Title: What Russians Think of Americans | Foreign Affairs
Headings: What Russians Think of Americans
What Russians Think of Americans
By Frederick C. Barghoorn
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Content: The article is a diatribe against foreigners, but no less against Russians who have an inferiority complex toward the west. It reveals that this feeling is widespread, and it is studded with such phrases as "Now there exist all the possibilities for the complete liquidation of a most harmful residue in the consciousness of certain citizens of the U.S.S.R. -- subservience to the west." The carefully controlled Soviet press often offers such hints that there is a gap between what the Russian people believe and what the Kremlin wants them to believe. In travels to and from Vladivostok, the Ukraine and the Caucasus during 1946 and the first three months of 1947, I noticed no diminution of popular friendship and esteem for Americans. Even at the time of the Iranian crisis and Mr. Churchill's speech at Fulton, Missouri, I met with the customary cordiality and friendly curiosity from the rank and file of the Russians. There comes back to me, for example, the peculiarly delighted smile with which an Armenian truck driver announced that he had friends in America, and the fervent gratitude of a Georgian woman for the help of her American associates in repatriation work in Germany. A hundred similar instances could be cited. The words "America" and "American" seem to have a magical appeal for nine out of ten Russians. Perhaps this appeal of things American should be likened to the attraction which the "Soviet myth" exercises over American "fellow travellers;" but the fellow travellers are, of course, intellectuals -- and the interesting comparison is that it is precisely among the intellectuals in the U.S.S.R. that one is least likely to find warmth of feeling for the United States.