In a globally interdependent world, Russia and the other states formed after the breakup of the USSR offer immense possibilities for trade and cooperation. Yet the ignorance about Russia and the successor states is profound. Winston Churchill’s famous statement that the Soviet Union is a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” should serve as no excuse for this situation. All the new nations, particularly the Russian Federation, are open for study as during no other time in history, offering extraordinary opportunities for investigation.

It is in this spirit that Wittenberg offers the Russian Area Studies Program to its undergraduates. Through the study of Soviet and post-Soviet history, art, language, literature, geography, economics, sociology, and politics, Wittenberg students gain important knowledge about Russia and the other newly independent nations today. Some students may be stimulated enough to perform advanced graduate work at other institutions; others, to seek policy-making positions in the U.S. government or to engage in business activities in the area. But the fundamental purpose of the program is to produce intelligent citizens and participants in the society around them who have a thorough understanding of Russia and the other new nations, whatever their vocations may be.

The Russian Area Studies Program assumes that knowledge of Russia and the other successor states demands, first and foremost, an understanding of those internal cultural, political and historical forces that contribute to the life of the nations today. For without such knowledge, explaining current domestic or foreign behavior is a futile exercise in applying faulty assumptions about what the leaders and people in these nations “really” believe and why they believe it or in using frameworks that are rooted in the American, rather than, for instance, in the Russian experience.

Misperceptions about the societies and political systems in the post-Soviet area inhibit fruitful political relations and harm normal international business contacts. George F. Kennan, eminent scholar and diplomat, has said that part of the problem of American policy toward the USSR derived from a misunderstanding of the Russian historical experience and its political manifestations. The Russian Area Studies Program attempts to impart an accurate, informed view of Russia and the successor states to present their realities and to increase international understanding.