CHAPTER 6

FROM 1914 TO 1939

As we have seen, Slavic studies were in their infancy when World War I broke out. The American reaction to the War was, as we might have expected, a plain paradox.

American public opinion concentrated on the Western Front and the campaign in France and only slowly did it begin to react to the enormous forces that were working in the central and eastern parts of Europe. As in most countries of Europe, the only persons who took a deep interest in these areas were the immigrants and the few persons who had already been awakened to the great problems which the Slavic world of the time presented.

The clash of Great Britain, France and Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, the Triple Entente versus the Triple Alliance, seemed real only in its relations to the Western Front. The Eastern Front and the titanic passions released in the Slavic lands under both Russia and Austria-Hungary seemed fantastic to public opinion and even to the opinion of the educated and intelligent classes. At the same time, it did have a message for the Slavic communities in the United States which sought every opportunity to raise their voice in hope of national liberation. The average American was more moved by the Armenian massacres than he was by the astounding Russian advances and retreats in the East. The causes which led the United States into the War were almost wholly connected with the respective influences of Great Britain, France and Germany and it was the armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918 that convinced the American people that the War was over and that the whole of Europe would very soon return to normalcy.

Consistent with American preoccupation with the developments in Germany, the agitation for the disintegration of Austria-Hungary vigorously sponsored by the Slavic colonies in the United States and the various national committees in Europe found a hearing chiefly as a means of curtailing German influence. Furthermore, as a result of propaganda diligently spread during the War, the Russian Revolution seemed to the majority of the American people another step in the development of democracy and the break up of the control of Russia by a Germanized royal family and a Germanized bureaucracy. It might even be said that the initial distrust of Lenin came because the German General Staff allowed him to cross to Russia from Switzerland. The disintegration of the Russian front was laid entirely to German propaganda and the most ridiculous stories were advanced in order to justify this point of view. This attitude prompted the American reaction to the efforts of liberation of the various peoples of the old Russian empire and nearly all the nationalist movements were laid to German influences.

We may see this in the phrasing of the sixth of Wilson’s Fourteen Points touching Russia:

The evacuation of all Russian territory, and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing and more than a welcome, assistance of every kind that she may need and may herself desire.

On the other hand the non-Russian peoples of the old empire paid no attention to these remarks by President Wilson. They saw rather the general principles enunciated in the Fifth Point, “A free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined.” In fact he went further and on July 4, 1918 he declared in the “Four Ends” speech: “The settlement of every question, whether of territory or sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its exterior influence or mastery.”

Thus the doctrine of self-determination definitely pronounced by President Wilson was carried still further by the people of the old Russian empire than he had himself intended. He only provided for independence for Finland, Poland and Armenia, three peoples who had won the special sympathy of the American people. In the case of all others, he was prepared to rest upon his Sixth Point and neglect careful and accurate study of the conditions prevailing in Eastern Europe.

If space permitted, we could trace this idea in the American attitude to the Peace of Brest Litovsk, the actions of the American Expeditionary Forces in Archangel and Vladivostok, the attitude toward the Russian White armies, the refusal to grant an Eastern border to Poland under the Treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain, the refusal to recognize the cession of Bessarabia by Russia to Romania and many other questions. It insured high favor from those entirely removed from Austria-Hungary and Germany and relative disfavor from all peoples trying to separate themselves from Russia.

It is true that from the very beginning of the conflict the leading intelligence officers like Colonels Ralph Van Deman and Marlborough Churchill, the real moving spirits of the military intelligence branch of the General Staff, recognized the importance of the Slavic languages, and Colonel Graham D. Fitch included the Slavic languages among those handled in the Translation Section of which he was the chief. Yet on the whole, the Corps of Interpreters and other concerned branches and units paid little attention to them and nearly all the American agents in the Slavic territories were persons who had already known the languages. Even in the case of the Siberian and Archangel expeditions, the problem of interpreters was not placed on a firm basis. For some years after the War, almost all the officers and men in the State Department were persons who had served in these forces and had attained a certain amount of Russian or some other language without any formal training.

The situation was the same in the committee formed by Colonel Edward House to study the peace settlement. It is true that most of the professors of Slavic were connected with this but it was very soon discovered that much of the available material could not be used unless it was in one of the Western languages or, in some cases, in Russian (and, of course, with a Russian bias).

