Tag: July 2025

Deadline: July 1, 2025

Special Issue of The Russian Review

From Fulbright and IREX scholarships facilitating in-country immersion, to the Wilson Center’s efforts to connect academics and policymakers, to Title VI and Title VIII support for less commonly taught “critical” languages, funding programs that began in the Cold War shaped the field of Russian and Eastern European studies in enduring ways. These programs not only helped the US government “know its enemy” but also consolidated and institutionalized new fields of knowledge (“area studies”), trained experts in the United States, and developed a network of content-creators in the region. Despite its ideological partiality, this system of knowledge production helped soften hearts and minds on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain. Though the original political impetus behind these programs ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, many initiatives survived. Even after the Cold War they funded the continued creation of cross-cultural knowledge and expertise, training the next generation of American scholars, and bringing academics, writers, and other practitioners from the region to the West.