Soviet Perceptions of the United States

Soviet Perceptions of the United States examines how Soviet scholars and policy analysts conceptualized American power, politics, and society during the Cold War, and how these perceptions informed Moscow’s foreign policy. Drawing heavily on writings from the USA Institute (founded in 1967 under Georgi Arbatov) and its journal *SShA: ekonomika, politika, ideologiya*, the book traces the evolution of Soviet views from the crude Stalinist caricatures of America as a capitalist dystopia to more nuanced, though still ideologically constrained, analyses in the 1960s and 1970s. It explores Soviet assessments of the U.S. economic system, acknowledging both its technological dynamism and its systemic inequalities, and reviews shifting interpretations of “state-monopoly capitalism” and the role of the military-industrial complex. The text shows how American recessions, the Vietnam War, and Keynesian policy experiments were closely scrutinized, often with a mix of admiration for U.S. adaptability and conviction that capitalism remained crisis-prone and historically doomed.

Beyond economics, the study surveys Soviet analyses of American political institutions and actors. Chapters detail interpretations of the presidency, Congress, the State and Defense Departments, and the influence of interest groups, think tanks, and public opinion. Soviet Americanists increasingly debated how internal U.S. contradictions—social unrest, economic cycles, political scandals—shaped Washington’s foreign policy. The book highlights diverging tendencies: dogmatic portrayals of U.S. imperialism persisted, but more sophisticated arguments emphasized divisions within American elites, particularly between defense-oriented industries and broader corporate interests wary of militarization. These interpretations fed into Soviet expectations of U.S. policy, oscillating between fears of aggression and hopes for détente. By tracing these perceptions, the book underscores their policy significance: Soviet leaders calibrated their responses to American actions through lenses shaped as much by ideology as by selective engagement with U.S. realities. For historians of international relations and Cold War political thought, it offers a revealing account of how superpower rivalry was filtered through competing images and misperceptions.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.