Early career, 1950-1971

Scope and content:

Jack Matlock initially began working for the State Department while studying and pursuing his doctorate in Russian literature. Early materials include his applications and correspondence regarding his background checks, as well as early research files from his projects on the Index to Stalin's Works and his first dissertation on the Union of Soviet Writers. Research files overlap between the Academia and Foreign Service series. Once hired fulltime by the State Dept., Matlock created reports and collected materials on Soviet internal affairs, writing intelligence briefs on specific publications and activities in the Soviet Union.

The subseries includes his travels and various assignments in Germany, Moscow, and Vienna, and then his transfer to Ghana and later Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. By this point they had five children; the official Foreign Service series overlaps with the Personal Series documenting the family's activities and children's education during this period. The Matlocks left Tanzania in 1970 and returned for Jack to work as a scholar at the Senior Seminar in the Foreign Service Institute; his research on Japan and the Soviet Union is also present in this subseries. Files are largely arranged chronologically with a group of correspondence collected for the period 1950-1971.

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