Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists 9781350988118, 9781786733030

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Amerikanistika in Soviet Knowledge Production
Historiographical Context
Sources and Structure
1. The Cold War Context of Knowledge Production and American Studies in the USSR
Amerikanistika as Soviet Area Studies of the Cold War
The Cold War and Academic Exchanges
Soviet Institutions of American Studies during Detente
Part I: The Postwar Generation
2. World War II and Inventing America on the Borders of Socialist Imagination: The Origins of American Studies in the USSR
Postwar Images and Sounds of America
The Year 1953 and Beyond
`Trophy Films' and the Genesis of Americanists in Soviet Ukraine
Conclusion
3. Discovering America by Studying Russian - US and Ukrainian - Canadian Relations
Soviet Pioneer of the History of Russian - American Relations
Cultural Influences of the Khrushchev Thaw and its Aftermath
American Discoveries of Soviet Russian Identity by a Historian of Russian - American Relations
Soviet Pioneer of the History of Ukrainian - American Relations
Conclusion
Part II: Detente Generation
4. Academic Exchanges and Soviet Americanists during the Cold War
American Hosts on `Politically Influential' Soviet Guests
Political Conformism in Academic Detente: A Soviet Ukrainian Case
A Variety of Personal Discoveries of the Real America by Soviet Guests
Soviet `Discursive' Discoveries of America
Conclusion
5. Soviet Americanists and the Impact of American Cinema and Television on the Soviet Union
The Western Goes East
Cultural Detente in Soviet Society
Problems of Nuclear Catastrophe and the End of Detente
Television, New Video Technologies and Soviet Espionage Television Series
Conclusion
Part III: From Detente to Perestroika: The Last Generations of Soviet Americanists
6. Playing American Indians and Soviet Indianistika
Yulia Averkieva, a Pioneer in Soviet Studies of Native Americans (1907-80)
From Playing to Studying American Indians
Andrei Znamensky and Alexander Vashchenko: Soviet Province - Centre Collaboration
Valery Tishkov: From the Russian Province to Soviet Academic Hierarchy
7. Carving the Academic and National Identity of Ukrainian Americanists
From Rock Music Enthusiast to Social Historian of Colonial America
Arnold Shlepakov, Political Conformism and American Studies in Soviet Ukraine
Conclusion: The Rediscovery of Modernity among the Ukrainians of North America, and the Shaping of Ukrainian Identity among Americanists in Soviet Ukraine
Epilogue. Perestroika and the Crisis of Soviet Amerikanistika
Vladislav Zubok and `Perestroika' among Young Soviet Americanists
`Envy of Moscow' and Provincial Americanists
`Perestroika' of Ukrainian Americanists
Three Generations of Soviet Americanists and Geopolitics
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Sergei I. Zhuk is Professor of Russian and Eastern European History at Ball State University and has just finished a visiting professorship at Columbia University. He received his first PhD, in US History, from the Institute of World History in Moscow and his second, in Russian History, from Johns Hopkins University. Zhuk is the author of the acclaimed Rock and Roll in the Rocket City (2010), Popular Culture, Identity and Soviet Youth in Dniepropetrovsk, 1959 – 1984 (2008) and Russia’s Lost Reformation (2004), as well as numerous books in Russian. In 1991 there were more than 1,000 ‘Americanists’ – experts in US history and politics – working in the Soviet Union. The Americanist community played a vital role in the Cold War, as well as a large part in directing the cultural consumption of Soviet society and shaping perceptions of the US. To shed light onto this important yet under-studied academic community, Sergei I. Zhuk here explores the personal histories of prominent Soviet Americanists, considering the myriad cultural influences – from John Wayne’s bravado in the film Stagecoach to Miles Davis – that shaped their identities, careers and academic interests. Zhuk’s compelling account draws on a wide range of under-studied archival documents, periodicals, letters and diaries as well as more than 100 exclusive interviews with prominent Americanists to take the reader from the postwar origins of American studies, via the extremes of the Cold War, thaw and perestroika, to Putin’s Russia. Soviet Americana is a comprehensive insight into shifting attitudes towards the US throughout the twentieth century and an essential resource for all Soviet and Cold War historians.

‘This extensively and imaginatively researched book – a fresh and fascinating analysis of “soft power” in the academic arena – is one of the most important and original contributions to Cold War studies of the past decade. Sergei I. Zhuk, once a “Soviet Americanist” and now a leading specialist in late Soviet cultural history, is uniquely qualified to examine the complex careers of Soviet pioneers in the study of US history. Expertly combining traditional archival and print material with extensive interviews, Zhuk convincingly demonstrates that American influences in postwar Soviet society were as intellectual as cultural, moving well beyond movies, music and jeans.’ Denise J. Youngblood, University of Vermont, author of Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (with Tony Shaw) ‘In Soviet Americana, Sergei I. Zhuk removes the veil of secrecy and misconception from one of the most intriguing subjects of the Cold War history, the story of the creation of Soviet knowledge about the Kremlin’s “main adversary,” America and Americans. Through the personal stories and academic careers of some of the most prominent Soviet scholars, observers and interpreters of the United States and Canada, Soviet Americana explains what, when and why the Soviet academics knew and did not know about North America, and how the Soviet America experts helped not only to perpetuate but also to end the Cold War. By going beyond Moscow and Russia and including in his inquiry Ukraine, Zhuk provides important insight in the transformation of the American studies in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union.’ Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University, author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy ‘Sergei I. Zhuk’s extraordinary combination of scholarly and personal knowledge makes Soviet Americana an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the Cold War and the politics of historical writing that lay behind it.’ Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh ‘At a time when the Russian government’s engagement with the US has become evermore intense, Zhuk offers a stimulating book about how Soviet scholars studied the United States in the late twentieth century. Specialists in political science, international affairs and history alike will want to read the

book and then consider how Russian studies of the United States have evolved since the collapse of the Soviet Union.’ Jeffrey Brooks, Johns Hopkins University ‘Soviet Americana is a timely, richly documented and highly readable account of a fascinating but hitherto under-researched topic, namely how Soviet academics imagined, and later discovered, “America”. This remarkable book will be essential reading not just for Cold War scholars, but for anyone with a serious interest in understanding how Russia views the US today.’ Graham H. Roberts, Paris Nanterre University ‘This book is a fascinating examination of the study of the United States in the Soviet Union and those Soviet specialists that studied America. Eschewing the tired methodology of historiographical analysis, Zhuk instead provides us with a deeply compelling and highly personal perspective on a most timely topic. Soviet Americana is part an American Graffiti-style remembrance of Zhuk’s amazing life, one that has been lived in two disparate yet connected cultural environments, and part Dr. Strangelove narrative of the complex and sometimes quirky milieu of Cold War politics. In a highly readable account that includes an impressive array of interviews, we learn of the deep interest and passion held by American specialists (“Americanists”) in the USSR for the United States and its culture. These Americanists analysed, absorbed and interpreted the US culture in a way that deeply impacted Soviet and post-Soviet culture and which influences perceptions of the United States in the former Soviet Union to this day. Soviet Americana is a must-read for students and specialists of Russian and Ukrainian studies alike, as well as for those who study the United States.’ Christopher J. Ward, Clayton State University

Library of Modern Russia Advisory board – Michael David-Fox, Professor at Georgetown University – Sheila Fitzpatrick, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago – Lucien Frary, Associate Professor at Rider University – James Harris, Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds – Robert Hornsby, Lecturer at the University of Leeds – Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History at Princeton University – Donald J. Raleigh, Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – Geoffrey Swain, Emeritus Professor of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow – Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic, Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester – Vladislav Zubok, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics Building on I.B.Tauris’ established record publishing Russian studies titles for both academic and general readers, the Library of Modern Russia will showcase the work of emerging and established writers who are setting new agendas in the field. At a time when potentially dangerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about Russia abound, titles in the series will shed fresh light and nuance on Russian history. Volumes will take the idea of ‘Russia’ in its broadest, cultural sense and cover the entirety of the multi-ethnic lands that made up imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Ranging in chronological scope from the Romanovs to the present day, the books will foster a community of scholars and readers devoted to a sharper understanding of the Russian experience, past and present.

New and forthcoming Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space, Cynthia Ruder Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, Mark Vincent Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika, Barbara Martin Fascism in Manchuria: The Soviet– China Encounter in the 1930s, Susanne Hohler Ideology and the Arts in the Soviet Union: The Establishment of Censorship and Control, Steven Richmond Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City, Vicky Davis Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, Alun Thomas Power and Conflict in Russia’s Borderlands: The Post-Soviet Geopolitics of Dispute Resolution, Helena Ryto¨vuori-Apunen Power and Politics in Modern Chechnya: Ramzan Kadyrov and the New Digital Authoritarianism, Karena Avedissian Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets, John P. Davis Russian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land: Piety and Travel from the Middle Ages to the Revolution, Nikolaos Chrissidis Science City, Siberia: Akademgorodok and the Late Soviet Politics of Expertise, Ksenia Tartachenko Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, Sergei I. Zhuk Stalin’s Economic Advisors: The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy, Kyung Deok Roh The Communist Party in the Russian Civil War: A Political History, Gayle Lonergan The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev, Vladislav Zubok The Politics of Football in Soviet Russia: Sport and Society after Stalin, Manfred Zeller The Russian State and the People: Power, Corruption and the Individual in Putin’s Russia, Geir Hønneland et al. (eds) ¨ nol The Tsar’s Armenians: A Minority in Late Imperial Russia, Onur O

SOVIET AMERICANA

The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists

SERGEI I. ZHUK

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 by I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Paperback edition fi rst published 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic Copyright © Sergei I. Zhuk, 2018 Sergei I. Zhuk has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7845-3910-8 PB: 978-1-3501-3012-8 ePDF: 978-1-7867-3303-0 ePub: 978-1-7867-2303-1 Series: Library of Modern Russia 6 Typeset by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

I devote this book to a memory of dear friends, Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov (1930 –2008) and Richard Stites (1931 –2010)

CONTENTS

List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface Introduction Amerikanistika in Soviet Knowledge Production Historiographical Context Sources and Structure 1.

The Cold War Context of Knowledge Production and American Studies in the USSR Amerikanistika as Soviet Area Studies of the Cold War The Cold War and Academic Exchanges Soviet Institutions of American Studies during De´tente

Part I The Postwar Generation 2.

World War II and Inventing America on the Borders of Socialist Imagination: The Origins of American Studies in the USSR Postwar Images and Sounds of America The Year 1953 and Beyond ‘Trophy Films’ and the Genesis of Americanists in Soviet Ukraine Conclusion

xv xvii xxi 1 4 6 9 13 14 18 25 31

33 34 45 50 58

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3.

Discovering America by Studying Russian –US and Ukrainian –Canadian Relations Soviet Pioneer of the History of Russian– American Relations Cultural Influences of the Khrushchev Thaw and its Aftermath American Discoveries of Soviet Russian Identity by a Historian of Russian– American Relations Soviet Pioneer of the History of Ukrainian –American Relations Conclusion

Part II De´tente Generation 4.

5.

Academic Exchanges and Soviet Americanists during the Cold War American Hosts on ‘Politically Influential’ Soviet Guests Political Conformism in Academic De´tente: A Soviet Ukrainian Case A Variety of Personal Discoveries of the Real America by Soviet Guests Soviet ‘Discursive’ Discoveries of America Conclusion Soviet Americanists and the Impact of American Cinema and Television on the Soviet Union The Western Goes East Cultural De´tente in Soviet Society Problems of Nuclear Catastrophe and the End of De´tente Television, New Video Technologies and Soviet Espionage Television Series Conclusion

61 61 66 76 80 87 89 93 96 107 113 123 133 136 138 141 150 152 159

Part III From De´tente to Perestroika: The Last Generations of Soviet Americanists

163

6.

165

Playing American Indians and Soviet Indianistika Yulia Averkieva, a Pioneer in Soviet Studies of Native Americans (1907–80) From Playing to Studying American Indians Andrei Znamensky and Alexander Vashchenko: Soviet Province – Centre Collaboration

166 173 181

CONTENTS

Valery Tishkov: From the Russian Province to Soviet Academic Hierarchy 7.

Carving the Academic and National Identity of Ukrainian Americanists From Rock Music Enthusiast to Social Historian of Colonial America Arnold Shlepakov, Political Conformism and American Studies in Soviet Ukraine Conclusion: The Rediscovery of Modernity among the Ukrainians of North America, and the Shaping of Ukrainian Identity among Americanists in Soviet Ukraine

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187 195 195 216 227

Epilogue Perestroika and the Crisis of Soviet Amerikanistika Vladislav Zubok and ‘Perestroika’ among Young Soviet Americanists ‘Envy of Moscow’ and Provincial Americanists ‘Perestroika’ of Ukrainian Americanists Three Generations of Soviet Americanists and Geopolitics

231 231 237 239 241

Notes Select Bibliography Index

246 309 313

LIST OF FIGURES

All photos are from Sergei I. Zhuk’s private collection Figure 1 Sergei I. Zhuk at Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s house in Moscow in July of 2013. xxiii Figure 2 Sergei I. Zhuk with Liudmila Antonovna Bolkhovitinova in Moscow in August 2013.

10

Figure 3 Americanist Nikolai Inozemtsev (IMEMO) in 1978.

15

Figure 4 Americanist Georgi Arbatov (ISKAN) in 1979.

16

Figure 5 Georgi Arbatov (ISKAN) and Edward Kennedy in the 1970s.

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Figure 6 Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s family around their car Pobeda in Moscow in 1947.

39

Figure 7 MGIMO student Nikolai Bolkhovitinov in 1951.

45

Figure 8 Leonid Leshchenko with his classmates in 1954 in Kyiv State University.

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Figure 9 Leonid Leshchenko in 1958.

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Figure 10 Nikolai and Liudmila Bolkhovitinovs in 1966.

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Figure 11 Nikolai Bolkhovitinov with his wife before leaving for the United States in 1968.

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Figure 12 Arnold Shlepakov in 1968.

86

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Figure 13 Arbatov during negotiations with American hosts in the 1970s, meeting George Bush.

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Figure 14 Grigorii Sevostianov in 2000.

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Figure 15 Leonid Leshchenko’s wedding, Ukrainian style.

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Figure 16 Alexander Fursenko in 2000.

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Figure 17 Nikolai Sivachev in 1979.

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Figure 18 Nikolai Bolkhovitinov with American scholars in the USSR in 1979.

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Figure 19 Publication of The Godfather in Vsesvit.

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Figure 20 Publication of The Godfather in Vsesvit.

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Figure 21 Yulia Averkieva in 1979.

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Figure 22 Aleksandr Vashchenko with Eagle Feather (Oleg Koshelev) near Leningrad in 1983.

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Figure 23 Soviet Indianists in the rituals of Pow-Wow, 1983.

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Figure 24 Soviet Indianists in the rituals of Pow-Wow, 1984.

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Figure 25 Soviet Indianists in the rituals of Pow-Wow, 1984.

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Figure 26 Women Pow-Wow in 1988.

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Figure 27 Andrei Znamenskii and American Indian in 1989.

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Figure 28 Valery Tishkov in 2010.

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Figure 29 Ukrainian Indianists with a sign of Trident (a state symbol of independent Ukraine) in 1989.

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Figure 30 Sergei I. Zhuk Lecturing on Colonial New York History in 1991 in Soviet Ukraine.

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Figure 31 Arnold Shlepakov in 1978.

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Figure 32 Leonid Leshchenko in 1998.

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Figure 33 Vladislav Zubok travelling overseas, 1988.

235

Figure 34 Vladislav Zubok travelling overseas, 1988.

236

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Soviet Americana is my personal tribute to the teachers and friends who have shaped my academic interests and preferences in both the Soviet geopolitical space and the United States since the 1980s. They include Nikolai Bolkhovitinov from Moscow, an official supervisor of my kandidatskaia dissertation, and Richard Stites from Washington, DC, both of whom inspired my research project from the very beginning, in the 1990s. Many colleagues of mine, who were to some extent personally connected to Bolkhovitinov and Stites, also enriched my intellectual experience as a young Soviet Americanist and contributed ideas to my book project, which finally took shape only after 1997, when I moved with my family from postSoviet Ukraine to the United States. I am especially grateful to Marcus Rediker, my first American friend, whom I met in 1985 in Moscow, to Jack Greene and Knud Krakau, whom I met in 1991 in Moscow, to David Goldfrank, Stites’ colleague, whom I met in 1992 in Washington, DC, and Michael Zuckerman and Sharon Holt, whom I met in Philadelphia in 1992; all of them are still my close friends. Many former colleagues of mine from the US, Canada, Russia and Ukraine not only helped me with my research, but also shared their own materials with me. I am especially grateful to Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Liudmila Antonovna Bolkhovitinova, Sergei Burin, Basil Dmytryshyn, Eric Foner, John Lewis Gaddis, David Goldfrank, Jack Greene, Robert F. Ivanov, Viktor M. Kalashnikov, Allen H. Kassof, Andrei Kozovoi, Ivan Kurilla, Leonid Leshchenko, Paul Robert Magosci, Donald J. Raleigh, Yale Richmond, Arnold Shlepakov, Larissa Stavroff (Krawchuk), Frank Sysyn, Valery Tishkov, Andrei Znamensky and Vladislav Zubok. I first attempted to articulate the ideas for my future project on American Studies in the USSR during my first visits to the West. In 1994– 5, as a

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Fulbright scholar, I went to Philadelphia and wrote my Ukrainian book, a social history of the middle colonies of British America, at the Philadelphia (now McNeil) Center for Early American Studies. During the breaks in my research work, I shared my personal experience of becoming an Americanist in Soviet Ukraine with American friends like Michael Zuckerman, Sharon Holt, Richard Dunn, Jack Greene, Wayne Bodle and William Pencak. Later they invited me to deliver a lecture about this during a special meeting of the Philadelphia Center, which was published a year later by Pennsylvania History magazine. So I owe my gratitude to these first American friends who were fascinated with my stories and who urged me to write in English for an American reading audience. My thanks go also to the Rockefeller Foundation, which awarded me a grant allowing me to write the first outline for my future project in Bellagio Center, Italy, in November to December 1996. It would have been impossible for me to finish this book without support from various people and organisations. First of all, Ball State University granted me Special Assigned Leave with pay in 2012, and I spent the time very productively at the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, as Petro Jacyk Visiting Scholar. I express my gratitude to my Canadian colleagues such as Frank Sysyn and especially to Larissa Stavroff (Krawchuk), who allowed me to use her personal archive in Toronto. I am also grateful to the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, which invited me as a visiting professor to teach and gave me an opportunity to use important printed materials to finish my research for this book in the spring of 2016. Moreover, the Harriman Institute provided me not only with important financial funding, but also with intellectual inspiration and support. Eventually, publication of this book was made possible, in part, with a grant from the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. I remain grateful to Alexander Cooley, Alla Rachkov, Tatiana Beloborodova, Mark Andryczyk and Ronald Meyer, who have consistently offered me friendly assistance and support in my research and teaching at Columbia. Many American Ukrainians helped me to finish my project about Ukrainian and Russian Americanists. I am especially grateful to Larissa Stavroff (Krawchuk), Frank Sysyn, Bohdan Vitvitsky, Serhii Plokhy, George O. Liber and Roman Procyk. The International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) provided support for summer months of research in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, and Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro). I am much indebted to the staff of the State Archive of Russian Federation, MGU Archive, Archive of the Russian

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xix

Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Dnipropetrovsk State Regional Archive, the Archive of National Academy of Science of Ukraine, the Central State Archive of Non-Governmental Organisations of Ukraine in Kyiv, and the Manuscript Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, for directing me to particularly useful material and for their tireless and good-natured assistance. The manuscript was improved by suggestions and critical comments from Jeffrey Brooks, Kate Brown, Philipp Casula, Eugene Clay, Karen Dawisha, Mikhail Dmitriev, Ekaterina Emeliantseva, Slava Gerovitch, David Goldfrank, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Eric Foner, Mark von Hagen, Mark Harrison, Dan Ingram, Andrew Jenks, Tomasz Kamusella, Allen H. Kassof, Neringa Klumbyte, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Hiroaki Kuromyia, Oleksandr Mykhailiuk, Dietmar Neutatz, Stephan Norris, Julia Obertreis, Serhii Plokhy, William Risch, Blair Ruble, Roman Senkus, Dmitry Shlapentokh, Asif Siddiqi, Lewis Siegelbaum, Kelly Smith, Mark Steinberg, Richard Stites, Frank Sysyn, Gleb Tsipursky, Catherine Wanner, Christopher Ward, Denise Youngblood, Andrei Znamensky, Michael Zuckerman and Vlad Zubok. I am especially grateful to my editor Tom Stottor, whose editing made my prose more lucid, and who helped guide the book through the editorial process. Finally, my words of gratitude go to the love of my life, my dear friend and wife, Irinushka.

PREFACE

One warm May night in 1987, after the successful defence of my kandidatskaia dissertation (the Soviet version of an American PhD) on the social history of colonial New York between 1664 and 1712, I was sitting with my mentor Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, a Russian historian of Russian– American relations and one of the pioneers of Soviet Amerikanistika, in his Moscow house, drinking tea and discussing my future research. I revealed to Bolkhovitinov my plan to begin a study of US cultural influences on Soviet society, especially the roots of the growing interest in US culture and history among the Soviet population. Knowing my enthusiasm for American pop culture, Bolkhovitinov suggested I begin my future research with the history of my own personal fascination with the products of American culture. ‘But,’ he reminded me, ‘you must first finish your doktorskaia dissertation about the comparative history of the “middle colonies” of British America, then defend it, and only after this can you launch your new project!’ In March 1996, after my defence of a new doctoral dissertation about New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware (known as ‘the middle colonies’ of British America), I was sitting again with Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, now an official reviewer of my doktorskaia dissertation (a post-Soviet version of the German Habilitation-Werk), this time in my apartment in Dnipropetrovsk in post-Soviet Ukraine, telling him about my interviewing people and reading archival material on Soviet consumption of Western (especially American) cultural products during late (post-Stalin) socialism. Bolkhovitinov suggested I divide my study into two parts, ‘a possible two books’. It should be a book on Soviet youth reaction to Western cultural products during the Brezhnev era (1964–82) in my home town

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Dnipropetrovsk, considered ‘a closed city’ by the Soviet administration. Then, he advised me to separate my research material and concentrate my interests on another, ‘probably the next’ book about American cultural influences on Soviet Americanists (that is, experts in US/Canadian history and culture) and the field of American Studies (Amerikanistika in Russian) during the Cold War.1 A few years after this conversation, when I moved to the United States in 1997, another colleague of mine, Richard Stites, then a Professor at Georgetown University, and a friend of Bolkhovitinov’s, also supported this idea of two separate books. Following a long conversation about my academic experience as a Soviet Americanist who had studied the social history of colonial British America with such an honest and decent Soviet historian as Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Richard said, ‘You know it looks like American Studies in the USSR became a tool of diplomacy for the man in the street, helping Soviet people to understand America better than the official journalism of Pravda. You must write your own unique insider story about Soviet study of US history. You can use your own stories of the Soviet-Americanist community as a micro-model for the study of Soviet Westernised intellectuals, from Khrushchev’s thaw to Gorbachev’s perestroika. It will be a fascinating book!’2 So, after finishing my first book about Soviet youth and the West in 2010, I devoted my new book to the memory of Richard Stites, a great inspirational scholar and visionary, and a good friend of democratic Russia and Ukraine. I decided that it would be a tribute to his role in changing the intellectual landscape in both American and post-Soviet space. Richard inspired the major themes of my new book. He used to say to me, ‘do not concentrate on the boring historiographical debates or institutional history, write about people, their personal stories, and explore their academic careers and private life!’ Following Richard’s advice, I decided to write about the personal histories of Soviet experts in American Studies and their role in the Soviet discovery of America and, paradoxically, the Soviet intellectual self.3 From the beginning, the creation and institutionalisation of American Studies in the Soviet Union in the 1970s was directly connected to Soviet intellectuals’ self-perception of socialist modernity and the limits of its ‘openness’. As Volodymyr Yevtukh, a Ukrainian Americanist and politician, noted in December 1995, ‘to be a Soviet Americanist, a Soviet expert in US and Canadian history, meant to be a very special, real modern scholar, who was different from the boring and traditionalist Soviet scholar, an official communist expert of the Soviet past and Soviet realities.’ And he continued,

PREFACE

Figure 1 of 2013.

xxiii

Sergei I. Zhuk at Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s house in Moscow in July

‘Everybody understood that despite all our official anti-Americanism in the Soviet Union, for us, Soviet intellectuals, American civilisation symbolised a modernity of the whole of humankind. According to communist ideology, the Soviet Union was also a modern, progressive civilisation. That is why we, Soviet scholars, studied the United States not only to criticise Americans, but also to learn from American experience how to be a part of modernity. At the same time to study America for us was an attempt to avoid our Soviet “closeness” and associate with “open” Western civilisation.’4 Another friend of mine, Andrei Znamensky, a former Soviet Americanist (an expert in Soviet Studies of Native Americans), and now a Professor of Russian History at the University of Memphis, suggested the main title and subject for my book. As he noted in 2015, It was not a research work conducted by Soviet Americanists, but rather their personal stories and their contribution to so-called Soviet Americana, a variety of Soviet cultural practices related to the culture, history and politics of the USA and Canada which demonstrated the

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real paradoxes of the cultural Cold War. The complicated story of American influences on Soviet scholars, and, at the same time, a history of their own effects on Soviet academia, society, culture and politics, is very important for our understanding of the intellectual and cultural formation of Soviet elites during the Cold War.5 I decided, then, to focus on what Znamensky referred to as ‘Soviet Americana’, a variety of cultural practices developed by Soviet experts in US/ Canadian history, politics and culture during the Cold War. Bolkhovitinov also suggested another topic for my new book: the relations between Moscow, as the intellectual and cultural centre for Soviet Americanists, and provincial Soviet scholars, experts in American culture and history. Knowing my Ukrainian patriotism and my traumatic three months in 1986 spent in the Chernobyl zone as a Soviet military reservist officer, Bolkhovitinov continually drew my attention to these tensions ‘between Muscovites and provincial scholars’ and appreciated the academic contributions of Ukrainian scholars: According to Stalin, Moscow became a showcase of mature socialism, demonstrating to the entire world the achievements and advantages of the Soviet socialist system. All the best of socialism, including its culture, scholarship and science, was concentrated in Moscow. This affected the development of American Studies as well. The first centres of American Studies with all their resources and academic privileges were concentrated in Moscow rather than provinces. And he continued, Sometimes we, here in Moscow, misunderstand the attitudes of intellectuals from the provinces. Take, for example, our Soviet Americanists. Many of our Moscow Americanists came from the Soviet provinces. The best students of US history that I have worked with came from the provinces. At the same time, I noticed certain tensions between provincials and Muscovites. To some extent, the relations of provincial scholars with Moscow as an academic centre for all of Soviet scholarship became indicative of the new developments in the authority of knowledge in the Soviet Union. To understand what happened with the provincial intellectual Soviet elites during late socialism and how these elites contributed to the collapse of the Soviet

PREFACE

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Union, we need to study the relations between Muscovites and provincials. These relations, including academic ones, could be used as a model for serious research on the transformation of our Soviet intellectuals into the new post-Soviet intellectual elites.6 Thus, following the suggestions of Bolkhovitinov, Stites and Znamensky, using numerous Soviet, mostly Russian and Ukrainian, studies of US history, culture and politics, archival documents, memoirs, various periodicals, personal correspondence and more than 100 interviews as its historical sources, I wrote this book.

INTRODUCTION

In 2004, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov recalled how in the spring of 1965 he was invited by the Communist Party leadership to a special ‘closed screening’ of American feature films, which ‘illustrated the dangers of nuclear war in an impressive artistic form’, including Stanley Kramer’s film On the Beach and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. And he explained, We Soviet experts in US history, politics and culture, known as Americanists, not only wrote books and lectured about two North American countries – the United States and Canada. We also advised the Soviet leadership about the different issues of American history, politics and culture, including films. These two functional roles of Soviet Americanists academic research and advising political leaders in the USSR: made us ‘a special elitist group’ of Soviet intellectuals. The participation of a thirty-fouryear-old historian like myself in those ‘closed screenings’ of American feature films and my future frequent travels to the US only strengthened a sense of my ‘special status’, of being a special (osobennyi) Soviet scholar, who was directly connected to American civilisation, which (despite all ideological confrontations) was still considered to be the ideal symbol of modernity (sovremennosti) for us, Soviet intellectuals.1 Another Soviet Americanist, Arnold Shlepakov, a 34-year-old historian from Kyiv, Ukraine, was also invited for the same ‘closed screening’ in Moscow in the spring of 1965. He, too, noted a sense of being ‘special’ after this event, of being connected with ‘American modernity’. As well as emphasising the

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importance of his Americanist advisory function, Shlepakov complained about another experience during his visit to Moscow: The condescending, even disdainful attitudes of Muscovites toward us, Ukrainian scholars, really shocked me. Some scientists and Americanists from Moscow just simply ignored us, disregarding our expertise, calling us ‘the provincials’ ( provintsialy). So I suddenly realised that for many Moscow colleagues of mine, I and my co-citizens from Ukraine remained the same ‘narrow-minded provincial khokhly’. Eventually, this experience led us, Soviet Ukrainian Americanists, to gradually distance ourselves from Moscow, developing our own Ukrainian research agenda and interests, different from our Russian colleagues.2 At the same time, Arnold Shlepakov acknowledged the existence of common developments and cultural practices for all Americanists throughout all republics of the Soviet Union. He suggested exploring those practices for the study of Soviet intellectual and political elites: In doing their research of the United States, using various discursive strategies in their research presentations and publications – Shlepakov explained – Soviet Americanists not only discovered and constructed their own understanding of American modernity. They also discovered and constructed their own intellectual Soviet self. Therefore, a community of Soviet Americanists could be used as a special micro prism for a scholarly analysis of the general history of Soviet intellectuals during the Cold War.3 Professional studies of the United States in the Soviet Union appeared after World War II, during the long period of political, economic, ideological and cultural confrontation known as the Cold War. On the one hand, Soviet studies of the United States were commissioned by the Soviet government and the KGB, whose representatives led the first centres of Soviet Amerikanistika in Moscow and Kyiv. On the other hand, the development of Soviet Amerikanistika reflected the stages of gradual ‘opening’ of the ‘closed’ political and ideological system in the Soviet Union and various levels of Westernisation of Soviet culture. Four geopolitical phenomena – World War II, the Khrushchev thaw, Brezhnev’s de´tente and Gorbachev’s perestroika – not only shaped various generations of Soviet Americanists, but also demonstrated to the Soviet government the necessity of official

INTRODUCTION

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state support of these Soviet experts as advisors in international and domestic politics. This official support contributed to the rise of the academic careers of Americanists, whose expertise in American Studies became indispensable for the Soviet leadership. At the same time, by the beginning of the 1980s, Soviet centres of American Studies had become an arena for ideological confrontation (albeit under the guise of Marxist rhetoric) between Westernisers and pochvenniki, later known as ‘Russian state-builders’ (derzhavniki).4 But overall, during Khrushchev’s thaw through the Brezhnev de´tente and Gorbachev perestroika, Westernisers’ concepts of American history became the prevailing trend in Soviet academia. This process was interrupted by the humiliation of Yeltsin’s ‘bandit’ era and Putin’s authoritarianism. The new post-Soviet Russian state with its new Russian nationalist state ideology ousted Americanist-Westernisers to the margins of post-Soviet academia. Pochvenniki and derzhavniki interpretations of the American past now dominate historical perception of the United States in Putin’s Russia. Moreover, the traditional Soviet legacy of confrontational discourse in American Studies alongside the former Soviet concept of the unreliability of Western, including American, allies – a notion which is widespread in both popular culture and academic studies in Putin’s Russia – replaced a discourse of cultural dialogue and mutual understanding. In his final notes, written on 10 April 2005, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov complained about the strong role of the post-Soviet Russian authoritarian state, which destroyed the creativity and autonomy of post-Soviet scholars, including post-Soviet Americanists, restoring ‘traditional Soviet state business’ in the field of American Studies.5 Many talented and honest post-Soviet Americanists are actively engaged in the development of university-level American Studies programmes; they keep alive the Russian –American scholarly dialogue, and fight the now popular anti-Americanism by making frank statements to the mass media. Unfortunately, they face manifold challenges due to the current crisis in Russian– American bilateral relations. On the one hand, the demand for professional knowledge about the United States in Russia is fast diminishing and American Studies programmes in Russia are being closed one after another. The main problem is that the post-Soviet authorities no longer need their consultations and expert opinions, as used to be the case during the Soviet period. On the other hand, mass anti-Americanism is on the rise, and the Russian authorities have made it one of the cornerstones of the new national identity that they are trying to create. This anti-Americanism is

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promoted by political journalists without professional training who pretend to be experts on everything related to the US. Far from supporting this campaign, professional Russian Americanists oppose it and fight it through the mass media.

Amerikanistika in Soviet Knowledge Production Richard Stites once suggested I should engage the ideas of French scholar Michel de Certeau in my research about Soviet Americanists. According to the latter, in modern social systems of knowledge production ‘the imposed knowledge and symbolisms become objects manipulated by practitioners who have not produced them’. In de Certeau’s interpretation, such practitioners usually subverted those practices and representations that were imposed on them from within – not by rejecting them or by transforming them (though that occurred as well), but in many different ways. Practitioners of knowledge production ‘metaphorised the dominant order: they made it function in another register. They remained other within the system, which they assimilated, and which assimilated them externally. They diverted it without leaving it.’6 Michel de Certeau’s ideas, combined with Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of authoritative discourse, had already influenced recent scholarship about theories and practices of late socialism, and about discursive practices and identity formation in post-Stalin Soviet society, especially works by Slava Gerovitch, Alexei Yurchak, Stephen Lovell and Juliane Fu¨rst.7 As these scholars explained, ‘for Bakhtin, authoritative discourse coheres around a strict external idea or dogma [. . .] and occupies a particular position within the discursive regime of a period’, while ‘all other types of discourse are organised around it’.8 Using ideas produced by this scholarship, especially the concept of interaction between authoritative and professional discourses, this book explores the various practices of knowledge production by those Soviet intellectuals who became experts in US/Canadian history, culture and politics in both Russia and Ukraine during the Cold War. According to one representative of the new post-Soviet generation of Russian scholars, the major form of intellectual production in Soviet scholarship in the humanities and social sciences during mature socialism (the period between Stalin’s death in 1953 and the peak of the Brezhnev era, 1964– 82), was the ‘exegesis’ of Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, [A]uthors in the Soviet human sciences could be positioned along an axis, beginning with those who exhibit extreme dogmatism and

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scholasticism; ranging through many examples of exegetical exercises that not only extract meanings from sacred texts but also rely on empirical detail to prove the truth of divine writ; and ending with authors who almost openly use quotations from Marx and Lenin as the required ideological icing on the cake, or as a ritual incantation inserted before a serious empirical and textual study of sources unfolds.9 As a result of such practices of intellectual production, many Soviet scholars, ‘who were more concerned with reality than with the sacred texts frequently went into those disciplines and chose those subjects on which Marx and Lenin rarely pronounced, or in which mastery of a few extant sources made ritual Marxist incantations seem unnatural and excessive.’ Thus, through the entire period of post-Stalin socialism, Soviet historians and social scientists (including Soviet Americanists) used two discursive strategies, which Oleg Kharkhordin described as ‘I-prove-Marx-through-empirical-studies’ and ‘I-write-good-stuff-and-add-ideological-nonsense’.10 Although a few Soviet historians, such as Alexei Efimov and Lev Zubok, wrote and published the first Soviet studies on US history before World War II, the professional centres of Soviet experts in American Studies were organised by the Soviet government many years later, during the peak of the Cold War confrontation – in 1953 at the Institute of World History, and in 1967 at the special Institute of the USA, at the USSR Academy of Sciences. Created as special centres of Cold War area studies, these institutions not only studied and analysed the major political and ideological enemy, the United States, but also advised the Soviet leadership, using the same information they had compiled as part of their research material.11 Such advisory functions required more professional approaches from the members of these centres. This led to new discursive strategies and roles among Soviet Americanists, which went beyond the acceptable ‘exegetical exercises’.12 Moreover, the improvement of US–Soviet relations after 1956 and the subsequent opening of Soviet society to foreign influences activated the advising functions of Soviet Americanists, and, after 1958, led to active involvement of Soviet scholars in academic exchange programmes with their colleagues from the United States. During the relaxation of international tensions in the Cold War, known as the de´tente of the 1970s, Soviet Americanists not only became frequent visitors to both the US and Canada, but also contributed to the creation of various forms of academic, political and cultural dialogue with Americans, spreading interest in American Studies and culture all over the USSR.13 The culmination of this growing interest in the

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studies of North American civilisation was the establishment of new Americanist centres such as the ‘American’ laboratory at Moscow State University (MGU) and the Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Foreign Countries in Kyiv in 1978. Similarly, the founding of various local groups of Soviet Americanists in the provincial cities of, primarily, Russia and Ukraine equally helped foster an ever-increasing interest in American Studies. By 1990, the overwhelming majority (more than 1,000) of Soviet Americanists resided in those two Soviet republics, representing a variety of research interests – from the traditional subjects of US/Canadian history, to the study of American politics, economics, ideology, anthropology, literature and films. During this time, aside from Americanists in the US, Soviet Americanists became the largest community of experts in American Studies in the world. Why did it happen? What were the reasons for this spectacular growth of the number of Soviet experts in American Studies after 1956? What were the functional roles and contributions of Soviet Americanists? How did the political, ideological and cultural practices of the Cold War shape American Studies and their practitioners in the Soviet Union? How did different generations of Soviet Americanists react to various changes in US politics during the Cold War? What was the role of Soviet Americanists in the ‘cultural and academic diplomacy’ of the Soviet Union?14 How was the Soviet experts’ knowledge production regarding North American civilisation connected to the practices of ordinary Soviet people, including their everyday cultural consumption?15 Paradoxically, Soviet Americanists (unknowingly!) functioned as the Soviet agents of ‘US soft power’ in this process of cultural consumption, and eventually in US ‘successful cultural diplomacy’.16 As Kiril Tomoff explained, ‘Culture is perhaps the most important sphere in which soft power can operate, so deploying it depends in large part on “cultural diplomacy”, a set of practices that states undertake to develop and distribute cultural products that are internationally identifiable as a characteristic of that state’s ideal self-presentation.’17 In which way did American Studies influence identity formation in Soviet society during the Cold War? Why and how did nationalism become an important factor in shaping the research agenda of Americanists in Russia and Ukraine? These are the major questions that this book attempts to address.

Historiographical Context In contrast to the traditional history of academic institutions of knowledge production, this book features the personal stories and biographies of Soviet

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Americanists as the main basis for its narrative. It also explores the social and cultural influences from the 1940s to the 1980s in the USSR that shaped the intellectual interests of Soviet Americanists. But an important aspect of this study is its emphasis on the cultural history of Soviet Americanists themselves, rather than on the institutional history of American Studies in the USSR.18 At the same time, following Thomas A. Kohut’s approach, this book attempts to organise this cultural history according to a chronology of various generations of Soviet intellectuals – from the postwar period to perestroika.19 The sudden rise of academic interest in American Studies among Soviet scholars was always a reaction to the important changes in the geopolitical situation and Soviet diplomacy. The first generation of Soviet Americanists was influenced by both World War II and the Khrushchev thaw, which involved an opening of intensive political and cultural dialogue between the USSR and the USA. The next generation of Soviet scholars responded to the de´tente of the Brezhnev era, which intensified academic exchanges between two countries. The last Soviet generation of Soviet Americanists was formed by controversial developments of Gorbachev’s perestroika, by its unfulfilled promises, which led to a crisis in the Soviet intelligentsia, and especially its academic community of Soviet Americanists.20 A particular emphasis of this study is on those representatives of the Soviet postwar generation (such as Bolkhovitinov and Arnold Shlepakov) who would eventually become the founders of the first Soviet centres for Amerikanistika. This book aims to shed new light on the interactions of the postwar Soviet generation within the context of a Cold War culture and postwar Stalinist ideological practices that became the object of recently released archival-based literature.21 The ‘socialist imagination’ became the most important component of the cultural practices of the postwar Soviet generation. Soviet youth ‘imagined and invented’ their ‘socialist modernity’, comparing it to the ‘imagined West’ or ‘imagined America’, being unable to visit the real Western Europe or America.22 According to Juliane Fu¨rst, the result of this socialist ‘invention’ or ‘imagination’ was the creation of a socialist ‘modernist’ culture of mature socialism as ‘a complicated conglomerate of performative practices, collective habits, individual mechanisms of survival, strategies of self-improvement, and segregated spaces for action, all of which were linked and interacted with each other in the person of the Soviet subject and citizen.’23 This study explores these connections between ‘socialist imagination’ and the personalities of the multiple generations of Soviet Americanists over the

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course of the entire history of American Studies in the USSR. The developmental high point of Soviet American Studies coincided with the period of de´tente in the 1970s. The new generation of Soviet Americanists who participated in the opening of Soviet society during this period took shape under the influences of Khrushchev’s thaw. Eventually this so-called ‘Sputnik generation’ or the ‘Soviet Baby Boomers’ among the Soviet Americanists would lay the foundations for perestroika and intensive academic and cultural dialogue with American scholars and politicians.24 Using the ideas and theoretical approaches of recent scholarship, especially the concept of interaction between authoritative and professional discourses and methods of oral history, this monograph also analyses how participation in US –Soviet academic exchange programmes (especially during the de´tente) affected the various discursive practices and personalities of Soviet Americanists. This study provides a new look at the problems of Western– Soviet cultural and academic dialogue after Stalin, offered recently by Robert English, Vladislav Zubok, Anne Gorsuch and other scholars,25 concentrating on what Robert English has referred to as Soviet scholars’ efforts ‘to move their country toward broader integration with the liberal international community’.26 At the same time, this book attempts to clarify the role of the so-called ‘KGB people’ in the Soviet community of Americanists during the same period.27 Finally, this book deals with the transformation of the last generation of Soviet Americanists in the 1980s, which experienced a real crisis of academic identity during the new openness of perestroika and academic contacts with Western scholars, when young Americanists, like Vladislav Zubok and Andrei Znamensky, moved to the US and formed a new academic identity as experts in Russian and Soviet Studies there. Soviet Americanists advised the Soviet leadership not only on US history and politics, but also on American cultural products ‘appropriate for consumption’ by Soviet citizens. In addition to literary and musical items, Soviet experts also recommended various forms of American visual media, especially US motion pictures and television shows. Among the numerous studies of Soviet film and television production during the Cold War,28 the best historical comparison of the so-called ‘cinematic’ Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is the book written by Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood.29 Even so, the crucial influence of US cinema and television on Soviet society deserves more attention, especially during the periods of de´tente, and their role in the Westernisation of Soviet visual media.30 Most works have overlooked the role of Soviet US experts (‘Americanists’) in making recommendations to

INTRODUCTION

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the Soviet government as to which films and other cultural products to buy and release to the Soviet public.31 This scholarly analysis also describes the role of Soviet Americanists in the cultural consumption of American visual media products in the Soviet Union.

Sources and Structure The initial group of sources for this book comprises a collection of personal correspondence, notes and unpublished sketches of memoirs by Nikolai Bolkhovitinov. After an initial attempt to write his autobiography in the late 1970s, Bolkhovitinov returned to his memoirs (now in Russian) only in 1990 at the end of perestroika. He continued writing his autobiography for many years, publishing some excerpts in various collections and journals. However, the major portion of his memoirs, which Bolkhovitinov proofread for the last time in 2005, was never published. The text of these memoirs and his correspondence, which were given to me by his widow, Liudmila Antonovna Bolkhovitinova, in 2010, are unique sources for our understanding of the mental world and life trajectory of Bolkhovitinov – the informal leader of the most famous Soviet school for study of US History at the Institute of World History at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow.32 What follows in this book is, to some extent, the result of my long conversations with Bolkhovitinov, and reading his memoirs and correspondence from 1983 (the first year of our mutual acquaintance, when I had been accepted to a post-graduate programme at the Institute of World History under Bolkhovitinov’s supervision) to August 2008 (our last meeting at his house in Moscow). This book is based primarily on personal interviews and oral histories, which I began recording as early as April 1990, questioning Nikolai Bolkhovitinov in Moscow and Arnold Shlepakov in Kyiv about Western influences and cultural preferences.33 As a former graduate student of Bolkhovitinov at the Institute of World History in 1983– 7, I was able to approach other prominent Soviet Americanists in the USSR/Russian Academy of Sciences and MGU and interview them during the 1990s and 2000s. The most interesting result of my interviews turned out to be the accumulation of various details of personal stories of Soviet Americanists, demonstrating the interaction of American cultural influences and Soviet realities of everyday life.34 I conducted more than 100 personal interviews with former Soviet Americanists in Russia, Ukraine (and recently in the US and Canada), beginning with my first recorded conversations with

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Figure 2 Sergei I. Zhuk with Liudmila Antonovna Bolkhovitinova in Moscow in August 2013.

my first academic mentor, Professor Viktor Kalashnikov, in Dnipropetrovsk. I checked the correctness/plausibility of every critical statement either with documents, or testimonies from at least two different witnesses. The additional 70 interviews were conducted with individuals of different social backgrounds regarding the consumption of various cultural products from the US during the 1960s and through the 1970s in the Soviet Union. I also interviewed (by phone or email) active representatives of the academic dialogue between American and Soviet scholars, such as Basil Dmytryshyn, John Lewis Gaddis, David Goldfrank, Valery Golovskoy, Allen H. Kassof, Frank Sysyn, Donald J. Raleigh, Yale Richmond, the late Richard Stites, Andrei Znamensky, Vladislav Zubok, Valery Tishkov, Ivan Kurilla and many others. Another group of important sources for this study includes the numerous memoirs, published and unpublished, penned by contemporaries of the various aforementioned events, particularly the colleagues of Soviet Americanists, such scholars as Aleksandr Nekrich, Aron Gurevich and Evgenia Gutnova.35 Professional journals of Soviet Americanists and various

INTRODUCTION

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contemporary periodicals from the period of late Stalinism to perestroika were utilised as sources of information for this study as well. In addition to the numerous studies by Soviet Americanists which are used as a source, this monograph is also based on an analysis of available archival documents from various human resource offices of Soviet universities and academic institutions, ‘academic reports’ about the foreign travels of Soviet Americanists and various files about their visits to the United States, available from the collection of such US funding agencies as the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX).36 Many Soviet Americanists had various connections to the KGB. With a few exceptions, such as the obvious case of G. Sevostianov, a former KGB/intelligence officer, who became a head of the famous Moscow centre of American Studies, it is very difficult to trace ‘the KGB connections’ in Soviet academia. Nevertheless, experienced archivists in Moscow and Kyiv defined the ‘apparent’ KGB connections of those Soviet scholars who travelled abroad before 1991 according to four major criteria: 1) their personal files had been removed in accordance with the official stamp of Osobyi (Pervyi) otdel; 2) they had an extensive record of service as supervisors (Soprovozhdaiushchii, or Starshii groupy) of tourist groups which travelled abroad, especially to capitalist countries, or/and as Deans of Foreign Students ( prorektor po rabote s inostrantsami) in their schools; 3) their dossier included an extensive record of service as invited reviewers or members of review panels which examined the applications of those Soviet officials who intended to travel abroad, especially to capitalist countries; 4) they had accumulated an unusually (e.g., twice a year) frequent number of trips to capitalist countries, and underwent a simplified procedure regarding official approval for such trips. These classifications, devised by the Moscow and Kyiv archivists, helped to identify ‘the KGB connections’ of those Soviet Americanists who had publicly denied any association with the ‘directive organs’. This book is my attempt to explore mostly cultural dimensions in a history of that Americanist community of Russian and Ukrainian scholars. Various aspects of political and diplomatic history, an analysis of knowledge production, involving Soviet Americanists, would require another detailed separate study. This book covers mainly a cultural history of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists. The most interesting result of my interviews was the accumulation of various details of personal stories of Soviet Americanists, demonstrating the interaction of American cultural influences and Soviet realities of everyday life.

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The book is organised chronologically as a history of various generations of Soviet intellectuals. It begins with a chapter giving the historical and institutional context of the Cold War and proceeds with chapters about the personal stories of the founders of American Studies in the Soviet Union after World War II. These chapters concentrate on the important cultural influences which shaped the identity and academic interests of the first postwar generation of Soviet experts in US history and politics in Soviet Russia and Ukraine. The second and third chapters focus on American connections which influenced the personality of Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Arnold Shlepakov and Leonid Leshchenko, founders of the Ukrainian school of Soviet American Studies. In addition, the third chapter demonstrates in detail how the transition of Soviet knowledge production from Stalinism to the Khrushchev thaw and Brezhnev’s de´tente was affected by the development of international relations as well as by cultural and ideological changes inside Soviet academia. Chapter 4 covers the cultural aspects of the Soviet Americanists’ participation in academic exchanges during the Brezhnev era. Chapter 5 explores the role of Soviet Americanists in shaping the cultural consumption of Soviet society during the Cold War, especially the everyday consumption of American feature films and television. It portrays the significant influence of American visual media on Soviet society and the instrumental role of Soviet experts in the dissemination of US films and other cultural products, especially during de´tente. Chapter 6 concentrates on the connections between the everyday cultural practices of late socialism, such as the reenactment of Native American rituals and games, and academic studies of American Indians. Using personal histories of the Ukrainian Americanists and stories of their encounters with the Great Russian chauvinism of their Russian colleagues, Chapter 7 explores the gradual process of the Ukrainian scholars’ distancing from Moscow by carving their own national research niche in Soviet American Studies. The book’s epilogue demonstrates how the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a crisis in American Studies in Russia and Ukraine as well as to dramatic changes in the academic identity of Soviet Americanists.

CHAPTER 1 THE COLD WAR CONTEXT OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE USSR

The first Soviet studies of the United States and Canada were published before World War II. Few in number and not really scholarly researched, these studies were a good example of communist anti-American propagandist discourse rather than scholarly research. Moreover, before 1941, the field of European Studies, and history in particular, were the most popular research area for Soviet scholars. Everything changed with the beginning of the Cold War. Suddenly, a new field of knowledge – North American Studies (the United States and Canada were lumped together) – became more popular among Soviet Marxist scholars. Contemporaries noted that the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union led to an intense ‘ideological offensive’ as thousands of historians and social scientists in both countries became involved in Area Studies such as Soviet Studies in the USA and American Studies in the USSR. During the 1960s and 1970s, the most important centres for various area studies in the Soviet Union were those devoted to US/Canadian history, economics, politics and culture.1 But in contrast to the American side of the Cold War story, where the US government and various corporations had funded college-based centres for Soviet Studies as early as the 1940s, Soviet centres of American Studies were organised much later and only in the Moscowbased institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From the very beginning, in the United States numerous Russian and Soviet research centres were disseminated throughout the entire country in a decentralised fashion and were affiliated with various colleges and universities. All of these

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American centres were professionally organised, well-funded and became immediately integrated into a so-called academic-national security complex, especially during the late 1940s and the 1950s.2

Amerikanistika as Soviet Area Studies of the Cold War Paradoxically, the first professional Soviet centres of American Studies (Amerikanistika in Russian) appeared much later, only after Stalin’s death, during the relaxation of international tensions and an improvement in US – Soviet relations. The institutionalisation of these centres, according to the directives of the Soviet state and the KGB, began in special research institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences only in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the real peak of popularity and proliferation of American Studies in the USSR during the late 1970s and the 1980s resulted from the individual efforts of local college professor-enthusiasts who created their own schools for the study of US/Canadian history, politics, economics and culture at the major universities in big industrial cities of the USSR.3 In 1953, the Soviet government created the first special centre for the ‘study of American countries’ at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From the outset, this centre united experts in Latin American and US/Canadian history. Following the division of the Institute of History in 1968 into two separate Institutes – of World History and USSR History – the centre for the ‘studies of American countries’ was eventually compartmentalised as well. All specialists in Latin American history came from this centre. After this subsequent division in 1968, the centre was transformed into a new ‘sector of history of the USA and Canada’ at the new Institute of World History (hereafter IVI) under the leadership of former KGB/intelligence officer Grigori Sevostianov. He was finally replaced in 1988 by Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, who was not connected to the KGB.4 This became standard institutional policy at all centres for American Studies in the Soviet Union: all of their directors were approved by the KGB, or had direct connections to this organisation. The second Soviet centre of American Studies was created in May 1967 as a special Institute of the USA at the USSR Academy of Sciences (it was renamed in 1975 as the Institute of the USA and Canada (hereafter ISKAN)) under the leadership of Georgi Arbatov.5 Many prominent Soviet experts on the US economy and politics, including Nikolai Inozemtsev, the first Soviet expert on American contemporary economic history, were employed by

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IMEMO (Moscow’s Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the USSR Academy of Sciences) – formerly the centre of Soviet economic theory, closed by Stalin in 1949 and re-opened during the Khrushchev Thaw.6 Some Soviet Americanist experts moved from IMEMO to ISKAN. Arbatov, who had also two years’ experience working at IMEMO, began organising this new institute of American Studies in November 1967. He was officially appointed as ISKAN director on 20 December 1967.7 At first, in December 1967, a Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences issued an order about organising this Institute as part of the Department of Economy of the USSR Academy of Science. This decision was officially approved by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee in October 1968 and, on 15 November 1968, the institute was officially named the Institute of the USA and recognised as a special graduate school in American Studies.8 In 1969, after only one year of existence, ISKAN was transferred from the CPSU Central Committee to the USSR Academy of Sciences and became the major Soviet centre for North American Studies. By 1970, Arbatov had managed to gather about 70 researchers and support staff. According to contemporaries, ‘Arbatov’s staffing problems at the beginning were not made easier by the fact that he himself did not have the influence [in Soviet academia] and reputation of either a distinguished academician or powerful politician.’ As Arbatov and his colleagues explained, ‘the Institute was

Figure 3

Americanist Nikolai Inozemtsev (IMEMO) in 1978.

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Figure 4

Americanist Georgi Arbatov (ISKAN) in 1979.

created not only with the task of supplying information on the US to Soviet officials, but, and perhaps more importantly, to build good relations with American scholars and propagandise the Soviet position to them in the most appropriate way.’9 From the very beginning, the major function of ISKAN was to advise the Soviet government on political matters based on thorough research of original sources from the United States and Canada. As Arbatov recalled in his memoirs, The people who worked in the [USSR] Defence Ministry and in the military-industrial complex (as well as the majority of Foreign Ministry officials and even academic experts) were intellectually unprepared for a dialogue with the Americans and for serious talks going beyond the bounds of political declarations. At first they could not properly grasp American concepts and terminology concerning strategic and disarmament issues . . . They were neither prepared for nor capable of seizing the initiative, of making their own wellgrounded proposals, let alone of introducing new ideas . . . But the

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[ISKAN] fund of knowledge made our institute unique and encouraged others to seek its help. Due to the institute’s pioneering efforts, a new type of expert was created – the civilian expert on strategic-military, political-strategic, and arms-control issues.10 Arbatov also worked out an agreement between the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Foreign Ministry permitting ISKAN researchers and students to be assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Washington or to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations in New York. As Arbatov’s colleagues explained, The research done at ISKAN initially took the form of short analytical reports drawn from a variety of firsthand sources. The reports were to be free of ideological bias and propaganda elements. Requests for reports came mostly from the Central Committee’s International Department, the Foreign Ministry and the KGB. After the Institute’s transfer to the Academy of Sciences, reports were also written for that body’s Presidium, but these reports were not considered as important as those written for the Central Committee.11 By the end of the 1970s, there were six departments at ISKAN for study of the USA: Foreign Policy, Domestic Policy, Economics, Information, Ideology, Military and one department for Canadian studies (added in 1974).12 Following the recommendations of the Central Committee of CPSU, Arbatov was appointed Chairman of the Scientific Council on the Economic, Political and Ideological Problems of the United States of America, an organisation established in 1973 under the USSR Academy of Sciences to guide and coordinate the research activities of Americanists all over the Soviet Union.13 According to Western experts with regard to the important functions of such centres as ISKAN and IMEMO: The role of these institutes in foreign policy-making is a subject of contention in the American academic and political community. They are not simply propaganda outlets to the West. They perform an important staff function for the leadership. They contribute to the Central Committee’s evaluations of international events and trends. At the same time they provide an unofficial channel of communication to foreign political and scholarly communities.14

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Georgi Arbatov (ISKAN) and Edward Kennedy in the 1970s.

The Cold War and Academic Exchanges According to contemporaries and scholars, two major diplomatic and political efforts to relax international tensions and to intensify cultural exchange between the Soviet Union and the capitalist West during Khrushchev’s (after 1956) and Brezhnev’s (after 1972) rule initiated a gradual opening of Soviet society to the world. Many members of the nomenklatura and representatives of the Soviet intellectual elite became active participants in this process of ‘opening’. As Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov noted, Soviet citizens encountered various levels of ‘closedness’ during their life. The entire intellectual history of the Soviet Union was a story of various scenarios to avoid and/or adjust to the limits of this Soviet closedness, which resulted in cultural and ideological isolation for a majority of Soviet citizens.15 According to Bolkhovitinov, everybody in Soviet society experienced these limits, even the ruling communist elite. At the same time, Soviet closedness, or isolation, was neither complete nor perfect. The very idea of Soviet education, which emphasised the widening of intellectual horizons of the Soviet people, and stimulated their curiosity about non-Soviet societies and cultures, pushed Soviet intellectuals beyond the limits of Soviet ideological isolationism. As a result, by studying nonSoviet cultures and countries, Soviet intellectuals had already theoretically ‘opened’ their society and broken Soviet ideological limits. As Bolkhovitinov

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argued, even as early as the 1950s and 1960s, American Studies in Soviet academia contributed to an opening of intellectual life for many Soviet scholars and students. On the diplomatic level, the process of such an opening for Soviet intellectuals studying the United States began in 1958. After almost three months of negotiations, which began on 29 October 1957 in Washington, DC, William S. B. Lacy, President Eisenhower’s Special Assistant on East– West Exchanges, and Georgiy Z. Zarubin, Soviet Ambassador to the United States, signed a special document, in fact, the first US– USSR exchange agreement, entitled ‘Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical and Educational Fields’, on 27 January 1958.16 As the Soviet official press explained, The two sides agreed that during 1958 they would exchange four delegations of university professors and college teachers, representing university education in natural sciences, engineering technologies and humanities, and for learning about systems of higher education in the Soviet Union and the United States, which will include 5 –8 persons for a period of visit of 2 – 3 weeks. The two sides will provide an exchange of delegations of university professors and college teachers between Moscow and Columbia Universities, Leningrad and Harvard Universities. Future exchanges of university professors and college teachers of other universities in the USSR and the USA will be decided by both sides, if necessary. Both sides will provide student exchange between Moscow and Leningrad Universities, on the one hand, and US universities, on the other, with twenty students on each side during 1958/59 academic year. For 1959/60 academic year such an exchange will involve thirty students on each side. Composition of these student groups will be defined by each side. Each side will provide an exchange of delegations of educators (8 –10 persons) for a 30-day period at the end of 1958.17 This exchange started in 1958 with 20 Soviet students. Their travels in America were officially sponsored by the Fulbright Scholarship Program, which originated in 1946. This exchange was recorded in the official documents for the academic year 1958–9, although a majority of these students began their studies only in January 1959. As Yale Richmond, who supervised some of these exchanges, noted,

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Over the next three years there was a gradual increase to ‘at least 40’ – the language used in the cultural agreement – but when US – USSR relations cooled during the Vietnam War years, the quota was cut back to thirty in 1969, at Soviet request. With de´tente, another increase began, and the exchange reached its peak in 1975 when fifty-two persons were nominated and accepted on each side. Another decline began in 1980, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the lapse of the cultural agreement . . . Twenty Soviets had arrived in the United States in September 1983, but they were recalled by Moscow after the Korean Airline disaster because Moscow feared for their safety after there were anti-Soviet demonstrations in the United States. They returned to the United States in February 1984.18 Usually, the KGB used a variety of American-funded exchange programmes (from ACLS, IREX to Fulbright) as a cover for sending their agents to America. For many young KGB officers, such a trip to the US in the role of ‘a Soviet student of American Studies’ constituted their first foreign assignment and helped them to join the Soviet intelligence network in America.19 Traditionally, this first KGB assignment for such ‘Soviet Americanists’ was a simple one: Just lay the foundation for future work – the KGB supervisor instructed such agents before their ‘academic exchange trip’ to America . . . But don’t overstep the line. Now that you’ve been picked to go to America, make it your business to learn more about the country. Buy yourself good maps. Improve your English. Find out about their way of life. Communicate with people and make as many friends as possible.20 Such KGB practices affected international academic exchange programmes, especially when they involved various Soviet experts in American Studies. The presence of the KGB people characterised all Soviet exchanges with America from the very beginning. As one member of the first Soviet group of ‘student exchange with America’21 (four of them were ‘Americanists’ sent to Columbia University) recalled, they met in Moscow in early September 1958 at the headquarters of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) to receive special instructions before setting off for the United States:

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Of the 18 Soviets in our group, half were officers of the KGB or Soviet military intelligence, known as GRU; the other half could be counted on to cooperate with us. Four students were assigned to Columbia University. One was from GRU, two of us were from the KGB, and the fourth was from the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His name was Alexander Yakovlev, and he would go on to forge a close relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev and become one of the architects of perestroika.22 As memoirs of the participants in the first academic exchanges demonstrated, it was normal practice to mix Communist Party functionaries with KGB/intelligence operatives in the groups of Soviet Americanists. According to the official American documents, the first four Soviet exchange students, sponsored by the US government, arrived in the US during late November 1958 to study at Columbia University: They were ‘Gennadiy P. Bekhterev – a constitutional lawyer who [is] interested in (the US) local and state governmental administration; Oleg D. Kalugin – a philologist and student of English [especially American] literature who [is] enrolled in the International Division of the School of Journalism; Yuli N. Stozhkov – a student of the Pedagogical Institute interested in American history especially during and after World War II, and Alexander N. Yakovlev – also a student at the Pedagogical Institute, also interested in American history during and after World War II.’23 Technically speaking, all of these participants in the first academic exchange were Soviet students of American Studies, described in the official documents as ‘Soviet Americanists’. All of them were communists, cleared by the KGB; two of them, Bekhterev and Kalugin, were KGB officers, and Stozhkov was a GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) officer.24 This became normal practice for Soviet academic guests who visited the United States. As Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and Aron Gurevich, Soviet historians from IVI, used to joke during the 1990s, ‘it was the correct proportion for a Soviet academic delegation – one in four Soviet participants in the exchange programme [during the Brezhnev era] with capitalist countries was a regular KGB officer, and other three – just KGB informers.’ But in 1958 –9, at the beginning of this programme, as we see, it was a different ratio – three in four Soviet academic visitors were intelligence officers.25

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It is noteworthy that all Soviet Americanists who were directly connected to the KGB became the most active participants in the academic exchange. Because of their intellect and talent for communication, they attracted the attention of their American colleagues who praised their good linguistic skills and intellectual abilities.26 Paradoxically, from the very beginning of these exchanges, all official American reports praised those Soviet guest scholars who happened to be either ‘undercover’ KGB officers, or KGB ‘collaborators’. In 1959, American officials described Kalugin positively, applauding his fluency in English, contrasting his intellectual abilities with the ‘very bad English skills’ of his ‘partner’ Yakovlev. At some point, a Foreign Student Admissions Officer from Columbia University even noted that Kalugin had ‘gone so far as to learn to type in English to meet one of the requirements of the programme. This is considerable as he had never typed in Russia before.’27 The first American report of 1959 noted the trend which, overall, characterised all Soviet visitors (including the obvious KGB agents) to America – these visitors demonstrated ‘[despite their supposed antiAmerican feelings] their sincere curiosity about and even fondness [sometimes even an obvious fascination with] for America and Americans’: They [Bekhterev, Kalugin, Yakovlev and Stozhkov] are all very interested in America and Americans. They have taken full advantage so far as I can see of numerous opportunities to visit American homes and churches . . . They wish to do more and have asked me as a friend to arrange trips to American secondary schools and colleges for the spring . . . They are most anxious to see the rest of the United States and have asked me to enquire about a tour.28 Till 1968, the major American organisation administering the scholarly exchanges with the Soviets was called the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants (IUCTG). In 1968, it was replaced by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the organisation established at the request of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to administer academic exchanges with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. IREX conducted the exchange programmes together with the USSR Ministry of Higher and Specialised Secondary Education, and the Soviet Academy of Sciences.29 According to these programmes, after 1968, 40 Soviet graduate students or young faculty spent one or two semesters in the US each year, and ten or more Soviet

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professors conducted research for periods of two to five months each year. Although the overwhelming majority of Soviet students and professors who participated in academic exchanges represented sciences or engineering, IREX tried to involve Soviet experts in the humanities and social sciences in its programmes as well. As a result, IREX supervised a special programme of collaborative research, conferences and workshops between ACLS and the Soviet Academy under the bilateral Commission on the Social Sciences and Humanities, established in 1975. According to an administrator of these programmes, about 80 Americans and 80 Soviets were ‘exchanged each year under the Commission’s activities, usually for visits of about one week. Between 1958 and the end of 1985, some 2,000 Americans and 2,000 Soviets were exchanged under IUCTG and IREX programmes.’30 Soviet officials noted that more than 40 American scholars visited the Soviet Union during the beginning of these exchanges – in a single year: 1956. According to Soviet data, during 1976–7, using IREX funding, three groups of Soviet scholars visited the US – 45, 15 and 16 people. At the same time, using the same source – IREX, three groups of American scholars did research in the USSR – 48, 9 and 17 people. During the same period of time, the special summer schools in both countries involved 35 Soviet teachers of English (in the USA) and 35 American teachers of Russian (in the USSR) annually.31 The dynamics and frequency of the visits to the United States dramatically changed during the Brezhnev era, especially during the 1970s de´tente period. As contemporaries observed: In 1961– 62 we usually knew only one or two rare fortunate candidates from either Moscow University or the Academy of Sciences who visited America; by the end of the 1960s we had known at least five names among our colleagues not only from Moscow but also from Leningrad who travelled on a regular basis to the States; but after 1974 it was already common practice to send our Americanists from all over the Soviet Union, hundreds of them – to the United States and Canada.32 ‘Yes, it is true,’ confirmed the Ukrainian Americanist Arnold Shlepakov, ‘thanks to de´tente in the 1970s the first Ukrainian scholars went to America.’33 More visits (almost 600!) of Soviet Americanists were made during the Brezhnev era, especially during the de´tente period. One of these Soviet visiting scholars, who was based at Columbia University, Alexei

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Burmistenko, a young historian of American journalism from Moscow, even called numerous Soviet academic guests in US ‘the children of de´tente’ in 1977.34 As Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB officer and a participant of the first Soviet student exchange group, described the important result of these exchange programmes for Soviet scholars, Exchanges were a Trojan Horse in the Soviet Union. They played a tremendous role in the erosion of the Soviet system. They opened up a closed society. They greatly influenced younger people who saw the world with more open eyes, and they kept infecting more and more people over the years.35 For the first time in the history of Soviet scholarship, the Communist Party and the KGB tried to create a group of scholars who were specially trained to study their major political and ideological opponent, the United States, and thus had to be directly exposed, even via personal contacts, to American influences, and were officially allowed to travel to the ‘open’ capitalist West. During the 1970s and 1980s, the KGB permitted almost 60 per cent of all Soviet Americanists (600 from 1000) to make ‘business trips’ to the United States and Canada. Overall, representatives from Moscow prevailed in scholarly exchanges with the West. During this period, more than 80 per cent of Soviet Americanists who travelled abroad were Muscovites (like Bolkhovitinov and many ISKAN scholars) and residents of Leningrad (like Fursenko). Less than 20 per cent of Soviet experts in American/ Canadian studies who were allowed to go to the West represented Soviet provincial universities. According to Bolkhovitinov and Arnold Shlepakov, Muscovite Americanists who travelled abroad became ‘a special Soviet academic nomenklatura, a special closed privileged academic community (zakrytyi privligirovannyi tsekh uchionykh)’.36 As Western scholars who were in charge of the exchange programmes described the situation among Soviet scholars who visited the West: ‘Among Western exchange persons it became proverbial to accept that they [the Soviets] use one third of the time to satisfy Soviet bureaucracy, one third to queue up, and the rest to work.’37 As we have already seen, from the early beginning, academic exchanges between the United States and the USSR were used for infiltration with ‘KGB people’. These ‘people’ included a wide variety of experts – from ranked KGB officers to various scholars and scientists (including Soviet Americanists), who collaborated with the KGB and provided those ‘directing organs’ not only with intelligence information and necessary

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‘informal’ contacts in academic and diplomatic circles, but also with very important expertise in such different fields of knowledge as the functions of the US Department of State, computer science or the banking system. Many Soviet participants recalled how their KGB supervisors requested them to provide information about the different functions of US banks ‘to use this experience for organisation of Soviet foreign banks, working abroad’.38 According to former Soviet KGB officers who participated in these exchange programmes, this information about Western banking and financial services would be used for future financial operations in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.39 But the most important effect of the exchange programmes on Soviet Americanists was the development, even among ‘KGB people’ of a psychological phenomenon which some contemporaries called ‘a fondness for America and its people’.40 As Allen H. Kassof from IREX explained: We know in retrospect that many of the Soviet Americanists who came to do research on the United States as adversaries developed a very complex symbiotic relationship with their subjects. Beginning as analysts of American life, they gradually became supporters: the internal messengers of new conceptions of Soviet-American relations and, ultimately, spokesmen for alternatives. On the personal level, they developed significant friendships not only with their counterparts in the American sovietological community, who were their most readily accessible colleagues, but with a representative spectrum of American elites.41

Soviet Institutions of American Studies during De´tente De´tente, the relaxation of international tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and growing cultural and academic exchanges between the capitalist West and the Soviet bloc during the 1970s, brought crucial changes to both Soviet society and the Soviet academic community. As Robert M. Gates, a CIA Soviet analyst and CIA director in the first Bush administration explained, ‘De´tente’s greatest achievement was the opening of consistent contact between the United States and the USSR in the early 1970s – a gradually intensifying engagement on many levels and in many areas that, as it grew over the years, would slowly but widely open the Soviet Union to information, contacts, and ideas from the West and would facilitate an ongoing East– West dialogue that would influence the thinking of many Soviet officials and citizens.’42

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During the 1970s, a new centre for American Studies were founded at the Department of History of Moscow State University (hereafter MGU), in Leningrad and other industrial cities of the Soviet Union. According to the Soviet government’s decision in 1973 – 4, the MGU department of history became a centre for the establishment of the Fulbright programme in the USSR. In 1975, Nikolai Sivachev, from the same department, established the Scholarly Coordinating Council on American Studies at this university. In November 1977, under his leadership a new Soviet centre for American Studies was organised there, a so-called ‘laboratory of American Studies’ affiliated with the MGU department of modern and contemporary history, which began functioning officially in November 1978.43 But for many American guests, the main Soviet centre for American Studies and the most important Soviet centre for international academic exchange, especially during the de´tente of the 1970s, was Arbatov’s institute in Moscow, ISKAN. According to Strobe Talbott, Over the years, the institute performed three important services: it made available to the leadership analysis and advice that were often better than what it received from the Party apparatus and the ministries; it kept open a channel to the West that was especially useful when government-to-government relations were strained; and it offered sanctuary to a number of intellectuals who had run afoul of the authorities and who were later able, thanks in part to Arbatov’s protection, to emerge as constructive figures in the reforms of the eighties.44 In Kyiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, under the leadership of Ukrainian scholar Arnold Shlepakov, a department of modern and contemporary history at the Institute of History of the Ukrainian Academy of Science was transformed into a new Soviet centre of American Studies during 1969– 78. In 1978, this centre outgrew its small department and became a new institute of the Ukrainian Academy, with the official name: Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Foreign Countries.45 As early as 1973, G. G. Shevel, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, complained to the new Ukrainian Communist Party leadership about the absence of special research institutions of international diplomacy in the Ukrainian SSR and the lack of Ukrainian experts in international relations and diplomacy. Then, referring to the improving relations of the Soviet Union with the United

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States, Shevel suggested organising such a centre, with special departments devoted to American Studies, in Kyiv. According to the memoirs of Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi’s aide, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine became very interested in Shevel’s proposal. In 1977, Shcherbytskyi officially approved this idea, which was also enthusiastically supported by Borys E. Paton, a head of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1977, Shcherbytskyi wrote a special letter to the Central Committee of CPSU in Moscow, proposing to create the Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Foreign Countries at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv. Reluctantly, the Soviet leadership in Moscow agreed to approve Shcherbytskyi’s proposal, but only under one condition: Moscow ideologists recommended that their Ukrainian colleagues have ‘a limited number of local personnel for this new research institution – not more than 100 researchers’. With Moscow’s approval of the proposal and of Shlepakov a head of this institute, the first official Ukrainian centre for American Studies (and, overall, for the studies of foreign countries) began functioning in Kyiv as early as October 1978.46 Since the early 1970s, the number of Americanists in Soviet Ukraine had been growing every year. In November –December 1971, during the first All-Union symposium of Soviet Americanists, 10 out of 130 experts in US history were from Ukrainian institutions. By 1980, Shlepakov’s centre for American Studies in Kyiv united 20 specialists in US/Canadian history, politics and diplomacy (among almost 100 personnel). Ukrainian historian Semyion Appatov at Odesa University trained at least ten experts in contemporary US history and diplomacy. At the same time, more than 20 experts on US history (including graduate students) worked at the Institute of the World History in Moscow. By 1980, ten doctors of historical science, specialists in US history, were employed at this institution. An overwhelming majority of these historians were officially affiliated with this institute’s department of history of the USA and Canada. By the beginning of the 1980s, this department consisted of 20 members, and a few Americanists were affiliated with other sectors of the same institute.47 Eleven specialists on US political history worked under the leadership of Sivachev at the laboratory of American Studies in the Department of History at MGU. By 1976, the staff of ISKAN had grown to about 300 and, by 1980, this number had increased to more than 450. About half of these were researchers and half were support staff. Every year this institute accepted approximately 15–20 new postgraduate students. By the late 1970s, the staff of IMEMO numbered about 800, and at least 200 were experts in

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American Studies. From 1964 until the end of the 1970s, almost 50 experts on US history had been awarded the academic title of doctor of historical sciences. Technically speaking, in 1980, 250 of the 400 Americanists at ISKAN – more than half – held degrees of either kandidat or doctor of historical sciences; even those who studied US contemporary politics were historians by training. In 1991, according to the calculations compiled by the now-deceased E. Yaz’kov, at least 300 Soviet historians (all of them from Russia and Ukraine) studied US history. At the end of the 1980s, almost 70 per cent of all 1,000 prominent Soviet Americanists (including political scientists, economists, sociologists, philosophers, literary and film critics) were college professors who taught American Studies in the major universities of Soviet Russia and Ukraine, in big industrial cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk. More than 60 per cent of the Soviet Americanists employed by universities and colleges were located in Russia – and almost 40 per cent in Ukraine. By 1991 it was the largest community of professional Americanists in the world outside the United States. The Chinese Americanists, the so-called America Watchers, comprised the second-largest after the Soviet community of America’s experts, with almost 700 specialists concentrated in 15 college centres.48 During the period 1945 to 1970, according to Grigori Sevostianov’s report, Soviet Americanists published 662 works (both scholarly articles and monographs) about various aspects of US history. In one year alone, 1971, Soviet historians published more than 180 articles and 47 books on US history. From 1966 to 1970, of the 150 Soviet books about US history published by the central Moscow publishing houses, only two were written by Ukrainian historians. In 1971, five out of 47 Soviet scholarly books on US history were written by Ukrainian historians.49 Overall, the productivity of Ukrainian Americanists grew in the 1970s. If, in 1971–3, they published a little more than 1 per cent of all Soviet articles in American Studies, in 1984– 5 Ukrainian Americanists published at least 10 per cent of all research work in US history and politics (15 out of 150 items according to the All-Union list of publications). By 1991, more than 30 per cent of all Soviet publications in American Studies were written by Ukrainian authors. By the end of perestroika, Ukrainian experts in US history and politics became the leading Soviet researchers in such areas as the colonial period of US history, American Indian history and the history of immigration in the US and Canada.50 As we see through the 1970s and 1980s, important centres for American Studies were officially instituted in Soviet Russia and Ukraine. But despite

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the official communist (and KGB) political and ideological supervision of these research centres, the individual scholars who staffed those centres in both Russia and Ukraine became (overall) instrumental not only in shaping the research agenda for American Studies in the Soviet Union, but also in organising the intensive cultural dialogue between the Soviet and North American civilisations, especially during late (after Stalin) socialism, ‘humanising the Cold War confrontation’.51 Three major geopolitical influences – World War II, the Khrushchev thaw and Brezhnev’s de´tente – not only contributed to this dialogue, but also shaped the life trajectories of all Soviet Americanists during this period.

PART I THE POSTWAR GENERATION

As Alexander Fursenko, a representative of the Leningrad school of Soviet Americanists, noted, ‘the majority of Soviet historians, who never visited the United States, imagined and invented America; these images of America simultaneously fit the anti-imperialist Soviet propagandist cliche´s and at the same time contributed to the creation of the exaggerated attractiveness of a remote America, a capitalist fantasy land. American films and music, which became available to Soviet audiences after World War II, provided the important material for this creation.’1 Being limited in their research resources, Soviet Americanists – Nikolai Bolkhovitinov added later – became involved in a process of inventing America, responding to the official demands of the Soviet political system to study America as their official enemy. What these scholars offered to the system in response was very far from a realistic analysis of American life. In fact, they always constructed controversial images of capitalist America on the borders of their socialist imagination. That is why we can’t understand Soviet studies of America without an analysis of the available elements of American popular culture – films, music and literature – behind the prevailing Marxist rhetoric in the historical imagination of Soviet scholars who studied the United States.2 This process of ‘inventing America’ began among the first generation of Soviet Americanists who grew up during and after World War II. Culturally

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and intellectually, this generation was formed not only by the war and American cultural products brought as Soviet trophies of this war, but also by the new opportunities and openness in the Soviet– American cultural dialogue during the Khrushchev reforms of 1953– 64.

CHAPTER 2 WORLD WAR II AND INVENTING AMERICA ON THE BORDERS OF SOCIALIST IMAGINATION: THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE USSR

After many years of anti-American communist propaganda, suddenly, during World War II, Soviet young people, including Bolkhovitinov, Robert F. Ivanov (Bolkhovitinov’s colleague from the Institute of World History) and Georgi Arbatov (a future director of the Institute of the USA and Canada), were exposed to positive images of Americans on Soviet screens. On Soviet newsreels and radio news broadcasts the Americans were depicted as friendly allies of the Soviet people, as an industrious and innovative nation. Moreover, many Soviet people had physical proof of American help by consuming American products sent through the lend-lease agreement. Both Ivanov (as a young soldier on the frontlines) and Bolkhovitinov (at home in Moscow as a middle-school student) experienced this type of assistance firsthand. Packages containing food from America sent as part of the lend-lease agreement were a significant part of celebrations in the Bolkhovitinov household. Positive images of America linked to these packages of canned meat, egg powder or sweetened condensed milk were thus imprinted on the memory of Bolkhovitinov and millions of other representatives of his generation who survived the war eating ‘the gifts’ from America.1

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Postwar Images and Sounds of America Born on 26 October 1930, in Moscow in the family of famous Russian material scientist and a teacher of Russian language, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov experienced not only the intellectual influences of his parents, but also the outside influences of friends. One of Bolkhovitinov’s high school friends, Nikolai Arkhangel’sky, introduced him to the members of his soccer team at the nearby soccer field where young Bolkhovitinov began playing (and very successfully) this popular game. Arkhangel’sky also introduced Bolkhovitinov to other activities that were to shape his personality, among them cinema. As Bolkhovitinov recalled, during the late 1940s they watched various ‘trophy films’ (trofeinye fil’my), foreign films brought from Germany by the victorious Soviet forces after World War II. During the years 1947 to 1949, these films reached not only the larger provincial cities but also small towns and remote villages. While most of them were German, there were also many from the United States. Among Bolkhovitinov’s friends, the most popular were these American films, especially westerns (so-called ‘cowboy films’).2 As some scholars explained, the collapse of Soviet film production during World War II led to a decline in the number of Soviet films available for domestic consumption – 18 films in 1949, ten in 1950, and nine in 1951. This vacuum was filled by foreign trophy films, the so-called ‘cinematic spoils of war’, which included 1,531 American, 906 German, 572 French and 183 British films.3 The favourite film of all Moscow children in the 1940s was an American ‘cowboy film’ entitled The Trip Will Be Dangerous. Bolkhovitinov recalled how all of his friends, including Arkhangel’sky, fell in love with the film’s main character, the Ringo Kid, and tried to imitate his tricks and behaviour. He was referring to the American western Stagecoach. This American film was directed by John Ford and released in the United States in 1939. Subsequently, the screening rights for the film were purchased by Germans and it was released in Germany with German subtitles for local audiences. After their victory over Germany in 1945, the Soviets brought this film to the USSR as a ‘trophy’, renamed it as The Trip Will Be Dangerous, and released it in Moscow, describing it ‘as an epic about the struggle of Indians against White imperialists on the American frontier’.4 But Bolkhovitinov and his friends paid no attention to the ideological message of Soviet propaganda. They loved the adventures and dynamic story, so different from Soviet children’s films, which were boring, slow and didactic. Moreover, it was the first American feature film to be shown at their neighbourhood film theatre.