Thus the World War, and American participation in it, did not result in any marked increase in interest and there was for some years a strong feeling that a knowledge of the languages was secondary. The old divisions between language and the historical sciences were still perpetuated, gradually breaking down between the wars.

It is true that after the War, the War Department made a half-hearted attempt to train certain regular officers in various subjects with a possible eye for making them instructors in West Point. These included two men who had been on the Siberian Expedition. Lt. Col. Benjamin B. McCroskey and Captain William Gent were sent to study in the Department of Slavonic Languages at Columbia University. With the growth of isolationism the experiment was not pressed, and step by step all of the government services lost interest except for a few young men in the State Department who were often sent in some indefinite capacity to the Baltic republics with the intent of learning Russian.

Thus, at the end of the War, there had come no important change in the general picture. The departments of language in Harvard, California and Columbia continued, perhaps with increased staffs, and Professor Harper in Chicago went on with his work also. On the other hand, there were a number of universities and colleges, chiefly in the Middle West, where one or more Slavic languages were taught, often under the pressure of local Slavic groups. These included Nebraska where Orin Stepanek was teaching. Czech was also added to the curriculum of Creighton University in Omaha and the University of Texas in Austin. There were energetic stirrings among the Poles to introduce their language at the University of Wisconsin. There were men in various other institutions such as Professor Leon Zelenka Lerando in Lafayette College who, in at least part of their work, handled one or another language. Yet in the course of the years many of those institutions which had included Russian during the War abandoned it.[35]

A rather unique case occurred at Dartmouth College. Professor R. W. Jones, who was in the German department, knew some Russian. But, one of the professors of the English department was Eric P. Kelly, who had been in Poland with the YMCA during the War and had become vitally interested in the country and its culture. In 1928 he published a very successful boy’s story on medieval Poland, _The Trumpeter of Krakow_, which won the Newberry Prize for Juvenile Books. Later he wrote two more on Polish themes, _The Blacksmith of Wilno_ and _The Golden Star of Halich_. Through their influence, William J. Rose, a Canadian and later the Director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the University of London, was brought to Dartmouth for a few years. At one time it looked as if Dartmouth would establish a full department with Kelly attracting large classes to courses in Polish in translation. Kelly became important in Polish intellectual work but for some reason, despite his popularity, reverted to work in journalism, although he continued his interest in things Polish outside the institution.[36]

All this was at a time when the bulk of the work on East European history was still being carried on in the small institutions by men who had no language training. In far too many places we still can find traces of this habit.

Another important event of the period, following the Bolshevik Revolution, was the arrival in the United States of a number of Russian emigres, on all intellectual levels. Some of them like Professors M. Rostovtseff and A. A. Vasilieff, were among the most distinguished Russian scholars. They easily found outstanding positions for themselves in the leading universities and were able to exert a considerable influence. They brought with them, in various capacities, men like Professor George Vernadsky who were to become the heads of their subjects during the next decades. It would take too long to list all of these men but among them was Professor Leonid Strakhovsky, Rostovtseff’s nephew, who taught history at Georgetown University and later moved to the University of Maryland, then to Harvard and is now at the University of Toronto. Professor Serge Eliseeff of Harvard was also in the field of Far Eastern languages. For a while, Nicholas Martinovitch, formerly of the University of Petersburg, was at Columbia in the field of Turkic studies. Many more of the younger group have gradually secured good positions and worked themselves up in the American university system, sometimes with a change of their names.

The same period saw the arrival in the United States of such outstanding Ukrainian scholars as the architect and engineer, Professor Stephen Timoshenko of Stanford University, and his brother the economist Volodymyr Timoshenko of the same institution, and Professor Alexander Granovsky, an entomologist, of the University of Minnesota. Professor Dmytro Doroshenko of the Ukrainian Free University in Prague paid several visits to Canada. All of these men were very active in arousing interests in Ukrainian culture as were the choral leader, Alexander Koshits, and the sculptor, Alexander Archipenko.

There were also a few young men of Slavic origin, born and educated in the United States, who devoted themselves to Russian fields. Among them was Leo Pasvolsky who worked for many years at the Brookings Institute in Washington and was the son of one of the foremost Russian editors in the pre-war United States. Yet the situation was so discouraging that relatively few of the really young emigres who came to the United States after 1918 and secured an education went into Slavic studies. They usually chose some other field and gradually lost all practical influence in the extension of Slavic culture, though in a few cases they did some unofficial work in their own languages.

