Cross-Cultural Couples In The Cold War

The Cold War may have officially ended, but, as Visson shows, the battle lives on in the culturally dysfunctional marriages made by Russians and Americans. Throughout the 20th century, and often against serious odds, Russians and Americans have been falling in love and marrying. Visson, an interpreter and writer, herself married to a Russian, has interviewed some 100 of these cross-cultural couples and researched the lives of couples in the earlier part of this century in an effort to understand the strange mutual attraction between people whose countries were usually antagonists. While rational explanations can only partly answer questions about romance (though at different times Russians and Americans have decidedly held romantic notions