The introduction argues that Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov’s 1935 American road trip offers a fruitful and innovative means of identifying the mediators who engaged in building friendly Soviet–American relations. Such means are necessary because unlike the Soviet state, the American government in the 1930s did not guide or systematically track Soviet visitors. Providing a brief overview of Ilf and Petrov’s biographies, the introduction highlights the mixture of fact and fiction in their American travelogue. It concludes with a sketch of their American itinerary and the wide range of sources employed to reconstruct their contacts with Americans.

Chapter 1 examines the popular and official fascination with Amerikanizm in the Soviet Union. The term connotated not only a desire to acquire American technology, but to learn to emulate uniquely American know-how, efficiency, practicality, ingenuity, and energy. Overwhelmingly, the Soviet people who visited the United States in the 1930s came to study American technology. To take advantage of the tantalizing business opportunities offered by this Soviet interest, the US government and businesses put few restrictions on visiting engineers. Although Ilf and Petrov were writers – “engineers of human souls” rather than engineers – they too focused on the promises of American “technique” (tekhnika), positing that in Soviet hands the capitalists’ tools would serve the workers’ interests.