The Twelve Chairs

INTRODUCTION

It has long been my considered opinion that strains in Russo-American

relations are inevitable as long as the average American persists in

picturing the Russian as a gloomy, moody, unpredictable individual, and the

average Russian in seeing the American as childish, cheerful and, on the

whole, rather primitive. Naturally, we each resent the other side's unjust

opinions and ascribe them, respectively, to the malice of capitalist or

Communist propaganda. What is to blame for this? Our national literatures;

or, more exactly, those portions of them which are read. Since few Americans

know people of the Soviet Union from personal experience, and vice versa, we

both depend to a great extent on information gathered from the printed page.

The Russians know us-let us forget for a moment about Pravda-from the works

of Jack London, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain and O. Henry. We know the

Russians-let us temporarily disregard the United Nations-as we have seen

them depicted in certain novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and in the later

dramas of Chekhov.....