Talking about the United States in our country almost always means talking about Russia. This country serves as an example or a threat, is used for comparison or repulsion, but remains the constitutive Other for Russian politicians and Russian society. The U.S. serves as a model and an anti-utopia, a country that sets the direction in which we have to «catch up and overtake» it, and as a «dark twin» of Russia, which has chosen «traditional values» seemingly only to contrast them more sharply with liberal «American» ones.
When we describe America, we describe ourselves — either through negation («we are not America») or through identification («this is what we could be or will be»). However, the level of knowledge about the United States in Russia is not very high, and this «use of America» most often relies on the characteristics attributed to the United States rather than on the real features of the overseas republic. One of the goals of Americanist Ivan Kurilla’s book is to explain to his readers the features of the American society that are most often used in Russian socio-political discussion, as well as to demonstrate the logic of relations between our countries, which is not at all reducible to strategic confrontation.