Italian Fascist Activities in the United States

Abstract

Choi Chatterjee and Beth Holmgren, eds. Americans Experience Russia: Encountering the Enigma, 1917 to the Present. Routledge Studies in Cultural History. New York: Routledge, 2013. Index. 232 pp. $125.00, cloth.The book is a collection of essays seeking to explore the way Americans understood and experienced Russia from the late nineteenth century to the present day. One of the main goals of this volume, according to the editors, is to break away from seeing Russia though a narrow prism of binary opposition encouraged by US authorities during the Cold Warfreedom vs. tyranny being the most glaring example. In addition, the volume examines how Americans' first-hand experience with Russia shaped their pre-existing views of that country as well as themselves. Essays touch on a broad range of subjects, from the birth and evolution of the Russian studies in the United States at the turn of the century to more recent encounters with Russian foreigner registration laws.David Engerman's opening essay describes the development of the field of Russian studies in the United States in the early twentieth century. The author focuses on Archibald Cary Coolidge, a man of many scholarly interests, including Russian affairs. Educated in Europe, Coolidge came back to the United States and used family connections and vast sums of money to obtain a position at Harvard where he championed the field of Russian studies, largely funding the program himself. Coolidge adhered to a European view of Russia as a prisoner of its geographically determined national characteristics, such as laziness and fatalism. Engerman also mentions Charles Crane, the heir to a plumbing fortune, and a generous benefactor of Russian studies at the University of Chicago. In the end, Engerman argues that early Russian studies in the United States rested on a European focus on national characteristics. Unlike in Europe, American optimism eventually gave birth to the idea that these characteristics could be overcome. The author, however, offers little factual support to this last assertion.Lynn Mally writes about Hallie Flanagan, an American theatre director who travelled to the Soviet Union several times in the 1920s and 1930s. Mally argues that Flanagan was much more interested in how certain features of early Soviet theatre could be used to improve the American stage, rather than in the ideological battle between capitalism and communism. Flanagan was particularly impressed with large-scale state support for Soviet theatre as well as its social relevance.Frank Costigliola and Lisa Kirschenbaum explore the role of individual personality and its effect on the Russian experiences of diplomat George Kennan and journalist Harrison Salisbury. Costigliola shows how Kennan, already unhappy with the limitations of a monogamous marriage, embraced Bolshevik ideas of more open relationships. That, coupled with Moscow's lively intellectual climate of the early 1930s, led Kennan to develop a genuine affection for the Russian people. At the same time, Stalin's purges and limitations on contact between Russians and foreigners cemented Kennan's hatred of the communist government. Kirschenbaum noted similar traits in Salisbury's attitude towards Russia. She wrote that while romanticizing the Russian people, Salisbury detested the Soviet government for its tight censorship of the press, seeing it as an attack on his journalistic integrity.Choi Chatteijee and Beth Holmgren focus on the idea of Russia in American popular culture. According to Chatteijee, beginning in the nineteenth century, American popular culture, influenced by exotic encounters with the New World, developed a romantic archetype of Russians as revolutionary noblemen or women-cultured yet full of dangerous and enigmatic ideas. …