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Bolkhovitinov remembered that, at first, he and his friends considered this film to be German because of the German subtitles, but they soon realised that it was an American western that had been subtitled in German. Two of the friends’ other favourite ‘trophy films’, The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, were American movies starring Errol Flynn. These films, translated into Russian as Korolevskie piraty (The Royal Pirates) and Ostrov stradanii (The Island of Suffering), portrayed the romantic adventures of Anglo-American pirates in the Atlantic Ocean, and once again connected attractive and dynamic characters from the screen with the enigmatic America, ‘whose wonderful movies were more attractive and interesting than the boring and slow Soviet ones’. Of course, the Soviet authorities were aware of some of the ideological implications, but in comments delivered before screenings they stressed the ‘anti-capitalist message’ and they censored all ‘controversial (from the ideological point of view) episodes’.5 During 1945– 8, images of America and ideas related to the United States were always present in Bolkhovitinov’s household. Nikolai Feodosievich, Bolkhovitinov’s father, who was once arrested by Soviet police in 1930 and afterwards developed a very sceptical attitude to the Soviet political system, praised the level of metallurgical studies in the US and often referred to American scientific publications for his own research. Young Nikolai was aware of his father’s respect for the good quality of research by American scientists. Then, during World War II, America became an ally of the Soviet Union. As a result, the Bolkhovitinovs always listened to British radio for political developments during the war years and discussed the role of the Allies, especially that of the United States, in defeating Nazi Germany and helping the Soviet Union. At this same time, in addition to classical Russian literature, Nikolai began reading American adventure classics for children. These books, written by American authors, were traditionally incorporated in the ‘must read’ list of any intellectual Russian household of pre-revolutionary times. As Bolkhovitinov later recalled, two American writers were his favourites during the 1940s – James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain: I read too much, but without any system, what was in our home library – he noted – that is how I discovered Cooper’s novels about the adventures of a white trapper Natty Bumppo and his friend, an Indian chief Chingachgook. And I loved especially two novels – The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans. Then I read Cooper’s The Spy, but I was not impressed with his writing very much. I still

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preferred reading Mark Twain’s stories. But my childish images of America were based mostly on American westerns [such as Stagecoach ], which we watched many times with my friends, and on the pictures from the old James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain dusty volumes I had found in my parents’ library.6 Eventually, Bolkhovitinov discovered that Nikolai Arkhangel’sky and his other friends loved to read American adventure classics, especially Cooper’s and Mayne Reid’s ‘novels about American Indians’. ‘My case was different’, he said as he commented on Cooper’s popularity among his friends. ‘Everybody read these American stories, but nobody knew the modern history of Europe and the United States. Thanks to my reading of college history textbooks I knew this history pretty well. That is why I always had my own critical opinion about the fiction in Cooper’s stories, which I shared with members of our kampania.’7 In addition to cinema and American adventure classics, Bolkhovitinov and Arkhangel’sky enjoyed listening to foreign recordings of American popular jazz and songs by then-forbidden Russian e´migre´ bards Alexander Vertinsky and Pyotr Leshchenko.8 The music Bolkhovitinov discovered through his friendship with Arkhangel’sky became an important component of his cultural development, triggering an interest in Western popular culture that continued after high school and into the 1950s, as he listened to recordings of Vertinsky and American jazz and, occasionally, to Voice of America radio broadcasts about jazz.9 The postwar period was a very difficult time for all of Soviet society. Neighbours of the Bolkhovitinovs who were party bureaucrats or university professors survived and prospered by undertaking ‘business trips’ to defeated Germany. In order to qualify for these trips, such ‘specialists’ had to prove their ‘ideological reliability’ and ‘professional usefulness’ for appropriating the technology and equipment so desperately needed by the Soviet economy. Together with Soviet military personnel, these ‘specialists’ pillaged Germany, returning to Moscow with cars, jewels and various manufactured items, including modern clothes, pieces of furniture, record-players and so on.10 In 1945–6, the adolescent Bolkhovitinov watched as his neighbours, contemptuously called sakvoiazhniki (travel-baggers) by his parents and their friends, transformed their apartments with luxuries lacking in his own home. It was the first of the young man’s unpleasant discoveries. He realised that, in contrast to the lives of millions of impoverished Soviet people, including the ordinary soldiers who had defeated Nazi Germany, a very few

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privileged sakvoiazhniki enjoyed a life of luxury (by his standards), surrounded by attractive modern goods from the West. Thus, for Bolkhovitinov, the notion of the capitalist West became directly connected to the style of the privileged elite in socialist society.11 Then, in the late 1940s, Bolkhovitinov and his friends discovered another American film, Sun Valley Serenade, which demonstrated that ‘normal people in the capitalist West could live a stylish and attractive life’ which only sakvoiazhniki could afford in postwar Moscow. Moreover, this film with a very simple plot introduced American jazz to the Soviet screen.12 For the first time, Soviet film viewers had the unique opportunity to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing live on screen. For many children in the postwar Soviet Union, this film not only served as a popular means of advertising very catchy jazz melodies such as ‘Chatanooga Choo-choo’, but was also instrumental in popularising English as a very attractive modern and ‘stylish’ foreign language.13 Many representatives of the Soviet postwar generation, such as the future Americanists Bolkhovitinov and Sivachev in Russia, and Shlepakov in Ukraine, decided to switch from the obligatory German – as the first foreign language in the Soviet school curriculum – to English as the language of their choice. Bolkhovitinov noted later that after watching Sun Valley Serenade and listening to the Glenn Miller Orchestra’s music, he began to memorise some of the songs from the film. However, he was unable to pronounce the English sounds correctly because his first foreign language in school was German, which is why he and his friend Arkhangel’sky decided to learn English.14 Some time later, after having entered college, they finally made the switch from German to English. As Bolkhovitinov and his colleague Robert Ivanov later recalled, ‘during the first years after the war everybody who watched American films and used food products sent by the American people understood that Americans were our allies and good friends; Soviet young people, like us, did not think at the beginning in terms of the Cold War at all.’15 Another graduate of the Moscow Institute of International Relations (hereafter MGIMO), who studied together with Bolkhovitinov, recalled how strong the good feelings were toward the American people among the Soviet youth in the 1940s: ‘our feelings toward America were very warm. We knew that the United States was giving us substantial help with food and mate´riel . . . Wartime films from Hollywood were often shown, many of them depicting the friendship between Americans and Russians. I felt sure we would always be friends; it was inconceivable that anything could come between the Soviet Union and the United States.’16 Georgi Arbatov, the founder of the USA Institute in

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Moscow as well as a graduate from MGIMO, confessed in his memoirs that as early as the autumn of 1944, while being demobilised from the Soviet Army, he ‘decided to study English and specialise in the United States’. As he explained, ‘The United States was our main ally. The attitude among most of my contemporaries toward America was warm and friendly. Even first-year students (at MGIMO) understood that the United States and the Soviet Union would play a special role in the postwar world. And the country itself was undoubtedly very interesting.’17 According to official documents, in 1945 and 1946, the sudden influx of US movies in Soviet film theatres affected the imagination of not only the urban residents, but also of the rural population of many Soviet villages all over the country. Like the Muscovites Bolkhovitinov and Ivanov, future Soviet Americanists such as Leonid Leshchenko and Nikolai Sivachev, who lived in small Soviet villages during the 1940s, fell in love with the ‘romantic America’ on film screens. By November 1946, the American film Sun Valley Serenade was screened in 25 village theatres of the Kamianets Podil’skyi region of Soviet Ukraine to 15,194 local viewers. However, another film, Charley’s Aunt, produced by the same film studio, American 20th Century Fox, became a genuine blockbuster among the local Ukrainian rural population. It was screened in all of the film theatres of that Ukrainian region to 45,801 local viewers. As one Soviet journalist described, even the residents of the small Ukrainian village Smotrich from the Kamianets Podil’skyi region ‘were fascinated with American movies’. They particularly loved the American film star Deanna Durbin. This journalist noted that the Smotrich residents knew her musical films such as His Butler’s Sister and Spring Waltz (Spring Parade). According to his information, His Butler’s Sister was shown four times in a row in this village of Smotrich, and all of the tickets were sold out. The majority of the villagers in Smotrich watched this musical two or three times in 1946.18 Meanwhile, the Cold War had begun, and its developments directly affected not only the ideological situation in the Soviet Union during the late 1940s, but also the financial circumstances of the Bolkhovitinovs and other families of Soviet scientists. The Soviet nuclear bomb project led to changes in official attitudes toward Soviet science and Soviet scientists. Stalin demonstrated a genuine interest in the support of Soviet science. Suddenly, Soviet scientists received privileged status in the social hierarchy of Soviet society.19 As Nikolai Bolkhovitinov recalled, the salary of his father – who was a full professor and a chairperson at the technical college – was raised to 6,200 rubles (meanwhile, the average salary of the Soviet

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citizen during the late 1940s was no more than 100 rubles!). Furthermore, Nikolai Feodosievich received additional funding of 3,000 rubles for his research. Moreover, he obtained official permission for the purchase of foreign literature and for a subscription to foreign journals in his field. Suddenly, the Bolkhovitinov family became part of Stalin’s scientific elite. In 1947, Nikolai Feodosievich bought a new Soviet car, a Moskvich, for 10,000 rubles, and in a few years later he purchased another new car, a Pobeda, for 16,000 rubles. From 1947 on, the Bolkhovitinov family had no financial problems and eventually began leading the lifestyle of the privileged few – the style which young Nikolai had noticed among the families of sakvoiazhniki in 1946. As he himself eventually wrote in his memoirs after 1946, ‘Soviet scientists became the most well-to-do social group in Soviet society’.20 Unfortunately, as a result of the Cold War during those years, the ideological situation deteriorated at the same time: various anti-Western and anti-American campaigns had begun in Moscow. Young Bolkhovitinov noted how, under pressure from above, after 1948, his father had to denounce and sever all of his connections with Western colleagues, sign a special public declaration about his withdrawal from foreign scientific societies and publicly renounce his subscription to foreign scientific journals. The

Figure 6 1947.

Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s family around their car Pobeda in Moscow in

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Bolkhovitinovs silently observed how the new Stalinist purges such as the ‘Lysenko campaigns against Soviet scientists-geneticists’, the ‘Zhdanov campaigns against A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko’ and the anti-Semitic campaigns against ‘uprooted cosmopolitans’ affected their neighbours and friends. The abstract problems of genetics especially affected young Nikolai Bolkhovitinov because two of his close classmates were sons of persecuted geneticists – professors Zhebrak and Sabinin. Nevertheless, Bolkhovitinov’s father survived all of these campaigns unscathed, maintaining his privileged position as a Soviet scientist, but, at the same time, by intensifying his scepticism and personal criticism of the Soviet political regime. This sceptical and cynical attitude toward Soviet reality, which his father demonstrated privately, would thoroughly influence young Nikolai’s mentality in the future. During perestroika, he revealed this in his private correspondence, ‘of course I grew up as a young Soviet loyal patriot in a privileged family, but the daily (sometimes silent) scepticism of my father pushed eventually my perception of Soviet realities in a very critical direction.’21 Another important factor which influenced and shaped young Bolkhovitinov’s personality was his Moscow school No. 218 with its relatively liberal atmosphere and talented pedagogical collective. During his high school education (1946– 8), Nikolai discussed with his classmates and teachers various facts regarding world and Soviet history and the writings of his favourite Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose publications were banned from the Stalinist school curriculum. After school, Bolkhovitinov not only played soccer and volleyball, but also spent hours listening to his favourite music – songs by Alexander Vertinsky and Pyotr Leshchenko. During his last academic year in school (1947– 8), as he recalled later, Bolkhovitinov spent almost every evening with his friend Arkhangel’sky at the apartment of his father’s colleague, Professor V. Kharchenko, listening to new records of the Russian e´migre´ singers such as Vertinsky and occasionally to American jazz. Unfortunately, one of his classmates denounced Bolkhovitinov publicly at school ‘for listening to anti-Soviet music’. Nevertheless, despite the scandal this incident provoked in the Komsomol school organisation, both Bolkhovitinov and Arkhangel’sky continued to listen to their favourite records. However, they ceased to share their enthusiasm about this music with their classmates. For many years to come, Bolkhovitinov’s favourite saying was a line from the 1946 song ‘Songbirds’ by Alexander Vertinsky. Bolkhovitinov used to sing this line sometimes in the presence of his close friends and students: ‘We are the singing birds and we can’t sing in the cage.’ This phrase became his motto.22

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According to contemporaries, during the Stalin era, when the study of history was transformed ‘into a simple ideological ritual justifying victory of communism in the USSR’, many Soviet intellectuals attempted to avoid the ‘uncritical and boring pursuits of historical research’ and devoted their energy to other less ideologically biased ‘intellectual fields of knowledge’.23 As Roger D. Markwick noted in his study of Soviet historiography, ‘history as a profession had very poor status’ in Soviet society as only 2 per cent of students chose to pursue history at college level.24 Such a negative attitude toward history as a profession was particularly obvious among the representatives of the Soviet ‘technological intelligentsia’, that is, Soviet scientists and engineers. Bolkhovitinov’s father, who was one of those ‘technological intelligentsia’, assumed that following Nikolai’s graduation from high school in 1948, his son would choose a serious scientific field, rather than scholarship in the humanities (especially in ‘the ideological brain-washing field of Soviet history’). As Bolkhovitinov wrote in 1979, his father ‘felt uneasy’ over young Nikolai’s decision to become a historian ‘but did not persist in his view, confining himself to a sceptical remark about “cult servants”’. In fact, his father used much stronger words, comparing the official Soviet historians to servants of the ‘Marxist ideological cult’.25 Nikolai Feodosievich then used a final argument, trying to dissuade his son from his decision to ‘join the ideological cult’. He reminded him about the obligatory ideological requirements for Soviet students of history. They had to be ideologically reliable, and therefore members of the Komsomol or Communist Party. Nevertheless, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, who had never belonged to any political organisation during his childhood, upheld his choice. That is why on the eve of his graduation from school, Nikolai applied for membership in the Komsomol. Despite some criticism by a few members of the school’s Komsomol organisation regarding Nikolai’s questionable music tastes and his notorious adoration of the ‘bourgeois bard’ Vertinsky and the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the majority of his Komsomol classmates supported his application. Thus, in May 1948, for the first time in his life, Bolkhovitinov became a member of a Soviet political youth organisation, that is, the Komsomol. According to Soviet ideological rules, he was now politically eligible to enter any Soviet establishment of higher education as a student of history.26 Bolkhovitinov, who was among the best students in his school, expected to graduate with honours (featuring a gold medal award), which would have granted him the privilege of taking only one college entrance exam in the

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subject of his specialty – history; under ordinary circumstances, the average Soviet applicant was required to take three additional entrance exams (in addition to the specialty subject). Unfortunately for Bolkhovitinov, he made one mistake in his final high-school Russian literature exam, which disqualified him from receiving the gold medal award. Frustrated, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov knew that now he was required to take all four entrance exams. Nevertheless, he considered applying to the department of history at two of the most prestigious teaching establishments of higher education in Moscow – MGU and MGIMO. Apparently, Bolkhovitinov preferred MGU, where the entrance exams were scheduled for August. Meanwhile, MGIMO offered the entrance exams as early as July. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov decided to try his luck earlier at MGIMO, before the MGU exams. To his surprise, he passed all four exams with good grades and was admitted as an undergraduate student at MGIMO’s Department of History by early August 1948.27 Influenced by American jazz and the music of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, that same year Bolkhovitinov decided to switch from German to English language classes. During the 1940s, the most popular foreign language in Soviet secondary schools was German, so Bolkhovitinov carried on studying the language until 1948. After his admission to MGIMO, he began studying basic-level English. Despite failing the first English language exam during the institute’s first exam session in January 1949, Bolkhovitinov continued studying this new language, and during his third year of study he reached the linguistic level of his classmates, who had been studying English since their childhood. To some extent, Bolkhovitinov’s persistence in the study of English was a result of his old sympathies for Americans from the days of World War II, when young Nikolai had become ‘a very loyal ally’ of the United States, tracing the movements of American troops on a map and listening to the speeches of American politicians on the radio. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s interest in ‘everything American’ was stimulated by his father who always expressed his delight and fascination with ‘the genius and inventiveness of the Americans’ and ‘their achievements in building their modern and rational civilisation’.28 The last important influence to push Bolkhovitinov in the direction of studying the English language and US history came from his MGIMO professors. During the period of Stalin’s campaigns against cosmopolitans, many talented Moscow scholars were compelled to leave MGU, or lost their teaching jobs at other Moscow colleges. For some reason, the MGIMO administration, which was interested in covering various fields of diplomatic

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studies and international history in the form of professional lectures by qualified specialists, invited many of these scholars to teach in their fields of expertise at MGIMO.29 As a result, by 1948 MGIMO’s faculty consisted of such historian-celebrities as E. V. Tarle, a specialist in French history, and L. V. Cherepnin, an expert in pre-modern Russian history, who offered special lecture courses there. During his first year of study at MGIMO, Bolkhovitinov – who had already read Tarle’s book – signed up for the professor’s classes and was disappointed with his lectures; they turned out to be a mere ‘recapitulation’ of his old writings that the young and ambitious student had already learnt by heart. So Bolkhovitinov tried to find new lecturers who would attract his interest and attention. Eventually, he discovered a constellation of brilliant scholars, experts in US history at MGIMO, who systematically covered all major periods of American history. As he explained later, The course of lectures on the history of the USA for the students who chose this country as their specialty was read at that time by A. V. Efimov (up to the Civil War and Reconstruction), L. I. Zubok (1877 – 1918), E. V. Ananova (1918 – 45) and, lastly, N. N. Inozemtsev, a young man at the time (the contemporary history and foreign policy of the USA after World War II). They also conducted seminars on their respective periods. Undoubtedly, they formed the most qualified group of specialists on American history in the Soviet Union. It is not surprising therefore that many Soviet Americanists from G. A. Arbatov to N. N. Yakovlev were trained at the Institute.30 Initially, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov planned to study the contemporary history of the United States. Beginning in his early childhood, Nikolai analysed newspaper and radio data regarding world politics and discussed this information with his father. He attempted to do the same at MGIMO, and eventually he realised that it was not only difficult to do, but even dangerous for his future studies and reputation as a Soviet student of history. I recall – he wrote about his student experience – that once during the seminar class I delivered a report about the main features of international imperialism after World War II and attempted to formulate (taking into account contemporary developments in Western capitalist countries) some ‘additions and changes’ with comparison to the famous five features of imperialism according to V. I. Lenin.31 Our

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professor immediately interrupted me and remarked that imperialism is a complete preparation for socialism and between these two steps in development of society there is no intermediate stage, as Lenin said. Since that time I have firmly decided to avoid any theoretical discussion about the current issues of present day politics and I concentrated (instead) on purely historical problems of the remote past.32 After this unpleasant experience, Bolkhovitinov decided to forget about contemporary history, and geared his attention towards the field of nineteenth-century diplomatic history, in order to collaborate with the MGIMO history professor whose lectures appealed to him the most and who triggered his strong interest in nineteenth-century US history. As Bolkhovitinov confessed later, ‘of all lecturers [at MGIMO] the greatest influence was exerted on me by Alexei Vladimirovich Efimov.’ And he explained that Efimov’s ‘lectures seemed to be somewhat incoherent, nor was he too precise with reference to the facts, but all this was more than compensated for by the brightness of his ideas and his unexpected generalisations. It was he who advanced the idea of the connection between the Monroe Doctrine and US expansionism, which had its effect on my choosing the subject of my diploma work and then my thesis for the scholarly degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences.’33 Moreover, at MGIMO all graduates from the department of history specialised only in contemporary history of the twentieth century. Despite this, Efimov insisted on and supported the idea that Bolkhovitinov should devote his diploma work not to the problems of current history, ‘but to the remote year of 1823, to the origin of the Monroe Doctrine’.34 As Bolkhovitinov commented on this story later, at the institute Efimov always projected the image of an old noble intellectual from preRevolutionary Russia, ‘an image of the Russian gentleman’. He looked like a decent and educated Russian professor with a great knowledge of the world and Russian history. Since that time, young Bolkhovitinov, in part attracted by this image of ‘the noble old-fashioned professor from pre-Revolutionary Russia’, had established good relations with Professor Efimov, who recognised in this student the gifts of a good scholar and the talent of a patient historian who loved to work with various sources and search for historical truth. By 1952, Bolkhovitinov chose two tutors for his research work – the legendary E. V. Tarle, and Professor Efimov. Both tutors approved of Bolkhovitinov’s diploma work, and in April 1953 they (along with L. I. Zubok, ‘an informal reviewer’ of Bolkhovitinov’s thesis) lauded his

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research and commented that his work deserved ‘high praise and full recognition’. Professor Tarle discerned in Bolkhovitinov’s diploma work ‘bits of sound ideas’, especially singling out and approving the section titled ‘The absence of a real threat of intervention by the Holy Alliance in Latin America’, which Bolkhovitinov subsequently utilised as a foundation for his first research article, published in 1957.35 In addition to Efimov, Professor Zubok – also of MGIMO, was equally instrumental in shaping the intellectual development of young Bolkhovitinov and many of his classmates and future Soviet Americanists. As Bolkhovitinov noted later, ‘Lev Zubok was a real inspiration for all of us, he not only influenced us intellectually at the institute, but also protected us after graduation, helping us to find a journal for our publications or a safe place for our teaching jobs.’36

Figure 7

MGIMO student Nikolai Bolkhovitinov in 1951.

The Year 1953 and Beyond 1953, the year of Bolkhovitinov’s graduation from MGIMO, was a remarkable year in his life. Before his graduation, at the beginning of March,

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Bolkhovitinov, together with his classmates Viktor Mal’kov and Robert Ivanov, went to the centre of Moscow to see the dead Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, lying in state. Thousands of people flooded the streets around the Palace of the Unions waiting for their turn to pay their respects to the dead leader. At one point, when the gathering was especially crowded, a stampede broke out, and many people were trampled or killed. Bolkhovitinov’s reaction was similar to that of the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko when he saw people ‘crushed against streetlights, telephone booths, and military trucks stationed to control the crowd . . . The sides of trucks were slick with blood. Police and young soldiers watched helplessly from the trucks, since they had no instructions.’ Young Bolkhovitinov shared with Yevtushenko the same ‘savage hatred for everything that had given birth to that criminal stupidity of the authorities.’37 After this experience and a long conversation with his father on 9 March 1953, young Bolkhovitinov realised that his Soviet patriotism based on the blind love of a ‘great leader’ was deficient at some level. As he explained later, he still believed in the socialist ideal of his great Motherland, but ‘the images of Stalin and people who were killed during Stalin’s funeral did not fit this socialist ideal anymore.’38 Bolkhovitinov’s scepticism about the Soviet political system was rooted in these reactions to the tragedy of March 1953, though to some extent, the foundation for his attitude had been laid by long and sincere conversations with his father and Professor Efimov. After 1953, Bolkhovitinov tried to avoid ‘ritualistic Marxist quotations’ in his writing on US history, a feature of his work that drew the ire of some Americanist colleagues, who complained that ‘he never quoted either Stalin or Khrushchev, and very rarely Karl Marx in his publications.’39 Another event in 1953 also made a strong impression on Bolkhovitinov. In the late 1940s, his friends had sung the praises of the new trophy film about the ape-man Tarzan, who travelled from the jungles of Africa to Manhattan in America searching for his kidnapped son. This was the 1942 American film Tarzan’s New York Adventure, featuring Johnny Weissmuller and directed by Richard Thorpe.40 Although Bolkhovitinov’s friends had seen the film many times, for some reason he had missed it. In May 1953, after finishing one of his college exams he decided to join his classmates when they went to a cinema showing this old Tarzan film. Eventually, Bolkhovitinov realised that this was the legendary trophy film his old friends had talked about. As he remembered, everybody was fascinated by the story and portrayal of the adventures of the ape-man in Africa and New York City. However, after watching the

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film, Bolkhovitinov felt frustrated and reacted negatively to the exalted delight of his classmates. ‘The plot of the film looked very childish to me,’ he later recalled, ‘probably my age (I was 22 years old) did not allow me to embrace Tarzan’s film as some impressive product of cinema art.’ What did impress Bolkhovitinov were not the adventures of Tarzan, but the portrayal of ‘the great American urban megapolis’ on the silver screen, with its unique cityscape of skyscrapers, shops and streets full of fashionably dressed and modern-looking people. ‘It was a real shock to me,’ he said. ‘Before this film I had seen modern stylish dresses and furniture only in the homes of those lucky people who brought this stuff from Germany after the war and in the pictures of those rare Western journals, which my father occasionally brought to our house. Now I recognised these elements of modern style in this Tarzan movie as well. For the first time in my life I realised that the United States of America was the precise location of what we called in those days modernity and style (sovremennost’ i stil’).’41 The second shock for Bolkhovitinov was the portrayal of the American court and the overall American judicial system in the film. At first, he could not understand the nuances of Tarzan’s trial in the film. He confessed to watching it twice, trying to understand how this system worked in the USA, and how it was different from the Soviet judicial system. Afterwards, Bolkhovitinov had a long discussion about these differences with his father. Nikolai Feodosievich did not encourage this discussion. What he eventually recommended to his son was to listen to US radio shows. This was the beginning of a long-standing tradition in the life of the Bolkhovitinovs (they used to listen to British radio during the 1940s). Since 1953, Bolkhovitinov had been listening to other foreign radio stations (including American) on a regular basis. The KGB jammed all Western radio stations that broadcast their radio programmes in Russian, so Bolkhovitinov had to listen to such programmes in English. In Moscow the best signal for local radio receivers in Bolkhovitinov’s neighbourhood came from the BBC radio station. Thus, the British radio news in English from the BBC World Service became part of the daily routine of this young MGIMO student. Throughout the rest of his life, Bolkhovitinov listened to ‘radio from the West’, and his favourite radio station was British. Subsequently, after 1956 he also listened to the Voice of America news. In a conversation with his classmates and colleagues Bolkhovitinov always pointed out that listening to radio programmes in English was an important practice for improving linguistic skills. Therefore, these future historians of diplomatic relations were expected

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to do this on a regular basis because ‘it enhanced their professional experience and broadened their intellectual horizons.’42 During the early 1950s, many young intellectuals in the Soviet Union were attracted to the images of stylish life, interesting fashions, musical sounds and rhythms in American films, as they portrayed contemporary life in the US. Both Bolkhovitinov in Moscow and Shlepakov in Kyiv recalled how they were impressed by two American films, Mr Deeds Goes to Town and The Roaring Twenties. The first film, which was directed by Frank Capra and released in the USSR under the title The Dollar Rules, presented to the Soviet audience a handsome Gary Cooper in the new urban fashions that the most advanced stylish tailors in both Moscow and Kyiv tried to imitate.43 The second film, directed by Raoul Walsh (1939), was renamed A Soldier’s Fate in America in the Soviet Union, and it became the first American gangster film on the Soviet screen. The fashions and music, especially the song ‘Melancholy Baby’, from this film, created a sensation among Soviet intellectual youth.44 As Arnold Shlepakov recalled after watching this film in Kyiv, ‘for everybody in my class, to look like an American became a fashion, to look and dress like the heroes from that movie was very cool and stylish.’45 After watching those American films, Bolkhovitinov realised that he ‘had to know more about this country where everybody is so intelligent, stylish and cool’. As he mentioned later, ‘the direct result of these movies was my desire to study professionally the recent history of the United States.’46 Bolkhovitinov watched Mr Deeds Goes to Town a week after seeing the Tarzan film, and again he was very impressed by the portrayal of the court scene in the new American film. This scene is a key scene in Capra’s film, showing how the American court worked and how ‘democratic’ the procedures of trial by jury were, which could acquit an innocent person who had been accused by corrupt lawyers. As another of Bolkhovitinov’s colleague, Robert Ivanov, noted, the court scene from this film ‘looked like an American communist utopia, where rich capitalist-parasites were punished and poor suffering and exploited folks were rewarded.’ And Ivanov acknowledged later that ‘this feature of the US courts from Capra’s movie’ during the time of his youth fit ‘very well with our Soviet images of socialist justice, which were missing from our Soviet realities in the 1950s’.47 The film by Raoul Walsh (A Soldier’s Fate in America) played a very important role in the lives of young Soviet students of American history such as Bolkhovitinov and Shlepakov. Bolkhovitinov recalled how he loved to

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observe this gangster film’s historical introduction, which covered contemporary US history in detail, featuring events from World War II, the Prohibition Era, the Great Depression and finishing with the beginning of the New Deal era. He was also impressed by the very critical (with regard to American realities) historical comments made in the film; while ‘a combination of the realistic portrayal of unemployment, capitalist crises, gangster capitalism and American greed with illustrative episodes from American documentary films, incorporated in Walsh’s movie, produced a tremendous effect on us young MGIMO students.’48 After viewing this film, Bolkhovitinov had serious doubts about having chosen nineteenth-century US history with Efimov and he wanted to make a switch back to contemporary US history. As he explained, I compared the facts from this film with what I had already read in Soviet books, like the study by Lev Zubok, and realised that this period of American history after 1919 to the present is the most attractive one for any intelligent researcher. But when I told my father about my decision to study contemporary US history, he immediately killed my enthusiasm, explaining to me all the difficulties in doing serious and decent research work on contemporary US history in the atmosphere of anti-American hysteria, which had just begun in our country during the late 1940s. After this conversation with my father, I cooled my passion (ostudil moi pyl), and decided to stay with my topic of nineteenth-century US history and the Monroe Doctrine. But paradoxically, till now, I still miss this opportunity to study the recent history of America, and I have a tremendous interest in this history and contemporary US diplomacy, still inspired by US movies such as Walsh’s film.49 Arnold Shlepakov of Kyiv and Nikolai Sivachev of Moscow were also impressed by the critical portrayal of American capitalism in Raoul Walsh’s film. As Shlepakov noted, ‘This portrayal of the unemployment of American workers and gangster capitalism of the Prohibition Era in this film fit perfectly well with all our Soviet ideological cliche´s about American capitalism. I would say it was a graphic and very convincing illustration of all the atrocities of the contemporary American capitalist system.’ Under the film’s influence, Shlepakov, as a young Ukrainian student of history, decided to study ‘the problems of working class movement and capitalism in twentieth-century American history.’50 According to Nikolai Sivachev’s

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graduate students, the latter, who was usually very cautious about praising American films to his colleagues and students, enjoyed Raoul Walsh’s film, explaining ‘how good and convincing the portrayal was of the American road to the New Deal in this old American feature film’.51 Alexander Fursenko also agreed that this film stimulated a tremendous interest in contemporary US history among representatives of his ‘postwar generation’. As he noted, ‘we loved the main character of the film, a noble, loving and struggling Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) who became a gangster and eventually failed and died at the end of the film. But most important for us was the effect after watching this film – we liked all these American people who looked so humane and sympathetic to us, but at the same time we hated American capitalism, which transformed these people into its victims, making them criminals and destroying their human nature.’52

‘Trophy Films’ and the Genesis of Americanists in Soviet Ukraine The same cultural influences shaped the life trajectories and the pioneers of American Studies in Soviet Ukraine – Arnold Shlepakov and Leonid Leshchenko. ‘I came from a typical privileged family of Soviet intellectuals,’ admitted Arnold Shlepakov as he described his social and cultural background in 1991. ‘As far as I can recall,’ continued Shlepakov, ‘I had never experienced any economic problems or financial difficulties while growing up as a child or college student in Soviet Ukraine during the late 1940s and early 1950s.’ In reality, he did experience some difficulties in his childhood, because he grew up during World War II, which affected his life as well. Arnold Shlepakov was born on 16 June 1930 in the city of Vinnytsia into a family of Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals (or sluzhashchie, as he wrote in his autobiography in 1978).53 His father, Mykola S. Shlepakov, was a prominent Ukrainian philosopher, who became a professor of philosophy at Kharkiv State University in 1930. Shlepakov grew up in the city of Kharkiv, and attended the local elementary school there for three years until June 1941, when World War II reached Soviet Ukraine. The Shlepakov family fled the war, headed east and settled in the city of Kzyl-Orda in Kazakhstan, where Arnold attended classes at the local middle school for two years. In 1944, his family returned to Kharkiv, which had recently been liberated by the Red Army from Nazi occupation. Shortly afterwards, Arnold’s father was invited to teach as a professor of philosophy at Kyiv State University, where he was promoted to chair of the history of philosophy that same year.

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As a result of this career promotion, the Shlepakov family’s financial situation improved dramatically. ‘By the beginning of 1946, after our move to Kyiv,’ Shlepakov recalled later, ‘we were living much better and more comfortably. My mother, a philologist, quit her job and now spent all of her time helping me with my studies. Two servants were hired to help us in our spacious apartment, provided by the city’s authorities for our family.’54 In 1947, Arnold Shlepakov graduated from Kyiv high school No. 147 with honours (receiving the golden medal award) alongside his first genuine experience of engagement in Soviet youth politics. For almost two years, following the suggestions of his father, Arnold was well known as the most capable of Komsomol activists, who eventually was elected secretary of his school’s Komsomol organisation. As he explained, by 1947 I had already dreamed of becoming a diplomat because I saw how our neighbours, professional diplomats, who worked for the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, lived comfortably and travelled around the world. Moreover, these neighbours often visited our apartment, had dinner with us, brought us new American music records and told interesting stories about their travels and adventures abroad. During this time I was fascinated with the United States and American popular culture. Together with my friends, we watched American motion pictures such as films about Tarzan, an ape-man, and listened to American jazz. Under the influence of American pop music, I even began learning English instead of the obligatory German in the official Soviet curriculum in 1946– 47. I dreamed of travelling to America to see with my own eyes the country, which had become the symbol of real modernity (sovremennosti) and inspiration for all humankind. But our neighbours emphasised that I had to have a ‘clean personal ideological record’ of my life, to be a Komsomol activist and collaborate with the KGB. Such an experience would help me, they said, to be admitted to the department of foreign relations at Kyiv State University (hereafter KDU), and, eventually, to fulfill my dream and visit America.55 During that same year of 1947, under the inspiration of the conversations he had with his neighbours, Shlepakov submitted his documents to the KDU department of foreign relations, passed the entrance exams with an ‘A’ and entered Kyiv University as an undergraduate student. According to Shlepakov, it was a period of the rise of a real, mass interest in American

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Studies, in everything related to the United States. For this reason, Shlepakov and many his classmates at the department, such as Semion Appatov and Leonid Leshchenko – future Soviet Ukrainian Americanists – began learning English and taking courses on US history and politics at the KDU department of foreign relations during the late 1940s. Following the suggestions of his neighbour-diplomats, Shlepakov not only studied the English language, the history of foreign countries and diplomacy, but also demonstrated his political activism by becoming secretary of the department’s Komsomol organisation and head of the department’s student scholarship society. According to his classmates, during his student years Arnold Shlepakov exemplified the typical representative of the ‘Soviet privileged class, always well-dressed and always avoiding any student assignments at the department that involved any kind of physical labour’.56 As one of his close friends revealed later, ‘many of Shlepakov’s classmates were envious of his privileged social status, of his family, and of his connections with the university’s administration.’57 Leonid Leshchenko recalled that, to him, Shlepakov ‘looked like an Americanised styliaga, meticulously dressed with his fashionable hair style’. But despite his image of the Americanised styliaga, Shlepakov always demonstrated publicly his Soviet patriotism, ‘loyalty to the Soviet political system’ and his preparedness to ‘serve the communist cause’.58 In December 1950, Arnold Shlepakov (still an undergraduate student!) joined the Communist Party’s organisation at the department of foreign relations.59 As both Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and Leonid Leshchenko noted, this was a unique case in the history of Soviet academia: ‘It was very rare for an undergraduate student without any “proletarian background”, being just a child of Soviet intellectuals, to become a member of the Communist Party at university!’ Leshchenko added that Shlepakov’s case was indicative of ‘the existence of his very strong KGB connections as well [at this time]’.60 As a result of his political activism (particularly of his membership in the Communist Party) and successful studies in history and diplomacy, Shlepakov not only graduated from Kyiv University with honours as a ‘historian and expert in foreign relations with a good knowledge of the English language’ in 1952, but he was also officially recommended by his department for graduate studies at the Institute of History of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences that same year. Eventually, Shlepakov succeeded as a graduate student at this academic institute and in 1955 defended his kandidatskaia (PhD) dissertation with the ‘politically correct’ title: ‘The Reunification of the Ukrainian People in One United Ukrainian Soviet State – the Outstanding Victory of the USSR’s Foreign Policy.’61

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A close friend of Shlepakov’s and one of the founders of Ukrainian American Studies, Leonid Leshchenko, was born in the village of Horodnytsia (Uman’ district, now Cherkasy region) in Soviet Ukraine, on 2 June 1931, into the family of a local kolkhoz accountant and a kolkhoz milkmaid. As Leshchenko recalled later, his parents stimulated his early interest in reading books. He began reading when he was seven years old. His parents borrowed and brought home various books from the local village library, so the young Leonid could read them after school while simultaneously ‘supervising the kolkhoz cattle’ in the pasture near his house. Leshchenko discovered for himself the adventure novels of James Fenimore Cooper, Jules Verne, Mayne Reid, Louis Henry Boussenard and Robert Louis Stevenson, in whose texts he particularly loved the description of travels and adventures in various exotic countries on different continents.62 Leshchenko recalled that during his childhood in Ukraine he worked as a herdsman ( pastukh), taking care of the local cows and sheep; he always combined this kind of work with reading a book. Usually Leshchenko would select a high enough tree with a good vantage point from where he could keep watch over his cattle and read books.63 At the age of eight, Leonid was already dreaming of his own travels oversees, far away from his Ukrainian village. Another stimulus for travel and the study of exotic countries came from his grandfather, who took part in the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–5, and was captured at the battle of Mukden by the Japanese and spent two years as a prisoner of war in a Japanese prison. Leshchenko’s grandfather described to Leonid how he travelled in Korea and China after the Japanese released him from prison. Thus, in addition to all the adventure novels, his grandfather’s tales also served as a genuine inspiration for Leonid. Nevertheless, his dreams about travelling to exotic countries were interrupted by World War II.64 When the war began, Leonid’s father was immediately drafted into the Red Army where he served in the artillery as an officer, ultimately completing his military service following the Soviet victory in May 1945 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, ten days after Nazi troops attacked the Soviet Union, and following orders from Kyiv, the kolkhoz administration of the village of Horodnytsia collected all of the kolkhoz horses, sheep, cattle and pigs into one huge herd and on 2 July 1941, assigned the local village herdsmen and shepherds, including young Leonid and his mother, to drive the entire herd east, far from the German occupants. During the hot July– August of 1941, half of this herd perished, and Leonid and his fellowvillagers reached the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv where they gave

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what was left of their herd to the local farmers and fled from the approaching Nazi troops to the Russian region of Saratov, crossing the Don and Volga rivers. Leonid Leshchenko and his mother lived there ‘in evacuation’ from November 1941 to the early spring of 1945, when they returned to Ukraine and Leonid resumed his studies in his Ukrainian school. As Leshchenko recalled, during that period of his childhood he experienced his first mental association with America, especially connected with packages with food, shipped by the Americans to the Soviet Union during the war. He referred to this real material assistance from the US as ‘the second front’ and recalled how this American food helped his family to survive, especially in 1945– 6. His subsequent mental connection with America came as a result of American films.65 Leonid Leshchenko’s school was located in the large village of Ladyzhynka in the same district of Uman. This village had a big House of Culture, which showed films each weekend. The overwhelming majority of these motion pictures were so-called ‘trophy films’ of American or German production. Leonid would spend the entire evening on Saturdays watching these American and German films at the House of Culture. He recalled that, in addition to the Tarzan films, he was also especially influenced (having watched it ten times) by one US film: A Soldier’s Fate in America, which was the Soviet title for the 1939 production of The Roaring Twenties, directed by Raoul Walsh. Another film which inspired Leshchenko was directly related to his childhood readings about the romantic adventures of the Boers in South Africa in the novels of Mayne Reid and Boussenard. This film had a Soviet title: Transvaal’ v ogne (Transvaal in Flames). It was an original German film, released in 1941 under the title Uncle Kru¨ger, directed by Hans Steinhoff.66 If the former, American film, featured ‘images of modern capitalist society, exposing the anti-human, exploitive essence of US capitalism’, then the latter, German, film ‘criticised the brutality of British imperialism’ in South Africa, where British troops suppressed the resistance of the local Dutch settlers (Boers). As Leshchenko later explained, those ‘trophy films’ that he watched in the 1940s strengthened his growing interest in two of his favourite research subjects: ‘(1) how capitalism worked in North America, and (2) how the imperialism of advanced industrial nations shaped foreign relations and international diplomacy all over the world.’67 At the same time, Leshchenko noted the special role of Soviet official film newsreels, which were shown every Saturday evening before the scheduled motion picture in their village House of Culture. In the late 1940s,

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he recalled how he was moved when he viewed the newsreels featuring meetings between Soviet and US soldiers (among whom were Canadian and American Ukrainians) in 1945. ‘The voice of the Soviet journalist announced a few times’, Leshchenko added, ‘that many American soldiers were Ukrainian by origin.’ ‘I was so shocked by this fact that many Ukrainians lived in America that I kept asking my father who had just recently returned from military service about the presence of American Ukrainians in the US army and if he had ever met such Ukrainians.’ Leshchenko recalled how (in the spring of 1949) he saw for the second time the same newsreels about the Ukrainian Americans in the US army before the scheduled screening of the Soviet film Vstrecha na El’be (Meeting on the Elbe) with ‘a relatively sympathetic’ portrayal of US– Soviet friendship and the meeting between Soviet and US soldiers in April 1945.68 Despite the ‘propagandist antiAmerican portrayal of the events of the spring of 1945’, Leshchenko, like many of his classmates, interpreted the plot of this film as ‘a more positive story, sympathetic toward ordinary Americans’. As he confessed later, all this childhood experience ‘pushed [him] in the direction of American Studies, learning English language (instead of the obligatory German in the Soviet school curriculum)’, and ‘triggered my strong and everlasting interest in the history of those Ukrainians who lived in the United States and Canada and who had fought German fascists during World War II side by side with Soviet Ukrainians such as my father. Therefore I decided to study international relations and American history at Kyiv University, where I knew from our teachers that they there was a special department devoted to the study of my favourite topics in diplomatic history.’69 After graduation from Ladyzhynka high school in June 1949, Leshchenko passed all four entrance exams with an ‘A’ and enrolled at Kyiv State University (KDU) as an undergraduate student of the Department of International Relations. But when Leshchenko arrived in Kyiv at the end of August 1949, he realised that socially, culturally and financially, he was lagging behind the majority of his classmates who represented the Soviet ‘middle class’. As Leshchenko recalled much later, he was so poor when he was accepted to Kyiv University that he had a single old shirt and coat which belonged to his father. He ‘felt a stark cultural distance’ between himself, ‘a Ukrainian village shepherd’, and such representatives of Kyiv’s ‘golden youth’ as, for example, Arnold Shlepakov, who hailed from the wealthy families of university professors or Communist Party apparatchiks. Eventually, due to his intellect and industrious nature, Leshchenko caught up intellectually and academically with these wealthy and trendy (‘dressed

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like styliagi’) students who were older than him and more influential in the department, namely Shlepakov.70 Leshchenko also recalled the shock he experienced upon his arrival at Kyiv University from the village. In the main red KDU building, which was restored in 1948, lectures were held according to two shifts [smeny] (morning and afternoon classes, because KDU did not have enough classrooms to accommodate all the required class meetings). In contrast to the ‘golden youth’ Shlepakov who lived at home (Shlepakov’s father was chair of the KDU Department of the History of Philosophy) and ate with his parents and so on, Leshchenko, like many of his classmates, arrived directly from his village with only the shabby clothes he was wearing, and went straight into the KDU dorms. Leshchenko described his first year at Kyiv University: Twenty-four students lived in our very small dorm room. Each newly arrived student had to collect hay (seno) outside in the dorm’s courtyard and fill huge bags with hay for his bed. These bags were used as mattresses and pillows. Then the student had to undergo a special ‘cleansing’ procedure before being admitted to the dorm. Afterwards, the student was sent to a special bathroom, where he was washed, and all his belongings were ‘sanitised’ in the special heaters to kill all lice, insects, etc. Only after this long operation of cleaning the body and dress of the student did the administration give special permission for students to reside in the KDU student dorms. This very experience of living in the university dorm had already created a social and cultural gap between us, the student ‘newcomers’ from the countryside, and the local ‘elitist’ city folk, such as Shlepakov. We were always very industrious, patriotic and loyal to the Soviet system in contrast to those spoiled city kids.71 On enrolling at the university, Leshchenko concentrated on studying English and US history and diplomacy. As he explained, an additional source of his interest in American Studies was related to the university’s obligatory Soviet ROTC military programme (voennaia kafedra). Because Leshchenko’s department specialised in foreign relations, all of the students were assigned a military specialisation, which was officially described as the programme of ‘military interpreters from English to Russian’. Therefore, once a week during military classes, Leshchenko and his classmates studied the US Army’s and Navy’s organisational

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Figure 8 Leonid Leshchenko with his classmates in 1954 in Kyiv State University.

infrastructure, ranks, weapons and so on. The experience of these military classes also pushed Leshchenko in the direction of American Studies. His foreign language in secondary school had been German. But now Leshchenko decided to make the switch to English at the university, not only as a result of his childhood interest in America and Canada, but also because of the new military specialisation of his department.72 By 1950, young Leshchenko had decided to concentrate exclusively on American Studies and international relations. However, a serious conversation with the older and more experienced Arnold Shlepakov changed Leshchenko’s plans. He recalled that his first encounter with Shlepakov had taken place already in 1949, when Leshchenko was a freshman organising a local Komsomol cell and Shlepakov was a junior undergraduate student who visited his cell to supervise it as a representative of the Komsomol bureau for the entire department. During 1950, when they met frequently as two Komsomol activists, Leshchenko revealed to Shlepakov his dream – to become an expert in American Studies – of both the United States and Canada. (For people of Leshchenko’s generation, the United States

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Figure 9

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Leonid Leshchenko in 1958.

and Canada were perceived as the same region; according to Soviet taxonomy, these countries were united together in one field: ‘North American Studies’.) But Shlepakov explained to Leshchenko that because of the ‘development of special anti-American and anti-cosmopolitan campaigns’ in the country and at Kyiv University, ‘it was very foolish and even dangerous to devote serious effort towards the study of America and to choose this topic for research work as partial fulfillment towards the requirements for the (final thesis) diploma.’ Therefore Shlepakov suggested ‘choosing a theme related to socialist countries, and particularly to China, where recently, in October 1949, the socialist revolution had become victorious’. As a result of this conversation, Leshchenko decided to switch to the study of Chinese– American relations, emphasising (since 1951) his new research interest: ‘the role of socialist China in international relations’.73 Eventually, Leshchenko followed the prevailing ideological trend and combined his old interest in US history with his studies of ‘socialist China’.74

Conclusion Like their Russian colleagues in Moscow and Leningrad, both Shlepakov and Leshchenko in Kyiv, despite the differences in their social origin, were

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influenced by the same ‘images and sound’ of Western trophy cinema, especially by American feature films, and by the same cultural situation in postwar Soviet society. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov also emphasised these cultural similarities, American trophy films triggered among the Soviet public a very important and strong interest in all American phenomena – politics, culture, history, economy, technology. And many future Soviet Americanists developed their first professional interest in American studies and love for American modern culture after watching these cinematic stories about the unhappy love of gangster Eddie for beautiful Jean during the Prohibition era (from The Roaring Twenties), or memorising the jazz songs of Glenn Miller in English (from Sun Valley Serenade). Many of them developed a real fixation (zatsiklilis’) with American trophy films, watching them many times and trying to imitate these films’ main characters behaviour, fashions etc.75 It is clear that the phenomenon known as ‘cultural fixation’ with American films among cultural anthropologists and sociologists became one of the factors influencing the postwar generation of Soviet Americanists. According to cultural sociology, limited sources of foreign cultural practices always produce ‘an intense idealisation’ of the early available forms of such practices in societies with strong ideological control and limitations. In the closed society of the Soviet Union after the war, the literature, music and films of ‘an important, but limited range were seized upon early on and became the central objects’ upon which subsequent cultural practice was based.76 American trophy films became a point of cultural fixation for Soviet young people, the future students of American Studies, who exaggerated the cultural significance of these products. By 1953, young Bolkhovitinov, as well as many of his future Soviet Americanist colleagues, such as G. Arbatov, N. Sivachev, A. Shlepakov, L. Leshchenko and R. Ivanov, were already familiar with American popular culture. Like many Soviet intellectuals of his generation, Bolkhovitinov and other representatives of his postwar generation ‘undertook the long road of learning about American culture from a distance’.77 Hollywood films, jazz and American literature provided important information about the United States to this postwar generation. As Joseph Brodsky noted in one of his interviews, the history of freethinking in the Soviet Union began with the Tarzan films.78 Some scholars who have studied the history of this generation demonstrated how, during

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the 1940s and 1950s, the screen images of Tarzan and the adventurous pirates from American films taught Soviet children ‘the first lessons of individual freedom as an absolute value, while cowboys and sheriffs from the westerns showed a model of personal responsibility and what Joseph Brodsky later called “momentous justice”.’79 Subsequently, American jazz, particularly the songs by Vertinsky, also strengthened this notion of personal independence and individual autonomy, which shaped the entire imagination and perception of the outside world for this generation.80

CHAPTER 3 DISCOVERING AMERICA BY STUDYING RUSSIAN—US AND UKRAINIAN—CANADIAN RELATIONS

For the first Soviet Americanists, studying US/Canadian history and culture led to their own gradual discovery of the real America and their own intellectual self. Those who explored the history of Russian/Soviet-American relations began ‘discovering not only the realities of modern American civilisation but also the past of their own country, connected to a history of the United States as well.’1 The most interesting and documented cases of such discoveries were the stories of two Soviet pioneers: one in the field of Russian– US relations, the historian Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, and another in the field of American– Ukrainian relations, the historian Arnold Shlepakov.

Soviet Pioneer of the History of Russian –American Relations Nikolai Bolkhovitinov entered graduate school at the Department of Modern History of the Moscow City Pedagogical Institute in December 1953. During his graduate studies from 1953 to 1957, under the supervision of Professor A. L. Narochnitsky, and following his new adviser’s suggestions, Bolkhovitinov collected valuable documentary material at the Archive of Foreign Policy of Russia (hereafter AVPR) in Moscow. These new archival documents became a good basis for his kandidatskaia dissertation – on the Monroe Doctrine. Narochnitsky helped to promote Bolkhovitinov’s academic career, first as an archival researcher at AVPR and

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then, in November 1958, he became a member (a junior researcher) of the Sector for the History of American Countries at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where Bolkhovitinov defended his dissertation in 1959.2 From the very beginning of his archival research at AVPR, Bolkhovitinov was particularly intrigued by the documents on the founding of the first US consulate in St Petersburg, as well as by documents regarding the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States in 1807–9. While preparing these documents for publication, Bolkhovitinov analysed these texts and recorded important comments about them, which would become the beginning of his new research project – his future doktorskaia dissertation. Bolkhovitinov’s first publication based on his new archival findings appeared in the spring of 1959, as an article about the history of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States of America during 1807–9.3 Fortunately for the author, the political situation within the Soviet Union and the new perspectives brought on by the easing of international tensions between the United States and the USSR during Khrushchev’s rule created a new climate in Soviet academia. Suddenly, Bolkhovitinov’s publication became a sensation and attracted the attention of the Soviet political elite in Moscow because it fit into the new diplomatic agenda of the Soviet state.4 First, 1959 was an important year because it marked the 150th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and the USA. The second, and probably more important, reason for the popularity of Bolkhovitinov’s research among Soviet politicians was the fact that during this time the Soviet administration had begun serious preparation for the first ‘historical’ visit of a Soviet leader to the United States. Alexei Adzhubei, an editor-in-chief of the newspaper Izvestia and Nikita Khrushchev’s son-inlaw, expressed his special interest in Bolkhovitinov’s publications in Novaia i noveishaia istoria. All off-prints of his publications were requested by Adzhubei for review by Khrushchev’s advisors. Surprisingly to the young historian, he became ‘a kind of celebrity not only for the party apparatchiks, but also for the leaders of the Soviet academic establishment’.5 One of Bolkhovitinov’s other colleagues, Sergei N. Burin, explained the interest of Khrushchev’s advisers in Bolkhovitinov’s research, Khrushchev wanted to present himself as a nice and civilised human being, rather than an authoritarian leader not only to the Soviet intellectuals but also to the outside world, and especially to

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Americans. For this role, he needed some material on human history covering the historical development of relations between Russia and America. That is why Adzhubei and others were attracted to Bolkhovitinov’s research work about human contacts in the establishing diplomatic relations between the young American republic and the Russian Empire in 1807– 09.6 In his memoirs, Adzhubei himself noted this aspect of Khrushchev’s personal diplomacy, ‘Khrushchev wanted the people of America to see him as a man of the world (chelovek mira) and the leader of a state, which demonstrates its growing scientific, technological and economic capabilities.’7 Meanwhile, in October 1959, Bolkhovitinov not only defended his kandidatskaia dissertation, but also published a book (a few weeks before the dissertation’s defence), which reflected the dissertation’s major ideas regarding the origin and character of the Monroe Doctrine. That same year, he published three scholarly articles in respected peer-reviewed Soviet historical journals.8 Adzhubei and other advisers from the CPSU Central Committee began utilising Bolkhovitinov’s publications while at the same time attempting to protect his academic career from his opponents at the Institute of History, who tried to accuse Bolkhovitinov of so-called ‘antiMarxist deviations’ using his new archival findings as proof of his digressions. They even organised a special discussion revolving around Bolkhovitinov’s ideological sins.9 The day after the discussion regarding Bolkhovitinov’s anti-Marxist position, that is, 29 July 1960, Pravda, the major central newspaper of the Soviet communists, published Bolkhovitinov’s major review of the new edition of the Soviet History of Diplomacy. Pravda’s publication of this review came as a surprise not only to all Bolkhovitinov’s opponents, but was also a genuine sensation for Bolkhovitinov’s colleagues. V. M. Khvostov, Director of the Institute of History, invited Bolkhovitinov to his office and congratulated him on Pravda’s publication, apologising for the strange discussion organised by Bolkhovitinov’s older and more conservative colleagues and offered his own support to Bolkhovitinov in ‘all his publications and research’. As it turned out, the invisible backing and support provided by Adzhubei as well as by other close advisors of Khrushchev – who appreciated Bolkhovitinov’s erudition and his knowledge of the US and diplomatic history – helped Bolkhovitinov not only to establish good relations with the ruling Soviet elite, but also to protect his career from the intrigues of his enemies at the Institute of History.10

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Meanwhile, Pravda’s editorial board expressed its interest in long-term relations with the talented young scholar. Representatives from Pravda offered him professional collaborative opportunities and asked him to contribute new material on recent Soviet– US relations. Bolkhovitinov did not categorically refuse, but at the same time he tried to avoid involvement in recent intricate ideological struggle by remaining in his own niche – eighteenth- and nineteenth-century diplomatic history. Now all his free time was devoted to archival research at AVPR, focusing on Russian diplomacy and Russian relations with the young American republic. Bolkhovitinov even prepared a publication featuring these documents in the form of a special documentary collection about Russia and the American War of Independence.11 During the early 1960s, based on his new archival research, Bolkhovitinov systematically published new articles on the early history of Russian– American relations.12 Again, Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law, invited the talented young historian to submit an article to vet another leading Soviet newspaper – Izvestia. As editor-in-chief of Izvestia, Adzhubei asked Bolkhovitinov to present his findings on the US’s reaction to the Russian Patriotic War of 1812 against the French troops of Napoleon for the newspaper’s commemorative issue marking the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that event. Adzhubei hoped to emphasise the international significance of the War of 1812, while, at the same time, to remind the Americans – during the ongoing conflict over Cuba – about the historical traditions of Russian resistance to any foreign attempt of imposing alien rule on the Russian people and their country. Thus, Bolkhovitinov’s archival findings on Russian– American relations circa 1812 ‘were the appropriate and handy’ material for illustrating this idea on the pages of the Soviet government’s newspaper. For this reason once again, to the great surprise of all his colleagues, Bolkhovitinov’s article on the Russian Patriotic War of 1812 was published in Izvestia on 13 November 1962. From that time on, Bolkhovitinov became ‘untouchable’ for his enemies at the Institute. His publications in both Pravda and Izvestia ‘created a special ideological protective shield’ for the young scholar that made his life ‘more comfortable’ at the Institute and provided him with the time to concentrate on writing his new, now doctoral, dissertation on the formation of Russian– American relations during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.13 At this time, Bolkhovitinov discovered new archival documents not only in Moscow, but also in Leningrad (including the documents from the manuscript division at Pushkin House) and in Tartu, Estonia. Without visiting the

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United States, he had already studied the microfilmed copies of documents from the US National Archives at the Lenin Library in Moscow and added this American material to his resource base. Many of Bolkhovitinov’s senior colleagues expressed their doubts about the feasibility of his research on the beginning of Russian–American relations during the eighteenth century. Boris F. Porshnev, the famous Soviet expert on diplomatic history of the early modern era, asked Bolkhovitinov, ‘what new information the young researcher could find on the eighteenth-century contacts if the official diplomatic relations between the young American republic and the Russian Empire were established only in 1809?’ In return, the young scholar showed Porshnev just how important the foundation of these relations was – based on early personal contacts between the peoples of the two countries – even before the diplomats and politicians began official state relations.14 In contrast to official and traditional diplomatic history, practised by Porshnev and by many of his colleagues in the Soviet Union and abroad, which concentrated mainly on the study of politicians’ state official relations, Bolkhovitinov offered a new concept, which he called ‘people’s diplomacy’. Bolkhovitinov explored how scholars, sailors and merchants from both Russia and America ‘through their personal contacts in the eighteenth century laid the foundation that would became a solid base for the establishment of diplomatic relations’ in 1809.15 As he explained his concept in English in 1980, In the past, historians of international relations very seldom studied socio-political, scientific and cultural ties. Their attention was centred on inter-state and, first and foremost, diplomatic relations, on the activity of prominent statesmen, famous generals and diplomats, tsars and presidents. This left out of the history of international relations the principal element, the people, as represented by the finest, most educated and active personages – scholars, public figures, men of letters, journalists. I see my main merit in trying to overcome this shortcoming and to study relations between Russia and the USA in their fullest dimension, comprehensively, including the history of trade, socio-political, scientific and cultural ties, the history of Russian America, the business contacts of Russian ‘promyshlenniki’ (fur traders) and Boston merchant-sailors, and other connections.16 Thus, Bolkhovitinov discovered and demonstrated the importance of personal contacts between, for example, Benjamin Franklin and other

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American scientists and their Russian colleagues, including M. Lomonosov, F. Epinus and I. Braun during the eighteenth century, many years before the establishment of official Russian– American diplomatic relations. Bolkhovitinov introduced new information about the reaction of Russian intellectuals and representatives of the Russian Enlightenment, such as A. N. Radishchev and N. N. Novikov, regarding the American War of Independence. He analysed the roots of the fascination with American liberal ideas among the Russian radical nobility and members of the of Decembrists conspiratorial movement. In addition, Bolkhovitinov explored details of the beginning of Russian –American diplomatic relations and their evolution through the early nineteenth century. In 1965, his doktorskaia dissertation on the beginnings of Russian– US relations became a sensation at the Institute of History. The first official reviewer for its defence, A. A. Guber, a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, noted in his positive review of Bolkhovitinov’s dissertation, ‘You can’t stay calm and not become fascinated at the unbelievable amount of the new archival funds and rare historical sources of different character, and not be also overwhelmed with the scholarly depth and professional usage of all these sources, and with the broad-mindedness and critical analytical approach of the dissertation’s author.’ Other Soviet historians also praised Bolkhovitinov’s research.17 As a result of this support, the entire text of Bolkhovitinov’s manuscript was published a year after his dissertation’s defence, in June 1966.18

Cultural Influences of the Khrushchev Thaw and its Aftermath Meanwhile, during the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, like many other Soviet Americanists, was tremendously influenced by new cultural developments, triggered by the Khrushchev Thaw. One of those influences, noted by both Bolkhovitinov in Moscow and Arnold Shlepakov in Kyiv, was the so-called ‘Americanisation of the Soviet screen’. Many contemporaries called the mass popularity of the American ‘trophy films’ under Stalin after World War II ‘the first wave of Soviet “Americanisation”’. The new unprecedented rise of interest in US feature films among Soviet audiences – the so-called second wave of ‘Americanisation’ – started with the Khrushchev thaw at the end of the 1950s, which began de-Stalinisation and the liberalisation of Soviet politics, society, economy and culture. De-Stalinisation led also to the relaxation of international tensions, especially between the Soviet Union and the United States. Since 1955, the exchange visits of various Soviet and American

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delegations took place on a regular basis. In the fall of 1955, a famous Soviet writer, the Pravda journalist and head of the international department of the Soviet Writers Union, Boris Polevoi, led a special delegation of seven Soviet journalists to the United States, and after this visit he urged the Soviet leadership to initiate film exchange with the USA ‘to better communicate the socialist message to Americans’.19 In his special report to the CPSU Central Committee, Polevoi noted that during a reception of the Soviet delegation in Hollywood, ‘the interesting idea’ arose in a conversation between American hosts and Soviet guests about the possibility of corresponding American and Soviet festivals of each other’s films. This idea, which was ‘ardently supported by film-makers, by studio executives, and by the so-called Hollywood “tycoons”, attracted the attention of Soviet visitors like Polevoi who thought it would be ‘the right thing to do’.20 In August 1956, while visiting the United States, representatives of the USSR Ministry of Culture also publicly agreed to initiate film exchange between the USA and the USSR. One of them, Vladimir Surin, future head of Mosfilm studio, supported the ideas of ‘reciprocal film festivals’, as well as ‘the exchange of actresses and actors to star in each other’s films’, and ‘a joint production by both (American and Soviet) motion picture industries’.21 The Soviet central newspapers publicly discussed such ideas of films exchanges as well.22 These ideas about film exchanges were finally realised in the official US– USSR agreement about cultural exchange, which was signed on 27 January 1958.23 As Soviet official press explained, this two-year agreement included not only the academic exchange, but also included exchanges in science and technology, agriculture, medicine and public health, radio and television, motion pictures, exhibitions, publications, government, youth, athletics, scholarly research, culture and tourism.24 This agreement also contained a provision about film exchanges and another provision about joint Soviet– American film productions: ‘To recognise the desirability and usefulness of organising joint production of artistic, popular science and documentary films and of the conducting, not later than May 1958, of concrete negotiations between Soviet Union film organisations and US film companies on this subject . . . The subject matter of the films will be mutually agreed upon by the two parties.’25 According to this agreement of 1958, the main Soviet organisation for the acquisition and distribution of foreign films, Soveksportfilm, was ‘to enter into contract with representatives of the motion picture industry in the United States, to be approved by the Department of State . . . for the purpose of the sale and purchase of films.’26 Initially, this agreement included a

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contract for ten American and seven Soviet movies to be exchanged via Sovexport and the Motion Picture Association of America. As Yale Richmond, who participated in this process, explained, this cultural agreement ‘applied only to members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the major producers, and did not cover the independent studios which were free to deal with the Soviets outside the agreement.’27 As a result, Soviet participants in the exchange programme looked for independent film producers and recommended them to Soveksportfilm. Of course, the leftist and pro-Soviet sympathies of American producers were important for these recommendations, but the low prices of US film products also attracted the Soviet administration.28 The first American reaction to this cultural agreement in 1958 was from the US tourist company Cosmos Travel and its president Sydney Reiner29 who funded travel for 17 Soviet film directors, cameramen and actors to the US (including the famous film director Sergei Gerasimov and poet Sergei Mikhalkov, who represented the Soviet intellectual elite). They visited New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Hollywood. In New York, at a reception with 100 American guests organised by US film producer Joshua Logan, who had previously visited the USSR, they met such movie stars as Lilian and Dorothy Gish, Marlene Dietrich (who signed an autograph for the readers of the Soviet popular magazine Sovetskii ekran), and Harry Belafonte. The Soviet visitors were impressed by the film studios in Hollywood and by their visits to Disneyland. They observed how Edward Dmytryk was shooting a film, a Western: Warlock, with Henry Fonda and Dolores Michael. Moreover, they were very impressed by the new film [The Defiant Ones] by Stanley Kramer about two fugitive criminals (a white one played by Tony Curtis and black one played by Sydney Poitier), who were joined together by one chain, a movie, which exposed the problems of racism and social inequality in capitalist American society . . . This movie witnessed the great possibilities of American cinema, when it worked with progressive themes in realistic spirit.30 This visit created the foundations of business relationships between Hollywood and the Soviet film establishment. An American host, Joshua Logan, was invited to serve as a member of the jury at the Second Moscow International Film Festival (hereafter MIFF) in 1961.31 After this visit, the Soviet guests recommended that the Soviet administration acquire the recent US films they had seen in America for Soviet domestic consumption.

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They especially emphasised the positive, ‘humanistic’ role of progressive film-makers such as Stanley Kramer. He was later officially invited to serve as a member of the jury at the Third MIFF in 1963. On his second trip to Moscow in 1965 for the Fourth MIFF, ‘Kramer brought along Judgment at Nuremberg, On the Beach, The Defiant Ones and West Side Story (a non-Kramer film) to give the Russians an idea of America’s freedom for self-criticism.’32 Soviet politicians also supported film exchanges through their official visits to Hollywood in 1959. Anastas Mikoyan, the first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, visited the US in January of that year. Following a special official invitation from Eric Johnston, a MPAA president, Mikoyan visited Paramount Pictures Company in Hollywood, where he met with this American film company executive Young Freeman, other representatives of the US film business, and film stars such as Marlon Brando, Jerry Lewis, Dina Merrill and Kirk Douglas. As a result of Mikoyan’s official visit, some American actors, such as Kirk Douglas, received official invitations to visit Moscow, and Paramount Pictures sent its official representatives to the USSR to establish ‘the mutually useful foundation’ for US– Soviet film exchange.33 During his official visit to the US, in September 1959, Nikita Khrushchev also went to Hollywood where he met with US film stars and film-makers on the premises of the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, confirming the official beginning of film exchanges between two countries.34 At Khrushchev’s personal invitation, Gary Cooper, a US film star popular among Soviet public through the old trophy films, travelled in the Soviet Union at the end of 1959. Moreover, as a part of this film exchange, the independent US movie Marty (Delbert Mann, 1955) was shown in Moscow, and the next year, in 1960, it was in general release all over the Soviet Union.35 The most important practical results of all these official visits were not only the increasing number of Soviet and American films shown in both countries as a part of exchange programmes, and frequent exchanges of official delegations of film-makers, but also special invitations for US film directors and producers to serve as jury members of the MIFF: from 1961, each MIFF had at least one American as a member of its jury.36 In 1959, new US films directly from America replaced the traditionally popular ‘trophy films’ on Soviet screens. The first US film (in fact, an American– Italian film), which was released in the USSR in August 1959 as a direct result of this ‘cultural diplomacy’ and the US– USSR film exchange, was War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956), starring Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostova and Henry Fonda as Pierre Bezukhov. Through August– October

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1959, this movie attracted more than 31.4 million Soviet viewers and gained wide acclaim all over the Soviet Union. According to contemporaries, in view of the approaching 150th anniversary of the Russian Patriotic War against the French Invasion of 1812 and because of the phenomenal worldwide success of Vidor’s adaptation of the legendary Russian national epic, the Soviet leadership, especially the Soviet Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva, decided to challenge the American cinematic ‘misinterpretation of Lev Tolstoy’s novel’ with a Soviet ‘complete and correct adaptation’ of this novel.37 Furtseva supported the open letter, which appeared in the Soviet press, signed by many of the country’s film-makers, and emphasised that it was ‘a matter of honour for the Soviet cinema industry to produce a picture which will surpass the American-Italian one in its artistic merit and authenticity.’38 Some Western journalists immediately interpreted this Soviet reaction as a new cinematographic battle in the cultural Cold War, and the planning of the Soviet adaptation of Tolstoy’s epic about the War of 1812 as a ‘counterstrike’ to Vidor’s film.39 In 1960, after the phenomenal box-office success of the American film, the same leading Soviet directors, including Sergei Gerasimov, after a visit to Hollywood publicly praised American cinema in the Soviet media. Yet shortly thereafter, they put themselves forward to head the project to challenge the film’s ‘wrong view of Russian history and culture’. After some period of intrigues, in 1961, the Soviet leadership decided to nominate the relatively young Soviet actor and film director Sergei Bondarchuk to shoot the new ambitious film adaptation of Tolstoy’s epic. Eventually, this movie was released in four parts as mnogoseriinyi fil’m (film series) during 1966– 7. It was the most expensive film ever made in the Soviet Union. Upon its release, it became a success with audiences, selling approximately 135 million tickets in its native country.40 Eventually, the international success of Bondarchuk’s film adaptation would lead to his collaboration with Italian and American film-makers, resulting in an international production of the new historical drama Waterloo in 1970, starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte.41 Thus Sergei Bondarchuk became the most popular figure of Soviet ‘cultural diplomacy’. He played a prominent role as a member of the official delegation of Soviet film-makers and movie stars, such as E. Bystritskaia and N. Cherkasov, invited by Eric Johnston to visit the United States during the spring of 1960. The Soviet visitors brought Mikhail Kalatozov’s film Cranes Are Flying, which had already had a great success in Europe.42 During visits to the Warner Brothers and Disney film studios, Bondarchuk made contacts

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with various American film directors such as Vincent Sherman and movie star Paul Muni, whose role in the recent film The Last Angry Man impressed all Soviet visitors. After this visit, Bondarchuk and other members of the delegation began actively promoting recent US movies in the Soviet Union as part of the ‘process of mutual understanding between Americans and people of the Soviet Union’.43 Nevertheless, Soviet imports of US films did not yet increase massively. In 1959, among 103 feature films released in the Soviet Union, there were only three US films – besides War and Peace and Marty, The Old Man and the Sea, starring Spencer Tracy and based on a story by Ernest Hemingway (John Sturges, 1958).44 In 1960, the USSR released 111 new Soviet feature films, but bought and screened widely only eight US movies: All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950), The Great Waltz (Julien Duvivier, 1938), Lili (Charles Walters, 1953), Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (Nathan H. Juran, 1958), Man of a Thousand Faces, starring James Cagney (Joseph Pevney, 1957), a British-American movie The Million Pound Note, starring Gregory Peck (Ronald Neame, 1954) and the musical Oklahoma! (Fred Zinnemann, 1955). All representatives of the first generation of Soviet Americans memorised the titles of all those films they had watched in Soviet film theatres.45 In 1960, the Soviet Ministry of Culture planned to buy 160 foreign films for the coming year, while Soviet film-makers released only 120 motion pictures that year. Afraid of this ‘Western film invasion’, Soviet ideologists tried to limit and control the ‘import of foreign movies, especially those from the capitalist countries’. But their efforts came to naught: all over the country the administration of Soviet film theatres and the Houses of Culture still preferred showing ‘films from the West’, especially US films, which attracted millions of filmgoers and guaranteed financial profits.46 ‘There was a real flood of US films in 1959 and 1960,’ recalled Nikolai Bolkhovitinov. Today you could watch The Old Man and the Sea, the American film starring Spencer Tracy, which was based on a story by Ernest Hemingway, recently popularised in Soviet mass media, tomorrow you enjoyed All About Eve with immortal Bette Davis and young Marilyn Monroe, and the day after tomorrow you could follow the adventures of the divine Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday – and all this was shown, uncensored, with good dubbing in Russian, on the Soviet screens.47

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As other contemporaries also noted, ‘in one year alone, in 1959, the Soviet film buffs could attend in Moscow the shows of the new French movies in April (during the so-called “Week of French Cinema”), and watch the new British films in October (during the “Week of British Cinema”).’48 Moreover, according to Bolkhovitinov, ‘the Soviet administration allowed meetings (albeit controlled) between Soviet intellectuals and American writers and scholars, who represented the American communist movement.’49 ‘For us,’ as he later noted, ‘it was a unique opportunity to listen to a genuine American intellectual. I still remember how impressed all my friends were with the presentation made by the American writer Albert E. Kahn, in late 1958 or 1959 for the students and faculty of the USSR Institute of Cinematography.’50 There was a further influx of American films in Moscow’s cinemas during 1964– 7.51 Among 212 feature films released in 1965, there were more than 100 foreign films, including US blockbusters such as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and The Defiant Ones (1958), both directed and produced by Stanley Kramer.52 The Fourth MIFF held in the summer of 1965 had a special screening for the latter, which was attended by Kramer himself and one of the actors, Sydney Poitier. According to American film producer George Stevens, Jr, who helped to organise a special showing of Kramer’s movies at MIFF, this screening was a ‘great success in Moscow’. He remembers that ‘film-makers applauded his films, often chanting Kraaaamer, Kraaaaamer, Kraaaaamer’, at their conclusion. Kramer spoke to the audience after each film, ‘making a fine impression for his country’. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, who attended one of the presentations, noted that he applauded Kramer with all the audience standing after this showing was over. As Stevens recalled: The screening was one of the most emotional I have experienced. After the film, the crowd stood – many with tears in their eyes – and gave Poitier and Kramer an ovation that subsided only when we had left the auditorium. Stanley’s visit to Moscow marked the high point in the cultural exchange between the two countries during those long years of estrangement.53 In 1966, 213 films were released, of which 113 were Soviet movies and 100 were foreign films, including the US films To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) and Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959).54 Many years later, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov emphasised also the role that the new published material in Novyi mir magazine – especially Alexander

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Solzhenitsyn’s stories – had on his intellectual development and worldview. ‘Reading Solzhenitsyn’s novellas like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, An Incident at Krechetovka Station and Matryona’s Place in 1963 was a genuine revelation for me’, he noted in 1995. ‘It was a mind-opening exercise for our entire family; after 1963, Solzhenitsyn, this literary symbol of conscience for all Russia, became my favourite writer, showing me that honesty and decency were the most important qualities of any intellectual person.’55 As his wife, Liudmila A. Bolkhovitinova, later recalled, ‘we tried to visit all the new exhibitions with the paintings of French Impressionists at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts; we attended the first concerts of American classical and jazz musicians, which became a sensation in Moscow during Khrushchev’s era; every day we read the new publications, including American prose in Soviet magazines such as Novyi mir, Yunost’, and Inostrannaiia literatura, and of course we watched numerous, newly released, US feature films.’56 In late July 1959, through his connections at the Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s father obtained two tickets for the American National Exhibition in Sokol’niki Park in Moscow and brought his son to see it. Bolkhovitinov recalled how difficult it was for his father to get these tickets and then to make his way through the crowd of Muscovites standing in line for hours to get to the exhibition. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov tried to buy a ticket for his friends as well through ‘black market’ people, but he was unsuccessful. Despite this frustration, both Bolkhovitnovs enjoyed their visit, and they had a similar reaction after observing all of the American home appliances – ‘a fascination with the rationality and effectiveness of the US economy, which satisfied the demands of the ordinary people rather than only the interests of the military industrial complex.’ When the younger Bolkhovitinov later shared his impressions with his colleagues at the institute, he told them ‘this visit made us feel how American people live and what we, the Soviet people had to borrow from modern American economy to improve and make our socialist life better.’57 The Khrushchev thaw not only helped to bring new cultural products and visitors from the ‘capitalist West’, including US films and writers to Moscow. Similarly, during the same period new intellectual and cultural activities emerged in various venues in Moscow and attracted thousands of Soviet intellectuals, including young Soviet Americanists, such as Bolkhovitinov, Ivanov and Sivachev. In addition to the new ‘evenings of poetry’ at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum – where young poets such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Robert Rozhdestvensky were reciting their poems – the USSR State Library

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of Foreign Literature served as another important venue of new influences for future Americanists. The director of this library, Margarita I. Rudomino, invited various interesting guests – journalists, film critics and scholars – to lecture about new cultural developments in various foreign countries. In 1959, she invited a young journalist Vladimir Pozner – who had spent his childhood in the United States – to prepare a series of talks about American culture for the readers of her library.58 Pozner, who still had a very thick American English accent, became another sensation for Soviet intellectuals such as Bolkhovitinov. As Bolkhovitinov recalled later, ‘young Pozner was the second, after Lev Zubok, Soviet American whom I had met in my life; he spoke with a native American accent, introducing us to various issues of the day involving American popular culture – from the folk songs of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to the new “experimental” jazz and contemporary American literature.’59 Margarita Rudomino, who strived to create a special ‘international lecture club’ (lektorii) in her library, invited the foreign guests – famous writers and artists, including James Aldridge and Irving Stone – to lecture in their native (in many cases English) language for the Soviet audience. Every Thursday, in her ‘international lecture club’, Rudomino organised screenings of original foreign films in English, French, German, Italian, Swedish or any other foreign language. Nikolai and Liudmila Bolkhovitinov always attended these events.60 Eventually, all these cultural influences – from US films on Soviet screens to Vladimir Pozner’s lectures and the events of the ‘international lecture club’ in Rudomino’s library – shaped not only Bolkhovitinov’s images of America, but also his notions of contemporary politics. The 1960s were a very important time for the formation of Bolkhovitinov’s perceptions and views of Soviet society and politics. As he recalled later, during his college years Bolkhovitinov always presented himself as a Soviet-Russian patriot. He had tremendous respect for those students, his classmates, who were veterans of World War II. In the 1950s, Bolkhovitinov sincerely believed that ‘the socialist system is the best possible form for the organisation of human society on the planet.’ During various debates with his colleagues, Bolkhovitinov always rejected negative criticism of Russia ‘as being a backward obsolete country’. He disliked it when some of his friends criticised Russian political leaders in history (including the Russian tsars) or referred to Russia as (in Lenin’s words) ‘the prison of the nations’. Though he agreed that Western industrial countries (including the United States) ‘developed a rational and productive economy, modern society and high standard of living’, Bolkhovitinov still insisted

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that socialism in Soviet Russia ‘was the only single solution’ to all the problems concerning Soviet multinational society.61 Following the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Bolkhovitinov developed certain doubts about socialism in other countries outside Russia. However, overall, he accepted Marxist theory as the only realistic and plausible concept that had worked to transform Russia in ‘the direction of industrial modernity’. At the same time, young Bolkhovitinov shared his late father’s scepticism about the ‘monopolistic’ role of the Communist Party in Soviet society. Thus, although he called himself ‘a Russian patriot’ and ‘a democratic Marxist’, Bolkhovitinov nevertheless distanced himself from the Communist Party as an organisation.62 After 1958, under the influence of his new friends and colleagues at the Institute of History, Bolkhovitinov gradually began changing his patriotic views about Russia, the Soviet Union and the socialist perspective for his country’s future development. These colleagues – who were Communists so stazhem (with a long membership in the party – in Russian) and World War II veterans, for example Lev Slezkine and M. S. Al’perovich – tried to persuade Bolkhovitinov to join the Communist Party. Lev Slezkine used to remind him, ‘Eventually you will join us as a communist; you have no alternative.’63 After a long period of doubt, Bolkhovitinov decided to follow Slezkine’s recommendations and joined the Institute’s communist organisation in 1961. Officially, he justified his decision based on the liberalisation and de-Stalinisation which the Communist Party itself had recently initiated in the country. However, as he revealed many years later, Bolkhovitinov joined the party for practical reasons. Firstly, many professional issues at the Institute were discussed during Communist Party meetings. As a non-member (before 1961), Bolkhovitinov was not allowed to be present during these meetings. Consequently, he always felt some kind of discrimination, as it meant he missed important debates about his historical profession. For this reason, Bolkhovitinov wanted to join the party in order to participate in these debates and to be part of the influential group, which shaped politics inside the Institute. Secondly, as Bolkhovitinov realised, membership in the Communist Party guaranteed access to very important privileges, including the privilege to travel abroad, especially important for his research in the United States. Immediately after receiving his job appointment to the Institute, Bolkhovitinov applied for permission to travel to the USA. However, his application had been denied every time. As Bolkhovitinov eventually realised, he had to be a communist to acquire such permission.64

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Figure 10

Nikolai and Liudmila Bolkhovitinovs in 1966.

American Discoveries of Soviet Russian Identity by a Historian of Russian –American Relations Bolkhovitinov’s pioneering study of the beginning of Russian– American relations made him a ‘celebrity’ among his American colleagues, who tried to contact him in 1964– 6 and invite him to visit the US.65 Soviet officials from the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Central Committee of CPSU had supported Bolkhovitinov’s research since the times of Khrushchev’s American visit in 1959, using his research material to justify reviving diplomatic relations with the United States even after the overthrow of Khrushchev in 1964. As a result of this official support, Bolkhovitinov was able to visit the USA from February to August 1968, with official funding from the American Council of Learned Societies.66

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Figure 11 Nikolai Bolkhovitinov with his wife before leaving for the United States in 1968.

