This study investigates the close correlation between politics and mainstream cinema vividly evidenced in Russian and American screen images of the former Cold War enemy from 1990 to 2005. Whereas glasnost and the demise of the Soviet Union ushered in a period of official cooperation that soon inflated into rhetorical declarations of partnership, the fifteen years under examination saw the gradual deterioration of relations after the initial euphoria, culminating in a partial resumption of mutual Cold War recriminations.

Helena Goscilo is a professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Culture at Ohio State University. Her areas of expertise are in Russian culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Russian folklore, visual culture. Margaret Bozenna Goscilo is Professor Emerita after decades of teaching English/Comparative Literature and Film, in Switzerland, France and various states in America--including Minnesota, where she conceived the idea for this book.