'Imperialist spies' or colleagues? Soviet-American anthropological dialogue during the early Cold War

The article explores contacts between Soviet ethnography and American anthropology from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The author claims that it was a period when the isolationism of Soviet ethnographers and their harsh ideological critique of America gave way to dialogue between the two disciplines. However, by the 7th ICAES that took place in Moscow in 1964, Soviet anthropologists had already set themselves the task of becoming the worldwide Marxist alternative to the 'bourgeois' American science. At the same time, American anthropology-oriented Sovietology started to develop and American leftist anthropologists sought to establish contacts with their Soviet counterparts. The article also analyzes the dynamics of academic exchange which promoted the scientific dialogue between the opposing Cold War camps.