American History in Russia: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

The study of American history (in comparison with the history of European countries, especially France) had no deep traditions in Russia until the middle of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century the most important books on the history of the United States -including the famous work by a French, aristocrat, Count Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America; the three-volume work, The American Commonwealth, by an Englishman, Sir James Bryce; and books by such Americans asJohn William Draper, Edward Channing, and otherswere translated into Russian and were well known to the reading public.1 The interest in American history, especially in the origin of the American political system, agrarian history, and the history of education became more evident at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries because similar problems were attracting attention in Russia itself. In this context, a book by a distinguished Russian academician, M. M. Kovalevskii, on the history of the United States Constitution deserves attention, as well as his articles, all based on original research, on agrarian laws in the United States, on local legislation, and on the national character of North Americans. The topics reflected an interest in reform. Indeed, Kovalevskii's liberal views and his critical attitude toward the czarist regime led to his expulsion in 1887 from Moscow University and to a ban on his lecturing at other educational institutions in Russia. I should also mention a serious two-volume work on the history of the United States by A. V. Babin, based on a wide range of special literature and documentary sources. Babin was well acquainted with American documents because he had worked as a librarian at Cornell, Indiana, and Stanford universities and, from 1902 to 1910, as chief of the Slavic division of