Россия и США: познавая друг друга. Сборник памяти академика Александра Александровича Фурсенко / Russia and the United States: perceiving each other. In Memory of the Academician Alexander A. Fursenko

Alexander Alexandrovich Fursenko was a greatly admired colleague of all the contributors to this volume and many, many more, both within Russia and abroad. His interests were wide ranging, his energy prodigious, and his commitment to historical scholarship and its importance to understanding the contemporary world was as passionate as it was productive. For many of us from the “far abroad” who came to know him well over the years, he also mirrored our own interests in linking our different scholarly communities in collaboration, mutual respect, and friendship. Always welcoming, but always also tough minded, A. A. left a lasting mark on the Institute of History in St. Petersburg as well as Russian and American historiography. By bringing his colleagues and friends together once again in his memory, this volume is a fitting reflection of the admiration and appreciation all of us felt for his generous investments in our intellectual and even personal well-being.

Those who are not familiar with American historiography may not know that A. A.’s own scholarship as a Russian Americanist was also greatly admired in that often less than generous scholarly environment. As I have detailed elsewhere,[1] the first major English language review of the work of Soviet Americanists in the American Historical Review described his early work as “superb”.[2] In part this was because like other leading representatives of the “St. Petersburg School”, Alexander Alexandrovich was devoted to archival work and documentary sources. His contributions consequently carried great weight, even as his approach often differed from that of historians of America within the United States.

A. A. was also an influential historian, however, because his scholarship increasingly touched on matters of seminal importance to American historical understanding. A review of his book on oil trust and international politics (Нефтяные тресты и мировая политика, 1880-е годы–1918 г. М.—Л., 1965) admired his scholarly independence and urged all American scholars interested in the subject to read this impressive and substantial book.[3] This was also true of his later work on the American revolution (regarded by one distinguished American historian as “one of the best books” among the dozens published at the time of the revolutionary bicentennial[4]); the 19th century “oil wars”, translated by Gregory Freeze (received as a “tour de force);[5] and especially his masterful last major work on the Cuban missile crisis, published in English under the title “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964.[6]

Although co-authored with Timothy Naftali, who studied the crisis from the American side, the importance of this work came almost entirely from A. A.’s careful work on Khrushchev and the Soviet engagement, using previously unknown archival materials. Within a year of its publication, the book was recognized by its American readers as one of the most important volumes ever written in the extensive historiography of Cold War politics. Within a year it had received more than 30 reviews not only in scholarly journals, but also in mass circulation magazines and leading newspapers like Business Week, Foreign Affairs, London Review of Books, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. The prestigious Wilson Quarterly called it “a treasure trove of a book[7]”. The New York Times named it one of the country’s “notable books of the year for 1997”, an unusual recognition and honor.[8]

Why this was so tells us much about Alexander Alexandrovich’s qualities as a scholar. Before the publication of “One Hell of a Gamble”, American historians largely interpreted the Cuban missile crisis as the consequence of great power strategies, perceptions, ideologies, and collective leadership wills, well developed and collectively shared, and informed by extensive and reasonably reliable intelligence.[9] A. A.’s careful archival work undermined most if not all of these explanations. By carefully mustering his evidence and presenting his arguments in clear unvarnished prose, he managed to persuade general American readers and scholars alike how perilous and unstable the crisis actually was, and how American historians themselves had misunderstood some fundamental elements of Soviet-American relations.