How Russia and America Invent Each Other

Please join us for a talk by Professor Ivan Kurilla who will discuss the impact of historical trends on the mutual imaging by Russia and the United States during Russia's war against Ukraine.

For more than two centuries, Russia and the United States have used each other to define their own identities, values, and fears. Russian thinkers admired the US Constitution and industrial dynamism, yet criticized American slavery and consumer culture.

Americans alternately saw Russia as an autocratic counterexample to democracy, a laboratory of revolutionary change, a strategic rival, and a country of profound literary, musical, and artistic achievement.
In this lecture, historian Ivan Kurilla traces how these mutual perceptions were formed — in newspapers, political rhetoric, intellectual exchanges, and cultural diplomacy.
How did they influence real policy decisions?
What did these shifting images reveal about internal debates within each society?

The conversation will also address the present moment. How have long-standing narratives resurfaced or transformed in the context of the war in Ukraine? How do contemporary media framing, political discourse, and public opinion in both countries draw on older ideas about democracy, empire, sovereignty, and security? The lecture examines how inherited narratives continue to shape political imagination on both sides.

Ivan Kurilla is a historian of US-Russia relations, national identity, and the political uses of history, currently serving as a Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University. He previously taught at the European University at St. Petersburg and has held appointments at Dartmouth College, George Washington University, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and Middlebury College. His English-language books include Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of American-Russian Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and Battle for the Past: How Politics Rewrites History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025; English translation of a Russian book).

• 🗣️ Language: English
• 🍷 Bonus: Free admission, refreshments included, and FREE on-campus parking.

This in-person event is open to the public.
Location: ASEAN Hall, Fletcher School (160 Packard Avenue)

Organized by the Russian European Cultural Club (RECC) in partnership with the Fletcher School and the Tufts Department of International Literary and Cultural Studies.