Remembrance of phobias past

The used bookstores of Washington offer the Russophilic book-lover a smorgasbord of stale fare - shelves full of antiquated Kremlinology; earnest discussions of the Soviet political system often shown by later revelations to have been misguided or naive; optimistic accounts of Russian democratization and marketization from the early 1990s; and travelogue accounts of the USSR which are often interesting only as ephemera, based as so many of them are only on the limited areas of the country which foreigners were allowed to see.

And of course, Washington being Washington, one can always find government publications which have made their way to the land of used bookstores by virtue of their obsolescence or their previous owner's need to free up shelf space. Often these are not just US government publications but Soviet products - Progress Publishers and the Foreign Languages Publishing House tend to be well-represented - or coffee-table books depicting foreign lands which visitors to DC bestowed upon their hosts. Sometimes, amidst the detritus, one finds items which have been preserved long enough to become interesting historical documents. Recently I found one such item, Vol. II of a report by the House Un-American Activities Commission entitled Soviet Total War: 'Historic Mission' of Violence and Deceit.


To be honest, I can't decide whether this book is more interesting as a compendium of enduring Russophobic stereotypes or as a monument to some of the actual (if perhaps superficial) policy continuities between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods and their ability to continue to engender hysteria among foreign observers (though I don't think Russophobic hysteria in today's America is quite at the fever pitch alleged by some).

I scanned in a few pages, although I now regret not scanning in the table of contents - the titles of many articles in this little paperback read as though they could have been snatched from some of the more sensationalistic headlines of today's Russia coverage: intimidation of neighbors, the use of trade as a weapon, domestic repression - all were present 50 years ago in the US perception of Russia, and indeed in Russian reality, though one suspects to a rather greater degree than is the case today.

I was finally inspired to post the scans after attending a presentation by David Foglesong at the Kennan Institute yesterday. Foglesong's book, The American Mission and the “Evil Empire”: The Crusade for a “Free Russia” since 1881, was the subject of a couple of interesting posts on Sean's Russia Blog, and his presentation - accompanied by a fascinating slideshow of political cartoons which sadly is not available anywhere online - did not disappoint. One of the cartoons can be seen at this post on the blog of Foglesong's publisher, which also reproduces his May 2008 testimony before the US Helsinki Commission. Foglesong's testimony is well worth a read, as it is a series of measured recommendations about how to approach Russia with good intentions but without those missionary impulses which do more harm than good to the bilateral relationship.

Anyway, back to the relic which is the main subject of this post. This fold-out graphic was what really induced me to buy the book (though since it was only eight bucks, it didn't require too much persuasion):


Here is an example of one of the articles - "Red Supersalesmen Muscle in," about unfair Soviet trade practices - which reads like a precursor of some things one reads in today's news coverage of Russian foreign economic activity (if you click on the graphic, you should get a readable couple of pages):


One of the articles in the compilation had some interesting charts which suggested that the identities of the parties in today's US-Russian relationship (a military/economic superpower vs. an energy superpower) represent something of a reversal of the roles in the relationship 50 years ago - at least as they were perceived by HUAC.

Of the two, the US would seem to have occupied the "energy superpower" role:




Meanwhile, the USSR had substantially more men under arms than the US (although that is actually still the case, at least on the books, though not to such a large degree; and then as now the US enjoyed advantages in naval and air power, though again, not to the same degree as today):