The situation in the languages and cultures of the liberated Slavic countries was very different. The restoration of the independence of Czechoslovakia and Poland and the formation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) involved the “Slavonization” of many institutions that formerly had been under German and Austrian control. As a result, there was a strong call for professors in those lands and very few of the outstanding men came to America during the early years. When they did, it was usually for a limited time, a semester or perhaps a full year, and the funds for this purpose were often supplied by the Slavic community in the neighborhood. Thus the Poles of Detroit brought Professor Thaddeus Mitana to the University of Michigan. This had been intended as the beginning of a Polish chair, but the attempt broke down and Professor Mitana remained at Alliance College, the institution of the Polish National Association. Professor Roman Dyboski of the University of Krakow was likewise brought to the University of Chicago for a period, but his lectures were not connected in any sense with the work of Professor Harper. In 1928, Professor Otakar Vocadlo of the University of Bratislava spent almost a full year lecturing throughout the United States. All this did much to promote an appreciation of Slavic scholarship, but since most of the visitors were in technical and scientific fields they did not increase interest in distinctively Slavic subjects.

Many of these visits were arranged through the Institute of International Education which, as part of an international policy, brought to the United States not only professors on lecture tours but many students from the Slavic lands. The same institute also administered a series of fellowships, usually for advanced study, which were chiefly offered to Americans of Czech and Slovak parentage by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education. A similar program among the Poles was carried on by the distinctively Polish-American Kosciuszko Foundation begun in 1926. It was able to take many American Polish students to Poland by offering them not only free tuition but also greatly reduced rates on the Polish-American line steamships.

During the 1920’s those American universities most interested in Slavic subjects developed rather independently. In the field of history, there were few real innovations. During the twenties, and especially during the period of the New Economic Policy in the USSR, a few young men were able, on fellowships from various institutions, to study in the Soviet universities and familiarize themselves with conditions there. Among these men we may mention two important scholars of the present time: Professor Philip Mosely of the American Council of Foreign Relations, formerly of Columbia University, and Professor Geroid T. Robinson of Columbia. Other men similarly visited other Slavic lands for varying periods. Their studies have been an application of the accepted method of historical research to the history of the Slavic countries by men who were as well trained in Slavic as earlier generations had been in French and German.

The situation was different in the field of language, literature and culture, in the general sense of the word, for these subjects had been very largely ignored in the earlier periods except in those institutions where Slavic departments had been established. Even the masterpieces of Russian literature had been handled purely on the basis of translations, with few efforts to equate them with the general life of Russia. This had produced the jaundiced view of Russian literature satirized by Stephen Leacock of McGill University. In fact during a large part of the period between the wars, one of the largest groups of students of Slavic literature were persons who had no desire to learn the language or to read Slavic literature in the original. They were merely interested in including Russian in courses of comparative literature, or they were instructors obliged to treat some of the Russian masterpieces in translation.

This broad cultural need was met in different ways by the various Slavic departments. Thus, during these years, the department at the University of California, under Professor George Rapall Noyes, decidedly stressed the development of translation, and courses in which a knowledge of Russian was not primarily required. The department grew steadily but largely maintained its original staff supplemented by visiting lecturers. This policy continued until the eve of World War II. During most of this time Professor Noyes did not make any special effort to establish contacts with the Slavic groups on the Pacific coast.

The situation at Columbia University was different. Professor Clarence A. Manning, who was acting department head during the twelve years which Professor Prince spent in the American diplomatic service, tried to continue the policy of Professor Prince in fostering a study of all the Slavic languages and in establishing contacts with the Slavic communities in the New York area. In terms of administration, the chief development was the transfer of most instruction in the Slavic languages from the faculty of philosophy, where it had originated, to the Columbia Extension Teaching, later revamped as the School of General Studies. This school had been planned originally for adult education but as it acquired a special form it furnished a convenient vehicle for many years, for giving language instruction. For some years it conducted a series of extramural courses, especially in Polish, as far away as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

The first addition to what eventually became a full time staff was Mrs. Elena T. Mogilat who, from 1922 until the eve of World War II, conducted practically all the courses in the Russian language. In 1927, Arthur P. Coleman, the first American of non-Slavic origin to receive a doctorate in Slavic languages in the United States, was appointed Lecturer and devoted himself chiefly to courses in Polish.

