In 1867 Mark Twain cruised into the Black Sea on the first American
tourist ship to visit in Russia. Just a few years later Russian
Grand Duke Alexis in turn was hunting buffalo and drinking
champagne on the Nebraska prairie. Both were taking advantage of a
growing, if precarious, alliance between two of the worlds most
influential nations.
In fact, as Norman Saul reveals, between 1867-the year of the
Alaskan purchase-and the beginning of World War I, Russian and
American dignitaries, diplomats, businessmen, writers, tourists,
and entertainers crossed between the two countries in far greater
numbers than was previously known.
Following the widely praised "Distant Friends," volume one of
Saul's trilogy on Russian American relations, Concord and Conflict
provides the first comprehensive investigation of this highly
transformational and fateful era in Russian-American relations.
Excavating previously unmined Russian and American archives, he
explores the flow and fluctuation of economic, diplomatic, social,
and cultural affairs; personal and professional conflicts and
scandals; and the evolution of each nation's perception of the
other.
At first concentrating on their similarities following the
American Civil War, Saul contends, the Russian and American people
established a tradition of friendship in the absence of major
controversy. In many ways, they felt bound by a sense of common
destiny, corresponding periods of reform and progress, and a mutual
hostility toward the "older" European powers.
Throughout Russia, American trademarks became familiar as U.S.
companies such as Singer, New York Life, Westinghouse, and
International Harvester took root. Hard winter wheat-today a vital
American crop-was introduced by Russian immigrants. The Smithsonian
established an information exchange with the Russian government.
War and Peace was translated into English and widely distributed in
the United States. And the first YMCA was established in
Russia.
As progressive reform waned in 1880s Russia, however, Americans
became increasingly leery of Russia's repressive internal tactics,
hostility toward Jews, open-door policy toward China, and expansion
in the Far East while Russians found America's actions and
attitudes hypocritical and equally confusing. Yet despite
deterioration of diplomatic ties, Saul shows, a semblance of
kinship endured into the twentieth century as cultural exchanges
and business opportunities continued to escalated.
Illuminating fifty of the most significant-and surprisingly
open-years of this frequently tumultuous and contradictory
association, "Concord and Conflict" reaffirms Saul's status as "the
leading American authority on Russian-American relations before
1917" ("Journal of American History").
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