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.....