Detachment R

Detachment R

Detachment R (also known as the U.S. Army Russian Area School) was a special U.S. Army School initially located in a former Wehrmacht garrison in Oberammergau and later moved to Regensburg, Germany, where it remained from 1950 to 1954, when it was moved back to Oberammergau.

The school operated as the two-year final component of the Army's Foreign Area Specialist Training (FAST) Program in Russian and was designed as a full-immersion experience in the language, economics, and culture of the Soviet Union. The first component of the FAST program involved a one-year Russian course at the Army Language School in Monterey, California, and was followed by a year at Columbia University studying Russian history, economics, political science, and other topics of strategic importance.[1]

Detachment R was described at length by Peter Bridges, former U.S. ambassador to Somalia, in his book, Safirka:

What we were being taught at Oberammergau was to perfect ourselves in the Russian language, to comprehend the intricacies and absurdities of the Soviet economic system, and to master the Soviet geographic, ethnographic, and climatic map; we were also taught a lot about the Soviet military and police system. (p. 28)

Bridges goes on to describe the structure of the program, its leadership, and its faculty:

The detachment commandant was an American colonel, his deputy was a major, and there were several staff noncoms. We students numbered less than fifty, mostly army officers spending two years at Detachment R after a year of Russian-language study and a year in the Russian Institute at Columbia University, where I had done my own graduate work. Most of the army officers would go on from Oberammergau to become military attaches at Moscow or to join the American liaison mission with the Group of Soviet Forces in East Germany. (p. 27)

They taught in Russian, and they were Russian, except for a pleasant gentleman named Ozolins, who had been a Latvian diplomat until Stalin occupied his country, and Chechen writer named Avtorkhanov, who had been a Soviet professor--and both of these spoke perfect Russian. As for the Russians, they ran the gamut from two former KGB officers who had defected to the West to an ethnic Russian who had lived in Poland until World War II and a former Soviet economist who had skipped from East to West Berlin before the Wall was built. (p. 27, emphasis in original)

References

  1. ^ Oppenheimer, Max, Russian Area and Language Studies in the U.S. Army, The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar. 1959), pp. 116-121. http://www.jstor.org/pss/321128

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Detachment 88 — logo Active 2003 Present Country …   Wikipedia

  • detachment — [n1] disconnection disengagement, disjoining, dissolution, disunion, division, divorce, divorcement, partition, rupture, separation, severing, split up; concepts 388,747 Ant. attachment, combination, connection, linkage, merger detachment [n2]… …   New thesaurus

  • Detachment — De*tach ment, n. [Cf. F. d[ e]tachement.] 1. The act of detaching or separating, or the state of being detached. [1913 Webster] 2. That which is detached; especially, a body of troops or part of a fleet sent from the main body on special service …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • Detachment —   [dɪ tætʃmənt, englisch] das, s/ s, die Abspaltung eines Elektrons von einem freien negativen Ion durch Strahlungsabsorption (Photodetachment), durch Stöße oder durch chemische Reaktionen des Ions mit anderen Atomen oder Molekülen (assoziatives… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Detachment — (frz. détacher = abgrenzen, entfernen) steht für: die Lösung eines Geschäftsobjekts bei Unternehmensanwendungen, siehe Enterprise JavaBeans eine tektonische Abscherungsfläche in der Geologie, siehe Abscherung (Geologie) Selbstentfremdung,… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • detachment — index candor (impartiality), disassociation, disinterest (lack of interest), disinterest (lack of prejudice), di …   Law dictionary

  • detachment — 1660s, action of detaching, from Fr. détachement (17c.), from détacher (see DETACH (Cf. detach)). Meaning portion of a military force is from 1670s; that of aloofness from objects or circumstances is from 1798 …   Etymology dictionary

  • detachment — ► NOUN 1) the state of being objective or aloof. 2) a group of troops, ships, etc. sent away on a separate mission. 3) the action or process of detaching …   English terms dictionary

  • detachment — [dē tach′mənt, ditach′mənt] n. [Fr détachement] 1. a detaching; separation 2. a) the sending of troops or ships on special service b) a unit of troops separated from a larger unit for special duty c) a small permanent unit organized for special… …   English World dictionary

  • Detachment — For other uses, see Detachment (disambiguation). The lotus symbolizes non attachment in some religions in Asia owing to its ability to soar over the muddy waters and produce an immaculate flower. Detachment, also expressed as non attachment, is a …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”