Bolkhovitinov came to America with an already established reputation as a serious historian, visiting major research centres and archival collections on the East and West coasts, giving public lectures, meeting his American colleagues and impressing them with his erudition and knowledge of historic material. Many American historians who were familiar with Bolkhovitinov’s research on the early history of Russian –American relations noted that the real ‘academic de´tente’ between Soviet and American societies began as a result of Bolkhovitinov’s ‘decent and honest’ research work. In 1975, Lyman Henry Butterfield described Bolkhovitinov’s contribution to the politics of de´tente, when he presented an American edition of the Soviet historian’s book, written in 1966, When shall we achieve a veritable de´tente, running unobstructedly in both directions, in archival and historical activities which will parallel that which has now at least begun in space science? The benefits to knowledge on both sides are manifest everywhere in the pages of this book. The product of indefatigable labour, fine organisational skill, and acute scholarly judgments, it throws beams of light on obscure

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chapters in the history of two nations still struggling to understand each other.67 Many Soviet Americanists noted how important personal contacts with Americans were for their own ‘personal discovery’ of America and construction of their own mental images of US society and culture. Americanists such as Bolkhovitinov and Fursenko acknowledged that living with Americans, in their homes and in the student dorms, influenced them more than simply establishing business or academic relations with American colleagues. Bolkhovitinov recalled how, in 1968, while staying in a dorm at Cornell University, he spent the nights talking with local students, discussing political and cultural problems such as the Vietnam War, music and other issues.68 He came to America ‘with preconceived notions about the internal crisis in American capitalist society’, and he eventually realised that these ideas were wrong. Bolkhovitinov saw ‘how talented these young members of American society were and how they were capable of critical selfanalysis and self-government’. ‘They were more self-efficient and self-reliable than our Soviet youth’, recalled Bolkhovitinov after witnessing American college students ‘organising their own meetings, dance parties and keeping order and respect for human dignity for everyone without any hierarchical distinctions, which were typical for Soviet society’ in those days.69 As Bolkhovitinov recalled in 2005, An unforgettable impression [on me] was produced by the two weeks of my life which I spent together with a representative of American youth, sharing a dorm room with a student from Telluride Association at Cornell University. We had long conversations, lasting long after midnight. Personal contacts with this student made me revise my first impression about the weakness of American society and convinced me that this society, despite some indications of its inner disintegration and decline, at its foundation was still very firm, full of strength and moral health.70 Many of these Americanists from Moscow, who visited the United States, eventually changed their perception of American society in much the same way as Bolkhovitinov had experienced in 1968. As one Soviet sociologistAmericanist had to acknowledge, ‘the “one-sidedness” of his early writings about the United States while describing how his study of labour unions, anti-war activism and the civil rights movement countered views of

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corporate greed, militarism and racism etc. made me realise that American individualism was the foundation of a dynamic and essentially healthy society.’71 Another important discovery for Bolkhovitinov during his first American trip was relatively easy access to information of any kind in America. A Soviet visitor could not only find and use any scholarly book or magazine article published in any language, in any country, for his own research in the university libraries and special collections, but also read ‘forbidden (in the USSR) literature’, including Solzhenitsyn’s publications and Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ of 1956 at the twentieth CPSU Congress. Bolkhovitinov recalled how in New York and Boston, while conducting his research in the libraries, he also read various publications in English translation of excerpts from Solzhenitsyn’s new novel The First Circle.72 Surprisingly, Bolkhovitinov rediscovered his own Russian (rather than Soviet) identity through communication with Americans who were Russian emigrants who had fled the Russian Revolution of 1917. To him, they still represented the pre-revolutionary intellectual traditions of imperial Russia. During various official receptions in Boston, New York and Washington, DC, the Soviet visitor was approached by these Americans of Russian ethnic origin who impressed Bolkhovitinov as ‘very intellectual and well-educated cultured people’ whose traits reminded him of his teacher Alexei Efimov from Moscow. These rare contacts with a few representatives of the Russian emigration in America became embedded for a long time in Bolkhovitinov’s memory as part of his first trip to the United States. Bolkhovitinov described his reaction as ‘a sudden restoration of ethnic memory in alien surroundings’. According to his interpretation, living without his family, communicating with foreign people and dwelling among them constantly for six months accentuated Bolkhovitinov’s feelings of ‘cultural loneliness’ and prepared him ‘to welcome any (even forbidden by the KGB) personal contacts with American Russians in America’.73 Another important component in this ‘re-awakening’ of his Russian ethnic identity in America was related to Bolkhovitinov’s discovery of Greek Orthodox Christianity as a foundation of his ‘being a Russian’. As Bolkhovitinov recalled, his personal communications with the Russian Americans, who represented (in his imagination) a generation of intellectuals from pre-revolutionary Russia, revealed to him the significance of the Orthodox Christian religion for maintaining Russian identity in the diaspora. ‘Orthodox Christianity as a part of our national Russian identity was never emphasised in my family,’ Bolkhovitinov noted. ‘My parents did not practise

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religion, but they respected Orthodoxy as a part of their old cultural family tradition, which was never denied by any of them, and they always demonstrated this, supporting their dear friends, such as the pianist Maria Yudina, who was an active Christian believer’, according to Bolkhovitinov.74 He found that many ‘intellectual American Russians’ were similar to Yudina in their Christian faith and love for ‘Great Russia’. And all of them had strong, nostalgic feelings about Russia. As Bolkhovitinov explained later, Some of these contacts with Russian Americans were arranged by our colleagues, American historians of Russia, who tried to help the Soviet guests in their adjustment to the realities of life in America. Many Soviet visitors tried to avoid these contacts with Russian emigrants; I did the same at the beginning of my visit. But eventually, through the rare meetings in New York in 1968 I became attracted to the people who reminded me of both Efimov and Yudina from Moscow and who served as a living proof of Russian Orthodox Christian identity, which survived various ideological limitations and that still exists in my Soviet Russian home in Moscow.75 It is noteworthy that other Russian Soviet Americanists, such as Nikolai Sivachev and Alexander Fursenko, also experienced this ‘awakening’ of Russian national identity while travelling in America. As contemporary observers noted, to some extent, this ‘reviving’ of the ‘Russian’ rather than ‘Soviet’ intellectual self among Soviet scholars in the 1960s was directly connected to the liberalisation of the Khrushchev thaw.76

Soviet Pioneer of the History of Ukrainian –American Relations Similar to Bolkhovitinov’s research visit to America, which led to awareness of his ‘Russian national identity’, Arnold Shlepakov’s research interests and travels stimulated his own ‘Ukrainian national identity’. At the Institute of History in Kyiv, Shlepakov’s mentor was the famous Soviet diplomat and scholar of diplomatic history, Dr Oleksii D. Voina, who suggested that for his dissertation Shlepakov use various official letters of those Canadian Ukrainians who supported the reunification of all Ukrainian lands into one Soviet Ukrainian state following World War II. In 1953, Voina sent his student to the archival collection of the Ukrainian SSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Eventually, these visits required the young Shlepakov’s ‘clearance’ by

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the KGB. As some of his colleagues assumed, this research activity in the ministry’s documentary collections in 1953– 5 led not only to the establishment of Shlepakov’s strong personal connections with the KGB, but also to his growing interest in the history of Ukrainian emigration to the United States and Canada. After the KGB’s official approval of Shlepakov as an ‘ideologically reliable student of Soviet foreign policy’, Oleksii Voina recommended to Shlepakov that he work with those Canadian Ukrainians who visited Soviet Ukraine (According to official requirements, to meet a foreigner, Shlepakov had to be officially approved by the KGB.)77 In 1956, Peter (Petro) Krawchuk, a Ukrainian-Canadian pro-Communist leftist writer with overtly pro-Soviet sentiments, visited Kyiv and brought Voina his new book manuscript about the history of Ukrainian emigration in Canada.78 Voina read the manuscript and recommended it for publication. Moreover, Voina introduced Krawchuk to two young talented historians from the Institute of History: Fedir Shevchenko and Arnold Shlepakov, who agreed to edit Krawchuk’s text for publication in Ukrainian by the Soviet Ukrainian Publishing House. The official Soviet editors of this manuscript were two professors from the same institute in Kyiv: Fedir Los’ and Luka Kyzia, but the actual editing was done primarily by Shevchenko and Shlepakov. This was the beginning of important contacts with foreigners for the young Shlepakov. Beginning in 1956, he had established strong personal connections with the Canadian citizen Peter Krawchuk, and began corresponding regularly not only with Krawchuk, but also with other Ukrainian Canadians.79 Shlepakov was actively engaged in the activities of the Ukrainian Society for Cultural Relations with Abroad (Ukrains’ke tovarystvo kul’turnogo zv’iazku z zakordonom). As a representative of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences this young scholar participated in all of the meetings, which included American and Canadian guests.80 Moreover, Shlepakov became Krawchuk’s very close friend, exchanging books with him, helping this Canadian guest every time he visited Ukraine. Very often, Shlepakov tapped Krawchuk as a precious source of information about Canada and the history of the working-class movement in North America. Between 1956 and 1972, Shlepakov sent Krawchuk at least five letters annually. As a member of the editorial boards of major Ukrainian periodicals such as Ukrains’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal and Vsesvit, Shlepakov also invited Krawchuk to publish his materials about Ukrainian Canadians in these Soviet Ukrainian magazines.81 In 1961, Shlepakov played an important role in assisting Krawchuk to make arrangements during his family’s visit to Ukraine regarding the enrolment of Krawchuk’s daughter

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Larisa in Kyiv State University as an undergraduate student. In fact, Mykola (Nikolai in Russian) Pidhornyi, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, assisted Larisa Krawchuk to become a KDU student. But Shlepakov attempted to demonstrate to Krawchuk his usefulness.82 Another ‘unexpected’ result of Shlepakov’s personal contacts with Krawchuk involved the ‘rediscovery’ of his own (i.e., Shlepakov’s) Ukrainian national identity. As Shlepakov later explained, ‘Krawchuk could not speak Russian fluently; therefore any Soviet official mediator between him and the Soviet bureaucracy had to speak Ukrainian with him, and to have good Ukrainian speaking skills.’ Thus, Shlepakov (as one such ‘mediator’) not only improved his own Ukrainian linguistic skills, but also realised that his good knowledge of Ukrainian language and culture would become instrumental for promoting his own career in Soviet academia. And he joked, Paradoxically, my communicational efforts with our Ukrainian Canadian guests led to the shaping, first of all, of my new identity as a Ukrainian intellectual rather than the identity of a Soviet intellectual living in Ukraine. Eventually, all this experience pushed me in the direction of reading more about my own Ukrainian history and culture (including the history of Ukrainian Canadians). The more I read about Ukrainians in America, the more I felt respect toward the Ukrainian nation, which contributed to the flourishing of North American civilisation in both Canada and the United States.83 As a result of all these communicational efforts, by 1961 – thanks to Krawchuk’s contacts and the books he sent from Canada – Shlepakov had accumulated a significant amount of material for his new research topic on the Ukrainian farmers’ and workers’ immigration to the United States and Canada. Eventually, Shlepakov published this material in the form of a book, based mostly on secondary published sources from the US and Canada, provided to him by his Canadian colleagues such as Krawchuk. It is noteworthy that Shlepakov’s first monograph on the first Ukrainian emigrants to Canada was written in good Ukrainian; he later presented a copy of the book as a gift to the Ukrainian Canadian Krawchuk, the latter being a representative of the very ‘Ukrainian labour migration’ described in Shlepakov’s monograph.84 Eventually, Shlepakov realised that he was unable to write a serious study of the social history of immigration to the United States and Canada without

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a special research trip to America. He used his connections among Ukrainian diplomats and KGB officers to acquire official permission for travel abroad. Since 1959, Shlepakov had been applying for such permission while at the Institute of History in Kyiv. Eventually, the KGB recommended that he first travel to socialist countries in order to demonstrate his loyalty, Soviet patriotism and ‘ideological maturity’. Thus, in February– March 1960, Shlepakov embarked on a research trip to ‘socialist’ Poland. Only after this experience was Shlepakov officially approved as a candidate from Soviet Ukraine for an academic exchange with the United States and was included on the official ‘waiting list’ at the end of 1960. As a result of all these efforts, in October 1964, Shlepakov travelled to the US, where he visited Columbia University, the New York Public Library, the University of California (Berkeley and UCLA), Stanford University, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducted research and collected materials for his study. In addition to research, he spent time in his favourite music shops looking for records of ‘cool jazz’ and especially his favourite, Miles Davis.85 When he returned to Kyiv from America at the end of January 1965, Shlepakov was ready to present his research findings for publication. While visiting his Moscow colleagues in the spring of 1965, he had boasted simultaneously of his unique findings in American archives and of his precious Miles Davis record, Kind of Blue, purchased during his American visit. After discussing his research findings with his Moscow colleagues at the USSR Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University, Shlepakov prepared his doctoral dissertation for defence in 1966. By the end of 1966, his dissertation was published in Moscow as a book on immigration and the working class in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.86 In his study, Shlepakov attempted to cover the major problems involving the history of labour immigration to the US, concentrating on ‘the role of immigrational “streams” in forming and replenishing the American working class, [on] the dynamics of its national composition, the contribution of labour immigration to the industrial development of the country, the [political] direction of the ruling circles in the sphere of immigrational policy, the attitudes of various working class centres and organisations toward immigrant workers, and the participation of workerimmigrants in the All-American working class movement.’87 In contrast to many Soviet scholars who studied immigration to North America by relying mostly on the literature available in Moscow’s central libraries, Shlepakov

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used original documents from US archival collections and recent American and Canadian publications, as well as his intensive correspondence with his Canadian colleagues, including Peter Krawchuk, for his research.88 As a result, in his book, Shlepakov managed to avoid the limitations of traditional Marxist orthodoxy and instead provide a reliable analysis of the processes of labour immigration of new migrants, their integration into the American ‘labour force’ and adjustment to new and better living conditions in the United States. Moreover, despite the obligatory citations from the classics of Marxism-Leninism, Shlepakov went further than ideological dogma and demonstrated the genuine improvement of American immigrant-workers’ living conditions, the role of various scientific and technological innovations in changing the character and even ‘class’ nature of qualified industrial workers, and the gradual assimilation of these workers into the American ‘middle’ class. Many liberal Muscovite intellectuals, such as Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and Sergei Burin, praised Shlepakov’s book as a new vision of US labour history. As Bolkhovitinov noted, ‘of course, Shlepakov completed his fine study with a phrase by Lenin about the assimilation of immigrants with different ethnic and racial backgrounds into one American working class; the very material presented by him in this book, however, obviously rejected the famous Soviet thesis about the material and cultural “deterioration” of workers’ living standards under imperialism, showing a very different picture of a much better [and improving] life for millions of American workers who could afford to buy a house and a car [in contrast to Soviet workers].’89 Sergei Burin recalled how ‘Moscow students of US history appreciated Shlepakov’s book’. Burin emphasised that many of his classmates at Moscow State University preferred ‘Shlepakov’s description of American workers’ living conditions to the boring criticism of American imperialism by their teachers such as Nikolai Sivachev.’90 Nevertheless, Arnold Shlepakov attributed his book’s success mostly to the ‘public euphoria’ of Khrushchev’s thaw: My study was influenced by the more liberal academic situation at the beginning of the 1960s – said Shlepakov – I would call this – the legacy of theThaw. Paradoxically, my more conservative colleagues in Kyiv did not want to publish my material. Only the more liberal editors from Moscow (in spite of their apparent condescending attitude toward us – the provincial scholars from Ukraine) supported my project and polished my manuscript to perfection, removing, by

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the way, too many of my citations from the classics of MarxismLeninism.91 Shlepakov’s book made him famous not only among Soviet experts in American Studies, but also among specialists in migration and the historical demography of ‘international imperialism’. After 1966, Shlepakov became something of an ‘academic’ celebrity due to his sky-rocketing career in traditional academic scholarship and Soviet diplomacy as well. He was appointed an official adviser to both the Ukrainian SSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Department of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. The KGB began requesting his recommendations for the list of candidates whose future travel plans would include the USA and Canada. As early as the spring of 1965, responding to a request from KGB officials from the first (international) department of the Institute of History, Shlepakov provided a positive recommendation and approval for the vice president of the KDU ( prorektor z naukovii roboty), Dr A. Z. Zhmudsky, and the chair of the KDU Department of Geography, Professor A. M. Marinich, to visit the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, from 28 April to 12 May 1966.92 From November 1966 until May 1967, Shlepakov travelled throughout France and Switzerland as an official representative of Soviet Ukraine under UNESCO funding. As part of his travels to attend a UNESCO conference in Paris, Shlepakov actively participated in the international discussion regarding necessary reforms in the system of science and college education in developing nations. Beginning in September 1970, for three years in a row, Shlepakov was a member of the official Soviet Ukrainian delegation to the sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. He became the ‘real star’ of Soviet Ukrainian ‘academic diplomacy’.93 However, some of his close friends noticed strange changes in Shlepakov’s personality during this period of time. He became more secretive and moody. During the 1960s, in private conversations with his close friends, Shlepakov used to boast about the new ‘forbidden’ pamphlets of Soviet dissidents or ‘forbidden’ books from the West, which he would receive through his Canadian or American colleagues. After 1970, Shlepakov ceased boasting about such literature and began avoiding ‘dangerous conversations involving criticism of Soviet politics and communist ideology’. Leonid Leshchenko connected these changes in Shlepakov’s behaviour to certain scandals in his private life, which were used by the KGB for manipulating and influencing him. On the one hand, ‘during the 1970s, Shlepakov became

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Arnold Shlepakov in 1968.

more active in organising various conferences and collective publications, involving all of his long-time friends and colleagues in these projects, but on the other hand, with the sky-rocketing ascent of his public academic career, gradually, he turned into a typical Soviet academic bureaucrat, distancing himself from these same long-term friends.’94 As early as 1969, Shlepakov was elected Chair of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of Foreign Countries at the Institute of History and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR that same year. In 1970, he became a full professor of world history. In essence, Shlepakov not only supervised the study of the history of foreign countries at the Institute (until 1978), but also played an important role in its administration, fulfilling the role of deputy director of the Institute of History during 1971– 4.95 At the same time, Shlepakov became a member of the official Soviet academic nomenklatura, mixing with Soviet academic officials in Moscow as well. He was invited to various official meetings of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he interacted with Russian Americanists and discussed with them the various problems facing American Studies in the USSR. During

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this time, in the mid-1970s, as he recalled later, Shlepakov encountered obvious manifestations of ‘Russian nationalism’ among his Moscow and Leningrad colleagues. For many years, during my visits to Moscow – he noted – I was used to a more relaxed, liberal and even cosmopolitan atmosphere in Moscow, especially during the non-official meetings with Russian intellectuals. I still recalled how open-minded and sympathetic toward us – as guests from Kyiv – our colleagues were, namely Arbatov, Inozemtsev, Bolkhovitinov, Sevostianov and Tishkov. But at the same time, I noticed a rise in strange anti-Ukrainian and antiSemitic Russian nationalism among a few of my colleagueAmericanists. Certain phrases or observations made in my presence by Nikolai Sivachev of Moscow and Alexander Fursenko of Leningrad, regarding ‘the humiliation of Great Russia and Russian culture’ in Soviet domestic politics and about the omnipresence of ‘khokhly’ [a Russian derogatory term/slur for describing Ukrainians] – ranging from Brezhnev to the leadership of the Soviet Academy of Sciences – put me on my guard immediately. Moreover, they constantly criticised ‘the total domination of Soviet American Studies by the Jewish gang (evreiskaia shaika)’ from ISKAN, led by ‘the big Jew’ Arbatov. I even complained about this to the first [KGB] department of our Institute in Kyiv. But in 1975, nobody paid attention to my complaints about the apparent expressions of Great Russian chauvinism among my Moscow colleagues.96 Eventually, as Leonid Leshchenko noticed, during the 1980s Shlepakov never forgot ‘Sivachev’s Great Russian chauvinism’, and he became more careful in his communication with ‘Muscovites’, trying to distance himself from [particularly] Sivachev’s MGU students, who began playing an important role in the studies of the US political system and international relations in Moscow.97

Conclusion The intellectual biographies of the two Soviet historians, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and Arnold Shlepakov – pioneers in the study of Russian– American and Ukrainian – American relations – illustrate the major developments in the first postwar generation of Soviet Americanists, which

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was formed mostly by the political and cultural changes of the Khrushchev thaw. These changes not only allowed them to finish their original research devoted to American Studies – the academic exchanges between the USSR and the USA, initiated by Khrushchev, opened new cultural and intellectual horizons for this generation. They began to travel to America, discovering not only new research material and American civilisation, but also their own Russian and Ukrainian national identities.

PART II DÉ TENTE GENERATION

Since the beginning of US – Soviet academic exchanges in 1958, Soviet Americanists, mainly experts from Russia and Ukraine, played an important role in these programmes. Soviet Americanists’ participation in the US– Soviet exchange program became the most significant part of the relaxation of international tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Brezhnev era [noted Nikolai Bolkhovitinov]. These Soviet experts in American Studies, who travelled to America, contributed to the real ‘academic de´tente’ bringing back not only new documents and literature they discovered in American archives and libraries, but also human contacts and fresh impressions of friendly interactions with American people. Eventually all these Soviet visitors to America became leading Soviet experts in American Studies.1 Soviet Americanists became participants in the important cultural dialogue between Soviet and American societies, opening both societies to each other and widening their intellectual and cultural horizons. Another prominent Soviet scholar of US history, Arnold Shlepakov from Ukraine, stressed other aspects of Soviet– American exchange: Soviet Americanists not only produced scholarly books about American civilisation after visiting the US. They also became instrumental in bringing back new American cultural products and ideas, offering a new format for Soviet television shows with American popular music, promoting Miles Davis ‘cool jazz’ records, helping to organise concerts of Duke Ellington and bluesman BB

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King in Leningrad and Moscow, negotiating about buying the US movie China Syndrome in 1979 for the Soviet audience to discuss a danger of nuclear power. Nowadays, people forgot about the cultural role of Soviet Americanists, who not only opened America for themselves but also brought various cultural forms from America, American modernity itself (nastoiashchuiu amerikanskuiu sovremennost’), to the whole of Soviet society. Through studies of these roles and cultural interactions we could understand better a variety of the cultural perceptions of American – Soviet dialogue during the Cold War.2 The activities of Soviet scholars were monitored by both Soviet intelligence and representatives of various US federal agencies. Soviet and American intelligence and various academic and government agencies collected numerous files of precious information about these visits. Comparison of this information also gives us a unique picture of cultural dialogue during the academic exchanges throughout the era of de´tente from two different points of view. As Leonid Leshchenko, another Ukrainian Americanist, noted in 2012, ‘We can’t understand the formation of American Studies in the Soviet Union without an analysis of the mutual reactions of American hosts and Soviet visitors and of the Soviet scholars’ travel experience in America.’3 The following chapters are an attempt to study such mutual reactions and to show a very important story of the Brezhnev era – the so-called academic de´tente and role of Soviet scholar-Americanists in this process. During the 1990s, many Soviet Americanists emphasised another very important aspect of the academic exchange programme – the creation of a new international community of scholars. As Marina Vlasova, a Russian expert in US political history, observed, the de´tente of the 1970s . . . was not only the Beatles’ music on Soviet radio, ABBA and Smokey concerts on Soviet television, or new Western blockbusters in Soviet movie theatres. It was also the first attempts at integration by Soviet scholars, especially experts in US history, politics and culture, into the international academic community.4 Using the documents of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) from the Manuscript Collection of the Library of Congress, Soviet travel reports,

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personal memoirs, correspondence and more than 70 interviews, and concentrating on the personal stories of Soviet Americanists, the following chapters explore the cultural dialogue between Soviet and American scholars, and also the role of Soviet Americanists in the Soviet system of knowledge production during the Cold War, especially during the de´tente of the 1970s.5

CHAPTER 4 ACADEMIC EXCHANGES AND SOVIET AMERICANISTS DURING THE COLD WAR

From the beginning of Soviet – US cultural exchange in 1958 until the peak of perestroika, the Soviet side maintained the same practices of selection of the Soviet participants.1 Officially, Soviet scholars went to America with the major goal of doing research and in some cases to teach, or deliver their lectures to American audiences. But to achieve this goal they had to go through a long, boring and humiliating process of application ‘for travelling abroad’ and ‘thorough interviews’ with so-called ‘international departments’ (mezhdunarodnye [Osobye]otdely) at their colleges and research institutions. The Soviet applicants who planned to travel to America had to be 1) ‘members of the Communist Party, [this was required particularly for historians and social scientists]’; 2) approved by their employers (‘with a research plan and an official recommendation, discussed by the department first, and then signed not only by their department chair, but also by the communist party and trade union chiefs’)2; 3) recommended for ‘research travel abroad by their departments to the USSR Ministry of Higher Education and the international department’; and, finally, 3) cleared by the KGB through the above-mentioned international departments, promising to submit their reports to the KGB officers immediately after their return from America. After this approval, the names of Soviet candidates were sent to American organisations (like IREX, ACLS, Fulbright, etc.), which usually approved all Soviet candidates.3 Paradoxically, two communist ‘founding fathers’ of American Studies in the USSR, Alexei Efimov and Lev Zubok, who taught (after

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World War II) the most popular undergraduate courses on US History at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (hereafter MGIMO) for their future Americanist students, were never cleared by the KGB and were not allowed to go abroad because of their background. As it turned out, Alexei Efimov, a former Russian naval officer and representative of the Russian Orthodox nobility, who published Soviet pioneering studies on early American history, specifically about the genesis of American capitalism through the Civil War and the Reconstruction, and also the first Soviet standard textbook on modern history for secondary schools, was connected to ‘the Whites’ during the Russian Civil War and participated in counter-revolutionary activities in 1918 – 20. Lev Zubok, a Jewish communist, the author of the first Soviet studies on the history of the US working class and US diplomacy at the beginning of the twentieth century, came to Russia in 1924, after the Civil War, from Philadelphia as a representative of the American communist movement. Unfortunately, he became a victim of anti-cosmopolitan, antiSemitic campaigns during 1948 – 9. As a result of these ‘ideological sins’, the KGB denied the numerous applications for international travel by Efimov and Zubok during the 1960s. Meanwhile their former MGIMO students, such young Americanists as Arbatov, Bolkhovitinov and Ivanov, were communists without ‘any ideological deviations’, and they were cleared by the KGB for their travels in America. The KGB usually approved ‘clean’ candidates’ research plans and itineraries (listing the names of schools, library and archival collections in the United States). Only after receiving this approval could candidates apply for foreign passports. The KGB officers from the international departments would then help to arrange US visas and air tickets for the selected and approved candidates through the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs.4 The most important requirement for all travellers abroad was the submission of a special travel report to the international departments (for the KGB). Besides a traditional academic report to the department chair, all visitors to foreign countries would report immediately to the KGB officers of their institutes (or universities) within a month of their return. This practice of collecting reports did not end in Moscow until perestroika in 1987, while in provincial universities in Ukraine the local international departments were still requesting the final travel reports as late as 1993.5 Some Soviet candidates, though already approved by their departments for research travel, were rejected by the KGB for their old ‘ideological

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crimes’. Another famous Americanist, Nikolai Yakovlev, a former student of Efimov and Zubok and the popular author of the Soviet biography of the first American president George Washington, was denied the privilege to travel abroad several times during the 1970s and the 1980s. As it turned out, during the late 1940s, Yakovlev had been arrested together with his famous father, a Soviet marshal of artillery. Eventually, Yakovlev was rehabilitated by the Soviet police, and he returned to academic work and joined the ‘American’ sector at the Institute of History. Unfortunately for his academic career, the KGB began using him for their provocations and engaged him in writing books glorifying the KGB struggle ‘with various anti-Soviet intellectuals like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn’.6 Despite this collaboration with the KGB, Yakovlev was still not allowed to travel abroad. A younger colleague of Sevostianov and Bolkhovitinov from the IVI, Sergei Burin – a grandson of the Soviet historian-medievalist S. D. Skazkin, and who studied the social history of colonial Virginia and Maryland – also became nevyezdnoi (someone without the privilege to travel abroad). As an MGU undergraduate student in the late 1960s, he used to draw various funny caricatures of Soviet leaders such as Vladimir Lenin in his notebook during lectures. Once, by mistake, Burin left a page with his caricature of Lenin inside a book from the MGU library. An MGU librarian found it in the book that Burin had just returned and she immediately reported it to the KGB. Burin was arrested, expelled from MGU and the Komsomol. Only the intervention of his famous grandfather, academician Skazkin, saved Burin from a prison term. He was drafted into the Soviet army and was not able to resume his academic career until the 1970s. After this experience, he was never allowed to travel abroad.7 Scholars from the Soviet provincial centres for American Studies also had restrictions placed on their travels to America because of a limited number of vacancies for provincial scholars to obtain American travel grants. Since 1958, the top positions on the official ‘travel lists to America’ (raznoriadka na poezdku v Ameriku) of the USSR Ministry of Higher Education and Academy of Sciences were usually sent to representatives from Moscow. Arnold Shlepakov, a Ukrainian historian of the working-class immigration to the United States, applied for permission to travel to America many times during 1962–4. Only in October 1964 did he finally receive this permission. Meanwhile, during the same period, Muscovites from various Moscow centres for American Studies, such as Sivachev, were placed at the top of the ‘vacancy list’

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immediately after KGB clearance.8 This ‘discrimination’ of provincial scholars continued through the 1970s. By 1980, nine out of ten doctors of historical science who were experts in US history at Moscow’s Institute of World History had already visited the United States, while in Ukraine during the same period, only three out of six professors of US history at ‘Shlepakov’s Institute’ in Kiev were invited to participate in academic exchanges with Americans. Overall, according to IREX files, from 1968 to 1980 almost 80 per cent (479) of Soviet visitors to America came from Moscow, and all but four were men. Of the 50 Soviet candidates for US travel in 1982, 38 (more than 70 per cent) came from the families of the Soviet party and academic elite (like Bolkhovitinov, Shlepakov and Vlasova).9 Another serious moral problem facing Soviet Americanists was collaboration with the KGB. Usually following a first trip abroad and submission of their travel reports, Soviet scholars were invited by KGB officers for a ‘special conversation’. As some participants of these conversations recalled, Soviet Americanists had to play ‘various mind games’ and follow ‘strategies of survival’ during these conversations, accepting some KGB offers and rejecting others. The main goal of these games was to maintain good connections with the KGB to guarantee future trips to America. Not everybody could follow the rules of such games, but breaking them could affect one’s entire academic career and, especially, plans for travel abroad.10 The most important part of the ‘strategies of survival’ was a correct adherence to all ideological requirements in the travel report by the scholar. This report had to reflect the major research and teaching goals of the trip and describe the major research centres, personal and scholarly contacts abroad, and main activities during travel. The KGB reports also required a certain description of the political, economic and ideological (and since the 1970s cultural) situation in American society. Trying to ignore these rules was considered to be a serious ‘deviation’.11 A few talented Soviet Americanists, like Nikolai Bolkhovitinov from Moscow or his young colleague from Odesa Vitaly L. Beloborodko, who rejected the recruiting efforts of the KGB, were punished by a ban on foreign travel.12 Those Soviet Americanists who were KGB officers, or who collaborated with this organisation had no problems getting KGB permission for their international travels.

American Hosts on ‘Politically Influential’ Soviet Guests The ‘adventures’ of the Soviet Americanists in America were closely covered by the US organisations responsible for the reception of the Soviet guests.

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After many months of waiting for KGB approval and being closely monitored by this organisation at home, Soviet Americanists finally arrived in America and became the focus of close attention by officials from IREX and other agencies, including the US Department of State. According to IREX files, 480 (80 per cent) of Soviet participants in the academic exchange programmme during 1968– 82 who represented a field of ‘American Studies’ were official policy analysts of the Soviet government, and all of them came from the research institutes of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, such as ISKAN and IMEMO in Moscow. During the same period of time, almost 80 per cent (483) of Soviet Americanists who visited the United States on American research grants were various official leaders (mostly academic apparatchiks) from the Soviet centres for American Studies in MGU, ISKAN, IMEMO and IVI. Reflecting the obvious Cold War ideological bias, American observers were sceptical about the mission of these research centres, and characterised them in the IREX official reports as ‘Spy Institutes’.13 Soviet officials expressed the similar sceptical and suspicious attitudes toward Americans at the beginning of these contacts. As ISKAN director Georgi Arbatov wrote in his memoirs, a ‘majority of our specialists [in American Studies]’ had yet to overcome the ‘pervasive ideology . . . [of] propaganda and fear.’ Speaking for himself, he recalled that, when named head of the USA Institute in 1967, his . . . knowledge was insufficiently deep . . . I had never been to the United States. I had no contacts or acquaintances among Americans . . . [but] harder to acquire than acquaintances . . . was a feeling for the country, a partly rational, partly intuitive sense that we could only acquire through regular professional contact with a wide variety of specialists from the United States and with representatives from government and business.14 Arbatov was a major figure, serving as an important link between the Soviet administration and American officials, responsible for academic exchanges and an official leader of Soviet Americanists. He was born in the city of Kherson, in Soviet Ukraine, on 10 May 1923, into the family of a prominent communist functionary and Soviet official. After serving in the Soviet Army from 1941 to 1944 during World War II, Arbatov entered MGIMO, from which he graduated in 1949. From 1949, he worked at the Foreign Literature Publishing House in Moscow, sat on various editorial boards of

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the Communist Party’s periodicals like Kommunist, and then at MGIMO. Arbatov was a member of the Central Committee of CPSU, an ISKAN director from 1967 and served as an adviser on US affairs to top Soviet policymakers.15 Despite his public denial of any connections to the KGB, the ‘Mitrokhin files’ indicate direct and very close relations between Arbatov and this organisation, where he was known under the code name of ‘Vasili’.16 As an ISKAN director, he made his first trip to the United States in January 1969, visiting Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, the Rand Corporation and other places. This trip ‘opened his mental horizons’ and ‘immediately expanded [his] circle of acquaintances both in the academic world . . . and among politicians.’17 After this trip, Arbatov again visited America in April–May 1970, September 1970, May 1971, November 1971, February 1973, and then he accompanied Leonid Brezhnev to the United States for the June 1973 summit talks.18 American hosts, experts in Russian and Soviet studies, were always interested in collaboration with Soviet scholars, trying to help them to integrate into the ‘improvised international community, created by the open opportunities of de´tente’.19 Sometimes, these American hosts even tried to ignore the ‘spy’ background of their Soviet visitors, if they were official bosses from Moscow centres. American scholars flattered these guests in public, hoping to get official invitations to visit Russia or begin collaborative research projects with their Soviet visitors. Among various materials, some IREX files contain a very positive and sympathetic portrayal of Grigori Sevostianov, a professional Soviet spy and intelligence/KGB officer who, during World War II, conducted Soviet espionage in the Far East. Sevostianov was born into a Don Cossack family on the Russian Cossack farmstead of Pleshakovo (the region of Rostov-na-Donu) on 23 March (5 April) 1916. After losing his parents in 1924, Sevostianov lived with his grandfather and his older sister on a small peasant farm in the region of Rostov. After graduation from the high school in a neighbouring town, Sevostianov, who had already joined a local Komsomol organisation, moved to the city of Novocherkassk, where he entered the local technical college (Polytechnical Institute). In December 1940, having recently graduated, Sevostianov joined the Red Army. During World War II, in July 1941, Sevostianov’s regiment was surrounded by Nazi troops near the city of Minsk in Soviet Byelorussia. By October 1941, Sevostianov had not only organised the resistance of his own regiment to the Nazi occupants, but had also established relations with Soviet intelligence representatives sent by Moscow to Byelorussia. In March 1942, Sevostianov became head of a special intelligence group ‘Chekist’ (meaning ‘an officer of

Figure 13 Arbatov during negotiations with American hosts in the 1970s, meeting George Bush.

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the Soviet political police’) among local Byelorussian resistance activists and anti-Nazi partisans. Until July 1944, Sevostianov served as an NKVD (Soviet police operative) among Soviet partisans, demonstrating his organisational skills and unique leadership abilities.20 Sevostianov not only played a prominent role in organising a guerilla (partisan) movement in Soviet Byelorussia against Nazi occupants. He also became one of the organisers of a new postwar Soviet government in liberated Byelorussia from July 1944 through September 1945. Then for a short period of time Sevostianov was sent to the Far East where he was in charge of the special Soviet ‘spy infrastructure’, whose goal was to fight Japanese agents in northern China, liberated by the Soviet Army and Chinese communists. After his ‘spy career’, in 1945 Sevostianov was sent by the KGB to the High Diplomatic School of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which he graduated in 1947. The following year, he was admitted to graduate school in the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of History. In 1950, using his short ‘spy experience’ in China, Sevostianov defended his freshly written kandidatskaia dissertation, entitled American Imperialism as an Accomplice of the Japanese Aggression in China, 1931– 33. In March of the same year, he was recommended by the KGB to be hired by the Institute of History. In 1960, he defended his doctoral dissertation, entitled Imperialist States’ Politics in the Far East, July 1937–December 1941, and was appointed in September 1967 as acting head of the sector of history of the USA and Canada at the same Institute. In April 1969, Sevostianov was officially approved as chair of this sector.21 Since 1963, the Soviet administration had included Sevostianov on the list of candidates for international academic exchange. Thus, this professional Soviet intelligence officer became one of the first pioneers of the exchange programmes funded by the ‘US imperialist funding agency’ – the American Council of Learned Societies. Despite their constant complaints about his ‘bad spoken English’, American hosts were ‘charmed’ by Sevostianov’s ‘correct and polite behaviour’ during his first American visit from 7 January to 7 May 1963: Mr Sevostianov was handicapped by limited oral English comprehension and conversation ability; apparently, however, he read English well enough for his research purposes . . . He has done research at the Library of Congress, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, and the libraries at Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley. Lectures he gave in Russian on

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American Studies in the Soviet Union at Cornell and on Soviet studies in American history at Yale were well received.22 Eventually, through his KGB connections, Sevostianov became head of the first American Studies centre in Moscow in 1968, ‘trying to suppress any fresh ideas’ among his Soviet colleagues, punishing those ‘liberals’ like Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, ‘for an expression of their open-minded and over revisionist views on US history’ in Moscow. As a head of this centre, he became a popular Soviet guest in America. Paradoxically, this ‘KGB man’, and well-known ‘enemy of American imperialism’, known for his ‘offensive brutal antiAmerican’ publications in the USSR, based mainly on communist propagandist cliche´s rather than on serious analysis of historical documents, suddenly found himself introduced by American hosts in 1974 as ‘a distinguished Russian diplomatic historian’ and as ‘a scholar of excellent background, a man of great integrity and seriousness’. Many American colleagues of Sevostianov, such as Norman Saul from the University of Kansas, characterised Sevostianov as ‘a serious scholar’ who ‘was well versed in American published material relating to his topic, thus enabling him to use research time more profitably’.23 As it turned out, Professor Saul was interested in Sevostianov’s immediate support for ‘expanding scholarly cooperation directly between the University of Kansas and the [Soviet] Academy of Sciences’, and ‘the possibility of joint conferences, joint publications, and teaching and research exchanges’.24

Figure 14

Grigorii Sevostianov in 2000.

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All American visitors to the USSR, especially American experts in Russian/Soviet history, culture and politics, depended on good relations with Soviet officials from the ‘spy institutes’, ultimately to gain their official invitations to visit Moscow. That is why the IREX officials always supported and promoted the visits of such famous Soviet academic officials, connected to the KGB, like Sevostianov or Georgi Arbatov. It was a principle of ‘do ut des’ – ‘we give you our permission to visit the US and expect you to allow us to visit the USSR to do our research there’, or ‘we do not pay attention to your KGB and communist connections, and expect (instead) that you invite us to the Soviet Union any time we need it.’ 25 On 27 August 1973, IREX issued a special ‘Memorandum regarding bilateral travel grant request’ to sponsor Arbatov’s visit on 9 January through 6 February 1974: The US Institute (ISKAN) has served as a useful intermediary in channeling visiting US scholars to other institutes within the (Soviet) Academy hierarchy, but these visits have to date not provided satisfactory reciprocal opportunities for ‘Russianists’ and Soviet specialists. We should like to discuss with Arbatov an expansion of our range of contacts and the formation of a bi-national agenda commission which would identify areas of mutual and parallel interest in order to facilitate consultation and collaboration.26 As a result, on 13 September 1973, Allen Kassof from IREX issued Arbatov an official invitation from IREX and ACLS to visit the US with his wife and to deliver a special public lecture (with a promised honorarium) at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. After this successful visit on 26 February 1974, Cynthia Scott, IREX programme officer, in her letter to Arbatov, reminded him about the successful results of his application for American funding for his trips, promised to support all his future visits to America and at the same time promised to inform Moscow of the list with nominations of American scholars for the 1974 –5 academic year, and requested a meeting with him in ISKAN to discuss this list of future American visitors to the USSR.27 General evaluations of the visits by Soviet Americanists to the US and discussions about the pros and cons of the exchange programme were the major themes of IREX correspondence during the 1970s. The main point of these documents was to justify the rationale for exchanges with Soviet

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scholars. In some reports, IREX officials were sincerely surprised by the rare cases of professionalism and academic honesty of Soviet Americanists.28 A good summary of the reaction of American hosts to Soviet guests was expressed in the 1976 correspondence between Eugene B. Skolnikoff, a Director of the Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (hereafter MIT) and Julia Holm from IREX: [the Soviets] seemed to come with a very specific objective of learning about certain techniques in political science, and were relatively little interested in discussing anything else at all. Moreover, I did not have the impression that they were well grounded in those techniques themselves, though I cannot speak with certainty on that point. The impression certainly was that they were there to get information rather than to have broader discussions. It was not clear to me either that they were sufficiently well-versed in the techniques they wanted to learn about to be able to assimilate very much of the information they seemed to be after . . . [p. 2] I might add that my own recent experiences with Russian visitors have been so consistently unsatisfactory, and I have picked up enough similar comments from others, that I find myself increasingly less interested in receiving or meeting with Russian visitors unless I know them well and know that I can have a reasonable exchange of information with them. When Dr Arbatov visited MIT recently for a small luncheon, I made this point very strongly to him and indicated that from my perspective US – Soviet academic exchanges would deteriorate very rapidly if the Russians continue to carry out their side as seems to have been developing in the last couple of years. He said he ‘got the message’ and would carry it back but offered no other commentary.29 A month later, Julia Holm answered to Skolnikoff, explaining that of seven letters I received back (about Soviet visitors), five were positive. Those five letters came from professors who do not frequently receive Soviet scholars and thus might have more patience and lower expectations than scholars like yourself who see a regular parade of Soviets. There is also a feeling in much of the correspondence that [academic apparatchiks] serve as laboratory specimens – ‘so this is

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how a shishka acts, talks, and dresses in the mid-70’s . . .’ – but not as intellectual counterparts . . . Unfortunately the evaluations that came back this year [about Soviet vistors] were alarmingly poor – the majority of the Soviet scientists were quite obviously here as a reward and not to do research . . . I mention this because the problem of – let me be frank – hacks coming guised as scholars, plagues all three exchanges I run.30 In general, American hosts were very sceptical about the intellectual potential and scholarly contributions of the Soviet Americanists who visited their country. Till the mid-1970s, they called these Soviet visits ‘a kind of academic tourism’, and they expected that more serious Soviet researchers would eventually come to visit as well. Overall, they were not interested in Soviet Americanists coming to American universities. As one expert in East Asian Studies from Harvard University complained to IREX in June of 1975: The Academy of Sciences of the USSR has sent us a succession of people who ask questions, but have nothing to offer. They are not historians, but seem to be intelligence specialists, and are not of intellectual interest to us. Meanwhile, our proposal that an historian of interest to us should visit Harvard from their Institute of Oriental Culture of the Academy of Sciences has been bypassed and disregarded for three years past. If the Soviets expect intellectual interchange with us, they should send people competent for the purpose.31 Unfortunately, the majority of Soviet visitors were academic or college apparatchiks rather than serious researchers. IREX reports left many portrayals of such Soviet functionaries. All of them share the similar characteristics: 1. Bombastic, 2. Arrogant, 3. Impolite (arrives without announcement to meet people), 4. Doesn’t pay hotel bill, 5. Doesn’t arrive for appointments made for him, 6. Speaking out of order, 7. Rejected a [American host’s] complaint that information in data sheets was not correct, 8. Rejected a complaint that Soviets ask for too much money, 9. Rejected complaints that Soviets participants only learn, bring little of value to American universities.32

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More than 60 per cent of all IREX reports during the Brezhnev era contained direct complaints about the bad English language and research skills of Soviet students of American Studies. Usually, American hosts could praise (in 40 per cent of IREX files) Soviet Americanists, specialists in US economy, politics, diplomacy and culture from ISKAN and IMEMO, but very rarely Soviet historians, whom they ‘found [sometime] charming people’, but [they] could not ‘see that visits [of Soviet historians] accomplished any intellectual purpose’, because Soviet guests ‘prosecuted no significant research here [in America]’.33 Even Alexander Fursenko, a Soviet historian and the most respected by his American colleagues, was criticised in the IREX reports for the same reason. Thus in his letter from 15 November 1979, Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr from the City University of New York wrote to IREX in answer to an inquiry regarding the visit of Fursenko and his research topic about ‘Evolution of US politics in the 1970s’, and complained: I have seen him on his previous trips and suppose I will see him again this time. But I cannot forbear passing on to you my strong impression that these meetings are a total waste of time. Fursenko, though a nice fellow, is not a historian. He is a Soviet propagandist, totally impervious to evidence at odds with his stereotypes, and it is a misuse of money to send him (or for that matter any other Soviet ‘historian’ of contemporary affairs) around the United States.34 Despite their constant complaints about ‘the ideological bias’ and ‘preconceived notions’ of Soviet visitors, American hosts always emphasised the political and cultural significance of these exchanges. In 24 January 1975, Marshall Shulman from Columbia University in his letter to IREX positively evaluated the visits of two scholars, Yuri Mel’nikov, a sector head at the Institute of the International Workers’ Movement, USSR Academy of Sciences, and Vladimir Zolotukhin from ISKAN: I consider both visits to have been useful. As it happened, I met with both men in Moscow afterwards, and both expressed warm appreciation for their reception here, and said that the trip had been valuable for them. I have no doubt that their desire to reciprocate made my own trip more productive. I have known Dr Mel’nikov for many years. He is a thoughtful man, and a serious scholar. He has made several trips to the United States, and they are reflected in the differentiations he makes in his writings . . . Dr Zolotukhin is the head

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of a section in the Institute of the USA, and he arranged for me to meet with members of his section in Moscow to discuss the role of the US Congress in the determination of foreign policy. From the discussion, I derived some valuable insights into their perceptions of US political life. The quality of his observations also reflected the value of his experiences in the United States. It is my belief that it is in the United States interest to have Soviet analysts of the US as knowledgeable as possible, to reduce the risk of dangerous miscalculations and unnecessary misunderstandings.35 According to the official American documents, the American hosts clearly understood the role of those Soviet Americanists from ISKAN, IMEMO and other Moscow and Kiev centres who were Soviet policy analysts and the official advisers of the Soviet leadership. For the IREX administration and US State Department, Soviet ‘power people’, like Arbatov, were important connections to the Soviet political leaders. During the 1970s, a majority of IREX exchanges, involving Soviet Americanists (almost 80 per cent), funded the Soviet policy analysts with discussions of arms control and other diplomatic issues in US – Soviet relations. Moreover, the IREX administration supported those Soviet research projects which could provide Soviet leadership with precious information about the situation in US politics, economy, society and culture, aiming ‘to reduce the risk of Soviet dangerous miscalculations’ in the ‘growing arms race’.36 According to the Soviet policy analysts who were active participants in the IREX programmes, they tried to bring this message from ‘their American hosts’ to Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders. Through their personal ties to the leadership, Americanists from IMEMO and ISKAN gave Brezhnev realistic recommendations about careful and reasonable policies to reduce the risks of an arms race. Unfortunately, after 1979 ‘their efforts to convince Brezhnev [to listen to their analysis after their visits to America] came to naught due to the latter’s near-total mental incapacity and the attendant devolution of power to Defence Minister Dmitri Ustinov and the military.’37 A minority of Soviet Americanist (less than 20 per cent) participants in the IREX programmes were Soviet experts in US history. American hosts also supported financially this category of Soviet visitor. According to IREX reports, ‘this exchange of scholars, if it can be carried on more broadly, would be a great asset in building better [and closer cultural and intellectual] relations between the United States and Russia.’38 The IREX

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administration tried to support not only the research projects of Soviet historians, but also their academic connections to their American colleagues, the American experts in Russian studies – ‘Russianists’ and ‘Sovietologists’. From a technical point of view, establishing such connections was important for helping the Soviet visitors with their adjustment to American realities. Since the American Sovietologists knew Russian language and culture, they became the first natural ‘interpreters’ of American life for the Soviet guests, experts in US history. As a result, Soviet Americanists had more friendly relations with American Sovietologists than with the local US historians.39 Moreover, later on, the Soviet visitors became instrumental in obtaining official invitations to the USSR for their former American hosts. It was the official policy of the IREX administration ‘to encourage the involvement of both Soviet and American scholars in international, mutually beneficial, academic projects’. This policy worked, and all Soviet Americanists, participants in the academic exchanges programme, tried to ‘organise an official invitation for their former American hosts’.40

Political Conformism in Academic De´tente: A Soviet Ukrainian Case The majority of Soviet participants in exchange programmes were ‘political conformists’ and ‘academic bureaucrats’ who used their visits to America to promote their academic careers. A typical story of such a participant was that of Ukrainian Americanist Leonid Leshchenko. The rise of his academic career began in 1954, when the administration of the Department of Foreign Relations at Kyiv State University (KDU) recommended Leshchenko, who had graduated from the department summa cum laude that same year, for postgraduate studies at the Institute of History of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. After successfully passing all the entrance exams, Leshchenko became a graduate student in September 1954. Officially, he selected a new research field for his graduate studies, entitled ‘the Contemporary History of China’. For more than two years, Leshchenko engaged in research at the Moscow and Kyiv archives, attempting to connect his two favourite research interests – the international politics of the United States and the contemporary history of the People’s Republic of China. Eventually, following the advice of his mentor, a former Soviet diplomat, Dr Oleksii D. Voina, Leshchenko concentrated his efforts on the analysis of relations between China and the United States during 1949– 55. Voina also

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recommended that his student make use of the special archival collections at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR for his dissertation. As it turned out, the research work at this collection required a special KGB permission (clearance) for Leshchenko. To make this process easy for him, Shlepakov (who had already secured this kind of clearance) and Voina suggested that Leshchenko ‘resolve the issue of his Communist Party membership’. As a result, Leshchenko joined the Communist Party and was eventually ‘cleared by the KGB, after signing all of the appropriate KGB papers, etc.’ During this same period, Leshchenko also ‘solved’ his ‘major personal problem’. During the final years of his graduate studies, he had fallen in love with a KDU graduate student (from the department of philosophy) Tatiana Makienko. Thus, by 1959, Leshchenko had married Makienko and completed his kandidatskaia (PhD) dissertation on US diplomacy vis-a`-vis China, which he successfully defended and published as a monograph in 1959.41 From 1959 to 1978, Leonid Leshchenko worked at the Institute of History, during which time he began a gradual return to his favourite theme – the history and diplomacy of North American countries. Officially, he continued publishing his popular (intended for a wide audience) monographs about Asian countries, but at the same time, during the 1960s,

Figure 15

Leonid Leshchenko’s wedding, Ukrainian style.

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he focused more of his research on the United States and Canada. Leshchenko attempted to explore the role of the United States in Soviet Ukraine’s international relations after World War II. Although the results of his research were published in a book, Leshchenko realised the limitations (both ideological and archival) of his material.42 As he confessed later, ‘the book was a shameful anti-imperialist criticism of Western scholars, while all of the material comprising my study was borrowed from the same scholars whom I criticised as Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists and falsifiers; simultaneously I realised that my book lacked original archival documents from America.’43 Leshchenko asked his KGB supervisors from the Institute of History about the possibility of travelling abroad to conduct research. These supervisors helped Leshchenko with his first foreign visit in 1960 when, under the aegis of the Komsomol travel agency Sputnik, they sent him to Western Europe as a member of a tourist group. Moreover, they also suggested that Leshchenko demonstrate a sense of dedicated and committed political activism at the Institute, including ‘serious engagement with the committee’s work’. Following his supervisors’ suggestions, Leshchenko approached his Institute’s administration and requested an official position in the Institute’s bureaucracy, which would require ‘the highest level of responsibility’. As a result, in 1961, Leshchenko was appointed to such a position – ‘academic secretary of the Institute of History’. Thus, all official papers and especially documents related to the defence of dissertations, as well as papers regarding the approval of scholarly publications, and so on, were now passing through Leshchenko’s office, and were under his direct control and supervision. In this way, Leshchenko became part of the official hierarchy in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Immediately after his appointment, the KGB officers from the First Department officially placed Leshchenko on the special foreign travel ‘waiting list’ of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow as early as 1968. Meanwhile, his close friends and colleagues, Arnold Shlepakov, and Gleb N. Tsvetkov from KDU, suggested that Leshchenko use two Western sources of possible funding for his research trip. One source would include a UNESCO Fellowship (usually from two to six months) and the other source would consist of an American exchange programme (either ACLS or IREX), which could cover from six months to one year of the research trip to the United States. Moreover, both scholars, Shlepakov and Tsvetkov, had excellent travel records to the United States; therefore they could provide Leshchenko with ‘supportive’ reference letters on his behalf.44

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Through the organised efforts of officials from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and his colleagues, in 1974–5, Leshchenko was finally awarded a four-month UNESCO Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to Canada (September– October 1974), the US (November 1974), and Great Britain (December 1974–January 1975). It was at this time that Leshchenko established his connections with the KGB. He explained the existence of these connections as the ‘natural strategy of human survival’. But at the same time, Leshchenko justified his behaviour as ‘normal Soviet patriotism’. His logic was simple enough: When, for the first time in my life, I was sent to the West in 1960, I simply tried to be loyal, and tried not to discredit my great country, which trusted me by sending me abroad. As a result of my loyal and patriotic behaviour, I gained the respect of my bosses etc., and they promised to promote my career and invited me for more trips abroad. Of course, it is difficult to criticise the relations with the KGB in the situation when everyone who wanted to travel abroad had to maintain these contacts. I wouldn’t blame the people of my generation, when we established those contacts in order to live a better life, to travel, to promote our academic careers and to secure a better and more comfortable life for our families as well.45 As Leshchenko recalled later, his UNESCO trip to the West was ‘a true revelation’ for him. From his arrival in Canada in September 1974, visiting Toronto, Ottawa and Winnipeg, he met and communicated mostly with Ukrainian Canadians and conducted this communication mainly in the Ukrainian language. Ironically, in Toronto, in October 1974, he had a long conversation with two very different individuals. The first was Vasyl Veriga, a former soldier of the 14th Waffen Grenadier SS Division (‘Galician’), who fought against the Soviet Army during World War II. The other was Petro Krawchuk, a Canadian communist who had consistently supported the Soviet Union throughout that war against fascism. But paradoxically, both of these individuals demonstrated similar traits of Ukrainian patriotism and criticised the politics of Russification in Soviet Ukraine Of course, I tried to be very careful with Veriga [Leshchenko recalled] because in my historic imagination he was a ‘banderovets’, a Nazi collaborator to me. And my father fought against people such as

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Veriga in 1944. But I did not feel any hostility in his attitude toward me. Apparently he was happy to meet me, a real Soviet Ukrainian who spoke fluent Ukrainian. He openly said this to me, that in the past he had usually met only Russian or Jewish representatives of Soviet Ukraine, who were unable to speak a word in Ukrainian. Communist Krawchuk also discussed openly with me the dangers of Russification and repressions against patriotic historians such as M. Braichevskyi, O. Apanovych and F. Shevchenko, who were punished by the Soviet administration and lost their jobs in Kyiv for their patriotic research on the history of Ukraine. Paradoxically, by the end of October, I felt closer to people such as the honest and decent Canadian Communist Krawchuk than to my colleagues, the hypocritical Soviet Communists from Kyiv.46 The major revelation for Leshchenko as a result of his journey to Canada and the US was that he realised, for the first time, the advantage of being a Ukrainian historian rather than just a Soviet historian. His deep ‘native’ knowledge of Ukrainian language and culture worked very much in his favour. As a result of his trip and following his communication with American and Canadian Ukrainians, Leshchenko noted that he had found his ‘unique research niche – the history of the Canadian farmers, who were, in most cases, people of Ukrainian origin.’ According to Leshchenko, as early as 1975, he compared his own research work to the publications of his Muscovite colleagues, experts in American Studies, and realised that he now represented his own unique field in Soviet American Studies – the history of Ukrainian Americans and Canadians. By the mid-1970s Leshchenko explained, ‘Shlepakov and I became the true pioneers and founders of a special school in Soviet Amerikanistika – the study of Ukrainians in the US and Canada.’ As a result of his 1974 – 5 research trip, Leshchenko not only completed his brilliant study of the farmers’ movement in the United States and Canada, but also collected vital archival documents on the revolutionary events of 1905 – 8 (from the US and British consulates in Kyiv and Odesa), and about the tragic history of the Ukrainian ‘leftist’ re-emigration during the beginning of the collectivisation campaigns in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s.47 By the end of the 1970s, Leshchenko became incorporated into the ruling Soviet academic hierarchy, adjusting to all official Soviet rules in academic de´tente. His American colleagues who met him during his visits

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to the United States were more sceptical about his ‘academic functions’. As one American scholar correctly described the nature of the Institute where Leshchenko worked: its goal was not ‘academic work’, but the ‘orientation of the top Soviet authorities on recent events taking place in the countries of their expertise with recommendations of possible ways to influence these events and with analysis of important groups and their interests.’ The chief of the department in such an institution (as is Dr Leshchenko) is a person of a rather high rank, a trusted member of the Communist Party and quite possibly an employee of the KGB [continued his American colleague]. A part of the work (and simultaneously the reward) for such a person is a trip abroad in the country of his expertise. This privilege lets him not only find some materials for his academic work – as all scholars usually try to do – but also he is obliged to fulfill some portion of the propagandist work. A person of Dr Leshchenko’s rank usually is quite skillful and very experienced in political demagogy and a big master of turning around dangerous questions – with a pleasant smile or a joke – to their audience, an audience perhaps not so experienced in the recognition of the open and cynical political life . . . Having returned home, Dr Leshchenko is obliged to write a detailed report on his impressions and his scholarly and propagandist activity undertaken abroad. The perception by the American public of recent events in Soviet-American relations, the attitude of farmers to the grain embargo (and maybe some influence – here and there – on this attitude) or similar questions are themes of this report made in written form with the consequent possible detailed conversation on these themes in the Central Committee of the CPSU . . . In the next couple of years Dr Leshchenko will stay at home, writing (or better say, made to write to his subordinates) reports on some aspects of the American domestic and foreign policy and occasionally display some hospitality toward his American colleagues passing with the groups of their students through Kiev and eager to visit Soviet people in an informal situation, especially at homes. These invitations to private homes are not numerous because people can be afraid of inviting foreigners; it is not frightening for Dr Leshchenko, who is the official part of the carefully planned surrounding of foreign academic visitors in the USSR. 48

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A Variety of Personal Discoveries of the Real America by Soviet Guests According to all Soviet participants of ACLS and IREX exchange programmes, Soviet intellectual and scholarly ‘inventing America’ derived from these Soviet scholars’ visits. Of course, the most important and first immediate discovery in America by Soviet academic visitors was academic freedom and easy access to any printed information, which was forbidden in the USSR. As Alexander Yakovlev, a pioneer of the Soviet –US exchange programme who studied in 1958– 9 in Columbia University, recalled, during his visit to New York he ‘read more than two hundred books, including all the works of Hans Morgenthau and books of other American scholars of international affairs’. And he explained that those were books that he ‘could not have read in the Soviet Union’.49 Another Soviet participant in the exchange programmes, Viktor Kremenyuk, an ISKAN deputy director, described his own way of discovery: By the 1960s we had come a long way, but there was still far to go. We still didn’t know the world. I remember my first trip to the US and how quickly I realised that 90, maybe 99 per cent of all that I had written was wrong. I’d read everything, we had facts and information, but we didn’t yet understand.50 Many of the first Soviet Americanists who visited the United States were deeply influenced by these visits, which eventually played an important role not only in their academic careers, but also in their various constructions of America. As one of the Soviet experts in US history, Robert Ivanov, noted, ‘the major elements of our mental construction of America tremendously depended on our discoveries of the shocking contrasts of American life, which to some extent fed into our old traditional Soviet propagandist stereotypes.’ And he explained, On the one hand, we discovered the real academic paradise of American colleges with any information available to a researcher, with an unusual respect for college professors who lived a very comfortable life compared to the bleak existence of Soviet scholars. On the other hand, we saw the contrasts of American capitalist urban society, where every imaginable product in the supermarkets co-existed with numerous unemployed people begging for food and

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money on the streets, with racial discrimination and police violence everywhere.51 As the first Soviet Americanists noted in 1959, all Soviet visitors ‘were shocked . . . with [America’s] stark contrasts of wealth and poor . . . its unemployed, its enormous racial problems’. One of them described the shock of living in New York City: As I walked [in 1959] through Harlem, the Bowery, the Bronx, and other poor areas of the city . . . I was stunned that such a wealthy society would do so little to eradicate this pervasive poverty. My first year in New York actually strengthened my faith in communism. I believed that although we [Soviets] were poorer than the United States, we at least tried to offer all our citizens a decent level of education, housing and health care. Odd as it looks now [in 1994], it seemed clear to me then that the United States didn’t have the Soviet Union’s vitality. Our achievements in science and the triumphs of our space programme convinced me we would overcome our relative poverty and our Stalinist past and – by the end of the century – become a far better place to live than America.52 Sometimes Soviet academic guests who lived in big cities like New York had very bad personal experiences with local crime. Some of them became targets of robbery and assault on American streets, like Igor Dementiev, who was attacked by a thief with a knife while he was exiting a subway station in central New York.53 Other Soviet academic visitors mentioned the same shocking revelations: ‘Dirty streets with homeless people contrasted with an abundance of manufactured goods and any imagined service on earth available here in America . . . It looked sometimes like an illustration to an editorial of Pravda . . . I was really shocked to see such contrasts in America that looked like “capitalist hell” to me. And I asked a question how such a rich and wealthy nation as the United States allowed this level of poverty and humiliation on the streets of New York.’54 Overall, the longer Soviet Americanists stayed in the US, the more positive impressions of America they developed and brought back to the USSR. They improved their English language speaking and communicative skills, and gained professional experience as experts in US history, politics and culture, ‘not only working at the American archives and libraries, but also participating in the everyday life of ordinary Americans, going

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shopping, watching “sitcoms” on American television, and the new Hollywood blockbusters in American film theatres.’ After frequent visits to US and long stays there in the 1970s, many Soviet Americanists recalled how they ‘developed great admiration for the West, for the United States . . . respect for the country, its strength, its people.’55 All Soviet Americanists noted how important personal contacts with Americans were for their own ‘discovery’ of America and the construction of their mental images of American society and culture. Both Bolkhovitinov and Fursenko acknowledged that living with Americans, in their homes or in student dorms, influenced them more than just their business, academic, relations with their American colleagues. Soviet guests were impressed not only with the good conditions of life and research in America, but also by the optimism, energy and individual initiative of ordinary Americans. Both their reports to the Soviet administration and the reports regarding their American hosts reflected this positive reaction. Alexander Fursenko, a Leningrad historian, later confessed that he had ‘fallen in love immediately with America, especially with New York City, the first time [he] visited the US in 1959, which was obvious in [his] official report to the international department.’56 As a young Soviet expert on US modern history, Fursenko was included in the Soviet delegation of consultants who presented the official Soviet exhibition ‘The Achievements of Science, Technology and Culture in the USSR’ in New York during June– July 1959.57 After this first visit, Fursenko always stressed in his official reports the positive influences of his American visits on his academic and personal life. Even in 1969, when his official visit funded by ACLS was interrupted by sudden serious sickness (he caught Hong Kong flu in the US), Fursenko still praised America. His American hosts also noted his fascination with American life.58 On 15 May 1973, Theodore Von Laue, a chair at the history department of Clark University in Massachusetts, wrote that Fursenko was overwhelmed with a rare book collection of the American Antiquarian Society, and spent his time on research, photocopying and so on. He gave a detailed description not only of the Soviet Americanist’s busy research schedule, but also of his other activities: . . . He also gave a talk to my Soviet History class and a scholarly lecture comparing the American and the French revolutions. In his talk to my students he spoke quite freely and most helpfully from my point of view, about his life in the Soviet Union, his family, his material condition, his attitude toward Stalin. My students were quite

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moved at times and increasingly cordial. They had never encountered a member of the CPSU and the Soviet Academy of Sciences: they found him a very human and attractive person. I also took him to a session of the Connecticut Valley African Colloquium at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., where I happened to read a paper, and subsequently to our farmhouse in West Dover, Vt., where we spent a weekend (with snow). With our help, he also recovered a bit from a strenuous first month in New York City, going (with us) on a side trip to Sturbridge Village.59 But, according to his American hosts, the most important part of Fursenko’s visit included his personal contacts with Americans, his stay in American homes and sincere honest conversations with Americans not only about politics and diplomacy, but also about family, culture and various problems of everyday life. And Theodore Von Laue explained the significance of these personal contacts, which laid the foundation for a ‘real academic de´tente’ between scholars of the Soviet Union and the United States: The greatest mutual benefit, I would judge, came from Mr Fursenko’s stay at my house. We have known each other for 16 years and corresponded on professional matters. He knows that I know something of the hidden aspects of Soviet life and treat them with some compassion; he knows I will not be critical of his country. He also appreciated being taken into my family and receive an inside view of American society, without embellishment or ostentation. He in turn freely shared with us his family problems (though my wife did not convert him to women’s lib). At any rate, we managed to establish and to deepen a basic human trust between us which transcends all differences of nationality and ideology. He is a sincere person, genuinely interested in understanding American realities without ideological blinders, though a patriotic citizen of the Soviet Union and conforming to its politics. He considers it his mission to bring American realities closer to the Soviet public, rejoicing over the current de´tente in Soviet– American relations. One of my students, critical of the Americanisation of the world as he observed it in West Africa, actually found him much too subservient to American taste and fashion . . . But at the same time, after personal conversations with Soviet Americanists such as Fursenko, American hosts noted expressions of ‘Russian nationalism’

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coupled with an authoritarian ‘Stalinist’ mentality and of the special ‘exclusive’ cultural mission embraced by Soviet visitors to the US. Von Laue described this manifestation of Fursenko’s Russian ‘Stalinist’ identity as follows: I found him [Fursenko] occasionally too Russian, almost Stalinist, too abrupt in his manners sometimes, too harsh in his judgements, too convinced of his mission and importance, too inconsiderate and inflexible, even arrogant when his work was at stake, impatient, yet trying very hard to be thoughtful.60 Overall, many American hosts praised Fursenko’s American visits as beneficial for a positive mutual perception of Soviet– American academic exchanges, noting in 1973 that ‘the informal reports [about Fursenko’s visits] were all favourable . . . The fact that Dr Fursenko had been in the United States before, spoke English well, and was outgoing in his relations with others all helped in making his visit a very considerable success.’61 Such positive mutual moments in the ‘identity construction’ of American hosts and Soviet guests co-existed with the negative issues in the everyday practice of these exchanges. *******

Figure 16

Alexander Fursenko in 2000.

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Another important feature of the Soviet ‘opening’ of America was the active role of Soviet scholars in American consumer culture. They bought blue jeans, music records, audio cassette players and numerous American-manufactured goods and managed to bring them back home to the USSR. They began using US grants not only to get some privileges in medical treatment but also to profit from the American medical care system. Chronologically, the first recorded case of cheating the American funding agency with the practical purpose of saving money was recorded during the visit of MGU historian Igor Dementiev in 1962 – 3 to Princeton University.62 As Dementiev explained later, he ‘tried awkwardly to stop buying books, which were required for studies at Princeton . . . and began using money given to [him] for his personal needs instead of wasting them on scholarly monographs at campus bookstores.’ At the same time Dementiev noted that all his fellow Soviet scholar-Americanists whom he met in America during his visits in the 1970s also ‘used the IREX funds awarded them for research . . . for their own personal needs, buying clothes, music records, etc.’63 While travelling in the United States, many Soviet Americanists got new pairs of spectacles, took care of their various dental problems (as Gennady Kuropiatnik did), had serious medical surgery (as Robert Ivanov did), using, and in many cases abusing, the IREX health care system. Some of them learnt how to ‘make money’ using their academic lectures and professional talks to attract not only audiences but also additional funding in the United States.64

Boris Komzin’s Case The most scandalous case regarding ‘making money’ using IREX grants was related to a visit by Dr Boris I. Komzin, head of the sector at the IMEMO, during September– November 1974.65 IREX received numerous complaints from hosting institutions regarding Komzin. On 3 July 1975, a letter from Brandeis University complained about Komzin’s lecture being in Russian instead of English, his avoiding discussion of professional topics and requesting honorariums for his presentations. Additionally, on 28 May 1975, a report from Tufts University stated that ‘he never appeared for [his official classes and appointments on the university campus], preferring to do lectures and research in different places.’ As it turned out, Komzin delivered talks for which he was paid by financial firm Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, instead of doing his research at Tufts University. The most alarming and critical letter came to IREX from Henrik Birnbaum, Director of the Center for

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Russian and East European Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (hereafter UCLA), on 21 October 1974, This to register my extreme displeasure, not to say outrage, with the behavior and manners of one of the official IREX visitors, Mr Boris Komzin, whom we had the doubtful pleasure of hosting here at UCLA and during his stay in Southern California. Never have I in my experience encountered an individual so unpleasant, demanding and downright rude as Mr Komzin who, to boot, had very little to offer as far as his own contribution is concerned. Both at the luncheon that we arranged in his honor and during his talk, supposedly on the international aspects of the energy crisis, he produced nothing but a long series of official platitudes, not telling his audience anything new. In fact, his remarks during the luncheon attended by some true experts in the field were outright embarrassing also for me as his official host. I should add that the uncivilised way in which he saw fit to treat the Center’s staff, our administrative assistant Mrs Lucille Liets as well as Mr Dmitry Ponomareff, a research assistant whom we had assigned to him as an interpreter and guide, defies words. I would very much appreciate it if you make sure that this is also brought to the attention of his own superior, Academician Inozemtsev of IMEMO. Besides the obvious shock at the ‘uncivilised behaviour’ of his Soviet guest, Birnbaum’s letter emphasised the new and very cynical commercial attitude of Komzin, who (instead of completing expected research work) was ‘preoccupied’ with making money, using not only IREX funding, but also occasional lectures. I should like to further point out [Birnbaum continued] that we had been advised through IREX of Mr Komzin’s preparedness to give a lecture here at UCLA. When it came right down to it, it turned out that he was travelling on a visa which for, to be sure, bureaucratic reasons made it impossible for us to arrange for the payment of our usual honorarium in the amount of $100. Since it was quite clear, that, unless paid, Mr Komzin was unwilling to perform at all, I finally had to pay him the above amount out of my own pocket and would very much appreciate it if I could look forward to having this amount reimbursed through IREX. It is my understanding that Mr Komzin has had himself paid for a number of other lectures, thus for example,

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the Livermore Laboratory of the University of California, every time exceedingly eager that his being paid should not go back either to IREX or, even worse, to his superior in the Soviet Union. Let me close by saying that I hope further IREX exchange scholars directed to UCLA will be of a different calibre both in terms of scholarship and morale.66 Trying to avoid a scandal at IMEMO for his behaviour during an American visit, after his return to Moscow, Komzin interpreted for IMEMO’s foreign department his American ‘adventures’ as the ‘provocations of American ideologists’, who ‘provoked’ him and ‘accused him of taking money for his academic lectures.’ Many years later, Soviet Americanists who had visited the United States during the 1970s still discussed and ridiculed the ‘commercial adventures’ of Komzin, who managed to ‘make more money on academic lectures’ for two months than ‘other Soviet visitors for teaching the entire academic semester’. Despite all rumours about Komzin’s ‘American commercial endeavours’, the IMEMO administration never punished him. Moreover, Soviet administration always supported and promoted his career throughout the entire 1970s and 1980s.67

Ivan Krasnov’s Case Sometimes Soviet visitors would cheat the IREX and ACLS administrations, trading books and other Soviet-manufactured products (like vodka or cameras) they had brought from home for American currency, trying to ‘save money and bring American currency back to the USSR’. Some American hosts were surprised that communist visitors were capable of making money in ‘a purely capitalist way’, and be so enterprising as to ‘bring more cash (than they were given in grants) and American products’ back to their ‘communist motherland’. A typical case of such an ‘enterprising’ communist who tried to ‘make money, save US dollars’ and ‘cheat on his American hosts’ was that of Ivan M. Krasnov, a historian-Americanist from the Institute of World History.68 On 1 August 1972, in his letter to Cynthia Scott from IREX, Dr Robert Wood from Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, wrote: ‘I found Dr Krasnov to be an affable, dedicated communist. I had the feeling at times that he was not searching for truth, but merely attempting to document a preconception. To my knowledge Dr Krasnov met with no one from the University – although I introduced him to several scholars in his area of research – and he seemed to resist any effort to see too much of “middle America”.’ But according to his American

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colleagues, this communist visitor was ‘unusually commercial in a traditionally capitalist way’. As they noted, ‘Dr Krasnov seemed intent on saving as much American currency as he could, and he continually sought to make some sort of exchange in lieu of payment.’69 As Robert F. Byrnes, Professor of History from Indiana University, noted, ‘My impression [sic!] was that Krasnov visited libraries and archives not for the kind of serious and prolonged study which we would consider research, but basically to indicate in his preface that he had visited a large number of American libraries and archives. My impression also was that he sought quotations, lists, and information of that kind to buttress conclusions he had already reached.’70 In 1972, Krasnov and his colleague Robert Ivanov were involved in a scandal trying to illegally obtain the personal letters of the Theodore Dreiser collection from the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier that same year, Krasnov had already had a tremendous scandal at the Hoover Institution, cheating the local personnel. Eventually he was denied access to a manuscript collection at the Hoover Institution. Krasnov even wrote a letter of complaint to a Soviet ambassador about the bad treatment of Soviet researchers by Americans. He threatened repercussions against American researchers in Soviet archives.71 As Alfred Rieber, a chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, noted, on 31 May 1972, in his letter to Cynthia Scott from IREX: ‘Clearly they (Krasnov and Ivanov) did not know beforehand what was available here although there is a good deal of published material which could have told them had they done their homework. Secondly, they stated their purpose as interest in the Republican Party, but they were in fact more interested in obtaining unpublished materials of any sort dealing with a wide variety of subjects.’ In his report, Alfred Rieber described in detail Krasnov’s rude behaviour, especially when both Krasnov and Ivanov categorically requested Dreiser Papers from the administration of Van Pelt Library (the University of Pennsylvania) and their requests were denied: When they arrived at the Rare Book Room, they were informed that no unpublished material on the Republican Party was held in the collection. When they discovered that the Dreiser Papers were in the collection, they showed great interest and asked to xerox the entire unpublished diary of Dreiser dealing with his trip to Russia. The librarian explained that the terms of the Dreiser estate would not permit this and noted that neither Krasnov nor Ivanov were Dreiser specialists. Krasnov was particularly insistent (the librarian politely

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hesitates to use the word rude) and finally he was permitted to xerox some letters and rare pamphlets. Krasnov came back a day later when the main librarian was out and tried to persuade an assistant to let him have the Dreiser diary to copy. This did not leave a favourable impression with the staff . . . I understand from the librarian’s account to me that the same problem occurred at Cornell. I regret not having warned them of our experience. An amusing sidelight; when Krasnov was insisting on his rights he exclaimed to the librarian that if she were in the Soviet Union she would be allowed to microfilm any unpublished material. Now we know differently, don’t we? In any protest you may pass on to the Soviet authorities, it might be pointed out that ‘archive raiding’ is resented as much here as in the USSR.72 Notwithstanding all criticism of his American hosts, at the end of his visit, Krasnov requested to be reimbursed for all his ‘money spent in copying books and other printed materials in both the Hoover and Van Pelt libraries. Eventually, using his scandalous letters, Krasnov managed (‘blackmailed’) to get money from his American hosts. As Robert Ivanov recalled ‘Krasnov could save more than $1000 only for a reimbursement of his book copying in those libraries during 1972.’73 After such a scandal, IREX decided to reject Krasnov’s applications for future travel grants. During 1973–5, using his connections among the administration of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Ivan Krasnov was submitting applications for research travel to the United States almost every year. Each time, both the KGB and the USSR Academy of Sciences supported Krasnov’s applications. But both IREX and the American hosts who had already experienced the unpleasant behaviour of the Soviet historian were unanimous in their rejection of all his applications. Professor Walter Pintner of Cornell University noted on 27 May 1975: ‘Krasnov impressed us as a political hawk, and dull. He did such a fun [sic!] about some Theodore Dreiser papers that the library was not able to let him have . . .’ In her letter to Richard Staar at the Hoover Institution, 30 May 1975, Julia Holm from IREX noted: ‘Thank you for rejecting him – I read through his old file and the correspondence there – it leads me to wholeheartedly support your current rejection. Cornell has also rejected Krasnov and the nature of his itinerary – which is more touristic than scholarly – will be discussed at our Board and Program Meeting in early June. IREX is concerned about his renomination to the exchange and what it represents in light of ongoing problems we experience in trying to place real scholars in the Soviet

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Union.’74 The IREX administration sent numerous complaints about Krasnov’s ‘unprofessional behaviour’ to the Soviet officials. But he was never punished ‘at home’ because of ‘his collaboration with the KGB’.75 Unfortunately, Krasnov’s case demonstrated a pattern of behaviour typical for many Soviet academic visitors to America. Despite such unpleasant experiences as ‘Krasnov’s case’, the Soviet– American academic exchange programme grew during de´tente, bringing mutual benefits to both sides. In contrast to Krasnov, another Soviet Americanist, Andrei Melville, did not waste his research time funded by IREX, productively explored the US book collections, and eventually expressed his sincere gratitude to the American organisation that had funded his research trips to the United States: Actually, this was, at that time [Melville noted in his communication with Yale Richmond] practically the only way to get the opportunity to work in libraries, get books, information and – maybe even more important – to meet peers, colleagues and ‘classics’ in the field. A conference or a seminar could not have provided such opportunity. Another quite important aspect was to stay in US universities alone (talking the conditions of the 1970s and 1980s) – i.e., without Big Brother’s oversight. The educational, cultural, emotional, academic, etc. impact was enormous and I remain grateful to IREX.76

Soviet ‘Discursive’ Discoveries of America According to American documents, the most talented Soviet Americanists who spent most of their visit working hard at American libraries and archives were a few Soviet enthusiasts of US history, politics and culture, who came to the US already prepared for serious research work and ‘had already done their homework’.77 The American experience of these Soviet Americanists affected their entire academic careers, shaping their research priorities, interests and discursive strategies in presenting material they discovered in the US for publication in the Soviet Union. One of these Soviet Americanists was Nikolai Sivachev, a graduate student from MGU’s department of history, who began his academic career as a participant of the US– Soviet student exchange programme during 1961– 2. The American administrators of this programme noted that this Soviet student of US history who took classes at Columbia University, ‘through serious application, made even greater strides in English’ and

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successfully studied the US presidential election of 1936 under the supervision of his adviser, Professor Richard Hofstadter.78 This young Soviet Americanist had an unusual biography for such an academic career. Nikolai Sivachev was born on 26 April 1934 in the small remote Mordovian village of Tashkino to a family of poor peasants. After graduating from a local village school with ‘distinction’, Nikolai entered the Department of History at Moscow State University (MGU) in September 1951. Influenced by American feature films he used to watch in his village film theatre in Mordovia during his childhood, Sivachev decided to study the history of American labour and the working-class movement in the US. As a typical Soviet provincial student and village school graduate, he had one serious problem in the way of achieving his goal of exploring US history – no knowledge of the English language. Therefore, Sivachev spent all his free time during the first two years of his college life studying English, taking additional (extra) language course, reading available literature in English at MGU library. As a result of all these efforts, he not only managed to master this foreign language, but after 1953 became a proficient and regular reader of various original American documentary collections devoted to modern US history and American communist periodicals at the reading room of MGU library. These achievements attracted the attention of KGB officers who worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences and at MGU. One of them, Grigori Sevostianov, who was affiliated with a recently created sector of American countries at the Institute of History, offered this young and talented student ‘support in his studies of US history’ at the end of 1953.79 From then on, Sevostianov became Sivachev’s official mentor for his studies. Sevostianov recommended to the MGU administration that Sivachev be admitted by the committee for graduate studies at the MGU Department of History. Eventually, after two years of working as a regular teacher of history at a secondary school in a small provincial town in the region of Cheliabinsk (Urals), following Sevostianov’s recommendations, Sivachev entered graduate school at the MGU Department ( fakul’tet) of History in 1958. As a graduate student of modern and contemporary history of the United States, Sivachev was supported not only by his undergraduate mentor (and the KGB officer) Sevostianov, but also by his new official mentor on the MGU faculty, the talented historian V. M. Khvostov.80 A combination of academic and KGB support promoted Sivachev’s career at MGU. He was one of the first Soviet graduate students of history officially recommended and approved by Soviet administration for academic exchange with Americans as early as 1960. So to finish his dissertation about American labour and the

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politics of the New Deal, Sivachev was sent to the US as an exchange student at Columbia University in the autumn of 1961.81 This visit to Columbia University in 1961– 2 triggered Sivachev’s interest in the political history of the New Deal and the social history of US labour. Influenced by his advisor, the conservative American political historian Richard Hofstadter, Sivachev concentrated on the history of the political elites in the US during the 1930s. When he returned to Moscow, he added Marxist analysis to his archival findings, defended his Soviet kandidatskaia dissertation and prepared his study of political struggle during the US elections in the 1930s, which was published as a book in 1966.82 As Yale Richmond, who knew him very well, wrote about Sivachev’s first visit to America: ‘In New York, Sivachev met Eleanor Roosevelt, who when she learned that he was studying the New Deal, provided a room for him at her home, Val-Kill, up the Hudson River, and had a car pick him up to the nearby Roosevelt Library, where he did some of his research.’83 During this visit in 1961–2, using various American archival collections, Sivachev also collected new material about the American working-class movement during the New Deal reforms of 1933–6. He finished writing his new book as early as 16 September 1964, and it was discussed and approved for publication by his colleagues from the MGU department of modern and contemporary history.84 Sivachev’s new research work was supported not only by his colleagues, but also by Soviet communist ideologists as ‘an important historiographical justification’ for Soviet criticism of ‘Chinese Maoist revisionism’ and ‘Maoist ideas about the immediate nuclear attack against the capitalist West’. The Soviet ideologists’ immediate recommendation was ‘to publish this study as a book’, and ‘support Sivachev’s application for his new research trip to the USA’. As Sivachev’s colleague from the same department, historian A. D. Kolpakov, noted: Sivachev’s study is a good illustration of the current situation in the development of the international working-class movement as well. It shows that despite the very bad conditions for progress of the Western labour movement, the American working class could effectively influence the progressive development of society, affect the US government, could improve the social system in the interests of the majority of ordinary American people . . . These ideas of Sivachev’s study clearly reject the Chinese Communist leadership’s thesis that the labour movement in the capitalist West was completely rotten and opportunistic, and that communists should stop expecting something

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positive from the Western working-class movement [and instead communists should concentrate on nuclear war with the West] . . .85 In October 1966, using his American materials, Sivachev delivered a report to his colleagues about his new research project, which opened a completely new topic for Soviet historiography: ‘labour legislation in the US’. I. Galkin, chair of the department, was so impressed by Sivachev’s report that he ‘immediately proposed to request a recommendation from the Ministry of Higher Education . . . to send Sivachev again for a half year research trip to America’.86 As a result of this recommendation, Sivachev visited the US a second time in November 1967 as the Soviet official in charge of the Soviet exhibition ‘Education in the USSR’ supported by official letters of recommendation from the Soviet leadership, including one signed by his official ‘supervisor’, L. Bazhanov, a ‘KGB man’ from the USSR Ministry of Education.87 At the same time, the American administration awarded Sivachev a three-month grant, funding his research at Columbia, Cornell and George Washington Universities from February to April 1968. Thus, during his second visit, Sivachev stayed in the US from November 1967 until the end of April 1968.88

Figure 17

Nikolai Sivachev in 1979.

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Starting in late 1967, Sivachev visited the United States on a regular basis (five times, with IREX funding). Eventually, he became the most famous and respected Soviet academic visitor in America, especially during de´tente. American scholars contrasted Sivachev as a talented researcher to other Soviet ‘not very interesting visitors, who were curiosities but not serious scholars’. As they reported to IREX, Sivachev ‘impressed everybody very much with his knowledge of American institutions’.89 After his American visits and intensive archival research, Sivachev prepared two book manuscripts about labour and government relations in US history before and during World War II.90 He also began writing a new book project about Soviet– US relations during his visit to America in December 1974 through January 1975. By 1975, Nikolai Sivachev had become the best representative of Soviet Americanists in all of the exchange programmes of the de´tente era. Sivachev was also a good scholar, a serious historian-researcher, and a very good psychologist who understood very well what the American partners expected from their Soviet guests. In contrast to his image of a ‘pedantic boring university professor’ and ‘orthodox communist ideologist’ among his Soviet students and colleagues, Sivachev projected a very different image of himself to his American colleagues. To Americans, he always looked optimistic, smiling, open-minded, humorous and ready for discussions, trying to avoid any ideological debates and distancing himself from explicit communist propagandist cliche´s.91 As one American host praised Sivachev’s research and communicative skills in 1975: Sivachev . . . steers away from Sovietologists in general (his field is US internal politics) but has been good with me because I provided him with connections (with VIPs) he couldn’t establish otherwise – and took his picture posing with these VIPs which he values a great deal. He is relatively young, ambitious, extremely hard working, especially for a teaching professor, in collecting archival and bibliographic data; he knows what he wants and has a great deal of determination . . . on his part, he was very considerate in not taking too much of my time, and quite informative about general intellectual trends in Moscow. A stout Russian nationalist (although a Mordovian, ethnically), he was a curious contrast with the more ideologically oriented visitors . . . Since his first visit to the US he has developed rather broad connections (once he was a house guest of Eleanor Roosevelt, and knew my friend Henry A. Wallace) but remained a

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rather modest sort. There is an authentic strength in this fellow, and he will go far in my judgement.92 Using his new American connections during the 1970s, Sivachev obtained a contract with the University of Chicago Press to publish a book in English about the history of US– Soviet relations. He then contacted Nikolai Yakovlev, another talented Soviet historian-Americanist, a nevyezdnoi, but a very prolific writer who collaborated with the KGB, and invited Yakovlev to be a co-author of the American book. Through this contact with Yakovlev, Sivachev received official KGB permission for collaboration with an American publishing house. Then, using IREX funding, Sivachev spent six months in 1978–9 and two months in 1980 reading the proofs of the book and collecting material on American labour-government relations. In 1980, Sivachev not only published the book in the US, but also served as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College.93 Moreover, Sivachev helped many of his MGU students to establish the necessary connections in America and obtained official invitations and funding from American hosts. Sivachev had supervised the research work of Vladimir Sogrin since 1967, assisting him with obtaining new literature on the history of ideology of political elites in the US. Finally, in 1979, Sivachev directed Sogrin to the topic of the American War of Independence and its ideology. He recommended his former student for IREX funding. As a result of Sivachev’s ‘American connections’ and his research visits in the US, Sogrin wrote his pioneering studies on the history of American ideology, which incorporated original American material, suggested by Sivachev as early as the late 1960s.94 Another famous Soviet Americanist, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, a historian of Russian – American relations during the late eighteenth through nineteenth centuries, began visiting the United States in 1968. During Bolkhovitinov’s 1968 visit, historians from Harvard University decided to translate his book into English and publish it in the United States, and Robert Webb, editor-in-chief of the prestigious American Historical Review, after attending Bolkhovitinov’s lecture about American Studies in the USSR, decided to publish this lecture in his journal.95 Throughout the 1970s, American hosts expressed their respect for such a decent and competent historian as Bolkhovitinov and kept inviting him to visit America. Because of his conflict with the KGB, Bolkhovitinov was not allowed to spend more than a month annually visiting the United States during the 1970s. Despite this conflict, the KGB was unable to stop Bolkhovitinov visiting America. By 1976, in both Soviet and American

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archives, he collected rare important documents, illustrating the establishment of Russian– American diplomatic relations over the course of 1807– 9. Due to the diplomacy of de´tente, both Soviet and American diplomats and political leaders frequently referred to these documents about the beginning of Russian –US relations. As a result, the US Department of State and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned the official publication of these documents.96 Bolkhovitinov’s research thus attracted the attention of Soviet and American diplomats and he was invited to head the publication project of these documents. Bolkhovitinov’s books were translated and published in English in the United States, and finally he became one of the editors of the publication of documents sponsored by the Soviet and American governments.97 Bolkhovitinov brought back a huge collection of documents and American dissertations on various issues of US history, and deposited this collection in Moscow libraries. Moreover, he always tried to help his nevyezdnoi colleagues, bringing copies of important documents from US archives. In this way he brought copies of documents on seventeenth-century Virginia in 1976 to Sergei Burin, who was not allowed to travel abroad and who was writing his dissertation about the social history of the English colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Using his connections in the Library of Congress and other American libraries, Bolkhovitinov also organised a subscription of various American historical magazines for central Soviet libraries.98

Figure 18 1979.

