March 12, 2013

Ivan Kurilla

Professor of Volgograd State University, Russia

Visiting Fellow at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies

Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University

During that period most of the Russian stereotypes about the United States were formed

Jean-Jacques Rousseau – idea of Noble savage

Russian poets of the XVIII century: Vasilii Trediakovski,

Alexandr Sumarokov,

Nikolai Karamzin

Pavel Svin’in,

Russian

diplomat,

journalist and

painter

Pavel Svin’in

James Fenimore Cooper

George Catlin

Alexander Radishchev, ode “Liberty” (1783)

Decembrists revolt (1825)

Railroads, steamships, telegraph, revolvers… Steamship orders in the US

Moscow-St.Petersburg railroad

Samuel Colt, Hiram Berdan and other weapon producers

Samuel Morse

Russian engineers is the USA: Mel’nikov, Kraft, Shants, Gorlov…

The Russian contracts became the first major foreign recognition of US ability to provide technological leadership and assistance.

The USA acquired the new reason to believe in its leading world role and destiny

(after “City upon a hill” in the 17th Century and invention of democracy in the 18th)

Americans at around 1830-40s started to believe in its special mechanical skills and inventiveness as a new token of their choosiness

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Dmitry Kachenovsky and Andrew Dickson White

Armed neutrality (1780)

Crimean war (1853-1856)

Civil War and visit of Russian fleets (1863)

First World War (1917)

Second World War (1941-1945)

War on Terror (2001)

America as a model

or

America as a threat

Depended on Russia’s home agenda:

America as a model (examples):

Nicholas I modernization (1830-40s)

Alexander II Great Reforms (1861-1881)

Bolshevik reforms and industrialization (1920-30s)

Nikita Khrushchev reforms (late 1950s-early 1960s)

Leonid Brezhnev in early 1970s

Mikhail Gorbachev Perestroika (late 1980s)

Boris Yeltsyn (1990s) reforms

Dmitrii Medvedev “modernization” effort (2009-11)

Depended on Russia’s home agenda:

America as a threat (examples):

Alexander III counter-reforms (1880s)

USSR in the late 1940s – early 1950s (post-war stabilization)

Leonid Brezhnev “stagnation” (late 1970s)

Vladimir Putin’s “stabilization” (after 2011)

If Russia will continue its reformation, - the attitude to the United States of America will become better

If the stabilization project will overcome, - the attitude will remain low.

However, Russia needs to reform…