| Economics played a key role in both American-Russian relations and American understandings of Russia/USSR. Moving beyond earlier debates about economic interests in foreign policy, this dissertation examines economics as an ideological framework through which several generations of experts (diplomats, scholars, journalists and policy advisors) understood Russia and other societies. Those under the sway of what George Frost Kennan labeled the "romance of economic development" recognized the price of economic change but saw it as a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve the all-important goal of industrialization. This dissertation, accordingly, examines the public and private writings of America's Russia experts during Russia's period of most rapid industrialization, 1870-1940, to elucidate the centrality of economic thinking in American intellectual life and diplomacy.; Russia's frequent famines--in 1891-92, 1921-23, and 1932-33--constituted the most dramatic and fatal sacrifices in the name of industrialization and illustrated the strong support for economic development in that country. Following the apocryphal Russian exhortation, "we will not eat enough but we will export," grain exports accompanied each of these famines. But American experts--those trained and paid to interpret Russia for American audiences--also justified exports as essential to Russia's continued economic development. Journalists and scholars alike, for instance, used the phrase that Russia was "starving herself great" to describe the 1932-33 famine, which killed as many as seven million Ukrainian and Russian peasants.; Two broad trends in American thought further bolstered the romance of economic development. First, widespread invocations of Russian "national character" (variously Slavic and "Asiatic") served both to explain industrialization's high costs and to denigrate its victims. Secondly, the increasing prevalence of academic experts encouraged a detached and "objective" view toward even the most tragic events, including famines.; The dissertation utilizes biographical sketches to demonstrate how the romance captivated experts of varied backgrounds, training, and political beliefs. Subjects include early academic experts Samuel Northrop Harper and Archibald Cary Coolidge, journalists George Kennan, Walter Duranty, William Henry Chamberlin, and others. By tracing the enthusiasm for economic development in interwar American thought, this thesis shows, finally, that economics--more than politics--defined American support for the Soviet Union and its policies. |
