Background
Saul, Norman Eugene was born on November 26, 1932 in LaFontaine, Indiana, United States. Son of Ralph Odis and Jessie (Neff) Saul.
(In 1867 Mark Twain cruised into the Black Sea on the firs...)
In 1867 Mark Twain cruised into the Black Sea on the first American tourist ship to visit in Russia. Just a few years later Russian Grand Duke Alexis in turn was hunting buffalo and drinking champagne on the Nebraska prairie. Both were taking advantage of a growing, if precarious, alliance between two of the worlds most influential nations. In fact, as Norman Saul reveals, between 1867—the year of the Alaskan purchase—and the beginning of World War I, Russian and American dignitaries, diplomats, businessmen, writers, tourists, and entertainers crossed between the two countries in far greater numbers than was previously known. Following the widely praised Distant Friends, volume one of Saul's trilogy on Russian American relations, Concord and Conflict provides the first comprehensive investigation of this highly transformational and fateful era in Russian-American relations. Excavating previously unmined Russian and American archives, he explores the flow and fluctuation of economic, diplomatic, social, and cultural affairs; personal and professional conflicts and scandals; and the evolution of each nation's perception of the other. At first concentrating on their similarities following the American Civil War, Saul contends, the Russian and American people established a tradition of friendship in the absence of major controversy. In many ways, they felt bound by a sense of common destiny, corresponding periods of reform and progress, and a mutual hostility toward the "older" European powers. Throughout Russia, American trademarks became familiar as U.S. companies such as Singer, New York Life, Westinghouse, and International Harvester took root. Hard winter wheat—today a vital American crop—was introduced by Russian immigrants. The Smithsonian established an information exchange with the Russian government. War and Peace was translated into English and widely distributed in the United States. And the first YMCA was established in Russia. As progressive reform waned in 1880s Russia, however, Americans became increasingly leery of Russia's repressive internal tactics, hostility toward Jews, open-door policy toward China, and expansion in the Far East while Russians found America's actions and attitudes hypocritical and equally confusing. Yet despite deterioration of diplomatic ties, Saul shows, a semblance of kinship endured into the twentieth century as cultural exchanges and business opportunities continued to escalated. Illuminating fifty of the most significant—and surprisingly open—years of this frequently tumultuous and contradictory association, Concord and Conflict reaffirms Saul's status as "the leading American authority on Russian-American relations before 1917" (Journal of American History).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700607544/?tag=2022091-20
(For Russia, it was a time of troubles: war, famine, and s...)
For Russia, it was a time of troubles: war, famine, and social upheaval the likes of which the world had never seen before. World War I, two revolutions in 1917, and the subsequent civil war and Allied intervention completely eradicated one regime and replaced it with a radically new one. Now an award-winning diplomatic historian ties these events together to reveal their far-reaching consequences for the future of not only the new Soviet Union but of the United States as well. In War and Revolution, Norman Saul offers a fresh analysis of this troubled era in Russia and of the American reaction to it. Tracing the events surrounding America's entry into the European conflict and its encouragement of continued Russian participation even in the face of domestic unrest, he shows how those circumstances adversely affected relations between two nations and shaped their futures in the century ahead. Drawing on rarely accessed military and diplomatic archives in both countries, Saul reaches beyond official actions to give readers a vivid sense of those times. He surveys the vast panorama of events while providing not only detailed accounts of the activities of consular, diplomatic, and military staffs but also colorful vignettes of ordinary Americans in Russia involved in humanitarian relief and other activities. Businessmen and artists, Red Cross volunteers and journalists-all were caught up in the immediacy of war and revolution, and all contributed to the shifting sentiments of two nations. War and Revolution is the third volume in Saul's sweeping history of U.S.-Russian relations, already hailed for setting "a new standard for how the history of international relations ought to be written" (TLS). Here he further develops the theme of "mirror-imaging," describing ways in which Americans and Russians saw themselves as having a common relationship distinguished from other European or Asian nations. Despite the turmoil of this era, he explains, Russians continued to look to America for ideas and models while Americans expected Russians to follow their lead in developing resources and reforming institutions. By 1921, Americans were in a quandary about Russia as its former friend pursued a hostile course beyond U.S. control. Saul's account of those years clearly shows how this parting of the ways came about—and how it set the stage for a cold war that would test both country's wills later in the century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700610901/?tag=2022091-20
(We began as friends. Then followed nearly a century of su...)
We began as friends. Then followed nearly a century of suspicion and hostility. Now, thanks to glasnost and a thaw in the Cold War, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union have nearly come full circle—we're almost friends again. In the initial volume of a three-volume series, historian Norman Saul presents the first comprehensive survey of early Russian-American relations by an American scholar. Drawing upon secondary and documentary publications as well as archival materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, he reveals a wealth of new detail about contacts between the two countries between the American Revolutionary War and the purchase of Alaska in 1867. By weaving personal experiences into analysis of the basic trends, Saul provides a fuller understanding of Soviet-American experience. His conclusion? That the early relationships—diplomatic, cultural, scientific, economic, and personal—between the two countries were more extensive than had been reported before, more important, and more congenial. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the U.S. and Russia had a lot in common, Saul notes, and many of those similarities persist today. Both countries, in part because of geographic size, faced problems in developing their natural resources. Both countries were economically dependent on systems of forced labor—slavery in the U.S. and serfdom in Russia. Reform resulted in freedom without land for American slaves, and land without freedom for the serfs. Then, as now, Russia looked to the U.S. for help with technology. Saul shows that differences also persist. The United States was geographically isolated and developed in relative peace, while Russia developed within the reach of the European powers and, consequently, worried more about defense. As is still the case, Russian government seemed appallingly autocratic to those whose rights were guaranteed by the U.S. constitution, and deal-making between citizens of the two countries was hampered by the Russians' belief that Americans were materialistic and deceitful, and by Americans' notion that Russians were slow, bureaucratic, and expected to be bribed. At a time when United States-Soviet relations have taken yet another dramatic turn, it is more important than ever to trace—and to understand—the history of the relationship of these two countries. As Saul shows clearly, parallel developments of the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries in some ways foreshadow parallel development into the two superpowers in the mid twentieth.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700604383/?tag=2022091-20
Saul, Norman Eugene was born on November 26, 1932 in LaFontaine, Indiana, United States. Son of Ralph Odis and Jessie (Neff) Saul.
Bachelor of Arts, Indiana U.- Bloomington, 1954; Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1959; Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1965; postgraduate, Leningrad State University (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics), 1960-1961.
Assistant professor Brown University, 1965-1968. Visiting associate professor Northwestern University, 1969-1970. Associate professor University Kansas, Lawrence, 1970-1975, professor history, 1975—2009, chairman department history, 1981-1989, professor emeritus, since 2009.
Institute Advanced Study, Princeton, 2000. With Kansas Humanities Council Speakers Bureau, since 1985.
(For Russia, it was a time of troubles: war, famine, and s...)
(In 1867 Mark Twain cruised into the Black Sea on the firs...)
(Book by Saul, Norman E.)
(We began as friends. Then followed nearly a century of su...)
Member American History Association, American Association Advancement of Slavic Studies, Kansas State History Society, Society of Historians of America Foreign Rels.
Married Mary Ann Culwell, June 27, 1959. Children: Alyssa, Kevin, Julia.