Orientalization of America: The Soviet Imagination of the American ‘Other’ and Modernization in Brezhnev’s Era

Abstract

Western observers and scholars had described Russia though oriental images and metaphors since the Early modern times. The Soviet Union was also perceived through this long-living tradition. It is especially interesting that Soviet journalists and scholars specializing in the USA (Amerikanists) also started using oriental metaphors and images to describe the Cold War America.

This article focuses on the so called ‘Orientalization’ of America that took place in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev’s era. Like the Orient from the famous work by Edward Said, America was excluded from historical time and social progress by Soviet experts, using Marxist ideas of European origin. But unlike Said’s Orient, the USA was economically and technically ahead of the USSR. The author argues that Soviet Amerikanists disconnected social modernization from an economic one. According to this view, America was technologically modernized but at the same time failed social modernization, while the Soviet Union was quite the opposite.