Dickinson College Dickinson Scholar Student Honors Theses By Year Student Honors Theses 5-22-2016 A Gun to Our Head? American Imagination of the Russian Character Since 1946 Jason William Denaburg Dickinson College Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.dickinson.edu/student_honors Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, Political History Commons, and the Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Commons Recommended Citation Denaburg, Jason William, "A Gun to Our Head? American Imagination of the Russian Character Since 1946" (2016). Dickinson College Honors Theses. Paper 248. This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Dickinson Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A Gun to Our Head? American Imagination of the Russian Character Since 1946 By Jason Denaburg Submitted in partial fulfillment of Honors requirements for the Department of American Studies Dr. Cotten Seiler, Supervisor Dr. Jerry Philogene, Reader Dr. Sharon O’Brien, Reader Dr. Eric Vazquez, Reader May 10, 2016 On September 14, 2013, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly asked Michael Waller, author of Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, if he believed that Russian president Vladimir Putin was “actively trying to embarrass the USA to get favor at home.” The question sparked the following exchange: O’Reilly: So the more…he spits in the face of America, the more popular he gets at home? Waller: …Yes, he’s getting a lot of popularity by standing up to the United States because Russians as a whole have an inferiority complex now that they’re not a superpower, and they have this great power pretension that Putin plays into.