access to materials are but i guess i'm still thinking the way i was a little bit when i entered the field that to me what is interesting is to go into the new areas where it what where the outlines haven't been laid down way you're the one you're the sort of pioneering type in there and so i know that work is getting better on their own on nineteen seventeen in the very first years i no longer working and moving into the nineteen thirties how many times have you been to the soviet union oh really lots of times the longest time that i was there was about eighteen months total over a two and a half year period that was as a british exchange exchanged and the end of the sixties and has been back in more recent years and they have been back on the irate exchanges as an american exchange reason for fullness appearance usually about up to five months would he do it here well i work in archives and libraries

or rather i try to work in archives this is one of my specialties is struggling with archives to try to get at them are let me work there because in general for western historians soviet archives on the soviet period are very difficult getting too so it's not just a question that you go there and you can meet into the archive and start working know you have to do a whole lot of struggle and bureaucratic struggle and argument to getting so first of all my state under the argument about why should get into the archives second half usually i get into the archives and i work it finding what you want to know is the material actually in there what once it's you can access it really finding we want i find enormously interesting things i cannot form an opinion about it what the archives as a whole night because the way that they operate when you're there they don't give you a list of the documents or the fires and they have and they

do choose them the procedure is you have to say i would like to work on such and such a thing do you have that our and then if they have it or if they want to bring two they bring it to you that you don't get a sense of what else is there it's a sort of lucky deepen way it seemed during your own several visits over a twenty year time span of the scene changes yes i've seen really for a great changes aren't and that is the sort of superficial change that strikes me most is how the clothes have improved because really they were terribly badly dressed at the end of the sixties still and car and now they may simply an ot and at the end of the sixties you would be very awkward about your western clothes even if like my new ways to close one point seven so great that they would attract attention but not ari if you if if i were to do what i used to do which is take

all my oldest and travis clothes and wear them well then i would look i would look pretty drab and so i don't do it anymore i take my decent close now so that's been a big change i think in general there has been for all the setbacks in on the consumer side did nevertheless has been an increase in the availability of consumer goods of all kinds of nudges close but also most types of food despite problems and certain types of consumer goods have come in that just use not to be iran when i first went there people generally didn't have television they didn't have a washing machine that did not have a car and they almost certainly or in most cases didn't have a daughter a country house not now most of the people i know that is sort of upper middle class people but still they would have all those things and this just in in twenty years you're really a lot of it is and what are some of the experiences that you stand out in your mind and the times the cheese skin care

oh goodness are you mentioned the difficulty of getting access to the archives is it other channels that you go through and you have to find the right person says bureaucratic or is it just a matter of persistence and showing up every day and saying i want to see this how do you go out you have to show up every day and you also have to knock on a number of doors and at the same time you've got a crib try to find out what is the right door to knock on it there's a variety of techniques and i never know which one is work because i you know i do everything i can think of i suppose in terms of the archival are my archival back to see incidents that stays in my mind was from my very frustrated are when i was quite young and i look younger probably and i was awfully serious about getting these archives and i i felt that i had to get them and i deserve to get them and i i had lost all sense of

of the sort of reality of the situation which was i very well might not get them and i went to finally went to the farm director prisons in china for instance and john asked once again for these archives i wanted and he said know and i was so angry that i started to cry which to migration green of course but he was extremely taken aback by that and voicing is it was grown ups on cry and then you pick up the telephone and i got those archives i've never known quite how to regard that is a triumph of the professionals go lower as showing harsh few laps from professionalism sometimes that it works all the same either way it worked it worked is you're listening to the acquiring mind my guest is dr sheela fitzpatrick professor of history at austin we're discussing her special areas in twist the soviet union what would you say is the sort of the status of soviet policy in the

united states do we have a number of people doing work studying examining soviet union from all different aspects well you know after the second world war there was a very big investment in this country in soviet studies are a lot of money was poured into it a lot of programs will build up in a lot of people were trained and of course they weren't all that many people to train them but anyway there was a big effort from the sixties i would say that started to forge peace is a little bit partly i think there was some thoughts about the nature of the the soviet illogical enterprise it had been built up as people started to question some you know cold war assumptions they start to wonder if if it had been the right kind of approach because it was a very cold war approach to the soviet union for four for whatever reason are the soviet studies started to lose out on funding it stopped being a glamorous there it still was one with a lot of people in it because they've been trained already

they're already have jobs but it doesn't anymore kind of growth there and ari in more recently is all we have had trouble getting as many good graduate students as we would hope for i speak nationally not not a beauty because they worry about the job prospects that was our job growth prospects in government or they wired by the academic job prospects most recently there has been some concern that we're not studying the soviet union as well as a stop soviet union is studying us they've got a great begins to color institute called the institute of usa and canada with lots of fine in over a hundred hundred and fifty probably full time researchers who are working on just those subjects and we don't have anything to match that do just in terms of scope of research if it so people looked become an undivided are one result was the saving up with the kennan institute in now in washington another one is being i think

the donation of a quite a large amount of money by afro harman to columbia university to develop its russian sentiments rushing institute so we hope that that trend will continue but are but we're not buying a mean sure some of the government funding that was available for soviet studies recently as far as even just in the most recent past dried up so it's hard to really see trends it also seems to me that the fact that you're dealing with a closed country makes an enormous difference i mean not to how slight the researchers are soviet union his daddy united states in anyway but it seems like they have a great advantage that they can get published material about the united states and canada are probably more than they would have you know without any difficulty whereas on your part you have to dig in you know go there and the persistent to find out

