Making the Soviet Intelligentsia explores the formation of educated elites in Russian and Ukrainian universities during the early Cold War. In the postwar period, universities emerged as training grounds for the military-industrial complex, showcases of Soviet cultural and economic accomplishments and valued tools in international cultural diplomacy. However, these fêted Soviet institutions also generated conflicts about the place of intellectuals and higher learning under socialism. Disruptive party initiatives in higher education - from the xenophobia and anti-Semitic campaigns of late Stalinism to the rewriting of history and the opening of the USSR to the outside world under Khrushchev - encouraged students and professors to interpret their commitments as intellectuals in the Soviet system in varied and sometimes contradictory ways. In the process, the social construct of intelligentsia took on divisive social, political and national meanings for educated society in the postwar Soviet state.

'… [a] wide-ranging and clearly argued work … Making the Soviet Intelligentsia raises important questions about how we understand the link between state policy and the 'life of the mind'.'

Claire Shaw Source: The Russian Review

'This welcome study effectively shows the ambiguity of learning and its practitioners … Recommended.'

P. W. Knoll Source: Choice

'… the two decades on which Making the Soviet Intelligentsia focuses are among the most interesting and eventful in the entire history of Soviet higher education. This thorough and elegant study does them justice and should remain a key work on the subject for many years to come.'

Polly Jones Source: The Journal of Modern History