Travelling to Koshey s Kingdom. England and America in the Soviet travel literature of the 1920-1930 s. Part 2

The article about USA and England in Soviet travel literature is continued. Up to the end of the 1930 s the United States of America were represented in Soviet literature not only as a country of technical progress and pioneer mentality, but also as a stronghold of capitalistic evil. This function allows to compare «American» and «English» travelogues in the Soviet literary tradition. Four most famous pre-war Soviet travels to America (written by Sergey Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pilnyak, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov), added with many other sketsches about America and England, are examined in the article from the viewpoint of metaphoric background, descended to old Russian culture and the tradition of ancient travels.