well it's true that if your during current analysis an awful lot which i don't but an awful lot of current announces his base in your newspapers are now they can read our newspapers but we can and with some exceptions we've designated me we have trouble getting their provincial newspapers but we can read their national and their republican papers we can we the germans are not going to say you know what the party wants them to say what i think that's it that's no that's to simplify get news i'm not going to be dissident publications but i think if we think in terms of a very narrow orthodox party line we may sometimes be misleading ourselves an obit in the newspapers and in particular in the scholarly journals what you find debates i mean you find what might be called official you find official statements official position that you also find debates about policy in which a thing which the position orthodox if you like it is in the process of being developed

and so those are of course of great interest in it so that debate is material there to be the day which you say that scholarly study has some influence on foreign policy or should it be in you know defeat yes yes i think i think it does quite undoubtedly if you look at the people who follow who've gone into government at others national security adviser's office in special position there as advisors on the soviet union and people like to be beijing's emotion showman and so on it is if people come out of the scholarly community and the concepts all fall of the soviet union than they have of those that they have developed only that they've absorbed from you know from from their colleagues so i think that that happens and that that's a good thing and by the way also home to the soviet union in packing much the same way

that would point into the need for a more serious study so i think definitely is would you say that town from your point of view that was what would you say that president reagan's stance it seems that we've had a very hard line view in the current administration toward the soviet union is as defined that negative and unwind with envy well i did find a dry the negative is that i've i don't think it's wise to cut off communication the way he seems to be doing why he is not really interested in any type any kind of dialogue and i'm not just he just thinking about the arms issue but what is conveyed to meet any rate is a lack of interest in ending in dialogue at any level and i think that that is not there really a safe situation given the position of it the us and the soviet union you might it be this is just

throwing something out might it be that the thing for some americans the view as well we need to be tapped and we need to say here are the ground rules these are that you know that the sort of the basis for dialogue if you can't meet this then we won't bother i think there's a lot in the argument that you should take a tough position and you'll be able to bargain with them better but i get the sense and reagan is taking a tough position on but i don't see the bargaining but absent from egypt that we were sitting there what do you say about we seen the soviets to have walked out of negotiations specifically on arms define that serious leisure view well i think it was in a predictable step that they took they add being very very anxious that the bushings not be putting in europe not be deployed and made fourteen with you know tooth and nail in every way they could and then the persians are to put it what are they going to do and they've obviously got to make

some kind of gesture as just his go it i think this was this was it this was not a very threatening wind in other words was a good kind of gestures they wanted to make a hostile just dry i applaud this one rather than anything of a more violent all or threatening kind as to whether they'll be back again at the negotiating table i suppose in my feeling is that they will be back but not on this they see something something real substantive to be negotiated a pot and it's not clear to me that they're being offered yet anything real and substantive to negotiate you talked a little bit about how people in this country who perceive the soviet union and how would you say a few kids before them how would you say the soviet union my pristine for us or the west where there's a difference one difference is that people in russia are much more interested in america than vice versa

and that would tend to be expects truly interested in in a mixture of ways i may there be interested in the culture in the clothes and they regarded as sark you know america's in a sense a future from there when you do they still have that image it's not part of the ideology i mean that's just an instinctive you they have an america as it fascinates him in the way it fascinates are they europeans that's the first part of the russian attitude that i've observed the second part of the russian attitude is an insistence that the american people like that russian people once peace now that is part of official propaganda that something that you said to them and that they repeat but it's always seemed to me that they repeat it with hope but olmert sometimes it almost seems a kind of desperate hope they very much want to believe that the american people want peace and therefore they won't be and they were strained their leaders who are portrayed often as warmongering and therefore

there won't be any war i don't think that in america in america people listening not concerned about the possibility of war in that immediate way that the russians with their their remaining after all red and the memories of the second world war he thinks they are are frightened by them in really clear here oh yeah i think it's so you know it was at a terrible experience and at it with with terrible losses of human losses losses of of everything of things that have been built and so i think it left a very deep scar i think that for some americans there is a fear that the soviet union as soon as his interviewers that there are somehow present in many of the trouble spots around the world and that somehow risk to ask us won't use it to people who might

take that position or i would say that certainly are in the last ten fifteen years the soviet union has not avoided giving provocation in the third world to the us they haven't avoided it at all and none of the reasons i think is that they feel very strongly ari that and maybe this is purely logical rather than rational for purity so emotional for me rather large conflict they feel that once there a superpower would then they should be allowed to throw their way around in the third world and to have clients there just like the us does and if the us object to them doing that the us is not treating them as an equal it's i really think to a lot of it is from so we preview of respect i've got to get respect kind of approach to it which of course is not at all appreciated on the on the american side has asserted it backfires and says oh you know what i don't want a justified as everyone to point out that they they have the same said

that they are they are their rights and privileges that go with being a superpower to know what those are they don't naturally united states if the united states doesn't mean they won't be him i guess it's been dr sheela fitzpatrick professor of history at the university of texas at austin speaking on the soviet union and catchy clever for an inquiring mind you've been listening to the inquiry line a series of programs about the members of a major university community their ideas and opinions expressed in this programme do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin inquiring mind is produced in association with the service and distributed by the center for telecommunication services all at the university of texas at austin air

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