Davis Center Collection

Resources (1)

• The RRC has 11 file cabinets of questionnaires of interview transcripts and about 60 unpublished reports, all generated by the so-called "Refugee Program." After World War II Harvard scholars, supported by U.S. air force funds, gathered information from Russian displaced persons and "non-returnees" ("nevozvrashchentsy") then living in Germany. About 2,000 persons completed a general questionnaire in writing (schedule A). Of these individuals, professional people (doctors, lawyers, writers), priests, actors, and others were then asked to complete a second written questionnaire and to have an oral interview (schedule B). This involved 350 persons. Another group, representing a social and economic cross-section of the total number, went through a separate oral interview (schedule C).

  The information gathered, from ca. 1945–54, covers such subjects as the Soviet family; health, medicine, and doctors in the USSR; religion; and work conditions. The material became the basis for 2 books, both published by the Harvard University Press: Raymond Bauer and Alex Inkeles, The Soviet Citizen (1959) and R. Bauer, A. Inkeles, and Clyde Kluchohn, How the Soviet System Works (1956); and the data have also been used in many other works of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Some of the material is duplicated in the Russian Research Center holdings of the University Archives. At present there is no access possible to these files; the collection is closed until final disposition and organization of the holdings can be arranged and a manual for using the archive can be reproduced.