America's Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution, Eurasianism, and the Race of Radicalism

FAIN: HB-289596-23

Jesse Schwartz
CUNY Research Foundation, LaGuardia Community College (Long Island City, NY 11101-3007)

Research and writing for a book examining the origins and shifts of American political perceptions of Russia as captured in print culture from the 19th and 20th centuries. 

This project outlines the prehistories of Eurasian philosophy, its ideological uses within Russia, and, just as importantly, how this set of ideas was reworked and repurposed in the US in ways that contoured not only in relations with Moscow but also had vast consequences for domestic movements concerned with economic justice and racial equality. First outlining the historical racialized "othering" of Russia vis-a-vis Europe, I then examine how early twentieth century reactionary forces in the US mobilized against movements for racial equality, gender parity, or economic justice by deploying the specter of communism to conflate non-whiteness with activist politics. I then examine the myriad ways that American and US-based writers of various races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and creeds recognized, critiqued, and reworked this conflation in the service of liberation for all.