A Soviet road trip through 1930s America

History Extra podcast

Immediate Media

History

4.3 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After years of suspicion and hostility, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had improved by the 1930s. In this episode, Lisa Kirschenbaum tells Danny Bird about how two Soviet satirists, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, launched a remarkable road trip across America in the middle of that fraught decade. From inedible T-bone steaks and coming face-to-face with President Roosevelt, to the grim reality of Jim Crow, it was a journey that continues to fascinate to this day. (Ad) Lisa Kirschenbaum is the author of Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soviet-Adventures-Land-Capitalists-American/dp/1316518469/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty. The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you between 18 and 30 and doing great things in the history space?
0:04.8	Or know someone who is?
0:06.8	Head over to the History Extra website where you can apply to our 30 under 30 competition
0:12.1	in collaboration with Alice Lockston. as it turns right now maybe but you will remember this season of finals it's a
0:26.7	remarkable goal
0:28.4	witness it for a chance feel it this is something we'll never forget.
0:33.6	Sensational.
0:34.8	Be part of history.
0:36.0	Unbelievable scenes in the Saksiago Bernabeo.
0:39.4	It's unmissible.
0:40.4	What a story.
0:41.4	The UEFA Champions League final on TNT Sports.
0:47.0	Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In the mid-1930s, two Soviet satirists, Eeliaif and Yevgeni Petrov, embarked on a remarkable
1:08.9	road trip across the United States of America. Immortalized in a famous travelogue,
1:15.0	their experience is the subject of a new book by Lisa Kirshambao.
1:19.0	She spoke to Danny Bird about why America both repulsed and fascinated the USSR at the time, and how the two
1:26.2	unlikely travellers met the likes of President Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway, marveled at automobiles and came face to face with the grim reality of Jim Crow era America.
1:38.3	So I should begin by asking you to introduce Ilia Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov. Who were they?
1:44.0	They were two of the most beloved Soviet authors.
1:48.0	They're, I think among the few Soviet authors who people still enjoy reading.
1:52.0	They worked as a team. They actually wrote each
1:54.8	sentence together and they wrote two of the most popular Soviet satirical novels,
	...

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