Nikolai Bolkhovitinov with American scholars in the USSR in

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All the Soviet historian-Americanists who were active participants of academic exchanges not only incorporated the new findings of their American colleagues in their own scholarship, but also began the publication of their own analysis of major developments in US history writing and of contemporary trends in American historiography.99 Overall, during the 1970s, after their visits to America, Soviet Americanisthistorians produced a variety of new research topics in US history: a comparison of eighteenth-century American and French Revolutions and American revolutionary ideology (A. Fursenko and V. Sogrin); the agrarian question and farmers’ movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (G. Kuropiatnik and E. Yaz’kov); the Civil War and Reconstruction (R. Ivanov and A. Blinov); American ‘Progressives’ and liberal ‘reformers’ (I. Beliavskaia and V. Sogrin); the anthropological history of American Indians (Yu. Averkieva and A. Vashchenko); the history of immigration in America (A. Shlepakov and L. Leshchenko); the traditionally popular themes of American working-class history (I. Krasnov, V. Mal’kov, B. Mikhailov and N. Sivachev) and ‘diplomacy and ideology of US imperialism’ (I. Dementiev and A. Fursenko).100 During the same period, Soviet Americanists followed certain ‘discursive strategies’ in publishing the results of their research in America. The Soviet state both tried to control professional Americanists and needed their expertise, and this resulted in a tangled and paradoxical structure of discourse. State and party officials promoted those practices that fit the contemporary political agenda, while Americanists sought legitimation and support from those in power. Tensions within both official political discourse and professional Americanists’ discourses provided considerable room for manoeuvre and negotiation. According to Slava Gerovitch, Soviet Americanists developed their various discursive strategies in an attempt to adapt their knowledge to the current political, socioeconomic, and cultural situation, and to influence this situation at the same time. Such discursive strategies had to be flexible enough to take advantage of the tensions within public discourse. On the other hand, in order to keep up with sociopolitical changes, professionals would have to frequently modify these strategies.101 For many Soviet Americanists who visited America, the safest discursive strategy in presenting their American findings was accepting the authoritative (ruling) discourse of orthodox Marxism:

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not searching for truth, but merely attempting to document a preconception [of Marxist ideology]. As some Americans noted, some of their Soviet guests visited libraries and archives [in the US] not for the kind of serious and prolonged study . . . but basically to indicate in [their] preface that [they] had visited a large number of American libraries and archives. [Our] impression also was that [they] sought quotations, lists, and information of that kind to buttress conclusions [they] had already reached.102 This strategy, which I call ‘conformist’, became the most popular among a majority of Soviet Americanists. Unfortunately, the depth of understanding of the United States among the older generation remained very shallow. A majority of these first professional Soviet Americanists were burdened by the Marxist belief system, image structures and categories of analysis. They suffered from a great deal of cognitive dissonance and simply looked for evidence to confirm their preconceived images of how the United States functioned.103 A different strategy was developed by Soviet Americanists who resented the propaganda cliche´s of the Stalin era and official Cold War discourse. These Americanists frequently turned to what some scholars called ‘internalist’ historical narratives as a means of both analysis and self-protection. That is, they tried to avoid any serious analytical approach that could be presented as non-Marxist theoretical deviation by the ideological censors and instead emphasised the inner logic of the historical development of the United States.104 Some Americanists, like Bolkhovitinov, began to gravitate toward an internalist approach, their main concern became ‘objectivity’, meaning an effort to ground their narrative in hard facts from archival documents rather than in purely ideological or speculative interpretations.105 For this reason, Soviet Americanists took to filling their works with ‘factological’ material and made little or no attempt to analyse and interpret it. This strategy was politically safe, and at the same time the author could demonstrate some personal intellectual independence by disregarding Marxist-Leninist interpretive cliche´s. The ideological censors of the day could not point to ‘bias’ in research work in which there was no explicit analysis and facts ‘spoke for themselves’. An attentive reader, however, could find the author’s ‘subjectivity’ transferred from the analytical to the factological level, ‘revealed in the selection of evidence and construction of historical narrative’.106 Another discursive strategy, commonly practised by Soviet Americanists, was to use criticism of recent Western scholarship as a way of introducing

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new ideas to the Soviet reader. According to contemporaries, titles like ‘The criticism of recent concepts of bourgeois falsifiers’ served more than once as an umbrella for discussion of scholarly ideas that would otherwise be inaccessible in printed form in the USSR. As Gerovitch noted, ‘this particularly paradoxical discursive strategy permitted Soviet historians to mask their disagreement (with one another) by the lack of criticism, while downplaying their accord (with some Western colleagues) by the presence of criticism.’107 During the 1970s and 1980s many young Soviet Americanists enjoyed reading various Soviet critical surveys of ‘bourgeois falsifiers’, published by Moscow scholars, including the so-called Referativnye sborniki INION, trying to find precious information about new modern theoretical approaches in Western historiography and social sciences. This ‘critical’ discursive strategy became especially popular among Americanists from ISKAN and IMEMO. As contemporaries noted, Soviet intellectuals ‘benefited from a proliferation of Russian-language reviews of Western scholarship. Continuing a practice begun in the early 1960s, an overall critical orientation permitted such works to pass the censors while conveying much about Western theory as well as the reality of Western political life.’108 Some Americanists still remember how, in the 1970s, they began serious study of US political science through reading such ‘critical antiAmerican’ literature, written by recent participants in IREX academic exchange programmes. For class discussions about the American political system, Sivachev and his students used different editions of such books, which eventually became the ‘Soviet classics of anti-American political science’.109 The most important version of the ‘critical’ discursive strategy was the socalled strategy of ‘critical recommendations and advising’. In this way, Soviet Americanists used their criticism of recent American scholarship and American realities with the aim of offering practical recommendations about Soviet historiography, social science, politics, culture, economy and diplomacy. During the 1970s and 1980s, researchers from ISKAN and IMEMO who had recently returned from the US prepared recommendations of publications for the Soviet political leadership about various economic, political and diplomatic problems, using American economic and political experience.110 After visiting America, Americanist-historians such as Bolkhovitinov and Sivachev recommended that Soviet scholars study and use the new research methods of recent American scholarship, especially works by representatives of the so-called ‘new social’, ‘new economic’ and ‘new political’ histories.111 The recent visitors to America not only organised the

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All-Union conferences, promoting the new research methods of their American colleagues in the USSR, but also supported the academic careers of talented students like Sergei Stankevich, who studied US presidential campaigns using the approaches of American ‘new political historians’.112 According to contemporaries, the most important advisers in the process of approving and buying various US cultural products, such as literary fiction, feature films, television shows and music records, were also Soviet Americanists. They not only published highly acclaimed books about US culture, music and cinema during the 1970s, but also submitted their recommendations about the most popular and ‘progressive’ American films and other cultural products to the Soviet leadership.113 Soviet Americanists employed flexible discursive strategies to convey the desired meaning without violating the constraints of the then-politically acceptable language. According to some scholars, Soviet academic discourse was ‘not a container of a particular ideology or theory, but rather a mechanism for advancing a certain agenda via disciplinary knowledge’.114 In practice, Soviet Americanists mixed various discursive strategies together. But the strategy of ‘critical recommendations’ usually became the most prominent in their discursive practices after their frequent research visits to America. After frequent visits to the US and long stays there in the 1970s, many Soviet Americanists recalled how they ‘developed great admiration for the West, for the United States . . . respect for the country, its strength, its people.’115 The discursive practices of Soviet scholars reflected not only their research work in America, but, above all, their ‘face to face communication with American colleagues as well’. As some scholars noted later, ‘these personal ties and this intellectual cross-fertilisation, together with de´tente’s exposure to foreign life, powerfully abetted the rise of a global outlook during the era of stagnation.’116

Conclusion Academic de´tente as a complete relaxation of international relations during the Brezhnev era had a very limited and elitist character, especially for American Studies in the USSR. According to the available documents, no more than 600 Soviet Americanists visited the United States during this time, and almost 80 per cent of these Soviet academic visitors were representatives of academic and state officials, with only four female scholars (less than 1 per cent). So it was a predominantly male community of Soviet visitors. Sometimes, the talented and young Soviet scholars could

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manage to get to America as the ‘supporting assistants’ [soprovozhdaiushchie ] of Soviet state apparatchiks. The most typical cases were the American visits of young Fursenko in 1959 as a ‘consultant’ for the official USSR exhibition in New York City, of young Sivachev in 1967 as an ‘assistant’ of the official from the USSR Ministry of Education, and of Shestakov, ‘assisting’ Vladimir Baskakov, a director of the USSR Institute of Cinematic History and Theory of the State Committee for Cinematography during an official visit in 1974. The social background of Soviet visitors also reflected the elitist character of Soviet academic de´tente: more than 70 per cent of Soviet researchers in America came from the families of the Soviet intellectual and party elite, and almost 80 per cent of them represented research centres (such as ISKAN and IMEMO) from only one city – Moscow. Overall, the discursive practices of Soviet Americanists fit Soviet authoritative discourse. But after their American visits, many Soviet researchers, especially the younger ones, added to the prevailing ‘factological’ discursive strategies their new scenario of ‘critical recommendations and advising’. They criticised their American counterparts, but at the same time, they not only advised Soviet leadership about American politics, economy and culture, but also popularised American realities, cultural products, theories and approaches among ordinary Soviet audiences. Unfortunately, the ‘advising practices’ of Soviet Americanists continued to have a limited and uneven character during the Brezhnev era. Soviet leaders used ISKAN and IMEMO policy analysts’ advice and recommendations about US policy and diplomacy up to 1979. Not until perestroika did Americanists resume their active advising functions for Soviet politicians. Soviet leaders also ignored major recommendations from Americanists about the dissemination of US cultural products in the USSR. Only a limited number of US films from the lists recommended by ISKAN experts were selected by Goskino for showing in Soviet film theatres. The most strongly recommended (by Americanists) films, like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, were never released in the Soviet Union. Soviet historians also had limited success in promoting new theoretical approaches from America. Their publications were censored and they were punished by travel bans to America for the slightest ‘ideological deviation’. But in a longer historical perspective, Soviet participation in academic ´ detente was successful. Soviet Americanists began their own contributions to the creation of an international community of scholars, becoming partners in academic exchanges with their American colleagues. They established good relations not only with American experts in US history, politics and culture,

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but also with American specialists in Russian/Soviet studies. To some extent, the participation of Soviet Americanists in this international community would not only shape the development of American Studies in the USSR, but also influence Russian studies in America. After visiting America, Soviet Americanists became hosts for American guests, experts in Russian studies, building strong personal connections with them – Bolkhovitinov with Norman Saul, Sivachev with Donald Raleigh, Vladimir Sogrin with Saul and Alfred Rieber, and so on. Eventually, through these personal connections, Soviet Americanists and their American colleagues created an important academic international network that involved their students as well, and which survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Paradoxically, as a result of expanding this network during the 1990s, not only American Sovietologists benefited from these connections, but the entire field of Russian studies in America became influenced by former Soviet Americanists, students of Arbatov, Bolkhovitinov, Sivachev and Fursenko. Using this network, former Soviet scholars such as Vladislav Zubok (an expert in Carter’s presidential campaign), Sergei Plekhanov (a scholar of American political science), Andrei Znamensky (a specialist in history and anthropology of American Indians) and myself (an expert in the social history of colonial New York and Pennsylvania) moved to North America and now teach Russian history and politics there.

CHAPTER 5 SOVIET AMERICANISTS AND THE IMPACT OF AMERICAN CINEMA AND TELEVISION ON THE SOVIET UNION

‘Soviet Americanists, together with Soviet journalists, who travelled frequently to the United States during the Brezhnev era, always played the very important role of mediators ( posrednikov) between American and Soviet cultures, especially during the de´tente of the 1970s,’ Leonid Leshchenko noted a few years ago: During this time, following new KGB requirements, in their academic reports, all Soviet Americanists made practical recommendations not only about US politics and diplomacy, but also about various American cultural products and innovations which could be brought to Soviet audiences. Since this time, as a result of these recommendations, the Soviet administration has not only incorporated new American cultural elements and forms in our radio, television, film and publishing, but also included a significant number of Soviet Americanists on the editorial boards of various literary and film journals. This has produced a mass influx of new cultural practices from America (from literature to films and television) that have resulted in a real ideological confusion, especially in our provincial Soviet closed society. Therefore, travelling back and forth between America and the USSR, Soviet Americanists, as cultural mediators between American and Soviet civilisations during de´tente, indirectly

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contributed to this ideological and cultural confusion in Soviet society, especially during the Brezhnev era.1 It is noteworthy that the overwhelming majority of Soviet and post-Soviet Americanists in both Russia and Ukraine (68 out of 70) whom I interviewed, beginning with Alexander Fursenko and Arnold Shlepakov during the 1990s and finishing with Andrei Znamensky and Leonid Leshchenko during the 2010s, emphasised the special and influential role above all of US feature films in shaping their academic imagination about America and US history. At the same time, as a result of all these influences, Soviet Americanists (especially during the 1970s and the 1980s) contributed to the ‘socialist’ consumption of American cultural products, such as US feature films, advising the Soviet administration about American visual media and recent video technologies, promoting new US movies and forms of US television shows. To some extent, these Americanists contributed to the controversial situation of a so-called cultural de´tente in 1970s Soviet society as well. Former KGB officers described this situation as ‘an ideological failure’.2 According to many contemporaries, in multiple ways, this ‘media Cold War’ influenced Soviet youth and even people in their forties and fifties, who preferred to watch not only movies from the West, but also those Soviet films which simply imitated American movie genres, such as Westerns, or included various visual and audio elements of Western capitalist modernity, such as rock and disco music and blue jeans.3 This chapter will show the paradoxes of the cultural Cold War in Soviet consumption of American visual media – films and television from the United States – and the role of Soviet Americanists in this consumption. Some scholars note that during the Brezhnev era the most important contradiction in the Soviet film industry ‘was its definition of success and its relationship to markets’. Soviet cinema identified itself as anti-commercial art, but also as drawing huge audiences and generating revenues for the state. Therefore, success in the Soviet film industry ‘was framed in ways that encouraged people across the spectrum to blur the lines between art and commerce, self-expression and self-interest, and public service and budgetary windfall.’ In the USSR during the mid-1960s, gross movie ticket sales were roughly 1 billion rubles annually, of which the state was said to have collected 440 million in ‘pure profit’.4 As a result of this commercial approach, the overwhelming majority of US feature films shown after 1968 consisted of less intellectual and more commercial films, which brought direct profits to the Soviet administration

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– adventure films, westerns, comedies and musicals. According to the official statistics, despite the official selections for the MIFF of ‘the best representatives of the progressive, anti-capitalist, anti-war and humanist American cinema’, two-thirds of the US films bought by Soveksportfilm between 1968 and 1988 were for ‘pure entertainment’.5 In 1969 –70, Soviet audiences enjoyed ‘vulgar scenes of eroticism’ in the British-American film One Million Years BC (Don Chaffey, 1966) with ‘Raquel Welch in a two-piece fur bikini’.6 In 1971– 2, millions of filmgoers all over the Soviet Union preferred watching American musicals My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964), The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965), Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968), or US comedy The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960), or American historic adventure films Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) and The 300 Spartans (Rudolph Mate´, 1962), rather than Soviet films.7 Even the official film exchange between the USSR and the US brought mainly commercial films from America. In 1971, in response to the official visit to the US of Soviet film directors Sergei Bondarchuk, Yuri Ozerov and Stanislav Rostotsky, who brought ‘serious realistic and intellectual films’ to American audiences, the representatives of the Guild of Film Directors from the USA visited Moscow, Leningrad and Tashkent in Uzbekistan, meeting with Soviet students of film and young film directors, and presented ‘American movies for entertainment only for their Soviet hosts’. To the great surprise of their Soviet colleagues, Robert Wise brought two of his films, the musical West Side Story (1961) and science fiction film The Andromeda Strain (1971). Robert Aldrich brought a gangster film The Grissom Gang (1971), and Ralph Nelson brought Flight of the Doves (1971) – an Anglo-American melodrama – all of them ‘pure entertainment, without any pretension about intellectualism’.8 And Soviet Americanists who advised the Soviet administration about American films had to face the new realities of ‘commercialisation’ of the film industry in the USSR.

The Western Goes East As both Alexander Fursenko and Arnold Shlepakov recalled, in 1961 the first Soviet academic visitors to the US recommended that the Soviet authorities buy ‘talented intellectual American movies’ like the mystery (detective) film Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957). But, in addition to this films, the Soviet administration bought a ‘purely commercial product of Hollywood’, a western, adventure film, The Magnificent Seven (1960), and released it to a wide Soviet audience in 1962.9

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Paradoxically, The Magnificent Seven influenced millions of Soviet young people during the 1960s, including such future Soviet Americanists as Alexander Vashchenko in Moscow and Volodymyr Yevtukh in Kyiv.10 This re-make of the Japanese classic Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954), directed by John Sturges and featuring the Russian-born movie star Yul Brynner, was originally released in the United States in 1960.11 During the summer of 1962 and the autumn of 1963 it appeared in cinemas all over the Soviet Union and became an immediate sensation among young filmgoers. It was the first original American western film that had ever reached a Soviet audience since the ‘trophy film era’ of the 1940s. Until 1966, the American western The Magnificent Seven had a ‘cult’ following among young Soviet filmgoers in particular, who memorised their favourite scenes, trying to imitate the behavioural patterns of their favourite heroes. According to contemporaries, after the first release of The Magnificent Seven this film genre – the western – became the most popular among the majority of the Soviet public. This resulted in phenomenal commercial success throughout the Soviet Union of all versions of western films, including so-called ‘substitute’ American westerns such as the Czech comedy Lemonade Joe; the East German DEFA ‘Indian films’ with Gojko Mitic; the West German westerns about Apache chief Winnetou (Pierre Brice) and Old Shatterhand (Lex Barker/Stewart Granger); or the Italian ‘spaghetti’ westerns. Still, the most popular were authentic American westerns, which dominated Soviet screens throughout the mid-1970s and the 1980s, with masterpieces of the genre such as My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946), 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves, 1957) and Mackenna’s Gold (J. Lee Thompson, 1969).12 The Magnificent Seven impressed not only young audiences but also representatives of the Soviet cinematic establishment. As a result, the Soviet organisers of the Third Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) in 1965 not only invited John Sturges, an American director of The Magnificent Seven, to present his recently released film The Great Escape (1963) for this festival’s competition, but also recommended the Silver Prize of Best Actor to be awarded to the American movie star Steve McQueen, who played a major role in Sturges’ recent film and who was one of the most popular of the seven ‘cowboy’ heroes from the legendary The Magnificent Seven.13 Moreover, the genre of American western, especially The Magnificent Seven, inspired Soviet film-makers during the late 1960s to create Soviet equivalents of American westerns based on historic stories about the adventures of pro-Bolshevik heroes (the Reds) against old-regime gangs (the Whites) during the Civil War of 1918– 20. The first attempts to make such

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versions were Edmond Keosayan’s films Neulovimye mstiteli (The Elusive Avengers) (1966), a film about young heroes of the Civil War, and its sequel Novye prikliuchenia neulovimykh (New Adventures of the Elusive Avengers) (1968), which attracted 66,239,000 younger viewers.14 According to many contemporaries and film experts, the most successful and popular (till the present day) attempt to create a Soviet western was the film Beloe solntse pustyni (The White Sun of the Desert), directed by Vladimir Motyl in 1970.15 Its Soviet director explained in an interview in 2000 that such American westerns as Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939), High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) and especially The Magnificent Seven, influenced him in creating what he described as a ‘cocktail of both an adventurous Russian folktale and a western, which elements are obvious in the film’.16 Among the numerous adaptations of American westerns for the Soviet screen, only Nikita Mikhalkov’s adventure film about the Civil War At Home Among Strangers (Svoi sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoi sredi svoikh) (1974) was considered to ‘deserve rivalry with a Soviet classical western such as The White Sun of the Desert’.17 All 70 Soviet Americanists whom I asked about the influence of visual media confessed that the various western films that had flooded Soviet screens during the Brezhnev era – from ‘authentic US westerns’ to East German ‘Indian films’ and Italian ‘spaghetti’ Westerns – had not only ‘influenced their historical imagination’, but had also ‘inspired their own research work’. People as different as Marina Vlasova, a scholar of US nineteenth-century political history, and Viktor Kalashnikov and Andrei Znamensky, Soviet experts in a history of American indigenous people (‘American Indians’), emphasised the ‘tremendous influence’ of the ‘western film genre’ on the formation of their identity as Americanists.18 The most important result of this tremendous popularity of westerns was the growth of a mass popular movement of so-called Soviet ‘Indianists [Indeanisty]’ (enthusiasts of American Indian culture and history), which also affected American Studies in the Soviet Union, especially the field of Soviet studies of Native Americans, the indigenous people of North America (‘American Indians’). The universal popularity of ‘cowboy-Indian films’ (both authentic American westerns and especially the more available Gojko Mitic movies among Soviet youth during the 1970s) led not only to the beginning of the ‘cultural games of imitating’ American Indians, but also to serious research of the history, culture and anthropology of Native Americans. This occurred among the same young Soviet ‘enthusiasts’ of American Indian culture who loved to watch the cinematographic adventures of Sheriff Mackenna, Tokei-ito, Chingachgook, Tecumseh and

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Osceola. During the 1970s, the entire ‘historical imagination’ of the first Soviet pioneers in the study of Native Americans, such as Alexander Vashchenko from Moscow, Viktor Kalashnikov from Dnipropetrovsk and Andrei Znamensky from Kuibyshev (now Samara), was shaped by those ‘DEFA Indian films’, which were inspired by the American western movies of the 1960s.19 Paradoxically, the most criticised (in the Soviet press) version of the western genre, Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, also influenced young students of American Studies from Moscow. According to Igor Dementiev and Robert Ivanov, some of their students from the Institute of World History and Moscow State University, after watching Leone’s film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1971 during a special screening of western films in one Moscow cinema, decided to study the history of the American Civil War (1861–5) and the Reconstruction Era (1865–77). As Igor Dementiev recalled, ‘the fascinating story of Leone’s film with its main characters’ involvement in military actions during this war, portraying various details of the everyday life, military uniforms, etc., of the participants of the Civil War, triggered an interest in the real history of these events among many of my students.’ As a result, many of them, who took Professor Dementiev’s classes at MGU Department of History, realised that the fiction of cinematic adventures portrayed in Leone’s film was far from the reality of historical events. But the most positive aspect of this reaction to Italian westerns, as Igor Dementiev noted, ‘was [Soviet] students’ desire to check the plausibility of those films’ stories with the historical reality of the Civil War and Reconstruction, presented in various historical sources, which eventually led to an increase of their interest in serious research of US history.’20

Cultural De´tente in Soviet Society New agreements between the Soviet Union and the capitalist West about various forms of cultural exchange signed during the 1970s, especially the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe signed in Helsinki by the Soviet leaders together with 34 other heads of states on 1 August 1975, opened Soviet society to new Western influences through various forms of media. A crucial moment in this Westernisation was the de´tente of the 1970s, especially the period from 1972 to 1979. During this period, the Soviet administration bought official licenses for manufacturing popular music records from the West, and officially licensed Western films were shown (more than 150 feature films from 70 countries in 1973 alone), Soviet TV broadcast concerts of Western popular musicians (from

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11 January 1977, a special Soviet TV show ‘Melodies and Rhythms of Foreign Estrada’ was shown on a regular basis); Western rock and disco music was incorporated into official Soviet television shows, such as International Panorama, Ogoniok, Benefis, Volshebnyi fonar’ and Vesiolye rebiata [with a range of music – from the light dance tunes of ABBA, the Beatles, Boney M, Paul McCartney and Smokey, arias from Jesus Christ Superstar to the heavier beat of Slade, Sweet, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Nazareth, Queen and UFO], Western pop stars such as Cliff Richard, BB King, Boney M, Elton John and others performed live for the Soviet public in the USSR and fragments of these concerts were shown on Soviet television.21 The beginning of de´tente in US– Soviet relations and the relaxation of international tensions also resulted in some important changes in the distribution and consumption of American films and appropriation of certain American cultural practices related to cinema and television. A very important role in this process belonged to various Soviet Americanists, experts in US history, politics and culture. During the 1970s, 600 of them became active participants in various political, cultural and academic exchanges between the US and the USSR, contributing to the cultural politics of the Soviet administration.22 During de´tente, the questions on the ‘KGB survey’ for the final reports of Soviet scholars who travelled abroad became more varied. In the 1970s, these questions addressed not only issues concerning the political situation in capitalist countries, but also dealt with the most popular Western cultural products – films, plays, books and so on. As Nikolai Bolkhovitinov explained, ‘suddenly, after 1974, our KGB supervisors began asking us before our trips to America to make notes during our travel about films, books and plays we could suggest for the Soviet government to bring to the Soviet public. As a result, during the 1970s, in my final travel reports I always included the titles of American fiction, plays and films which I considered important.’23 To some extent, ‘the best representatives of contemporary American literature’ were bought, translated and published in the Soviet Union following these recommendations. During the 1970s, Soviet journals such as Inostrannaia literatura and Vsesvit published more varied American literary products than they had for the entire period of their existence.24 The most direct impact of Soviet Americanists on cultural consumption during de´tente became obvious in Soviet cinemas. As Alexander Fursenko recalled, Soviet scholars: not only recommended American film titles in our travel reports, but also we had special meetings with officials from the main Soviet

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organisation for the acquisition and distribution of foreign films, Soveksportfilm. Of course, these officials interviewed film specialists like Shestakov and Baskakov from the Institute of Cinematic History and Theory, who travelled with us. They were the experts. I recalled how we were invited to advise what recent American films should be included in the programme of Moscow Film Festivals during the 1970s. And he added, ‘I remember that for many years I recommended buying Gone with the Wind, but they never did, probably because it was too expensive for Soveksportfilm.’25 Viacheslav Shestakov, a Soviet film critic and expert in US films, and Vladimir Baskakov, his supervisor, who visited the US in 1974–5, did indeed become instrumental in making recommendations regarding the selection of American films.26 As early as 1971, Soviet visitors to the United States also returned with technical recommendations, having discovered new American video-recording technology, including portable video cassettes with video films.27 As I mentioned before, Soviet film experts were always looking for independent film producers and recommended them to the Soviet administration. The normal practice for Soviet officials was to invite these American producers to participate at the MIFF and therefore to justify the future purchase of a US film. In the 1970s, additional recommendations by Soviet Americanists served as additional proof for the acquisition of such films. Unfortunately, this led to a situation when not recent, but very old (and cheap) American film productions flooded the Soviet film market. One US feature film recommended by Soviet Americanists and shown for a wider Soviet audience was released almost immediately in the USSR; following ‘very positive evaluations’ and recommendations by Nikolai Sivachev, this American film, The Comedians, was bought by Soveksportfilm immediately after its release in the United States in 1967. Directed and produced by Peter Glenville and based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene, the film starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and was considered an ‘anti-imperialist critique’ by Soviet experts. It was officially released in the Soviet Union as early as 1969.28 During the same period, the US–British film most recommended by all Soviet-Americanists, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was never purchased by the Soviet administration. It was shown as part of the official programme of the Moscow International Film Festival in July 1969. Paradoxically, it was screened only on one day for a closed audience.29

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During 1971, three films directed by leftist American film-makers and recommended by Soviet Americanists received awards at the Seventh MIFF – Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970), The Sandpit Generals (a.k.a. the Defiant, Hall Bartlett, 1971), They Shoot Horses Don’t They (Sydney Pollack, 1969) – and within a few years they were released for ordinary Soviet viewers.30 The most popular US movie, shown as a vne-knokursnyi (without participation in a competition) film, was Stanley Kramer’s Bless the Beasts and the Children (1971). Six thousand Soviet movie fans ‘gave a rousing ovation’ to Kramer after the screening of his film. Because of its popularity, this American movie was widely screened all over the Soviet Union by the end of September 1972. Even cinemas in small towns and villages in the Cherkasy region of Soviet Ukraine showed this film during autumn– winter 1972.31 In 1973, Stanley Kramer’s film Oklahoma Crude, only just released in the US, was awarded the Golden Prize at the Eighth MIFF, and was widely shown in the Soviet Union as well.32 Subsequently, Soveksportfilm released on average four US films annually.33 In 1974, Soveksportfilm released six US films, and American and Soviet filmmakers began a collaborative project on a new film production – Blue Bird – starring Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and Ava Gardner. This film was shot by American film director George Cukor on the premises of the Soviet Lenfilm film studio in both Leningrad and Moscow, drawing on music by the famous Soviet composer Andrei Petrov and the literary genius of prominent Soviet screenwriter Aleksei Kapler, whose script was based on a play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Blue Bird was simultaneously released in both the United States and the USSR in April 1976.34 Soviet Americanists impressed by particular American films tried to promote them in their recommendations to the Soviet authorities after their return from research trips to the US. According to Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, during his long American visit in 1976, he experienced a real nostalgia, missing his home in Moscow very much. Therefore, he spent more time playing tennis, or watching films in the local cinemas with the purpose of distracting himself from sad, nostalgic thoughts. Bolkhovitinov recalled that he saw a few recently released American films in late November 1976, such as Rocky (directed by John Avildsen, 1976). As he revealed later, he liked this film because of its realistic portrayal of the life of ordinary American people, including its main character: amateur boxer Rocky Balboa from the city of Philadelphia. Bolkhovitinov was shocked that American film-makers did not hide ‘the level of poverty of the American lower classes and the spread of crime in the big American city, as shown in the film’.

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But at the same time he was moved by ‘the sincere sympathy for ordinary American city folks depicted by the Hollywood film-makers’.35 After his first visits to US cinemas in 1976, Bolkhovitinov eventually realised that the admission price for new films was rather expensive for his travel budget. For this reason, he began attending cinemas located on various university campuses, which were showing older films from their repertoire but with a much cheaper admission rate. As a result, over the course of his entire stay in the US, Bolkhovitinov managed to view, while saving his travel money, ‘relatively good films released either in 1975 or early 1976’. According to Bolkhovitinov, these films included Hard Times (Walter Hill, 1975), Soldier Blue (Ralph Nelson, 1970), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974), Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milosˇ Forman, 1975), Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, 1976), Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) and The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976).36 After viewing these films in different college film theatres on various university campuses during the Fall Semester 1976, Bolkhovitinov realised that his spoken English skills had ‘improved significantly’ and he ‘understood almost all of the characters in those films, despite some issues regarding dialect and other problems with pronunciation’.37 Viewing these films was not only a way of distracting himself from nostalgia, but also a ‘good school of colloquial American English’ for a visiting Soviet scholar. As Bolkhovitinov recalled later, another important and lasting impression from this 1976 trip was related to watching a particular American classic film on television, about which he had read very much and which had been recommended to him by his fellow Soviet Americanist colleagues, such as Alexander Fursenko. Bolkhovitinov saw Gone with the Wind on 7–8 November when it made its television debut on NBC.38 He had never read Margaret Mitchell’s novel, but the film based on this novel was a genuine sensation for him. As Bolkhovitinov noted later, it was the first historical movie produced with American historical material about the Civil War, which he recalled as ‘a cinematographic sensation’. Bolkhovitinov was so impressed with this old American movie that, in December 1976, when he returned to Moscow and wrote a travel report to the international department of the Institute of World History, he began his report by praising ‘a masterpiece of American historical film-making – the movie Gone with the Wind’.39 Indirectly, Bolkhovitinov’s recommendations about those American movies which could be shown to Soviet audiences were taken into

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consideration by the leaders of Goskino, the USSR State Committee for Cinematography. In January 1977, Bolkhovitinov was invited by Zhukov, the IVI director, to a special reception followed by a dinner with the legendary director of Goskino, Fillip Ermash. Evgeni M. Zhukov introduced Bolkhovitinov as a Soviet scholar who had visited the US on a regular basis. Ermash asked Bolkhovitinov about the most important American feature films, which could be recommended for purchase and release in the Soviet Union. Bolkhovitinov prepared a long list of the films he had seen, beginning with Gone with the Wind and finishing with Rocky. Ermash never contacted him afterwards. However, at the end of 1977 Zhukov approached Bolkhovitinov and told him that not only were his accomplishments in the study of archival documents about the beginning of Russian– American relations highly regarded, but also that his cinematic tastes were equally ‘appreciated by individuals from the CPSU Central Committee and personally by Ermash’.40 According to the most representative readers’ surveys in the Soviet Union’s most popular film magazine, among the foreign films released in 1974 that Soviet filmgoers selected as ‘the best’ were American motion pictures such as Mackenna’s Gold (J. Lee Thompson, 1969) and The New Centurions (Richard Fleischer, 1972). In 1975, they included US films such as The Day of the Dolphin (Mike Nichols, 1973) and How to Steal a Million (William Wyler, 1969).41 In 1977, Soveksportfilm released 63 films from socialist countries and 67 films from capitalist countries, including 12 American films, and after 1979 it continued releasing on average eight US films annually until 1982. Even in 1984, during the anti-American ideological campaign in the Soviet Union, the most popular foreign films among the Soviet public were still American movies such as The Deep (Peter Yates, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979), Kramer vs Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979), Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975), and Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982).42 All these films had been recommended by Soviet academic visitors to the United States. Not all recommendations were accepted by the Soviet administration. The most popular and the most recommended US films by many Soviet experts were The Godfather (Francis Coppola, 1972) and Love Story (Arthur Hiller, 1970). Francis Coppola’s film in particular had a ‘cult following among many Soviet Americanists who watched this movie during their research trips to the West’.43 But Soviet officials rejected the numerous suggestions from Soviet experts to buy these films and they were never shown to a wide audience in the cinemas in the USSR. At the same time,

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Publication of The Godfather in Vsesvit.

Ukrainian Americanist Arnold Shlepakov became a member of the editorial board of the Ukrainian journal Vsesvit, which began regular publication of American bestsellers in Ukrainian translation. As a frequent Soviet visitor to America and an expert in American Studies, he supported the publication of two novels, which were adapted for the screen and became the most popular movies in the United States. His first recommendation for publication in Soviet Ukraine was the novel The Godfather by American writer Mario Puzo, which was eventually published in Ukrainian translation by Vsesvit during the autumn of 1973 through the winter of 1974. The publication of this American novel in a Soviet periodical was a sensation. This Ukrainian literary magazine, with its new editor Dmytro Pavlychko, a writer from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, was the only Soviet periodical to publish a good translation of the novel, and also included informative professional comments about it.44 Even Russian-speaking readers from other parts of the Soviet Union tried to obtain copies of Vsesvit to read the famous novel, which became a legend due to the release of the Francis Coppola film in the US and the tremendous popularity among Soviet music fans of the movie’s theme music composed by Nino Rota.45 Paradoxically, Coppola’s film, which was

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Figure 20

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Publication of The Godfather in Vsesvit.

forbidden in the USSR, was popularised by the Ukrainian periodical, which put a portrait of Marlon Brando as the Godfather on the front page of its publication.46 The second American novel promoted by Shlepakov was Love Story by Erich Segal. This novel became famous in the Soviet Union because of the film adaptation by Arthur Hiller. During the 1970s, Soviet audiences were already familiar with the film’s theme music [‘Where Do I Begin’] composed by Francis Lai. For many Soviet fans of western popular music, the name of Erich Segal was also familiar as one of the script-writers for the Beatles cartoon film Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968), popularised by Soviet media since 1968 as the ‘most progressive anti-imperialist product of western pop culture’.47 So during one editorial meeting in Vsesvit in 1975, after a reference to the popularity of Erich Segal among both Soviet audiences and American ‘progressive critics’, Shlepakov insisted that Love Story should be published in the magazine. His KGB connections helped and the novel was published in Ukrainian translation in 1976, in the magazine’s December issue.48 According to contemporaries, the most important advisers in the process of buying US films and commenting on them for Soviet audiences were those

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Soviet experts who worked in ISKAN. They not only published highly acclaimed books about US cinema during the 1970s, but also submitted their recommendations about the most popular and ‘progressive’ American films to Soviet leadership.49 The Institute of Cinematic History and Theory of the State Committee for Cinematography, which was created in 1974, sponsored a special two-day conference in 1976 with the participation of ISKAN’s experts to discuss not only the problems of American cinema and US feature films appropriate for Soviet audiences, but also ‘what kind of US films should be recommended for the programme of the Moscow International Film Festivals’.50 During this conference, which involved 27 representatives of other research institutes from Moscow, Viacheslav Shestakov delivered a special report about the recent ‘democratic progressive’ trends in Hollywood and recommended that the leaders of Goskino buy films by Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack and other ‘talented’ American film directors. Yuri Zamoshkin and other Soviet participants of IREX programmes joined Shestakov in his criticism of the ‘lack of professionalism’ of those Soviet film critics who ‘rejected all, even anti-capitalist progressive, American films as mere bourgeois propaganda’.51 According to participants, during this conference it became obvious that all professional Soviet film critics took ‘a firm anti-American and antibourgeois ideological position’ regarding the release of US feature films. As a result of this position on the part of the professionals, the participants became divided. All Soviet Americanists present at this conference supported a mass release of American films for a wide Soviet audience and rejected the ‘teeth-crushing anti-Americanism’ of their Soviet film-expert colleagues.52 Some conference participants recalled how the chair of Goskino, F. Ermash, and other representatives of the Soviet administration had discussed the possibility of a Soviet release of the US movies The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, which were shown for ‘selected audiences’ in Moscow during the end of the 1970s.53 I. A. Geievsky, a sector head from ISKAN, also emphasised the positive and talented portrayal of ‘capitalist realities’ in such masterpieces of American cinema as The Godfather. After this conference, Soviet experts in American film became the most important figures in establishing personal contacts not only with their American colleagues, film critics and film historians, but also with American filmmakers and movie stars, especially during the MIFF.54 In May 1977, Vladimir Baskakov, a representative of ‘the official Soviet film criticism establishment’, organised a special round table to discuss ‘the struggle of ideologies and problems of American cinema’ at the editorial office of the

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Soviet theoretical journal Art of Cinema (Iskusstvo kino). Despite his attempts to ‘stop dangerous idealisation of the humanism of US movies’ a majority of expert-Americanists from ISKAN and MGU insisted on the official ‘promotion’ and ‘mass screening of the most progressive representatives of American cinema’.55 As a direct result of the Soviet Americanists’ recommendations, some of those films, which were discussed during the 1976 conference and 1977 round table, were permitted by the Soviet administration to go on wide release by the end of the same year. In 1976, among many commercial and already obsolete US blockbusters such as The Great Race (Blake Edwards, 1964), Goskino also released Martin Scorsese’s comedy-drama Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and Conrack (Martin Ritt, 1974), starring Jon Voight.56 According to the Soviet Americanists’ recommendations of 1976, Goskino also bought (in 1981!) and released Three Days of the Condor (1975), an antiCIA thriller by Sydney Pollack.57 After 1979, with access to new American videotape recording techniques, experts in US cinema such as A. Muliarchik and Shestakov organised special shows of new US films at ISKAN on a regular basis. These Americanists were instrumental in the mass release of the majority of films in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era.58

Problems of Nuclear Catastrophe and the End of De´tente Unlike the West, in the Soviet Union the fear of nuclear war was not much fuelled by feature films, largely because the Soviet government kept films on the subject at bay. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov recalled how, during the spring of 1965, along with a few Soviet experts in US politics and culture and many Soviet scientists, he was invited by officials from the Central Committee of CPSU for a special ‘closed screening’ of two American anti-war movies to decide if they were appropriate for Soviet audiences. One of them was Stanley Kramer’s film On the Beach and the other was Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Although all the Soviet Americanists who attended the screening recommended these films for wider release, they were never shown in the Soviet Union ‘to a wider audience’ as ‘too intimidating for a normal Soviet viewer with the graphic results of nuclear war’. Meanwhile, ‘less intimidating’, films ‘made in the USA’ were on the screens of all major cinemas in Moscow.59 During the 1970s, however, after visiting the United States, Soviet Americanists raised questions about the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the US. Soviet experts paid special attention to the

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American film The China Syndrome, by director James Bridges and starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas. This film portrayed the real danger of a nuclear plant and attempts by the plant administration to cover up serious problems with the nuclear reactor. Paradoxically, this film was released throughout the USA on 16 March 1979. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, just twelve days later, on 28 March, the worst nuclear accident in United States history occurred at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This real-life incident was, in many ways, identical to the plot of the film. An incorrect reading of equipment at Three Mile Island made the plant’s operators think, in error, that there was more water covering the core of the power plant than there actually was – exactly what we see unfold on the screen in The China Syndrome.60 Soviet Americanists urged the Soviet government to buy this film immediately. At this stage, the USSR had not yet produced any motion picture about ‘the real danger of nuclear catastrophe’ for humankind.61 As early as summer 1979, the organisers of the Moscow International Film Festival asked the director of The China Syndrome to give it a special screening.62 After its release in the USSR in 1981, this American movie became a sensation and was used not only for traditional criticism of American imperialism but also for serious discussions about problems of energy, ecology and conservation.63 Even the end of political de´tente did not stop the Soviet fascination with American films. In 1979, the Soviet government released 237 films: among them 128 Soviet films, plus 58 from socialist countries and 51 from capitalist countries, including 8 US films, such as The Vikings (Richard Fleischer, 1958), Robin and Marian (Richard Lester, 1976), Fun with Dick and Jane (Ted Kotcheff, 1977), Stunts (Mark L. Lester, 1977), Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963), Song Without End (Charles Vidor, 1960), Breakout (Tom Gries, 1975), The Domino Principle (Stanley Kramer, 1977).64 At the end of 1979, under the leadership of V. Maiatsky, head of Soveksportfilm, a group of Soviet film-makers, including Georgi Daneliya, Liudmila Gurchenko and Natalya Gundareva, visited the United States, presenting new Soviet films such as Osennii marafon and Sibiriada to American audiences, and brought back to the Soviet Union ‘positive good impressions from their American visit and communications with ordinary Americans’.65 In 1980, according to the Sovetskii ekran statistics, the most popular foreign films (among Soviet filmgoers) were the US films Stunts (Mark Lester, 1977) and West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961). American films were presented during the Twelfth MIFF in July 1981 – Escape to

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Victory (John Huston, 1981) for an official competition, and Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969), The Electric Horseman (Sydney Pollack, 1979) and Gloria (John Cassavetes, 1980) – for non-official public screening.66 During July 1983, despite worsening diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, US feature films and American filmmakers and movie stars still played a significant role and attracted thousands of Soviet filmgoers for public showings of American films at the Thirteenth Moscow International Film Festival.67 The most significant event of the festival was the thematic screening of seven Stanley Kramer films which had been recommended by a group of Soviet film experts. Thus, On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Ship of Fools (1965) were finally screened in the USSR, no doubt increasing the international tension of that year.68 As Kramer declared to journalists in Moscow in 1983, he came to the MIFF ‘worrying about a dangerous development of the international situation and increasing international tensions’. ‘I came to Moscow,’ Kramer said, ‘because I must tell the young generation of film-makers of the world, who attend this largest cinema forum, and all normal and sensible people – despite all contradictions, we must survive together, rather than perish together!’69 All American films recommended for screening at the festival represented obvious, very leftist criticism of American realities, including the film Francis (Graeme Clifford, 1982) starring Jessica Lange, who won a special prize at the festival. For the Soviet audience, Francis Coppola presented two of his films – The Outsiders (1983) and One from the Heart (1982). Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro presented their film The King of Comedy which, together with Tootsie directed by Sydney Pollack, offered ‘a negative and very critical picture of the American television business’ that confirmed Soviet propaganda cliche´s. But despite the promotion of all these films by the Soviet experts, Soviet censorship did not allow the wide release of a majority of these US films in Moscow. On the Beach was not supported by the censors because of the ‘graphic portrayal of nuclear war’; Ship of Fools was rejected due to its ‘apparent pro-Jewish theme’. Only Tootsie was recommended for ‘immediate release, because of its humanism and exposure of the commercial character of television in the US’.70

Television, New Video Technologies and Soviet Espionage Television Series Soviet television did not escape American influence. During the 1970s, Soviet Americanists, especially researchers from ISKAN, together with

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Soviet journalists working in the United States, provided the Soviet administration with recommendations about the improvement and ‘modernisation’ of Soviet radio and television.71 On almost a monthly basis, Soviet Americanists published special surveys of technical and ideological innovations in American television, including detailed information about cable infrastructure and new video recording techniques for broadcasting television shows.72 Soviet scholars together with young Soviet journalist-mezhdunarodniki, such as Ekaterina Tarkhanova, Vladimir Pozner and Igor Fesunenko, contributed to the slow Westernisation of Soviet radio and TV, using various technologies especially for broadcasting popular music.73 ‘As far as I remember,’ Nikolai Bolkhovitinov explained, ‘my fellow Americanists recommended that their supervisors include talk shows, live TV, variety shows with elements of American jazz and beat music in Soviet television programmes as early as the 1970s. And some of these recommendations were implemented in various TV shows.’74 American TV series such as Daktari, broadcast in the USSR from June 1973, Lassie (from January 1974), Adventures in Africa (from August 1976), which were recommended by both Soviet scholars and journalists, became the most popular television shows among Soviet children.75 American situation comedies inspired the production of the first original Soviet mini-series, Day After Day (1971– 2), which covered the life of the ordinary residents of one Soviet communal apartment. Originally broadcast from 9 December 1971, it became the most popular Soviet TV show.76 In their reports and professional analysis, some Americanists, like N. A. Goliadkin, paid special attention to a variety of genres of American television mini-series, which included not only a criminal police drama such as Kojak (Abby Mann, 1973–8), or western series like The Virginian (Morton Fine, 1962 –71), but also action crime (detective) drama such as Charlie’s Angels (Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, 1976–81).77 During the 1970s, they recommended the Soviet administration create similar Soviet television shows, ‘filling them with socialist cultural human content’.78 Americanists suggested using a form of ‘legendary’ American television ‘novels’, which could be based on talented literary bestsellers, familiar to a majority of Soviet spectators. These experts explained how such mini-series ‘could hook’ the audience for ‘promoting an important ideological message’ and ‘educating ordinary viewers in various topics of history’. Soviet Americanists and journalists especially praised three American television ‘historic novel-based dramas’, broadcast like mini-series – Roots (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1977, 1979, 1988), based on Alex Haley’s novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family;

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Washington: Behind Closed Doors (David W. Rintels, 1977), based on John Erlichman’s book The Company; and Holocaust (Gerald Green, 1978).79 Some Soviet Americanists even described these television shows as ‘a significant phenomenon not only in popular culture, but also in the social-political life of the entire civilised world.’ Eventually, this kind of show was used for numerous so-called ‘historic epic’ television mini-series in the Soviet Union such as Teni ischezaiut v polden’ (Shadows Disappear at Midday) (Valery Uskov and Vladimir Karasnopol’sky, 1970–1) and Vechnyi zov (Eternal Call) (Valery Uskov and Vladimir Karasnopol’sky, 1973– 83).80 Soviet experts also recommended the incorporation of so-called video clips in various music shows for television. As early as 1974, they referred to the new video recording technology developed in the US, and suggested that the Soviet administration follow the same direction, using a ‘combination of pre-recorded video clips and new American magnetic video tapes for recordings’.81 The new video-clip culture was introduced in variety shows with various popular music numbers. Millions of Soviet fans of Western pop music were pleasantly surprised that, following a traditional long and boring Novogodnii Ogoniok show in the early morning of 1 January 1975, the central Soviet TV station, using new American video-recording technologies, broadcast an unusually long concert of Western pop music stars which included the most popular names played in Soviet discotheques, such as ABBA, Boney M, Dowley Family, Donny Osmond, Silver Convention, Joe Dassen, Amanda Lear, Smokey and Baccarat. After 1975, Soviet TV aired similar shows at least once a year, usually very late at night. From 11 January 1977, Soviet TV ran a special show called ‘Melodies and Rhythms of Foreign Estrada’, which included the most popular stars of Western rock and disco music. Until perestroika, ‘Melodies and Rhythms’ was the only TV show to give a unique opportunity to millions of Soviet fans to see their idols on Soviet TV screens at least once a year. During the 1970s, Soviet TV also organised the broadcast of variety shows, including covers of the most popular Western hits in Russian by various Soviet vocal instrumental ensembles (VIA). The ‘TV Benefit Performances’ of famous Soviet film stars such as Larisa Golubkina (1975) and Liudmila Gurchenko (1978) and Evgeni Ginzburg’s show ‘Magic Lantern’ (1976) offered very good covers of songs from the British rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, and also from the Beatles and Paul McCartney’s albums by various Soviet rock bands such as Vesiolye rebiata from Moscow and Poiushchie gitary from Leningrad.82 As Vladislav Zubok recalled, his father, Martin Zubok, son of the legendary Soviet Americanist Lev Zubok, worked as a cameraman and video engineer

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at Ostankino television studio at this time. Martin Zubok adored Ginsburg’s television shows and took a very active part in their preparation. In conversations with his young son, he especially praised ‘Magic Lantern’ as ‘the most revolutionary variety show’ on Soviet television. But because Soviet administrators were afraid of this ‘revolutionary variety show’, they delayed it. It was shown only during spring 1976 on Easter night ‘to distract Soviet youth’ and ‘prevent them from attending’ Easter celebrations in church.83 It is noteworthy that all of Ginsburg’s shows used stories and various songs from My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964), another US ‘cult’ film, which represented a moment of cultural fixation for an entire generation of Soviet film-makers and television producers. The archetypal American musical, introduced through films such as My Fair Lady, Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965), and Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968), which were released in the Soviet Union during 1970 and 1971, became the most popular cultural form used by Soviet television for various variety shows through the entire 1970s.84 By the end of the 1970s, young Soviet television journalists were incorporating many American innovations in video technologies recommended by Soviet experts in US video media, combining various video clips and experimenting with video and audio recording, and producing one of the most popular variety shows of music parodies and social criticism – Vesiolye rebiata (Funny guys) – on Soviet television. Officially broadcast on 26 February 1982, this show ‘became a video clip revolution in Soviet visual media’.85 Another important American influence on Soviet TV resulted in Soviet films on espionage, including a new television series during the 1970s. The most popular Soviet spy movies included such motion pictures as Dead Season (Savva Kulish, 1968), The Resident’s Mistake (Venyamin Dorman, 1968) and The Resident’s Fate (V. Dorman, 1970), Zemlya, do vostrebovaniya (V. Dorman, 1972).86 Soviet film-makers produced the anti-American movies Incident at Map Grid 36 –80 (Mikhail Tumanishvili, 1982) and Solo Voyage (Mikhail Tumanishvili, 1986). In 1984, in a Soviet television miniseries, the Soviet spies who fought the Whites during the Civil War (An Adjutant of His Excellency, 1969– 70) and the Nazis during World War II (Seventeen Moments of the Spring, 1973) were replaced, in TASS is Authorised to Announce (Vladimir Fokin, 1984), with KGB patriotic officers fighting against American spies during the 1970s.87 TASS is Authorized to Announce is made in the best tradition of international spy fiction, but from a different ideological perspective than

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that of the novels by John Le Carre´, Frederick Forsyth and other masters of the genre. Soviet writer Yulian Semionov based the film’s story on facts. In 1977, when the KGB tried to arrest the CIA spy Trianon, he poisoned himself. This spy was Alexander Ogorodnik, a Soviet official from the Department of America at the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Semionov used this story for his novel and film, mixing fiction and the memoirs of his friend, KGB General Viacheslav Kevorkov, portrayed in the film as KGB officer Slavin. In the movie, when the spy Trianon is finally uncovered and a CIA officer under diplomatic cover is caught engaging in espionage red-handed, the US ambassador is summoned to the Soviet foreign ministry in Moscow and confronted with the evidence. He agrees to have the CIA operation against the pro-Soviet African regime in Nagonia called off in return for silence on the part of the Soviets. Izvestiya is later able to report: ‘TASS is authorised to declare that Soviet counterintelligence has uncovered and neutralised a CIA operation aimed against the USSR and Nagonia.’88 To some extent, this movie was a direct Soviet reaction to the immense popularity of the American anti-CIA feature films which were widely shown in the USSR during the de´tente. Two anti-CIA thrillers – The Three Days of the Condor by Sydney Pollack (1975) and The Domino Principle by Stanley Kramer (1977) – especially promoted a negative perception of America and of ‘Western imperialism’ among Soviet audiences. TASS is Authorized to Announce was made during the peak of power of Yuri Andropov, a former KGB chief who succeeded Brezhnev in 1982. It glorifies the KGB but at the same time portrays the CIA as intelligent and praiseworthy rivals. As one film critic noted, ‘it depicts Americans as very worthy enemies – American agents of the CIA are presented here with big respect which means that the Soviets respected themselves. And this goes in contrast to most Hollywood productions shot during the Cold War where the Soviets were depicted simply as morons.’89 The most popular Soviet film stars such as Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Yuri Solomin were invited to appear in this film. It had been a real television blockbuster since its first showing on Soviet television during 30 July– 10 August 1984. The film became famous for the first public portrayal (on Soviet television) of a video cassette player, showing specifics of video shooting, recording and other technological details which made the VCR popular from 1984. The film was also known for the experimental music of composer Eduard Artemiev, who mixed his traditional electronic sound with elements of ‘Western’ progressive rock music. And finally, the film justified a new Western fashion combination:

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American jeans, American sneakers, leather jackets and T-shirts, worn by the film’s KGB characters – as a symbol of modern Soviet dress code suitable for both Soviet youth and middle-aged people.90 As a result of the Soviet experts’ recommendations, rare TV films based on classical foreign literature from capitalist countries appeared on Soviet TV during the Brezhnev era. From the middle of the 1970s, the cultural situation of de´tente resulted in more television films, shows and information directly from the capitalist West.91 According to the most complete recordings of everyday life from five summer school diaries during the period of the 1970s, Soviet children watched not only ice hockey matches broadcast from America between Soviet and Canadian hockey teams, but also the American television series Lassie about the adventures of a collie dog, the British mystery film The Moon Stone based on Wilkie Collins’ detective novel and various BBC television mini-series like David Copperfield based on Charles Dickens’ novel. As one 16-year-old rock music fan reacted to the cultural de´tente on television in late 1977, ‘it’s amazing to see what is appearing on our television: since 1975 we have watched an American movie about Lassie, various broadcasts about Soviet-American space flights of Soyuz-Apollon and scientific exchanges between us and Americans, then we have seen an English detective movie The Moon Stone, and finally, on Soviet television the official political show Mezhdunarodnaia panorama is introduced by the [unannounced] melody of One of These Days from Pink Floyd’s album Meddle.’92 Meanwhile, adult Soviet audiences fell in love with the BBC television series The Forsyte Saga, based on John Galsworthy’s novel, and other Western television films, such as the Italian film The Life of Leonardo da Vinci by Renato Castellani. According to Soviet film critics, these were the most popular Western feature films shown on Soviet TV during the 1970s.93 As one contemporary summarised the situation in the Soviet media during de´tente, ‘It was a real Western cultural invasion of the Soviet Union. From 1975, Soviet audiences were exposed to massive attacks of images and sounds from the capitalist West on television, in the movies, on radio, on music records, and, of course, on the dance floor.’94 This cultural de´tente on Soviet television created a subsequent ideological confusion, especially in the Soviet provinces. On 4 March 1972, a communist leader from one industrial region of Soviet Ukraine complained to local Komsomol ideologists, ‘It is too much capitalist West on our Soviet television screens today . . . Television shows about American music and films, about Western fashions prevail on our central channel from Moscow. It looks like a kind of Americanisation! It confuses our Soviet youth who try

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to imitate these foreign images in their behaviour . . . We need to stop it!’95 Ten years later, in 1982, a local newspaper was still complaining about ‘Americanisation on Soviet screens’.96 According to my analysis of the ‘television programmes’ section in local newspapers from the Kyiv, Cherkasy, Zaporizhie, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine, the number of television shows containing ‘material from the capitalist West’ increased from 7 to 10 shows per week (10 per cent of broadcast time with prevailing material on ‘informational programmes’ such as Mezhdunarodnaia panorama, and one ‘capitalist’ movie, like the French Count of Monte Cristo) in 1968, to 14– 18 per week (20 per cent of the time with ‘capitalist’ music numbers during music shows like Ogoniok, special shows about Angela Davis from the US, and two capitalist films like a BBC feature film and Italian television series) in 1972, and reaching a peak in 1978 with 24– 27 shows per week (from 30 to 40 per cent of the time with numerous popular music shows, like Benefis, and numerous US television series for children, like Lassie).97 Local party leaders in provincial Ukrainian cities tried to stop this ‘Americanisation’ in TV broadcasting, complaining to the central administration about this ‘Westernisation of TV images’ and trying to produce local ‘counter-propagandist anti-capitalist’ TV shows, containing criticism of the material shown on ‘a central Moscow channel’.98 Paradoxically, because of the centralisation of Soviet television during the Brezhnev era, local administration in the ‘Soviet provinces’ failed to prevent this ‘Westernisation of TV images’ on local TV screens. The central channel of Soviet television, a crucial creative mechanism for the formation of an AllUnion identity in the Soviet provinces, became instrumental in adding new elements of Western popular culture (even with Soviet ‘covers’) to the construction (and simultaneous confusion) of the ‘visual matrix’ of this Soviet identity.99 Even local TV viewers were amazed and confused by the changes on Soviet television during the 1970s. As one high school student from a small provincial Soviet town wrote in his diary in 1976: ‘What is going on with our television? A few years ago a Moscow TV channel presented rock music as the “sound of capitalist degeneration and of cultural crisis”. Now they include Western rock [music] in every show. It is like our own Soviet Westernisation!!! A year ago (1975), in Larisa Golubkina’s Benefis, they permitted Soviet musicians to cover “Mrs. Vandebilt” by McCartney and Wings. This year in one show, Volshebnyi fonar’, I noticed at least four Russian covers of arias from rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, including my favourite “King Herod’s Song”, two covers of Beatles songs

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like “Octopus’s Garden” and “Let It Be”, and Russian covers of music from the American films Godfather, Love Story and My Fair Lady.’100 The year after, another student from another small Soviet town noted, It is amazing how this international de´tente has changed our television . . . On a channel of the Central television, our family watched recently concerts of Western music featuring ABBA and Smokey . . . Tonight, my mom watched television shows and films only from the capitalist West. She was so frustrated by this ‘capitalist invasion’ of our culture that she called this situation ‘the de´tente’s new cultural revolution’.101

Conclusion Yet, cultural de´tente had an explicit anti-capitalist and, overall, anti-American bias. Thus, all American films recommended by Soviet Americanists played a very important role in anti-capitalist and anti-American propaganda. One college student who loved American rock and roll and westerns noted, after watching in one week of August 1982, American films as diverse as The Domino Principle, Oklahoma Crude and The Three Days of the Condor, ‘we perhaps have not enough products in our food stores and fewer cars on our roads, but our youth has a much brighter future than those Americans.’102 As another student commented in his diary after watching the American police drama The New Centurions, ‘it is good to live in the West when you have money and power, but it is very dangerous to live there if you are just an ordinary poor man. I would rather stay in my own country.’103 Two anti-CIA thrillers – The Three Days of the Condor and The Domino Principle – especially influenced the negative perception of America and of ‘Western imperialism’ among Soviet college students. As some college students explained in their writing, ‘The military industrial complex and the intelligence agencies rule the West. After watching Pollack’s and Kramer’s films, we understand that capitalist America has no future.’104 This was the very conclusion that Soviet ideologists and the KGB expected from the Soviet audience’s reaction to the ‘cultural de´tente’ with ‘capitalist America’. ‘Academic and cultural de´tente’ had to justify in scholarly ways the perception of cultural politics as part of a relaxation in international tensions between the USSR and the United States. During de´tente, the KGB tried to develop a very important idea about Soviet partners in negotiations from the West and then to impose it on the

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consciousness of Soviet audiences. This idea concerned the ultimate unreliability of Western politicians. In such an interpretation, the Western powers, especially the United States, were presented not just as the class enemies of the Soviet Union, but also as very unreliable political and economic partners. To some extent, academic studies, including American Film Studies, had to promote the major ideas of de´tente, but at the same time they needed constantly to remind Soviet audiences of this notion. Even the most popular Soviet television shows, like 1973’s television mini-series Seventeen Moments of Spring, emphasised this ‘unreliable’ position of the Soviet Western Allies during World War II.105 At the same time, the influx of cultural products from the capitalist West, stimulated by de´tente, intensified ideological confusion in Soviet society during the 1970s. Indirectly, Soviet Americanists served as mediators between American and Soviet cultures, playing very important roles in this process of cultural confusion. A phenomenon known as ‘cultural fixation’ on American cultural practices and products such as films and television became important influences for Soviet consumers, representing both the elite and ordinary Soviet people. The limited sources of foreign cultural practices always produce ‘an intense idealisation’ of the early available forms of such practices in societies with strong ideological control and limitations. As entries in Soviet personal diaries testify, American films attracted Soviet filmgoers not only because they were fun to watch, but also because they displayed elements of modern Western technology and machinery which were lacking in the everyday life of Soviet society. ‘It is fantastic how they use machines in America!’ one Soviet spectator wrote after watching US films. ‘Everybody drives cars and can operate different machines. And what about the machines! It looks like everything – cars, music records, jeans – is available for everybody. How I dream just of living in such a society! It is easy living in the West!’106 In this idealised world, even real social problems in the US portrayed in American movies were supplanted by more attractive and memorable details of American everyday life, which on the screen looked very different from the traditional images of the capitalist ‘oppressive’ West in Soviet propaganda. Another eyewitness emphasised that these attractive details of everyday life in American films ‘strengthened this feeling of easy, carefree living in the West’. As a result, the Soviet viewer had negative impressions of the difficult realities of everyday life in the Soviet Union, ‘where people worked hard, earned a little, and lived without convenient modern Western machines’.107

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The cultural Cold War in visual media led not only to ideological and cultural confusion in Soviet society, but also contributed to generating in the USSR new film genres and television show forms, such as the historical epic drama, the Western, musical, spy film, sitcom and soap opera in TV miniseries. Recommended by the Soviet expert-Americanists and promoted by the official Moscow international film festivals, various American cinematic practices, together with American technological innovations in television, such as video recording and video-clip compilations, not only ‘Westernised and modernised’ images on both cinema and television screens particularly during the 1970s and the 1980s, but at the same time demonstrated the unique possibilities of ideological manipulation and mobilisation through visual media. Even if it is true that Hollywood was at its best when depicting crime and corruption in the US, which after all is the stuff that thrillers are made of, it is remarkable how the Soviet propaganda machine managed to keep apart, in the heads of its citizens, the images of high US living standards, and the US as an intrinsically bad society. Soviet citizens seem not to have drawn the conclusion that a system that is criticised openly from within might be more democratic than one where such criticism cannot be voiced. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, these practices of the cultural Cold War do not seem lost on the post-Soviet regimes in their struggle for control over post-Soviet space.

PART III FROM DÉ TENTE TO PERESTROIKA:THE LAST GENERATIONS OF SOVIET AMERICANISTS

The ‘academic’ and ‘cultural de´tente’ of the 1970s opened not only new resources and materials for Soviet Americanists to continue their decadeslong engagement in scholarly research – giving them new impulses and directions for their studies – but also provided new tools for influencing and advising the Soviet administration on international politics, disarmament and culture. During the 1980s, Soviet Americanists also established new fields and directions in American Studies. In addition to the flourishing of political, economic and cultural (especial film) studies devoted to the United States and Canada, and traditionally centred at ISKAN (the Institute of the USA and Canada), the most striking development was the surprising growth of new original fields and topics in US and Canadian history, especially at provincial universities outside Moscow. Ukrainian Americanists in Kyiv concentrated on the history of Ukrainians in the United States and Canada. By 1980, one of these ‘promising’ original fields in Soviet Amerikanistika turned out to be the study of Native Americans (‘American Indians’). A related ‘promising field’ was the colonial period of North American history, starting with the pre-Columbian history of Native Americans and proceeding through various social, economic, political, cultural and ideological developments of the seventeenth through the

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eighteenth centuries up to the end of the American War of Independence and the creation of the United States.1 Paradoxically, these ‘promising fields’ of Soviet Amerikanistika, which really flourished during the 1980s, were based on and justified by (already well-established) Russian-Ukrainian-Soviet cultural and intellectual traditions.

CHAPTER 6 PLAYING AMERICAN INDIANS AND SOVIET INDIANISTIKA

Many scholars will argue that the beginning of the ‘unusual and mass interest’ in American history in general, and American Indians in particular, among the people who lived in the geopolitical space of the former Russian Empire/Soviet Union, was directly connected to their reading of the adventure novels of American writer James Fenimore Cooper (1789– 1851) and British writer Thomas Mayne Reid (1818–83), who portrayed brave American Indians fighting European colonisers in North America.1 In 1825, with the first publication of Cooper’s novel The Spy in Russian translation, Russian readers began their fascination with the narrative of early American history and American characters, ‘presented for the first time in very good literary form in the Romantic adventure novel’.2 Already accustomed to the influx of similar historical adventure novels written by Sir Walter Scott, the Russian public was now ready to give a ‘welcome reception’ to Cooper’s novels featuring the same Romantic writing style.3 As a result, in Russia all of the major publications of Cooper’s adventure novels on early American history – The Pioneers (1828), The Prairie (1829), The Red Rover and The Pilot (1831), The Last of the Mohicans (1832), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1848) – became very popular with their Russian (especially young) readers.4 The novels about the white trapper Nathaniel Bumpo and his friend, the Indian Chief Chingachgook, immediately triggered ‘unexpected and surprising mass imitation’ by young readers from various localities of the Russian Empire. Beginning with the 1865 edition of ‘Cooper’s complete works’, his novels were reprinted many times in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Many Russian writers, such as

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Alexander S. Pushkin, Lev N. Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton Chekhov, became influenced by Cooper’s novels, and incorporated themes and images from his works into their own writings.5 In this same period, the adventure novels of British writer Mayne Reid, especially his novels about American Indians, such as The White Chief and Osceola the Seminole, which were translated into Russian, became the source of inspiration for millions of young people in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, including such famous figures as Vladimir Nabokov and Vladimir Mayakovsky.6 The lasting influence and legacy of both Cooper and Mayne Reid’s novels became evident with the development of a ‘genuine cult’ of the American Indian among Russian and Soviet youth. Paradoxically, such ideologically different youth organisations as the first Boy Scout movement in pre-revolutionary Russia and the ‘Leninist’ Pioneer movement in the Soviet Union actively promoted young people’s interest in Native American culture, encouraging a healthy ‘natural lifestyle of pathfinders’ among both prerevolutionary Russian and Soviet youth.7 All future Soviet Americanists noted Cooper and Mayne Reed’s strong literary influence, which triggered the scholars’ own interest in early American history and the history of Native Americans as well.8

Yulia Averkieva, a Pioneer in Soviet Studies of Native Americans (1907–80) Ironically, the founding mother of Soviet Studies of Native Americans, Yulia Averkieva-Petrova, was not particularly influenced by adventure novels about American Indians. Originally trained as an expert in the anthropology of Soviet Karelia, Averkieva eventually became the first qualified Soviet specialist in the ethnography of North American Indians.9 Yulia Averkieva was born on 24 July 1907 into a Russian lumberjack family in the northern Russian province of Karelia near the Finnish border. In 1918, Averkieva lost her mother and, following this loss, she spent all her free time after school helping her stepmother to bring up her two younger sisters. The administration of the local Karelian village school took notice of this talented girl and her accomplishments in studying history and geography, and, as a result, her school principal recommended that Averkieva enter college in Leningrad. With this official recommendation, during the summer of 1925 Averkieva travelled to Leningrad, passed the entrance exams ‘with distinction’ and was admitted as an undergraduate

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student at the sector of ethnography in the Department of Geography of Leningrad State University in the autumn of 1925.10 In Leningrad, she attended the classes of two legendary Soviet Russian ethnographers of Siberian indigenous people – Vladimir G. Bogoraz (1865– 1936), a famous Russian anthropologist, and expert in the tribal life of the Chukchi, and Lev Ya. Shternberg (1861– 1927), a Russian Jewish ethnographer of the Nanai and Ainy tribes.11 Under their tutelage, young Averkieva began her studies of the Finnish-Hungarian tribes of Karelia, the tribal people of the Russian Arctic and the Far North, participating in many ethnographic expeditions, organised by her famous mentors. After graduation in the spring of 1929, Averkieva planned to return to Soviet Karelia to continue her anthropological research of the local population.12 Meanwhile, her favourite professor, Vladimir Bogoraz, had recently visited the United States, where he had received an official proposal from American anthropologist Franz Boas inviting five Soviet university students of anthropology to continue their studies in America. After his return to Leningrad, Bogoraz offered one of these invitations – a scholarship from Barnard College at Columbia University – to his favorite Karelian student, Yulia Averkieva, whom he recommended to Professor Boas. As a result, instead of returning to Karelia, Averkieva spent the entire summer of 1929 studying the English language in Leningrad. Afterwards, she joined a Soviet student group in Berlin and at the beginning of October 1929, together with this group, Averkieva arrived in New York City, where she began her studies at the all-female Barnard College, which was associated with the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University. Franz Boas, who was head of Columbia’s Department of Anthropology, attempted to help Averkieva not only with her anthropological studies, but also with her study of colloquial American English and her adjustment to life in New York City. Eventually, Professor Boas took Averkieva on an anthropological research expedition to study the Indian tribes of Kvakiutl and Nutka on the Canadian island of Vancouver in October 1930. This expedition, which lasted until the middle of January 1931, triggered Averkieva’s long and serious academic interest in the anthropology of American indigenous tribes.13 Averkieva not only studied Native American tribes on Vancouver Island, she also lived among those tribes and participated in their rituals and celebrations. As Averkieva later recalled, these American Indians even initiated her membership into one of their tribal clans, bestowing upon her the indigenous tribal name of Khvuana. The major result of her fieldwork among the Indians of Kvakiutl was Averkieva’s study of their ritual-play of

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so-called ‘string figures’. She compiled important anthropological material, made numerous sketches and took photographs, which she used not only for her American study, approved and directed by professor Boas, but also for her future unique collection of Native American tribal artifacts for the Leningrad Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (hereafter MAE).14 In May 1931, Averkieva returned to Leningrad from New York, and in July of that year she was admitted to a MAE-affiliated and sponsored graduate studies programme with permission to work part-time at the North America department of MAE. Averkieva began writing her kandidatskaia (PhD) dissertation on slavery and slave ownership among the indigenous tribes of the north-western coast of North America. In the spring of 1932, she published her first scholarly article and in July 1935 Averkieva defended her kandidatskaia (PhD) dissertation, which was published as a book in 1941.15 In the meantime, this period of Averkieva’s life was darkened by a very personal tragedy. In 1931, three months after her return to Leningrad, Averkieva married Peter Bookin, a Russian-American engineer who had just recently returned to the Soviet Union after many years of living in the United States. In July 1934, their daughter Elena was born. According to Averkieva’s somewhat ambiguous autobiography, a few months after the birth of their daughter, Averkieva and her husband Peter were ‘officially divorced’, although a review of the available sources leads us to assume that her American husband was probably arrested by the Soviet political police during this time. Averkieva had to conceal this fact in all of her official documents after 1931. As a result of this event, Yulia Averkieva was left on her own with a little daughter without any additional financial support.16 The ideological and political situation in the country after December 1934, following the assassination of Sergei Kirov, which initiated the beginning of Stalin’s mass terror, drastically affected all MAE personnel, including Averkieva. She was accused of helping the ‘enemies of the Soviet people’ at her institute, and as a result she was expelled from the Komsomol in August 1936 and subsequently fired from the institute the following month.17 During this difficult time Averkieva found support from her new husband (m. 1935), Apollon A. Petrov, a scholar of ancient Chinese philosophy from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. After giving birth to her second daughter, Zina, in 1937, and using her new husband’s connections among the city Communist Party leadership, Averkieva returned to the Institute

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of Anthropology and Ethnography, where she worked as a senior research associate until June 1941.18 Shortly after the outbreak of war with Germany, Petrov was transferred to Moscow to serve at the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID – in Russian). Petrov, together with his family, was then evacuated as part of the MID’s personnel far from Moscow to the city of Kuibyshev on the Volga River. Because of his knowledge of Chinese language and culture, Petrov was employed by the MID’s ‘Chinese’ Department. As a result, in May 1942, he was assigned to the Chinese city of Chongquing as first secretary of the Soviet embassy to Chiang Kai-Shek’s government. Soon afterwards, he was promoted to the position of official advisor to the USSR embassy where his wife, Yulia Averkieva, served as an official interpreter for almost a year. In September 1943, Petrov and his family returned to Moscow and Averkieva resumed her research work on American indigenous tribes. Moreover, her application for a special doctoral scholarship (doktorantura) to write a new doctoral dissertation (na soiskanie doktora istoricheskikh nauk) was approved by the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences (IE) (which was now located in Moscow). Thus, from this time on, Averkieva had an official assignment to complete her research and prepare the results for future publication. Unfortunately, Averkieva’s studies were interrupted by another trip taken by the Petrov family to China in April 1945, when her husband was appointed official Soviet ambassador in Chongquing (moved to Nanking in 1946).19 For almost two years, Averkieva had been working on her new research project, living in China, writing and sending material based on her new dissertation for publication in Moscow.20 Eventually, however, Averkieva’s research activities were tragically interrupted during one of her return trips to Moscow in 1947. In the summer, while staying in her Moscow apartment, Averkieva had almost completed the text of her dissertation and therefore applied for a permanent position at IE, submitting the draft version of her dissertation’s text in the process as proof that she was qualified for this position. On 1 November 1947, Averkieva’s application was approved by the administration of the Institute of Ethnography. However, suddenly, on 28 November, Averkieva was arrested by the KGB, and on 23 April 1949 she was sentenced to five years imprisonment.21 According to the memoirs of her contemporaries, Averkieva was accused by the KGB of ‘being an American spy’ in order to discredit her husband, Apollon Petrov, a favourite diplomat of Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister. As documents discovered by E. Nitoburg reveal, Lavrentiy

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Beria and Viktor Abakumov, the leaders of the KGB, concocted an elaborate political plot against Molotov in an attempt to discredit him before Stalin, accusing everyone close to Molotov of ‘being imperialist spies’. For this reason, they used the ‘Averkieva case’ to undermine the diplomat, whom Molotov had tapped as his deputy minister of foreign affairs. George Marshall, the official US representative in China in the rank of ambassador, had begun his personal contacts with Apollon Petrov, as Soviet ambassador in China from November 1945. These contacts led to productive negotiations and important contacts between the personnel of both embassies in Chongqing.22 Moreover, Marshall invited the Soviet officials to use various US facilities in Chongqing, including an American military hospital. When her younger daughter Zina fell very ill, Yulia Averkieva needed to visit this American hospital to obtain medical treatment for her because the Soviet embassy had no medical doctor on staff during that time. A few days later, the American doctor stationed at the American embassy also helped Averkieva to acquire a rare medicine for her daughter.23 As one contemporary, a young official at the Soviet embassy in 1946, recalled, the KGB was not ‘very happy’ about the frequent personal contacts between Averkieva and the Americans. He described this story in his memoirs: In 1945, the new Soviet ambassador in China was A. A. Petrov, a scholar, an expert in Chinese studies, a person who was a very gentle intellectual. Unfortunately for him, his wife Yulia Pavlovna, who had a doctoral degree, and who had conducted her research work for some time in the USA where she had studied the American Indians, became very close friends with the personnel at the US embassy, who helped her to obtain ethnographic literature about American Indians. Eventually it cost Averkieva her freedom. In 1947, she was arrested. The order promoting A. A. Petrov to the rank of deputy foreign minister was revoked, and he had to work as an ordinary clerk at the Archival Department of the Foreign Ministry until his premature demise in 1949.24 Eventually, Averkieva told her own version of this story. As she recalled, after numerous meetings between the Soviet and American diplomatic personnel, some of the Soviet and American officials and members of their families established close friendly relations. Averkieva became friendly with George Marshall’s wife, who often invited her to visit Marshall’s private residence. Averkieva would usually visit Marshall’s house accompanied by the official

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interpreter of the Soviet embassy. During one such visit to her American friends, Averkieva forgot to invite the Soviet interpreter, thinking that her spoken English skills were sufficient to communicate with Marshall’s family in private. This was an obvious breach of Soviet protocol regarding meetings of Soviet diplomats and members of their families with foreigners. Averkieva’s mistake was used by the KGB as a pretext for accusing a Soviet diplomat’s wife of ‘spying for the Americans’.25 When the KGB arrested Averkieva, she was pregnant with her third child. This sudden imprisonment of an innocent intellectual woman by the Soviet political police was a truly tragic shock for her husband, Apollon A. Petrov. As his colleague recalled these events, Petrov was a highly educated diplomat and a serious scholar of Asian studies . . . His boss, Molotov, who had always promoted Petrov’s diplomatic career, regarded him highly . . . But then Petrov suddenly died of a heart attack in Moscow [on 11 January 1949], because he could not endure the family drama – the arrest of his wife Yu. P. Petrova-Averkieva. This charming, intelligent woman, a mother of three children (the youngest of these [Alexander] was born in prison) was, following a villainous denunciation, accused of establishing relations with the American intelligence service and sentenced to a five-year prison term.26 From January 1949 until December 1952, Averkieva served her prison term in various labour camps from the Volga region to Siberia. Then, near the end of her term, she was deported and exiled, as ‘a socially dangerous element’, to a remote district in eastern Siberia ‘without the right to return to Moscow’. Following the death of Stalin in March 1953, Averkieva appealed repeatedly to the Soviet government, including personally to Molotov, regarding her pardon and release. Finally, the Soviet Ministry of the Interior (MVD) permitted Averkieva to return to Moscow in May 1954; and two years later, in May 1956, the Soviet Supreme Court pardoned Averkieva and granted her ‘complete political rehabilitation’.27 Averkieva joined her family and resumed her job at the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow in August 1954. At the end of the 1950s, Averkieva continued her research work on the anthropology of indigenous tribes of the American Northwest. Following the traditional orthodox Marxist methodology described by Frederick Engels in his book Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Averkieva’s major research

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concentrated on the exploration of the transition of American Indians from the stage of primitive society, based on collective property, to the stage of class-divided society, founded on private property. As a result of her studies, Averkieva published her second book in 1961, and then used it in defending her doctoral dissertation in March 1962 at the Institute of Ethnography.28 In July 1962, a doctorate (the Soviet degree of doctor istoricheskikh nauk) was officially conferred on Averkieva, and that same year she joined the Communist Party’s organisation at her institute. Moreover, the KGB even allowed Averkieva to visit the Republic of Cuba for three months beginning in late November 1964. She not only delivered lectures in English to her Cuban colleagues there, but also participated in ethnographic expeditions on the island and visited and studied local indigenous tribes of this ‘young socialist republic’. In addition, Averkieva helped some Cuban scholars with their research on Native Americans and even supervised their dissertations in Moscow, while they were visiting the Soviet Union.29 After 1966, Yulia Averkieva experienced the most productive and successful period in her life. That same year, she was approved by the institute’s administration as editor-in-chief of the magazine Sovetskaia etnografiia, and in 1975, as head of the sector of the peoples of America at the Institute of Ethnography. All her visits abroad were approved by the international department and by the KGB; Averkieva became the most active Soviet participant and official Soviet representative at numerous prestigious international congresses and conferences during the 1970s. She established, constantly contributed to and supported with all her means, the North American Division at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Leningrad. During the same period, Averkieva published the most influential studies on Native American history and American Indian anthropology in the Soviet Union.30 By submitting an entry on the Tlingit Indians, Averkieva also contributed her scholarly expertise to a published collection on Native Americans compiled by a group of Marxist and Leftist American anthropologists in New York.31 She became instrumental in popularising, editing and writing substantive, professional comments about various popular publications devoted to American indigenous tribes, Native American culture and history. According to many contemporaries, Averkieva’s commentary introduced two major popular publications about American Indians which created a ‘cult following’ among millions of Soviet children who had already ‘fallen in love’ with the Native American theme of DEFA Indian films featuring Gojko Mitic – a general history of Native Americans by the Czech ethnographer Miroslav Stingl (1966) and Dee

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Yulia Averkieva in 1979.

Brown’s book (1970) about the resistance movement of various Native American tribes against US westward expansion.32 Until her death on 9 October 1980, Averkieva was an active participant in all major Soviet conferences and academic projects devoted to the history and anthropology of Native Americans. She became known as the visionary catalyst who set the standard that paved the way for the field of Soviet Studies on Native Americans. All enthusiasts of so-called American Indian Studies (or Indianistika) in the Soviet Union were inspired by Averkieva’s pioneering research work. Although some scholars noted the very conservative (almost orthodox) Marxist ideological approaches of this research, overall, even the most merciless of Averkieva’s critics acknowledged that despite her emphasis on traditional Marxist-Leninist methodology and rejection of all ‘bourgeois deviational theories’, Yulia Averkieva laid ‘the proper groundwork’ for future ‘serious studies in Native American economics, society, politics, culture and religion’ in the Soviet Union.33

From Playing to Studying American Indians As contemporaries noted, the immense popularity of and growing mass interest in North American Indian culture and history, which had already

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existed among Soviet youth by the end of the 1960s, received a new impulse in the early 1970s when, suddenly, the Soviet media began ‘mass coverage’ of the rise of American Indian political activities in the US on a regular basis. One Soviet enthusiast of Native American culture who began to study the history of American Indians in the 1980s recalled how, ‘in its 13 February 1973 issue, Pravda began informing Soviet readers about Wounded Knee, describing social unrest in South Dakota in connection with the murder of an Indian from Lakota. This newspaper dedicated more than ten articles to South Dakota Indians during the spring of 1973. Later Indian protest actions, such as Menominee on the Kootenai Reservation, received proper attention in the press.’34 Eventually, this surprising increase of articles about American Indians and their resistance movement in the official Soviet press in 1973 not only stimulated the Soviet public’s mass interest, but also contributed to the steady development of a new field in American Studies in the Soviet Union – Soviet studies of Native American ethno-history, politics and culture. Some scholars also argue that the special subculture of Soviet ‘Indianists’ (Indianistika) emerged at the same time and also influenced American Indian Studies. According to American visitors who defined this subculture, Indianists were ‘Soviet citizens dedicated to the preservation of Native American culture’, who ‘progressed from an outlaw movement (in the 1970s and 1980s) to an official organisation seen across seven time zones on Soviet Central TV (in 1990).’35 Beginning with direct imitation of Native American lifestyle and culture as a result of literary and film influences, this Indianist subculture began its formation during the 1970s. According to its representatives, which included ordinary everyday enthusiasts who took Indian names, such as Sergei Ivanov (Wapiti) and Vladimir Koshelev (Eagle’s Feather), and future Soviet scholars of American Indian culture and history such as Alexander Vashchenko and Andrei Znamensky, the first groups of young Soviet Indianists started appearing in various regions of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1960s. The movement’s pioneers consisted of enthusiasts from the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, who manufactured special Native American Indian garments, decorations and so on. Usually, they spent their summers in the woods imitating the life of Native Americans. Eventually, similar groups appeared in the town of Velikie Luki, in the Pskov region (a tribe of the Kauchi), in Novosibirsk – a tribe of the Red Arrows, in Petrozavodsk – a Dakota tribe and so on. Throughout the 1970s more groups and individuals joined this movement.36 In 1976, an Indianist group of the Forest Union was organised in Leningrad, and afterwards this movement extended to

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various localities of the Moscow, Ivanovo and Cheliabinsk regions of Russia, and to the Lviv, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine. Even the closed Soviet cities (those controlled by the KGB), such as Arzamas-16 (Sarov), did not escape this new fashion of Indianistika. The Soviet media began coverage of the movement, thereby helping young enthusiasts to locate each other and to establish a very intense correspondence as well as the exchange of various printed information among the Soviet Indianists. As a result of these efforts, and by means of this correspondence, in 1978 these young Soviet enthusiasts, who were mostly young workers and college students, created their own All-Union group – the Organisation for the Preservation of North American Indian Culture (Организация Сохранения Культуры Североамериканских Индейцев – OSKSI). All of these Indianists strived to collect any available material about Native Americans. Eventually, they began searching for original documents (in English) and publications, covering the culture and history of American Indians. Throughout this time, Soviet Indianists were busy making numerous photocopies of various American publications featuring Native Americans from the collections of the central Soviet libraries in Moscow and Leningrad, such as the Lenin State Library; they began exchanging these materials with other groups all over the Soviet Union. Soviet Indianists began studying English to understand new printed material about American Indians. Their groups, originally numbering 50–70 individuals by the end of the 1970s, multiplied by hundreds during the 1980s. This new phenomenon attracted the KGB’s attention. Many participants recalled their frequent ‘prophylactic’ interrogations by KGB officers. Almost all of the Indianist groups in the Soviet Union were monitored by the KGB, which attempted to infiltrate the movement, being wary of this ‘unhealthy interest in American Indian culture and the English language’ among Soviet youth. The KGB feared that the Soviet Indianists’ endeavours would not only create ‘an alternative [Native American] way of life’ – with a movement poised to organise itself all over the USSR – but would also entice its followers to correspond with ‘foreigners and international organisations’, who shared a similar interest in American Indians.37 During the spring of 1980, six original pioneers of the Indianist movement met in Leningrad and decided to start the first ‘informal’ journal of Soviet Indianists and organise the first meeting of enthusiasts of their movement from all over the Soviet Union. They called it ‘The Big Council’ for all tribes of Soviet Indianists and sent invitations to all the movement’s major Soviet centres. The Leningrad Indianists planned for this meeting to occur somewhere near Leningrad at the end of July 1980, but it was almost sabotaged by KGB

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interference. The KGB arrested all six original organisers of the Big Council, including Sergei Ivanov (Wapiti). After many hours of interrogations, the KGB officers, who wanted to create ‘a safe city landscape’ in Leningrad for the1980 Olympic Games, requested that the organisers cancel the meeting and threatened them with ‘unexpected consequences in their student and academic careers’.38 Thus, at the end of July, Wapiti and his Leningrad friends had to inform the invitees about the meeting’s cancellation. However, despite this cancellation, 14 people (mostly from Leningrad, Novosibirsk and Moscow) met secretly on 19 August 1980 on the small island of Troinoi on Lake Otradnoe to the north of Leningrad. During this meeting the Big Council of Soviet Indianists decided to establish ‘working relations’ with the Institute of Ethnography and the American Indian clubs in East Germany. Following this meeting, its participants, who complained about constant KGB constant harassment, decided to select ‘their own approved official informer for the KGB’ in order to circumvent KGB infiltration of their group. One of the organisers of the Big Council from Leningrad, Ovases, confessed to his ‘brothers’ that KGB officers threatened to punish him with expulsion from the College of Fine Arts if he refused to collaborate with the secret police. After a lengthy discussion about this issue with his fellow Indianists, Ovases was permitted by his friends to become their ‘official KGB snitch’ (informer).39

Figure 22 Aleksandr Vashchenko with Eagle Feather (Oleg Koshelev) near Leningrad in 1983.

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Soviet Indianists in the rituals of Pow-Wow, 1983.

