Lisa Kirschenbaum retraces the route of Soviet satirists Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov on their eye-opening road trip across 1930s America
After years of suspicion and hostility, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had improved by the 1930s. In this episode, Lisa Kirschenbaum tells Danny Bird about how two Soviet satirists, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, launched a remarkable road trip across America in the middle of that fraught decade. From inedible T-bone steaks and coming face-to-face with President Roosevelt, to the grim reality of Jim Crow, it was a journey that continues to fascinate to this day.
Lisa Kirschenbaum is the author of Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip (Cambridge University Press, 2024).