In his book Russia under Western Eyes (1999), Martin Malia made the useful observation that Western understandings of Russia have often borne little resemblance to Russian realities. Instead, they have tended to reflect the political and cultural concerns of Westerners’ own countries. James Casteel develops a somewhat similar thesis with regard to Germany and Russia in Russia in the German Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905–1941, which examines how Germans depicted Russia in the first half of the twentieth century. These depictions, according to Casteel, arguably tell us more about Germans and their concerns than they do about Russia. According to Casteel, “Russia became a site onto which Germans projected their ambitions and expectations for the future as well as their worst anxieties about modernity” (6). More specifically, “perspectives on Russia articulated by German intellectuals, commentators, and political observers were shaped by their concerns regarding Germany's place as an imperial nation-state in a world of empires” (37).

Casteel starts his book with a brief look at German views of Russia before the nineteenth century. German travelers to early modern Muscovy, he notes, developed a stereotype of Russia as an Oriental despotism. This stereotype never entirely disappeared, but an additional narrative supplemented it over time, one that depicted Russia as a developing and Europeanizing country that Germans could help to civilize. From an early stage, therefore, Germans attitudes toward Russia were ambiguous. As Casteel puts it, “Russia was viewed as Asiatic and Europeanizing, barbaric and civilizing, backward and modernizing all at the same time” (10).

This ambiguity continued into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when “Russia came to be seen somewhat paradoxically as an imperial rival or an object of German economic penetration” (37). Some Germans feared Russia; others viewed it as a potential source of natural resources with great opportunities for German investment. With the latter in mind, Germans developed a particular fascination with Siberia, which they saw as the Russian equivalent of the American Wild West. Before World War I, many Germans believed that Russia, by exploiting the wealth of Siberia, would become a global power and dominate the world alongside the United States. At this point, the narrative of Russia as a modernizing, Europeanizing country predominated over that of Russia as a despotic, Asiatic state. With the revolution of 1917, attitudes changed yet again, and the Asiatic trope returned in part, though now tied to a narrative of modernization. According to Casteel, Germans’ views of the Soviet Union reflected not only their opinions on the communist experiment but also their understanding of what it meant for Germany's own future.

A surprising revelation in Casteel's book is the importance of the theme of colonization both before and after the Russian Revolution. There was, Casteel writes, a “ubiquitous trope of colonization” (101). Germans could not agree, however, on whether Russia was a European country colonizing Asia or an Asiatic country fit for German colonization. According to Casteel, “the question of whether Russia belonged to Europe or to Asia was intertwined with the question of whether Russia was a colonizer or an object of colonization, or both” (101). On the one hand, “the Soviet project of developing its human and material resources was seen as a form of internal colonization” (101); on the other, Siberia was seen as “virgin colonial land,” an “ideal space for expanding German trade” (112).

There was a great diversity of views in Germany about Russia. It is tempting to look at the subject through the prism of Nazi policy in World War II, imagining the history of such views as leading naturally toward the events of 1941–45. Casteel wisely avoids this temptation, noting, for instance, that German policy in occupied Russia during World War II was different in important respects from its policy during World War I. There was always some ambiguity in German views of Russia, reflecting different Germans’ different senses of their own position in the world. As Casteel puts it, “travelers’ impressions of Russia … were tied to their perspective on Germany's current situation” (96), which varied from traveler to traveler and from era to era.

Although Casteel analyzes only German views of Russia, his conclusions fit well with those of scholars who have examined other Western countries’ conceptions of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, such as Malia and David Foglesong (The American Mission and the “Evil Empire” [2007]). As a result, Casteel's book should be of use not only to those studying Germany and Russia but also to those interested in Russian-Western relations more generally.