During 1980 –1, enthusiasts of the Indianist movement met in different locations, organised ‘underground’ periodical publications and formed a few rock music groups, for example, the Red Power band from Novosibirsk, which performed songs about Native Americans. In December 1980, Eagle’s Feather (Vladimir Koshelev) from Novosibirsk visited Leningrad to discuss with his ‘brothers’ the fate and plans of future Big Council meetings. As a result of long discussions, everybody agreed to organise the annual meetings in the format of a traditional American Indian Pow-Wow – a special gathering of Native Americans to meet and dance, sing, socialise and honour Native American culture and history. The major venue for this event, planned for the summer of 1982, was a new club created by the Leningrad Indianists. Using their friends’ KGB connections at the Leningrad rock club that had already been sponsored by the KGB, Ovases and Wapiti persuaded the city Komsomol apparatchiks to sign the necessary papers to register the local Indianists in Leningrad officially.40 Ovases and Wapiti proposed a name for the new organisation to the Leningrad city administration – the Leningrad Indianist Club ‘Alcatraz’. The local Indianists promised to organise the All-Union meeting of Soviet Indianists to celebrate the Native American tradition of the Pow-Wow as a ‘demonstration of the anti-imperialist solidarity of Soviet youth against

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the racial discrimination and exploitation of American Indians in the USA’ as the club’s first practical, ideological and cultural event. In late July 1982, representatives of the Leningrad Komsomol and KGB visited this celebration of the Pow-Wow, organised near Leningrad, and approved it. More than 50 young enthusiasts lived in seven tipis during this meeting with additional people visiting the event as well. As a gesture legally approving the event, the Leningrad city administration officially registered the Indianist club ‘Alcatraz’, legitimising ‘the new antiimperialist action of Soviet youth’s solidarity with Native Americans’ – the Pow-Wow, an innovative ritual of the Soviet youth movement. From summer 1982, the Soviet Pow-Wow was held near Leningrad almost every year. In 1982, Indianist clubs emerged in Gomel, Belarus, as well as in Kharkiv and Zaporizhia in Ukraine. Despite (or probably, because of) the obvious KGB presence in Indianist groups, this movement became a massive youth phenomenon, reaching its peak in the summer of 1984. During perestroika, more Indianist communities were founded all over the Soviet Union, starting with the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod in the west, and finishing with the Altai Mountains and the city of Syktyvkar in the east.41

Figure 24

Soviet Indianists in the rituals of Pow-Wow, 1984.

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At the same time, many of the movement’s young Soviet enthusiasts initiated their own in-depth research of Native American culture and history. Eventually, some of these researchers would become genuine experts in American Indian Studies. According to Alexander Vashchenko and Andrei Znamensky, the impetus for focusing on engaged research rather than on imitating the Indian lifestyle resulted from a special academic symposium entitled ‘American Indians in the Contemporary World’, organised in autumn 1982 by Valery Tishkov, a young and ambitious expert in Canadian Studies, at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Although the idea of this conference can be credited to Alexander Vashchenko, an enthusiast of Soviet Indianistika, its actual organiser was Averkieva’s young successor at the Institute of Ethnography, the new head of the Department of the Peoples of America, Valery Tishkov.42 After 1982, the entire movement of Soviet Indianists began, gradually, to divide into two distinct groups – (1) the so-called ‘reenactors’, active imitators of the American Indian lifestyle, and (2) academic students of Native American history and culture.43 While the annual Soviet Pow-Wow (held in 1983 near the railway station Kanneliarvi, and in 1984 in Sablino, Leningrad region)

Figure 25

Soviet Indianists in the rituals of Pow-Wow, 1984.

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attracted numerous participants (more than 400, including foreign guests from East Germany with 15 tipis for a few weeks) and featured more diverse activities (music, dance, sports, fashion shows etc.), many Indianists rejected the ‘pure theatrical elements’ of their movement and attempted to recreate an authentic communal American Indian lifestyle, ‘which had nothing to do with any industrial civilisation, neither American, nor Soviet’. As an initial reaction to the ‘strong theatricality’ of the movement, and as a complete rejection of the traditional ‘industrial urban way of life’, in 1984 Vladimir Koshelev (Eagle’s Feather) founded the community of Blue Rock, an Indian-type lifestyle commune in the Altai Mountains. Many loyal supporters from Leningrad and other localities of the Soviet Union followed Koshelev and joined him in this community.44 At the same time, though, many of these followers became frustrated with the overall situation in the movement and quit it. A majority of these disillusioned followers resumed their traditional ‘Soviet’ lifestyle. However, some participants of the movement (mostly from the Soviet provinces) concentrated their efforts on and devoted their lives to the scholarship of Native American culture and history. Eventually, in the 1980s, they joined the growing field of American Studies in the USSR. The direct support of colleagues from Soviet centres of American Studies in Moscow and Leningrad helped these provincial Indianists to build their careers in the new and growing field of Soviet Studies of Native Americans.

Figure 26

Women Pow-Wow in 1988.

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Andrei Znamensky and Alexander Vashchenko: Soviet Province –Centre Collaboration Andrei Znamensky’s case is the best illustration of such a development inside the Soviet Indianist movement. Znamensky was born on 3 November 1960 into a family of typical representatives of the Soviet urban intelligentsia in a typical Soviet ‘closed city’ in the Russian Federation: the city of Kuibyshev (Samara). He was born in the same year that his city was closed to foreigners, due to the opening of the new Samara Progress industrial plant, which manufactured space missiles. The plant’s existence transformed Kuibyshev into the Soviet Union’s ‘missile shield centre’.45 Znamensky’s father was a college chemistry professor and his mother taught Russian in the local medical school. As a secondary school student in the early 1970s, like millions of Soviet children elsewhere, Andrei was particularly influenced by the images of American Indians portrayed by Gojko Mitic and Pierre Brice in the Indian DEFA and West German films, on the one hand, and by stories about Native Americans and their lifestyle in the classic novels of Mayne Reid and Fenimore Cooper on the other. In Znamensky’s imagination, the truly free American Indians should live on prairies near mountains and ride horseback. These stereotypes were supported by images from the German western Winnetou Apache Chief and from such Gojko Mitic films as White Wolves and Trail of the Falcon. However, Znamensky was also affected by reading the stories of the British Canadian writer Ernest Seton Thompson (1860–1946), particularly by Two Little Savages, as well as the novels of the East German writer Liselotte WelskopfHenrich (1901–79).46 In 1974, his father, who had become aware of Andrei’s strong interest in American Indian culture, bought him an academic edition of Averkieva’s book on Native Americans, which had recently been published by the main Soviet academic publishing house.47 The book was a genuine revelation for the 14-year-old boy. Znamensky realised that Native Americans could be the subject matter of legitimate and in-depth scholarly research. He wrote a substantive letter to Averkieva, requesting her professional opinion and advice regarding his potential academic interest in the ethno-history of American Indians. To his surprise, Averkieva not only answered Znamensky’s letter, but encouraged him to study the English language and read more books about Native Americans in English in order to prepare himself for enrolment at the university’s department of history for academic training as an expert in American Indian Studies. This letter, written in 1975 by the Soviet pioneer of Indianistika,

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completely changed Andrei Znamensky’s life. He began dreaming of travelling to the United States to study Native Americans there – Andrei imagined that with Averkieva’s support he could become a new Soviet ethnographer and a historian of American Indians. It was also at this time, while visiting the local city library, that he discovered a new Soviet academic journal: SShA. Ekonomika, politika, ideologiia, which featured a number of topics on the United States, including the history and culture of Native Americans. Znamensky began reading this ISKAN magazine on a regular basis. He was especially moved by the Russian translations of Dee Brown’s book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, published as a series in this journal. Znamensky recalled later how he made notes on the translation by hand in his school notebooks. Beginning in 1975, he started to compile not only his handwritten notes but also various published material which contained information about Indians. In her 1975 letter to Znamensky, Averkieva suggested that he begin reading American literature about Native Americans in its original English. Thus, Andrei Znamensky started travelling to Moscow, where at the famous ‘Book House’ on Kalinin Avenue he would buy paperback editions of original American books about Native Americans.48 During one such raid on this Moscow bookshop in 1977, Znamensky eventually managed to acquire an original American paperback edition of Dee Brown’s book. Another American book, discovered by Znamensky at this same time, which stressed the Left’s criticism of US policy towards indigenous peoples, was Howard Fast’s novel The Last Frontier about the Cheyenne tribe fighting for its rights.49 Reading this book and other materials about the Native American resistance and struggle for American Indian rights not only improved his English, but also pushed Andrei Znamensky’s interest in the direction of the political history of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Beginning in 1976, Znamensky started compiling his materials about AIM professionally. He sent numerous letters to various Soviet youth and adventure magazines, requesting help from and contact with those individuals who were equally interested in Native American culture and history.50 Znamensky also made use of his city library to request various American books to be ordered specially from the central libraries of Moscow through the inter-library loan system. Thus, by 1978, Andrei Znamensky had already accumulated a huge collection of various printed and copied materials about Indians, as well as a list of the names of those young Soviet Indianists who had shared their information with him.51 When Znamensky entered Kuibyshev State University in 1979, he was admitted not as a regular student, but as a student attending classes by

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correspondence. For some reason, during his entrance examination in 1978, members of the selection committee suspected him of being Jewish, and they gave him a much lower grade, preventing him from joining the regular undergraduate university class that year. Only the following year, through his parents’ connections, did Znamensky manage to matriculate at Kuybyshev State University, joining the least prestigious form of Soviet higher education, as mentioned above: classes by correspondence.52 Therefore, his aspirations to become an expert in Native American ethno-history were delayed by a few years. However, eventually, Andrei Znamensky passed the additional exams with distinction and joined the regular undergraduate student classes by 1981. He began writing his senior thesis (diploma work) about the political history of the American Indian Movement under the supervision of the local Americanist, historian Boris D. Kozenko (1927–2007).53 As suggested by Znamensky’s mentor, Boris Kozenko, who admired his talented student and approved of his research topic, he sought consultations with experts on Native American ethno-history at the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow, in order to establish his own personal contacts with specialists on American Indian culture and history. Eventually, he established good friendly relations with Dr Alexandr V. Vashchenko (1947– 2013), an expert in American Indian literature and folklore who, following the defence of his own dissertation in 1975, worked at the Institute of International Literature at the USSR Academy of Sciences. In addition, Vashchenko also made sure to attend some of the meetings and conferences on Native American culture held at the Institute of Ethnography. When Valery Tishkov, the new head of the American sector at the institute, organised a conference on American Indians in 1982, Vashchenko supported this endeavour and invited all his friends who were enthusiasts of Indianistika, including Andrei Znamensky, the young student from Kuibyshev, to attend this event. After the conference, Znamensky not only established important contacts with other Soviet Indianists who had participated, but also realised the importance of in-depth and serious research, emulating Vashchenko as his role model of a scholar. Beginning in 1982, Znamensky also maintained good relations with Alexander Vashchenko.54 In 1984, Znamensky graduated from Kuibyshev University and began working as an assistant professor of history at the local college. At the same time, he continued his research and participated in the Soviet Pow-Wow ceremonies near Leningrad in 1984 and 1985. His university mentor, Kozenko, helped him to embark on his graduate education in Leningrad, at the local pedagogical institute, where Znamensky eventually defended (in

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1988) his PhD (kandidatskaia) dissertation, devoted to the history of US government policy regarding Native Americans during the 1970s.55 As a provincial Soviet historian, Znamensky had limited access to the resources necessary for his research. Nevertheless, in addition to the traditional sources from the collections of the Lenin State Library and the Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow, Znamensky discovered a very unusual resource for his studies. This resource was none other than the ‘All-Union paper disposal area’ on the outskirts of his home town of Kuibyshev. This unique territory (in the Soviet closed city) was used as a special location in the Soviet system of paper recycling. For many years, since Stalin’s time, the Soviet administration engaged in the practice of collecting all paper discarded by foreign embassies and various offices in Moscow belonging to foreign organisations and transported this garbage for recycling to a specially designated location in Kuibyshev. Paradoxically, during the early 1980s, this garbage area (‘paper dumpster’) became a favourite stamping ground for many local intellectuals, including Znamensky’s friends, who were interested in collecting foreign printed materials – books, journals and so on. Following his friends, Znamensky began visiting this location, which had no regular security guards. Over the course of rummaging through the ‘paper dumpster’, Znamensky managed to collect numerous issues of American journals published in the 1970s, such as Time, Newsweek and so on, which eventually became indispensable sources for his ‘political history of Native Americans’ of the same decade.56 Another valuable source for Znamensky’s research endeavours was his Moscow-based friend Vashchenko, who not only provided him with vital information about Native Americans, but also suggested that he translate and publish a mystical spiritual book, written by Black Elk (1863 – 1950), a spiritual leader, a ‘holy man’ of the Lakota-Sioux Indians.57 Znamensky devoted many years of his life to translating this book and writing commentary on it; it was finally published during perestroika in Yakutsk, Siberia. Translating, editing and commenting on this text became the long collaborative project of the Muscovite Vashchenko and the ‘provincial’ historian Znamensky. To the surprise of both scholars, the project eventually brought them a significant sum of money in the form of an official honorarium paid by the Siberian publishing house in 1989 – 90.58 This long collaboration with Vashchenko also produced important safeguards for Znamensky when he experienced his first encounters with the KGB, which sought to impose its control over all of the major figures of the Indianist movement. As a frequent visitor to the US (since 1979),

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Vashchenko had developed certain connections with the KGB, which allowed him to protect his young friends such as Znamensky. As a Soviet expert in American literature and folklore, Alexander Vashchenko began to apply for travel to the US immediately following the defence of his kandidatskaia dissertation in 1975. Vashchenko’s main and very personal interest was Native American folklore and literature: he emphasised this fact in all his applications for foreign travel. Eventually, the administration of the Institute of World Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences included Vashchenko as part of a group of Soviet scholars whose travels were funded by IREX. From November 1979 to February 1980, Vashchenko, together with Dmitry Urnov, his older colleague from the same institute, travelled to the United States, visiting Princeton and Cornell Universities, where they met the faculty members and students of those institutions. George Gibian, Professor of Russian Literature at Cornell, noted the literary erudition of the Soviet guests, especially Vashchenko’s knowledge of American Indian history and folklore. In his IREX report, Gibian praised both scholars, whose visit to Cornell ‘was great – full of fine talks, etc.’59 From 1981 to 1989, through the financial support of IREX and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Vashchenko had the opportunity to participate in various international conferences devoted to modern American literature; he visited the University of Mississippi, and various colleges in Ohio, where he discussed the challenges of translating the prose of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway with his American colleagues.60 But as many of his American friends revealed, during all of those visits, Vashchenko cherished only one secret and heartfelt dream – to make personal contacts with Native Americans and collect their folklore material. Vashchenko’s engaging personality attracted his American colleagues, who not only made the effort to help him arrange such contacts, but also brought these personal contacts – living Indian chiefs – directly to him, in Moscow. As one American friend recalled Vashchenko’s visit in October 1989 to a conference on Hemingway in Ohio, this Soviet expert in American Indian folklore also demonstrated his enthusiasm for and knowledge of such an American literary genius as Hemingway, ‘A slender, quietly engaging man in his mid-forties, with thinning black hair, frayed slack suit and the stereotypical black-framed glasses of the Russian intellectual, he offered a spontaneous toast at the opening banquet – citing Hemingway’s image of a “moveable feast” – that set the tone for a stimulating week [at the conference].’61 During perestroika, Vashchenko became an instrumental figure in arranging very important contacts between American visitors and

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Andrei Znamenskii and American Indian in 1989.

such Soviet provincial Indianists as the young historian from the closed city of Kuibyshev, Andrei Znamensky. But prior to the visits of the American guests (who, eventually, witnessed the Soviet Indianists’ ceremonies in 1990), the most popular foreign guests at the Soviet Pow-Wows in the 1980s had been the Indianists from socialist East Germany. The most active East German Indianist, the editor of a special journal titled Ametas about Native Americans, was Herbert Schmidl.62 He established an intensive correspondence with many Soviet Indianists, including Andrei Znamensky. All East German visitors to Soviet Indianist meetings were recommended by Schmidl. In his letters, he introduced himself as a worker from a gas factory at Karl-Marx-Stadt. Herbert Schmidl officially invited Soviet enthusiasts of Native American culture to visit their colleagues in East Germany. Eventually, thanks to funds collected by Soviet Indianists and due to the KGB’s approval, one of the leaders of the Novosibirsk Indianists, Mato Nazhin (Sergei Nemkov), visited the GDR and met Herbert Schmidl in 1983.63 As eventually became clear, the entire East German Indianist movement was controlled by the state political police, known as the Stasi: Herbert Schmidl was a Stasi captain and had close

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relations with a famous Soviet spy and KGB operative in Soviet academia, Iosif Grigulevich.64 KGB agents such as Grigulevich also tried to control Soviet Indianists, especially those in Soviet academia. As Andrei Znamensky later confessed, the KGB’s intimate interest in the movement of Soviet enthusiasts of Native American culture was a nuisance. As mentioned above, KGB officers would summon almost every participant of this movement for ‘regular prophylactic’ interrogations – a practice which continued until 1991, especially in provincial Soviet cities. Some of the Soviet Americanists who were victims of KGB harassment later had to emigrate to the US and other foreign countries, including Andrei Znamensky, who did precisely this in 1991–2.65 Those who survived this harrassment laid the foundation for the still very popular movement of studying and reenacting American Indian history and culture in post-Soviet space.66 A few of these individuals, namely Alexander Vashchenko, tried not to focus on the KGB’s activities, and continued instead to engage in their studies of Native Americans, applying their knowledge of American anthropology to a new field – the study of indigenous tribes in Russian Siberia – which began to flourish as an academic discipline particularly in post-Soviet Russia.67

Valery Tishkov: From the Russian Province to Soviet Academic Hierarchy Two distinct individuals representing different fields in Soviet Amerikanistika, and who pioneered the first Soviet conference on Native American culture and history in 1982, remained the uncontested leaders of post-Soviet American Indian Studies in Moscow – Alexander Vashchenko, the expert in Native American literature and folklore, and Valery Tishkov, a specialist in Canadian history and the anthropology of American Indians. Eventually, these two founders of American Indian Studies in the Soviet Union contributed their expertise to the professional development of postSoviet studies of indigenous people, ethnicity and nationalism in postSoviet Russia.68 If Vashchenko represented the typical Muscovite Soviet intellectual elite, having been born in Moscow and having spent all of his life in the city, Tishkov was a different type of Soviet intellectual. The latter was one of numerous Soviet provincial intellectuals who came to Moscow to study and make a career during the Khrushchev Thaw. He was born on 6 November 1941 in the small Russian town of Nizhnie Sergi in the region of Sverdlovsk (in the Urals), where he grew up in a typical family of Soviet Russian

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provincial intellectuals. His mother was a teacher at the local elementary school, and his father was a teacher of geography and physical education at the local secondary school in this small Ural industrial town.69 While in high school, Valery Tishkov, whose favourite subjects were Russian literature and history, was inspired by his teacher of Russian literature, who advised him to enter the prestigious Moscow State University (MGU) rather than the local Ural colleges. Thus, after graduating with honours (s zolotoi medaliu) from Nizhnie Sergi’s high school in 1959, Valery Tishkov moved to Moscow to enroll at the MGU Department of Philology. However, once in Moscow, he realised that academic competition among the entrants for this department was at its highest that year. Therefore, Tishkov changed his mind and submitted his documents for enrolling in another department for a subject he also enjoyed, and ended up choosing the MGU Department of History where he hoped to study Russian and Soviet history. Moreover, during the third year of his studies, Tishkov decided to select the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) as his main specialisation at the department.70 Many provincial historians who entered the MGU Department of History in those years clearly understood that this specialisation could help promote their academic and political careers, because the history of the CPSU was a major ‘ideological’ subject taught in every college and university in the Soviet Union. Overall, during Khrushchev’s era, the majority of MGU Department of History graduates received ‘regular job assignments in secondary schools as teachers of history’. Nevertheless, a degree which included the history of the CPSU as ‘a major specialisation’ could guarantee a MGU Department of History graduate a ‘steady and comfortable job as a college professor of CPSU history’. This was especially important for a provincial historian such as Tishkov. But unfortunately for him, during the 1962– 3 academic year, Tishkov became friends with a few American visiting scholars who had arrived in the USSR on an academic exchange programme and took residence at one of MGU’s dormitories. One of these scholars was Martin Malia, a professor of Russian History from the University of California, Berkeley. Malia lent Tishkov Stalin: A Political Biography by Isaac Deutscher.71 Tishkov was so impressed by this book, and especially by its detailed description of Stalin’s purges and political repressions of the 1930s, that he referenced this material during one of his seminars on CPSU history. An MGU professor who supervised this class immediately denounced and reported Tishkov to the department’s administration as ‘a student spreading anti-Soviet rumours among his

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classmates’. To avoid ‘political persecution’ and possible expulsion from MGU, Tishkov switched from the history of the CPSU specialisation to modern and contemporary history, asking Professor Evgenii Yaz’kov, the deputy chair of the kafedra of modern and contemporary history at the Department of History, for permission to study ‘North American history’. At this point, because of Tishkov’s frequent and friendly communications with such American MGU visitors as Malia, Professor Terrence Emmons from Stanford and Richard Hellie (later a professor of Russian History at the University of Chicago), and his reading of American books such as Deutscher’s Stalin biography, Tishkov had been noted by MGU Americanists, including Yaz’kov, as a ‘talented student with good spoken and reading skills in English’. Therefore Yaz’kov accepted Tishkov as a new student in his kafedra with a new specialisation in the modern and contemporary history of the USA and Canada. Meanwhile, G. N. Sevostianov (a retired KGB officer, turned historian) from the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences took on the supervision (occasionally) of various diploma research students from MGU’s Department of History specialising in US contemporary history. Yaz’kov recommended Tishkov to Sevostianov as one of his new talented students ‘with relatively good English reading skills’. As a result, Tishkov became Sevostianov’s student, and wrote his undergraduate student diploma work (an equivalent of the American MA thesis) on ‘The US position at the Potsdam Conference of 1945’ under Sevostianov’s supervision. According to some contemporaries, Sevostianov’s supervision saved Tishkov’s academic career and protected him from further harassment by the KGB. Tishkov’s classmates denounced and reported him to MGU’s administration for ‘his frequent illegal communications with Americans in MGU’s dormitory’, and accused Tishkov of ‘drinking American whiskey, smoking Marlborough cigarettes and reading American (forbidden) books.’ Despite all of these denouncements, Sevostianov’s protection guaranteed Tishkov’s graduation from MGU safely in 1964. Although Tishkov was a very active member of the Komsomol organisation at MGU’s Department of History, which recommended him to be included as a member of the special Soviet student exchange group designated for a trip to Canada, the KGB’s information about his ‘frequent contacts with Americans’ was used by the department’s communist organisation as a pretext for denying Tishkov permission to travel abroad in 1964.72 Thus, instead of travelling to Canada, Tishkov was compelled to accept his first job assignment in August 1964 to the city of Magadan in the Soviet

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Union’s Far East, the infamous location of Stalin’s labour camps. Despite this ‘inferior place’ for employment, Tishkov was fortunate enough to secure a teaching position there as a professor of history, rather than the job of an ordinary teacher of history in a provincial Soviet secondary school. Using his good personal connections with other MGU graduates who had already secured their teaching positions at the Magadan Pedagogical Institute, Tishkov obtained an official invitation from this institute regarding his job placement there. During 1964– 72, Tishkov taught modern and contemporary history of Europe and America at the Institute’s HistoricalPhilological Department. In 1969, he was even promoted to the position of chair of this department, following the successful defence that same year of his kandidatskaia (PhD) dissertation entitled ‘The historical preconditions of the Canadian revolution of 1837’ at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute under the supervision of Alexei L. Narochnitsky.73 Eventually, Tishkov’s long-lasting connections with Sevostianov and his fortuitous marriage to a resident of Moscow not only helped promote his academic career, but also enhanced his legal status for potential travel abroad: he became vyezdnoi as early as 1967. During this year, Tishkov travelled abroad for the first time to visit his college friend (from Moscow) in East Germany. After securing KGB clearance, the young historian from Magadan was even included on the official list of the Soviet delegation for the 13th International Congress of Historical Sciences, organised by the International Committee of Historical Sciences in Moscow in August 1970.74 As a result, in 1972, Tishkov left Magadan for good for Moscow, where Sevostianov helped him to join the sector of the history of the USA and Canada at the Institute of World History (IVI). Once in Moscow, Tishkov made a tremendous ‘leap’ in his academic and administrative career. Following Sevostianov’s recommendations, in 1974, Evgeni M. Zhukov, the director of this institute and the president of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, offered Tishkov the position of secretary of the organisational committee for the preparation of Soviet historians for the forthcoming International Congress of Historical Sciences in San Francisco, USA in 1975. This position would serve as ‘the key trigger’ in Tishkov’s administrative career. He was not only included in the official Soviet delegation for this Congress, but, following his return to Moscow, Tishkov was appointed to the new (and very prestigious) position of academic secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Department of History (uchenyi sekretar’ otdeleniia istorii Akademii Nauk SSSR), a responsibility which he

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fulfilled until 1981. Meanwhile, he embarked on new research projects while travelling (for the first time in his life) to Canada in 1973. During this visit, Tishkov began collecting new material for his research on the early colonial history of Canada, and especially on the history of the Native American tribes of Canada. The main outcome of this research was his doktorskaia dissertation entitled ‘The liberation movement in colonial Canada’, which he defended at the Institute of World History in 1979.75 Following the defence of his dissertation, Tishkov was appointed head of the sector of ethnography of the peoples of America at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1981.76 Beginning in 1973 and until perestroika, Tishkov made 30 official research trips to the United States and Canada. He became the leading Soviet scholar on Canadian Studies and the official organiser of the Soviet Studies of Native Americans, particularly in the field of Native American anthropology. Tishkov’s direct connections to the administration of the USSR Academy of Sciences were instrumental in his obtaining a very prestigious American research grant – the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship. In 1980, the American administration of this academic exchange programme sent an announcement regarding this fellowship to the Soviet administration of the Academy of Sciences. As a result, the academy’s presidium approved its only candidate for this grant – Valery Tishkov, the scientific secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Department of History. The Americans’ initial, official reaction to Tishkov’s candidacy was negative. Only after a long period of negotiations, when the USSR Academy of Sciences rejected to send an alternate candidate, did the Eisenhower Foundation finally accept Tishkov’s nomination in the spring of 1980. The direct result of this trip to the US was Tishkov’s new book about historians and history-writing in the United States, which was published in 1985 in Moscow.77 At the same time, finally, Tishkov established his professional reputation not only as an expert in Canadian history, but also as a specialist in US history. During the 1980s, he became the ‘official’ Soviet Americanist, who combined not only his knowledge of both US and Canadian history, but also his expertise in Native American history, ethnography and anthropology.78 The case of Valery Tishkov, a talented and ambitious historian from a Soviet Russian provincial town, was another example of the important role of the KGB and official academic hierarchy in the process of Soviet knowledge production as it pertained specifically to the promotion of the academic career of those Soviet provincial scholars who specialised in American Studies. The most famous case of such collaboration between the

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Valery Tishkov in 2010.

KGB and Soviet Americanists with a provincial background was the story of MGU Professor Nikolai Sivachev. Nevertheless, for Soviet Indianistika (American Indian Studies), the role of Tishkov, who was apparently connected to the KGB through Sevostianov, especially after 1982, became instrumental. Along with Vashchenko, who also relied on the KGB for support, Tishkov shaped Indianistika into an entirely new academic field in Soviet American Studies. Tishkov and his older friend Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, two Russian Americanists from Moscow, supported many Soviet ‘provincial’ scholars from Ukraine who pioneered the study of Native Americans outside Moscow. One of them was Viktor Kalashnikov, who graduated in 1969 from the Department of History at Odesa State University. Kalashnikov’s good knowledge of the language enabled him to select as his major at the department the history of the British Empire and British imperial politics. As a result of his choice, Kalashnikov wrote and then successfully defended (in 1969) his MA thesis (diplomnaia rabota) on the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa (1899– 1902) as a direct result of British imperialism and colonialism. At the same time, Kalashnikov became interested in the history of British colonialism in North America and of the resistance by Native American tribes to this colonialism. According to Kalashnikov, his reading of James Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reed’s books about American Indians

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during his childhood, and his watching of DEFA ‘Indian’ films featuring Gojko Mitic after 1969, were an equal influence on his research interests. Therefore, after serving (as a private) for two years in the Soviet Army and then two years as a teacher of history and social studies in a vocational school, Kalashnikov decided to begin studying Native American resistance to British imperialism, and in 1973 he was accepted (with his topic on American Indians) as a graduate student at the Department of World History at Dnipropetrovsk State University.79 In contrast to Znamensky and Vashchenko, the idealist enthusiasts of Soviet Indianistika, Kalashnikov represented a different type of Soviet scholar – the pragmatic conservative conformist, who was ready to accept any official ideological interpretation in his history writing, if it could guarantee the steady, stable and profitable promotion of his career in the future. Therefore, instead of the more nuanced analysis of Native American history presented in the studies of Tishkov, Vashchenko and Znamensky, Kalashnikov chose the ‘confrontational’ approach of the traditional Marxist concept of ‘class struggle’. As Andrei Znamensky once noted, ‘considering the Indian a part of the national liberation struggle against American capitalist expansion’, Kalashnikov tried to prove that ‘United States Indian Policy never had a peaceful character’ and interpreted ‘the Indian side as a unified force opposing’

Figure 29 Ukrainian Indianists with a sign of Trident (a state symbol of independent Ukraine) in 1989.

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American/European expansion.80 According to Kalashnikov, who defended his kandidatskaia dissertation in 1977 and his doktorskaia dissertation in 1986 (both at Moscow State University’s Department of History), throughout the colonial period of US history, the ‘Native American resistance’ against American/European imperialists produced ‘the following forms: armed uprisings, diplomacy, boycott of trade with whites, escape from colonisers to distant regions’.81 Eventually, by 1986, Kalashnikov founded his own school of ‘early American history’ in the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. It is noteworthy that, by supporting Kalashnikov’s academic career, Moscow colleagues such as Bolkhovitinov and Tishkov contributed to the rise of the new academic field of American Studies in Soviet Ukraine. ****** As we have seen, the new field of Native American Studies (Soviet Indianistika) in the 1980s was influenced not only by the sincere enthusiasm of ordinary scholars such as Andrei Znamensky from Kuibyshev (Samara) and Viktor Kalashnikov (Dnipropetrovsk), but also by such active members of the official Soviet academic establishment as Valery Tishkov from Moscow. And, unfortunately, the KGB’s infiltration of both the ‘grass-roots’ movement of the Soviet imitators of American Indians (i.e., the subculture of Soviet Indianistika) and the official academic field of Native American Studies became an important component of the realities of the 1980s in the Soviet Union. Despite this infiltration, by the mid-1980s, using personal connections in Moscow, local ‘provincial’ scholars transformed the field of Native American ethno-history into an important part of Soviet Amerikanistika.

CHAPTER 7 CARVING THE ACADEMIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY OF UKRAINIAN AMERICANISTS

During the transition from Brezhnev’s de´tente to Gorbachev’s perestroika, the first Ukrainian Americanists not only began their pioneering research on the ethno-history of Native Americans, the social history of colonial British America and the Ukrainian diaspora in Northern America, but also organised the first research centres for American Studies in Soviet Ukraine. At the same time, Ukrainian Americanists ‘carved out’ their own academic niche in Soviet American Studies. Unfortunately, this process was interrupted by the failures of perestroika, including the Chernobyl catastrophe, which eventually led to a distancing of Ukrainian scholars from their Russian colleagues. Using my own personal story and the intellectual biographies of my older colleagues from Kyiv – Arnold Shlepakov and Leonid Leshchenko – this final chapter explores the problems of building academic and national identities among Ukrainian Americanists during late socialism.

From Rock Music Enthusiast to Social Historian of Colonial America The beginnings of my personal story did not foresee my future academic interests in the colonial period of US history. My parents met at Dnipropetrovsk central regional library, where my mother worked as a librarian-bibliographer after graduating from the Leningrad Institute of Culture in 1950. Meanwhile, my father was a student at Dnipropetrovsk

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Mining Institute. Eight years before (in 1942), during World War II, when Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany, my 16-year-old (then) father, who looked very Jewish with his black curly hair, was arrested by Nazi soldiers in the central market of the city of Zhdanov (Mariupol) in southern Ukraine. It was a typical anti-Jewish raid (oblava), organised by the SS and local Ukrainian collaborators in search of ‘hidden Jews’. My young father was then sent as a prisoner to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he spent the next four years. After his liberation in May 1945 by US troops, he was sent back to Soviet Ukraine where he entered the Mining Institute in Dnipropetrovsk as an undergraduate student, following a year of recuperation and medical treatment in the local hospital. As a good student of coal mining and mathematics, after graduating in 1951 with honours, my father received a special job assignment as chief coal mine engineer with a very good salary, free apartment and other privileges in the newly founded mining town of Vatutino in central Ukraine in Cherkasy region. So my newly-wed parents moved from Dnipropetrovsk to this town, with their first child, my elder brother Fyodor. A few years later, I was born, on 18 December 1958, at the peak of Khrushchev’s thaw. I spent my whole childhood in Vatutino (Vatutine – in Ukrainian), in this small Ukrainian town of coal miners, named after a famous Soviet general, Nikolai F. Vatutin (1901–44), who was shot dead by Ukrainian patriotic guerrillas during World War II.1 My hometown is located in the centre of Ukraine, in its agricultural belt, known as the ‘homeland of the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’.2 New coal (lignite) mines opened in Vatutino during the early 1950s,3 which is why many Soviet political prisoners, freed after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, moved there, seeking jobs. Many of these newcomers were intellectuals, very educated and intelligent people. They spent their free time not in ‘pubs’ and bars, but in Vatutino’s public library, where my mother worked as a librarian. Thus, my first experience as a child was connected to these people’s tales of the atrocities of the Stalinist regime, about the glory and misery of Ukrainian and Russian history. At the same time, I had vague memories of my parents’ loud conversations about ‘Moscow oppression’ of Ukrainian patriots. My mother was an ethnic Russian (her last name was Kochetkova), who spoke both Russian and Ukrainian; my father was an ethnic Ukrainian (with some Greek and Jewish blood in his veins), who spoke exclusively Ukrainian at home. I could not understand the nuances of these conversations or my parents’ discussions about Ukrainian patriotism versus ‘Moscow domination’, but I became aware very early in my life that my family represented the mixed national

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identities – Russian and Ukrainian, alongside Jewish and Greek elements – which would eventually be blended in my own (complicated) Soviet Ukrainian identity. My next memory as a child was of long lines of people at food stores, waiting for bread. Everybody was cursing Khrushchev and his reforms. But even my mother, whose family had suffered under the Stalinist regime, could say nothing in support of Khrushchev because we ourselves lived very poorly in those days. My mother was raising her two sons without a husband (my parents divorced in 1965). Her librarian’s salary was not enough to buy our food: our family dinner was usually tea, butter and bread. My next impressions of childhood concerned books, and a lot of them. I learned to read very early and spent all my time in my mother’s library. I read treatises of great historians of ancient Greece and Rome, historical works written by Nikolai Karamzin, Sergei Solovyov, Vasiliy Kliuchevsky, and also old, dusty volumes from the shelves with the sign ‘To read here is forbidden’. These forbidden books included the Slavic Orthodox Bible, Mikhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine and Petro Shelest’s O Ukraine, Our Soviet Land!4 During my school days, I began to read American literature (of course, in Russian translation). My favourite writers were James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. And I also devoured novels about Native Americans, written by the British writer Thomas Mayne Reid and the German writer Karl May. As I remember, what I loved most of all in those books were romantic adventures in colonial America among the American Indians, the brave pioneers on the banks of the Hudson and Delaware, and the Apache and Navajo, riding horses across the prairies of the American West. I also loved adventure novels about early America and Anglo-American pirates and privateers written by James Fenimore Cooper and Raphael Sabatini. I have preserved my love for that romance of my childhood to the present day. Like millions of Soviet children, I also loved to watch DEFA Indian films with Gojko Mitic and American westerns such as MacKenna’s Gold or My Darling Clementine, which were shown in Vatutino during the 1970s. Besides watching films about American Indians and reading adventure novels about colonial American history, I also began reading the Ukrainian poetry of my favourite poet, Taras Shevchenko, who became a cult figure for my classmates. I found in Shevchenko’s poems not only impressive poetic images of my native land, but also various stories from Ukrainian history, which triggered my interest in the history of my native Ukraine, especially of the so-called ‘Shevchenkiv land’ (Zvenigorodka district of Cherkasy

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region), where I spent my childhood. My mother always encouraged my interest in history, providing me with various publications by Ukrainian historians and writers, available in Vatutino library. These Ukrainian books by the ‘forbidden historian’ Mykhailo Hrushevsky and by writers such as Semen Skliarenko and Mykhailo Starytskyi also shaped my interests in history. By 1976, the year of my graduation from Vatutino high school no. 1, I was already dreaming of becoming a professional historian studying both early modern America and early modern Ukraine. At the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, one more cultural influence determined my tastes and interests. My elder brother Fyodor, a physicist from Moscow, brought to Vatutino music records and audio tapes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Doors and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I still remember my very emotional reaction, in June 1966, when my brother, during his summer break, brought an audio tape of the Beatles’ album Rubber Soul. He borrowed a tape recorder to play it from our neighbours (our family was poor, so we were unable to afford such expensive technology in those days). It was my first exposure to Western rock music. Our family had a relatively good collection of records with classical music (my mother especially loved Mozart and Tchaikovsky), and French and Italian popular music (my mother was fond of Edith Piaf’s songs). We played these records using the old record player our father had bought in 1965, before my parents’ divorce. Now, in late June 1966, I experienced a real culture shock listening not to the old record player, but rather to our neighbours’ new tape recorder. I was thrilled by the unusual catchy and melodic sound of the English songs by the Beatles (my brother called them Bitly). I even tried to memorise two of the slow and melodic songs, ‘Michelle’ and ‘Girl’. On the reverse side of my brother’s tape, I found another sample of very catchy ‘beat music’. This sample was by various Anglo-American beat groups, which fascinated me in 1966 –7. One part of the compilation was presented by the Rolling Stones (my brother called them Rollingi) with the immortal songs ‘Play With Fire’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ and ‘As Tears Go By’. The second part was presented by the Doors with ‘beat’ anthems such as ‘Break On Through’ and ‘Light My Fire’. As I recall, I immediately fell in love with the sound of the English language of those songs. My immediate reaction was to learn English and find out more about the musicians and countries which produced that magic sound. There were very few available sources of information about this music. My brother and his former classmates from Vatutino high school no. 1, who were now college students in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv, provided me

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with original records and audio tapes of good quality during my childhood in Vatutino (through 1967 to 1975). But I and my friends had tastes and music preferences which differed from those of my brother. Moreover, as I recall, it was not enough music information for me. Therefore, together with my friends, I began looking for other sources of information. We found various radio shows about Western popular music. In our small town of Vatutino, during the early 1970s, the first available (and not jammed) radio show with a wide variety of music performers came from socialist Romania. Unfortunately for us, when the Romanian leadership changed their liberal tolerant attitudes toward ‘capitalist’ pop music and replaced our favourite Anglo-American rock in their radio shows with boring Romanian folk-pop, we were left without this traditional source. To some extent, we found some kind of substitute for Romanian radio on the Soviet radio waves during that time. As far as I can recall, from 1970 to 1976, all my Vatutino friends, who loved ‘beat’ music listened to the legendary radio shows of Viktor Tatarsky on the Soviet radio stations Yunost’ (Youth) and Maiak (The Beacon). My friends and I (using their tape recorders) recorded entire Tatarsky shows, especially his Zapishite na vashi magnitofony (Please make your own taperecording). During the 1970s, the main Soviet official label Melodia began releasing ‘bootleg’ versions of Western minions with records of the most popular Western rock performers, such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival (hereafter CCR). During our class breaks in school, we went looking for Melodia records at neighbouring kiosks. After school, at home, our group of friends listened to these Soviet new releases of Western rock music and compared them with the original sound of our tapes. For many of us, such audio sessions became our first lessons of spoken English (for both British English and American English), which we practised by deciphering the recordings of the Animals or the Doors. At the same time, we combined information from Tatarsky’s shows with published articles in the Soviet youth magazine Rovesnik, and tried to figure out the real stories about our favourite musicians. This improvised music research constituted our first lessons in the history of Western popular culture in the small Ukrainian town of Vatutino.5 Another available (but not reliable) source of information for us was Western radio shows from the BBC and the Voice of America. In Vatutino, the radio signal of those stations was of very poor quality, often jammed and distorted. But sometimes, late in the evening, I could catch the Voice of America’s Russian show (of a relatively good quality). As a result of such rare

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luck, I managed to record an entire song by CCR or Grand Funk Railroad. Sometimes, American journalists, who presented new albums by rock music performers, often interrupted such presentations with other radio shows, such as political news or special readings from ‘anti-Soviet’ publications by Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov. As a result of such practices, Soviet young listeners had a unique opportunity to combine recording their favourite song with listening to ‘forbidden’ books by anti-Soviet dissidents. I still recall how frustrated I was in the late summer of 1973, trying to record Grand Funk Railroad’s album We’re an American Band, when the promised presentation of this record was postponed by a long reading from a chapter from Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago by the Voice of America. After this experience, I realised that such intellectual breaks in my recordings contributed to my civic education as well. In this way, I had my other lessons of ‘non-official’ Soviet history and politics as a direct result of my attempts to find information about my favourite music. This unusual ‘rock and roll education’ of mine eventually led to a very critical attitude on my part toward official Soviet propaganda, which I maintained throughout my entire life; I ended up bringing this sceptical attitude of mine to Dnipropetrovsk University in 1976. Another dimension of my rock and roll experience in Vatutino was directly related to my emotional frustration as well. After my parents’ divorce, I gradually realised how precarious my mother’s financial situation had become, trying to provide a relatively decent (within the limits of Soviet socialist reality) material standard of comfort for both my brother and myself, on her small librarian’s salary. By the year of my graduation from high school, in 1976, I became aware that I had grown up in a very poor (even by Soviet material standards) family. This awareness added a lot of anger and bitterness to my fascination with Western rock music, which became a kind of emotional expression of my social and material status. Moreover, my regular habits of listening to political comments by AngloAmerican journalists from the BBC and the Voice of America during the breaks in my music sessions in 1975–6 also contributed to my bitterness and emotional negativity, which I directed against the entire social system in the Soviet Union that put my intelligent and well-educated mother into a low-class position, even below that of those industrial workers, our neighbours, whom I knew as noisy, stinking, illiterate alcoholics, who always abused their own children and publicly despised intelligent people such as my parents. Anglo-American rock also stimulated my serious interest in learning and actively using the English language. Since 1966, from my first exposure to

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the music and lyrics of the immortal Beatles, I tried to study English language and British and American culture. My first experience of such studies was related to my attempts to read and understand the lyrics of the Beatles album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the record sleeve in 1970 and then the lyrics from the record sleeve of rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar in 1973.6 I realised that the Beatles poetry from this first conceptual music record (in a history of rock and roll) represented a real encyclopedia of everyday life and politics in Great Britain for me. At the same time, the lyrics of the rock opera about Jesus Christ stimulated my own interest not only in British youth culture, but also in Christianity and reading the Gospels because I wanted to know the real story of Jesus Christ described in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical masterpiece. Then my neighbour brought me hand-written copies of the lyrics from the major CCR albums. So I not only translated all this CCR poetry, but tried to understand the reality of American popular culture and US contemporary politics. In my mum’s library, I began reading various articles about everyday life and politics in the United States, which were published in a variety of Soviet periodicals such as Za rubezhom (Abroad), Novoe vremia (New Times), Vokrug sveta (Around the World), Smena (Successors), Rovesnik (Contemporary), Inostrannaia literatura (Foreign Literature), Vsesvit (The World), Iskusstvo kino (The Art of Cinema) and SShA: politika, economika, ideologiia (The USA: Politics, Economy, Ideology). My mother was a librarian in charge of the special reading room for periodicals: newspapers and magazines. Therefore she allowed me to borrow all recent issues of my favourite journals so I could read them at home and continue my studies of US politics and culture. At the same time, I began parallel historical research into the sources of my favourite music. Constantly listening to the Beatles, the Animals, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin had triggered my interest in the original musical material which had inspired my favourite musicians. I compared the information from Tatarsky’s and the Voice of America’s radio show with my own music material and discovered the original American roots of British rock. So I began to study the American founders of rock and roll, the original musicians such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and, my musical idol, an inspiration for the entirety of British hard rock, Muddy Waters. My progress in these studies depended on the complexity and seriousness of the music that I began listening to during the 1970s. From the simple texts of the Beatles, the Doors and Creedence Clearwater Revival, I moved on to the hard-rock poetry of Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top, then through the catchy glam rock lyrics of Slade,

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Sweet and T. Rex to the more sophisticated poetry of David Bowie, Queen and finally to the progressive rock ballads of Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Pink Floyd, which required more effort from me to understand the original ideas of my favourite musicians. The various historic allusions, cultural references and poetic images in progressive rock triggered my interest in the cultural history and philosophy of the West and stimulated my historical research as well. Rock music also found me a role model. By 1976, despite all the new music influences on my personality, from King Crimson, Pink Floyd to Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, I preserved a loyalty to only one musician and rock poet, who affected all my cultural and political preferences. This musician was John Lennon, whose musical and poetic ideas connected my childhood’s discoveries of the Beatles music with my emotional negativity and sceptical attitudes toward the Soviet realities of my youth. My friends even gave me the nickname ‘Johnny’, which I occasionally used as a pseudonym during my college years. Knowing about my music collection and knowledge of rock music, the school administration in Vatutino together with our school Komsomol organisation asked me to organise the special music breaks between classes and the evening dance parties. So during 1974–6, I began to use my rock music material for organising officially sponsored ‘music entertainment’ in Vatutino school No. 1, where I succeeded as a Komsomol activist promoting my favourite Anglo-American rock music. And finally, my rock music enthusiasm helped me to establish new important connections with other rock music fans not only in my home town of Vatutino, but also throughout Ukraine and other regions of the Soviet Union. This new communicational infrastructure between Soviet rock music fans provided me and my friends not only with ‘fresh’ new music information, but also with new experience, which, eventually, contributed to new commercial practices for me. Before entering Dnipropetrovsk State University in late August 1976, I had never visited the so-called ‘black market’ to get my music information. Meanwhile, many friends of mine from Cherkasy region had already used their own connections with various black marketeers ( fartsovshchiki) from Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa to find necessary information about ‘fresh’ music. When they left Vatutino in 1976 for various colleges and universities all over the Soviet Union, some of them still used their black market connections for their own music bands and disco clubs, where they played their favourite music; some of them became the real organisers of the illegal music business in various Soviet cities, controlling the entire city’s ‘music markets’ of records, audio tapes and music equipment

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in Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Moscow and Leningrad. Throughout 1976– 9, I often used these connections with my old high school friends, and sometimes even tried to establish my own personal connections with the black marketeers of Dnipropetrovsk to get ‘fresh’ new music.7 These commercial practices and connections also strengthened my distancing from and scepticism of official Soviet ideological and political practices during my college years. As I have written before, for my generation of the 1960s–70s, ‘Anglo-American rockmusic became our own peculiar mode of self-expression and original way of socio-cultural protest against hypocrisy and official values, imposed and enforced by communist ideology.’8 At the same time, my wish to understand the texts of rock songs, composed by my favourite rock musicians, stimulated my interest in English language, American history and culture. Therefore, when I entered Dnipropetrovsk State University history department as an undergraduate in 1976, I decided to combine my love of history with my interest in English. First of all, inspired by images of the Ukrainian past from the poetry of Shevchenko and the books of Hrushevsky, on the one hand, and by English rock lyrics about the Anglo-American past and present, on the other, I had already developed ambitious plans to begin a comparative study of US and Ukrainian history. But after the first weeks of my undergraduate studies in Dnipropetrovsk, I realised that the reality in my university was very different from my expectations and plans. In the first place, I had to put aside my Ukrainian because at the Ukrainian University in Dnipropetrovsk the official language for instruction was Russian. Any efforts to defend Ukrainian culture or refer to Hrushevsky’s interpretations of Ukrainian history were regarded as ‘bourgeois nationalism’. In the second place, I understood that our Soviet authorities considered the department of history as a place to train the future ideological personnel of the Communist Party (or future KGB officers), not to train historical specialists. Communist functionaries at the University did not encourage honest research in history. In fact, they cruelly punished it. Any deviation from the official methodology of ‘class struggle’ was regarded as a serious sin. Two of my best friends, who attempted to investigate honestly the complicated events of the Stalinist era, were excluded from the Komsomol and expelled from the University. Our authorities encouraged and maintained a system of espionage and tale-bearing among the students. They punished those of us who listened to ‘prohibited Western rock music’. Thus I was rebuked and even deprived of a stipend by our Komsomol leaders for my enthusiasm for ‘bourgeois culture’ (i.e., the music of the Beatles and Pink Floyd) during one

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semester, although I was an A-grade student with a perfect academic record, uniformally graded ‘excellent’ (otlichno in Russian). Another important factor influencing the entire intellectual and cultural life of Dnipropetrovsk University was the ‘closed’ status of the city itself. From 1959 to 1987, Dnipropetrovsk was closed to foreigners because the city was the location for the famous rocket factory Yuzhmash (in Russian, or Pivdenmash in Ukrainian), which manufactured the most powerful rocket engines for the Soviet defence system. This closed character of the city contributed to the higher level of secrecy around the rocket factory and the more conservative and tighter ideological and police control over intellectual life and youth culture by the Communist Party and the KGB compared to the situation in other industrial ‘open’ Soviet cities.9 The faculties of different colleges and the university in Dnipropetrovsk took an active part in various ideological campaigns, initiated by the KGB, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, trying to establish close ideological control over the everyday life of college students. Unfortunately, the faculty from the departments of philosophy and CPSU history played the most reactionary and negative role not only in our student life at the university, but in the life of the city as well. Many of the prominent professors of philosophy and history who taught us initiated and supported various ideological campaigns in the city through 1968 till the end of 1986. E. N. Shabalina, I. Moroz, A. Chernenko and other DGU ideologists justified and directed all ideological practices against Western popular culture in the closed city. The philosopher Shabalina kept explaining to DGU students and faculty that it was not only ‘beat music’ from the capitalist West that ‘killed the souls of the future builders of communism’. She pointed out that even Soviet ‘poets with guitars’ such as Yuri Vizbor, Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky ‘brutally distort the socialist political system, slander the Soviet people and poison the minds of our youth’.10 Moreover, those DGU ideologists, together with the city’s Communist Party leadership, complained to Moscow, to the central Soviet administration, that Soveksportfilm, the Soviet agency responsible for the purchase of foreign films for Soviet domestic consumption, bought too many ‘wrong and ideologically harmful movies, which perniciously influence Soviet youth’. Dnipropetrovsk philosophers and CPSU historians even threatened to punish ‘through Communist Party channels’ those Moscow officials who were guilty of buying ‘low-quality products of Western cinema lacking both ideas and principles’.11 Every year, the party leadership and

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DGU ideologists collaborated in the ‘ideological purges’ of various cultural products from the ‘rotten West’. They noted that ‘neither Western popular music nor feature films promoted an upbringing in the communist spirit’. Overall, Western adventure films such as Fantomas, The Magnificent Seven or Black Mask helped to ‘romanticise’ negative moments in the life of capitalist society. As one official noted, ‘the attention of our Soviet youth in such Western films is attracted not by the criticism of social conditions in capitalist society, but most of all by the sexual side, by the criminal romance of thieves, by the customs of the criminal world, and by the “courage” and “honesty” of thieves, film characters.’12 During the 1970s, my University professors from the departments of philosophy and scientific communism became the major ‘protectors of [our] ideological virginity’ from dangerous Western popular culture, trying to prohibit all cultural products from the capitalist West in our Soviet closed industrial city.13 Unfortunately for many undergraduate students of history, our faculty demonstrated the same anti-Western approaches, seeing their major mission to lie not in educating us, their pupils, but protecting us from various forms of bourgeois propaganda – beginning with Ukrainian nationalism or Jewish Zionism and finishing with the academic research of Western historians. In this way, during 1968– 9 our professors of history played an active part in the ideological campaign against Oles Honchar’s novel Sobor and in persecutions of their students for their Ukrainian patriotism and search for historical truth, which they defined as ‘Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism’. Moreover, the professors of our history department destroyed any honest desire for historical truth through their collaboration with the KGB officers, participating in police arrests and the interrogations of young student enthusiasts of Ukrainian history, such as Yuri Mytsyk and Viktor Lavrishchev, who tried to organise a discussion among their classmates of the newly published novel Sobor at the department of history.14 These students were traumatised by this experience of 1968. Yuri Mytsyk, who had joined this department later, in the 1970s, as an expert in Slavic history, kept silence about his ordeal of 1968 and always tried to avoid any ‘dangerous ideological discussions’ of Ukrainian history with us, his undergraduate students. Even Mytsyk’s senior colleagues, like Professor V. Ya. Borshchveskiy, who discussed some ideological issues of Russian and Ukrainian history during their lectures in the 1970s, were reprimanded by the KGB and Communist Party supervisors, who reminded them of their task: ‘to defend Marxism-Leninism’ against ‘Ukrainian nationalists and Western bourgeois falsifiers of history’.15

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This suffocating atmosphere of the Brezhnev era was conducive to hard drinking among the undergraduate students of the department of history; mixing beer with vodka, red wine and white, we sought to sink into alcoholic reveries. We tried to escape from reality into a world of day dreams and fantasy. History for many of us (including myself) turned out to be a way of fleeing from real life as well. But, nevertheless, in those days it was impossible for a decent, well-educated historian to study Russian or Ukrainian history honestly. That is why I decided to get further away from the dangerous ideological spheres of my native land’s history and recent world history into the sixteenth- through eighteenth-century history of colonial America. First of all, such study helped me to learn English and other foreign languages. In the second place, I could, as a professional historian, freely use any kind of sources on early American history without fear of speaking the truth and of the need to apply the ideas of Soviet successors of classical Marxism-Leninism. In the third place (having grown up on American literature), I was moved by normal human curiosity: I wanted to know the historical past of the American people, learn the new facts and new historical theories that had been used by American scholars in their research. During the first two years of my studies in Dnipropetrovsk, I preferred English-language classes to the rather boring and ideologically invested history classes. Our English instructor was Azza Semionovna Katicheva, a talented teacher and wonderful personality. She always supported my interests and projects related to English language; she even helped me to organise special sessions about the Beatles music at our dorm disco club, which I conducted in English. Katicheva knew about my secret goal to study the colonial period of US history and my personal wish to use the English language for my historical research. Therefore, in 1978 she introduced me to Viktor Kalashnikov, a new, young and ambitious teacher of world history who had recently joined our department’s history faculty. Being an expert in early Native American history, Kalashnikov was looking for undergraduate students who knew English well enough to use it in their study of early American history. I was personally recommended to him by Katicheva, and by the end of 1978 Kalashnikov had agreed to supervise my research work. Fortunately for me, Kalashnikov did not insist that I choose his topic of American Indian history. He gave me time to choose what I liked the most. After two months of reading various American books in Dnipropetrovsk Library of Foreign Literature, I decided to study the history of various rebellions of European colonists against British imperial administration on

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the eve of the American War of Independence. I tried to understand how the different ethnic, racial and religious groups of colonists interacted with each other and with the indigenous tribes of Native Americans, and – in the end – contributed to the unique Northern American civilisation that eventually produced my favourite rock music and feature films. By the end of 1978, Professor Kalashnikov had selected almost ten undergraduate students from the group who had already studied English under Katicheva’s supervision at the department of history. Katicheva recommended these students (including myself) to Kalashnikov as potential candidates for the MA degree in US history. After a long conversation with me about my search for a possible topic for my research project in Dnipropetrovsk’s libraries, Kalashnikov suggested I study Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion of 1676 in colonial Virginia, which started with the European settlers’ raids against the American Indians and progressed, eventually, to their bloody confrontation with the British colonial administration, for my better understanding of the complicated and confusing connections of colonialism with ‘acute class struggle’ in early America. At the same time, Kalashnikov recommended I use the internship stipends of our department for my research in Moscow libraries. Therefore, during the summer of 1979, I went to Moscow as a participant of the special internship programme for research in the city’s museums, archives and libraries. I was fortunate to get funding from my university for a two-month internship at the Map Department of the USSR State Historic Museum in Moscow. During this summer of 1979, I not only discovered and described in detail the rare Dutch, German and English maps of various American colonies in the seventeenth century (as a part of my working assignment), but also began visiting on a regular basis the USSR Public Historical Library to check the historic data for my cartographic research. At the same time, in this library I read and made notes of the important American sources and studies on the history of the English colony of Virginia and the story of Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion. During my research in the Public Historical Library, I made the acquaintance of a remarkable person: Elena Vasilievna Beznosova, a librarian in charge of the World History Reading Room. She guided me to the special collection devoted to early American history and explained to me that the overwhelming majority of the collection’s books and magazines had been brought or ordered from the USA by the ‘real expert in US history’: Dr Nikolai Bolkhovitinov from the Institute of World History. I used ‘Bolkhovitinov’s’ collection for my various research projects from 1979 until the 1990s, and Elena Vasilievna always helped me to order new books or

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dissertations from American libraries. Sometimes she borrowed an important book for me using her own privileges as the Public Historical Library’s librarian, and I was able to keep such books in Dnipropetrovsk for months, being able to read and make notes at home. After my return to Dnipropetrovsk, through the entire autumn and winter of 1979 – 80, I continued working with American literature from other Moscow library collections, using a system of inter-library loan at Dnipropetrovsk University. As a result, by the beginning of 1981, I had enough published sources to finish my MA thesis (diplomnaia rabota). Meanwhile, by 1979, I had already discovered that one young scholar from Moscow, Sergei Burin, had already defended his kandidatskaia dissertation about the social conflicts in colonial Virginia, and published a small article about Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion. But I also realised that since Burin’s publications, the Moscow libraries had acquired more recent American studies and documentary collections devoted to this topic. Therefore, I decided to focus on an analysis of the new literature that Burin had omitted. Moreover, during this period I was also influenced by another scholar, a historian of early modern Ukraine: Mykola Koval’skiy, a professor from the Department of Historical Resources and Historiography, whose lectures I attended in 1979–80. At Dnipropetrovsk State University, Koval’skiy created the famous historiographical school of early modern Ukrainian history, whose representatives, his former students, such as Yurii Mytsyk and Serhii Plokhy, became well known not only in post-Soviet space, but also in the West. Many undergraduate students from the Department of History were attracted to Koval’sky’s lectures because of his innovative approaches to the analysis of historical sources. Koval’sky used various documentary and printed sources for a serious discussion about methodological and epistemological issues in exploration of Ukrainian Cossack history, and the intellectual and religious history of early modern Ukraine. Professor Koval’sky inspired me to rewrite my research project on Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion and implement his approaches with regard to my material from colonial Virginian history. The result of this experiment was my MA thesis, written in 1981, The Historical Sources and Historiography of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. This work was based on the analysis of such collections of primary published sources as P. Force, Ch. Andrews and so on, and famous books dealing with the history of Bacon’s rebellion by Th. Wertenbaker, W. Washburn, Ed. Morgan and J. Carson.16 I divided all documents on the subject into two groups – ‘legal documents’ and ‘narrative sources’ – and

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analysed how different political, social, cultural and intellectual traditions shaped the documents of the rebels and their opponents in colonial Virginia and England. Then I concentrated my attention on various historiographical schools in the US and the Soviet Union in the study of social conflicts in colonial British America, analysing various epistemological influences in the historical interpretations of Bacon’s rebellion. After finishing my thesis, I asked Elena Vasilievna Bessonova in Moscow to help me to contact Sergei Burin, who was a regular reader at her reading room in the Historic Library. To my surprise, after Bessonova’s conversation with him, Burin not only agreed to communicate with me, but also became ‘an official external’ reviewer of my thesis. Eventually, in April 1981, Sergei Burin wrote a flattering positive review of my work, recommending me for post-graduate studies in US history.17 Paradoxically, after my MA defence, during one long telephone conversation in May 1981, Burin suggested I contact his senior colleague from the Institute of World History, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, about the possibility of my entering the post-graduate school at their Institute. Unfortunately for me, instead of post-graduate school in Moscow, in September 1981 I was sent (after receiving a special working assignment – poluchil raspredelenie na rabotu in Russian) to a Dnipropetrovsk secondary school as a teacher of history and social sciences. Our department’s administration did not like my ‘independent’ and ‘immoral’ behaviour, which they associated with Western ‘degenerate’ popular culture and alcoholism. So despite my graduation with honours, our department chair rejected my application for graduate school and signed off my working assignment as ‘a teacher in a secondary school’. So, for the time being, I had to postpone my dream of becoming a historian of early America and, being recently married, concentrated my efforts on the strategy of survival and adding to our family budget by working full-time in the middle school teaching ancient and medieval history, and working part-time as a diskjockey at various dance parties. I already hated the Soviet political system and dreamed of leaving Soviet geopolitical space for America, which I had idealised and worshipped since my childhood. My married life in the early 1980s and my teaching and disk-jockey’s experience led to numerous encounters with various practical issues of everyday life in Soviet reality. This experience demonstrated to me how social injustice, corruption, nepotism and the system of personal favours, known as blat, flourished in this Soviet socialist reality. I observed how Communist and Komsomol officials used Soviet ideological institutions and the disco club movement, in which I was

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involved, to make money and promote their careers. I was enraged that my mediocre classmates, members of the Communist Party, who were C-grade students at the university, within a few years of graduation had become part of the Soviet political elite, serving in the offices of the Communist Party or the KGB. I tried to replace this socialist reality with family life and some pedagogical and discotheque activities, which contributed to our family budget during the 1980s. Sometimes, my frustration with Soviet reality led to ideological mistakes in my DJ career, when I would publicly present a Soviet Estrada song that I played during my dance party at a disco club as ‘Sovdepia’.18 My ideological supervisors were so appalled with such slips in my music presentation that they threatened to fire me the next time I repeated the word. Despite my serious involvement in various teaching and disco club activities since 1981, I also continued to visit Moscow libraries to study the familiar collections of the documents on early American history and to write my projects about various aspects of this history. In the Charles Andrews collection, Narratives of the Insurrections, I found interesting documents on Jacob Leisler’s rebellion in colonial New York. Then at the Historic Library I read Jerome Reich’s book about this event and the documents of Leisler’s administration from Edmund O’Callaghan’s Documentary History of New York. As a result of my exploring these and other American collections of published documents, by 1982 I had already finished my first long article on the social history of Leisler’s rebellion. From the beginning, I rejected the simplistic ‘leftist’ interpretation of this revolt by ‘progressive’ American historians such as J. Reich, which was used by a majority of Soviet historians of early America to explain this event within a traditional Marxist ‘class struggle’ model. I was also sceptical about the new American studies that I had read in the Moscow libraries that stressed the purely ‘ethnic character’ of the rebellion. I offered my own interpretation of Leisler’s rebellion. In contrast to John Murrin’s and Thomas Archdeacon’s opinions, I considered this revolt not as an ethnic movement against ‘Anglicisation’, but the struggle of ordinary and wealthy colonists (Dutch and British settlers) against restrictions on their business activity, imposed by colonial administration. It was a real surprise for me that this article, sent to Moscow in 1982, was accepted by the editorial board of Moscow magazine Novaia i noveishaia istoria. Then, in 1983, I sent my work on the history of Dutch and Swedish settlements in North America (New Netherlands and New Sweden) to Voprosy istorii, the main magazine of Soviet historians. That material was also accepted.19

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All of this was unbelievable for me, because in those days I had no job at the University. I worked as a secondary school history teacher and as a discjockey in various dance halls. Moreover, by this time I had caused a serious scandal at the professional-technical school (PTU) because of my ‘ideological unreliability’. I was the teacher in charge of the school discotheque, and my students prepared a wonderful notice about an upcoming dance. The trouble was that, given the shortage of paper, the students had created their announcement on a huge poster with a portrait of Lenin on the reverse side. Unfortunately, on the day of the discotheque, a special ‘Communist Party control’ group visited my school. At first, they were surprised by the content of the notice with such ‘bourgeois’ names as the Beatles, Deep Purple and ABBA (but no Soviet musician). Then they found the face of a communist leader on the back of the same poster and regarded this as a sacrilege, the profanation of a sacred image. Their indignation came to a head when they saw American books in my office, including volumes written by ‘dangerous enemies of Marxism’, such ‘bourgeois falsifiers’ as Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, and my handwritten notes with my own translations from those authors in Russian. Of course, after this scandal I was discharged in disgrace. Fortunately for my pedagogical career, the next month, January 1984, I moved with my family from Dnipropetrovsk to my home town Vatutino, where I resumed teaching contemporary history at the local medical school for nurses. As a result of this move, the ‘Communist Party control’ group from Dnipropetrovsk lost track of me and those zealous ideologists did not persecute me for my ‘ideological mistakes’. But then suddenly my publications in these prestigious Soviet historical magazines opened the door for me to take a post-graduate course at the Institute of World History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Bolkhovitinov, who knew my publications and supported them as a member of the editorial board of Voprosy istorii, agreed to supervise my dissertation. I was a lucky post-graduate student, because my advisor, my teacher Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, was a unique figure in Soviet American Studies. The overwhelming majority of Soviet Americanists, especially those who often went abroad, were either KGB agents, or Soviet secret police informants. Historians who consented to collaborate with the KGB were not only able to visit Western countries, but could also advance their professional careers. Bolkhovitinov, author of serious studies on Russian-American relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and on recent American historiography, preferred to be an honest and decent historian. He rejected any kind of cooperation with the KGB. So all his actions were under its

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surveillance and since 1979 he had not been allowed to visit foreign countries. Moreover, as I realised after my long confidential conversations with Bolkhovitinov, he shared my scepticism about the Soviet political system and communism. If all my teachers in Dnipropetrovsk, including Kalashnikov, were typical Soviet intellectual conformists, who always avoided any political conversations with their students and never publicly criticised the Soviet system, Bolkhovitinov freely discussed various problems of Soviet politics and international relations with me. This kind of Moscow intellectual liberalism in the early 1980s was a very surprising cultural phenomenon to me because I never experienced anything similar at DGU Department of History where everybody was overzealous to demonstrate Soviet patriotism and loyalty to the official communist line. My ‘nonofficial’ mentor in Moscow was Sergei Burin, who recommended me to Bolkhovitinov. Both Bolkhovitinov and Burin represented (to me) liberal pro-Western Moscow intellectuals, who could discuss with me the problems of bureaucratisation of the Soviet academic system, the rise of Russian nationalism among communist ideologists and Russian intellectuals, and the spread of anti-Semitism in the USSR. Both Bolkhovitinov and Burin suffered from the Soviet political system, both were punished by the KGB, both were nevyezdnoi and so on. Bolkhovitinov, who frequently visited the United States between 1968 and 1979, shared with me and Burin his memories about his travels in America. He described all the advantages of the American academic system to us and suggested that I use American academic standards of scholarship, which he described as ‘honest, innovative and open-minded’, in contrast to Soviet standards which were ideologically biased and conservative. As early as 1984, Bolkhovitinov advised me to focus not only on research, but also on preparations for my research trip to the United States. I still remember his words: ‘Seriozha, as a serious historian, as a free intellectual, you must go to the US and spend at least a few months there for your research! Without this trip to America it is impossible for you to succeed here [in the Soviet Union] as a serious Americanist.’20 Bolkhovitinov realised that it was necessary for me, a young Americanist, to contact other American scholars. That is why, in spite of strict KGB rules, in January 1985 he organised my first meeting with my American colleague Marcus Rediker of Georgetown University, now at the University of Pittsburgh. In those days, I was writing an article about sailors and pirates of colonial New York and it was very important for me to meet the colleague who wrote Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, the most important book about the Anglo-American maritime world of the eighteenth century.21

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I remember that we met secretly, being afraid of the KGB shadowing us, at the Lomonosov Monument on the Moscow University campus. Then Bolkhovitinov drove us in his car to his house, where we could talk about our professional problems. The paradox was that we were keeping secret from the KGB our meeting with a leftist, neo-Marxist historian who publicly criticised American capitalism. Nevertheless, if the KGB had found out about our meeting, Bolkhovitinov would have been dismissed from the Academy of Sciences immediately. Bolkhovitinov directed me toward new American literature. He advised me to read not only classic works, but also books by ‘new social’ historians such as Michael Zuckerman, Philip Greven and Kenneth Lockridge. From his personal library, he gave me an interesting collection of articles on Colonial British America, edited by Jack Greene and J. R. Pole. I read this book in a week and, under its influence, I completely rewrote the first version of my dissertation. I also began to read on a regular basis various American historical periodicals in the Public Historical Library in Moscow, starting with the American Historical Review, Journal of American History and finishing with more specialised journals such as the William and Mary Quarterly, New York History, Pennsylvania History and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Doing my research on the social history of colonial New York, I found at the Moscow libraries interesting collections of printed sources, such as the series Original Narratives of Early American History and multi-volume editions prepared by Edmund O’Callaghan and Charles Lincoln.22 I received some published sources through the international book loan service in Moscow libraries. By 1986, I already had copies of collections of documents edited by A. Van Laer, J. Cox, Jr, H. L. Osgood and even seven microfilms of recent American PhD dissertations on the history of colonial New York from Ann Arbor, Michigan.23 My dissertation, finished in 1986, was written within the framework of the Marxist-Leninist concept of American capitalism. Nevertheless, my conclusions were not about institutions or politics, but about social history. They were based on an analysis of original (unknown to Soviet Americanists) historical sources and new American scholarship. In my work, I tried to trace the history of all social conflicts during the first 50 years of British rule in colonial New York: the strikes of cartmen, coopers and bakers after 1667; Leisler’s rebellion of 1689 – 91; the mutiny of New York’s garrison in 1700; the riot of the sailors-privateers in 1705; the uprising of German settlers against the colonial administration on the

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Livingston Manor in 1711; and the slave revolt of 1712. Among the diversity of social contradictions (ethnic, religious etc.), I distinguished as basic those which had determined colonial progress and were connected with property and wealth distribution, with relations between culture and power. The principal conclusion of my work was: ‘The social development of colonial New York at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries was shaped by the struggle of the bourgeois trend of private enterprise in the activities of the colonists against various restrictions to further deepening of that tendency . . .’24 During my post-graduate studies in Moscow after 1983, besides the positive experience of my communication with liberal Moscow intellectuals such as Bolkhovitinov, Burin and Lev Slezkine, who became role models, in a way, for my future life (despite my constant and public criticism of factual mistakes made by Burin and Slezkine in their studies of early America), I had very unpleasant and negative encounters with their colleagues from the same branch of US and Canadian history. Such colleagues as B. Shpotov and A. Pozdniakov, who demonstrated publicly their condescending attitude to me as a ‘provincial Ukrainian’, ridiculed my Ukrainian accent and always criticised my presentations as ‘un-professional and purely impressionistic’. Moreover, any attempt of mine to suggest to Shpotov, who was writing his new book on the industrial revolution in the USA, that he should use recent American publications about industrialisation and research work by new economic and cultural historians was met with an aggressive and rude response. During the discussions of the drafts of my dissertation, Shpotov always confronted my arguments as ‘pro-American idealisation’ of the historical sources. Despite his criticism of my narrative, I successfully defended my dissertation. My defence coincided with the beginning of perestroika, the final chronological period in the history of the Soviet Union, the period of Gorbachev’s reforms. For me personally, this period was from its very beginning directly associated with the tragedy of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine, which affected not only my country but my life as well. My Moscow colleagues planned a discussion of the final draft of my dissertation at the history of the USA and Canada department (Institute of World History) for May – June 1986. But these plans were interrupted by the Chernobyl catastrophe, on 26 April 1986. The Soviet leadership tried to conceal this catastrophe, but at the same time sent thousands of Soviet regular troops and ‘army reservists’ to deal with it and protect/close a zone around the Chernobyl power plant. On 2 May, a policeman knocked at my

Figure 30 Sergei I. Zhuk Lecturing on Colonial New York History in 1991 in Soviet Ukraine.

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apartment’s door in Dnipropetrovsk and handed me a special warrant requesting my obligatory military service in the Chernobyl zone for three months. During my studies at the department of history in Dnipropetrovsk University in 1976–81, I had taken compulsory military training classes (similar to American ROTC college classes), and when I graduated in 1981, I spent three months in military camps and, as a result, I was given the rank of an officer (lieutenant) of the Soviet army and automatically put on the ‘army reserve’. That is why in 1986 I left my wife and my two-year-old son in Dnipropetrovsk and (like thousands of other reservists with college degrees) was drafted into the army and spent May, June and July in special military camps near Chernobyl, protecting a zone as an officer in charge of a special platoon of regular troops. During this period of military service, I had a new and very bad encounter with the realities of the Soviet political system, which sent thousands of people, like myself, to a dangerous ‘Chernobyl zone’ without providing them with any protection from radiation. For the first time in my life, I became aware of the real physical danger and anti-human character of the Soviet system (especially after a confidential conversation with my military physician, when he recommended that I avoid having more children because of the high dose of radiation I could be exposed to during my military service). As a result of this interruption, I had to postpone the discussion of the final draft of my dissertation in Moscow. Eventually, it was discussed and approved in October 1986. So instead of defending my dissertation at the end of 1986 (as my mentor Bolkhovitinov had planned before Chernobyl), I did so only in May 1987 at the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of World History in Moscow. Afterwards, I returned to Dnipropetrovsk University as a lecturer at the department of world history. But my Chernobyl experience of the summer of 1986 completely changed my perception of my relations with Moscow and my Soviet experience. I realised that despite my good relations with my old colleagues from Moscow, I had begun mentally distancing myself from Moscow as a centre of Soviet political power whose dangerous political decisions jeopardised my own physical existence and threatened my family as well.

Arnold Shlepakov, Political Conformism and American Studies in Soviet Ukraine Towards the end of 1980, I visited Kyiv, looking for scholarly advice for my research from a person whom my Dnipropetrovsk mentor, Professor Kalashnikov, had introduced as ‘a pioneer of American Studies in Soviet

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Ukraine’. This legendary person was Arnold Shlepakov. Unfortunately for me, by this time Shlepakov had stopped producing anything original in American Studies. Like many ‘official’ Soviet Americanists (including G. Arbatov and G. Sevostianov), he became mainly an ‘official academic’ organiser of various forms of ‘institutionalisation’ of American Studies in Kyiv. Shlepakov continued to publish, but mostly as an editor of various collective monographs, occasionally contributing one or two chapters to such publications.25 He served as an editor of every major academic and popular publication in Soviet Ukraine, focusing on the history and culture of the ‘Western capitalist countries’. More specifically, Shlepakov would lend his editorial expertise to a broad spectrum of publications and topics ranging from various purely ‘academic’ editions about the international solidarity of the working class in the struggle against fascism, to themes of national relations in the United States and Canada, in such Ukrainian magazines as Ukrainskyi istorychnyi zhurnal, Vsesvit and Visnyk of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Shlepakov was also a major organiser of all official receptions for delegations of foreign scholars and scientists in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.26 Eventually, Shlepakov’s ‘organising genius’ contributed to the creation of a new research institute, devoted to the special study of foreign (mainly capitalist) countries of the world. As Shlepakov recalled, he ‘always dreamed

Figure 31

Arnold Shlepakov in 1978.

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of creating something similar to Inozemtsev’s IMEMO but in Kyiv, in Ukraine’.27 That is how he proposed to transform the ‘overgrown department of modern and contemporary history at the Institute of History’ into a new, separate academic institution, which officially began functioning under Shlepakov’s leadership in October 1978. It was located in central Kyiv, and the Soviet administration approved its official title, proposed by Shlepakov: the Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Foreign Countries (ISEPZK – in Ukrainian abbreviation). Shlepakov also initiated the publication of his institute’s periodical The World Abroad: Social-Political and Economic Problems, in which he published materials devoted to American Studies, sometimes also including contributions from US scholars.28 During the existence of ‘Shlepakov’s Institute’ (as ISEPZK was known in Kyiv and Moscow), its director assembled talented Ukrainian scholars committed towards researching important issues on international politics, diplomacy and American Studies. Eventually, by the end of the 1980s (in addition to the traditional ideological anti-Western themes), the Institute’s personnel concentrated on such research topics as ‘international divisions of labour and structures of the world’s economic relations; national problems in Western Europe and the Americas; migrational processes and the status of immigrants; economic and scientific-technological aspects of the protection of nature and other ecological issues; the West’s relations with the developing countries of the Middle East’.29 However, the most important and unique research topic which Shlepakov proposed to his colleagues at ISEPZK was the study of the Ukrainian diaspora throughout the entire world, and especially in North America. As Shlepakov used to joke, Our Institute in Kyiv was a true pioneer in Soviet academia regarding the study of various aspects of the Ukrainian immigration to Canada and the United States; we found our unique academic niche in the Soviet study of America because we knew our Ukrainian language and culture and we could communicate with American and Canadian Ukrainians in our own native language. None of the Russian Americanists in Moscow or Leningrad could speak our language, therefore they lost the academic competition of establishing important contacts with Americans or Canadians of Ukrainian origin. And we, the Ukrainian Americanists in Kyiv, won this competition against the Muscovites.30 As his close friends later emphasised, through his institute, Shlepakov consolidated the most talented Ukrainian scholars with different research

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interests into one group of genuine experts in immigration and national processes in the industrial Western countries, especially in North America. Leonid Leshchenko noted, ‘Shlepakov created, from all of us, the first (and the most respected) school of Ukrainian Americanists in the Soviet Union.’ During the 1980s, Leonid Leshchenko and his younger colleagues, such as Volodymyr B. Yevtukh, began their original research on the United States and Canada under the inspiration and support of Shlepakov.31 Until 1991, ‘Shlepakov’s Institute’ functioned as the leading Soviet centre for the study of American/Canadian Ukrainians, which was a new and flourishing field in American Studies in the USSR. Despite all of Shlepakov’s activities in promoting American Studies in Soviet Ukraine, many contemporaries, including his Kyiv and Moscow colleagues, noticed ‘how cautious and conservative’ he had become in his analysis of American politics, ideology and culture after 1979. As Bolkhovitinov observed, ‘after accepting the position of director of his new institute’ Shlepakov changed for the worse, ‘openly demonstrating antiAmericanism even in very intimate conversations with his colleagues’. To some extent, Shlepakov’s many years of collaboration with the KGB and his connections with the Soviet academic leadership shaped his identity and worldview. As Sergei Burin noted, ‘in the 1980s, Shlepakov suddenly had a different personality – that of an ideological reactionary; I could not recognise him anymore.’ Even the more ideologically cautious and conformist Moscow Americanists, such as Robert Ivanov and Igor Dementiev, complained about ‘the overly aggressive anti-Americanism’ that was expressed in public by Shlepakov.32 Shlepakov also took a very cautious and conservative ideological position regarding perestroika, when Mikhail Gorbachev began his reforms in 1986. As director of a very important ‘Cold War institution’ in Soviet Ukraine, Shlepakov was afraid that the ‘improvement of Soviet– American relations’ would lead to the ‘dismantling of ISEPZK in Kyiv and ISKAN in Moscow’ and to ‘ideological confusion in Soviet society and, eventually, to economic and political chaos’. In August 1991, he believed that Gorbachev and Yeltsin ‘were shitting through [ prosyraiut in Russian] the great country of the Soviet Union’. To some extent, he also criticised the Moscow Americanists and Gorbachev’s consultants, including such experts as Arbatov, whose ‘consulting misled and disoriented the Soviet leadership, and eventually contributed to the failure of Soviet diplomacy in its competition with the United States.’ I still recall his words: ‘Arbatov and Gorbachev surrendered our motherland – the Soviet Union – to the Americans!’33

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Manipulating Shlepakov’s ‘dependence on the directive organs’ and his ideological conservatism, the KGB used him for various international ideological campaigns ‘against the bourgeois falsifiers of history’. The most shameful among such campaigns at the beginning of perestroika was devoted to the official Soviet denial of materials about the Holodomor – the artificial famine in Soviet Ukraine during the period of collectivisation in 1929–33 – as presented in Robert Conquest’s book of 1986, and interpreted by Soviet ideologists as ‘a complete falsification’.34 According to his close friends, ‘under strong pressure from the KGB, Shlepakov, who had never read Conquest’s book and had never been an expert on the history of Stalin’s collectivisation, agreed to sign a special Soviet letter of recommendation in the form of a petition to the Communist Party of Canada criticising Conquest’s study while at the same time approving the publication in Canada of a book which would reject the plausibility of all the facts about the Holodomor, as presented in Conquest’s study.’35 Eventually, such a ‘pro-Stalin’ book, supported by Shlepakov, was published in Canada in 1987.36 A Canadian friend of Shlepakov’s, Petro Krawchuk, recalled in his memoirs how he was shocked to see in Toronto a photocopy of the ‘Soviet recommendation letter’ regarding the publication of an anti-Conquest book, personally signed by Shlepakov.37 One year before his death, in 1996, Krawchuk recalled this story: As recently as 1987, after glasnost and perestroika were introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, when the Communist Party of Canada asked for a truthful explanation of the 1932– 33 famine, it received denials from Moscow. Then the Communist Party of Canada insisted that the Kobzar Publishing Company publish the book ‘Fraud, Famine and Fascism’ by Douglas Tuttle, which denies that the 1932– 33 famine in Ukraine was artificially organised by the Stalin regime. The book was recommended for publication by Yuriy Kondufor, director of the Institute of History in the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, by Academician Arnold Shlepakov, director of the Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Foreign Countries, and by Vasyl Yurchuk, director of the Institute of Party History. The book eventually was published but not by the Kobzar Publishing Company, even though it was pressured very hard to do so.38 Shlepakov never accepted the criticism addressed to him about his participation in such campaigns. He continued to serve as director of his

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institute until June 1991. During perestroika, Shlepakov was still an active official of the Presidium of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, teaching various courses on diplomacy and American history at Kyiv State University and editing a number of collective monographs of his colleagues. However, after 1991, Shlepakov ceased producing original research work. His close friends recalled that during the last years of his life, Shlepakov never demonstrated publicly his frustration about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of his leadership in ISEPZK, which by the end of 1991 was restructured and renamed the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. But Leonid Leshchenko noticed that Shlepakov began drinking heavily again, and in confidential conversations he used to repeat only one phrase: ‘after 1991 Soviet American Studies died completely’. Leshchenko thought that the end of Shlepakov’s Institute in its original form in June 1991 contributed not only to his emotional shock, but also to Shlepakov’s gradual mental demise and his ‘unexpected’ death.39 Shlepakov’s life during perestroika and afterwards bore out this opinion. During the last years of his life until his death in 1996, he was teaching at the university and local colleges, advising Ukrainian politicians and diplomats. He even became president of one of the most prestigious diplomatic colleges in Kyiv – the Ukrainian Academy of Foreign Trade. Unfortunately, however, after 1991, Shlepakov stopped producing anything in the field in which he used to be ‘an original innovative thinker and researcher since the 1960s’: the immigration history of the United States and Canada and the history of Ukrainian Canadians. For Shlepakov, this was a genuine intellectual death.40

Leonid Leshchenko: Changes in Academic Identity A close friend and colleague of Shlepakov, who always supported him and contributed to ‘institutionalising’ American Studies in Kyiv, was Leonid Leshchenko. Together with Shlepakov, who was the deputy director in charge of research work at the Institute of History (since June 1972), Leshchenko began searching for young talented scholars who could concentrate their research work on the history of Ukrainians in America. By 1974, they had already found Volodymyr Yevtukh, who was originally an expert in English and German literature, but who had decided to study the history of the United States and Canada, using his good linguistic skills. During 1971–4, Yevtukh was a graduate student at the Institute of History, working with Shlepakov and Leshchenko and researching historical material about

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Ukrainians in North America.41 After 1975, when Andrii Strilko and other graduate students agreed to focus on the problems of the Ukrainian diaspora in America, Leshchenko realised that they had ended up forming a specialised group of young scholars with solid intellectual potential and linguistic skills. As Leshchenko recalled, ‘after a long discussion with Shlepakov in 1976, we began planning to create a separate research institute, engaging more young experts in various studies of capitalist countries, including Canada and the United States and to study not only history, but also politics, economics and culture; we had in mind a combination of two models for such a research centre – Inozemtsev’s IMEMO and Arbatov’s ISKAN.’42 Thus, in October 1978, when Shlepakov received official permission for the establishment of his new research institute, Leshchenko immediately joined him, bringing other young scholars, such as Yevtukh, with him. Leshchenko became head of the most important department at ISEPZK – the Department of the Concepts of Foreign Politics, which was later renamed the Department of the USA and Western Europe. As early as December 1979, in his correspondence with Peter Krawchuk, Leshchenko mentioned his intention to consolidate a special research group at ISEPZK whose specialisation would be the history of Ukrainian Canadians.43 During the 1980s, Ukrainian scholars from Leshchenko’s department created a core group of young experts in Canadian Studies. Leshchenko coordinated this group, which was busy preparing for the special celebration of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Ukrainian immigration to Canada (September 1891). Meanwhile, by the end of the 1970s, Leshchenko had begun to distance himself from his Moscow colleagues. Sometimes he even felt offended by the open expressions of condescension and contempt demonstrated by Americanists from MGU, ISKAN and other Moscow centres of American Studies. As Leshchenko recalled in October 1991, ‘instead of a word of advice, which we could have used in Kyiv from our Russian colleagues in Moscow, we, Ukrainian scholars, often received unsubstantiated and condescending criticism of our proposals, when the Moscow experts simply disregarded our archival findings in Canada or the United States.’ During his visits to Moscow, Leshchenko witnessed overt public expression of obvious Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism, when, for example, during one such visit he overheard Nikolai Sivachev complaining to his MGU colleagues that ‘those Jews and Ukrainians came here and overcrowded Moscow, controlling ISKAN and the Institute of World History’. Eventually, he realised that Sivachev was complaining about Arbatov’s leadership of ISKAN and the

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frequent visits to Moscow by Semion Appatov from Odesa (both Arbatov and Appatov were Jews). Paradoxically, Leshchenko noted, Sivachev and his MGU colleagues all tried, as anti-Semites, to be ‘very polite and civilised with American visiting scholars (such as Eric Foner), who were of Jewish origin’, while at the same time they ‘openly despised Ukrainian and Russian Jews from Soviet Ukraine’. According to Leshchenko, he could still recall the time when he felt ‘unfriendly attitudes toward Ukrainian scholars from Kyiv’, demonstrated by two Russian historians who were organisers of American Studies in the Soviet Union. One of these historians was Alexander Fursenko from Leningrad, and the other was Nikolai Sivachev from Moscow. As Leshchenko revealed in 1991, [He] could remember only four Muscovites who were respectful towards their Ukrainian colleagues, who always tried to help Ukrainian visitors and who invited Ukrainian Americanists to participate in the compilation of Moscow publications devoted to American Studies. These were Arbatov from ISKAN, Inozemtsev from IMEMO, Bolkhovitinov from the Institute of World History and Tishkov from the Institute of Ethnography. In striking contrast to them, Fursenko (from Leningrad), Sivachev, Dementiev and Krasnov (from Moscow), who travelled to the United States together with their Ukrainian colleagues (and I would sometimes meet them during these trips), always distanced themselves from the Soviet Ukrainians, showing only condescension and disrespect towards us, the scholars from Kyiv . . . Of course, I knew about Shlepakov’s official complaint regarding Fursenko and Sivachev’s Great Russian chauvinism and their anti-Semitism. He filed this complaint with our KGB supervisors (from the international department) as early as 1975. But I did not follow Shlepakov’s example. I did not complain officially, I simply tried to distance myself from my Moscow colleagues and concentrate on my own research in Kyiv.44 The decade of the 1980s was the peak of Leshchenko’s activities in what he referred to as ‘academic diplomacy’. To some extent, he replaced Shlepakov in the role of the ‘academic diplomat’ from Soviet Ukraine. In 1980, Leshchenko visited the US (with funding from IREX), then he travelled to the US and Canada in 1983, 1985 and 1987 as a member of the official delegation of the Ukrainian Association of Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, with Soviet funding.45 Leshchenko

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became an official mediator (‘liaison’) between Shlepakov’s Institute and the official Soviet organisations responsible for various ‘public/cultural diplomacy’ events in capitalist countries, like the Ukrainian Association of Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. He was heavily involved (as Shlepakov’s representative) with the Association for Relations with Ukrainians Living Abroad (Society Ukraina) (Tovarystvo kul’turnykh zv’iazkiv z ukraintsiamy za kordonom). This organisation was usually responsible for the exchange of various ‘cultural’ delegations (including musicians, artists, writers and actors) between Ukraine and North America (mainly from Canada). Only one scholar, the historian Leshchenko, was always included in these ‘cultural delegations of the Society Ukraina as the ideological supervisor’ in 1983, 1985 and 1987.46 On the one hand, Leshchenko demonstrated his reputable skills as an ‘academic diplomat’ by establishing fruitful relations with Canadian and US scholars and the US/Canadian administration as part of the official preparation for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. On the other hand, Leshchenko conducted his own research and collected material for his own publications, thus forging his own academic career in Soviet Ukraine. In November 1983, Leshchenko became the first Soviet Ukrainian scholar to be awarded the ‘Honorary Citizenship of the City of Baltimore’ ‘in recognition of [his]

Figure 32

Leonid Leshchenko in 1998.

