Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip

 In 1935, two Soviet funny men, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, set off to America. They didn’t emigrate. Or go to make an official state visit. Their mission, interestingly, was a particularly American one–to take a 10,000 mile road trip from New York to Hollywood and back. Armed with a used car, a map, and a Russian Jewish immigrant and his wife as translator and guide, the dynamic duo passed through cities big and small, the Midwest and the deep South, up and down the West and East coasts, and met a variety of people in between. Ilf and Petrov published their travelog as “One-Story America ” in 1937. What was the purpose of Ilf and Petrov’s road trip? Why a road trip? What did they think of America and Americans? And to what extent did their ideological lenses warp their perception of American realities? The Eurasian Knot put these questions and more to Lisa Kirschenbaum about her new book Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Press. Guest: Lisa Kirschenbaum is an award-winning author whose research explores how individuals navigated the traumas of the twentieth century. Her books include Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932; The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995; and International Communism and the Spanish Civil War. Her most recent book is Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Press. Send us your sounds! euraknot.org/contact/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/euraknot Knotty News: eurasianknot.substack.com/ The Knot’s Nest: eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/ Website: euraknot.org/