We began as friends. Then followed nearly a century of suspicion
and hostility. Now, thanks to glasnost and a thaw in the Cold War,
relations between the United States and the Soviet Union have
nearly come full circle--we're almost friends again.
In the initial volume of a three-volume series, historian Norman
Saul presents the first comprehensive survey of early
Russian-American relations by an American scholar. Drawing upon
secondary and documentary publications as well as archival
materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, he
reveals a wealth of new detail about contacts between the two
countries between the American Revolutionary War and the purchase
of Alaska in 1867. By weaving personal experiences into analysis of
the basic trends, Saul provides a fuller understanding of
Soviet-American experience.
His conclusion? That the early relationships--diplomatic,
cultural, scientific, economic, and personal--between the two
countries were more extensive than had been reported before, more
important, and more congenial.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the U.S. and Russia
had a lot in common, Saul notes, and many of those similarities
persist today. Both countries, in part because of geographic size,
faced problems in developing their natural resources. Both
countries were economically dependent on systems of forced
labor--slavery in the U.S. and serfdom in Russia. Reform resulted
in freedom without land for American slaves, and land without
freedom for the serfs. Then, as now, Russia looked to the U.S. for
help with technology.
Saul shows that differences also persist. The United States was
geographically isolated and developed in relative peace, while
Russia developed within the reach of the European powers and,
consequently, worried more about defense. As is still the case,
Russian government seemed appallingly autocratic to those whose
rights were guaranteed by the U.S. constitution, and deal-making
between citizens of the two countries was hampered by the Russians'
belief that Americans were materialistic and deceitful, and by
Americans' notion that Russians were slow, bureaucratic, and
expected to be bribed.
At a time when United States-Soviet relations have taken yet
another dramatic turn, it is more important than ever to trace--and
to understand--the history of the relationship of these two
countries. As Saul shows clearly, parallel developments of the late
eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries in some ways foreshadow
parallel development into the two superpowers in the mid
twentieth.
"This book will be the standard--one is tempted to say
classic--reference for U.S.-Russian relations between the 1770s and
the late 1860s. It is encyclopedic. Saul's research is awesome.
This will simply become the standard reference from which every
other scholar studying the subject will have to begin. It is a
publication of great importance in American and Russian
history."—Walter LaFeber, Noll Professor of History at
Cornell University and author of "The American Age: U.S. Foreign
Policy Abroad and at Home Since 1750," "Inevitable Revolutions: The
United States in Central America," and numerous books on relations
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
"A highly valuable contribution on important, but neglected
aspects of the histories of both countries. . . . Provides 'missing
pages' from both Russian and American history. . . . Complements,
updates, and synthesizes very effectively all the existing
literature on the subject."--Allison Blakely, professor of European
history and comparative history at Howard University and author of
"Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought."
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