Publication date:
21 July 2003Length of book:
328 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9780742527935
In Imagining America, historian Alan M. Ball explores American influence in two newborn Russian states: the young Soviet Union and the modern Russian Republic. Ball deftly illustrates how in each era Russians have approached the United States with a conflicting mix of ideas—as a land to admire from afar, to shun at all costs, to emulate as quickly as possible, or to surpass on the way to a superior society. Drawing on a wide variety of sources including contemporary journals, newspapers, films, and popular songs, Ball traces the shifting Russian perceptions of American cultural, social, and political life. As he clearly demonstrates, throughout their history Russian imaginations featured a United States that political figures and intellectuals might embrace, exploit, or attack, but could not ignore.
Highly respected U.S. scholar Ball is mainly concerned with Russian attitudes and borrowings regarding U.S. technology and culture, but he also deals with Russian perceptions of the U.S. economic and political system and of American life in general. His excellent book is divided into two sections, 'The Early Soviet Period' and 'The Contemporary Era,' but it also briefly touches on the period between these two eras and flashes back occasionally to 19th-century opinions of the U.S. Ball's analysis is balanced, and he provides many useful statistics. Recommended. All levels and libraries.