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distinguished achievements and eminent contributions to the life of our times’. Meanwhile, after the publication of his book on the farmers’ movement in Canada in 1979, Leshchenko maximised his connections in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to prepare a successful defence of his own doctoral dissertation in 1985 at KDU on Canadian history. In 1991, Leshchenko became a professor of history, and at the same time he gradually began to replace Shlepakov as the leader of North American Studies in Soviet Ukraine.47 In contrast to Shlepakov, Leshchenko was more flexible and ‘adjustable’ during perestroika. He not only accepted changes initiated by Gorbachev, but also used these changes and the beginning of the ‘relative ideological openness’ of perestroika to his advantage. Leshchenko became the leading figure from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to play a significant organising role in the preparation of a Ukrainian-Canadian ‘mutual’ publication in 1989– 90 about the Ukrainian Canadians and their historical relations with Ukraine. Officially, this publication was the result of the efforts of ISEPZK, the Canadian Society for Ukrainian Labour Research and the Society for Cultural Relations with Ukrainians Abroad; and it was simultaneously published in Ukrainian and English.48 Although officially the major organisers of this project were Shlepakov (from Ukraine) and Peter Krawchuk (from Canada), in reality, all of the practical side of compiling the published materials and the organisation of translations from Ukrainian to English in Kyiv were supervised by Leshchenko.49 During perestroika and the beginning of the flourishing of Soviet study of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, Leshchenko began travelling abroad, especially to Canada and the United States. He participated in the international conference devoted to the centennial of Ukrainian emigration to Canada, which took place in Edmonton, Alberta, at the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, on 17– 20 May 1991.50 During October– December 1991, Leshchenko spent three months in Berlin, having been awarded a research scholarship by the Kennedy Institute of the Free University Berlin. However, according to Leshchenko, after 1990, when he published his final book in Ukraine, Leshchenko paid less attention to his research, concentrating instead on practical issues of survival due to the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, he now began to utilise all of his Canadian and American connections (especially Peter Krawchuk in Toronto) in order to bring his family abroad and to help secure a college education for his daughters in the West rather than in Ukraine.51 In contrast to Shlepakov, who could not bear the collapse of communism and the end (officially ‘restructuring’) of his institute, and who eventually

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killed himself by heavy drinking, Leshchenko not only survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but visibly prospered in post-Soviet independent Ukraine. Together with Shlepakov, Leshchenko engaged in political consulting and advising for the Ukrainian government, especially on issues of international relations. During 1993– 6, Leshchenko served as an official adviser at the Ukrainian Embassy in China. From 1997 to 2013 he worked as a Professor of International Relations at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until his death in December 2013, Leshchenko managed to combine two of his favourite scholarly topics in his research activities, his teaching engagements and his diplomatic career – the history and diplomacy of the United States and Canada and the contemporary history and diplomacy of China. However, ironically, by the end of his life he chose a diplomatic career and the role of political adviser, rather than the life of an Americanist-historian. At the same time, Leshchenko’s story serves as a metaphoric illustration of the general situation in American Studies in Ukraine after 1991. Leshchenko’s and Shlepakov’s former students and young colleagues also ceased carrying out serious research in the field of American Studies, concentrating mainly on their political and business careers instead. As Leshchenko joked during his last interview with me in late June 2013, ‘all our Ukrainian Americanists have now gone into politics and political advising. Only our Kyiv philologists, experts in American literature, are still doing something interesting in American Studies. I know only one former Soviet Americanist in Kyiv, Shlepakov’s best student, Yevtukh, who after a long political career, has now returned to research and to teaching sociology and migration by using his earlier expertise in American Studies.’52 Leshchenko was too modest in the evaluation of his own role in the formation and development of American Studies in Soviet Ukraine. Both Leshchenko and Shlepakov were scholars with different personalities, with different scholarly productivity, but they became true pioneers in establishing the first influential school of American Studies in Soviet Ukraine. At the same time, their life trajectories illustrated, on the one hand, typical Soviet academic careers in the field of American Studies, on the other, a gradual distancing from Moscow in this field, creating their own special academic niche, emphasising the different, purely Ukrainian, character of their own specialisation.

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Conclusion: The Rediscovery of Modernity among the Ukrainians of North America, and the Shaping of Ukrainian Identity among Americanists in Soviet Ukraine First of all, a comparison of the Ukrainian scholars’ life trajectories demonstrates their obvious similarities with the biographies of Russian Americanists from Moscow. Both Shlepakov and Leshchenko belonged to the same postwar generation of Soviet intellectuals as G. Arbatov, N. Bolkhovitinov, N. Sivachev and R. Ivanov in Moscow, who (chronologically) represented the first generation of Soviet Americanists. Despite all their ethnic and cultural differences, each of these scholars shared a similar social and cultural background of the postwar Soviet intelligentsia and a Soviet communist ideological and mental worldview.53 Thus, to some extent, both Shlepakov and Leshchenko represented the ‘quintessential archetype’ of Soviet historians, experts in American Studies. Like their Russian colleagues, both the Ukrainian scholars began their careers with a fascination for the United States, which was not only the main ally of the Soviet Union in World War II, but also a producer of attractive images (in films) and sounds (in jazz tunes) of ‘industrial modernity’, which the Soviets attempted to reproduce on their own soil. Like their Russian counterparts, Ukrainian Americanists experienced the massive brainwashing ideological campaigns of the Cold War and close collaboration with the KGB. They all became organisers of special academic centres devoted to American Studies during the de´tente of the 1970s. Of course, in real life, the Soviet intellectual archetype of Shlepakov and Leshchenko had obvious differences. Shlepakov was a noticeable, ‘visible’ (vidimyi) leader and organiser of American Studies in Kyiv, who tried to be the focus of people’s attention by being an active participant in various public events. Leshchenko, on the other hand, represented a different kind of personality. In contrast to Shlepakov, he tried to avoid excessive public attention. He could be labelled a ‘smooth operator’, who always solved any personal conflicts peacefully. Leshchenko played the role of ‘peace-maker’, a pacifier in his academic career: from the beginning – in his position as academic secretary at the Institute of History in 1961 – to the role of department leader at Shlepakov’s Institute after 1978. Leshchenko’s and Shlepakov’s different social and cultural roots and backgrounds affected their careers as well. Shlepakov, at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, was a typical representative of the ‘Soviet middle class’. He was a trendy, fashionable and stylish young man, who listened to American jazz

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and read ‘forbidden’ books at his parents’ home library and posed for his close friends as a ‘frondeur’ and a knowledgeable ‘Westernised’ young student of international relations. Leshchenko was a Ukrainian village boy who lacked the cultural and educational background of such Kyiv urbanites as Shlepakov. With his peasant background, destitute and poorly dressed, Leshchenko concentrated on his studies (rather than on his social life) and on a career in the Communist Party. But even with such differences, we can find apparent similarities in the biographies of such Moscow Americanists as Nikolai Bolkhovitinov (Soviet urbanite) and Nikolai Sivachev (Soviet village boy). And yet, gradually, the Ukrainian Americanists began distancing themselves from their Moscow colleagues. Occasionally, they experienced condescending attitudes, sometimes even loathing, on the part of their Russian counterparts. The Ukrainian Americanists would overhear the term ‘khokhly’ pronounced behind their backs, or experience other expressions of contempt. Both Shlepakov and Leshchenko witnessed very aggressive manifestations of Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism expressed by such Russian Americanists as Sivachev and Fursenko. Ukrainian Americanists felt genuine discrimination, when very often they would not secure assignments (quota) for travels abroad; according to the Soviet centralised system of distribution of available foreign grants and fellowships, only Muscovites were allotted the most lucrative foreign funding options and their names would be placed ahead of Ukrainian scholars’ names on special ‘waiting lists’ by the Soviet administration. Paradoxically, their research work (including their trips abroad) helped Ukrainian Americanists to rediscover their national Ukrainian identity visa`-vis the Soviet identity of their Russian colleagues. As all contemporaries noted, the most important emotional and mental experience for the Soviet Ukrainian Americanists who travelled to the United States and Canada and who communicated with Ukrainian Americans (including Ukrainian Canadians), was the rediscovery of their own ethnic identity and growing respect for the Ukrainians who lived overseas and demonstrated so many accomplishments, including the ability to live and prosper in the advanced capitalist industrial civilisation of North America. As Leonid Leshchenko recalled regarding his first visit to North America (Toronto, Canada) in September 1974, he was ‘shocked by the prosperity, stability, social justice, relative equality and obvious democracy, which efficiently worked for everybody, in Canadian society.’ However, more importantly, he saw that Ukrainians in America ‘lived much better, were better educated, more productive and happier than Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine.’ Moreover,

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American Ukrainians ‘were proud of their Ukrainian language and culture, and publicly demonstrated this national pride in their religion and culture without fear of persecution by the American or Canadian state for such public demonstrations of their Ukrainian nationalism.’ Leshchenko contrasted this ‘free unlimited expression of national pride’ in Canada with the case of his relative in the village of the Cherkasy region, who was ‘harassed and arrested by the KGB for the same expression of national pride’ in Soviet Ukraine in 1973. According to Leshchenko, only during his visit to Canada did he realise that Canadian Ukrainians lived under ‘genuine conditions of a more civilised and more humane modernity’ in North America as opposed to the ‘imagined modernity of developed socialism’, which humiliated and exploited Soviet Ukrainians, ‘transforming them into slaves of the Soviet state’.54 Eventually, Ukrainian Americanists concentrated their efforts on studying the roots of that ‘American modernity’, which created much better living conditions for Ukrainians than their native land. They began to study the Ukrainian diaspora in America. Unconsciously, through this new research, Soviet Ukrainian Americanists began forging their new professional identity as unique experts on the immigration, culture, politics and economy of Ukrainians in North America, while distancing themselves, at the same time, from Moscow Americanists. During perestroika, this new professional identity was strengthened through more frequent and less limited contacts and communication with American Ukrainians and various US and Canadian research centres, especially at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and at Harvard University. However, the most important factor in the construction of identity for Soviet Ukrainian Americanists, which stressed the necessity of not only distancing, but also of separating from Moscow, was the Chernobyl catastrophe. Both the ‘more conservative’ Shlepakov and the ‘more proUkrainian’ Leshchenko were shocked at how the Soviet authorities attempted to deny and cover up what happened on 26 April 1986 in Chernobyl. As Leshchenko noted in 1991, ‘everybody in Kyiv became more Ukrainian and more anti-Moscow after Chernobyl.’55 All contemporaries, including myself, felt these new, growing, antiMoscow and pro-Ukrainian feelings after Chernobyl. As cultural anthropologist Catherine Wanner noted, [The Soviet] authorities’ initial denial of the accident, which released more radioactive fallout than the bombing of Hiroshima, and their

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refusal to divulge information of critical importance to the health of their own citizenry shone a harsh light on the system’s penchant for manipulating information to maintain power. A centralised Moscowbased regime was revealed as blatantly self-serving, as displaying total disregard for the well-being of its own people and a supreme commitment to preserving the facade of normalcy in the proletarian paradise over all else.56 Wanner also, correctly, related the reaction to Chernobyl in Ukraine to the new national awareness of Soviet Ukrainians, who began perceiving themselves as a separate nation vis-a`-vis Moscow after 1986. A traumatic historical event [she wrote] can crystallise as a defining experience, dramatically affecting the life history of individuals and fundamentally informing their sense of identity and values. Chernobyl provides a sharp example of how the process of identity formation can first and foremost be shaped by cataclysmic historical circumstances and the disjunctures and interruptions to anticipated life trajectories they produce, rather than by a series of experiences leading to a gradual evolution of identity.57 This Chernobyl experience provided the final push for many Ukrainian Americanists, such as Leshchenko and myself, towards the direction of building a ‘separate Ukrainian national modernity in Ukraine, rather than searching for such a modernity among American Ukrainians and writing books about North American civilisation.’58

EPILOGUE PERESTROIKA AND THE CRISIS OF SOVIET AMERIKANISTIKA

Paradoxically – noted Nikolai Bolkhovitinov – the openness of perestroika, especially after 1987, when Soviet Americanists, including myself, resumed our travelling abroad, opening our cultural horizons, eventually killed Soviet Amerikanistika by destroying an image of the USA as our ideological and political enemy, revealing a low scholarly level of Soviet studies of US/Canadian history, politics and culture. Moreover, the most talented young Soviet scholars simply left the field of American Studies, changing their identity.1 Many Soviet Americanists who began travelling abroad during perestroika changed their specialisation, and eventually became experts in Russian/ Soviet/post-Soviet history, politics and culture, settling down in the United States, Canada and Western European countries, teaching Russian/ Ukrainian/Soviet/Post-Soviet history – scholarly subjects which differed significantly from their initial Soviet training as Americanists.

Vladislav Zubok and ‘Perestroika’ among Young Soviet Americanists One of the most remarkable (and, to some extent, typical) stories of such an academic ‘personal’ transformation is the history of Vladislav Zubok, a grandson of Lev Zubok, the famous founder of American Studies in the Soviet Union.2 Lev Zubok had a son, Martin, who became a famous sound engineer, working for many years at Ostankino television studio in Moscow.

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For young Soviet rock music fans, Martin Zubok (1926–2009) became associated with Magic Lantern, a legendary Soviet television show of 1976, directed by Evgeni Ginzburg. Martin Zubok helped mix videotapes with music from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar and American films such as The Godfather and Love Story for this show. Vladislav (Vlad) Zubok was born on 16 April 1958 and grew up in the family of this Ostankino sound engineer, being exposed to a variety of American sound technologies, including his favourite videos of Disney cartoon films. Vladislav Zubok still recalled how, as a child, he loved to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, and Tom and Jerry cartoons in his father’s television office in Ostankino.3 In contrast to many young Soviet Americanists of his generation, such as Vyacheslav Nikonov from Moscow State University (MGU), Vladislav Zubok did not attend a ‘specialised school with English as the language of instruction’. As he recalled, it was a ‘normal’ Moscow school, No. 350, where students began learning foreign languages only in their fifth year. Like all his classmates, Vladislav loved reading adventure novels about American Indians and American pirates by James Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid. He also read Mark Twain’s classics and was greatly impressed by science fiction and the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe, whose poem ‘Raven’ he learned by heart during his high school years.4 Anglo-American rock music and Western films also triggered Vladislav’s interest in American culture and history. During the early 1970s, he occasionally managed to get access to the American illustrated magazine Amerika in Russian, where one could read Kurt Vonnegut and other authors of contemporary American fiction.5 Most importantly, little Vladislav learned the story of his grandfather Lev (who died when he was eleven), and was fascinated: having a relative who had lived in the United States and returned to Soviet Russia was a rarity in the Soviet Union! Lev’s books stood on the shelves in Vladislav’s room, and he began to use them as a reference for his school work. He was also proud that his grandfather was the author of a textbook on world history used in all Soviet schools at the time. And in 1972, Vladislav and his classmates visited the US Exhibition in Gorky Park on Research and Development, which made an impression on him comparable to the impact of the 1959 exhibition in Sokolniky on his parents’ generation. American cars, appliances, the Apollo space module, hundreds of high-quality colour pictures and other items opened a window onto ‘another world’.6 Vladislav developed a fascination with America that almost caused trouble for him and could have precluded his future career. In 1973, together with his friend Eduard, whose parents frequently travelled to the

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West, Vladislav prepared a school report about the US economy for a geography class. The report was based on impressions from the American exhibition, the magazine Amerika and various journalistic accounts that had appeared in Soviet media at the time of de´tente. The two friends got carried away and projected American growth as exceeding Soviet growth. It was very imprudent thing to do. They also appeared in class with a small (handmade) American flag and tiny flags attached to their school jackets. A teacher of geography who listened to their presentation, as Vladislav learned many years later from his friend, reported on them to the KGB. Opening a file on two students would have put their lives on an unfortunate trajectory and as a minimum could cost them their Komsomol membership and block their college education. Luckily, Eduard’s father, a geologist and oil expert with an international reputation, used his connections to stop the case.7 In the summer of 1975, Vladislav Zubok successfully passed his exams and became a undergraduate at MGU. He toyed with the idea of becoming a specialist in antiquity and medieval history and received an offer to major in these fields. But his fascination with America was too strong, and when the time for specialisation came in 1977, he chose to major at the ‘Laboratory of American Studies’ founded and run by major MGU experts in American history, such as Nikolai Sivachev, Igor Dementiev and Alexander Manykin. After consultations with Professor Sivachev, the main leader of the Laboratory, he began to write a diploma on the domestic politics of the Harry S. Truman administration (1945– 53). Sivachev became his thesis advisor.8 Vladislav did not know at the time about Sivachev’s latent nationalism (not to mention anti-Semitism) and his sceptical attitudes to ‘Moscow children’ from ‘privileged’ stratas of the Soviet intelligentsia. He believed that his grandfather’s name would help him in his career, but the fact that Lev Zubok was a Jew could only hurt him at a time of rampant ‘Jewish emigration’ from the Soviet Union and latent state anti-Semitism. And the topic involving Truman was risky. Professor Dementiev once asked Vladislav why he had agreed to write on this topic. Truman, Dementiev said, was a most reviled political figure, because he started the Cold War against the USSR. This could become problematic during the diploma’s defence. Naively, Vladislav answered that this would not be a problem, because his diploma focused only on domestic policies. He was demonstrating, Vladislav added, that Truman’s ‘Fair Deal’ reforms fell victim to Cold War policies. In reality, it was Sivachev who protected Zubok from ideological and political repercussions. The defence was successful.9

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Sivachev also played a crucial role in recommending Vladislav Zubok for graduate school at ISKAN in the summer of 1980. This was the dream destination for a young Americanist. Zubok, son of a television engineer, did not belong to the ‘Soviet golden youth (zolotaia molodiozh)’, but Moscow University gave him access to this world and better access to American mass culture. He partied, drank, danced rock and disco in the private apartments of his classmates (a few times at the apartment of Professor Sivachev, invited by Sivachev’s daughter Natasha). In 1980, one of his classmates introduced him to videotapes of American films; it was the very beginning of the video revolution that would greatly affect Zubok’s generation.10 In 1983, after his official graduation from ISKAN aspirantura (graduate school), Zubok was included in the ISKAN personnel as a junior research associate (mladshii nauchnyi sotrudnik). Two years later, in 1985, under the supervision of Dr Vladimir Pechatnov, Zubok defended his kandidatskaia (PhD) dissertation at ISKAN, with a new topic based on his research, ‘The evolution of the Democratic Party and its executive elites before and during the Carter presidency, 1969– 1981’. Like all of his young colleagues, Zubok planned to begin writing his doctoral dissertation and continue to build his academic career at ISKAN. But perestroika changed his focus of research completely.11 At the beginning of 1987, an ISKAN deputy-director and KGB officer, Radomir G. Bogdanov, invited Zubok to his office and told him to write a report on the origins of the Cold War. Bogdanov was involved in the work of the Soviet-American historical commission that met in 1979 and then was suspended until 1986. The forthcoming meeting of the commission had a focus on the Cold War.12 This conversation changed Zubok’s life. From the study of Congressional Records and American domestic politics, Zubok turned his attention to literature about the Cold War. In June 1987, he took part as a junior participant in the meeting of the Soviet-American Commission, met several leading American historians, among them John Lewis Gaddis, William Taubman, Melvyn Leffler and others. This conference was supervised also by the special sector of the Central Committee of the CPSU.13 Fortuitously by that time, Zubok (who had never travelled to the West from ISKAN because of his refusal to cooperate with the KGB, as well as non-membership in the Communist Party etc.) managed to travel twice outside the Soviet borders: to the GDR in the autumn of 1986, and to West Germany in May 1987. He was included in a high-power group of Soviet historians invited to come to the United States in autumn 1987 at the invitation of USIA, the Johnston Foundation and other American

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educational institutions, as part of ‘perestroika’ public diplomacy. The group included Andrei N. Sakharov from the Institute of USSR History and Alexander Chubarian from the Institute of World History. This trip began on 7 November 1987 and was ‘an eye-opener’ for Zubok. The itinerary included Washington, Boston, Chicago and Dallas, where Soviet visitors attended a conference of American high school teachers. For Zubok, the highlight of the trip was the AAASS Convention in Boston, where he was astounded by the scale of Russian and Soviet Studies in the West and could freely rummage through hundreds of books, including publications of dissidents published in Russian by the e´migre´ press. He brought some of those books back home. He was lucky not to be searched by Soviet customs officers. This was the last year when the publications of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents were banned in the Soviet Union.14 American Cold War historians also noticed Zubok. He was invited to take part in a special Soviet-American conference on Cold War history (1950– 5) hosted by John Lewis Gaddis from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in October 1988. Zubok and another young scholar from ISKAN, Constantine Pleshakov, made a great impression on American participants.

Figure 33

Vladislav Zubok travelling overseas, 1988.

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They presented separate papers, based mostly on secondary sources (they still had no access to Soviet archives on the Cold War) ‘from the Soviet point of view, but without the traditional Soviet ideological cliche´s’.15 Pleshakov (born in 1959) was an ISKAN expert in the history of China– US relations after World War II, who had graduated in 1982 from MGU, had recently defended his PhD (kandidatskaia) dissertation, and was fluent in Chinese after his year-long study in Singapore. He wrote about ‘the perception of China in the United States after the Second World War’ in ISKAN. Pleshakov used his expertise in the history of Soviet diplomacy in the Far East to add his analysis to the Soviet archival documents.16 Zubok created a mini-sensation at the conference when, during the discussion of the origins of the Korean War, he stood up and said: ‘Everyone knows that North Korea attacked South Korea. Instead of disagreeing on this, we should focus on other issues.’ Gaddis later took Zubok aside and admitted that he never expected in his lifetime to hear a Soviet historian say anything like that. For decades, the standard line of Soviet diplomacy and historiography was to say that the Korean War started with aggression from the South. Zubok and Pleshakov received several offers to come to US

Figure 34

Vladislav Zubok travelling overseas, 1988.

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universities as visiting professors. Moreover, various US funding agencies offered them financial support for their research work. In the summer of 1990, both Zubok and Pleshakov were awarded prestigious grants by the MacArthur Foundation to write a book about the Soviet side of the Cold War.17 By that time, they had obtained authorisation from ISKAN and the authorities of the Soviet Foreign Ministry to do research in the Archives of Soviet Foreign Policy. Zubok began to work with the files of the Soviet Committee of Information, an intelligence analysis body created in 1947 and in existence for the decades following. These were top-rate Soviet assessments that opened a road to archival research on the Cold War from the other side. Later, he would publish the results of this research in the United States.18 Paradoxically, an intensification of academic contacts between Soviet scholars and their American colleagues did not dramatically change the ‘discursive landscape’ of American Studies in Russia and Ukraine during perestroika. But at the same time, the new openness and travel abroad led to a change in research topics and fields – instead of US history, American political science and anthropology, Soviet Americanists from Moscow and Kyiv began studying Russian/Soviet history, Soviet diplomacy and anthropology. Eventually, as the case of Zubok and Pleshakov demonstrated, personal academic adjustment to the new requirements of the international job market by Soviet Americanists led to gradual changes in their academic identity: former Soviet Americanists (including myself) became the new Western Sovietologists and experts in Russian/Ukrainian history, in Soviet political science and anthropology.

‘Envy of Moscow’ and Provincial Americanists Soviet Americanists employed flexible discursive strategies to convey desired meaning without violating the constraints of the politically acceptable language of the time. According to some scholars, Soviet academic discourse was not ‘the container of a particular ideology or theory, but rather a mechanism for advancing a certain agenda via disciplinary knowledge’. As Slava Gerovitch noted, ‘Instead of depicting the Cold War solely as a clash of ideologies, it may be more productive to examine the discursive strategies that were employed to shape the image of the opponent and to build up “our” ideology against “theirs”.’19 In this context, Soviet Americanists actively developed various discursive strategies to appropriate the image of the opponent to the needs of the current situation. At the same time, they

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connected the opponent’s image to their mental construction of progressive modernity and to their assumed role of the agents of this modernity in both Russia and Ukraine. Both these mental constructions and assumed roles were affected by the psychological complex of tensions, which had existed between Soviet provincial populations and Muscovites since the Stalin era. Historically, the tensions between provincials and Muscovites created a unique and mass psychological phenomenon of mature socialism in the USSR known as the ‘envy of Moscow’. This phenomenon was Stalin’s legacy, a result of the creation of Moscow as a show case of socialist achievements for the entire Soviet Union. With all the limitations in socialist production, distribution and consumption of manufactured goods and cultural products in Soviet provinces, from a provincial point of view, Moscow looked like a ‘socialist paradise’ with the best food stores, best schools, theatres, libraries and museums. Moscow was a symbol of the entire Soviet civilisation, a trendsetter for all provinces, but at the same time an object of intense envy for the millions of Soviet provincials.20 In September 1999, Sergei N. Burin, a younger colleague of Bolkhovitinov, noted an important development that affected the intellectual history of American Studies in Russia and Ukraine: Envy has always been a fundamental element in constructing the Soviet personality since Stalin’s times. Beginning with Yuri Olesha, all Soviet writers noted this. Provincials envied Muscovites because Moscow had better living conditions. Muscovites envied provincials, if they made successful careers and travelled abroad. In my opinion, envy killed the Soviet Union when the local intellectual elites from national republics transformed their envy of Moscow into their new national politics. Envy became the most important factor in shaping the entire intellectual history of the Soviet Union, including its academic life and, to some extent, affecting the development of American Studies as well.21 In the USSR, provincial intellectual elites tried to join the Muscovite elite. If they failed to do so, they eventually began developing certain antiMoscow feelings. This phenomenon influenced the attitudes of various provincial Americanists toward their colleagues from Moscow. The major perception of the provincial intellectuals was that ISKAN (since 1967) and other Soviet centres for American Studies offered jobs only to the representatives of the Moscow elite, to the young members of ruling families in Moscow. For people from the provinces, all young (and

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sometimes not so young) Americanists from Moscow were ‘the golden youth’, mal’chiki mazhory.22 This ‘envy of Moscow’ became a significant element in the formation of the regional version of the Soviet intellectual self among Ukrainian Americanists.

‘Perestroika’ of Ukrainian Americanists In 1986, Viktor M. Kalashnikov, a Ukrainian historian of early America, complained about the centralisation of American Studies in the Soviet Union, about the concentration of all American literature only in Moscow libraries and, particularly, about the high academic standards for research established by the Moscow Americanists: I am tired of this Muscovite condescending attitude toward historians from the Soviet provinces. It is very easy for them to criticise the provincials, sitting among American books and historical sources at the Moscow central libraries and using American literature for their own research. We, provincial scholars, can visit Moscow libraries only occasionally, because it is very expensive to travel to Moscow, to find accommodation in Moscow and do serious research in Moscow libraries, when you have very limited time and budget.23 In 1990, another prominent Ukrainian historian, Arnold Shlepakov, noted a different source of conflict between Ukrainian and Moscow Americanists: Muscovites are cynical hypocrites. In public, they tried to demonstrate their loyalty to the Soviet politics of international peace, they always required us, provincial scholars, to follow the official Marxist interpretations of US history which they had developed. But in real life, they laugh at our blind following Marxist-Leninism, they no longer believe in the Marxist ideology they had imposed on us here in Ukraine. Criticising privately our loyalty to Marx’s teachings, Muscovites ignore our research of US history as too ‘ideologised’, provincial, and second rate compared to their own confusing and changing revisions of American historical developments.24 Many Ukrainian Americanists expressed their misunderstanding of Moscow politics in the field of American Studies, especially during the 1980s.

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In 1990, Alexei B., a graduate student of Semyon Appatov, a scholar of US international politics from Odesa State University in Ukraine, complained about the privileged position of Muscovites in the area of American Studies, Historians from Moscow have direct access to all recent literature in US history and politics. Therefore they can criticise us, historians from the provinces, as ignorant scholars. But look at who is travelling to America, who is taking part in scholarly exchange with the United States. They are predominantly Muscovites. They have the best schools of English language, direct exposure to American influences, almost unlimited access to American literature and historical sources. Therefore they monopolise American Studies in the Soviet Union and control us, the scholars from the Soviet provinces, through various central administrative structures.25 As a result, this element of envy of Muscovites co-existed with more conservative and cautious professional discourse (including ritualistic references to the ‘Marxist classics’) of Ukrainian Americanists, which was still dependent on Moscow authoritative discourse even during perestroika. Meanwhile, as early as the 1970s and 1980s, many Ukrainian Americanists gradually developed their own critical attitudes toward the Soviet centre of academic power in Moscow. These attitudes took a wide variety of forms – from an obvious misunderstanding of changes in ideological practices of their supervisors from Moscow to an attempt to carve their own cultural and research niche in Soviet studies of North American civilisation. Eventually, the history and culture of Ukrainian migration to Canada (with a traditional emphasis on class struggle) became such a research niche for many Ukrainian Americanists. This emphasis on Ukrainian ethnic and cultural elements in Canadian history was enforced by the strengthening of connections between the Soviet Ukrainian intellectual elite, whose regular visits to Canadian soil were sponsored by the Soviet government, and the Ukrainian Diaspora (mostly with the representatives of the Canadian Left, such as the communist Petro Krawchuk) in Canada. As a result, by the end of the 1970s a special field of Ukrainian-Canadian Studies had been created in Soviet Ukraine, with no equivalent Canadian Studies in Moscow. To some extent, the new field of Ukrainian-Canadian Studies eventually contributed to the formation of a Ukrainian academic identity in the Soviet field of American Studies. By 1991, more than two-thirds – 22 out of 30 – prominent Ukrainian Americanists in Kyiv and Odesa had become experts in Canadian Studies.26

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The rise of a national patriotic movement in Ukraine and numerous mistakes made by the central Soviet administration in the Kremlin discredited Moscow’s authoritative discourse and made it irrelevant for Ukrainian intellectuals after 1988. As a result of these developments, even Russia-oriented and Russian-speaking Americanists from Ukraine began to associate themselves more with local interests and expressed their frustration with the unpredictable politics of Moscow by distancing themselves from Moscow control. The organisational structures of scholarship in Ukraine played an important role in this process. Leadership of the Ukrainian academic institutions, including the local centres of American Studies, strengthened their independent position in research and teaching agenda, rejecting control from Moscow. Many of them used this situation as an opportunity to re-create their own power structures in Ukrainian scholarship without Moscow’s control. Eventually they replaced the All-Union agenda in research and teaching with regional, national ideas which justified their own (regional/Ukrainian) control over American Studies in Ukraine.27 Many of these scholars, who before 1987 had blindly followed the suggestions of their Moscow colleagues, became the explicitly anti-Russian leaders of Ukrainian centres for American Studies. Paradoxically, scholars like L. Leshchenko and V. Yevtukh joined the ruling political elite of postSoviet Ukraine and built their careers in international diplomacy and politics rather than in academic spheres during the 1990s. These changes were related directly to the diminishing role of Moscow as a centre in the Soviet scholarly discourse of modernity during perestroika. By 1991, Moscow had already lost its symbolic role for Soviet authoritative discourse and became completely irrelevant for the professional discourse of American Studies in the Soviet provinces, especially in non-Russian republics.28 This created a vacuum which was filled eventually with a new discourse of modernity; this time it was a nation-based version, a regional/ Ukrainian discourse that rejected the ‘universalist’ All-Union model of Soviet socialist modernity, and which now looked to both Canada and the United States as its model.

Three Generations of Soviet Americanists and Geopolitics All these changes in the identity formation of Soviet Americanists were directly connected to a geopolitical situation, and to new developments in Soviet– American relations. The changes in the geopolitical situation of the

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Cold War after Stalin involved intense Westernisation of both Soviet political and popular culture. To some extent, the development and institutionalisation of American Studies became indicative of the Westernisation of Soviet intellectuals, not only in Moscow, but also in the provinces.29 Approximately three different generations of Soviet Americanists grew up after Stalin. These generations were shaped by four different geopolitical phenomena. The first generation of Soviet experts in American Studies created the first schools of Soviet students who became interested in the study of North American countries, rather than of the (traditionally popular among Soviet scholars) Western European countries. These scholars, including Georgi Arbatov and Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, contributed to founding and developing the first official centres for the study of the United States and Canada in Moscow. According to their memoirs and the observations of contemporaries, the most important influence on their choice of studying the United States came from World War II and an awareness of the important role of the USA as the Soviet Union’s main ally. In different versions of his memoirs, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov always emphasised the role of World War II in triggering an interest in US history among his generation of Soviet intellectuals. In 1992 he repeated what he had already mentioned in 1980, The British Americanist H. C. Allen once remarked ‘Hitler made Americanists of us all.’ I fully agree with this observation. World War II had an enormous influence in Russia and aroused deep interest in the United States and its history. Unfortunately, I began my scholarly activity in the fifties during the worst years of the Cold War and anti-American propaganda. At that time, I began to ponder the responsibility of the historian and the need not to fan hatred, but to contribute (if only to a small extent) to closer relations between the Russian and American peoples, the need to overcome mutual misunderstanding and ignorance and to replace them with knowledge and mutual understanding.30 For many Soviet intellectuals, not only those who fought in the war, but also those who grew up during the war, during the 1940s, the United States symbolised the great friendship of two great nations and their victory over fascism and ‘international reaction’.31 Unfortunately, the depth of understanding of the United States among the first postwar

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generation of Soviet Americanists remained very shallow. A majority of these first professional Soviet Americanists were burdened by the Marxist belief system, image structures and categories of analysis. They suffered from a great deal of cognitive dissonance and simply looked for evidence to confirm their preconceived images of how the United States functioned.32 The second geopolitical influence came from Khrushchev’s thaw and the first official attempt to open the Soviet Union to the West and to begin the first round of relaxation of the international tensions with the USA after 1956. The Youth International Festival in Moscow, academic exchanges between Soviet and American scholars, the reorganisation of international tourism and creation of international travel agencies in the USSR opened new cultural and ideological horizons for a new generation of Soviet intellectuals known as ‘shestidesiatniki’. Future ideological architects of perestroika such as Alexander Yakovlev visited and studied in the United States. The founding fathers of Soviet American Studies, the first postwar generation, scholars like Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai Sivachev in Moscow and Arnold Shlepakov in Kyiv, defended their first dissertations during this time. The third geopolitical influence came from the de´tente of the 1970s. A new round of relaxation of international tensions (especially between the Soviet Union and the United States) contributed not only to an improvement in US – Soviet relations and an increase in scholarly and cultural exchanges, but also to the growing consumption of Western cultural products, especially music and films, and, as a result, to mass Westernisation of Soviet youth culture.33 Following the needs of a new diplomacy, the Soviet government created the first Soviet centres for American Studies in Moscow and Kyiv. The 1970s was a time of official institutionalisation of American Studies in the Soviet Union. The most popular organisers (although, in some cases, the unofficial leaders) of these institutions were prominent scholars, representatives of the first Soviet postwar generation, such as Arbatov, Bolkhovitinov and Shlepakov. At the same time, a new generation of the Brezhnev era (I would call them ‘semidesiatniki’) grew up under the new influences of de´tente and Westernisation of their cultural life.34 Many of them, including V. Tishkov, V. Sogrin, B. Shpotov, S. Appatov and V. Kalashnikov, would become leaders in American Studies in Russia and Ukraine during the 1980s, defending their doctoral dissertations and struggling for their academic career promotion.

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The representatives of the last Soviet generation of Soviet Americanists, including Marina Vlasova, Vladislav Zubok, Alexander Sergounin and Andrei Znamensky and myself, who joined the new centres of American Studies later, during the 1980s, were influenced and trained by ‘semidesiatniki’. Although a majority of these scholars grew up during the 1970s, their intellectual trajectory was shaped mainly by the events of the 1980s, which is why I call them ‘vosmidesiatniki’. The period of the late 1980s was the beginning of the last, and the most crucial, geopolitical phase of influence for American Studies in the Soviet Union. This period, known as perestroika, saw not only a development of the entire country, but also a change in the directions and themes of Soviet American Studies. With Soviet society opening up to various foreign influences, the new young generation accepted these influences, especially new approaches in methodology, a peculiar form of Soviet ‘epistemological revolution’, and became the most active participants in restructuring thematic orthodoxy in Soviet American Studies, challenging the conservatism of the older generation of ‘semidesiatniki’, scholars like Sogrin and Kalashnikov. According to some scholars, tensions between the young and old generations of Soviet Americanists in the 1980s reflected a basic tenet of cognitive dissonance, namely, that after the age of about 30, one tends to look for evidence confirming one’s core beliefs and rejects contradictory evidence, because dissonance is psychologically uncomfortable.35 At the same time, this period witnessed a growing distancing of Ukrainian scholars from Moscow and an increase of tensions between Muscovites and provincial scholars. National and regional identity now shaped the research agenda in both Russia and Ukraine. The last generation of Soviet Americanists, ‘vosmidesiatniki’, became shaped by these new controversial developments. They tried to link the old traditions of the founders of Soviet Amerikanistika, scholars like Arbatov and Bolkhovitinov, with the new demands of research and new scholarship from the West. The representatives of this perestroika generation, together with the ‘semidesiatniki’, would become leaders in American Studies in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, trying to recreate a significant role for their field not only in college education, but also in shaping the international and domestic policy of their states.36 As we can see, using various discursive strategies in their research and publications, Soviet Americanists tried to adjust their intellectual discoveries to the changing realities of Soviet ideological discourse and political life. They not only reflected these realities, but also tried to adjust

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their personalities and their intellectual interests to these changes. Simultaneously, they also built their own identity, transforming their own Soviet intellectual self, based on various interpretations of American modernity. Eventually, they infused these interpretations of modernity with very different elements of regional/national identity, which, under certain political circumstances, became a core for the new post-Soviet national authoritative discourse among both Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals.

NOTES

Preface 1. See also Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Colonial America, the independence of the Ukraine, and Soviet historiography: The personal experience of a former Soviet Americanist’, Pennsylvania History 62/4 (1995), 468– 90. In the USSR (as in other socialist countries, like China) American Studies – Amerikanistika in Russian – always included both the USA and Canada. All other American countries, like Mexico and Cuba, were included in the field of Latin American countries – Latinoamerikanistika. Soviet administration created two separate fields of knowledge, with different requirements for preparation and defence of dissertations, opening two separate academic institutions and their branches in the USSR – Institute of the USA and Canada and Institute of Latin America. This separation of two American areas of studies was rooted in traditional Marxist class analysis. The first field – American Studies – included so-called ‘capitalist imperialist nations’, members of NATO, such as the USA and Canada. The Latin American region included not imperialist, but so-called developing nations, exploited by the world imperialism of the USA and Canada. 2. Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Richard Stites, the Soviet West, media, and the Soviet Americanists’, in David Goldfrank and Pavel Lyssakov (eds), Cultural Cabaret: Russian and American Essays for Richard Stites (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2012), 166– 7. 3. Ibid., 167. 4. I quote here my interview with Professor Volodymyr B. Yevtukh, 15 December 1995, Kyiv. 5. Conversation with Andrei Znamensky, 16 February 2015. 6. Interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. See also Oleksii Ias’, ‘Na choli respublikans’koi nauki. . .’ Instytut istorii Ukrainy (1936 –1986): Narysy z instytutsional’noi ta intelektual’noi istorii (Do 80-richchia ustanovy), edited by V. A. Smolii (Kyiv: NAN Ukrainy: In-t istorii Ukrainy, 2016).

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Introduction 1. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow. Bolkhovitinov was born on 26 October 1930. 2. Interview with Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. Shlepakov was born on 16 June 1930. On Russian nationalism among the ruling Soviet elites see Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953– 1991 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), and Kevin O’Connor, Intellectuals and Apparatchiks: Russian Nationalism and the Gorbachev Revolution (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 45–78. As a young Soviet scholar, I had a similar experience in March 1991, during the prestigious international conference of Soviet and foreign Americanists organised by Nikolai Bolkhovitinov in Moscow. On the one hand, I felt my special social status, mixing openly with my American and European colleagues as their equal, sharing my research experience with them. On the other hand, I encountered an apparent hostile reaction of some of my Moscow colleagues, who called me in public a ‘provincial khokhol’ during one session of this conference. I have already described this story in Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Ukrainian Maidan as the last anti-Soviet revolution, or the methodological dangers of Soviet nostalgia (notes of an American Ukrainian historian from inside the field of Russian Studies in the USA)’, Ab Imperio 3 (2014): 195–208. 3. Interview with Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. 4. I describe this in detail in Zhuk, ‘Colonial America, the independence of the Ukraine, and Soviet historiography’. See also Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 236– 7. 5. Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2005) [unpublished, typewritten manuscript of 62 pages, which begins with the crossed-out title ‘Schastlivaia pora detstva’ (The Happy Time of Childhood)], 60, 61, 62. 6. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 [1st pr.: 1984]), 31. 7. See especially an American edition of Bakhtin’s work with insightful comments: Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 342 – 3. Compare with Slava Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 2004); Slava Gerovitch, Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Stephen Lovell, The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); Juliane Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 8. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, 14. 9. Oleg Kharkhordin, ‘From priests to pathfinders: the fate of the humanities and social sciences in Russia after World War II’, American Historical Review 120/4 (October

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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

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2015): 1284–5. Compare with Western scholars’ analysis of Soviet academia in Roger D. Markwick, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, 1956–1974 Foreword by Donald J. Raleigh (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Benjamin Tromly, Making the Soviet Intelligentsia: Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Oleg Kharkhordin, ‘From priests to pathfinders’, 1285. Compare with the situation in Soviet science in Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). See also Denis Kozlov, ‘Athens and Apokalypse: writing history in Soviet Russia’, in Axel Schneider and Daniel Woolf (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Vol. 5: Historical Writing since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 375– 98. See a growing literature about the Soviet area studies (and various ‘ThinkTanks’) during the Cold War, especially: Tyrus W. Cobb, ‘National security perspectives of Soviet “thinktanks”’, Problems of Communism 6 (1981): 51– 9; Rose Gottemoeller and Paul Fritz Langer, Foreign Area Studies in the USSR. Training and Employment of Specialists (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., 1983); V. M. Danylenko, Ukraina v mizhnarodnykh naukovo-tekhnichnykh zv’iazkakh (70-80-i rr.) (Kyiv: Instytut Historii NAN Ukrainy, 1993); Marie-Pierre Rey, ‘Le De´partment International du Comite´ Central du PCUS, le MID et la Politique Exte´rieur Sovie´tique de 1953 a` 1991’, Communisme 74/75 (2003): 179–215; Piotr Cherkasov, IMEMO. Institut Mirovoi Ekonomiki i Mezhdunarodnych Otnoshenii. Portret na fone epokhi (Moscow: Ves’ mir, 2004); Vladislav Zubok, ‘Sowjetische Westexperten’, in Bernd Greiner, Tim Mu¨ller and Claudia Weber (eds), Macht und Geist im Kalten Krieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2011), 108– 35. See the recent collective monographs, presenting comparative studies focusing on various centres for American Studies in the USSR and Russian/Soviet Studies in the USA: Ivan Kurilla and Viktoria I. Zhuravleva (eds), Russian/Soviet Studies in the United States, Amerikanistika in Russia: Mutual Representations in Academic Projects, (Lanham, MD and Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Press, 2015); V. Zhuravleva and I. Kurilla (eds), Rossiia i SShA na stranitsakh uchebnikov: opyt vzaimnykh reprezentatsii (Volgograd: Izd-vo VolGU, 2009). See the recent literature which attempts to connect the development of US –Soviet relations with the international activities of Soviet scholars as well in William Benton Whisenhunt and Norman E. Saul (eds), New Perspectives on Russian-American Relations (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘“Academic De´tente”: IREX files, academic reports, and “American” adventures of Soviet Americanists during the Brezhnev era’, Cahiers du monde russe 54/1– 2 January– June, 2013): 297– 328, and Vladimir V. Noskov (ed.), Rossiia i SShA: poznavaia drug druga. Sbornik pamiati akademika Aleksandra Aleksandrovicha Fursenko (St Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2015). About ‘cultural diplomacy’ see in Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921– 1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), especially 312– 24 about post-Stalin developments; Christina Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Cadra Peterson McDaniel, American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy: The Bolshoi Ballet’s American Premiere

NOTES

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16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

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(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015) and Kiril Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945– 1958 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). See the recent historiography on cultural consumption in the USSR in Sergei Zhuk, ‘Soviet Studies and cultural consumption’, in Artemy Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 351–68. Joseph Nye introduced this term at the end of the 1980s. See especially Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). One of the many interpretations of this concept fits very well our description of the Soviet Americanists’ ‘cultural roles’: ‘Unlike hard power, which is concentrated in the hands of those at the source, soft power is dispersed and malleable. The allure of effective soft power lies in its capacity for requisition and reuse by foreign recipients to advance their own interests, but in ways that ultimately benefit the donor nation.’ Greg Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xii. Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad, 11. This book thus takes a different approach to David C. Engerman’s good study of American Sovietology: Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). I refer to Thomas A. Kohut, A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). On this crisis, see Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), esp. 335– 62; Vladislav Zubok, The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev (London: I.B.Tauris, 2017). See especially A. V. Pyzhikov, Khrushchevskaia ottepel’ (Moscow: OLMA-Press, 2002); Y. Gorlizki and O. Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945– 1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931– 1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Zubok, Zhivago’s Children; Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation; Serhy Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). See Alan M. Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), esp. 184 – 5. Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation, 26. I refer to Russia’s Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives, translated and edited by Donald J. Raleigh (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006) and Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War From Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s

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26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

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Children; Yurchak, Everything Was Forever; Anne E. Gorsuch, All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), esp. 106–28; and various publications of Andrei Kozovoi, Par-dela` le mur. La culture de guerre froide sovie´tique entre deux de´tentes (Paris: Complexe, 2009). See also the biographies of the major Soviet Americanists: B. D. Kozenko, ‘Igor Petrovich Dementiev’, in G. Sevostianov (ed.), Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by, Vol. 4 (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), 143– 56; A. Manykin, V. Sogrin, ‘Nikolai Vasilievich Sivachev’, ibid., 422– 36; A. Yu. Petrov, ‘Bolkhovitinov Nikolai Nikolaevich (1930 – 2008)’, in G. Sevostianov (ed.), Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by, Vol. 5 (Moscow: Nauka, 2010), 163 – 77. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 126. Compare with the Soviet point of view in E. A. Dudzinskaia, Mezhdunarodnye nauchnye sviazi sovetskikh istorikov (Moscow: Nauka, 1978). On the ‘KGB people’ participation in the exchange programme see: Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 32 – 5 (about Oleg Kalugin), and 36– 8 (about Boris Yuzhin). Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Ellen Propper Mickiewicz, Media and the Russian Public (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981); Denise J. Youngblood, Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914– 2005 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2007). Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010). See also the recent study about Soviet –US competition in the interpretation of the Russian literary classics: Denise Youngblood, Bondarchuk’s War and Peace. Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014). See Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2011), 12. See also Christine E. Evans, Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016). See especially Marsha Siefert, ‘From Cold War to wary peace: American culture in the USSR and Russia’, in Alexander Stephan (ed.), The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy and Anti-Americanism After 1945 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 185– 217; idem, ‘Twentieth-century culture, “Americanization”, and European audiovisual space’, in Konrad Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger (eds), Conflicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 164– 93; idem, ‘Co-producing Cold War culture: East-West filmmaking and cultural diplomacy’, in Peter Romijn, Giles Scott-Smith and Joes Segal (eds), Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War East and West (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 73– 94. His first attempt to publish what he had already written was made in 1996. It was a small part of his first draft of the memoirs: N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘O vremeni i o sebe: zametki istorika’, Istoriki Rossii. Vypusk 1 (Moscow, 1997), 67– 80. I used another (never published) text as a major source for this study: Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2005).

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33. Eventually, I used a part of this ‘oral history’ collection of mine for my book about cultural consumption in the Soviet Ukraine during the Brezhnev era. See about my methodology of oral history and my list of questions in Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960– 1985 (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 15 – 16, 318– 20. An overwhelming majority of my interviews (especially those conducted in the 1990s) were transcribed in my numerous notebooks. Many of the recent interviews are still on my voice recorder. 34. For my previous book and this study, I used various approaches and methods of oral history, presented in the recent literature. Among numerous guides and books, see especially Donna M. DeBlasio et al. (eds), Catching Stories: A Practical Guide to Oral History (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009); Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2010); and Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 (1st pr.: 2002)). 35. I refer to various Russian editions of Georgi Arbatov, a legendary director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, such as Georgi Arbatov, Zhizn’. Sobytiia. Liudi: Avtobiografiia na fone istoricheskikh peremen (Moscow: Liubimaia Rossiia, 2008) and an American edition in English: Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992). I also use: Aleksandr Nekrich, Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian, translated by Donald Lineburgh (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991); Petro Kravchuk, Bez nedomovok: Spogady (Kyiv: Literaturna Ukraina, 1995); Aron Gurevich, Istoria istorika (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004); Evgenia V. Gutnova, Perezhitoe (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001); Rafail Ganelin, Sovetskie istoriki: O chem oni govorili mezhdu soboi (St Peterburg: Nestor, 2004); Vladimir V. Pozner, Proshchanie s illiuziiami (Moscow: AST, 2013); Margarita I. Rudomino, Knigi moei sud’by: vospominaniia rovesnitsy XX veka (Moscow: ProgressPleiada, 2005). Besides the unpublished notes by Bolkhovitinov, I also used unpublished memoirs of his younger colleague, Valery Tishkov. Dr Tishkov sent me his memoirs by e-mail. 36. I referred to various ACLS and IREX reports from the Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection. A unique collection of the academic reports about travels abroad is located in the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow (hereafter GARF), fond 9606 (Ministerstvo vysshego i srednego spetsial’nogo obrazovaniia SSSR) [Minvuz SSSR], opis 1 (1959 – 82). Another good source of information is Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk [Moscow, Russia], fond 1900, Institut vseobshchei istorii (IVI) Akademii nauk SSSR, 1969 – 85, opis 1: Upravlencheskaia dokumentatsiia IVI, d. 632: protokoly zasedanii sektora istorii SShA i Kanady; d. 647: otchety sotrudnikov instituta o komandirovkakh za granitsu; and fond 2021, Institut Soedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki i Kanady (ISKAN) RAN, 1968 – 95, opis 1: Upravlencheskaia dokumentatsia ISKAN (1968 – 90), d. 647: Otchety sotrudnikov Instituta o poezdkakh v zarubezhnye strany. All academic reports are filed in a folder, called delo 647. Unfortunately, all classified materials about collaboration with the KGB were removed from those files.

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Chapter 1 The Cold War Context of Knowledge Production and American Studies in the USSR 1. Christopher Simpson, ‘Introduction’, Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War, Christopher Simpson (ed.) (New York: the New Press, 1998), xvi. See also a good historical survey on the development of American centres for Russian and Soviet Studies as the Cold War’s Area Studies centres in David Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Compare with the first attempt to draw a comparison of both sides of the ‘academic Cold War’ in Ivan Kurilla and Victoria I. Zhuravleva (eds), Russian/ Soviet Studies in the United States, Amerikanistika in Russia: Mutual Representations in Academic Projects (Lanham, MD and Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Press, 2015). 2. On this, see Engerman, Know Your Enemy and Simpson, Universities and Empire, xx. 3. See Piotr Cherkasov, IMEMO. Institut Mirovoi Ekonomiki i Mezhdunarodnych Otnoshenii. Portret na fone epokhi (Moscow: Ves’ mir, 2004). 4. ‘Doklad akademika N. N. Bolkhovitinova’, Novaia i noveishaia istoria 6 (2003) 185; ‘Yubilei I. A. Beliavskoi’, Amerikanskii ezhegodnik [hereafter AE] 1995 (Moscow, 1996), 13, 15. In 1970 the sector began publishing its periodical Amerikanskii ezhegodnik. 5. See various editions of the memoirs written by the first director of this institute: G. A. Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie (1953–1985 gg.) Svidetel’stvo sovremennika (Moscow, 1991), 381–99; idem, Chelovek sistemy: Nabliudenia i razmyshlenia ochevidtsa eio raspada (Moscow, 2002), 132–47, and a chapter ‘The Institute: how we “discovered” America’, in English in Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), 295–328. ISKAN had its own monthly magazine SShA: ekonomika, politika, ideologiia. 6. See how Arbatov described the role of the revived IMEMO: Arbatov, Zatianuvsheiesia vyzdorovlenie, 73 – 4. Compare with Cherkasov, IMEMO, 81 – 138, 139– 286. 7. Arbatov, The System, 297. 8. See Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk [Moscow, Russia], fond 2021, Institut Soedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki i Kanady (ISKAN) RAN, 1968– 95, opis 1: Upravlencheskaia dokumentatsia ISKAN (1968 – 90), Predislovie, ll. 2 – 3. 9. See Barbara L. Dash, A Defector Reports: The Institute of the USA and Canada (Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, 1982), 5, 6. 10. Arbatov, The System, 174. 11. Dash, A Defector Reports, 11. 12. Ibid., 16– 19, and interviews with Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and Vladislav Zubok. According to contemporaries, ‘Many of the Institute’s KGB ties are certainly through the Ideology Department, or, more specifically, through Deputy Director [Radomir] Bogdanov who heads the Ideology Department. Bogdanov is a colonel in the KGB and works with the first department at the Institute. He is also in charge of the Institute library.’ See Dash, A Defector Reports, 20 –1.

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13. Dash, A Defector Reports, A-10, 3. 14. Seweryn Bialer, The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal Decline (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 294. 15. Interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. 16. On this and subsequent US – USSR exchange agreements, see the books of those who organised these exchanges from the US side: Robert F. Byrnes, SovietAmerican Academic Exchanges, 1958 – 1975 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976), 46 – 7, 48ff. and Yale Richmond, US-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958 – 1986 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 2, 4ff. Compare with the Russian publications, especially A. S. Krymskaia, ‘K istorii nauchnoobrazovatel’nykh obmenov mezhdu SSSR i SSHA v kontse 1950-kh – 1960-e gg.’, Noveishaia istoriia Rossii 2 (2011), 99 – 106. See also Norman E. Saul, ‘The program that shattered the Iron Curtain: the Lacy-Zarubin (EisenhowerKhrushchev) agreement of January 1958’, in William Benton Whisenhunt and Norman E. Saul (eds), New Perspectives on Russian – American Relations, (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 229 – 39. 17. This is a citation from ‘Soglashenie mezhdu SSSR i SSHA ob obmenakh v oblasti kul’tury, tekhniki i obrazovaniia’, Chapter 10 ‘An exchange of the university delegations’, published in Pravda 29 (29 January 1958), 6. See also: Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (New York: St Martin Press, 1998), 151– 83. 18. Richmond, US-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958 – 1986, 36 – 7. 19. See also the good portrayals of Kalugin’s and other KGB people’s participation in the exchange programme in Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 32– 5 (about Oleg Kalugin), and 36 – 8 (about Boris Yuzhin). 20. Oleg D. Kalugin, Spymaster: My Thirty-Two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2009), 23. 21. Kalugin called this exchange programme ‘made under the auspices of a Fulbright Foundation student exchange’. See Kalugin, Spymaster, 23. 22. Ibid., 24. As Kalugin recalled later, because he needed a cover story for his student exchange, he (a senior lieutenant of the KGB with a salary of 300 rubles) posed ‘as a graduate of the Philology Department of Leningrad University’. And he continued, ‘This ruse was eventually swallowed by the New York Times and others in the United States. I travelled to Leningrad to cook up a past and spent a month at the university, familiarising myself with the campus and picking a topic for my nonexistent senior thesis. After several weeks, I “graduated” from Leningrad University and became the proud holder of degree number 981064, dutifully signed by one Professor Alexandrov, member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.’ Ibid., 23. See also a good biography of Alexander Yakovlev and his first visit to the US in: Christopher Shulgan, The Soviet Ambassador: The Making of the Radical Behind Perestroika (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008), 34 ff. 23. Library of Congress. Archival Manuscript Collection. International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) [hereafter LC. IREX], RC 94, F 23, Letter of 15 January

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25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

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1959, by Stephen Viederman, Foreign Student Admissions Officer, to Professor Henry L. Roberts, Russian Studies at Columbia University. See Kalugin’s memoirs: Kalugin, Spymaster, 21 – 33 about his KGB operative work in New York City; and 398 – 9 about ‘Gennadi Bekhterev, one of [his] KGB colleagues from [his] Columbia University days’. I refer to my phone interview with Yale Richmond, 9 May 2012, Muncie, Indiana, the transcript of which is located in my personal collection. Both Bekhterev and Kalugin were promoted to the rank of the general of KGB by 1990. Compare with Christopher Shulgan, The Soviet Ambassador, 34 – 5. Conversation with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov and Aron Ya. Gurevich during our trip to Madrid, Spain, 25 August 1990 for the 17th Congress of the Historical Sciences. As Kalugin recalled, ‘the KGB had infiltrated the [Soviet] Foreign Ministry to the same extensive degree that it controlled the Soviet media. Nearly half the Soviet diplomats stationed overseas were officers of the KGB or military intelligence.’ And he added that since 1965 ‘of the hundred or so people stationed at the [Soviet] embassy [in Washington], about forty were KGB officers’. See Kalugin, Spymaster, 71 – 2 and 73. Both Yale Richmond and Donald Raleigh acknowledged this fact. I refer to my phone interview with Donald J. Raleigh, 11 May 2012, Muncie, Indiana, the transcript of which is located in my personal collection. See in LC. IREX. RC 94, F 23, Letter by Stephen Viederman, 15 January 1959, 1 – 2. Ibid., 3. Kalugin described his fascination with America in his memoirs, ‘I was twenty-four and had been turned loose in New York City with the princely sum of $250 a month in Fulbright spending money.’ ‘I was living for free in Columbia’s John Jay Hall,’ he continued, ‘taking journalism courses, and being encouraged by the school newspaper – and the KGB – to sniff around New York and get acquainted with American life . . . I visited scores of neighborhoods and all the major museums. I saw ball games and went to the Metropolitan Opera. I rode buses and subways for hours, and saw more than one hundred films. I went to a strip club in Greenwich Village, shelling out $40 for a drink with one of the dancers’ See Kalugin, Spymaster, 27, 29. On this, see Byrnes, Soviet-American Academic Exchanges and Engerman, Know Your Enemy, 139, 171, 246– 8. Richmond, US-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958 – 1986, 32. I. V. Alpatova, ‘Sovetsko-amerikanskoe sotrudnichestvo v gumanitarnykh oblastiakh: problemy i perspektivy’, SShA: Ekonomika, Politika, Ideologiia 5 (May, 1978): 64– 70, citations are from 65 and 67. Interview with Robert F. Ivanov, 25 June 1991, Moscow. Interview with Arnold Shlepakov, 28 April 1990, Kyiv, Ukraine. LC. IREX. RC 19 (1976 – 7), F 7; The Milwaukee Journal, 21 February 1977. An essay about Burmistenko’s visit (‘Soviet critic finds US press ruthless’) in this local newspaper quoted him, calling himself ‘a child of de´tente’. Compare with Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 125.

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35. I quote his interview with Yale Richmond in 1997 in Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 32. 36. See my interviews with Shlepakov and Bolkhovitinov. They both repeated a similar comment, one in 1991 and the other in 2001. 37. Citation is from Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain, 25. 38. Interview with Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, 23 March 1991, Moscow. 39. See Kalugin, Spymaster, 424. 40. Pavel Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 95. Palazchenko, Mikhail Gorbachev’s interpreter wrote in his book of memoirs: ‘Most [Soviet] experts on the United States, regardless of differences of view on particular issues, seemed genuinely to like America and the Americans.’ Ibid., See also Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 91. 41. Allen H. Kassof, ‘Scholarly exchanges and the collapse of communism’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 22/3 (1995): 263– 74, citation is from 270. 42. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 49. 43. I. V. Galkin and E. F. Yaz’kov, ‘Laboratoriia amerikanistiki MGU’, SShA: ekonomika, politika, ideologiia 8 (1987): 65; A. A. Porshakova, ‘Laboratoriia istorii SShA v MGU’, AE. 1989, 256–65. In 1983 after Sivachev’s death, Evgenii F. Yaz’kov became a leader of this centre: Larisa V. Baibakova, ‘E.F. Yaz’kov (1923–2009): tvorcheskii put’ pedagoga i uchenogo’, Novaia i noveishaia istoria 3 (2011): 202–20, especially 212 – 13. See also Yu. N. Rogulev, ‘Dvenadtsat’ let vzaimovygodnogo sotrudnichestva (o professional’nykh sviaziakh istorikov-amerikanistov MGU s amerikanskimi kollegami)’, AE. 1986, 246–50. Compare with A. S. Manykin (ed.), Pamiati professora N. V. Sivacheva. SShA: Evoliutsia osnovnykh ideino-politicheskikh kontseptsii (Moscow: MGU, 2004), esp. 5–16. 44. Arbatov, The System, Introduction by Strobe Talbott, xvi. 45. Leonid Leshchenko and Ihor Chernikov, ‘Vsesvitnio vidomyi vitchyznianyi uchenyi: Istoryk-miznarodnyk, organizator nauky i diplomat. Do 80-litia vid dnia narodzhennia akademika NAN Ukrainy Arnol’da Mykolaivycha Shlepakova (1930– 96 rr.)’, in S. V. Vidnians’kyi (ed.), Mizhnarodni zv’iazky Ukrainy: naukovi poshuky i znakhidky. Vypusk 19 (Kyiv: Institut istorii NAN Ukrainy, 2010), 27 –8. A majority of scholars affiliated with this Institute studied various problems of US and Canadian politics. 46. Vitaliy K. Vrublevskiy, Vladimir Shcherbitskiy: zapiski pomoshchnika: slukhi, legendy, dokumenty (Kyiv: Dovira, 1993), 180 – 1. See also documents in Arkhiv Instituta istorii Natsional’noi Akademii nauk Ukrainy (hereafter ANANU), Opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, l. 77 (about Shlepakov moving as a director of the new institute), spr. 1198, l. 48 (about Yevtukh joining Shlepakov in this new institute). 47. AE. 1972, 303 – 6, interviews with Shlepakov and with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001.

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48. Calculations based on data from Gordon S. Wood and Louise G. Wood (eds), Russian – American Dialogue on the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 7; Barbara L. Dash, A Defector Reports: The Institute of the USA and Canada (Washington, DC and Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, 1982), 7; Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, SShA: Problemy istorii i sovremennaia istoriografiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 340; my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow, and with Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. See also David Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 277–8. 49. AE. 1971, 354 – 8; AE. 1972, 303, 331– 9, Interview with Shlepakov. In the All-Union list of publications on US history, the most prominent Ukrainian authors were S. I. Appatov (from Odesa), A. A. Mkrtchian and G. N. Tsvetkov (from Kyiv). 50. AE. 1986, 256– 63; Marcus Rediker, ‘The old guard, the new guard, and the people at the gates: new approaches to the study of American history in the USSR’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., vol. 48 (October, 1991): 580– 97; AE. 1993, 201, 202. 51. I paraphrase what Leonid Leshchenko said in his interview on 31 July 2012 in Kyiv.

Part I

The Postwar Generation

1. Interview with Alexander Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow. On Fursenko and his school, see Vladimir V. Noskov (ed.), Rossiia i SShA: poznavaia drug druga. Sbornik pamiati akademika Aleksandra Aleksandrovicha Fursenko (St Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2015). 2. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov’s letter to me, 12 September 1993, 2.

Chapter 2 World War II and Inventing America on the Borders of Socialist Imagination: The Origins of American Studies in the USSR 1. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2005), 11 – 12 [unpublished, typewritten manuscript of 62 pages, which begins with the crossed-out title ‘Schastlivaia pora detstva’ (The Happy Time of Childhood)] (hereafter Vospominaniia). Compare with the similar reaction to American lend-lease products in the memoirs of Bolkhovitinov’s older colleague from the Institute of World History: Evgenia V. Gutnova, Perezhitoe (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001), 229. Compare with Arkhiv Rossiskoi akademii nauk (hereafter ARAN), F1644: Bolkhovitinov Nikolai Fedosievich, d. 2, d. 3, d. 6, d. 7 and d. 8. This collection includes 148 files, covering the period from 1912 to 1964.

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2. Bolkhovitinov mentioned this in all his interviews. See the story of the German films brought to the Soviet Union as ‘trophy films’ with their mass release for the Soviet audience in 1948– 9, in Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2006 [revised edition: 1998]), 212 – 14. 3. Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 40; Sergei Kapterev, ‘Illusionary spoils: Soviet attitudes towards American cinema during the early Cold War’, Kritika 10/4 (Fall, 2009): 783, 790. 4. I quote my interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 15 December 1995, Moscow. Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 125. 5. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, Moscow, 15 December 1995. Bolkhovitinov referred to two Hollywood classics, both starring the legendary Errol Flynn. The Sea Hawk (1940) tells the story of Geoffrey Thorpe, a privateer, one of several Sea Hawks, who on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I, keep the shipping lanes open. When he sinks a Spanish galleon carrying the new Spanish ambassador to England, Don Jose´ Alvarez de Cordoba and his niece Don˜a Maria, the Queen is displeased since they are not at war. Thorpe and his kind are very wary of Spain and urge the Queen to build up the fleet. With the Queen’s tacit approval, Thorpe goes to Panama to capture his enemies’ treasure but they are betrayed. Brought before a Spanish court, he and his men are sentenced to the galleys as slaves. He manages to escape with proof that the Spanish Armada will sail against England. The second film, Captain Blood (1935), was based on the famous novel by English writer Rafael Sabatini about the adventures of the pirate Captain Blood. On the tremendous popularity of this novel among Soviet children, see my book: Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 116. See also the recent biography of Errol Flynn: Thomas McNulty, Errol Flynn: The Life and Career (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), especially 29–192. 6. Letter of Bolkhovitinov, Moscow, 12 December, 1996, 2. Compare with his interview of 3 July 1999, Moscow. 7. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow. On the real cult of adventure novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Thomas Mayne Reid in Soviet households, see my book: Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 109 – 23. 8. See in Russian a book of Vertinsky’s memoirs, published during the last year of perestroika: Aleksandr Vertinskii, Dorogoi dlinnoiu . . . (Moscow: Pravda, 1991). See also in English about this music in David MacFadyen, Songs for Fat People: Jazz Music in the USSR (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002), 22, 63, 87 – 113. 9. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 13, 19– 20. 10. See in detail about this in: Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945 – 1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997). 11. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 15 – 16, and interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 March 1991, Moscow. See in detail about the representatives of the Soviet elite who

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

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lived in Berlin in the postwar years and brought expensive ‘German stuff’ to Moscow in the memoirs by a member of such an elitist family: Iren Andreieva, Chastnaia zhizn’ pri sotsializme: otchet sovetskogo obyvatelia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2009), 68 – 74. Sun Valley Serenade is a 1941 musical film starring Sonja Henie, John Payne, Lynn Bari and Milton Berle. See also: http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Valley-SerenadeSonja-Henie/dp/6302136229. See in English another description of the Soviet reaction to these American films in Vasily Aksyonov, In Search of Melancholy Baby (New York: Random House, 1987). Compare with Juliane Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 232. Bolkhovitinov’s letter, 12 September 1993, 1 – 2. He mentioned the same in his interview, 3 July 1999, Moscow. Compare my interview with Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. Conversation with Bolkhovitinov and Ivanov on 19 March 1991, at the Institute of World History, the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Arkady Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow (New York: Knopf, 1985), 56. Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), 35. Quoted from the official report submitted on 19 November 1946 to the Secretariat of the Central Committee of CPSU in the Russian State Archive of Social Political History (hereafter RGASPI), f. 17, op. 128, d. 868, ll. 111 – 13. Compare with G. V. Kostyrchenko (ed.), Gosudarstvennyi anti-semitizm v SSSR ot nachala do kul’minatsii: 1938– 1953 (Moscow: Materik, 2005), 87. Other Soviet Americanists who grew up in small Ukrainian villages during this time also recalled the same effect on their imagination. See my interview with Leonid Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv, Ukraine, and with Marina Vlasova, a former student of Nikolai Sivachev, 20 March 1991, Moscow. See also Aleksandr Nekrich, Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian, translated by Donald Lineburgh (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 47. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 16 – 17. On Soviet cars such as Moskvich and Pobeda, see Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). Compare the memoirs of Gutnova, Perezhitoe, 244– 57. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 18 –19; and Bolkhovitinov’s letter to me, Moscow 16 April, 1990. See a description of this period in Gutnova, Perezhitoe, 258 – 71, 274– 9. Bolkhovitinov, ‘O vremeni i o sebe’, 68, and Bolkhovitinov’s letter, 16 April 1990. Vertinsky wrote this song after his return from emigration to Moscow in 1946. See Vertinskii, Dorogoi dlinnoiu . . ., 347. Many of Bolkhovitinov’s colleagues, such as Ivanov and Fursenko, used these expressions (in their interviews) to characterise the traditional attitudes of Soviet intellectuals towards history during late Stalinism. Compare with memoirs by Gutnova, Nekrich and Gurevich. Roger D. Markwick, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, 1956– 1974 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 67.

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25. Bolkhovitinov, ‘How I became a historian’, 106, and interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 March 1991, Moscow. 26. Bolkhovitinov, ‘O vremeni i o sebe’, 69, and my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 2 July 1989, Moscow. 27. Ibid. Compare with a description of other Soviet Americanists’ college education during the same period in the memoirs of Victor L. Israelyan: On the Battlefields of the Cold War: A Soviet Ambassador’s Confession (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 1 – 52. 28. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 March 1991, Moscow. Compare with my interview with Liudmila Antonovna Bolkhovitinova, 14 February 2011, Moscow. Compare with Georgi Arbatov’s decision in 1944 to study English, US history and politics in MGIMO. See his memoirs: Arbatov, The System, 35; and idem, Zhizn’. Sobytiia. Liudi: Avtobiografiia na fone istoricheskikh peremen (Moscow: Liubimaia Rossiia, 2008), 77. 29. For a detailed account, see Gennadii V. Kostyrchenko, Stalin protiv ‘kosmopolitov’: Vlast’ i evreiskaia intelligentsiia v SSSR (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009). Regarding these postwar MGIMO professors as ‘the best of what was left of the brilliant galaxy of Russian scholars of the old (pre-revolutionary) school’, see the memoirs of postwar MGIMO graduates: Arbatov, The System, 33, and Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow, 60 – 8. See also Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 74, 103, 262. 30. Bolkhovitinov, ‘How I became a historian’, 108. 31. Bolkhovitinov referred to the classical description of imperialism ‘as the highest and the last stage of capitalism’ by Vladimir Lenin in 1916: (1) Monopoly (a corporation of a group of capitalists) replaces individual capitalists; (2) Export of capital (money) prevails over export of manufactured goods; (3) Financial capital (an accumulation of industrial money and banking funds in one capitalist corporation) becomes a dominant form of capital; (4) International corporations divide the global economy into their spheres of economic domination; (5) Imperialist countries divide the world into political alliances. 32. Bolkhovitinov, ‘O vremeni i o sebe: zametki istorika’, 69– 70; B. N. Komissarov, ‘As otechestvennoi amerikanistiki (k 70-letiu N. N. Bolkhovitinova)’, in A. O. Chubarian (ed.), Russkoe otkrytie Ameriki. Sbornik statei, posviashchionnyi 70-letiu akademika Nikolaia Nikolaievicha Bolkhovitinova (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 19. 33. Bolkhovitinov, ‘How I became a historian’, 108. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 109, and Bolkhovitinov’s letter, Moscow, 16 April 1990. Bolkhovitinov, ‘K voprosu ob ugroze interventsii Sviashchennogo soiuza v Latinskuiu Ameriku’, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (hereafter NNI) 3 (1957): 46– 66. 36. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 18 May 1992, Moscow. See my detailed analysis of Efimov and Zubok’s biographies in Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Inventing America on the borders of Socialist imagination: movies and music from the USA and the origins of American Studies in the USSR’ REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 2/2 (2013): 249– 88, esp. 264– 80.

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37. Bolkhovitinov’s letter to me, Moscow, 8 December 1987. Citations are from Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 45– 6, who used a book by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew (London: Collins and Harvill, 1963), 89– 92. On various reactions to Stalin’s death see Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation, 121 – 6. See also memoirs of Bolkhovitinov’s older colleague Gutnova, Perezhitoe, 274–9. 38. Bolkhovitinov’s letter, Moscow, 16 April 1990. Compare with the reaction of a much younger witness of similar developments to the death of Stalin and postStalin political and cultural processes in Pozner’s memoirs (Vladimir Pozner was born in 1934): Vladimir V. Pozner, Proshchanie z illiuziiami (Moscow: AST, 2013), 131– 88. See also the memoirs of another Americanist and a MGIMO graduate: Arbatov, The System, 38 – 61. 39. Bolkhovitinov’s letter, Moscow, 16 April 1990. The last quotation is from my conversation with his colleagues from the Institute of World History (the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow). See my interview with Robert Ivanov and Sergei Burin, 19 March 1991, Moscow. 40. See also about this film in the USSR in Stites, Russian Popular Culture, 125– 6, and Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, 40, 41. Compare with Alex Vernon, On Tarzan (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 40, 96, 172. 41. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 4 March 1990, Moscow. See also Bolkhovitinov’s letter, 12 May 1991. 42. Ibid. This quotation is from an interview with Robert F. Ivanov, 6 September 1998, Moscow. 43. Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) is Frank Capra’s classic screwball comedy about a village innocent who inherits $20 million, only to discover it’s more trouble than it’s worth. See also the website: http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Deeds-Goes-TownRemastered/dp/B001GLX6US/ref¼atv_dvd_twister. 44. On these films, see also Stites, Russian Popular Culture, 125. 45. Interview with Shlepakov, 29 August 1991, Kiev. 46. Bolkhovitinov’s letter, 12 May 1991, and my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 5 April 1992, Moscow. 47. Bolkhovitinov’s letter, Moscow, 12 May 1991, and an interview with Robert F. Ivanov, 6 September 1998, Moscow. 48. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow. 49. Ibid.; similar facts were described in a different chronological order (before 1953) in my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 March 1991, Moscow. 50. Interviews with Arnold Shlepakov, 29 August 1991, Kyiv, and with Leonid Leshchenko, 23 July 2012, Kyiv. 51. My interviews with Sergei Burin, Vadim Koleneko and Marina Vlasova, 18 April 1992, Moscow, Institute of World History. 52. Interview with Alexander Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow. 53. ANANU, opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277: Osobova sprava Shlepakova Arnol’da Mykolaiovycha (1978 rik, 77 arkushiv), l. 6; Leonid Leshchenko and Ihor Chernikov, ‘Vsesvitnio vidomyi vitchyznianyi uchenyi: Istoryk-miznarodnyk, organizator nauky i diplomat. Do 80-litia vid dnia narodzhennia akademika NAN Ukrainy Arnol’da

NOTES

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63. 64.

65. 66.

67.

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Mykolaivycha Shlepakova (1930–1996 rr.)’, in Mizhnarodni zv’iazky Ukrainy: naukovi poshuky i znakhidky. Vypusk 19: Mizhvidomchyi zbirnyk naukovykh prats, Vidp. redactor S. V. Vidnians’kyi (Kyiv: Institut istorii NAN Ukrainy, 2010), 27. I also used a similar essay reminiscing about Shelpakov published by his colleagues: V. Gulevich, B. Zabarko, L. Leshchenko and I. Chernikov, ‘Cherez roky I vidstani: Do 80-richchia narodzhennia akademika NAN Ukrainy A. M. Shlepakova (1930– 1996)’, Visnyk NAN Ukrainy 5 (2010): 42–6. See also Oleksii Ias’, ‘Na choli respublikans’koi nauki . . .’ Instytut istorii Ukrainy (1936 – 1986): Narysy z instytutsional’noi ta intelektual’noi istorii (Do 80-richchia ustanovy), edited by V. A. Smolii (Kyiv: NAN Ukrainy: In-t istorii Ukrainy, 2016). Interview with Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. Interview with Shlepakov, 29 August 1991, Kyiv. Interview with Volodymyr B. Yevtukh, 15 December 1995, Kyiv; Interview with Leshchenko, 23 June 2013, Kyiv. Ibid. Interview with Yevtukh, 15 December 1995, Kyiv; Interview with Leshchenko, 23 June 2013, Kyiv. ANANU, opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, l. 6. Interview with Bolkhovitinov and Leshchenko. See especially my interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. ANANU, opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, l. 6. On how Soviet children read the same adventure novels in Ukrainian villages, towns and cities during the 1960s and the 1970s, see Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Book consumption and reading practices in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk during the Brezhnev era’, Ab Imperio 3 (2009): 207– 43, and idem, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 109– 23. He also loved hunting, fishing and riding his motorbike in the countryside. I quote my interview with Leshchenko, on 25 June 2013, in Kyiv. What follows is based on my numerous conversations and interviews with Leonid Leshchenko, starting with our first meeting at Kennedy-Institute of Free University of Berlin in Germany in November 1991, and finishing with my last interviews in the summer of 2012 in Kyiv, Ukraine, and especially on 23 – 27 June 2013, in his apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine. I also used my personal correspondence with him and his colleagues, such as Volodymyr Yakimets’ in 2012, and various biographical publications about Leshchenko: Yurii Slyva, ‘Leonid Leshchenko – vchenyi, diplomat, lector: Do 80-richchia z dnia narodzhennia’, Trybuna 9 – 10, 11 – 12 (2010): 54 – 5; V. K. Gura, ‘Do 80-richchia doktora istorychnykh nauk, profesora L. O. Leshchenka’, Ukrains’skyi istorychnyi zhurnal 4 (2011): 228 – 31. Interview with Leshchenko, 26 June 2013, Kyiv. Richard Taylor and Derek Spring (eds), Stalinism and Soviet Films (New York: Routledge, 1993), 51; Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, rev. edn (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998), 214. On German film see also David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933 – 1945 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1983), 229. Interview with Leshchenko, 26 June 2013, Kyiv.

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68. On this film see Isabelle de Keghel, ‘Meeting on the Elbe (Vstrecha na EI’be): a visual representation of the incipient Cold War from a Soviet perspective’, Cold War History 9/4 (2009): 455– 67. 69. Interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. 70. Ibid. 71. Interview with Leshchenko, 26 June 2013, Kyiv. 72. Interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. 73. Interview with Leshchenko, 31 July 2012, Kyiv. 74. I used Leshchenko’s personal notes, which he gave me in June 2013. 75. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. 76. See a definition of this concept in Thomas Cushman, Notes from Underground: Rock Music Counterculture in Russia (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 43. 77. I quote Lev Losev, Iosif Brodskii. Opyt literaturnoi biografii (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2008), 184. 78. Solomon Volkov, Dialogi s Iosifom Brodskim (Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1998), 107– 8. 79. Losev, Iosif Brodskii, 184. 80. See in detail what is still the best book about this generation in English: Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, 41, 374. Vasily Aksyonov, In Search of Melancholy Baby (New York: Random House, 1987), 15.

Chapter 3 Discovering America By Studying Russian –US and Ukrainian –Canadian Relations 1. Interview with Robert F. Ivanov, 21 March 1991, Moscow. 2. Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2005), 21 – 2, 40; Bolkhovitinov, ‘How I became a historian’, Journal of American Studies 14/1 (1980): 109– 10; idem, ‘O vremeni i o sebe: zametki istorika’, Istoriki Rossii. Vypusk 1 (Moscow, 1997), 70– 1, 72 – 3; B. N. Komissarov, ‘As otechestvennoi amerikanistiki’, 14; Compare with Narochnitsky’s biography written by V. S. Miasnikov, E. A. and N. A. Narochniskye, M. I. Svetachev, ‘Narochnitsky Aleksei Leontievich’, Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by, Vol. 5: Srednie veka. Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, 350– 72. 3. ‘K istorii ustanovlenia diplomaticheskikh otnoshenii mezhdu Rossiei i SShA, 1808– 1809’, N. N. Bolkhovitinov (ed.), NNI 2 (1959), 151– 62. 4. I discussed this in detail with Sergei N. Khrushchev during his visit to Muncie, Indiana, on 4 April 2011. 5. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 40. On the preparation and organisation of Khrushchev’s visit to the United States, see his son-in-law’s memoirs: Aleksei I. Adzhubei, Te desiat’ let (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1989), 200– 7; idem, Krushenie illiuzii: Vremia v sobytiiakh i litsakh (Moscow: Interbuk, 1991), 214 – 26. Both Robert Ivanov and Vadim Koleneko confirmed this information during my interviews on 23 March 1991, Moscow.

