The American Westerner in Russian Fiction

Abstract

IT is an amazing fact that the American cowboy, who is probably the most familiar of all American characters to a West European picturegoer and comic-book reader, has never been well known in Russia. No Russian authors have introduced a cowboy into their works, even when they gave us realistic descriptions of the American West. One reason for this might be the fact that during the whole of the nineteenth century, the Russians' idea of America was molded by the works of Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, and Mark Twain, which did not mention cowboys. Until the very end of the nineteenth century there was no emigration from the purely Russian territories; only Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, and Finns emigrated from the hated Russian Empire. Russian peasants, when forced to move by famine or in search of more land and better conditions, went not to America, but to Siberia. Once more they proved that to a real Russian five thousand miles by cart or sledge seemed easier than even a short voyage by sea. The latter had to be paid for, the former cost only time, and a Russian had plenty of time. To the technicaland business-minded West European, America appeared as a country of freedom and equality, where the strong and capable were able to make a fortune even if they were of low origin. The Russians, for centuries kept in the hard conditions of a police state, had not yet developed the spirit of private enterprise. Even if some of them came to America,