Abstract

To date, there has been an astonishing dearth of analysis on the ways in which enlisted personnel within the United States are presented with concepts of the outside world, and even less so on how this drastically differs from an American cultural zeitgeist. As Cold War ramifications continue to guide our modern contexts, this investigation looks into the split between American civilian and military representations of an ephemeral Soviet identity. This contrasting application of ethnography allows a new opportunity to examine how the United States military – an entity typically thought of as monolithic and unwieldy – navigated complex issues of identity politics and national antagonisms through internal educational publications. Embodied in their training materials, the Department of the Army demonstrates itself as surprisingly complex, agile, and measured in its portrayal of the Soviet and Russian opponent – especially when contrasted against certain exaggerations and stereotypes present in twentieth-century cultural products.