RAND Corporation is a nonprofit think tank established in the United States as an independent organization in 1948. Throughout the post-World War II period, it was one of the key analytical institutions to offer research on major issues of international security. Since its inception, RAND has gone through multiple alterations in its structure and research approaches in response to global political challenges. One of the significant changes within the organization was the initiation of the Social Science program. There are two parts to this article. The first part identifies the main characteristics of the U.S. expert community in the post-World War II period and analyzes how they were shaped by the state of international affairs and domestic institutional changes. In the second part, the author explores research materials published by RAND to examine its place within the U.S. expert community, as well as the evolution of its organizational structure and research methods. It looks in particular at the development of RAND’s research in social sciences and Soviet studies and compares its analytical product published between 1946 and 1956 – from the year RAND released its first report under a special contract with Douglas Aircraft Company until 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the Earth’s first artificial satellite, which arguably marked a new era in Soviet Studies research. To explore the analytical methods employed by RAND’s social scientists more deeply, the author examines three analytical pieces: “Soviet Atomic Blackmail and the North Atlantic Alliance” by Hans Speier (1957), “the Organizational Weapon” by Philip Selznick (1952), and “the Operational Code of the Politburo” by Nathan Leites (1951).