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Call for Abstracts: The Life and Death of Cold War Funding
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.
Meanwhile, post-Soviet states went on to develop their own responses to these programs, from the Higher School of Economics’ postdoctoral fellowships and conferences in Russia to Kazakhstan’s Boloshak international scholarships. Recent years also witnessed the passage of “foreign agent” laws seeking to track, target, and restrict US-based funding.
As funding opportunities that began in the Cold War end and the institutions they created face closure, potentially for good, this special issue of The Russian Review invites contributions reflecting on the life and death of Cold War-era funding, and how this funding shaped the Cold War and its aftermath. Contributions should examine the creation and operation of these programs in the broader story of soft power, cultural exchange, international relations, institutions, and transnational history and politics. Contributors might also address the question of what will fill the vacuum created by the potential demise of US-led programs.
The journal will consider two types of proposals for this special issue: 1) proposals for academic articles based on original research of approximately 9,000 words; and 2) proposals for personal reflections of up to 4,000 words and/or video essays.
Please submit a brief abstract (250-300 words) detailing your proposed contribution and clearly indicating the proposal type (academic article, personal reflection, video essay) to Managing Editor Kurt Schultz (rusrev@ku.edu) by July 1, 2025. For accepted proposals, complete submissions will be due by November 1, 2025. Submissions will then go through an anonymized peer review process, with the special issue’s publication planned for 2026.