Essays

Americans in academic centers. And, more remarkably, an unprecedented surge in studies of the United States Rus- sian specialists. In each country, during the 1970s, popular ac-counts of everyday life in the other have become best sellers. Here, two young American scholars, S. Frederick Starr and William Zim- merman, analyze in turn what the Russians have been writing about the Americans, and vice versa.

THE RUSSIAN VIEW
OF AMERICA
by S. Frederick Starr
Rare is the American over 35 who cannot d...

"I have always been regarded by the United States establishment as an oddball, and I am a strange mixture of a reactionary and a liberal," George Kennan said in a lengthy Encounter interview last September. "It is perfectly true that in my attitude toward what is going on in the United States and Western civilization . . . I am worried and profoundly pessimistic."
Long a student of Russia, Mr. Kennan w...

Stephen Hess
Twice I have served on White House staffs-at the end of one administration (1959-61) and at the beginning of another (1969). All presidencies, of course, are different. But one could hardly fail to observe differences that were exclusively a product of time. Beginnings and endings are different. There are differences of pace, attitude, objectives, and response, not only between adminis- trations but also within each one.
What follows is a composite portrait of a President over the...

Alexis de Tocqueville saw the American family, so different from the European, as an exemplar and bulwark of sober democracy.

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