This essay examines ways in which American social science in the late twentieth century was--and was not--a creature of the Cold War. It identifies important work by historians that calls into question the assumption that all social science during the Cold War amounts to "Cold War social science." These historians attribute significant agency to social scientists, showing how they were enmeshed in both long-running disciplinary discussions and new institutional environments. Key trends in this scholarship include a broadening historical perspective to see social scientists in the Cold War as responding to the ideas of their scholarly predecessors; identifying the institutional legacies of World War II; and examining in close detail the products of extramural--especially governmental--funding. The result is a view of social science in the Cold War in which national security concerns are relevant, but with varied and often unexpected impacts on intellectual life.

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Ideology and the origins of the Cold War, 1917-1962 DAVID C. ENGERMAN Russia's Great October Socialist Revolution of I9I7 triggered a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States that would last much of the twentieth century. In its early years, each side aimed to transform the other. American-Soviet conflict became global only in the I940S, at which point it shaped the international system and every nation in it. In addition to com petition over markets or territories, this new form of struggle-the Cold War was at its root a battle of ideas: American liberalism vs. Soviet Communism. The ideologies animating the Cold War had centuries-long pedigrees, emerging by the early twentieth century as powerful and compelling visions for social change. These ideologies-explicit ideas and implicit assumptions that provided frameworks for understanding the world and defining action in it-were not antithetical to material interests, but often shaped the way foreign-policy officials understood such interests. IdeolOgies were lenses that focused, and just as often distorted, understandings ofexternal events and thus the actions taken in response.