“After my lecture the Russian students wanted to ask questions, but the professor in charge thought they better not, as they were questions of a provocative nature,” Pipes says. As a result, “the students would surround me after lectures to ask questions.”

Not only were conversations about politics avoided, but discussion actually carried consequences for those in the USSR and for the Soviet professors in America. For instance, Goody recounts a story of his good friend and Rector of the University of Leningrad, Kirill Kondratiev, who was reportedly too friendly to foreigners and was subsequently banned from traveling abroad for 15 years.

“We never discussed politics—that was too dangerous for our Russian colleagues,” Goody says.

“The ‘tiki’ or ‘silent ones’ were always there, somewhere. The slightest slip on their part could have consequences,” he adds, referring to the danger that Soviet professors’ actions might be reported to Russian intelligence services.

While back at Harvard, discussing politics did not carry the same severe consequences, but the discussion was still limited. Robert W. Back, a graduate student in Harvard’s Regional Studies-USSR program at the time, says he was frustrated even with the Russian language curriculum.

“The problem was it was all literature and no politics,” Back says. “But at the time we wanted to talk politics.”

“It was boring to be a student in Russian at Harvard because the conversation was all literature,” Back adds. “They couldn’t discuss politics to save their lives.”

—Staff writer Erika P. Pierson can be reached at epierson@fas.harvard.edu.