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6. Interview with Sergei Burin, 2 February 1996, Moscow. 7. Adzhubei, Krushenie illiuzii, 219. See also how Khrushchev’s advisors explained preparation for the Soviet leader’s visit to America in A. Adzhubei et al. (eds), Litsom k litsu s Amerikoi: Rasskaz o poezdke N. S. Khrushcheva v SSHA, 15 – 27 sentiabria 1959 goda (Moscow: Godudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1959), especially 12, 13 – 23. 8. ‘K istorii ustanovlenia diplomaticheskikh otnoshenii mezhdu Rossiei i SShA, 1808 – 1809’; N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘Prisoedinenie Floridy Soedinennymi Shtatami’, NNI 5 (1959): 110 – 19; idem, ‘Provozglashenie Soedinennymi Shtatami doktriny Monro 1823 g.’, Uchenye zapiski MGPI. Kafedra istorii novogo vremeni 93/5 (1959): 279– 340. 9. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 42 – 3; Bolkhovitinov’s letter, 6 May 1991, Moscow; interview with Ivanov, 21 March 1991, Moscow. 10. Vospominaniia, 42 – 3, Bolkhovitinov, ‘Problemy, volnuiushchie chelovechestvo: Novoe izdanie “Istorii diplomatii”’ [M., 1960, T. 1, 896 s.], Pravda (29 July 1960): 4; idem, Vospominaniia, 43. 11. N. N. Bolkhovitinov and Yu. Ya. Mashkovskaia, Rossiia i voina SSHA za nezavisimost’. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossii, 1961). 12. Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala XX veka. Dokumenty Rossiiskogo MIDa, ser. 1, vol. 6: 1811 –12 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1962); ibid., ser. 1, vol. 3: January 1806– July 1807 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1963); N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘O roli ‘podvizhnoi granitsy’ v istorii SSHA: (Kriticheskii Analiz kontseptsii F. D. Ternera)’, Voprosy istorii 9 (1962): 57–74; idem, ‘Otkliki v SSHA na Otechestvennuiu voinu 1812 goda’, NNI 6 (1962): 93–7. 13. N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘Pouchitel’nyi urok: [K 150-letiiu Otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda]’, Izvestia (13 November 1962): 5; idem, Vospominaniia, 43 – 4; and an interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow. I use Bolkhovitinov’s original phrases. 14. See my interviews with Sergei Burin and Robert Ivanov. Quotations of Porshnev and Bolkhovitinov’s response are from: N.N. Bolkhovitinov, Stanovlenie i razvitie russko-amerikanskikh otnoshenii, 1732 – 1867 (nekotorye itogi issledovanii) (Moscow: IVI RAN, 1998), 5. 15. See Bolkhovitinov, Stanovlenie i razvitie russko-amerikanskikh otnoshenii, 5. In his paper presented in Volgograd in 1997, he reprinted some parts of this work later on in Americana, Vypusk 2 (Volgorad: Izd-vo Volgogradskogo gosudarsvennogo universiteta, 1998), 6 – 15. 16. Bolkhovitinov, ‘How I became a historian’, 111. 17. Quotations are from: Komissarov, ‘As otechestvennoi amerikanistiki’, 15, and Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 44. 18. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 44; Komissarov, ‘As otechestvennoi amerikanistiki’, 16. See Bolkhovitinov, Stanovlenie russko-amerikanskikh otnoshenii, 1775– 1815 (Moscow: Nauka, 1966). 19. I quote Marsha Siefert, ‘Co-producing Cold War culture: East-West film-making and cultural diplomacy’, in Peter Romijn, Giles Scott-Smith and Joes Segal (eds), Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War East and West (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 77. Polevoi described his impressions after his

264

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

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67 –68

two-week American visit of 1955 in Boris N. Polevoi, Amerikanskie dnevniki (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1956). Compare with J. D. Parks, Culture, Conflict and Coexistence: American-Soviet Cultural Relations, 1917 – 1958 (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 1983), especially Chapter 10. Quoted from Polevoi’s report in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (hereafter RGANI), f. 5, op. 15, d. 734, ll. 131–45. Citation is from ll. 140– 1. See also Ro´sa Magnu´sdo´ttir, ‘Mission impossible? Selling Soviet socialism to Americans, 1955–1958’, in Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried (eds), Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 50–74. ‘Russia ready for talks on film “barter”’, in Chicago Daily Tribune, 27 August 1956, 16. See Literaturnaia gazeta, 3 October 1957, 4, and Sovetskaia kul’tura, 1 January 1958, 1. On this and subsequent US– USSR exchange agreements in books by those who organised these exchanges from the US side, see: Robert F. Byrnes, Soviet-American Academic Exchanges, 1958– 1975 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976), 46– 7, 48ff. and Yale Richmond, US-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958– 1986 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 2, 4ff. Compare with Russian publications, especially I. V. Alpatova, ‘Sovetsko-amerikanskoe sotrudnichestvo v gumanitarnykh oblastiakh: problem i perspektivy’, SShA: ekonomika politika ideologiia (hereafter SEPI) 5 (May, 1978): 64 – 70. This is a citation from ‘Soglashenie mezhdu SSSR i SSHA ob obmenakh v oblasti kul’tury, tekhniki i obrazovania’, Chapter 10 ‘An Exchange of the University Delegations’ published in Pravda, 29 January 1958, o. 29, 6. Section VII, item 5, ‘The cultural exchange agreement, United States and USSR sign agreement on East– West exchanges’, [US] Department of State Bulletin, 17 February 1958, 243 – 7, citation on 245. Quoted by Richmond, U.S. – Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958 – 1986, 64. Ibid., On US films in the Soviet Union see a detailed account in Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 128 –32, and idem, Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey (New York: Berhahn Books, 2008), 109– 11. From the beginning of the US– Soviet film exchanges in 1958, the Americans complained about Soviet representatives who proposed several provisions in the agreement that were against US interests. One of them would grant Sovexportfilm the right ‘to contact any American firm to carry on direct contact and make direct deals regarding purchase and sale of films without reference to provisions of [the] cultural agreement’. This was described as ‘an obvious plot . . . to obtain “blanket approval” in advance . . . to make direct contacts with US concerns without any reference to protective clauses set up in [the] cultural agreement.’ Quoted from Marsha Siefert, ‘Meeting at a Far Meridian: American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy on Film in the Early Cold War’, in Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer (eds), Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange in the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2014), 172. ‘As the president of Cosmos Travel, Mr Reiner followed in the footsteps of his father, the late Gabriel Reiner, an immigrant from Czarist Russia, who bought the travel

NOTES

30. 31.

32.

33. 34.

35.

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agency in the late 1930s and maintained an often successful personal campaign to keep the door open for travel to the Soviet Union regardless of the ups and downs of American – Soviet relations. After graduating from New York University and spending a year in law school, Mr Reiner gravitated into his father’s business. Over the years he cultivated personal relationships with many officials in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as with American officials involved in Soviet – American relations. In the early 1970s, he expanded those contacts to Chinese officials, working through the Chinese ambassadors in Moscow and Warsaw. Besides arranging tours to traditional tourist destinations in the Soviet Union, Mr Reiner was instrumental in opening access to small cities with special significance to some Soviet –American Jews, like Uman in the Ukraine, where one of the founding rabbis of Hasidism is buried. He was a member of the US– USSR Trade and Economic Council, a private group of executives and others promoting trade, and the Citizens Exchange Council, which organises educational and artistic exchanges between the Soviet Union and the United States.’ Quoted from The New York Times, 25 February 1991. Citations are from: Vladimir Shneiderov, ‘Vostochno-zapadnoe puteshestvie’, Sovetskii ekran 3 (1959): 8. On how the Soviet government supported the idea of MIFF, organising its second festival in the modern new building of the Luzhniki Palace of Sports in Moscow, demonstrating to foreign guests, like Logan, the possibilities of socialist modernity, see Leonid Mlechin, Furtseva (Moscow: Molodaia gvardia, 2011), 349. Quoted from Vernon Scott, ‘Kramer lured back to films’, Sun Sentinel, 7 June 1987. Compare with my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 4 May 1997, Moscow. Bolkhovitinov attended all the screenings of Kramer’s films during this festival in Moscow. S. Allov, ‘Vstrechi v Gollivude’, Sovetskii ekran 6 (1959): 3. See also Jindriska Blahova, ‘A merry twinkle in Stalin’s eye: Eric Johnston, Hollywood and the Soviet Union’, Film History 22/3 (2010): 347–59. Vasilii Kiselev, ‘Vizit mira i druzhby’, Sovetskii ekran 22 (1959): 2 – 3; A. Kozlov, ‘N.S. Khrushchev v Amerike’, ibid., Sovetskii ekran 24 (1959): 2 – 3. On the preparation and organisation of Khrushchev’s visit to the United States, see his sonin-law’s memoirs: Aleksei I. Adzhubei, Te desiat’ let (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1989), 200– 7; idem, Krushenie illiuzii: Vremia v sobytiiakh i litsakh (Moscow: Interbuk, 1991), 214 – 26. Compare with A. Adzhubei et al. (eds), Litsom k litsu s Amerikoi:Rasskaz o poezdke N. S. Khrushcheva v SSHA, 15 – 27 sentiabria 1959 goda (Moscow: Godudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1959), especially 12, 13– 23; and Siefert, ‘Meeting at a Far Meridian’. Jeffrey Meyers, Gary Cooper: American Hero (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 302, 303. Marty was received by Soviet audiences as a film offering a critical portrayal of life in the United States. As Marsha Siefert noted, such American movies, in spite their obvious ‘humane message’, portrayed America as a ‘land of little culture, boredom, and purposeless existence’. See Marsha Siefert, ‘From Cold War to wary peace: American culture in the USSR and Russia’, in Alexander Stephan (ed.), The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy and anti-Americanism after 1945 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 196.

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36. 1961: Joshua Logan; 1963: Stanley Kramer; 1965: Fred Zinneman; 1967: Dimitri Tiomkin; 1969: King Vidor; 1973: George Stevens; 1975: Bert Schneider; 1981: Jay Leyda; 1985: Robert Young. 37. M. Grigoriev, ‘Voina i mir,’ Sovetskii ekran 17 (1959): 12 – 13. See also Fedor Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo kino (Moscow: EKSMO, 2008), 74– 5, and Peter Rollberg, Historic Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), 744. Compare with the best biographies of and memoirs about Furtseva: Leonid Mlechin, Furtseva (Moscow: Molodaia gvardia, 2011), and Dmitrii Shepilov, Aleksei Adzhubei and Nami Mikoyan, Furtseva: Ekaterina Tretia (Moscow: Algoritm, 2012). 38. Anastasiia Gnedinskaia, ‘Tovarishch Kutuzov, chto-to stalo kholodat’,’ Moskovskii komsomolets, 21 September 2011, 4. 39. See, e.g., ‘Fu¨nfte Fassung,’ Der Spiegel 9 (1967), S. 130. Many Soviet Americanists, including Bolkhovitinov and Shlepakov, described the influence of American films on them. 40. Rollberg, Historic Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema, 744– 5. According to the recommendations of Soviet film-makers, the only viable candidate remaining was the experienced and talented film-director Ivan Pyriev. As his selection to the role seemed secure, several officials in the Ministry of Culture offered it to 40-year-old Sergei Bondarchuk, who had completed his directorial debut, Sud’ba cheloveka, in 1959. Bondarchuk had not sought out the position and did not know of the proposal until a letter from the Ministry reached him, but he chose to accept it and contend with Pyriev. A journalist, Fedor Razzakov, wrote that the invitation of Bondarchuk was orchestrated by Pyriev’s many enemies in the establishment, who were determined not to let him receive the lucrative project; in early February 1961, a letter endorsing Bondarchuk was sent to the Minister, signed by several prominent figures from the cinema industry. At first, Furtseva decreed that both candidates would each direct a pilot to be screened before a commission. However, Pyriev soon withdrew his bid. Razzakov believed he had done so after realising his chances were slim: Bondarchuk, whose career began only during the Khrushchev thaw, represented a generation of young directors promoted by Khrushchev himself to replace the old film-makers from the Stalin era, like Pyriev. At the end of February of 1961, after Pyriev conceded, the Minister held a meeting and confirmed Bondarchuk as the director. See Fedor Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo kino, 74 – 5. Compare with Leonid Mlechin, Furtseva, 349 – 50. 41. See also in detail a history of the Soviet cinematographic version of War and Peace in the recent study: Denise Youngblood, Bondarchuk’s War and Peace. Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014). 42. See Josephine Woll, The Cranes are Flying: The Film Companion (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), 77ff. On the first screening of US film Marty in Moscow and Kalatozov’s film in Washington, DC, see also B. Galanov, ‘Premiera Amerikanskogo fil’ma’, Izvestia, 11 November 1959, and Bosley Crowther, ‘Screen: exchange film: The Cranes are Flying bows here’, New York Times, 22 March 1960. 43. Sergei Bondarchuk, ‘SSHA, Meksika, Italia . . . Tri poezdki S. Bondarchuka za rubezh’’ Sovetskii ekran 11 (1960): sleeve 1 and 7. Paul Muni became a famous US film star because of the trophy films shown in the Soviet Union during the

NOTES

44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

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1940s and 1950s. All of them were originally released in the 1930s. These films included such old productions as I am Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and The Life of Emile Zola (1937). Sovetskii ekran 24 (1959): 19. See information about these films and American film stars in N. Abramov, ‘Novye gosti nashikh ekranov. Amerikanskie fil’my’, Sovetskii ekran 1 (1960): 10–11, 21; no. 10, 21 (sleeve); no. 12, sleeve; M. Bleiman, ‘Iskusstvo na kanikulakh. O fil’me “rimskie kanikuly’, no. 14, 14–15, and sleeve; Dzheims Kelli, ‘Bett Devis’, ibid., no. 15, 16–17, no. 16, sleeve; A. Vilesov, ‘Bankovskii bilet v million funtov sterlingov,’ Sovetskii ekran, no. 18, 6–7; A. Kuleshov, ‘Pestrye kadry. Vpechatlenia o kinematograficheskoi Amerike,’ Sovetskii ekran, no. 19, 16–17; A. Kuleshov, ‘Pestrye kadry. Vstrecha s Disneiem’, Sovetskii ekran, no. 20, 16–17; N. Krylova, ‘Sidnei Puatie’, ibid., no. 22, 18–19, sleeve; no. 24, 19. Mlechin, Furtseva, 347. See a study based on archival documents about Soviet – American film exchanges during the 1960s in Siefert, ‘Meeting at a Far Meridian’, 166– 209. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, Moscow, 10 July 2004. Compare with contemporary periodicals: M. Grigoriev, ‘Voina i mir’, Sovetskii ekran 17 (1959): 12 – 13; Sovetskii ekran 1 (1960): 10 – 11, no. 10, 21, no. 12, 21, no. 14, 14 – 15, 21. See Fedor Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo kino (Moscow: EKSMO, 2008), 74 – 5, and Rollberg, Historic Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema, 744. See also Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 115 – 20. Interview with Ivanov, 25 June 1991, Moscow. Compare with contemporary periodicals: ‘Al’bert Kan, amerikanskii pisatel’’, ‘Liudiam, obgoniaiushchim vremia’, Sovetskii ekran 2 (1959): 13; Yu. Shiriaiev, ‘Al’bert Kan u studentov VGIK’, ibid. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. See also Ted Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945 – 1958 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 155. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow; Yu. Shiriaiev, ‘Al’bert Kan u studentov VGIK,’ Sovetskii ekran 2 (1959): 13. Compare with Anne E. Gorsuch, ‘From iron curtain to silver screen: imagining the West in the Khrushchev era’, in Gyo¨rgy Pe´teri (ed.), Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 153 – 71, and Barbara Walker, ‘Moscow human rights defenders look West: attitudes toward US journalists in the 1960s and 1970s’, in ibid., 237 – 57. See Sovetskii ekran 24 (1966): 19. See Sovetskii ekran 24 (1965): 20 (appendix). Bolkhovitinov’s letter, Moscow, 29 January 1997. Citations are from: George Stevens, Jr, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age: At the American Film Institute, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 557, 558. Sovetskii ekran 24 (1966): 19. In 1967, among 204 released films, there were 117 Soviet movies and 88 foreign films, including old US favourites such as Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Henry King, 1952). See Iskusstvo kino 10 (1967): 160 and Sovetskii ekran 24 (1967): 19.

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55. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 April 1995, Moscow. On Solzhenitsyn’s influences on Soviet reading audiences, see Denis Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 158–9, 163 –4, 169 – 70, 209 – 38. 56. Interview with Liudmila Antonovna Bolkhovitinova, 15 February 2011, Moscow. On Soviet magazines like Novyi mir, see Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 37, 54, 56, 70, 259–60 and Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir. 57. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 April 1995, Moscow. Robert Ivanov also recalled Bolkhovitinov’s fascination with this American exhibition of 1959. Among many studies about the cultural influences of this exhibition see Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, 113–14. Compare with a good oral history in Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 59– 61, and Susan E. Reid, ‘Who will beat whom? Soviet popular reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959’, in Pe´teri (ed.), Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 194–236. 58. Vladimir V. Pozner, Proshchanie s illiuziiami (Moscow: AST, 2013), 214– 19. See also about Yevtushenko and Rozhdestvensky in Zubok, Zhivago’s Children, 171, 176, 286– 9, 198, 319– 20. 59. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. 60. Margarita I. Rudomino, Knigi moei sud’by: vospominaniia rovesnitsy XX veka (Moscow: Progress-Pleiada, 2005), especially 292 – 7. On club activity during the Thaw, see Gleb Tsipursky, Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945 –1970 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). 61. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 March 1991, Moscow, and Bolkhovitinov, ‘O vremeni i o sebe,’ 72. 62. Quoted from interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow. 63. Lev Slezkine (1920 – 2012) is the father of Yuri Slezkine, a professor of Russian history at the University of California, Berkeley. 64. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia, 45. On the reaction of other historians to the same events, see Aleksandr Nekrich, Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian, translated by Donald Lineburgh (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 77 – 121. Compare with Aron Gurevich, Istoria istorika (Moscow, ROSSPEN 2004), 93 – 145. 65. Letter of 19 April 1965 from Frederick Burkhradt, ACLS President to Mr S. K. Romanovsky, Folder ‘Correspondence with State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries’ in ACLS file II:789: Exchange agreements between the U.S. and USSR, 1958 – 68, American Council of Learned Societies (hereafter ACLS), Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection. 66. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow; and Vospominaniia, 47; Lyman Henry Butterfield, ‘Introduction’, in Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, The Beginnings of Russian – American Relations, 1775–1815, translated by Elena Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), xviii. See also ACLS file II:789: Exchange agreements between the US and USSR, 1958– 68, ACLS, Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection, Folder ‘Administration of IIE [Institute of International Education (New York)]’, Letter of 7 December 1967, from Charlotte

NOTES

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77.

78.

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Bowman, ACLS Administrative Secretary, to Mrs Ann Doherty, IIE, ‘I enclose a copy of a translation of a letter from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, dated November 11, but only recently received, in which N.N. Bolkhovitinov is nominated for a six-month visit . . . (We didn’t take time to translate the last two pages – Mr Bolkhovitinov’s bibliography.)’ Quotations are from Lyman Henry Butterfield, ‘Introduction’, in Bolkhovitinov, The Beginnings of Russian – American Relations, xviii. See N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘V arkhivakh i bibliotekakh SSHA’. Compare with his essay: N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘O vremeni i o sebe: zametki istorika,’ Istoriki Rossii. Vypusk 1 (Moscow, 1997), 73 – 4. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominania, 50 – 1. Compare with my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 2 June 2001, Moscow. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominania, 50. See Iu. A. Zamoshkin, ‘Za novyi podkhod k problemam individualizma’, Voprosy Filosofii 6 (1989): 3 – 16. Compare with Robert English, Russia and Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 276 notes. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 14 March 1991, Moscow. Citation from Bolkhovitinov’s letter, 21 January 1992, Moscow, 2. Ibid., 1. See literature about Yudina: Vspominaia Yudinu, edited by A. M. Kuznetsov (Moscow: Klassika-XXI, 2008); Plameneiushcheie serdtse: Mariia Veniaminovna Yudina v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, edited by A. M. Kuznetsov (Moscow: Avtokniga, 2009). Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. LC. IREX. RC 27, F 16 (about Sivachev), and LC. IREX. RC 21, F 109, letter by Theodore Von Laue, 15 May 1973, 1 (about Fursenko). ANANU, Opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, l. 55. During this time Shlepakov wrote and published the typical (for Soviet historian) anti-American and anticapitalist propaganda materials. See, e.g.: A. N. Shlepakov, Ukraina v planakh mizhnarodnoi reaktsii naperedodni drugoi svitovoi viiny (Kyiv: Derzhavne vydav-vo politychnoi literatury URSR, 1959); idem, V roky zrostannia voennoi nebezpeky (Kyiv: Derzhavne vydav-vo politychnoi literatury URSR, 1963). The CIA operatives also suspected the KGB connections of a scholar as relatively young as Shlepakov. See ‘declassified and released Central Intelligence Agency material’ from 1964 about Shlepakov travelling abroad with his wife. See: http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/ default/files/document_conversions/1705143/AERODYNAMIC%20%20% 20VOL.%2030%20%20(OPERATIONS)_0003.pdf. See his autobiography: Petro Kravchuk, Bez nedomovok: Spogady (Kyiv: Literaturna Ukraina, 1995). On Soviet financial (and other) support of Leftist Canadian Ukrainians such as Krawchuk, see: John Kolasky, The Shattered Illusion: The History of Ukrainian Pro-Communist Organizations in Canada (Toronto: PMA Books, 1979), especially 205, 206– 8. See more details about those connections of Leftist Canadians (like Krawchuk) with the Soviet administration in M. H. Marunchak, The Ukrainian Canadians: A History (Winnipeg/Ottawa: Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, 1976), 494 – 5; Andrij Makuch, ‘Ukrainian pro-communists: revolutionaries into businessmen’, Student (December 1979): 9, 11, and other

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80.

81.

82.

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publications by Andrij Makuch about Peter Krawchuk in The Ukrainian Weekly 15 (13 April 1997): 4; Journal of Ukrainian Studies 23/1 (Summer 1998): 148– 50. On the overall issues regarding the Soviet perception of Canada, see Joseph Laurence Black, Canada in the Soviet Mirror: Ideology and Perception in Soviet Foreign Affairs, 1917– 1991 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1998). Eventually Krawchuk’s book, edited and proof-read by Shlepakov, was published in 1963 in Soviet Ukraine: Petro Krawchuk, Na kanads’kii zemli (Lviv: Knyzhkovo-zhurnal’ne vydavnytstvo, 1963). On this, see his memoirs: Bez nedomovok: Spogady, 67. Ukrains’ke tovarystvo kul’turnogo sv’iazku z zakordonom existed during 1926– 59, from January 1959 it was renamed as Ukrains’ke tovarystvo druzhby i kul’turnogo sv’iazku z zarubiwnymy krainamy (1959 – 85). For a history of such Soviet organisations, created by the USSR for ‘cultural diplomacy’, see Michael DavidFox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921– 1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), V. M. Danylenko, Ukraina v mizhnarodnykh naukovo-tekhnichnykh zv’iazkakh (70-80-i rr.) (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy. Instytut ukrais’koi arkheografii, 1993); P. Tron’ko et al. (eds), Na skryzhaliakh istorii: Z istorii vzaiemozv’iazkiv uriadovykh struktur i hromads’kykh kil Ukrainy z ukrains’ko-kanads’koiu hromadoiu v drugii polovyni 1940– 1980-ti roky (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, Fundatsiia ukrains’koi spadshchyny Al’berty, 2003); and Stanislav Yu. Lazebnyk and Olha B. Havura, Rozdumy na mostu z dvobichnym rukhom (Kyiv: Etnos, 2004). During the late 1950s and the early 1960s, young Shlepakov was used by the ‘directive organs’ for various contacts with official guests from the United States and Canada. See documents in Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Vyshchykh Organiv Derzhavnoi Vlady i Organiv Derzhavnogo Upravlinnia Ukrainy (hereafter TsDAVOVUU), fond 5110, op. 1, tom 2, d. 1192, l. 1 – 3, ll. 1193, 1 – 5. For a detailed account of the relations between Ukrainian Canadians and Soviet Ukraine, see Jaroslav Petryshyn, ‘The ‘ethnic question’ personified: Ukrainian Canadians and Canadian– Soviet relations 1917– 1991’, in Rhonda L. Hinther and Jim Mochoruk (eds), Re-Imagining Ukrainian Canadians: History, Politics, and Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 223– 56; Jennifer Anderson, ‘Polishing the Soviet image: the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society and the “progressive ethnic groups”, 1949– 1957’, in Hinther and Mochoruk (eds), Re-Imagining Ukrainian Canadians, 279– 328. I also used the Private Archive of Larissa Stavroff (Krawchuk) [hereafter Stavroff archive] in Toronto, Canada, which I visited in March 2012. Stavroff archive, file 64: Arnold Shlepakov, letter from 10 April 1957 about an invitation for submission to ‘the new Ukrainian periodical Ukrains’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal’. See also their publications after Shlepakov joined the editorial board of Vsesvit: Petro Kravchuk, ‘Kanadtsi ukrains’kogo pokhodzhennia vchora i siogodni’, Vsesvit 9 (1981): 192 – 9, and Arnold Shlepakov, ‘Storinky zhyttia i borot’by’, ibid., 200 – 1. See in Kravchuk, Bez nedomovok, 73 – 5, and my interview with Leshchenko, 31 July 2012, Kyiv.

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83. Interview with Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. On a similar experience, see Lazebnyk and Havura, Rozdumy na mostu, in the chapter ‘Filosofiia zhyttia Petra Kravchuka’, 111– 31. 84. A. M. Shlepakov, Ukrains’ka trudova immigratsiia v SShA i Kanadi (kinets’ XIX – poch. XX st.) (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1960). See especially Stavroff archive, file 64: Shlepakov Arnold, personal letters from 7 August 1956 to 17 December 1972. 85. Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection. ACLS, II:789, ‘Report on program of exchanges . . . 1 July 1964 through 30 June 1965’, 2. Compare with TsDAVOVUU, fond 4621, op. 13, tom 1, d. 205, ll. 10 – 25. 86. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov recalled how Shlepakov showed him Miles Davis’ record in 1965. See also A. N. Shlepakov, Immigratsiia i amerikanskii rabochii klass v epokhu imperializma (Moscow: Mysl’, 1966). 87. A. N. Shlepakov, Immigratsiia, 8. 88. Compare with L. Bagramov, Immigranty v SShA (Moscow: Mysl’, 1957); V. Chirkin, Diskriminatsiia national’nykh men’shinstv v SShA (Moscow: Mysl’, 1958); E. Pletnev, Mezhdunarodnia migratsiia rabochikh v kapitalisticheskoi sisteme mirovogo khoziaistva (Moscow: Nauka, 1962); A. Katz, Polozhenie proletariata v SShA (Moscow: Nauka, 1962); and a study by a historian – Sh. A. Bogina, Immigratsiia v SShA nakanune i v period grazhdanskoi voiny, 1850– 1865 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1965). 89. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. 90. Interview with Burin, 5 September 1999, Moscow. 91. Interview with Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. 92. TsDAVOVUU, fond 4621, op. 13, d. 217, ll. 2 – 37. 93. ANANU, Opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, ll. 55 – 64; Visnyk NAN Ukrainy, 2010, no. 5, 45. 94. Interview with Leonid Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. Leshchenko suggested in his conversation with me that in his youth, Shlepakov had homosexual relations and was caught by the police in a kind of ‘illegal sexual act’. The KGB used this incident for blackmailing and manipulating him. Shlepakov began drinking alcohol as a result of this situation. Other colleagues also mentioned that despite his marriage to E. N. Roslavets, deputy director of the Kyiv Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Shlepakov never demonstrated romantic feelings towards women, or expressed interest in women in any other form, etc. See also ANANU, Opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, l. 56. 95. Leonid Leshchenko and Ihor Chernikov, ‘Vsevsitnio vidomyi vitchyznianyi uchenyi: Istoryk miznarodnyk, organizator nauky i diplomat. Do 80-litiia vid dnia narodzhennia akademika NAN Ukrainy Arnol’da Mikolaivycha Shlepakova (1930– 1996 rr.)’, in Mizhnarodni zv’iazky Ukrainy: naukovi poshuky i znakhidky. Vypusk 19: Mizhvidomchyi zbirnyk naukovykh prats, Vidp. redactor S. V. Vidnians’kyi (Kyiv: Institut istorii NAN Ukrainy, 2010), 28. Of course, occasionally, Shlepakov reproduced his old original material on Slavic immigration to the United States and US immigrational politics and published them in prestigious collective monographs in Moscow. See, e.g., his contributions to the book, published by the Institute of Ethnography at the USSR Academy of Sciences: A. N. Shlepakov, ‘Slavianskie gruppy v SShA’, in S. A. Gonionskiy, A. V. Efimov and Sh. A. Bogina (eds), Natsional’nye protsessy v SShA, (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 278– 98; and idem,

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‘Rasovo-natsional’nye osnovy immigratsionnoi politiki SShA v 20-60-kh godakh XX v.’, Natsional’nye protsessy v SShA, 312– 27. 96. Interview with Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. 97. Interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv.

Part II 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

De´tente Generation

Interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. Interview with Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. Interview with Leonid Leshchenko, 23 July 2012, Kyiv. Interview with Marina Vlasova and Vadim Koleneko, 20 March 1991, Moscow. Besides Arbatov’s memoirs, I use Bolkhovitinov’s personal materials: Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2005) [unpublished, typewritten manuscript of 62 pages, which begins with the crossed title ‘Schastlivaia pora detstva’ (The Happy Time of Childhood)] (hereafter Vospominaniia). See also Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘How I became a historian’, Journal of American Studies 14/1 (1980): 103–14; idem, ‘O vremeni i o sebe: zametki istorika’, Istoriki Rossii. Vypusk 1 (Moscow, 1997), 67–80. Compare also with the role of American funding agencies in this exchange in recent studies: David Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), and Mark Solovey, Shaky Foundations: The Politics – Patronage – Social Science Nexus in Cold War America (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2013).

Chapter 4

Academic Exchanges and Soviet Americanists during the Cold War

1. LC. IREX. RC 19 (1976– 7), F 39. 2. Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1009, l. 13. 3. Citations are from Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1009, ll. 13 – 14, and Vospominaniia, 48– 9. See also my interviews with former Soviet Americanists – Bolkhovitinov, Fursenko, Ivanov, Shlepakov and Leshchenko, and the American organisers of their visits – Yale Richmond and Donald Raleigh. The Soviet side usually rejected more American candidates than the US hosting institutions. The most infamous cases of Soviet rejection were the denial of applications from David Goldfrank (because of his religious topic) and Frank Sysin (because of his Ukrainian nationalism) applications. 4. As Fursenko and Leshchenko recalled later, ‘before a trip to America, the number one ideological enemy of the Soviet Union, it was normal practice for the selected candidate to be interviewed by the KGB representative at the candidate’s teaching or academic institution to remind him about some behavioural issues in the country of our enemies. Only after this prophylactic conversation could a KGB

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officer offer the selected candidate a contract for future collaboration with the KGB. It was the candidate’s right to accept or ignore this offer.’ Fursenko in 1991 and Leshchenko in 2013 gave identical accounts of the procedure. See my e-mail correspondence with Vladislav Zubok, 9 June 2013. He recalled that during his first trip to the US in 1987, ISKAN’s administration stopped collecting travel reports. But I still remember that before and after my 1993 research trip to US, I was approached by the local former KGB officer, requesting a submission of my academic report to his office at Dnipropetrovsk State University. On the KGB’s treatment of young Yakovlev, when the Soviet police used him in their provocation against the US Embassy in Moscow in 1949, see John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), 456 – 8. Compare with a very idealistic biography of Yakovlev in the essay by V. Pechatnov and S. Pozharskaia, ‘Nikolai Nikolaievich Yakovlev (1927 – 1996)’, in G. Sevostianov (ed.), Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by, Vol. 4 (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), 522 – 3. I quote his book commissioned by the KGB: Nikolai N. Yakovlev, TsRU protiv SSSR (Moscow: Progress, 1976), 7. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, and interview with Sergei Burin, 3 September 1998, Moscow. Compare with Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1009, ll. 91– 4. See archival documents about this submissions in ANANU sprava 1277, l. 54 (Shlepakov’s papers), and Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1009, l. 14 (Sivachev’s papers). Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, SSHA: Problemy, 339 – 40, and interviews with Ivanov, Bolkhovitinov, and especially with Leshchenko, 26 June 2013, Kyiv. In the files, I found only the names of four female Soviet visitors such as Irina Beliavskaia and Marina Vlasova from Moscow. I use quotations from my interview with Vlasova and Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow. See also Nekrich’s memoirs about travels abroad of Soviet Americanists from his Institute of History, and especially about the case of Lev Slezkine, who was denied permission to travel abroad: Aleksandr Nekrich, Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian, (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 135, 201. Even people who were close to the KGB, like Arbatov, had problematic relations with this organisation and sometimes experienced real persecution by KGB officers. See Arbatov, Zatianuvsheiesia vyzdorovlenie (1953 –1985 gg.) Svidetel’stvo sovremennika (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1991), 269, 272 –4. See a typical academic travel report by O. S. Soroko-Tsiupa, a MGU Professor of Canadian History, in Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1011, ll. 11– 12, about his travel to Toronto, Canada during September 1966– June 1967. Compare with ANANU, sprava 1277, ll. 53 – 4, 64, and sprava 1198, ll. 31 – 4. LC. IREX. RC 94, F 28, file of Vitaly Beloborodko. LC. IREX. RC 237, F 13 (1977). See an IREX paper dated 20 September 1977, with a handwritten description of ISKAN as ‘a Spy Institute.’ As David Goldfrank from Georgetown University recalled, the entire situation with Soviet – American exchanges reminded him of the Radio Erevan joke he had heard about 35 years ago.

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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

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‘Vopros[question]: Are our academic exchanges with the United States reciprocal and equitable? Otvet [answer]: Yes, our academic exchanges with the United States are reciprocal and equitable. They send us scholars, and we treat them like spies; we send them spies, and they treat us like scholars.’ Cited from Goldfrank’s e-mail message to me, 29 August 2013. G. Arbatov, The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), 289–90, 292. Arbatov explained that as late as 1968 even he, director of the new USA Institute, still had not a single American acquaintance because ‘given the restrictions of the times . . . I didn’t even have the right to initiate such contacts.’ See also Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 148. See his numerous books of memoirs, including one in English, especially: Arbatov, The System, 11 – 294. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 211– 12, 213. Arbatov, The System, 298. Barbara L. Dash, A Defector Reports: The Institute of the USA and Canada (Washington, DC: Delphic Associates, 1982), A-10-12, 3 – 5. As Norman Saul mentioned earlier, in 1975, ‘academic de´tente was part of [Soviet Americanists’] mission to this country’. See in LC. IREX. RC 228, F 18, 2. See a detailed description in his memoirs: G. N. Sevostianov and V. I. Zhukovskaia, Za liniei fronta (Minsk: Belarus, 1980), and the official obituary on the Russian Academy of Sciences’ site: http://worldhist.ru/News/356/9367/. See his publication where he describes his career in the Far East: G. P. Sevostianov, Ekspansionistskaia politika SShA na Dal’nem Vostoke, v Kitaie, i Koreie v 1905– 1911 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1958). After this book, he stopped writing something original. But as a head of the ‘American’ sector since 1967, he had been editing mainly the collective works of his sector’s colleagues. See an official Soviet publication, openly praising the professional background of Sevostianov as a Soviet spy/KGB intelligence officer in Byelorussia and the Far East before his academic career in 1950. It was published in the rubric ‘Nauchnaia zhizn’ [Scholarly Life]’, in Amerikanskii ezhegodnik during perestroika. See S. N. Burin, ‘K 75-letiiu akademika G. N. Sevostianova’, AE 1990 (Moscow, 1991), 211– 15. Compare with another official publication ‘Novye chleny Akademii nauk SSSR’, in Vestnik AN SSSR (Moscow, 1988), Vypusk 2, 123– 6; and ‘Grigorii Nikolaievich Sevostianov: [nekrolog]’, Novaia i noveishaia istoria 3 (2013): 245– 8. LC MC, ACLS, II: 789, ‘Interim Report on 1961– 63 . . ., Soviet scholars’, 4. ‘Grigori M. Sevostianov, Senior Scholarly Worker, Institute of History, Academy of Sciences. Dr Sevostianov’s research topic was “History of the foreign policy and diplomacy of the USA in modern times”. His program included visits at the Library of Congress, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley. He delivered lectures at Cornell and Yale Universities . . .’ See ibid., II: 791, ‘Report on educational exchange project carried by the ACLS under grant no. SCC-30047’, 4.

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23. LC. IREX. RC 21, F 17 (1974 – 5), and LC. IREX. RC 228, F 18, citation from a letter by Allen Kassof, 26 December 1974. Compare with my interviews with Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Robert Ivanov, Alexandr Fursenko and Aron Ya. Gurevich (19 March 1991) and their very negative relations to the ‘KGB general’ Sevostianov; they characterised Sevostianov as ‘the worst enemy of American people’ as the ‘Soviet hawk of the Cold War’. 24. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 18, 2: ‘After consultations with faculty and administration and subsequent conversations with Dr Sevostianov in Washington by myself . . . it was decided to extend a proposal for a joint Soviet-American conference on World War II to be held in Lawrence in the fall of 1976, including a joint publication of papers. The State Department and American Historical Association were also consulted in regard to this project, which was presented to Dr Sevostianov by Professor John T. Alexander in Moscow in May . . .’ 25. These were Vlasova’s words; compare with interview with Donald Raleigh, 16 May 2012. 26. LC. IREX. RC 161, F 25, IREX Memorandum, 27 August 27 1973, and letter of Cynthia Scott, 26 February 1974. 27. Ibid. 28. LC. IREX. RC 187, F 13: Sergei Plekhanov’s file, praising his erudition. 29. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 45, letter by Eugene B. Skolnikoff, 22 June 1976, 1 – 2. 30. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 45, letter by Julia Holm, 14 July 1976, 1 – 2. Another problem, which IREX officials began complaining about after 1975, was the KGB trying to stop serious researchers from going to the US: ‘Support for dissidents among American scientists is growing steadily and I am very curious to see if their actions might not positively affect the quality of scholars coming here.’ 31. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 54, letter by John K. Fairbank, 27 June 1975. On 12 May 1975, IREX Memorandum recommended to finance a visit (from 3 –4 weeks) of a talented Soviet sociologist, ‘which would promise to lead us beyond the kind of academic tourism which [existed in early years]’. See in LC. IREX. RC 161, F 29. 32. LC. IREX. RC 91, F 1 (1963– 8). See folder: ‘Trip to USA of P. I. Shitov, from Department of Foreign Relations, Ministry of Higher Education, March (4 –27) 1968.’ He went to visit colleges and universities in the US where Soviet students stayed. See a special handwritten note with complaints about Shitov’s visit from IREX representatives. 33. LC. IREX. RC 21, F 68, letter by Donald Fleming from Charles Warren Center at Harvard, 6 April 1976, about a visit by Igor Dementiev. The similar unenthusiastic report about E. Yaz’kov’s visit is placed in the same folder under F 85. 34. LC. IREX. RC 187, F 25, letter by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, New York, 15 November 1979. 35. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 17, letter by Marshall Shulman, 24 January 1975. 36. Look though the entire IREX file for the Year 1975 with recommendations to provide the Soviet analysts with all necessary information about the US economy. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 17. I quote the phrase ‘Soviet powerful people’, from my interview with the late Richard Stites, 18 November 2008, Philadelphia.

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37. See Arbatov, The System, 202, and English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 163–4, 165. 38. LC. IREX. RC 31, F 26, 2. 39. Both Sevostianov and Bolkhovitinov (from IVI) became close friends of the American expert in Russian history, Norman Saul. Sivachev (from MGU) became friends with the American historian of Soviet Russia, Donald Raleigh. Sivachev’s student, Vladimir Sogrin (from IVI), is still a good friend of Norman Saul’s and has close friendly connections with Alfred Rieber, an American historian of Imperial Russia. 40. Interview with Yale Richmond, 9 May 2012. 41. L. O. Leshchenko, Proval amerykans’koi polityky izoliatsii Kytaiu (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo AN URSR, 1959). 42. L. O. Leshchenko, Ukraina na mizhnarodnii areni (1945 –1949) (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1969). Later on, he published another book based on the secondary published sources: L. O. Leshchenko, SRSR i Kanada v antihitlerivs’kii koalitsii (1941 – 1945 rr.) (Kyiv, Naukova dumka, 1973). 43. Interview with Leshchenko, 31 July 2012, Kyiv. 44. See IREX evaluations of Tsvetkov’s visit to the US from 31 May to 5 August 1970 in: Library of Congress. Manuscript Collection. IREX, RC 21, F 3 – on 29 June 1970, Prof. Ivo Lederer from Stanford University reported to IREX that Tsvetkov has just concluded his two-week stay at Stanford. ‘He worked intensively at the Hoover Institution and, in addition, saw a handful of people in various parts of the university. He is the most engaging and friendly individual, and very much interested in seeing that the exchange flourishes. I rather think he will do whatever he can to help American participants at Kiev University.’ 45. Interview with Leshchenko, 26 June 2013, Kyiv. 46. Interview with Leonid Leshchenko in his Kyiv apartment, 27 June 2013. In his memoirs, Krawchuk also recalled this conversation with Leshchenko: ‘On October 15 [1974 in Toronto] we had a visitor, a historian from Kyiv, L. Leshchenko.’ See Kravchuk, Bez nedomovok, 189. 47. The results of his productive research trip were published in a book – L. A. Leshchenko, Fermerskoe dvizhenie v Kanade (1900 – 1939 gg.) (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1979) – and in various Ukrainian journals and collective monographs. On this, see V. K. Gura, ‘Do 80-richchia doktora istorychnykh nauk, profesora L. O. Leshchenka’, Ukrains’skyi istorychnyi zhurnal 4 (2011): 230–1. 48. LC. IREX. RC 187, F 32, a letter of 17 May 1980, by Ronald Pope; Daily Vidette, Friday, 18 April 1980, ‘letter to the editor’ by Ada Nicholsky, Assistant Professor from Department of Economics, Illinois State University, Bloomington-Normal. 49. I quote Yale Richmond’s interview with Yakovlev in September 1998 in Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 29. 50. I quote Robert English’s interview with Kremenyuk in December 1989 in English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 75, 266n.146. 51. Interview with Robert F. Ivanov, 25 June 1991, Moscow. 52. Quoted from: Oleg D. Kalugin, Spymaster: My Thirty-Two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2009), 28.

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53. B. D. Kozenko, ‘Igor Petrovich Dementiev’, in G. Sevostianov (ed.), Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by, vol. 4 (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), 149. 54. Interview with Volodymyr B. Yevtukh, 15 December 1995, Kyiv. Compare with my interview with Leshchenko, 23 July 2012, Kyiv. 55. I quote my interview with Ivanov, 25 June 1991, Moscow, and English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 150. Another Soviet Americanist who became a diplomat noted, ‘start to resemble the people, the country, where you work, and this was especially so for those who worked on the USA. It took a higher level of professionalism and culture, and such experience changes your outlook’. Ibid., 298. 56. Interview with Alexander Fursenko, 21 March 1991, Moscow, IVI. 57. New York Times, 5 July 1959; R. Sh. Ganelin, V. V. Noskov and V. N. Pleshkov, ‘Fursenko Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (1922 – 2008)’, Portrety istorikov: Vremia i sud’by. Vol. 5, edited by G. Sevostianov (Moscow: Nauka, 2010), 555 – 71, the citation is from 561. 58. Interview with Fursenko, 21 March 1991, Moscow, IVI. 59. LC. IREX. RC 21, F 109, letter by Theodore Von Laue, 15 May 1973, 1. 60. Ibid., 1 – 2. And he finished his letter with the phrase, ‘Poor man: his visit in the US was so hectic, too much to be observed and digested! I wonder how he feels now, back in Leningrad, with all his presents and his memories’. 61. LC. IREX. RC 21, F 109, letter (15 May 1973) by Norton Ginsburg, Dean of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. 62. See his file in LC IREX, RC 85, F 54. 63. Interview with Igor P. Dementiev, 20 March 1991, Moscow, IVI. 64. See many cases of such money-making and getting benefits like new spectacles, free dental visits, etc. in LC. IREX. RC 19, F 7, F 17, and F 39 (1976 – 7); RC 187, F 31 (1979) about Kuropiatnik. See in R 228, F 49 about Robert F. Ivanov’s visit from August 1975 to June 1976. See also how other Soviet Americanists tried to make money during their trips, cheating on the American administration, in LC. IREX. RC 228, F 35, file of Viktor Martsinkevich (IMEMO), April– July 1975. 65. About the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow see: English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 70, 76, 125, and especially for the period from 1965 to 1982 in Cherkasov, IMEMO. Institut Mirovoi Ekonomiki i Mezhdunarodnych Otnoshenii. Portret na fone epokhi (Moscow: Ves’ mir, 2004), 201– 530. Boris I. Komzin was born in 1929 in Moscow. He earned a PhD in civic engineering; then using his Communist Party connections, Komzin made an important state and academic career. He served in the USSR Council of Ministry and worked in IMEMO from 1965. From 1982 Komzin served as chair of numerous Soviet delegations at the United Nations Organisation and UNESCO. See: http://www.biografija.ru/biography/komzin-boris-ivanovich.htm. 66. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 33, file of Boris I. Komzin, a head of the sector at the IMEMO, September– November 1974. On 4 November 1974, Julia Holm informed Komzin that $100 was deducted from his stipend. 67. Interviews with Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Alexander Fursenko and Igor Dementiev, 21 March 1991, Moscow, IVI. I quote Bolkhovitinov, who explained that Komzin’s KGB connections helped him to avoid a scandal in Moscow.

278

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68. LC. IREX. RC 229. F 15: Krasnov, Ivan Matveevich [(born in 1914, graduated in 1940 from Voronezh State Pedagogical Institute), affiliated with Moscow Institute of World History, visit (on ACLS programme) from 5 March 1972 to 14 June 1972, with research ‘The Republican Party in Power – Foreign Policy 1921– 1933’]. 69. LC. IREX. RC 229, F 15, Ivan M. Krasnov’s file, letter by Robert Wood, 1 August 1972. 70. LC. IREX. RC 229, F 15, Ivan M. Krasnov’s file, letter by Robert F. Byrnes, 23 May 1972. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., RC 21, F 113: See a letter by Alfred Rieber, a chair at the department of history at the University of Pennsylvania, 31 May 1972, to Cynthia Scott, IREX, 1 – 2. 73. Interview with Ivanov, 21 March 1991, Moscow, IVI. I quote Ivanov’s description of Krasnov’s requests as ‘blackmail’. LC. IREX. RC 229, F 15, Krasnov’s file. On 11 May 1972, Robert F. Byrnes, Distinguished Professor of History, from the Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University to Cynthia Scott, described how Indiana University meticulously planned Krasnov’s visit: tour to the library, meetings with graduate students and faculty, dinners at homes of the faculty, receptions, tours to Museums of Dreiser and Eugene Debts at Terre Haute, visits to Indianapolis, American Legion Archive, etc. But Krasnov’s major concern was how to save his money and bring it back to Moscow. In an IREX record (transcript) of a conversation from 8 June 1972, Mary Clark said that ‘Krasnov is being extremely difficult – saw Starr, associate director of Hoover library and threatened him and has said same to Mary “he will write to Dobrynin [Soviet Ambassador] complaining that he was denied access – many Hoover Institute scholars go to the USSR and are given access to Soviet archives.” He will go to Beliaev (Director of Soviet Archives in USSR) as soon as he returns and demands that American scholars not be allowed to come to the USSR and most especially not be allowed to use archives etc., etc.’ 74. LC. IREX. RC 228, F 42, file of Ivan Krasnov, letter from Professor Walter Pintner, Cornell University, 27 May 1975. 75. According to Bolkhovitinov and Robert Ivanov, both colleagues of Krasnov from the same sector of the same institute, Krasnov was ‘on the KGB payroll’. Eventually, IREX denied a new application from Krasnov for funding in 1975. See in LC. IREX. RC 228, F 42, file of Ivan Krasnov. 76. I quote Andrei Melville’s email with Yale Richmond on 13 January 2001, in Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 91 – 2. 77. I use the phrase coined by Professor Alfred Rieber in: LC. IREX. RC 21, F 113, letter by Alfred Rieber, 31 May 1972, 1. 78. LC. IREX. RC 68, F 36, 25. 79. Interview with one of Sivachev’s student, Marina Vlasova, 20 March 1991, Moscow. 80. See his biography in K. V. Khvostova, ‘Khvostov Vladimir Mikhailovich (1905– 1972)’, Portrety istorikov: Vremia i sud’by. Vol. 5, edited by G. Sevostianov (Moscow: Nauka, 2010), 572– 83.

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81. I quote my interview with Vlasova, 20 March 1991, Moscow, and A. S. Manykin and V. V. Sogrin, ‘Nikolai Vasilievich Sivachev (1934– 1983)’, Portrety istorikov: Vremia i sud’by. Vol. 4, edited by G. Sevostianov (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), 422 – 36, especially 422, 423, 424. 82. Nikolai V. Sivachev, Politicheskaia bor’ba v SShA v seredine 30-kh godov XX v. (Moscow: MGU, 1966). 83. Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 44. ‘Sivachev’s interest in Roosevelt [Richmond noted] continued after his return in Moscow; and in 1982, when the Soviet Union marked the centennial of Roosevelt’s birth with a TV special, Sivachev was the featured speaker.’ And he explained the reasons for Sivachev’s interest in the New Deal: ‘Sivachev, in later years, confided to American friends that he had been sent to Columbia to learn why the United States, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, had had a New Deal and not a communist revolution. Sivachev learned why and, in doing so, became one of the Soviet Union’s leading authorities on Roosevelt and Soviet – American relations.’ Ibid., 44. 84. Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 917, ll. 2, 8. Even the Soviet policy analysts, who were present, praised this manuscript. 85. Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 917, l. 8. 86. Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1009, l. 14. 87. See about this in LC. IREX. RC 68, F 36, 23, 25, and letter of L. Bazhanov, 28 November 1967. Compare with my interviews with Bolkhovitinov, Yale Richmond and Donald Raleigh, and Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 43 – 4. Sivachev’s colleagues spread rumours about him establishing official KGB connections during this visit to the US in 1967 (interview with Ivanov and Dementiev, 21 March 1991, Moscow, IVI, USSR Academy of Sciences). 88. LC. IREX. RC 27, F 16: a file of ‘Nikolai V. Sivachev, Associate Professor, Chair of Modern and Current History, Department of History, MGU, Assistant Dean, with a topic “Government and Labor Relations in the USA in World War II” for 3 months beginning February 1, 1968.’ On 12 January 1968, the officials from the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants sent over a letter about a visit of Sivachev to all schools where he planned to do research. This letter had an introduction as follows: ‘Nikolai Sivachev who is presently in this country with an official Exhibit’. 89. LC. IREX. RC 21, F 113 (1972), 2. In his letter from 11 June 1975, David Cronon, Dean, College of Letters and Science, the University of WisconsinMadison, praised Sivachev and his stay, which ‘was successful in all respects. He was with us for two weeks as a house guest in my home and spent as much time as possible doing research in the libraries of both the University and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. He also had contacts with some of our faculty members and was entertained socially on a number of occasions. Through the generosity of the University librarian, we were able to provide him with xerox copies of two dozen PhD dissertations done here in areas of his scholarly interests in American labor history.’ And he explained his contacts with the Moscow guest: ‘I am making a point to go to the meetings (with Sivachev) because I want to keep up the contacts with Professor Sivachev and other Soviet colleagues whom I got to

280

90.

91. 92. 93. 94.

95. 96. 97. 98.

99. 100.

101.

102. 103.

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know during my stay as a Fulbright lecturer at Moscow University last year.’ See in LC. IREX. RC 21, F 39. Nikolai V. Sivachev, Pravovoe regulirovanie trudovykh otnoshenii v SSHA (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1972), idem, Rabochaia politika pravitel’tva SShA v gody vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: MGU, 1974). His major findings were summarised in his last book: idem, SSHA: Gosudarstvo i rabochii klass: (ot obrazovaniia Soedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki do okonchaniia vtoroi mirovoi voiny) (Moscow: Mysl, 1982). Various people, like his former MGU students Vladislav Zubok and Marina Vlasova, and his American colleague Donald Raleigh, noted this. LC. IREX. RC 21, F 17, Vladimir Petrov’s letter of 3 February 1975, 2. LC. IREX. RC 180, F 66 (1978 – 80). Nikolai Sivachev and Nikolai Yakovlev, Russia and the United States: US – Soviet Relations from the Soviet Point of View (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). LC. IREX. RC 187, F 48 (1979). See about a recommendation of Sogrin for the MGU graduate programme in Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 1009, l. 93. Among his books see: V. V. Sogrin, Istoki sovremennoi burzhuaznoi ideologii v SShA (Moscow, 1975); idem, Ideinyie techenia v Amerikanskoi revoliutsii XVIII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), and idem, Osnovateli SShA: Istoricheskie portrety (Moscow: Nauka, 1983). Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘The study of United States history in the Soviet Union’, American Historical Review 74/4 (1969): 1221– 42. See Bolkhovitinov, Vospominania, 47 – 8, 50, 53. See Bolkhovitinov, Vospominania, 50 – 1, 52, 53. See especially N. N. Bashkina, N. N. Bolkhovitinov, J. H. Brown et al. (eds), The United States and Russia: The Beginning of Relations, 1765 – 1815: Collection of Documents (Washington, DC, 1980). See in detail chapters 2 and 3 of this book. Interview with Burin. Using the material brought by Bolkhovitinov from America, Burin eventually defended his dissertation in 1978: S. N. Burin, Sotsial’nye protivorechiia i konflikty v Virginii i Marilende (1642 – 1676): [Social Contradictions and Conflicts in Virginia and Maryland, 1642 – 1676] Avtoref. dis. kand. ist. nauk (M., 1978). The best study of the new trends in US historiography was written by Bolkhovitinov as a result of his research trips to US: Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, SShA: Problemy istorii. See the best summary of Soviet history writing about US history in: Bolkhovitinov, SShA: Problemy istorii, 339 – 78. Compare with another survey: N. Sivachev and I. Savel’eva, ‘American labor in recent Soviet historiography’, Labor History 18/3 (Summer 1977): 407– 32. Slava Gerovitch, ‘Writing history in the present tense: Cold War-era discursive strategies of Soviet historians of science and technology’, in Christopher Simpson (intro. and ed.), Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: the New Press, 1998),189 – 228, 190. LC. IREX. RC 229, F 15, Ivan M. Krasnov’s file, letter by Robert F. Byrnes, 23 May 1972. Ibid., RC 21, F 113. Compare with similar developments among Chinese Americanists in David Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972 – 1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 283.

NOTES TO PAGES 131 –133

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104. I follow here the logic of Gerovitch, ‘Writing history’, 199. 105. See the similar developments in American historiography in Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 106. Gerovitch, ‘Writing history’, 199 – 200. 107. Ibid., 200– 1. As contemporaries recalled, such ‘critical’ reviews and analyses ‘served as a . . . means of familiarising researchers with [Western thought and practice] . . . In many cases such works were written for the purpose of disseminating this information, employing a critical orientation as a cover to obtain consent for publication.’ See Vladimir Shlapentokh, The Politics of Sociology in the Soviet Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 16. 108. See in English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 129. For many Americanists, like Arbatov, their work as translator-reviewers of foreign-language political and economic work for various Soviet reference editions was ‘instrumental in shedding dogmas about the West’. See Arbatov, The System, 34. 109. See the most popular among Moscow Americanists books, written by Soviet participants in IREX programs: V. G. Kalenskii, Politicheskaia nauka v S. Sh. A. Kritika burzhuaznykh kontseptsii vlasti (Moscow, 1969) and Amerikanskoe obshchestvennoe mnenie i politika, edited by Iu. Zamoshkin (Moscow, 1978). Marina Vlasova mentioned this fact in her interview. 110. I refer to Prognozy razvitia avtomatizatsii proizvodstva v mashinostroenii v SShA (Moscow: ISKAN, 1978), and many other documents, such ‘the untitled internal institute document reviewing ISKAN’s main policy recommendations of 1968 – 79’, provided by a former ISKAN Deputy Director Sergei Plekhanov to Robert English in July 1991, quoted in English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 156. See also a detailed description of various ‘analytical reports’, submitted by ISKAN Americanists to the Soviet government in Dash, A Defector Reports, 10 – 12. 111. See discussions of the new methods in Sivachev’s research in Arkhiv MGU, f. 9, op. 8, d. 917, part 1, l. 8, and Bolkhovitinov, SShA: Problemy istorii, 22, 23 ff. 112. On this strategy of advising in the list of activities during the 1970s, see L. V. Shut’ko et al. (eds), Nikolai Nikolaievich Bolkhovitinov (Moscow: Nauka, 2002), 4 – 6, 44– 52. On Stankevich’s research see S. Stankevich, ‘“Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika” administratsii R. Niksona v 1971 –1974 gg.’, AE (1986): 5 –23. 113. See especially: Viacheslav Shestakov, Amerika v zerkale ekrana: Amerikanskoe kino 70kh godov (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1977); I. E. Kokarev (ed.), Na ekrane Amerika Collection (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1978); A. S. Muliarchik and V. P. Shestakov (eds), Amerikanskaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura v sotsial’no-politicheskom kontekste 70-kh godov 20 veka (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1982). See chapter 10 for a more detailed account. 114. Gerovitch, ‘Writing history’, 217 – 18. 115. I quote my interview with Ivanov, 25 June 1991, Moscow, and English, Russia and the Idea of the West,150. 116. Interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv; English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 128.

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Chapter 5 Soviet Americanists and the Impact of American Cinema and Television on the Soviet Union 1. Interview with Leonid Leshchenko, 23 July 2012, Kyiv. 2. Interview with Igor T., a retired KGB officer, Dnipropetrovsk, 15 May 1991. 3. See the official complaints about ‘Americanisation of Soviet television’ in Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Dnipropetrovskoi Oblasti (hereafter DADO) f. 22, op. 19, d. 2, ll. 135– 45, especially 142 – 3; Tsentral’nyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Vyshchykh Organiv Vlady ta Upravlinnia Ukrainy (hereafter TsDAVOVUU), f. 4915, op. 1, d. 3438, ll. 4 – 9. 4. Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 27. As Valery Golovskoy, who worked for many years as a head of one important department in the editorial office of the Soviet periodical The Art of Cinema (Iskusstvo kino), wrote, ‘There was a serious discussion among Soviet cinema officials about different approaches to film production. Some new film directors, like Andrei Konchalovsky, emphasised the necessity to ‘commercialise’ Soviet film production using US movies business as a model . . . Despite the official rejection of this model, in the real practice Soviet officials borrowed this system and implemented it in their practices, especially during the 1970s.’ See in V. S. Golovskoy, Mezhdu ottepel’iu i glasnost’iu. Kinematograf 70-kh. (Moscow: Materik, 2004), 80–3. 5. Each year the last issue (no. 24) of the Soviet journal Sovetskii ekran on pages 19 – 20 published the titles of all films released in the USSR. I use this information for my calculations. 6. Interview with Igor T., KGB officer, Dnipropetrovsk, 15 May 1991. See Dneprovskaia Pravda, 11 July 1969. See a Soviet review of this film in ‘“Bikini” i dinozavry’, Sovetskii ekran 9 (1969): 17. 7. Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960 – 1985 (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 149– 69. 8. A. Borodin, ‘My mozhem dat’ drug drugu mnogo tsennogo . . .’, Sovetskii ekran 16 (1971): 16– 17. 9. During 1962, the USSR released 64 Soviet movies and 139 foreign films. See Sovetskii ekran 24 (1962): 18 –19. I refer to my interview with Shlepakov (1990) and Fursenko (1991). 10. Interview with Volodymyr Yevtukh, 12 November 1996, Kyiv. 11. J. Hoberman, The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties (New York: New Press, 2003), 31 – 2, 33, 34 50; Stanley Corkin, Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 174, 179– 80, 181– 4, 186, 189, 190. See Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 126– 8, and 359. 12. On the immense popularity of westerns among Soviet audiences and the story of their reception in the USSR, see Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 126– 38. Compare with the story of socialist westerns in Gerd Gemunden, ‘Between Karl May

NOTES

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

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283

and Karl Marx: The DEFA Indianerfilme (1965–1983)’, New German Critique 82, East German Film (Winter, 2001): 25–38; and among many essays on westerns substitutes see especially Cynthia J. Miller, ‘Comedy, capitalism and Kolaloka: adapting the American West in Lemonade Joe (1964)’, in Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper (eds), International Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 104–20. See also Sovetskii ekran 24 (1981): 15. Sovetskii ekran 16 (1963); 16 (1965). See also my interview with Alexander Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow. See also how even in 1970, the Soviet journalists expressed their fascination with this old American western of 1960, meeting John Sturges in Hollywood: Yurii Zhukov, ‘Vstrechi v Gollivude’, Sovetskii ekran 1 (1970): 20, 21. Sovetskii ekran 6 (1971): 2. Compare with the data from Ellen Propper Mickiewicz, Media and the Russian Public (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981), 76. Vincent Bohlinger, ‘The East is the Delicate Matter’ White Son of the Desert and the Soviet Western,’ in International Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier, 373–81. Vladimir Nuzov, ‘Interview s Vladimirom Motyliom,’ Vestnik, December 12, 2000. Interviews with Alexander Fursenko, Moscow, 19 March 1991, Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, Moscow, 21 May 2001, and Arnold M. Shlepakov, Kyiv, 4 April 1991. I quote my interviews with Vlasova (1991), Kalashnikov (1992) and Znamenskii (2010). See especially Alexander Vaschenko, ‘Some Russian responses to North American Indian cultures’, Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, edited by Christian F. Feest (Aachen, Germany: Herodot, 1987), 307 – 20. Compare with online publications by Jennifer Rayport Rabodzeenko, who did her anthropological research about Russian Indianists and the numerous Russian publications online about this culture of Soviet/Russian Indianists, e.g., http://www.first-ameri cans.spb.ru/main.htm. See also Andrew Wiget, ‘Remembering Alexander Vashchenko’, Studies in American Indian Literature 25/3 (Fall 2013): ix –xii. Interviews with Robert Ivanov and Igor Dementiev, 21 March 1991, Institute of World History, the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow. ‘Personally,’ Dementiev said, ‘I would prefer the old American cinematographic classic Gone with the Wind as a stimulus to my students’ interest in a history of the American Civil War. But, unfortunately, this US historic film was never shown in Moscow in those days.’ See in Leonid Parfenov, Namedni. Nasha era. 1971 –1980 (Moscow: KoLibri, 2009), 215 (1978). I have already discussed this in detail. See especially Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘De´tente and the Western cultural products in Soviet Ukraine during the 1970s’, Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc: Youth Cultures, Music, and the State in Russia and Eastern Europe, edited by William J. Risch, (Lanham, MD and Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Press, 2014), 117– 51. Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘“Academic De´tente”: IREX files, academic reports, and “American” adventures of Soviet Americanists during the Brezhnev era’, Cahiers du monde russe 54/1 – 2 (January– June 2013): 297– 328; Robert English, Russia and Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

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23. Interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. 24. I paraphrased Ivanov in his interview of 21 March 1991. 25. Interview with Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow. See how such recommendations were discussed in publications by Soviet Americanists – on the US film business: S. A. Karaganov, ‘Amerikanskaia kinopromyshlennost’, SEPI 1 (January 1975): 71 – 80; on the role of Hollywood films in US cultural life in the 1970s: I. E. Kokarev, ‘Vzlioty i padeniia Gollivuda’ SEPI 8 (August 1976): 40 – 52. 26. Library of Congress (manuscript collection), IREX. RC 228, F 43: ‘about visit of Viacheslav Shestakov (November 1974 – April 1975) from the Institute of Cinematic History and Theory of the State Committee for Cinematography’. Compare with Vl. Baskakov, ‘Klokochushchii ekran Ameriki’, Sovetskii ekran 11 (1971): 14– 15. See Shestakov’s academic report about his American travel (with his recommendations) in V. P. Shestakov, ‘Puteshestvie v kinematograficheskuiu Ameriku’, SEPI 1 (January 1977): 45 – 53. Compare with the serious analysis and recommendations by Shestakov’s colleagues: I. E. Kokarev, ‘Itogi kinematograficheskogo goda’, SEPI 3 (March 1977): 56 – 63; Yu. A. Komov, ‘V Amerikanskom institute kino’, SEPI 8 (August 1977): 55– 62; V. P. Shestakov and T. G. Il’in, ‘Politicheskoe kino: itogi desiatiletiia’, SEPI 1 (January 1981): 38 – 50; E. N. Kartseva, ‘“Malyi sotsium” na bol’shom ekrane’, SEPI 9 (September 1983): 40– 54. On Baskakov see Leonid Mlechin, Furtseva (Moscow: Molodaia gvardia, 2011), 348– 9. See especially a brilliant popular analysis of so-called New Hollywood in Viacheslav Shestakov, ‘“Novyi Gollivud”: taktika i strategiiia’, Iskusstvo kino 9 (1976): 126– 43. 27. See how Soviet film-makers such as Grigori Kozintsev and Stanislav Rostotsky discussed the prospects for the usage of video films and video recording and distributing technologies in the USSR in Sovetskii ekran 10 (1971): 16 – 17. 28. R. Orlova, ‘Chiornoe i beloe’, Sovetskii ekran 24 (1966): 14– 15, 19. See Sovetskii ekran 24 (1966): 19; A. Anikst, ‘V tiskakh terrora,; Sovetskii ekran 5 (1970): 16 –17; and my interviews with Sergei Burin, Vadim Koleneko and Marina Vlasova, 18 April 1992, Moscow, Institute of World History. I paraphrased Vlasova’s interview. She was a former student of Sivachev’s. 29. Both Bolkhovitinov and Fursenko complained about this on 21 March 1991. 30. Sovetskii ekran 17 (1971): 1– 2. Arthur Penn’s film was shown in the festival programme ‘Obraz sovremennika na ekrane’ (A Contemporary on the Screen) and received an Award International Federation of Film Press Award and the Soviet Peace Fund’s Award. Hall Bartlett’s movie won a Special Prize of the Organisational Committee of MIFF. Sydney Pollack’s film was awarded with ‘Pamiatnyi priz’ (Memorable Prize) by the USSR Union of Cinematographers. Besides these films, another US film, The Hellstrom Chronicle (Walon Green, 1971), was awarded a special diploma by the Organisational Committee of MIFF. The US delegation, led by Marc Spiegel, brought 21 American films for MIFF. See Sovetskii ekran 17 (1971) 2; S. Chertok, ‘Stanley Kramer: Protiv bezumnogo mira’, and Ia. L’vov, ‘Slovo o chistote i muzhestve: Blagoslovi zverei i detei (SSHA)’, in Sovetskii

NOTES

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32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

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ekran 22 (1971): 14– 15. Compare with a comment in ‘US movies praised in Moscow’, The Montreal Gazette, 27 July 1971. British-American film Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971) was also shown during this festival in Moscow. See E. Kartseva, ‘Kinofantastika oblichaet’, Sovetskii ekran 8 (1972): 16–17. See Sovetskii ekran 17 (1971): 2; S. Chertok, ‘Stanley Kramer: Protiv bezumnogo mira’, and Ia. L’vov, ‘Slovo o chistote i muzhestve: Blagoslovi zverei i detei (SSHA)’, in Sovetskii ekran 22 (1971): 14 – 15; ‘US Movies praised in Moscow’, The Montreal Gazette, 27 July 1971. I still recall vividly, as a thirteen-year-old boy, how I saw this film in December 1972 at a local Place of Culture in Vatutino, my hometown, in Zvenigordka district of Cherkasy region, together with my school friends. It was released in 1974. See A. Babikov, ‘Stanley Kramer: V poiskakh pravdy o cheloveke’, Sovetskii ekran 13 (1973): 15 – 16; Sovetskii ekran 17 (1973): 2; Ia. Varshavskii, ‘Posledovatel’nost’’, Sovetskii ekran 19 (1973): 3. In 1973, MIFF also awarded special prizes to two other US movies: Solo and Tom Sawyer. See Sovetskii ekran 17 (1973): 2. On the release in 1974 of US motion pictures such as Oklahoma Crude, Mackenna’s Gold, New Centurions, Call of the Wild (Ken Annakin, 1972), Slaves (Herbert Biberman), How to Steal a Million and British-American film Ring of Bright Water (Jack Couffer, 1969), see Sovetskii ekran 24 (1974): 17. See also a special interview with Stanley Kramer for a major Soviet film journal: Stanley Kramer, ‘Soznanie otvetstvennosti’, Iskusstvo kino 12 (1973): 10 – 12. Special film exchanges were organised with the professional support of Soviet film critics; some of them, like Shestakov, became regular visitors to the US. A. Borodin, ‘My mozhem dat’ drug drugu mnogo tsennogo . . .’, Sovetskii ekran 16 (1971): 16–17. See Shestakov’s academic report about his American travels (with his recommendations) in Shestakov, ‘Puteshestvie v kinematograficheskuiu Ameriku’, 45 –53. A. S. Aleksandrov, ‘Snimaetsia “Siniaia ptitsa”’, SEPI 9 (September 1975): 70 –2; Semen Chertok, ‘Skazka o schastie’, Sovetskii ekran 13 (1975): 10– 13. This film was the fifth screen adaptation of Maeterlinck’s play, following two silent films, the studio’s 1940 version starring Shirley Temple, and a 1970 animated feature. See a positive review of this film in Romil Sobolev, ‘Naiti to, chto ob’ediniaet’, Sovetskii ekran 24 (1976): 4 – 5. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 15 December 1995, Moscow. Ibid. Ibid. Anthony Slide, The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry (New York: Routledge, 1998), 45. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 15 December 1995, Moscow. Ibid. Both Robert Ivanov and Sergei Burin confirmed this information. Sovetskii ekran 10 (1975): 6, and 10 (1976): 18. Sovetskii ekran 24 (1984): 17 – 18. Both Arnold Shlepakov and Alexander Fursenko mentioned this in conversation with me. For praise of this film in numerous Soviet film experts’ reviews, see: Ian

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47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52. 53.

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Bereznitskii, ‘Marlon Brando, odinokii beglets’, Iskusstvo kino 5 (1974): 166– 219; V. Siliunas, ‘“Krestnyi otets”, bludnye synovia i pasynki Ameriki’, Iskusstvo kino 3 (1975): 145– 65. Almost all my 7-B classmates (40 out of 43) in Vatutino secondary school read the issues of this journal with Puzo’s novel during the winter – spring of 1974. Both Robert Ivanov and Alexander Fursenko mention this. See Brando’s picture in Vsesvit 10 (1973): 107. The novel was published in Vsesvit, (10) 1973: 109 – 67; 11: 155 – 201; 12: 120 – 76; 1 (1974): 85 – 154 – as Mario P’iuzo, Khreshchennyi bat’ko, translated by Viktor Batiuk and Oleksandr Ovsiuk and edited by Yurii Lisniak. See also my interview with Leshchenko, 23 July 2012, Kyiv. About a real cult of Brando in Soviet film studies see: Yan Berznitskii, ‘Marlon Brando, odinokii beglets’, Iskusstvo kino 5 (1974): 166 – 92. On how the Beatles film Yellow Submarine was glorified as a cultural ‘protest against imperialistic war and sufferings of the people and a hymn to a beauty of this world, the pleasures of simple life and love’ in the Soviet press, see: M. Aleksandrova, ‘Zheltaia submarina’, Rovesnik 7 (July 1969): 17. Eric Sigel, ‘Istoria odnogo kokhannia’, Vsesvit 12 (1976): 11 – 72, translated by Mar Pinchevs’kyi and Oleksandr Terekh. See on 44– 5 stills from the film Love Story. See my interview with Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. Compare with a very negative review of this film in the prestigious Soviet film magazine: K. Razlogov, ‘Mekhanizm uspekha’, Iskusstvo kino 11 (1973): 141 –9. The author criticised this film as a cheap melodramatic, commercial movie trick. But the review itself still contains very useful information about the film, the music of which was very popular among Soviet audiences. See the most popular books about US cinema by Soviet Americanists: Viacheslav P. Shestakov, Amerika v zerkale ekrana: Amerikanskoe kino 70-kh godov (Moscow: Soiuz kinematografistov SSSR, 1977); I. E. Kokarev (ed.), Na ekrane Amerika Collection (Moscow: Progress, 1978); A. S. Muliarchik and V. P. Shestakov (eds), Amerikanskaia khudozhestvennaia kul’tura v sotsial’no-politicheskom kontekste 70-kh godov 20 veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1982); and their recommendations such as Shestakov, ‘Puteshestvie v kinematograficheskuiu Ameriku’. ‘Konferentsiia po problemam amerikanskogo kino’, SEPI 9 (September 1976): 75 – 6. On this conference, see Valery Golovskoy, ‘Amerikanskoe kino – “za” i “protiv” (konferentsia 1976 goda)’; idem, Eto bylo nedavno . . . Izbarannye publikatsii za 30 let (Baltimore, MD: Seagull Press, 2010), 156– 63. See also his essay, ‘Amerikanskie fil’my na sovetskikh ekranakh (1957 –1980)’, in Eto bylo nedavno, 169 – 77. E-mail exchange with Valery Golovskoy, 10 –11 May 2013. Golovskoy, ‘Amerikanskoe kino’, 161, 162– 3; Library of Congress. IREX. RC 228, F 43, ‘about the visit of Viacheslav Shestakov (November 1974– April 1975) from the Institute of Cinematic History and Theory of the State Committee for Cinematography’, and RC 237, F26: about the visit of Yuri Zamoshkin from ISKAN, November – December 1977. See my e-mail correspondence with Valery Golovskoy, 9 January 2015. See in Golovskoy, ‘Amerikanskoe kino’, 158 –9.

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54. On V. Shestakov in such a role, interviewing US actress Ellen Burstyn during the MIFF in 1977, see ‘Ellen Burstin: Vernite zhenshchinu v iskusstvo’, Sovetskii ekran 13 (1977): 16. See also ‘Konferentsiia po problemam amerikanskogo kino’, SEPI 9 (1976 September): 75– 6. 55. See the minutes of this round table in: ‘Bor’ba ideologii i problemy amerikanskogo kinematografa: “Kruglyi stol” v redaktsii “IK”’, Iskusstvo kino 8 (1977): 118– 52. See especially Viacheslav Shestakov’s presentation on 142– 8, and my e-mail correspondence with Valery Golovskoy, 9 January 2015. 56. Aleksandr Doroshevich, ‘Gde zhivet Alisa?’, Sovetskii ekran 21 (1976): 4 – 5. 57. Sovetskii ekran 24 (1981): 15. 58. See my e-mail exchange with Vladislav Zubok, 28 May 2013. 59. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow; English, Russia and Idea of the West, 106. Since 1965 until the 1970s, all Soviet film experts recommended Soviet administration to buy Stanley Kubrick’s film for a wide screening in the USSR. See a good analysis of Kubrick’s ‘progressive humanism’ in R. Sobolev, ‘Apokalipsis po Stenli Kubriku’ Iskusstvo kino 9 (1974): 145– 53. 60. ‘SShA: Energeticheskie problemy’, SEPI 7 (July 1980): 117– 25. 61. Interviews with Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow; Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow, and Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Moscow. 62. V. Shitova, ‘Sil’nee sily’, Sovetskii ekran 20 (1979): 16– 17. 63. Sovetskii ekran 17 (1981): 19; 24 (1081): 15; and Gennadii Frolov, ‘Dzhein Fonda’, Sovetskii ekran 2 (1980): 16– 17. 64. See in Sovetskii ekran, 1979, No. 24, 15. 65. Quoted in A. Markov, ‘Na dalekom meridiane (komandirovka za rubezh)’, Sovetskii ekran 2 (1980): 18. 66. Sovetskii ekran 18 (1981): 16 – 17. Two American films were selected as the winners of a MIFF competition for children’s films – The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard, 1979) and Kartinki iz zhizni. [I was unable to identify this film’s original English title.] See Sovetskii ekran 18 (1981): 2. 67. I. E. Kokarev, ‘Amerikantsy na Mezhdunarodnom kinofestivale v Moskve’, SEPI 11 (November 1983): 75– 81. Sovetskii ekran 24 (1983): 15. 68. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 21 May 2001, Moscow. See also my personal e-mail exchange with Valery Golovskoy, 10 –11 May 2013. 69. Kokarev, ‘Amerikantsy na Mezhdunarodnom kinofestivale v Moskve’, 75. 70. Quoted in Kokarev, ‘Amerikantsy na Mezhdunarodnom kinofestivale v Moskve’, 80– 1. At the same time, publications by Soviet film experts reflected a gradual increase of the ideological conservatism and more cautious evaluation of ‘progressive humanism’ in US film-making. On this trend throughout the 1970s, with obvious anti-Americanism in 1979– 80, see: G. Kapralov, ‘Utverzhdenie istiny, razoblachenie mifov’, Iskusstvo kino 1 (1972): 129– 42, and 2 (1972): 146– 61; N. Anastasiev, ‘Navstrechu pravde,’ Iskusstvo kino 6 (1972): 145– 51; Yu. Komov, ‘New York. Osen’’, Iskusstvo kino 4 (1974): 139–48; Yu. Komov, ‘Kinematograf v SShA: biznes liubymi sredstvami.’, Iskusstvo kino 1 (1975): 169–245; Yu. Komov, ‘“Bermudskii treugol’nik”, ili Kinoapokalipsis novogo sveta. Pis’mo iz Niu-Iorka’, Iskusstvo kino 4 (1976): 134 – 49; M. Shaternikova, ‘“Sinie

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72.

73. 74.

75. 76. 77.

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vorotnichki” glazami Gollivuda. Sotsial’nye mify o rabochem klass v kino SShA’, Iskusstvo kino 6 (1976): 114 – 30; Ian Berznitsky, ‘Fil’my SShA o voine: konets 60kh – nachalo 70-kh godov’, Iskusstvo kino 8 (1976): 129 – 57; Yu. Khaniutin, ‘Son razuma . . . Mifologiia zapadnoi fantastiki’, Iskusstvo kino 9 (1977): 126 – 50; Yurii Komov, ‘Delovoi Gollivud: agenty i “zvezdy”’, Iskusstvo kino 5 (1978): 142 – 53; Marianna Shaternikova, ‘Real’nost’ i mify amerikanskogo ekrana,’ Iskusstvo kino 7 (1978): 124 – 45; K. Razlogov, ‘Ot “kontrkul’tury” k “neokonservatizmu”?’, Iskusstvo kino 8 (1978): 137 – 54; Yurii Komov, ‘Iskusstvo na sluzhbe kommertsii. Rasskazy o gollivudskikh rezhiserakh’, Iskusstvo kino 5 (1979): 134 – 54; Liudmila Mel’vil’, ‘Podvodia itogi “parallel’nogo” kino na Zapade’, Iskusstvo kino 4 (1980): 130 – 46; Georgi Kapralov, ‘V tshchetnykh poiskakh tochki opory’, Isskustvo kino 6 (1980): 117 – 43; Marianna Shaternikova, ‘Mirazh svobody i iznanka “demokratii”. Zametki o dvukh amerikanskikh fil’makh’, Isskustvo kino 9 (1980): 138 – 50. Soviet film experts criticised especially the US film The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978) as ‘a libel against our brotherly people of socialist Vietnam’. See Liudmila Mel’vil’, ‘Militarizatsiia ekrana i otvetstvennost’ kritiki. Eshche raz o fil’me “Okhotnik na olenei”’, Iskusstvo kino 8 (1980): 154 – 62. SEPI 1 (January 1973): 84 – 5; N. A. Goliadkin, ‘Profili amerikanskogo radio’, SEPI 9 (September 1977): 43–54, and idem, ‘Obshchestvennoe televidenie SShA: mezhdu kul’turoi, biznesom i politikoi’, SEPI 2 (February 1979): 50 – 70; N. S. Biriukov, ‘Televizionnaia imperiia’, SEPI 2 (February 1976): 83–95. A.S. Dangulov, ‘Magnitnaia “pamiat’” sistemy “Ampeks”’, SEPI 9 (September 1974): 107–13; E. V. Perfilova, ‘Nastoiashcheie i budushcheie kabel’nogo televideniia’, SEPI 7 (July 1977): 46–55; N. A. Goliadkin, ‘Gollivud i TV: ot konfrontatsii k sotrudnichestvu’, SEPI 1 (January 1980): 46–57; Yu. M. Kagramanov, ‘Ostorozhno: televidenie’, SEPI 9 (September 1980): 60–4; S. I. Gus’kov, ‘Televidenie i sport’, SEPI 8 (August 1982): 51–4. Fedor I. Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo TV: Tainy televidenia ot Stalina do Gorbacheva. 1930– 1991 (Moscow: EKSMO, 2009), 7 – 260, 461ff; and especially Goliadkin, ‘Profili amerikanskogo radio’, 52 – 4. Interview with Bolkhovitinov, 12 May 1996, Moscow. This collaboration of Americanists and journalists also produced, as Alexander Fursenko added, ‘official invitations to American musicians like BB King, and various American theatrical groups to tour in the USSR’. Quoted from my interview with Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow. Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo TV, 71ff. See interview with Ivanov, 25 June 1991, Moscow. Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo TV, 73 – 6. The overwhelming majority of the 70 people whom I interviewed noted the tremendous popularity of all 17 films of the miniseries Den’ za dniom. N. A. Goliadkin, ‘Obshchestvennoe televidenie SShA: mezhdu kul’turoi, biznesom i politikoi’, N. S. Biriukov, ‘Televizionnaia imperiia’, and N. A. Goliadkin, ‘Gollivud i TV: ot konfrontatsii k sotrudnichestvu’, SEPI 1 (January 1980): 46 – 57; Yu. M. Kagramanov, ‘Ostorozhno: televidenie’, SEPI 9 (September 1980): 60– 4. Compare with a negative description of American television in Melor Sturua,

NOTES

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82. 83. 84.

85.

86. 87.

88. 89.

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S Potomaka na Missisipi: Nesentimental’noe puteshestvie po Amerike (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1981), 38– 41. See especially Goliadkin, ‘Gollivud i TV’, and interviews with Ivanov and Fursenko, 21 March 1991, Moscow. For the best history and analysis of American television (in Ukrainian), see Evgen Rosenko, ‘Svitlotini amerikans’kogo teleekranu’, Vsesvit 7 (July 1981): 190– 206. I quote my interview with Bolkhovitinov, 4 May 1997, Moscow and Rosenko, ‘Svitlotini amerikans’kogo teleekranu’, 196– 7. Dangulov, ‘Magnitnaia “pamiat’” sistemy “Ampeks”’, 107 – 13; Perfilova, ‘Nastoiashcheie i budushcheie kabel’nogo televideniia’, 46 – 55. Ironically, these recommendations sometimes led to strange decisions, such as when the Soviet administration ordered the release of US television films for Soviet film theatres rather than for television. In 1980, Soviet officials allowed the release of just such a film: Black Market Baby (a.k.a. A Dangerous Love) [1977], directed by Robert Day, starring Linda Purl, Desi Arnaz Jr, Jessica Walter and David Doyle which was shown all over the Soviet Union under the title Ne kradite moego rebenka. See Sovetskii ekran 11 (1980): 19. See Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 239, 240. See e-mail correspondence with Vladislav Zubok, 1 January 2015. A. Anikst, ‘Razvlechenie – delo serioznoie’, Sovetskii ekran 12 (1970): 16; 19 (1970): 9; Sovetskii ekran 24 (1971) 19; 10 (1972): 18. People as different as Soviet scholars Bolkhovitinov and Fursenko from Russia and Shlepakov and Leshchenko from Ukraine, former rock music fans and businessmen from Ukraine such as Eduard Svichar and Mikhail Suvorov, noted the role of American musical films as a model for the Soviet television variety show. Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo TV, 109– 10. More than 60 of the people I interviewed used the term: ‘video revolution’. On other influences on Soviet television and video technologies coming to Soviet Estonia through Finnish television during the 1970s and 1980s, and then spreading through other parts of the Soviet Union, see Sergei I. Zhuk, film review of Disco and Atomic War, directed by Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Aarma. Brooklyn: Icarus Films, 2009, in Slavic Review 70/4 (Winter 2011): 902– 3. Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 52, 237. Shaw and Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War, 190 – 201, Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture, Entertainment and Society Since 1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 152; Elena Prokhorova, ‘Fragmented mythologies: Soviet TV mini-series of the 1970s’ (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2003). I. Peretrukhin, Agenturnaia klichka – Trianon. Vospominaniia kontrrazvedchika (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2000), 46 – 98. Oleg Kotov, ‘O chiom ne byl upolnomochen zaiavit’ TASS’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 5 March 2004; Marina Efanova, ‘Vladimir Fokin smotrit televizor spinoi k ekranu’, Vechernii Khar’kov, 2 March 2013.

