1. 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

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

3.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau – idea of Noble savage
 Russian poets of the XVIII century:
 Vasilii Trediakovski,
 Alexandr Sumarokov,
 Nikolai Karamzin

4. Pavel Svin’in,
Russian
diplomat,
journalist and
painter

5. Pavel Svin’in

6.  James Fenimore Cooper
 George Catlin

7.  Alexander Radishchev, ode “Liberty” (1783)
 Decembrists revolt (1825)

8.  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…

9.  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

10. Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin

11. Dmitry Kachenovsky and Andrew Dickson White

12.  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)

13. America as a model
or
America as a threat

14. 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)

15. 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)

16.  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…