The rest of the staff, some of whom served for many years, was composed chiefly of educated journalists employed on the Slavic papers in New York or persons occupying responsible positions in various institutions of learning and business. Almost without interruption, yearly courses were given in Polish, Czechoslovak and Serbo-Croatian or Slovene. We must specifically mention the courses in Albanian given by Nelo Drizari who published, at this period, an Albanian-English grammar and a small Albanian-English dictionary. Most of the students in these non-Russian courses were second generation Slavs. Few of these ever worked toward higher degrees.

During the twenties, most students for the doctorate were Russians or persons of Russian descent who had come to the United States after the Revolution seeking positions in the American educational world. Those who took the master’s degree were largely of the second generation or of non-Slavic origin.

The department made its most extensive efforts in 1929 in providing a summer course on the history of all Slavic literatures. The lectures on Russian were given by Prince D. S. Mirsky of the University of London; on Czech, by Professor Otakar Vocadlo; on Polish, by Professor Kelly of Dartmouth; and, on Yugoslav, by Dr. D. Subotic of the University of London. One lecture on Bulgarian was prepared by Dimitar Shishmanov, the son of the distinguished professor of Slavic philology at the University of Sofia and a well-known Bulgarian author who was executed by the Communists after World War II. The response of students was not sufficient to justify the repetition of the experiment in the next years, although the numbers exceeded anything achieved in England at that time for similar programs.

At the time it was the idea of Professor Manning that the future of Slavic studies, especially in those languages spoken by considerable communities in the United States, lay in the development of interest and support from those communities. This notion was, at the time, warmly supported by Columbia’s President Nicholas Murray Butler and led to the formation of an Institute of Polish Culture and an Institute of Czechoslovak Studies. Both met with initial success but the depression with its pressure upon the Slavic population of the United States, led to a practical suspension of the institutes after the publication of a Polish number of the American archaeological journal, _Art and Archaeology_, and a translated _Anthology of Czechoslovak Poetry_ compiled in the United States and Canada.

On the return of Professor Prince in 1933, the name of the department was changed to East European Languages and Professor Prince made a new effort to realize his dream of founding something that would include all of the peoples of Eastern Europe. It proved premature, once again. The department underwent further change after the retirement of Professor Prince. Then in the fall of 1938, Professor Max Vasmer of the University of Berlin lectured for one semester; he was followed by Professor Boris Unbegaun of the University of Strassburg. Still later Professor Karl Menges was added to the faculty to give courses in Slavic and Altaic philology.

In still a different field, Professor Manning and Dean Hawkes, of Columbia College, were both active in the establishment of St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Seminary in New York, to train candidates for the priesthood of the Russian Orthodox Church of North America. This developed later into St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary and Theological Academy. To this were invited many of the leading emigrant Russian theologians from Paris and elsewhere.

The development at Harvard was somewhat different. Few changes were made in the situation which existed prior to World War I, until the retirement of Professor Wiener. Then in 1927 Professor Samuel Hazzard Cross (born in 1891, A.B. and Ph.D. at Harvard before 1917), rejoined his alma mater and after some years of service in the German department was made, in 1930, Professor of Slavic Languages. With the appointment of Professor Cross, Slavic work at Harvard went through a new period of development and expansion. Into the revised department Cross brought Professor Ernest J. Simmons who had taken his doctorate in 1928 with a study of English influence on Russian literature of the eighteenth century. A larger staff of Russian assistants was also engaged.

Professor Cross, who had translated the _Russian Primary Chronicle_, stressed the older period of Russian literature, perhaps because of his Germanic interests. He also became the managing editor of _Speculum_, the organ of the Mediaeval Academy of America. In his interest in the medieval period, Professor Cross was not alone in Harvard for from the School of Architecture came the work of Professor Kenneth J. Conant on St. Sofia Cathedral in Kiev and from the English department the work by Francis P. Magoun, Jr. on the spreading in East Slavic lands of the medieval _gestes_ of Alexander.

During the following years, Professor Cross became the center of the developing Slavic activity, which was not limited to Harvard, but which was responsible for the publication of various works in connection with the Pushkin Centennial in 1937. The death of Cross in 1946 was a great loss to American-Russian scholarship.

