| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 292 words from this article are provided below; about 584 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Norman E. Saul. Friends or Foes? The United States and Soviet Russia, 1921–1941. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2006. Pp. xviii, 434. $40.00.
Norman E. Saul spins a fascinating story, stretching from President Woodrow Wilson's nonrecognition of Soviet Russia to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's extension of Lend-Lease aid. Between these two points, America passed through phases, including A. Mitchell Palmer's Red Scare; Charles Evans Hughes's "business at your own risk"; Herbert Hoover's famine aid by the American Relief Administration; Soviet-American cultural "melding" led by luminaries Vladimir Mayakovsky and Theodore Dreiser; recognition long championed by Senator William Borah; attempts at accommodation by Ambassador Joseph E. Davies; and Lend-Lease shaped by W. Averell Harriman.	1
Saul narrates the story with grace, humor, and attention to detail. His archival research is shaped into a battle between proponents of recognition against their nonrecognition foes. He sides with the former because recognition was sensible, realistic, and not based on, as he writes, "Wilsonian theo-political dogma" (p. 5). His eight chapters move through a period already well researched, the exception being his longest and most interesting fourth chapter on "Culture." This offers Saul a chance to highlight the best side of U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations, without dwelling on its eventual Stalinist downside. Pre-1917 Russian and American culture "melded" by "symbiosis" (p. 136). One product was joint discovery of new cultural directions symbolized by Isadora Duncan, who was active on both sides of the 1917 divide. She returned to Moscow in 1921, telling Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky that she was "sick of bourgeois, commercial art" (p. 139). Her romance with peasant-poet Sergei Esenin stirred controversy; they married in 1922 and divorced in 1923. Whether or not they symbolized melding, others did.	. . .

There are about 584 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.