Merle Fainsod

Merle Fainsod (May 2, 1907 – February 11, 1972) was an American political scientist best known for his work on public administration and as a scholar of the Soviet Union. His books Smolensk under Soviet Rule, based on documents captured by the German Army during World War II, and How Russia is Ruled (also known as How the Soviet Union is Governed) helped form the basis of American study of the Soviet Union, and established him "as a leading political scientist of the Soviet Union." Fainsod is also remembered for his work in the Office of Price Administration and as the director of the Harvard University Library.

Fainsod was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania on May 2, 1907, and spent his childhood years there. In 1920, after the death of his father, Fainsod's family moved to St. Louis. Fainsod attended Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 1928 with a B.A. in political science and an M.A. in 1930. He then began his Ph.D at Harvard University in government, completing it in only 2 years.

In 1932, Fainsod traveled to the Soviet Union on a Sheldon Fellowship, gaining his first exposure to the country. In 1933, he returned to the United States and began teaching in the government department at Harvard. Upon his return to the United States he also married Elizabeth Stix, with whom he had two children.

Throughout the 1930s, most of Fainsod's work focused on the United States, and he published the books The American People and their Government and Government and the American Economy. Because of his expertise on American government, he was chosen as a staff member for the Brownlow Committee in 1936. In 1940, he was chosen as a consultant for the Temporary National Economic Committee, and in 1941, when America entered World War II, he was selected as a price executive for the Office of Price Administration(OPA). In April 1942, he was chosen to direct the retail trade and services division of the OPA.

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