Still another attempt to promote Slavic studies was made at the University of Pittsburgh by the establishment of national rooms in the Cathedral of Learning to serve as centers for the national interests of the students. The Slavic communities, in and around the city, were urged to provide funds to furnish these rooms in native style and appeals were frequently made to the governments of the Slavic countries to help in the work.

In 1927 also, Professor Michael Karpovich, joined the faculty at Harvard as Professor of Russian History. Professor Karpovich had been trained as a lawyer and diplomat in Russia before the Revolution of 1917 and he soon became a leading spokesman for the Russian liberal groups in the United States and in America’s scholarly communities.

At the end of World War I, it was proposed that a scientific society be established to unite Slavic scholars. The constitution and practice of existing organizations in history seemed sufficiently broad to include the professors of those subjects but a more complicated situation prevailed in the fields of language and literature.

Consequently, in 1919, there was organized the Society for the Advancement of Slavonic Study. The nucleus of this group was Slavs from various organizations, especially Czechs and Yugoslavs. The first president was Miss Sarka B. Hrbkova who had come to New York from Nebraska after the dissolution of the department at the state university there. The secretary was Leon Zelenka Lerando of Lafayette College. A few meetings were held in 1922 with the final one at Columbia. The society did not prove to be a success, however, largely because of the inability of the founders to realize the aims of the society. It published a few numbers of a bulletin but the addresses at the meetings were made largely under the mistaken impression that the “findings” of the society would pass for final pronunciamentos on many of the most disputed subjects of Slavic scholarship. It must be confessed, also, that many of these “findings” were based upon the political decisions made at Versailles and previously advanced by movements such as the Czechoslovak National Committee. As a result, the organization rapidly lost standing and it very soon ceased to exist.

Yet the seed which it had sown was not entirely wasted. In 1922, Professor Manning discussed with the Modern Language Association the possibility of organizing the scholars of Slavic languages and literatures under its auspices. From the very beginning, the attitude of Professor Manning and the other founders was to avoid the difficulties that had arisen earlier between the Association and the Society for the Advancement of Slavonic Study. The first meeting, under the chairmanship of Professor Manning, was poorly attended and some of the papers read were decidedly amateurish; but the group continued. During the intervening years, the original group has been developed into two: one for Slavic literatures and one for Slavic philology. The attendance is composed of members of the Association who are either actively or passively interested in Slavic studies. This is very different from the early years when it became necessary to do everything possible to secure an audience for the few persons who ventured to submit papers. During the early years, Professor Manning remained as chairman and the secretary was usually chosen from one of the representatives of the Slavic communities who had shown some interest in the undertaking. Now the posts of chairman and secretary are rotated, more or less regularly, and most professors of Slavic in the country have filled a position at least once. Even so, the group has not sufficiently developed to apply for recognition as a section parallel to those for English, Romance and Germanic. Despite this, one of its members, Professor Ernest J. Simmons, has been elected to the post of Director of the Modern Language Association for one term.

A somewhat different development came in the foundation of the _Slavonic Review_ by Professor Sir Bernard Pares and Professor R. W. Seton-Watson at the University of London in 1922. From the beginning, this journal, the first purely scholarly Slavic journal in English, had as American co-editors, Professor Harper, Professor Noyes and Professor Kerner, then at the University of Missouri. In 1923, once the journal was fairly launched, Professor Seton-Watson came to the United States in the hope of dissuading American Slavists from starting a competing journal. The proposal was broached at a meeting of the American Historical Association in Richmond, Virginia, but was decidedly disapproved by some of those present, and the idea was tacitly dropped without prejudice to the cooperation between the scholars of the two countries.

In a somewhat different vein, mention should be made of the monthly magazine _Poland_. This was started in 1919 by the Polish Legation in Washington at the suggestion of the Baldwin Locomotive Works which had taken a prominent part in the rehabilitation of the Polish railroads after World War I. The Baldwin company furnished the permanent staff, an editor, Paul Le Tallec, a young Frenchman, and Eric Lord as business manager. The journal received a subsidy from the Legation. It was started purely as a trade journal, but Le Tallec had other views. Under Clarence Dawson, who succeeded Paul Le Tallec as editor, it rapidly developed into a general magazine covering all aspects of Polish life, art and literature, as well as economics and business. The journal proved successful for over ten years but when Dawson resigned as editor, it began to fail. The magazine changed its character considerably and finally, in the early thirties, was allowed to lapse.

