Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies
A History of American-Russian Relations

A bold, sweeping history of the turbulent American-Russian relationship, unique in being written jointly by American and Russian authors.

David S. Foglesong (Author), Ivan Kurilla (Author), Victoria I. Zhuravleva (Author)

9780521111058, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 November 2025

640 pages
23.6 x 16.3 x 3.9 cm, 1.04 kg

'A highly important analysis by a team of excellent American and Russian scholars, the Distant Enemies will attract even greater interest than scholarly books usually do. A more complete, comprehensive, and original account of U.S.-Russian relations simply does not exist.' Andrei P. Tsygankov, author of Russia and America

This bold, sweeping history of the turbulent American-Russian relationship is unique in being written jointly by American and Russian authors. David Foglesong, Ivan Kurilla and Victoria Zhuravleva together reveal how and why America and Russia shifted from being warm friends and even tacit allies to being ideological rivals, geopolitical adversaries, and demonic foils used in the construction or affirmation of their national identities. As well as examining diplomatic, economic, and military interactions between the two countries, they illuminate how filmmakers, cartoonists, writers, missionaries and political activists have admired, disparaged, lionized, envied, satirized, loved, and hated people in the other land. The book shows how the stories they told and the images they created have shaped how the two countries have understood each other from the eighteenth century to the present and how often their violent clashes have arisen from mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentations.

Introduction
1. From First Contacts to Fledgling Diplomatic Relations, 1607–1807
2. Diplomacy and Rebellions, 1807–1841
3. Beginning of a Friendship: Cooperation, Crisis, and Transformation, 1841–1860
4. The Noonday of Friendship, 1861–1881
5. Romance and Revulsion, 1881–1901
6. Collision and Revolution, 1901–1905
7. Interactions and Contradictions, 1906–1914
8. Wartime Honeymoon, 1914–1917
9. Revolution and Intervention, 1917–1920
10. From Estrangement to Engagement, 1921–1933
11. Hopes and Horror, 1934–1941
12. Allies, 1941–1945
13. From Alliance to Enmity, 1945–1953
14. Crises and Coexistence, 1953–1963
15. Détente, 1964–1979
16. From Armageddon to Accommodation, 1980–1989
17. Transformation and Reversion, 1989–1999
18. From Partners to Archenemies, 2000–2020
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]