In this study, Marinova examines the diverse practices of crossing boundaries, tactics of translation, and experiences of double and multiple political and national attachments evident in texts about Russo-American encounters from the end of the American Civil War to the Russian Revolution of 1905. Marinova brings together published writings, archival materials, and personal correspondence of well or less known travelers of diverse ethnic backgrounds and artistic predilections: from the quintessential American Mark Twain to the Russian-Jewish ethnographer and revolutionary Vladimir Bogoraz; from masters of realist prose such as the Ukrainian-born Vladimir Korolenko and the Jewish-Russian-American Abraham Cahan, to romantic wanderers like Edna Proctor, Isabel Hapgood or Grigorii Machtet. By highlighting the reification of problematic stereotypes of ethnic and racial difference in these texts, Marinova illuminates the astonishing success of the Cold War period’s rhetoric of mutual hatred and exclusion, and its continuing legacy today.

Contents

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1: Russian Tourists View Postbellum America 2: "Innocent" Encounters with Russia, or Americans at Play 3: Russian "Marvels" and American "Originals." The View of Russia and America During the Last Two Decades of the Nineteenth Century 4: The Gifts of Travel: Tales of Passing of the Ethnic Russian in America: Vladimir Korolenko’s Bez Iazyka and Abraham Cahan’s "Theodore and Martha" and The White Terror and the Red Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Author Bio

Margarita Marinova is Assistant Professor of English at Christopher Newport University.