It was during this same decade that energetic work was done in building the libraries of various institutions. Even before the Russian Revolution, the Library of Congress had acquired a large, uncatalogued collection of Russian books and the New York Public Library developed a very large and extensive Russian department. There were large Russian collections at both Harvard and Yale. At Columbia, the Russian collections prior to 1914 were negligible, while at the University of California, Professor Noyes had specialized largely in translations of Russian literature. Most of the institutions took advantage of the large number of Russian books that were thrown upon the market after the Soviet Revolution and purchased whole libraries from emigres and other sources.

The Columbia collections were increased by the gift of a large library on Russian literature, collected for many years by Dr. Samuel Abel, a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. It numbered several thousand volumes. The establishment of the Hoover War Library at Stanford University brought to that institution a vast amount of material, especially concerning Slavic countries, that had been collected by American Relief workers, under the direction of Herbert Hoover.

We must also mention the work that developed at Georgetown University under the direction of Father Edmund Walsh who had served in Russia after the Revolution. Work was done in the various schools but especially in the School for Foreign Service of which Father Walsh was the founder. Georgetown’s example was seconded by the continual improvement in the standards of other institutions such as that of the Czech Benedictines at Lisle, Illinois, and further, by the establishment, in 1933, of such institutions as St. Basil’s College in Stamford, Connecticut, by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Exarchate of Philadelphia.

There was also a large number of Slavic books and translations from Slavic in the public library in Cleveland, Ohio, where Mrs. Eleanor Ledbetter had worked long and hard with the Slavic groups in that city. Thus, by the outbreak of World War II, there were in the United States a considerable number of libraries that were fairly adequate in nearly all the centers where Slavic subjects were treated with the importance that they deserved.

In 1931 work in Russian literature in English was also started at the University of Washington, in Seattle, by Ivar Spector. In 1943, a course in Russian history was added. In addition to these courses, Professor Spector did considerable lecturing before various groups interested in Russian affairs. The interest in Seattle is especially noticeable because of the possible contacts with Siberia across the Pacific Ocean. Whatever contact is had with the Soviet Union comes almost inevitably through the seacoast cities on the Pacific Ocean. The same motives have led to a strengthening of Russian work in the other California universities, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.

Strange to say, the recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933 by the United States did not produce a marked increase in interest in Russian Slavic affairs. Student interest flagged and it was soon evident that the need for Russian in the business world would not at all parallel the situation which a few years earlier had sparked the great development in Spanish studies.

The years of the depression, in many ways, produced another period of marking time in Slavic studies. For the most part efforts of the Slavic groups to introduce their languages into the American educational system were retarded, while available finances were restricted to relief purposes. In other cases, as among the Czechs, the hardships were complicated by the death of such leaders as Reverend Vincent Pisek and Professor Michael Pupin who had been active in stimulating cooperation between the immigrant communities and the American educational system. Their deaths at a critical period disrupted much of the work. Further, the 1931 failure of the Bank of Europe Trust company in New York under conditions which almost completely reimbursed the depositors, nonetheless lessened the effectiveness of Thomas Capek, a leader in the work. Similar disasters in other Slavic groups had similar nation-wide effects and except for an effort to interest the Czech population in the Chicago area to establish courses at the University of Illinois, the period was destitute of that type of energetic development which, on the eve of the depression, promised to bear such rich fruits.

In a lighter vein came the establishment of courses in Russian under the NRA. It had been hoped by some that it might be possible to give relief to at least some of the unemployed Russians by the establishment of free courses in the language. The attempt was almost completely a failure. The students lacked any serious desire to learn the language and the instructors were no more anxious to teach it. One very well educated Russian actually prepared a set of charts on Russian grammar which purported to show that there were no exceptions to any syntactical rule in Russian and he blandly presented to his class word forms that he knew never existed even in the speech of the most illiterate. When he was reprimanded, he calmly told the NRA supervisors that he knew that none of his students intended to learn Russian, he wanted his money, and so there was no reason to worry about what, or how he taught.

