Most readers of this journal are familiar with the works of their Russian/Soviet counterparts and their accomplishments, both bad and good. Sergei Zhuk, who teaches at Ball State University and is best known for his Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (2010), provides a detailed examination of the origins and growth of Russian and Ukrainian specialists in American history, society, and culture. This book was preceded by Zhuk's closely-related study concentrating on one of the leading Russian scholars, Nikolai Bolkhovitinov, his mentor, and of many others in the field: Nikolai Bolkhovitinov and American Studies in the USSR: People's Diplomacy in the Cold War (2017), which is surprisingly not cited in the current book. For my review essay of that book with my personal memories of Bolkhovitinov, see online, Journal of Russian American Studies, vol. 1, no 2 (November 2017), 110–14. In fact, Zhuk repeats a substantial portion of the Bolkhovitinov book in the one now under review.

A problem in the case of both books is evaluating Zhuk's sources. He relies heavily on citations of personal e-mails, private interviews, personal telephone conversations, and unpublished letters and memoirs, such as those of Bolkhovitinov. How do we know that these are interpreted correctly, since none are publicly available and many of the original sources are no longer living? The claim that Grigory Sevostianov, the longtime director of the Center of North American Studies of the Institute of World History of the Academy of Sciences, was a KGB agent can be believed because of the involvement of that agency in the development of experts on America, but is not clearly substantiated. Readers may also accept that the two sons of Alexander Fursenko, the doyenne of St. Petersburg Americanists, were close friends of Vladimir Putin while students at the University of St. Petersburg, but was this consequential?

More interesting, but perhaps tangential, is a large section (165–94), on the Russian and Ukrainian craze for Native American culture (playing Indian in the Soviet countryside) during the Cold War, with several amateur photographs of Soviet Indianisty dressed up in costumes and performing imitation pow-wows. At least this is backed up and perhaps inspired by descriptions of genuine Russian scholarly research on Native Americans, especially by Iulia Averkieva's studies of northwestern American tribes during her studies at Barnard College (1929–31), and subsequent publications, for which she suffered during the Stalin purges. Another fascinating section of the book Zhuk devotes to his own personal experiences in becoming an Amerikanist while growing up in Vatutino, a coal-mining center in the Cherkasy district of Ukraine. This includes the influence of American music (rock and roll) and films on his student activism at the university in Dnepropetrovsk, where he enjoyed supportive teachers. He also delves into his developing a particular interest in colonial American history, and the guidance by Bolkhovitinov of his graduate studies in Moscow. The defense of his dissertation was delayed by his being recalled for military service for special duty at Chernobyl immediately after the nuclear accident, where he was exposed to radioactivity. This section includes a digression on the course of specific Ukrainian-American studies that were affected by the anti-American shift of Arnold Shlepakov, who headed the key institute in Kyiv.

What Zhuk does not do is acknowledge and discuss the vital background to all of this, the substantial funding that made all of this possible by the Soviet/Russian government in creating and supporting agencies such as ISKAN, the Center of North American Studies of the Academy, and the Ministry of Higher Education, which were all backed by the KGB and GRU for obvious reasons: developing the expertise “to know the enemy.” The role of the cultural exchange agreement of between the US and USSR in January 1959 is not mentioned, nor the commitment by American universities and institutions such as the Kennan Institute, ACLS, Fulbright Commission, and Ford Foundation to the cause of mutual understanding and scholarship.

In the epilogue, mostly lifted from the previous book, Zhuk takes a dim view of the future of Russian Amerikanistiki. I question this conclusion, considering the active interest in American studies that persists throughout the Russian Federation, with recent conferences not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in Volgograd and Vologda, and one scheduled for Ekaterinburg in November under the leadership and scholarly productivity of Vladimir Sogrin, Viktoria Zhuravleva, Ivan Kurilla, Olga Porshevna, Vladimir Noskov, and many others. The number of participants from Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe at American scholarly meetings, and the continuing support of their attendance at these events by ASEEES, the State Department, the Kennan Institute, as well as the government of the Russian Federation—and no doubt the KGB—are also positive signs. On the other hand, the cessation of the document publications on foreign relations and restrictions on access to archives indicates new limitations.