How difficult it is to forge a balanced outlook — combining hope for the best with readiness for the worst — is illustrated in a new book by John Van Oudenaren, The Geopolitics of Culture: James Billington, The Library of Congress, and the Failed Quest for a New Russia.
Van Oudenaren writes as an insider. Now a Global Fellow at the Kennan Institute, he was Chief of the European Division at the Library of Congress and Director of the World Digital Library, one of the projects through which Billington, Librarian of Congress, 1987-2018, sought to develop Russian cooperation with the West and other countries.
With partners in 81 countries, the digital library makes online copies of professionally curated primary materials from the world’s cultures freely available in multiple languages.
Having taught history at Harvard and Princeton since 1957, Billington became the founding director of the Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1974, home to the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Billington to head the Library of Congress, an appointment unanimously confirmed by the Senate.
In 1988 he accompanied Reagan to a summit in Moscow and over several years traveled with 10 congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union, making him the personal Russian affairs tutor to generations of lawmakers.
In 2000, Billington founded the Open World Leadership Center, which administered 23,000 professional exchanges for emerging post-Soviet leaders in Russia, Ukraine, and the other successor states of the former USSR, enabling them to visit counterparts in the US.
A leading historian of Russia, he tried to use his own contacts and the resources of the Library of Congress to improve US-Russian relations and restore Russian pride in their own culture.
His major works included The Icon and the Axe (1966), Fire in the Minds of Men (1980), Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope, August 1991 (1992), and The Face of Russia (1998), a companion book to a three-part PBS television series.
Despite Billington’s innovative and energetic efforts, Van Oudenaren concludes that his quest for a new Russia failed. In some cases he was misled, for example thinking that some Russian Orthodox churchmen were influential when they were cut off at the knees by Patriarch Kirill, a supreme apologist for Putin and a former KGB agent. It is doubtful if presidents Yeltsin or Putin were ever ready to sacrifice anything to cooperate with, and open up to, the West.
Billington, like many Western scholars (and several US presidents) was probably reluctant to admit that liberalism had no future in a country they had studied and where they had seemingly like-minded friends. Some of us read Pushkin and Gogol at night to clear our nervous systems of the day’s news. Could such giants of literature be overpowered by Kremlin thugs?
If rose-colored glasses led to dangerous misperceptions, was it better to view Russia through dark lenses? Paul Nitze, of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, argued in April 1950 that the Soviet Union was “animated by a new fanatic faith” and driven “to impose its will” everywhere.
To deal with this threat, Nitze argued for a massive arms build-up. Accordingly, the Truman administration almost tripled defense spending between 1950 and 1953.
Richard Pipes, another leading historian of Russia, took a line similar. He asserted that détente was “inspired by intellectual indolence and based on ignorance of one’s antagonist and therefore inherently inept.”
In 1976 he headed the experts who concluded that the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate underestimated both Soviet military strategy and ambition. In 1980-1982, Pipes served on the National Security Council and probably bolstered President Reagan’s “evil empire” view of the USSR before Mikhail Gorbachev gave reason to hope for positive change.
Here is “where the dog is buried,” as Russians would say. The USSR was an evil empire, but, if Reagan had never opened his mind to the possibility of change, he and Gorbachev would not have reached a series of significant accords in the late 1980s, enlarged by their successors.
Where can we find a golden mean between excessive hope and unrelenting caution?
Wearing neither rose-colored nor very dark glasses, historian of Soviet military affairs Raymond L. Garthoff steered a middle course. First in the CIA and then in the State Department, in 1962 he contributed to clear thinking about missiles in Cuba, and in 1972 he served as executive officer and senior State Department adviser for the strategic arms limitation talks.
Fluent in Russian, he helped create the mutually acceptable language for the SALT I accords. His knowledge of Russia and professionalism helped US presidents make containment function while also making the most of opportunities.
Garthoff provides a model of erudition and balance in dealing with complex challenges and for a time his views helped shape US policy.
It’s worth remembering however that advisers aren’t always listened to — top decision-makers may respond to pressures and emotions that override measured rationality.
Walter Clemens is an Associate at Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. His latest book is ‘Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims’ (Westphalia, July 2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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