In 1934, a new development emerged which was to prove exceedingly fruitful in later years. Largely under the influence of Professors Cross and Patrick, a small sum of money was secured to establish an intensive summer course in Russian for about 20 students. The course was held at Harvard University the first year and was directly under the control of Professor Patrick who had come from the University of California to conduct it with the aid of some assistants. The experiment was successful. In 1935, joint sessions were held at Columbia University and were to a certain degree independent of the regular summer school courses. Professor Patrick was assisted by Mrs. Mogilat of Columbia and Dr. Jack A. Posin of the University of California. After 1935, the course was held at the University of California, largely because of the increasing illness of Professor Patrick.

The session at Columbia was attended by two regular officers of the United States Army, Major Frank L. Hayne and Lieutenant (later Brigadier General) Joseph A. Michela. Their attendance was made possible by the efforts of Colonel Burnett, officer in charge of the Military Attache Service, who, having served several terms as United States Military Attache in Japan, insisted that officers assigned to such posts as Moscow and Tokyo have a speaking and reading knowledge of the local language. This had been the case of Colonel Philip Faymonville, the first Army man to be sent to Moscow after the restoration of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. In a sense, it was almost the beginning of serious language work by the United States Armed Services. Both Hayne and Michela later were military attaches in Moscow, although Hayne was transferred to Finland during the Soviet-Finnish War. Michela remained in Moscow during the greater part of the War and participated in the removal of the capital to Kuybyshev when the Germans approached Moscow in the summer of 1941. At Columbia, these officers had special courses during a two year period. In the second year they were joined by Captain Ivan Yeaton, who had previously served during World War I in the Siberian Expedition under General Graves. Other officers were later added to the group but as World War II approached, the entire project was transferred to Harvard University.

The thirties also witnessed the beginning of a systematic interest in Russian studies by the American Council of Learned Societies. This group had previously considered the need for developing studies in specialized fields and had approached foundations to secure money for limited projects. It had been successful in fostering work in Chinese and in completing at least a preliminary survey of American resources in the field. It then turned its attention to Russian and established a committee to study the general status of Russian studies. Professor Cross was secretary of this important committee for several years. Through the activities of the American Council, coordination of work by the various universities and colleges, was accomplished. This was but the beginning of a process which was to be greatly intensified during the War.

In the thirties, the University of Wisconsin began to offer courses in Polish. Elaborately planned, Professor Joseph Birkenmeyer from the University of Krakow was invited to direct the work. Unfortunately, he returned to Poland just on the eve of World War II, but the work was continued successfully.[37] The department at Wisconsin was established primarily through the influence of the Polish population of the state.

When we consider the state of affairs as a whole on the eve of World War II it is apparent that no important university or college had established an adequate course in Slavic languages and literatures other than those which had done so by the end of World War I. This does not mean that the period between the wars was lost. The departments at all the major centers were better equipped than they had been twenty years before; they had larger libraries, better trained instructors and what is more, they were attracting more serious students. Further, there were, in the United States, a considerable number of men who had had personal experience and acquaintance with the Slavic and adjacent countries. There were real experts in almost every field of Slavic studies and there had been a large output of books on the languages, literatures and histories of the Slavic nations.

Of course, Russian predominated. Yet it is noteworthy that during the twenties and thirties when American institutions were overrun with would-be Communists, the Slavic departments, which might have seemed the most vulnerable, somehow escaped with the least amount of trouble. They had not taken sides in the fervent polemics of the period that were carried on with more heat than light, and while there were a number of men who had studied or visited the Soviet Union, few, if any, had become seriously infected with Communism.

They had, however, continued to repeat the old traditional formulas set out by Russian scholarship before the Revolution, arbitrarily neglecting all aspects of the nationality problem in the Soviets, treating Russia as a single unified country, without regard for the mixed elements of her population or the Soviet division of the republics by an official policy of differentiation between the peoples.

The most unsatisfactory aspect of the period concerned the non-Russian Slavic tongues and histories. This was unfortunate, for it tended to give instruction in the major centers a Russian, if not Soviet, orientation, a fact which would cause repercussions in the following period.

Among the Slavic communities, some leaders were beginning to understand better the peculiar problems of the American educational system, and though they had not yet come to cooperate actively, they were rapidly becoming aware that there was serious work being done. Their own institutions were improving. They were securing more American-trained teachers, even if they were members of the groups, and many second generation Slavs were rising to prominence.

Thus, the period represented a marked deepening, rather than an expansion, of efforts. Slavic languages and history were no longer considered merely artificial and exotic; the way was cleared for a period of rapid expansion.