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90. Razzakov, Gibel’ sovetskogo TV, 115, 259. The film is still one of the most popular Soviet television films among post-Soviet Russian audiences. It is the most popular ‘downloaded’ film in post-Soviet Russia. See my interviews with Gusar and Suvorov. See also Sergei Zhuk, ‘TASS authorised to announce’, in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Directory of World Cinema: Russia 2 (Bristol: Intellect Ltd., 2014), 230– 1. 91. Fursenko mentioned a discussion about the ‘ideologically reliable’ TV mini-series from the USA he recommended in his academic reports. Eventually, after this discussion, USSR Ministry of Culture representatives agreed on the purchase of television films based on classical literature, like Charles Dickens or Jack London. See interview with Fursenko, 19 March 1991, Moscow, and Aleksandr Anikst, ‘“Bez vdokhnovenia”’, Sovetskii ekran 24 (1975): 4. 92. School Summer Diary of Alexander Gusar, Pavlograd, Dnipropetrovsk region, 1970– 7: 8 November 1977. 93. Interview with Askold B., the son of a tourist department head in the Dnipropetrovsk Trade Unions branch, Dnipropetrovsk University, 15 April 1993, Novyny kinoekranu 20 (1970): 14. See an article on the BBC adaptation of David Copperfield which was shown on Soviet TV in Anikst, ‘Bez vdokhnovenia’. For a negative review of the British TV film The Moon Stone based on Wilkie Collins’ detective novel which was also shown on Soviet TV, see Aleksandr Anikst, ‘Kamen’ okazalsia ne dragotsennym’, Sovetskii ekran 20 (1975): 4. See also Leonid Parfionov, Namedni. Nasha era. 1971 – 1980 (Moscow: KoLibri, 2009), 232, 286. 94. See interview with Suvorov. 95. DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 2, ll. 135 – 45, especially 142 – 3. Compare with my interview with Igor T., KGB officer, 15 May 1991, Dnipropetrovsk, and TsDAVOVUU, f. 4915, op. 1, d. 3438, ll. 4 – 9. 96. E. Iakovlev, ‘Navazhdenie (kinoobozrenie)’, Dneprovskaia Pravda, 4 February 1982, 3. 97. I used such local periodicals as Ukrains’ka Pravda, Shevchenkiv krai, Vechernii Donetsk, Dnepr vechernii etc. 98. DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 2, ll. 135– 45, d. 156 (for 1973), l. 10, ll. 10ob – 11, and TsDAVOVUU, f. 4915, op. 1, d. 3438, ll. 4 – 9. 99. Propper Mickiewicz, Media and the Russian Public, 73 – 8; Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time, 281. 100. School diary of Vladimir Solodovnik, Sinel’nikovo, Dnipropetrovsk region, 7 December 1976. 101. School diary of Oleg Grin, Vatutino, Cherkasy region, 16 January 1977. 102. School summer diary of Oleg Grin, Kyiv, 29 August 1982. 103. School diary of Alexander Gusar, 5 July 1975. 104. School diary of Andrei Vadimov, Dnipropetrovsk, 5 December 1978. 105. Bolkhovitinov and Fursenko noted, and Ivanov and Leshchenko agreed about this in their interviews. 106. School diary of Andrei Vadimov, Dnipropetrovsk, 27 June 1974. 107. Interview with Vitali Pidgaetsky.

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Part III From De´tente to Perestroika: The Last Generations of Soviet Americanists 1. Sergei N. Burin, Konflikt ili soglasie? Sotsial’nye problemy kolonial’nogo Yuga SShA (1642 – 1763 gg.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 10.

Chapter 6

Playing American Indians and Soviet Indianistika

1. O. Y. Danchevskaya, ‘Notes on Russian Indianists’, Native American Women in the Arts, Education, and Leadership: Proceedings of the Sixth Native American Symposium, edited by Mark B. Spencer and Robert Tudor (Durant, OK: Southeastern Oklahoma State University, 2005), 55 – 60, especially 55 – 6; Jennifer Rayport Radodzeenko, ‘Russian “Indianists”: a romance with the image of the North American Indian’, Anthropology of East Europe Review 13/2 (1995): 56– 63, citation from 56– 7; Ishta Shitcha (Evil Eye, Zloi Glaz), ‘Kratkaia istoriia PauVau v Rossii’, Ikhtomi 1/1 (1994): 81. See also a short version of the history of Russian Indianistika in T. V. Nelin, ‘Subkul’tura indeanistov v Rossii’, in Amerikana. Vypusk 9: Americans on the Volga, Volga People in America, edited by A. I. Kubyshkin (Volgograd: VGU, 2008), 253– 61, especially 254. 2. Aleksandr N. Nikoliukin, ‘Fenimore Cooper i russkaia kritika’, in his, Literaturnye sviazi Rossii i SShA: Stanovlenie literaturnykh kontaktov (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 256– 326, see especially 256 – 8. 3. ‘Vstrecha g. Kupera s Val’terom Skottom’, Biblioteka dlia chteniia 21 (February 1837): otd. VI, 33– 40. 4. See a list of Cooper’s publications in Russia in V. A. Libman, Amerikanskaia literatura v russkikh perevodakh i kritike: Bibliografiia. 1776– 1975 (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 140–8. 5. Aleksandr N. Nikoliukin, Vzaimosviazi literatur Rossii i SShA: Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky i Amerika (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), 25, 72 –4. 6. Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton, Gerald David Naughton, ‘“Westward Went I in Search of Romance”: the transnational reception of Thomas Mayne Reid’s western novels’, The CEA Critic 75/2 (July 2013): 142 – 57. 7. Compare Bill Leizi, ‘Indeanistika v tsarskoi Rossii’, Tomahawk 3 (Syktykvar, 1991): 104 (situation in tsarist Russia), with Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960– 1985 (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 109–19 (situation in the USSR). 8. Such different scholars as Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Viktor Kalashnikov, Alexander Vashchenko and Andrei Znamensky (and 70 others) noted this. 9. Alexander Vashchenko, ‘Some Russian responses to North American Indian cultures’, in Christian F. Feest (ed.), Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Aachen, Germany: Herodot, 1987), 307–20, especially 310–11. 10. See E. L. Nitoburg, ‘Yu. P. Petrova-Averkieva: uchenyi i chelovek’, Repressirovannye etnografy, compiled by D. D. Tumarkin, Vypusk 2, (Moscow: Vostochnaia

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

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literatura, 2003), 399– 428, especially 399 – 400; and E. L. Nitoburg, ‘Portrety istorikov. Yu. P. Petrova-Averkieva (1907 – 80). Sud’ba i vremia’, Novaia i noveishaia istoria (hereafter NNI) 1 (2004): 205 – 21, especially 205– 6. Mark Nuttall and Terry V Callaghan (eds), The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 2000), 415; Mark Nuttall (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Arctic, vols 1, 2 and 3 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 1905. See also Sergei Kan, Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2009). On the situation in Soviet Karelia during the same time, see Nick Baron, Soviet Karelia: Politics, Planning and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1920– 1939 (New York: Routledge, 2007). Sergei Kan, ‘“My old friend in a dead-end of empiricism and skepticism”: Bogoras, Boas, and the politics of Soviet anthropology of the late 1920s – early 1930s’, in Regan Darnell and Frederic W Gleach (eds), Histories of Anthropology Annual, vol. 2 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 33 – 68, esp. 53 – 4. See also the numerous publications of the Russian scholar Igor Kuznetsov on the relations between Boas and Averkieva, especially his collection of documents from Boas’ archives in the American Philosophical Society: I. V. Kuznetsov, ‘Perepiska Yu. P. Averkievoi i F. Boasa (1931 – 1937)’, Bulleten: antropologiia, men’shinstva, mul’tikul’turizm. Novaia seriia, Vyp. 1/2 (June 2006) (Krasnodar): 137– 59. See in Julia P. Averkieva and Mark A. Sherman, Kvakiutl String Figures (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1992), xiii, xv, xvii, xx– xxi. This is an American study, written by the young Averkieva in 1931 in New York. In 1982, a young American biochemist and enthusiast of playing with ‘string figures’, Mark Sherman, found this manuscript and prepared it for a publication in 1992. Her first publications included Yu. Averkieva, ‘Sovremennaia amerikanskaia etnografiia’, Sovetskaia etnografiia (hereafter SE) 2 (1932): 97 – 102; Yu. Averkieva, ‘Rabstvo u plemen severo-zapadnogo poberezhia Severnoi Ameriki,’ SE 4 – 5 (1935): 40 – 61; idem, Rabstvo u indeitsev Severnoi Ameriki (Moscow: Institut etnografii AN SSSR, 1941). See the details in Averkieva and Sherman, Kvakiutl String Figures, xviii; and Nitoburg, ‘Portrety istorikov’, 209. Compare also with Nitoburg’s analysis of archival materials about this in idem, ‘Yu. P. Petrova-Averkieva,’ 407, and notes 29 and 30 on 425. For a detailed account, see Tatiana D. Solovei, Ot ‘burzhuaznoi’ etnologii k ‘sovetskoi’ etnografii (Moscow: Institut etnologii i antropologii, 1998), 191 –2, 210. Nitoburg, ‘Portrety istorikov’, 211. MAE was now part of this new academic institution. See also Averkieva and Sherman, Kvakiutl String Figures, xviii. She published the following articles based on her research: Yu. P. PetrovaAverkieva, ‘K voprosu o potlache u indeitsev Severo-Zapadnoi Ameriki’, Kratkie soobshcheniia Instituta etnogafii (hereafter KSIE), vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1946), 269; idem, ‘Frants Boas (1958– 1942)’, KSIE, 101 – 11; idem, ‘Psikhologicheskoe napravlenie v sovremennoi amerikanskoi etnografii’, SE 1 (1947): 218– 21; idem, ‘Perezhitki zhenskogo roda u kvakiiutlei’, Trudy Instituta etnografii AN SSSR, (hereafter TIE), vol. 2 (Moscow, 1947), 153 – 73. For more about her research, see

NOTES

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

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Leslie A. Robertson with Kwagu’l Gixsam Clan, Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012), 61, 77, 78, 300, 317, 318. A. M. Ledovskii, ‘Na diplomaticheskoi rabote v Kitaie, 1942 – 1952’, NNI 6 (1993): 131– 2. M. S. Kapitsa, Na raznykh paralleliakh. Zapiski diplomata (Moscow: Kniga i biznes, 1996), 24 – 5; A. M. Ledovskii, SSSR i Stalin v sud’bakh Kitaia (Moscow: Pamiatniki istorich. mysli, 1999), 204; Dieter Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China 1945– 1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 60, 526. Averkieva and Sherman, Kvakiutl String Figures, xix. Kapitsa, Na raznykh paralleliakh, 34. See the citation from Nitoburg’s interview with D. D. Tumarkin, the former editor of the journal Sovetskaia etnografiia and Averkieva’s colleague, on 6 February 2001, in Nitoburg, ‘Yu. P. Petrova-Averkieva: uchenyi i chelovek’, 412, n. 50 on 426. NNI 6 (1993): 131– 2. During the 1960s, Averkieva told Nitoburg and her other colleagues at the Institute of Ethnography that her husband was poisoned by their domestic servant following the KGB’s special orders. See in Nitoburg, ‘Portrety istorikov’, 213. Averkieva and Sherman, Kvakiutl String Figures, xix – xx; Nitoburg, ‘Portrety istorikov’, 216. Yu. P. Averkieva, Razlozhenie rodovoi obshchiny i formirovanie ranneklassovykh otnoshenii v obshchestve indeitsev Severo-Zapadnogo poberezhia Severnoi Ameriki (Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1961). See also the positive review of this book in SE 1 (1962): 136– 8. See also Andrei A. Snamenski (sic!), ‘In black or white, or through Marxist glasses: the image of the Indian in the Soviet press and scholarship’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 16/1 (1992): 119 – 36, especially 120– 3. Averkieva and Sherman, Kvakiutl String Figures, xix – xx. Ibid., xx; Yu. P. Averkieva, Indeiskoe kochevoe obshchestvo XVIII-XIX vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1970); idem, Indeitsy Severnoi Ameriki. Ot rodovogo obshchestva k klassovomu (Moscow: Nauka, 1974); idem, Istoriia teoreticheskoi mysli v amerikanskoi etnografii (Moscow: Nauka, 1979). J. Averkieva, ‘The Tlingit Indians’, in Eleanor Burke Leacock and Nancy Oestreich Lurie (eds), North Indians in Historical Perspective (New York: Random House, 1971), 317– 42. Afterwards, it was reprinted in Russian translation in Moscow. See Yu. P. Averkieva, ‘Redaktsia, predislovie i vvedenie’, in Severoamerikanskie indeitsy, edited by Yu. P. Averkieva (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), 529. See her comments about Miroslav Stingl, Indeitsy bez tomagavkov, edited by R. V. Kinzhalov (Moscow: Progress, 1971) [it was a Russian translation of the original Czech edition, published in 1966]. Averkieva also provided an introduction to the first Soviet [abridged] publication of the following American book: Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1970). Its Russian (very short) translation was published in a Soviet academic journal. See Yu. P. Averkieva, ‘Bor’ba indeitsev Vunded Ni’, SShA. Ekonomika, politika, ideologiia (hereafter SEPI) 6 (1973): 66 –8.

294

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The full text of this book was translated in Estonia and Ukraine. On this, see: Alexander Vashchenko, ‘Some Russian responses to North American Indian cultures’, in Christian F. Feest (ed.), Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Aachen, Germany: Herodot, 1987), 315. A very good translation was published in a Ukrainian magazine in 1975: Di Brown, ‘Pokhovaite moe sertse u Vunded-Ni’, translated by Viktor Syzonenko, Vsesvit 6 (1975): 192 – 208, no. 7: 208– 16, no. 8: 194–218 [The Ukrainian magazine used the 1973 American edition]. Averkieva also contributed an introduction to a book written by an American author who was a Cherokee Indian: William Meyer, Native Americans: The New Indian Resistance (New York: International Publishers, 1971). See Yu. P. Averkieva, ‘Vstupitel’naia statia’, in U. Meier, Korennye amerikantsy. Novoe dvizhenie soprotivleniia indeitsev (Moscow: Progress, 1974), 5 – 13. Andrei Znamensky mentioned this in e-mail message to me, 4 February 2015. Other popular articles by Averkieva include: Yu. P. Averkieva, ‘Diskriminatsia indeitsev v SShA’, in P. N. Fedoseev (ed.), Rasizm – ideologiia imperializma, vrag obshchestvennogo progressa (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 106– 12; idem, ‘Indeitsy vchera i segodnia’, SEPI 1 (1973): 53– 61; idem, ‘Dvizhenie amerikanskikh indeitsev segodnia’, SEPI 2 (1981): 2, 48– 58. 33. NNI 1 (2004): 219. See also a quotation from Nitoburg’s interview with L. S. Sheinbaum, 25 July 2000 in ibid., 220. I quote my interview with Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, Moscow, 10 July 2004 and conversation with Andrei Znamensky via Skype on 2 February 2015. Bolkhovitinov expressed his self-criticism about omitting Averkieva’s name in his book, in the chapter on the colonial period of US history. See N. N. Bolkhovitinov, SSHA: Problemy istorii i sovremennaia istoriografiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 14 – 48. A year later, he insisted on including Averkieva’s name in the collective monograph of Soviet historian-Americanists in: Istoria SShA, Tom 1. 1607 –1877, Otv. redaktor [Editor-in-Chief] N. N. Bolkhovitinov (Moscow: Nauka, 1983), 16 and 667. 34. Snamenski, ‘In black or white, or through Marxist glasses’, citation from 123. Andrei Znamensky referred to the so-called Wounded Knee Incident when, on 27 February 1973, approximately 200 Oglala Lakota Indians seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and declared its ‘independence’ from the United States. This led to an armed confrontation for 71 days between the Lakota Indians and the US police and FBI agents. Eventually, this incident, and especially the 1977 trial of the Lakota Indian Leonard Peltier, accused of the murder of FBI agents in 1975, inspired the rise of the American Indian Movement and attracted the attention of not only the American press, but also of the international media. See numerous publications on this, including Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: The New Press, 1996), and Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (New York: Penguin, 1983). 35. Interview with Viktor M. Kalashnikov, 2 November 1992, Dnipropetrovsk. See also Vashchenko, ‘Some Russian responses to North American Indian cultures’, 311– 12, and Nelin, ‘Subkul’tura indeanistov’. I quote here one such American visitor from Ohio, who was invited by Alexander Vashchenko to visit Moscow in the summer of 1990, to participate in various meetings and ceremonies of Soviet

NOTES

36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

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174 –178

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Indianists: Claude Clayton Smith, Red Men in Red Square (Blackbourg, VA: Pocahontas Press, 1994), v. See the numerous internet sites, devoted to Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian Indianistika, which contain not only unique memoirs and analyses of this phenomenon, but also photos and videos. The main link for these sources is http://www.first-americans.s pb.ru/main.htm. Good analytical material is presented in http://www.firstamericans.spb.ru/n4/win/bluerock.htm, and http://www.first-americans.spb.ru/n3/ win/german.htm. What follows is mainly based on the memoirs of the movement’s participants from those websites. I used also publications by Vashchenko (in American spelling Vashchenko) and Znamensky, and especially my numerous conversations and interviews with Andrei Znamensky in January– February 2015 and his audio files, including one about his relations with Vashchenko. Compare with American anthropological research of Soviet/Russian Indianist subculture in doctoral dissertations: Jennifer Rayport Rabodzeenko, Creating Elsewhere, Being Other: The Imagined Spaces and Selves of St Petersburg Young People, 1990–5, PhD diss. (University of Chicago, 1998), 351– 97 and German Valentinovich Dziebel, Playing and Nothing: European Appropriations of Native American Cultures in the Late 20th Century, PhD diss. (Stanford University, 2006); see especially its chapter on Soviet Indianists on 163–222, and about Alexander Vashchenko on 215– 22. See also a good American description of this culture in the USSR on the brink of the collapse of communism in Clayton Smith, Red Men in Red Square. I quote my interview with Igor T., a retired KGB officer, 15 May 1991, Dnipropetrovsk. The KGB officers from Dnipropetrovsk also recalled this 1980 ‘anti-Indianist campaign’ in Soviet Ukraine as well. See my interview with Igor T., 15 May 1991, Dnipropetrovsk. See also Aleksej Popov, ‘“Marafon gostepriimstva”: Olimpiada-80 i popytka modernizatsii sovetskogo servisa’, Cahiers du monde russe 54/1-2 (January – June 2013): 265– 95. See Ivanov Sergei (Wapiti), ‘Kratkaia istoriia indeanistiki v Rossii’, in Indeanisty, http://www.first-americans.spb.ru/n4/win/bluerock.htm. Among many sources about these KGB connections see a study written by a Leningrader: Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 192; and a book of memoirs by a KGB general, also a Leningrader – Oleg D. Kalugin, Spymaster: My Thirty-Two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2009), 345 – 6. Quotations are from: Ivanov (Wapiti), ‘Kratkaia istoriia indeanistiki v Rossii’, 5 – 6; O. N. Iasenenko, ‘Indeanisty Rossii: kto oni?, 1 – 2; A. Kuchmenev, ‘Obshchinnoe dvizenie indeanistov Rossii’, 1 – 2; and a citation from Orlinoe Pero (Vladimir Koshelev), ‘Magiia edinstva’, 1 – 2, in Indeanisty, http://www.first-ameri cans.spb.ru/n4/win/bluerock.htm. Compare with Nelin, ‘Subkul’tura indeanistov v Rossii’, 255– 6. On similar developments but in different ideological settings among European Indianists, especially in Germany, see Colin G. Calloway, Gerd Gemunden, and Susanne Zantop (eds), Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003); Petra Tjitske Kalshoven, Crafting ‘The Indian’: Knowledge, Desire, and Play in Indianist Reenactment

296

42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

NOTES

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178 –183

(New York: Berghahn, 2012), especially 179; H. Glenn Penny, Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013). Vashchenko, ‘Some Russian responses to North American Indian cultures’, 315. On this conference, and the publication of the conference’s papers see Valery A. Tishkov (ed.), Istoricheskie sud’by amerikanskikh indeitsev: problemy indeanistiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), especially 3 – 9. Compare with Kalshoven, Crafting ‘The Indian’, 67, 73, 179. On this, see Orlinoe Pero (Vladimir Koshelev), ‘Magiia edinstva’, 1 – 2, in Indeanisty, http://www.first-americans.spb.ru/n4/win/bluerock.htm. On the concept of the Soviet closed city and a similar city in Soviet Ukraine, see: Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Closing and Opening Soviet Society (Introduction to the Forum Closed City, Closed Economy, Closed Society: The Utopian Normalization of Autarky)’, Ab Imperio 2 (2011): 123– 58; and idem, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 18 – 28. See numerous interviews and conversation with Andrei Znamensky, especially, 7 December 2010 and 4 February 2015. Compare with Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 130– 3. Yu. P. Averkieva, Indeitsy Severnoi Ameriki. Ot rodovogo obshchestva k klassovomu (Moscow: Nauka, 1974). ‘Book House’ (Dom knigi) in central Moscow was a major Soviet bookshop with a large selection of foreign literature published abroad in a variety of different languages. This famous bookshop became the most popular destination for Soviet intellectuals interested in obtaining original books and journals from the capitalist West. Howard Fast, The Last Frontier (New York: Duel, Sloan and Pearce, 1941). The most interesting (and less politicised) material on American Indians was published in such popular Soviet magazines as Vokrug sveta. See, especially, material with a good analysis of readers’ letters about Wounded Knee and other stories about Native Americans in Grigorii Reznichenko, ‘Moi rodnoi dom – ne moi . . .’, Vokrug sveta 2 (1978): 12–21; and an essay about the spiritual and religious life of the Indians who live on the American prairies: V. Babenko, ‘Solnechnye kolesa indeitsev’, ibid. 3 (1979): 41–4. All of these materials were direct replies to the numerous letters sent by young Soviet Indianists. See especially: L. Martynov, ‘Nebol’shaia voina bez tomagavkov’, Vokrug sveta 1 (1980): 46–8; L. Martynov, ‘Dlinnyi marsh’, ibid. 10 (1980); V. Peutin, ‘Blednolitsye i krasnokozhie’, ibid. 11 (1980): 29–33; L. Ol’gin, ‘Den’ prazdnichnykh periev’, ibid. 5 (1981): 64; V. Babenko, ‘Tasanke Uitke, zhivushchii v skale’, ibid. 10 (1981): 59–61; L. Martynov, ‘Otstupnye dlia siu’, ibid. 10 (1982): 14–17; Gennadii Vasil’ev, ‘Protivostoianie’, ibid. 9 (1983): 16–21; X. Storm, ‘Letuchii myshonok’, ibid. 10 (1983): 26–8; A. Martynov, ‘Besplodnye kraia navakho’, ibid. (1984): 12–14; L. Ol’gin, ‘Indeitsy i kovboi’, ibid. 3 (1985): 64. I quote both Andrei Znamensky’s audio file and my Skype interview with him, 5 February 2015. The Soviet system of higher education offered three possible forms of instruction: (1) regular daily classes (dnevnaia forma obucheniia); the less prestigious (2) evening classes (vechernaiia forma obucheniia); and the least prestigious (3) classes by correspondence (zaochnaia forma obucheniia).

NOTES

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297

53. G. M. Sadovaia, ‘Kozenko Boris Dmitrievich (1927 – 2007)’, Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by, Vol. 4: Srednie veka. Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, edited by G. N. Sevostianov (Moscow: Nauka, 2010), 305– 15. 54. On Vashchenko’s role in the interpretation of Western scholars, see Kalshoven, Crafting ‘The Indian’, 67, 73, 179; and Clayton Smith, Red Men in Red Square, 27 – 8 ff. 55. Andrei A. Znamenskii, Politika pravitel’stva SShA v indeiskom voprose (70-e gody XX v.): diss. na soiskanie stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh nauk (Leningrad: Leningradskii pedagogicheskii institute, 1988). 56. Among his publications based on these unusual sources, see especially A. A. Znamenskii, ‘Tragediia indeitsev navakho’, SEPI 12 (1986): 66 – 9; idem, ‘Radikal’naia obshchsetvennaia mysl’ SShA o polozhenii indeitsev (60-80-e gody)’, Kritika sovremennoi burzhuaznoi istoriografii novoi i noveishei istorii stran Evropy i Ameriki, edited by N. V. Farbman, V. M. Kirillova and V. A. Eshchin (Riazan’: Riazanskii gos. Pedinstitut, 1988), 140 – 54; idem, ‘Indeiskaia politika pravitel’stva SShA v kontse 70-kh – nachale 80-kh godov: (Krizis gosudarstvenno-monopolisticheskogo regulirovaniia natsional’nykh otnoshenii)’, Iz istorii obshchestvennoi mysli i politicheskikh dvizhenii v novoe i noveisheie vremia (Kuibyshev: Kuibyshevskii universitet, 1988), 149– 63. 57. Raymond J. DeMallie (ed.), The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985 [1st edition 1932]). 58. Aleksandr Vashchenko and Andrei Znamenskii (eds), O suti zhizni: indeiskie i eskimoskie avtobiografii (Iakutsk: Iakutskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1989). 59. George Gibian’s letter to Julia Holm of IREX, 14 February 1980, in Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection, IREX. RC 187, F50. Eventually, Vashchenko published various materials about his trips to America and about his encounters with American Indians in a number of Soviet periodicals. See A. Vashchenko, ‘Tropy, skrytye betonom’, Vokrug sveta 3 (1981): 24–8. 60. See about Vashchenko’s participation at the Ninth Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in 1 – 6 August 1982 at the University of Mississippi in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Collection, ACLS, II: 661, Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1980 –5. 61. Clayton Smith, Red Men in Red Square, 9. In 1990, Vashchenko invited the American author of that book, together with one American Indian Chief, to visit Moscow and make contact with Soviet enthusiasts of American Indian culture. See more on this in Clayton Smith, Red Men in Red Square, 204 – 9. 62. Kalshoven, Crafting ‘The Indian’, 253. 63. Ivanov Sergei (Wapiti), ‘Kratkaia istoriia indeanistiki v Rossii’, 7 – 8, and Andrei Znamensky, 4 February 2015. 64. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 87, 99 – 101, 147, 162– 3, 300, 357 – 8. 65. See Igor T. and Andrei Znamensky. 66. See especially Danchevskaya, ‘Notes on Russian Indianists’; Rayport Radodzeenko, ‘Russian “Indianists”: A romance with the image of the North American Indian’; and Nelin, ‘Subkul’tura indeanistov v Rossii’.

298

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187 –190

67. Later on, one of their younger colleagues, Andrei Grinev, an expert on the history of Native Americans in Russian America, followed Znamensky’s example, moved from ‘provintsia’ to Moscow, defended his dissertation there in 1987, using his connections to another Muscovite, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, and relocated to St Petersburg/Leningrad. See his book: A. V. Grinev, Indeitsy tlinkity v period Russkoi Ameriki (1741 – 1867 gg.) (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1991). This book was subsequently published in English as Andrei V. Grinev, The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741 – 1867, translated by Richard L. Bland and Katerina G. Solovjova (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). 68. Aleksandr Vashchenko and Viktor Gatsak, Istoriko-epicheskii fol’klor severoamerikanskikh indeitsev: tipologiia i poetika (Moscow: Nauka, 1989); Alexander Vashchenko, ‘Oral Historical Epic Narratives’, in Andrew Wiget (ed.), Handbook of Native American Literature (New York: Garland, 1996), 91 – 7; Aleksandr Vashchenko and Claude Clayton Smith (eds), The Way of Kinship: An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); and Valery A. Tishkov, Strana klenovogo lista: nachalo istorii (Moscow: Nauka, 1977); idem, Osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v kolonial’noi Kanade (Moscow: Nauka, 1978); idem, Istoricheskie sud’by amerikanskikh indeitsev: problemy indeanistiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1985); idem, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict In and After the Soviet Union (London: Sage, 1997); idem, Chechnya: Life in War-Torn Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). In the post-Soviet era, Valery Tishkov supported the idea of the Russkii mir and Putin’s diplomacy in post-Soviet space as early as May 2007. On this see Michael Moser, Language Policy and the Discourse on Languages in Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych (25 February 2010– 28 October 2012) (Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2014), 142. 69. I use information from Valery Tishkov’s official website (hereafter Biografiia. Valerii Tishkov) and chapters from his own memoirs, which he sent me by e-mail on 25 February 2015 (From an unpublished manuscript by V. A. Tishkov ‘Antropologiia sebia’ [Hereafter Tishkov, Anthropology of Myself ]). I retrieved his information (on 15 March 2015) also from: http://www.valerytishkov.ru/cntnt/biografiya/ avtobiogra.html#. 70. Biografiia. Valerii Tishkov, 3. 71. It was the first edition of Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949). On Malia’s visit to MGU, see also David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 140. 72. Biografiia. Valerii Tishkov, 3 – 4. Both Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and Sergei Burin (who also was Sevostianov’s student) confirmed this story in their interviews. (See my interviews with Sergei N. Burin, 15 January 1995, Moscow, and with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow). 73. Tishkov, Anthropology of Myself, 6; [‘Glava IV. V Akademii nauk’], 7 – 14. 74. Aron Gurevich, Istoria istorika (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004), 164– 6, and Aleksandr Nekrich, Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 241– 4. The citation is from Sergei Burin’s interview, 18 January 1996, Moscow. See also a history of these International Historical Congresses in Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Toward a Global Community of Historians: The International Historical

NOTES

75. 76. 77.

78. 79.

80. 81.

TO PAGES

190 –201

299

Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences, 1898 – 2000, edited by Ju¨rgen Kocka and Wolfgang J. Mommsen in collaboration with Agnes Bla¨nsdorf, translated by Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 253, 254– 6. See his books based on the research for this dissertation: Tishkov, Strana klenovogo lista; idem, Osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v kolonial’noi Kanade. Tishkov, Anthropology of Myself, [‘Glava IV. V Akademii nauk’], 7 – 15. Eventually, Tishkov used material from this trip for two books: 1) on US historians – V. A. Tishkov, Istoriia i istoriki v SShA (Moscow: Nauka, 1985) and 2) on Native Americans – V. A. Tishkov, V. G. Stel’makh and S. V. Cheshko, Tropoiu slioz i nadezhd: Kniga o sovremennykh indeitsakh SShA i Kanady (Moscow: Mysl’, 1990). Tishkov, Anthropology of Myself, [‘Glava IV. V Akademii nauk’], 13– 14. Both Bolkhovitinov and Burin confirmed this story. I quote Burin’s definition ‘Tishkov was the official Soviet Americanist.’ Profesory Dnipropetrovs’koho natsional’noho universytetu imeni Olesia Honchara: Bibliohrafichnyi dovidnyk, Editor-in-chief M. V. Poliakov (Dnipropetrovsk: Vydvo DNU, 2008), 189– 90. I also draw on my conversation with Viktor Kalashnikov, 3 March 1990, Dnipropetrovsk. Snamenski (sic!), ‘In black or white, or through Marxist glasses’, 130. Ibid.

Chapter 7 Carving the Academic and National Identity of Ukrainian Americanists 1. The first historical study about my home town Vatutino was published in Ukrainian in 2014. See Oleksandr Gritsenko, Pam’iat’ mistsevogo vyrobnytstva (Kyiv: K.I.S., 2014). 2. This region is called Shevchenkiv krai in Ukrainian. 3. In fact, the first (and very primitive) lignite mines were built in this area as early as 1846. Suring the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet government began extraction of lignite in the so-called ‘Yurkovka basin’ in the low-lying valley of Shpolka River, which would later become the location for the town of Vatutino in 1946. See Vasyl Derkach, Vatutine (Dnipropetrovsk: Promin’, 1977), 4, 5 – 9. 4. The local KGB left such ‘secret’ shelves in Soviet libraries for a short period of time before moving the forbidden books into the special closed book collections (spetskhran). I recalled the existence of such shelves with forbidden books during 1970– 3 in Vatutino library. 5. About the role of Tatarsky’s radio shows and other ‘sources of rock music consumption’ see my book: Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960 – 1985 (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 95– 7; on the role of Rovesnik magazine, see ibid., 241 – 9. 6. Thanks to my friends, I had access to the original Beatles album (released in 1967) in January 1970.

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7. For details about the Dnipropetrovsk black market for rock music in the archival documents, see: DADO, f. 19, op. 54, d. 113, ll. 9 – 10. 8. Sergei Zhuk, ‘Colonial America, the independence of the Ukraine, and Soviet historiography: the personal experience of a former Soviet Americanist’, Pennsylvania History 62/4 (1995): 468– 90, citation is from 469. 9. I have described the story of this city in: Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 18 – 28. On various ideological campaigns, initiated by the KGB, see ibid., 31– 64. I also discussed the problems of ‘closing’ and ‘opening’ Soviet cities in Sergei Zhuk, ‘Closing and opening Soviet society (Introduction to the Forum: Closed City, Closed Economy, Closed Society: The Utopian Normalization of Autarky)’, Ab Imperio 2 (2011): 123– 58. 10. DADO, f. 19, op. 52, d. 70, ll. 102– 3. 11. Ibid., ll. 103– 4. 12. DADO, f. 19, op. 52, d. 71, ll. 4 – 5. According to police reports in 1968, under the influence of Fantomas’ adventures, in Dnipropetrovsk young people committed 200 various crimes, leaving the message ‘Fantomas was here’. Ibid., l. 5. On these influences, see Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 141– 5, 148. 13. I quote my colleague, Vitaliy Pidgaietskiy. 14. DADO, f. 19, op. 52, d. 72, ll. 95– 6. I describe this story in detail in Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, 31 – 52, 53 – 64. The most active fighters against Ukrainian nationalism were professors from the historical-philological department (which was the official name of this department in 1968), B. A. Shadura and F. M. Biletskiy, and a professor of philosophy, I. Moroz: DADO, f. 19, op. 52, d. 72, ll. 45, 48. 15. DADO, f. 18, op. 35, d. 224, l. 149. 16. Peter Force (ed.), Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement and Progress of the Colonies in North America from the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1776 (4 vols., New York: P. Smith, 1947 [1st pr.: 1836]); Ch. Andrews (ed.), Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675– 1690 (New York: Scholar’s Bookshelf, 1915); W, Kavanagh (ed.), Foundations of Colonial America. A Documentary History (New York: Chelsea House, 1973) vol. 3; W. Billings (ed.), The Old Dominion in the Eighteenth Century. A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606– 1689 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Bacon’s Rebellion: Abstracts of Materials in the Colonial Records Project, compiled by J. Neville (Richmond: Jamestown Foundation, 1976); Th. J. Wertenbaker, Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon’s Rebellion and Its Leader (Gloucester: Scholar’s Bookshelf, 1965); W. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel. A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957); Ed. S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom. The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); J. Carson, Bacon’s Rebellion 1676 – 1976 (Jamestown: Jamestown Foundation, 1976). 17. It is interesting to note, that an ‘internal’ reader from the DGU Department of History, Professor Vitaliy Pidgaetskiy, criticised me for my focus on American historians and my ‘neglect’ of Soviet Marxist contributions in the exploration of US history. At the same time, Burin praised my analysis of US historiography. See S. N. Burin, Otzyv na diplomnuiu rabotu S. I. Zhuka ‘Istochniki i istoriografiia

NOTES

18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

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virginskogo vosstaniia 1976 goda pod rukovodstvom Natanielia Bekona’, 20 April 1981, 5 pages. The term Sovdepia derived from the official name of the first Soviet organ of power (Sovet narodnykh deputatov); and it had obviously anti-Soviet critical connotations in those days. I started by reading this book: Jerome Reich, Leisler’s Rebellion: A Study of Democracy in New York, 1664 – 1720 (Chicago, 1953). In my research, I portrayed Jacob Leisler’s revolt not as a Dutch ethnic movement against the process of ‘Anglicisation’, or religious upheaval of Protestants against the threat of Roman Catholicism in New York, but as the struggle of ordinary and wealthy colonists (Dutch, British and French settlers) against restrictions on their business activity, imposed by the British colonial administration: S. I. Zhuk, ‘Vosstanie Dzhekoba Leislera v N’iu-Iorke v 1689 – 1691gg. [Jacob Leisler’s rebellion in New York, 1689 – 1691]’, Novaia i noveishaia istoria 5 (1986): 156 – 63. This article was accepted in 1983 and published in 1986. Two smaller articles were accepted in 1983 and published in 1984 and 1986: S. I. Zhuk, ‘Novye Niderlandy’, Voprosy istorii 10 (1984): 184 – 8; and idem, ‘Novaia Shvetsiia’, Voprosy istorii 6 (1986): 181 – 5. I quote from my conversation with Bolkhovitinov on 3 November 1984, in Moscow. In 1986, I reviewed Rediker’s book for a Soviet historical journal. It was published three years later. See: S. I. Zhuk, ‘Issledovanie o moriakakh nakanune Amerikanskoi voiny za nezavisimost’ [A study about the sailors on the eve of the American War of Independence]’, Voprosy istorii 1 (1989): 153 –5. B. James and J. F. Jameson (eds), Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679 – 1680 (New York, 1913); A. C. Myers (ed.), Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware, 1630 – 1707 (New York, 1912); J. F. Jameson (ed.), Narratives of New Netherland, 1609 – 1664 (New York, 1909); E. O’Callaghan (ed.), The Documentary History of the State of New York (4 vols., Albany, 1850 – 51); Ch. Lincoln (ed.), Colonial Laws of New York from the Year 1664 to Revolution (5 vols., Albany, 1894 – 96). K. Scott and K. Stryker-Roda (eds), New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, trans. A. Van Laer (4 vols., Baltimore, 1974); J. Cox, Jr (ed.), Oyster Bay Town Records (New York, 1916), vol. 1; H. L. Osgood (ed.), Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675– 1776 (New York, 1905), vols. 1 – 2; and dissertations: J. Goodfriend, ‘Too great a mixture of nations: the development of New York City society in the seventeenth century’ (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1975); G. Hodges, ‘The cartmen of New York City, 1667– 1801’ (PhD diss., New York University, 1982); J. Leamon, ‘War, finance, and faction in colonial New York: the administration of Governor Benjamin Fletcher, 1692– 1698’ (PhD diss., Brown University, 1961); M. Lustig, ‘Eboracensis: the public career of Robert Hunter (1666– 1734)’ (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1983); C. McCormick, ‘Leisler’s Rebellion (PhD diss., American University, Washington, 1971); J. Peyer, ‘Jamaica, Long Island, 1656– 1776: a study of the roots of American urbanism’ (PhD diss., The City University of New York, 1974); B. Wilkenfeld, ‘The social and economic structure of the City of New York, 1695– 1796’ (PhD diss.,

302

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

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Columbia University, 1973); L. Wright, ‘Local government in Colonial New York, 1640– 1710’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1974). For my publications, see: Marcus Rediker, ‘The old guard, the new guard, and the people at the gates: new approaches to the study of American history in the USSR’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 48 (1991): 580 – 97; and my dissertation: S. I. Zhuk, ‘Sotsial’nye protivorechiia v kolonii New York, 1664– 1712 [Social contradictions in the colony of New York, 1664– 1712]’ (Dissertatsia na soiskanie stepeni kandidata nauk [PhD diss.], Moscow: Institute of World History, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1987), 224, citation on 181. I published the major results of my research in various Moscow periodicals: S. I. Zhuk, ‘Piratstvo: Istochnik pervonachal’nogo nakopleniia i forma social’nogo protesta (na primere kolonii Niu-Iork) [Piracy: a source of primitive accumulation of capital and a form of social protest (Colonial New York as a Case Study)]’, Amerikanskii ezhegodnik. 1986, (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 235 – 45; idem, ‘Vosstanie Dzhekoba Leislera’; idem, ‘Sotsial’nye aspekty formirovania kapitalizma v kolonii Niu-Iork, v kontse XVII – nachale XVIII vv. [The social-economic aspects of capitalism formation in the colony of New York at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries]’, Amerikanskii ezhegodnik. 1989 (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 210 – 28; idem, ‘Vozniknovenie goroda Niu-Iorka [The origins of New York City]’, Voprosy istorii 5 (1998): 148– 51. I use the phrase by Sergei Burin regarding ‘Arbatov and Sevostianov as the officially appointed nachal’niki sovetskoi amerikanistiki’ (the bosses and official representatives of American studies in the USSR). See A. N. Shlepakov, Biografiia statui Svobody: Istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow: Mysl, 1969); idem, SShA: Sotsial’naia struktura obshchestva i ego natsional’nyi sostav (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1976); V. A. Gorbik and A. N. Shlepakov, Gosudarstvennaia politika i obostrenie natsional’nykh otnoshenii v stranakh kapitala (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1979); I. S. Khmil and A. N. Shlepakov, Sotsial’naia struktura i sotsial’naia politika SShA, Velikobritanii, FRG, Frantsii i Kanady (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1980); A. N. Shlepakov and L. A. Smirnova, SShA: ‘Pokhishchenie umov’ v proshlom i nastiashchem (Moscow: Mysl, 1983). He also edited numerous collective monographs. Altogether, Shlepakov (as an author and editor) published more than 200 books. See his various editorial projects: O. A. Makarenko, A. N. Shlepakov et al. (eds), Ukraina i zarubizhnyi svit (Kyiv: Vyd-vo politychnoi literatury, 1970); A. N. Shlepaov, V. N. Gulevych, B. M. Zabarko et al. (eds), Mizhnarodna solidarnist’ u borot’bi proty fashyzmu (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1970); A. N. Shlepakov and L. G. Babichenko (eds), Dvizhenie mezhdunarodnoi solidarnosti trudiashchikhsia, 1924 – 1932 (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1980); A. N. Shlepakov (ed.), Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskaia i politicheskaia diskriminatsiia trudiashchikhsia v kapitalisticheskom mire, 60 – 70-e gg. XX v. (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1980). E-mail correspondence with Volodymyr Yakimets, 10 – 12 March 2012. On IMEMO, see Chapter 1. The phrase is Volodymyr Yakimets’. Zarubezhnyi mir, sotsial’no-politicheskie i ekonomicheskie problemy (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1981 –1991). See especially volume 19 for the year 1990, 103– 9, 109– 15. On how the Ukrainian Communist Party’s leadership supported Shelpakov’s Insitute, see the memoirs of Vladymyr Shcherbytsky’s personal secretary: Vitaliy K. Vrublevskiy, Vladimir Shcherbitskiy: zapiski pomoshchnika:

NOTES

29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

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slukhi, legendy, dokumenty (Kyiv: Dovira, 1993), 180 – 1. Note the very condescending attitude of the Moscow leadership towards Ukrainian efforts to create the first research centre for American Studies in Kyiv. See the documents in ANANU, Opys 1-L, Otdel kadrov, spr. 1277, l. 77 (about Shlepakov), spr. 1198, l. 48 (about Yevtukh joining Shlepakov). Visnyk NAN Ukrainy 5 (2010): 43. Interview with Arnold Shlepakov, 29 August 1991, Kyiv. Among the numerous publications, initiated by Shlepakov, see, especially V. B. Yevtukh, Istoriografiia natsional’nykh otnoshenii v SShA i Kanade (60 – 70-e gody) (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1982); A. N. Shlepakov, V. B. Yevtukh et al. (eds), Rabochii klass i natsional’nyi vopros v stranakh Zapadnoi Evropy i Severnoi Ameriki, 6080-e gg. (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1985); A. M. Shlepakov, Ukrains’ki kanadtsi v istorychnykh zv’iazkakh iz zemleiu bat’kiv (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1990). However, the best study by Yevtukh in 1991 was edited by his Moscow colleague, Valery Tishkov, rather than by his mentor Shlepakov. See V. B. Yevtukh, Kontsepsii etnosotsial’nogo razvitiia SShAi Kanady: tipologiia, traditsii, evoliutsiia (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1991). Interview with Robert F. Ivanov, 6 September 1998, Moscow. Interview with Shlepakov, 29 August 1991, Kyiv. This conversation was in Russian, and it had more criticism of Muscovites, Arbatov and Gorbachev than in my previous interview. He always denied his connections to the KGB, when I raised this question. Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Interview with Leonid Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. Douglas Tottle, Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard (Toronto: Progress Books, 1987). Petro Kravchuk, Bez nedomovok: Spogady (Kyiv: Literaturna Ukraina, 1995), 244. Peter Krawchuk, Our History: The Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Movement in Canada, 1907 – 1991, translated from Ukrainian by Mary Skrypnyk, edited by John Boyd (Toronto: Lugus, 1996), 250. On this story, see also Roman Serbyn, ‘Echoes of the Holocaust in Jewish-Ukrainian relations: the Canadian experience’, Ukrainian Quarterly 60/12 (2004): 223, and Frank Sysyn, ‘Thirty years of research on the Holodomor: a balance sheet’, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2/1 (2015): 7. Interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. In Ukrainian, Shlepakov’s phrase about the demise of American Studies went: ‘Radians’ka amerikanistika pomerla povnistiu.’ I paraphrased what Leshchenko told me during our long conversation. See my interview with Leshchenko, 25 June 2013, Kyiv. ANANU, Opys 1-L, spr. 1198, l. 31. See ll. 4 – 30 for an autobiography of Volodymyr Yevtukh. Interview with Leshchenko in his Kyiv apartment, 27 June 2013. See also Vrublevskiy, Vladimir Shcherbitskiy, 196. See Leonid Leshchenko’s letter, 10 December 1979, from Kyiv, 1, in the Stavroff Archive.

304

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44. I quote from my interviews with Leshchenko, 1 – 3 November 1991, Berlin, Kennedy Institute, Free University Berlin. 45. TsDAVOVUU, f. 5110, op. 1, tom 4, d. 3384, ll. 23 – 25; d. 3393, ll. 112 – 17. 46. TsDAVOVUU, f. 5110, op. 1, tom 4, d. 3384, ll. 122 – 35. Volodymyr Yakymets, who was head of the department of foreign relations of this organisation since 1981 (after 1985 he became deputy chair of this Association), explained this role of Leshchenko’s. See my e-mail correspondence with Yakymets for 10 March and 13 March 2012. On the roles of this organisation, see also books by its former officials: V. M. Danylenko, Ukraina v mizhnarodnykh naukovotekhnichnykh zv’iazkakh (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy. Instytut ukrais’koi arkheografii, 1993); P. Tron’ko et al. (eds), Na skryzhaliakh istorii: Z istorii vzaiemozv’iazkiv uriadovykh struktur i hromads’kykh kil Ukrainy z ukrains’kokanads’koiu hromadoiu v drugii polovyni 1940 – 1980-ti roky (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, Fundatsiia ukrains’koi spadshchyny Al’berty, 2003), 96, 114; Stanislav Yu. Lazebnyk and Olha B. Havura, Rozdumy na mostu z dvobichnym rukhom (Kyiv: Etnos, 2004); Stanislav Lazebnyk, Zakordonne ukrainstvo: vytoky ta siogodennia (Kyiv: Istyna, 2007). 47. At the same time, during perestroika, a few Ukrainian Americanists tried to distance themselves from Shlepakov’s legacy in Canadian studies. See A. I. Sych, ‘O roli slavianskoi immigratsii v osvoenii kanadskogo Zapada (1896– 1914)’, Amerikanskii ezhegodnik. 1989 (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 174 –89. 48. A. M. Shlepakov, L. O. Leshchenko, V. B. Yevtukh et al. (eds), Ukrains’ki kanadtsi v istorychnykh zv’iazkakh iz zemleiu bat’kiv: Do 10-richchia prybuttia pershykh ukrains’kykh poselentsiv do Kanady: Zbirnyk (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1990), and A. M. Shlepakov (ed.), Ukrainian Canadians in Historical Ties with the Land of Their Fathers, translated from Ukrainian by Viktor Kotolupov and Viktor Ruzkitsky, edited by Donna Marilyn Devine (Kyiv: Dnipro, 1991). See also A. M. Shlepakov et al. (eds), Ukraintsi v zarubizhnomu sviti (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1991). 49. See my e-mail correspondence with Yakymets for 10 March and 13 March 2012. 50. On this conference, see Kravchuk, Bez nedomovok, 269 – 70; and V. Yevtukh (ed.), Ukrains’ka emihratsia: zhyttia I suchasnist’ (Lviv: Kameniar, 1992). 51. His last monograph was a small brochure, and it was based mainly on secondary published sources. See L. O. Leshchenko, Kanada – nash susid i partner (Kyiv: Znannia, 1990). See the Stavroff Archive. During those years, an overwhelming majority of Leshchenko’s letters to Krawchuk contained only requests about various assistance and support for Leshchenko’s daughters in America. 52. Leshchenko referred to Shlepakov’s best student, Volodymyr Yevtukh, who served as the Minister (Chair of a State Committee) for Nationalities and Migration of Ukraine in 1995– 7, and then during 1997– 9 as Ukrainian Ambassador in Italy. Paradoxically, Shepakov’s school of immigrational studies as a subfield of American Studies, survives in the activities of Yevtukh, who continues research on ethnosociology as a director of the Institute of Sociology, Psychology and Management at the National Pedagogical University in Kyiv since 2007. Yevtukh is one of the most productive of Shlepakov’s students. In contrast to the others, he is still publishing research work, based on the traditions of Shlepakov’s Institute. Among his numerous publications, see especially Volodymyr Yevtukh, Volodymyr

NOTES

53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

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Troshchyns’kyi, Andrii Popok, Olena Shvachka, Ukrains’ka diaspora: Sotsiologichni ta istorychni studii (Kyiv: Feniks, 2003). For the best studies in English on this generation, see Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); Juliane Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet PostWar Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Benjamin Tromly, Making the Soviet Intelligentsia: Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Interview with Leshchenko, 31 July 2012, Kyiv. Interview with Leshchenko, 1 November 1991, Berlin, Kennedy Institute, Free University Berlin. See also Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 54 – 5, 62, 300 – 1. Catherine Wanner, Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 27. Ibid., 30. I paraphrase what Leshchenko said during his last interview on 27 June 2013, in Kyiv.

Epilogue

Perestroika and the Crisis of Soviet Amerikanistika

1. Interview with Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, 10 July 2004, Moscow. He referred to the last international conference of Americanists in Moscow in March 1991, which revealed the low scholarly level of Soviet Americanists. On this conference, see Marcus Rediker, ‘The old guard, the new guard, and the people at the gates: new approaches to the study of American history in the USSR’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 48/4 (October 1991): 580 – 97. 2. On Lev I. Zubok, see Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Inventing America on the borders of Socialist imagination: movies and music from the USA and the origins of American Studies in the USSR’, REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 2/2 (2013): 249– 88, especially 264 – 70. 3. I quote my e-mail correspondence with Vladislav Zubok, 17 December 2010. On the tremendous popularity of those Soviet television shows, which were put together with the participation of Martin Zubok, see Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘“Soviet Young Man”: the personal diaries and paradoxical identities of “youth” in provincial Soviet Ukraine during late Socialism, 1970 – 1980s’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies 5/2 (2013): 2, 34; idem, ‘Hollywood’s insidious charms: the impact of American cinema and television on the Soviet Union during the Cold War’, Cold War History 14/4 (2014): 612. 4. Correspondence with Vladislav Zubok, 17 December 2010. 5. On this magazine, whose circulation in the USSR was resumed under Khrushchev in 1956, see Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (New York: St Martin Press, 1998), 117 –19, 152. 6. Zubok’s e-mail correspondence, 4 November 2015.

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7. Ibid. 8. His thesis (diplomnaia rabota) had the title: ‘The Fair Deal of Harry S. Truman, 1946– 1949’. 9. Zubok’s e-mail correspondence, 4 November 2015. 10. See my interview with Vladislav Zubok, 30 December 2012. Compare with a description of the similar behaviour of Moscow ‘golden youth; in Andrei Makarevich, “Sam ovtsa”: Avtobiograficheskaia proza (Moscow: Zakharov, 2002), 85– 108, 109 ff. 11. On this, see various editions of the memoirs written by the first director of ISKAN: G. A. Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie (1953 – 1985 gg.) Svidetel’stvo sovremennika (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1991), 381– 99; Georgi Arbatov, Chelovek sistemy: Nabliudenia i razmyshlenia ochevidtsa eio raspada (Moscow: Vagrius, 2002), 132– 47; Georgi Arbatov, Zhizn’, sobytiia, liudi: Avtobiografiia na fone istoricheskikh peremen (Moscow: Liubimaia Rossiia, 2008), 305 – 43; idem, The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), 329– 55. Compare with Piotr Cherkasov, IMEMO. Institut Mirovoi Ekonomiki i Mezhdunarodnych Otnoshenii. Portret na fone epokhi (Moscow: Ves’ mir, 2004), 531– 70, and Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 193– 228. 12. Interview with Zubok, 25 January 2011. On Radomir Bogdanov as a KGB officer, see Barbara L. Dash, A Defector Reports: The Institute of the USA and Canada (Falls Church, VA: Delphic Associates, 1982), 20 – 1; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 211; Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 88. 13. George F. Kennan, Sketches from a Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000 [1st edition: 1989]), 345, 346 ff. 14. Interview with Zubok, 25 January 2011, and Zubok’s e-mail correspondence, 4 November 2015. 15. On this conference, see James G. Hershberg, ‘The end of the Cold War and the transformation of Cold War history: a tale of two conferences, 1988– 1989’, in Mark Kramer and Vit Smetana (eds), Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945 – 1989 (Lanham, MD and Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Press, 2014), 533 – 50. On Zubok’s participation, see 537– 8, 547, 549. 16. See also: http://az.gay.ru/authors/contemporary/pleshakov.html. 17. Interview with Zubok by telephone, 25 January 2011. Their book was published later in the US as: Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 18. Zubok’s e-mail correspondence, 4 November 2015. Zubok referred to his pioneering study, published in the US in 2007: Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War From Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

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237 –242

307

19. Slava Gerovitch, ‘Writing history in the present tense: Cold War-era discursive strategies of Soviet historians of science and technology’, in Christopher Simpson (intro. and ed.), Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: the New Press, 1998), 217– 18. 20. See Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 210–11, 278–9. 21. Interview with Sergei N. Burin, 5 September 1999, Moscow. Burin referred to a famous short novel by the Soviet Russian writer, published in 1927. See its English translation: Yuri Olesha, Envy, translated by Marian Schwartz (New York, 2004). 22. On the domination of Muscovites in centres of American Studies in the USSR, see Dash, A Defector Reports, 7 ff. More than 90 per cent of my interviewees from both Russian and Ukrainian provincial universities shared these notions. See especially A. Shlepakov from Kyiv, V. Kalashnikov from Dnipropetrovsk and A. Belonozhko from Zaporizhie. 23. Interview with Viktor M. Kalashnikov, 3 March 1986, Dnipropetrovsk. 24. Interview with Arnold M. Shlepakov, 4 April 1991, Kyiv. 25. Interview with Alexei B., a graduate student of Appatov’s, 15 May 1990, Odesa. 26. All major figures in American Studies in Soviet Ukraine, such as Shlepakov, Appatov, Leshchenko and Yevtukh, became experts in the history of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada. On their connections with Canadian communists and the formation of Ukrainian academic identity in the Soviet field of American Studies, see a book by a Ukrainian Canadian: Peter Krawchuk, Our History: The Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Movement in Canada, 1907– 1991, translated from Ukrainian by Mary Skrypnyk, edited by John Boyd (Toronto: Lugus, 1996). 27. See a description of this process in Kyiv in Leonid Leshchenko and Ihor Chernikov, ‘Vsesvitnio vidomyi vitchyznianyi uchenyi: Istoryk-miznarodnyk, organizator nauky i diplomat. Do 80-litia vid dnia narodzhennia akademika NAN Ukrainy Arnol’da Mykolaivycha Shlepakova (1930– 1996 rr.)’, in Mizhnarodni zv’iazky Ukrainy: naukovi poshuky i znakhidky. Vypusk 19: Mizhvidomchyi zbirnyk naukovykh prats, Vidp. redactor S. V. Vidnians’kyi (Kyiv: Institut istorii NAN Ukrainy, 2010). 28. See my explanation of this process in Sergei I. Zhuk, ‘Levelling of the extremes: Soviet and post-Soviet historiography of early American history’, in William L. Chew III (ed.), Images of America: Through the European Looking Glass (Brussels: Free University of Brussels Press, 1997), 63–78. 29. On Westernisation of the Soviet provincial youth, see Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City. 30. Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, ‘American history in Russia: retrospect and prospect’, Journal of American History 79/2 (September 1992): 526. Bolkhovitinov cited H. C. Allen, ‘Foreword’, Journal of American Studies 14 (April 1980): 6. 31. See Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov’s writings, especially his ‘The study of United States history in the Soviet Union’, American Historical Review 74/4 (1969): 1221– 42; idem, ‘How I became a historian’, Journal of American Studies 14/1 (1980): 103–14; Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Random House, 1992); Leonid Leshchenko and Ihor Chernikov, ‘Vsesvitnio vidomyi

308

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

NOTES

TO PAGES

242 –244

vitchyznianyi uchenyi’, 27. Compare with the recent studies of this Soviet generation in Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Vladislav Zhubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentisa (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009) and Juliane Fu¨rst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). See her interview with the Soviet Russian Americanist-historian Robert Ivanov on 61, 83. Compare with the similar developments among Chinese Americanists in David Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972 – 1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 283. See my book: Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City. Some historians call this the ‘Sputnik generation’. See Donald J. Raleigh (trans. and ed.), Russia’s Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist, 284– 5. This is obvious, looking at the publication of symposium papers etc., of the postSoviet Russian Americanists who represented this combination of generations, and who became leaders of the new local centres of American Studies in Russia. See the materials of the 26–27 November 2009 meeting in Moscow in Amerikanskii ezhegodnik. 2008/2009, edited by Vladimir V. Sogrin (Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii, 2010), especially 201–313. See also V. I. Zhuravleva and I. I. Kurilla, ‘Problemy razvitiia amerikanistiki v postsovetskoi Rossii’, AE. 2005. (Moscow, 2007), 180–93; V. Zhravleva and I. Kurilla (eds), Rossiia i SShA na stranitsakh uchebnikov: opyt vzaimnykh reprezentatsii (Volgograd: Izd-vo VolGU, 2009); Ivan I. Kurilla and Victoria I. Zhuravleva, ‘Teaching US history in Russia: issues, challenges, and prospects’, Journal of American History 96/4 (2010): 1138–44.

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310

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Markwick, Roger D., Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, 1956– 1974, Foreword by Donald J. Raleigh (New York: Palgrave, 2001). Nekrich, Aleksandr, Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian, translated by Donald Lineburgh (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991 [1st edition: 1979]). Noskov, Vladimir V (ed.), Rossiia i SShA: poznavaia drug druga. Sbornik pamiati akademika Aleksandra Aleksandrovicha Fursenko (Saint-Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2015). Palazchenko, Pavel, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). Potts, Louise W., ‘“Who is to blame? What is to be done?” Joint ventures with Russian Americanists in the 1990s’, American Studies International 41/1– 2 (2003): 41– 63. Pozner, Vladimir V., Proshchanie s illiuziiami (Moscow: AST, 2013). Richmond, Yale, US– Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958 – 1986 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987). ——— Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003). Sevostianov, G (ed.), Portrety istorikov: vremia i sud’by (Moscow: Nauka, 2000– 10), vols 1 – 5. Shambaugh, David L., Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972– 1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Shaw, Tony and Denise Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010). Shiraev, Eric and Vladislav Zubok, Anti-Americanism in Russia: From Stalin to Putin (New York: Palgrave, 2000). Simpson, Christopher (ed. and intro.), Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: the New Press, 1998). Vidnians’kyi, S. V. (ed.), Mizhnarodni zv’iazky Ukrainy: naukovi poshuky i znakhidky. Vypusk 19 (Kyiv: Institut istorii NAN Ukrainy, 2010). Vrublevskiy, Vitaliy K., Vladimir Shcherbitskiy: zapiski pomoshchnika: slukhi, legendy, dokumenty (Kyiv: Dovira, 1993). Wood, Gordon S. and Louise G. Wood (eds), Russian-American Dialogue on the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). Zhuk, Sergei I., ‘Colonial America, the independence of the Ukraine, and Soviet historiography: the personal experience of a former Soviet Americanist’, Pennsylvania History 62/4 (1995): 468– 90. ——— ‘Leveling of the extremes: Soviet and post-Soviet historiography of early American history’, in William L. Chew III (ed.), Images of America: Through the European Looking Glass (Brussels: Free University of Brussels Press, 1997), 63– 78. ——— ‘Closing and opening Soviet society (Introduction to the Forum Closed City, Closed Economy, Closed Society: The Utopian Normalization of Autarky)’, Ab Imperio 2 (2011): 123– 58. ——— ‘Richard Stites, the Soviet West, media, and the Soviet Americanists’, in David Goldfrank and Pavel Lyssakov (eds), Cultural Cabaret: Russian and American Essays for Richard Stites (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2012). ———‘“Academic De´tente”: IREX files, academic reports, and “American” adventures of Soviet Americanists during the Brezhnev era’, Cahiers du monde russe 54/1– 2 (January – June 2013): 297– 328. ——— ‘Inventing America on the borders of Socialist imagination: movies and music from the USA and the origins of American Studies in the USSR’, REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 2/2 (2013): 249 –88.

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——— ‘Hollywood’s insidious charms: the impact of American cinema and television on the Soviet Union during the Cold War’, Cold War History 14/4 (2014): 1 – 24. Zhuravleva, V. and I. Kurilla (eds), Rossiia i SShA na stranitsakh uchebnikov: opyt vzaimnykh reprezentatsii (Volgograd: Izd-vo VolGU, 2009). Zubok, Vladislav, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). ——— ‘Sowjetische Westexperten’, in Bernd Greiner, Tim Mu¨ller and Claudia Weber (eds), Macht und Geist im Kalten Krieg (Hamburg, 2011), 108– 35.

INDEX

100th anniversary of the beginning of Ukrainian immigration to Canada (1891), the, 222, 224 2001: A Space Odyssey, 143 300 Spartans, The, 138 3:10 to Yuma, 139 Abakumov, Viktor, 170 ABBA, 90, 142, 154, 159, 211 ‘academic diplomacy,’ 6, 223 Adjutant of His Excellency, An, 155 Adventures in Africa, 153 Adzhubei, Aleksei, 62– 4 ‘Alcatraz’ (Leningrad Indianist Club), 177 – 8 Aldrich, Robert, 138 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 145, 150 All About Eve, 71 All the President’s Men, 145 ‘All-Union paper dumpster area’ (Kuibyshev), 184 Al’perovich, M. S., 75

American Civil War (1861– 5) and the Reconstruction Era (1865– 77), 141 American Council of Learned Societies, The (ACLS), 11, 20, 22, 23, 76, 90, 93, 100, 102, 113, 115, 120, 185 American Indian Movement (AIM), the, 182, 183 American jazz, 36– 7, 40, 42, 60, 153, 227, American movies and Soviet Americanists, 35–8, 66–73, 136–61 American television and Soviet Americanists, 152– 9 American War of Independence, the, 64, 66, 164, 207 Andromeda Strain, The, 138 Andropov, Yuri, 156 Animals, the, 198, 199, 201 anti-Semitism, 212, 222, 223, 228, 233 Apache, the, 139, 181, 197 Apanovych, O., 111

314

SOVIET AMERICANA

Apartment, The, 138 Apocalypse Now, 134, 149 Appatov, Semyon, 27, 52, 223, 240, 243 Arbatov, Georgii, 14–18, 26, 33, 37– 8, 43, 59, 87, 94, 97– 9, 102– 3, 106, 135, 217, 219, 222, 223, 227, 244 Arkhangel’sky, Nikolai, 34– 7, 40 Art of Cinema (Iskusstvo kino), 150, 201 Association for Relations with Ukrainians Living Abroad (Society Ukraina), the, 224 Averkieva, Yulia, 130, 166–73, 179, 181, 182 Barker, Lex, 139 Baskakov, Vladimir, 134, 143, 149 Bazhanov, L., 126 Beatles, the, 90, 142, 148, 154, 158, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 206, 211 Beliavskaia, Irina A., 130 Benefis, 142, 158 Beria, Lavrentii, 170 Beznosova, Elena Vasilievna, 207 ‘Big Council’, the (for all tribes of Soviet Indianists), 175– 7 Birnbaum, Henrik, 118–19 Black Elk, 184 Black marketeers (fartsovshchiki), 202 Black Sabbath, 201 Bless the Beasts and the Children, 144 Blinov, A., 130 Blue Bird, 144

Blue Rock, (Indian-like lifestyle commune, Altai Mountains), 180 Boas, Franz, 167, 168 Bogdanov, Radomir G., 234 Bogoraz, Vladimir G., 167 Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai N., 34– 49, 61– 80, 95, 96, 101, 115, 128– 9, 131, 132, 135, 142, 144– 9, 153, 192, 194, 207, 209, 211– 13, 219, 223, 227, 228, 231, 238, 242, 243, 244 Bondarchuk, Sergei, 70– 1, 138 Borshchveskiy, V. Ya., 205 Bowie, David, 202 Braichevskyi, M., 111 Brando, Marlon, 69, 147, 148 Breakout, 151 Brezhnev, Leonid I., 2, 3, 4, 7, 12, 18, 21, 23, 29, 87, 89, 90, 98, 105, 106, 133, 134, 136, 137, 140, 150, 156– 8, 195, 206, 243 Brice, Pierre, 139, 181 British Empire, the, and British imperial politics, 192 Brown, Dee, 172–3, 182 Brynner, Yul, 139 Bumpo, Nathaniel, 165 Burin, Sergei N., 62, 84, 95, 129, 208, 209, 212, 214, 219, 238 Burton, Richard, 143 Butterfield, Lyman Henry, 77 Byrnes, Robert F., 121 Cagney, James, 50, 71 Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, the, 225

INDEX

Canadian Society for Ukrainian Labor Research, the, 225 Canadian Studies, 222, 240 Capra, Frank, 48 Captain Blood (Ostrov stradanii), 35 Charley’s Aunt, 38 Charlie’s Angels, 153 Chernenko, A., 204 Chernobyl nuclear accident, 195, 214, 216, 229– 30 China Syndrome, The, 90, 146, 151 Chingachgook, 35, 140, 165 Chubarian, Aleksander O., 235 Cleopatra, 151 closed Soviet cities Dnipropetrovsk and Kuibyshev, 175, 181– 7, 195– 216 colonial New York history, 135, 210, 212– 15 colonial period of the US history, 28, 194, 195 Comedians, The, 143 ‘conformist’ discursive strategy, 131 Conrack, 150 Cooper, Gary, 48, 69 Cooper, James Fenimore, 35– 6, 53, 165– 6, 192, 197, 232 Coppola, Francis, 146, 147– 8, 149, 152 Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), 198, 199, 201 ‘critical’ discursive strategy, 132 Cukor, George, 138, 144, 155 Daktari, 153 Davis, Angela, 158 Davis, Bette, 71 Davis, Miles, 83, 89 Day After Day (Den’ za dniom), 153

315

Day of the Dolphin, The, 146 Dead Season (Miortvyi sezon), 155 Deep Purple, 142, 201, 202, 211 Deep, The, 146 Defiant Ones, The, 68, 69, 72 Dementiev, Igor, 219, 223, 233 De Niro, Robert, 152 Derzhavniki, 3 Deutscher, Isaac, 188, 189 discourse of modernity, 241 discursive strategy of the ‘critical recommendations and advising’, 132, 134 Domino Principle, The, 151, 156, 159 Doors, the, 198, 199, 201 Douglas, Kirk, 69 Douglas, Michael, 151 Dr. Strangelove, 1, 150 Durbin, Deanna, 38 early American history, 94, 165, 166, 194, 206, 207, 210 Efimov, Aleksei V., 5, 43 – 6, 49, 79, 80, 94– 5 Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship, the, 191 Electric Horseman, The, 152 Emmons, Terrence, 189 Engels, Frederick, and Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 171– 2 ‘Envy of Moscow’, 237– 9 Erlichman, John, 154 Ermash, Fillip, 146, 149 Fantomas, 205 Fast, Howard, 182 Faulkner, William, 185 Fesunenko, Igor, 153

316

SOVIET AMERICANA

Flight of the Doves, 138 Flynn, Errol, 35 Fonda, Henry, 68, 69 Fonda, Jane, 144, 151 Francis, 152 Fulbright programme, 19, 20, 26, 93 Funny Girl, 138 Fun with Dick and Jane, 151 Fursenko, Alexander A., 24, 31, 50, 78, 80, 87, 105, 115– 17, 130, 134– 5, 137, 138, 142, 145, 223, 228 Furtseva, Ekaterina, 70

Granger, Stewart, 139 Great Escape, The, 139 Great Race, The, 150 Great Russian chauvinism, 12, 87, 228 Great Waltz, The, 71 Greene, Graham, 143 Greene, Jack P., 213 Greven, Philip, 213 Grigulevich (Lavretskii), Iosif R., 187 Grissom Gang, The, 138 Guber, A. A., 66 Gurevich, Aron Ya., 10, 21

Gaddis, John Lewis, 10, 234, 235, 236 Galkin, Ilia S., 126 Gardner, Ava, 144 Genesis, 202 ‘genuine cult’ of the American Indian among the Russian/ Ukrainian and Soviet youth, 166 Gerasimov, Sergei, 68, 70 Gerovitch, Slava, 4, 130, 132, 237 Gibian, George, 185 Glenville, Peter, 143 Gloria, 152 Godfather, The, 134, 146–8, 149, 159, 232 Goldfrank, David, 10 Goliadkin, N. A., 153 Gone with the Wind, 143, 145, 146 Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The, 141 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 2, 3, 7, 21, 195, 214, 219, 220, 225 Goskino, 134, 146, 149, 150 Grand Funk Railroad, 200

Haley, Alex, 153 Hard Times, 145 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 197 Hellie, Richard, 189 Hemingway, Ernest, 71, 185 Hepburn, Audrey, 69, 71 High Noon, 140 His Butler’s Sister, 38 Hofstadter, Richard, 124, 125 How to Steal a Million, 146 Holm, Julia, 103, 122 Holocaust, 154 Honchar, Oles’, 205 Hrushevsky, Mykhailo, 197, 198, 203 Incident at Map Grid 36 –80, 155 Inherit the Wind, 152 Inozemtsev, Nikolai N., 14, 15, 43, 87, 119, 218, 222, 223 Institute of Ethnography, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 169, 171, 172, 176, 179, 183, 223

INDEX

Institute of International Literature, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 183 Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Foreign Countries (ISEPZK), the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences, 6, 26, 27, 218, 220, 221, 222, 225 Institute of the USA and Canada (ISKAN), the USSR Academy of Science, 14, 15, 16– 18, 28, 33, 87, 97, 98, 102, 105, 113, 132, 134, 149, 150, 152, 163, 182, 219, 222, 223, 234, 235– 7 Institute of World History (IVI), the USSR Academy of Science, 5, 9, 12, 33, 96, 120, 141, 145, 190, 191, 207, 209, 211, 214, 216, 222, 223, 235 International Congress of Historical Sciences, 190 International Research and Exchanges Board, The (IREX), 11, 20, 22 – 3, 25, 90, 93, 96– 7, 102– 7, 109, 113, 118– 23, 127, 128, 149, 185, 223 ‘internalist’ discursive strategy, 131 Irving, Washington, 197 It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 72 Ivanov, Robert F., 37, 46, 48, 113, 118, 121, 122, 141 Ivanov, Sergei (Wapiti), 174, 176 Jaws, 145 Jesus Christ Superstar, 142, 154, 202, 232

317

Jethro Tull, 202, Johnston, Eric, 69, 70 Judgment at Nuremberg, 69, Kahn, Albert E., 72 Kalashnikov, Viktor M., 10, 140, 141, 192– 4, 206, 207, 212, 216, 239, 243, 244 Kalugin, Oleg D., 21 –2, 24 Kapler, Aleksei, 144 Kassof, Allen, 10, 25, 102 Katicheva, Azza Semionovna, 206– 7 Kevorkov, Viacheslav, 156 KGB, the, 2, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20– 5, 29, 47, 51, 52, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 93– 8, 100– 2, 108– 10, 112, 122– 6, 128, 137, 142, 148, 155– 7, 159, 169, 170– 3, 175–8, 184, 185, 187, 189– 91, 203–5, 210– 13, 219–21, 227, 229, 233– 4 Khrushchev, Nikita S., 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 15, 18, 29, 32, 46, 62– 4, 66 – 75, 76, 79, 80, 84, 88, 187–8, 196–7, 243 Khvostov, V. M., 63, 124 Kind of Blue, 83 King Crimson, 202 King of Comedy, The, 152 Kojak, 153 Kolpakov, A. D., 125 Komzin, Boris I., 118– 20 Koshelev, Vladimir (Eagle’s Feather), 174, 176, 177, 180 Koval’skiy, Mykola, 208 Kozenko, Boris, 183

318

SOVIET AMERICANA

Kramer, Stanley, 1, 68– 9, 72, 144, 150– 2, 156, 159 Kramer vs. Kramer, 146 Krasnov, Ivan M., 120– 3, 130, 223 Krawchuk, Peter (Petro), 81–2, 84, 110– 11, 220–2, 225, 240 Kubrick, Stanley, 1, 138, 143, 150 Kurilla, Ivan, 10 Kuropiatnik, Gennady P., 118, 130, Kyzia, Luka, 81 labour immigration to America, 83– 4 labour movement, 125 Lai, Francis, 148 Lassie, 153, 157, 158 Last Angry Man, The, 71 Led Zeppelin, 201, 202 Leisler’s Rebellion in colonial New York, 210–11 Lemmon, Jack, 151 Lemonade Joe, 139 Lennon, John, 202 Leone, Sergio, and spaghetti westerns, 141 Leshchenko, Leonid A., 12, 38, 50, 53– 8, 59, 85, 87, 90, 107– 12, 130, 137, 195, 221– 6, 227–30, 241 Leshchenko, Pyotr, 36, 40 Lili, 71 Little Big Man, 144 Lockridge, Kenneth, 213 Logan, Joshua, 68 Los’, Fedir, 81 Love Story, 146, 148, 159, 232 Mackenna’s Gold, 139, 146, 197 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 144

Magnificent Seven, The, 138– 9, 140, 205 ‘Magic Lantern’ (Volshebnyi fonar’), 154, 232 Makienko, Tatiana, 108 Malia, Martin, 188–9 Mal’kov, Viktor, 46, 130 Man of a Thousand Faces, 71 Manykin, Aleksandr, 233 Marathon Man, 145 Marinich, A. M., 85 Marshall, George, 170– 1 Marty, 69, 71 Marx, Karl, 46 Mato Nazhin (Sergei Nemkov), 186 Mauthausen concentration camp, 196 May, Karl, 197 Mayne Reid, Thomas, 36, 53, 54, 165, 166, 181, 197, 232 McCartney, Paul, and the Wings, 142, 154, 158 McQueen, Steve, 139 mediators (posredniki) between American and Soviet cultures, a role of Soviet Americanists, 136– 7, 160 Mel’nikov, Yuri, 105 Melville, Andrei, 123 Mezhdunarodnaia panorama, 157, 158 Midnight Cowboy, 152 Mikhailov, Boris, 130 Mikhalkov, Sergei, 68 Mikoyan, Anastas, 69 Miller, Glenn, 37, 41, 42, 59 Million Pound Note, The, 71

INDEX

319

Mitic, Gojko, 139, 140, 172, 181, 193, 197 modernity, comparison of American and Soviet modernity, 47, 51, 75, 90, 137, 227–30, 238, 241, 245 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 169–70, 171 Monroe Doctrine, the, 44, 49, 61, 63 Monroe, Marilyn, 71 Moroz, I., 204 Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF), 68, 139, 143, 149, 151, 152, 161 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), 68 Motyl, Vladimir, 140 Mr Deeds Goes to Town (The Dollar Rules), 48 Muliarchik, A., 150 My Darling Clementine, 139, 197 My Fair Lady, 138, 155, 159 Mytsyk, Yurii, 205, 208

Ogorodnik, Aleksandr, 156 Oklahoma!, 71 Oklahoma Crude, 144, 159 Old Man and the Sea, The, 71 Oliver!, 155 Olympic Games (1980), 176 Omen, The, 145 On the Beach, 1, 69, 150, 152 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 145 One from the Heart, 152 One Million Years B.C., 138 Organization for the Preservation of North American Indian Culture, the (OSKSI), 175 Osceola, 166, 141 Outsiders, The, 152 Ovases, 176, 177

Narochnitsky, Aleksei L., 61, 190 Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion in colonial Virginia, 207 national identity, 3 –4, 81, 82, 195 nationalism, 6, 87, 116, 187, 203, 205, 212, 222, 229, 233 Native American ethno-history, 174, 183, 194 Native Americans, American indigenous people (‘American Indians’), 166– 94 Navajo, 197 Nekrich, Aleksandr, 10 Nelson, Ralph, 138, 145 Nevyezdnoi, 95, 128, 129, 212

Parsons, Talcott, 211 Pavlychko, Dmytro, 147 Pechatnov, Vladimir, 234 Peck, Gregory, 71 Petrov, Andrei, 144 Petrov, Apollon A., 168, 171 Piaf, Edit, 198 Pidhornyi, Mykola (Nikolai), 82 Pink Floyd, 157, 202, 203 Pintner, Walter, 122 Plekhanov, Sergei, 135 Pleshakov, Constantine, 235– 7 Plokhy, Serhii, 208 pochvenniki, 3 Poe, Edgar Allan, 197, 232

New Centurions, The, 146, 159 New Deal, the, 49, 50, 125 Nikonov, Vyacheslav, 232 Nitoburg, E., 169 Novyi mir, 72– 3

320

SOVIET AMERICANA

Poitier, Sydney, 68, 72 Polevoi, Boris, 67 Pollack, Sydney, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 156, 159 Porshnev, Boris F., 65 Pow-Wow (American Indian ritual), 177– 80, 183, 186 Pozner, Vladimir, 74, 153 Putin, Vladimir, 3 Queen, 142, 202 ‘quintessential archetype’ of Soviet Americanists, the, 227 Raleigh, Donald, 10, 135 Rediker, Marcus, 212 rediscovery of Soviet Americanist ethnic identity, the, 79– 80, 82, 194– 230 Red Power rock band, the, 177 Reiner, Sydney, 68 Resident’s Fate, The (Sud’ba rezidenta), 155 Resident’s Mistake, The (Oshibka rezidenta), 155 Richmond, Yale, 10, 19, 68, 123, 125 Rieber, Alfred, 121, 135 Roaring Twenties, The (A Soldier’s Fate in America), 48, 54, 59 Robin and Marian, 151 Rocky, 144, 146 Rolling Stones, the, 198, 199 Roman Holiday, 71 Romantic adventure novel, 165– 6 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 125, 127 Roots, 153– 4 Rudomino, Margarita, 74

Sabatini, Raphael, 197 Sakharov, Andrei D., 95, 200, 235 Sakvoiazhniki (travel-baggers), 36– 7, 39 Samara Progress industrial plant, 181 Sandpit Generals, The, 144 Saul, Norman, 101, 135 Schlesinger, Jr, Arthur, 105 Schmidl, Herbert, 186– 7 Scorsese, Martin, 145, 149, 150, 152 Scott, Cynthia, 102, 120– 1 Scott, Walter, Sir, 165 Sea Hawk, The (Korolevskie piraty), 35 Second Anglo-Boer War, the, 192 Segal, Erich, 148 Semionov, Yulian, 156 Sergounin, Aleksandr, 244 Seton Thompson, Ernest, 181 Seventeen Moments of the Spring, 155 Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, The, 71 Sevostianov, Grigorii, 11, 14, 28, 87, 95, 98–101, 102, 124, 189, 190– 2, 217 Shabalina, E. N., 204 Shcherbytskyi, Volodymyr, 27 Shelest, Petro, 197 Shestakov, Viacheslav, 134, 143, 149, 150 Shevchenkiv krai (land), 197–8 Shevchenko, Fedir, 81, 111 Shevchenko, Taras, 196, 197, 203 Shevel, G. G., 26– 7 Ship of Fools, 152 Shlepakov, Arnold M., 1– 2, 7, 9, 12, 23, 24, 26, 27, 37, 48, 49, 50– 2, 80 – 7, 89, 95, 96, 108, 109, 111, 130, 137, 138,

INDEX

147– 8, 195, 216– 21, 222, 223– 6, 227–9, 239, 243 Shpotov, Boris N., 214, 243 Shternberg, Lev Ya., 167 Shulman, Marshall, 105 Sivachev, Nikolai V., 26, 27, 37, 38, 49– 50, 59, 73, 80, 84, 87, 95, 123– 8, 130, 132, 134, 135, 143, 192, 222, 223, 227, 228, 233– 4, 243 Skliarenko, Semen, 198 Skolnikoff, Eugene B., 103 Slade, 142, 201 Slezkine, Lev Yu., 75, 214 Smokey, 90, 142, 154, 159 social history of colonial British America, 95, 129, 135, 195, 210, 213 – 14 Sogrin, Vladimir V., 128, 130, 135, 243, 244 Soldier Blue, 145 Solo Voyage, 155 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., 72– 3, 79, 95, 200, 235 Some Like It Hot, 72 Song Without End, 151 Sound of Music, The, 138, 155 Soveksportfilm, 67, 68, 138, 143, 146, 151, 204 Soviet Indianistika, 165–94 Soviet ‘Indianists [Indeanisty]’, 165– 94 Soviet intellectual self, 80, 239, 245 Spartacus, 138 Spring Waltz (Spring Parade), 38 Stagecoach (The Trip Will Be Dangerous), 34, 36, 140 Stalin, Joseph, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 29, 38, 39, 41, 42, 46, 66,

321

115, 117, 131, 168, 170, 171, 188 – 9, 220, 238 Stankevich, Sergei, 133 Starytskyi, Mykhailo, 198 Stasi, 186–7 Stevens, Jr, George, 72 Stingl, Miroslav, 172 Stites, Richard, 126 Strilko, Andrii, 222 ‘string figures’ (American Indian ritual-play), 168 Stunts, 151 Sturges, John, 71, 139 Sun Valley Serenade, 37 –8, 59 Surin, Vladimir, 67 Sweet, 142, 202 Tarkhanova, Ekaterina, 153 Tarle, E.V., 43, 44, 45 Tarzan’s New York Adventure, 46 – 7 TASS is Authorized to Announce, 155– 6 Tatarsky, Viktor, 199, 201 Taubman, William, 234 Taxi Driver, 145 Taylor, Elizabeth, 143, 144 Tecumseh, 140 Teni ischezaiut v polden’ (Shadows Disappear at Midday), 154 They Shoot Horses Don’t They, 144 Three Days of the Condor, 145, 146, 150, 156, 159 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 151 Tishkov, Valery, 10, 87, 179, 187– 94, 223, 243 To Kill a Mockingbird, 72 Tokei-ito, 140 Tootsie, 146, 152

322

SOVIET AMERICANA

Tracy, Spencer, 71 Trail of the Falcon, 181 T. Rex, 202 trophy films, 34– 60, 66, 69 Truman, Harry S., 233 Tsvetkov, Gleb N., 109 Twain, Mark, 35 –6, 232 Ukrainian Association of Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, the, 223– 4 Ukrainian Cossack history, 208 Ukrainian diaspora in Northern America (Ukrainian Americans and Canadians), 55, 111, 225, 228, 229, 240 Uncle Kru¨ger (Transvaal in Flames), 54 Uriah Heep, 201 Urnov, Dmitry, 185 Ustinov, Dmitri, 106 Vashchenko, Aleksandr, 130, 139, 141, 174, 176, 179, 183– 7, 192, 193 Vatutino, Zvenigordka district, Cherkasy region, 196–203 Vechnyi zov (Eternal Call), 154 Veriga, Vasyl, 110–11 Vertinsky, Aleksandr, 36, 40, 41, 60 Vesiolye rebiata (Funny guys), 142, 155 Vidor, King, 69– 70, 151 Vikings, The, 151 Virginian, The (television show), 153 Vlasova, Marina, 90, 96, 140, 244 Voight, Jon, 150 Voina, Oleksii D., 80 – 1, 107– 8

Von Laue, Theodore, 115–17 Vsesvit, 142, 147–8, 201, 217 Vstrecha na El’be (Meeting on the Elbe), 55 Wallace, Henry A., 127 Walsh, Raoul, 48– 50, 54 Wanner, Catherine, 229– 30 War and Peace, American-Italian film of King Vidor (1956), 69– 70, 71 War and Peace, Soviet film of Sergei Bondarchuk (1966– 7), 70 Washington: Behind Closed Doors, 153– 4 Webb, Robert, 128 Weber, Max, 211 Welskopf-Henrich, Liselotte, 181 western, as a film genre, 138–41, 181 West Side Story, 69, 138, 151 White Wolves, 181 Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, 139 Winnetou Apache Chief, 139, 181 Wise, Robert, 151, 155 Witness for the Prosecution, 138 Wounded Knee Incident, the, 174, 182 Yakovlev, Alexander, 21 – 2, 113, 243 Yakovlev, Nikolai N., 43, 95, 128 Yaz’kov, Evgenii, 28, 130, 189 Yellow Submarine, 148 Yes, 202 Yevtukh, Volodymyr, 219, 221, 222, 226, 241

INDEX

Yudina, Maria, 80 Yuzhmash/Pivdenmash rocket factory, 204 Zamoshkin, Yuri, 149 Zemlya, do vostrebovaniya, 155 Zhmudsky, A. Z., 85 Zhuk, Sergei I., 195–216 Zhukov, Evgenii M., 146, 190

323

Znamensky, Andrei, 8, 10, 135, 137, 140, 141, 174, 179, 181– 7, 193, 194, 244 Zolotukhin, Vladimir, 105– 6 Zubok, Lev I., 5, 43, 44 – 5, 49, 74, 93, 94, 95, 231–7, 244 Zubok, Martin L., 154– 5, 231– 2 Zubok, Vladislav, 8, 10, 135, 154 Zuckerman, Michael, 213 ZZ Top, 201