Friends or Foes? The United States and Soviet Russia, 1921–1941 Norman E. Saul April 2006 456 pages, 27 photographs, 6 x 9 Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1448-6, $40.00 With Friends or Foes? Norman Saul continues his monumental multi-volume magnum opus on U.S.-Russian relations over the course of 200 years. This fourth volume provides the first comprehensive study in any language of an era that shaped the rest of the century and captures the major changes in relations between two nations on the verge of becoming dominant global powers. Among other things, Saul examines the rationale for America’s failure to recognize the Soviet government through the early 1930s, analyzing the impact of the Red Scare and the roles of the State Department, Russian émigrés, religious groups, and key individuals—like Charles Evans Hughes, Robert Kelley, Herbert Hoover, Boris Skvirsky, Olga Kameneva, and Maxim Litvinov—on the policy process. In addition, he recalls the American Relief Administration’s gigantic effort to help Russian peasants and garners new material from American business records on concession arrangements and commerce and on Soviet responses during the first Five Year Plan. He also records travelers’ impressions, cultural exchange, and the role of academia in each country—particularly the contribution of Russian émigré scholars to American education and the contributions of American journalists in Russia. Saul’s prodigious research in the Hoover Presidential Library, the Franklin Roosevelt Library, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University—incorporating overlooked Diplomat Post Records and featuring an interview with George Kennan on his diplomatic role—has yielded a wealth of new insights into what really happened during a period in the history of the relations between the two countries that remains mysterious and controversial. Breaking new ground in diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural history, Friends or Foes? illuminates both the mutual fascination that briefly permitted peaceful coexistence (and eventual alliance) and the ideological battles that ultimately led to the Cold War. “Saul caps one of the most significant historical projects of our time with a magnificently researched (on both the Russian and American sides) volume. . . . Makes an important contribution to our understanding of two decades which were turning-points in twentieth-century history, but also decades in which the leading actors repeatedly failed to make the correct turns.”--Walter LaFeber, author of America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2002 “Saul’s richly detailed panoramic view of American-Russian relations is presented not merely as the formal exchanges between diplomats and political leaders, but also as the wider encounter between peoples and cultures.”--David S. Foglesong, author of America’s Secret War against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920 NORMAN E. SAUL is professor of history and Russian and East European studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763–1867, winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Award; Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867–1914, winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize; and War and Revolution: The United States and Russia, 1914–1921.   Home | About the Press | Recent Awards | Contact Us | Order New Books: | By Author | By Subject | By Title | By Series Books in Print: | By Author | By Subject | By Title | By Series ©2007 University Press of Kansas 2502 Westbrooke Circle, Lawrence, KS 66045-4444 Phone (785) 864-4155; Fax (785) 864-4586