Recent Books192 foreign affairs‘friend.’” But despite the duration and
diversity of the two societies’ interac-
tions, human bonds and cross-cultural
influences remain amazingly scarce:
intermarriage is rare, work and business
ethics differ greatly—and Russian food,
as Pulford’s interlocutors repeatedly
tell him, tastes terrible to the Chinese.Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front:
American Airmen Behind the Soviet Lines
and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance
BY SERHII PLOKHY. Oxford
University Press, 2019, 360 pp.In early 1944, the United States estab-
lished a number of air bases in Soviet
Ukraine. Their fate mirrored that of
the uneasy U.S.-Soviet alliance, which
was initially sustained by a common
enemy but quickly unraveled after
World War II ended. Plokhy’s unique
account of this well-known episode
benefits from the recent opening of
Ukrainian archives containing kgb
documents detailing the Soviet surveil-
lance of the Americans at the bases.
The American and Soviet servicemen
eagerly cooperated but were struck by
their cultural differences. The Soviets
thought that the Americans were
wasteful (they used spare parts instead
of repairing broken ones) and lacked
commitment (they broke for lunch before
their work was finished). The Ameri-
cans were surprised by the great
number of Soviet women doing “men’s
jobs” and by Soviet farmers’ reliance on
hoes instead tractors. Warm relations
soon chilled as the Soviets recruited
civilians and servicemen to spy on the
Americans and roughly interfered in
the Americans’ dating of local women.
Meanwhile, leaders in Moscow and“soundscape curation” furthers the resorts’
commercial goal of pleasing the guests.
Many of the musicians are well-traveled
cosmopolitans capable of creatively
blending global knowledge with pride
in their local legacies.Eastern Europe and Former
Soviet RepublicsMaria Lipman
Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys
in Between
BY ED PULFORD. Hurst, 2019, 360 pp.P
ulford begins his fascinating and
enlightening travelogue in
Moscow and ends it in Beijing,
but his main route runs along the
2,600-mile border separating Russia
and China. In Inner Mongolia, he finds
a community of “Chinese Russians”
who use Russian names and look
“European” yet speak standard local
Chinese, their Russianness serving
mostly as an attraction for Chinese
tourists. He finds himself in an obscure
Russian settlement where North Korea’s
founding dictator, Kim Il Sung, spent
four years in the 1940s and where his son
Kim Jong Il was born—although neither
of those facts is recognized in North
Korea’s official histories. Over the
centuries, Pulford writes, Russia has
played many roles in the Chinese
consciousness: “from imperial adversary
to Soviet inspiration, anti-Japanese
liberator, socialist blood-brother, ‘revi-
sionist’ enemy, post-Soviet trade partner
and, most recently, authoritarian