Žarko Milenić translated Ground-Level America from Russian for Buybook , and below you can read "The Translator's Word" about this iconic travelogue.
Ilya Arnoldovič Iljf (1897–1937), writer, playwright, screenwriter, photographer and journalist, wrote a significant part of his prose in collaboration with Yevgeni Petrovič Petrov (1902–1942), also a writer, screenwriter, playwright and journalist, including the novels Twelve Chairs (1928) and its sequel The Golden Calf (1931) and a number of film scripts, the novella collection One Thousand and One Days or New Scheherazade (1929) and Unusual stories from the life of the town of Kolokolamsk (1928–1929), essays and vaudeville.
Down-to-earth America is the title of their 1936 travelogue. Traveling as official Soviet writers to the United States during the Great Depression, Ilf and Petrov describe their experiences and acquaintance with American culture and way of life in their characteristically humorous and satirical manner, not holding back from criticizing both the American reality of the 1930s and Soviet prejudices about 'decadent American capitalism'. In September 1935, correspondents for the newspaper Pravda , Ilf and Petrov, went to the United States during the time of President Franklin Roosevelt, who did much to bring the United States and the USSR closer together. This allowed the authors to move freely around the country and become more familiar with the life of different strata of American society. Ilf and Petrov lived in America for three and a half months. Excerpts from the book in the making were first published in Pravda and in the magazine Ogonjok (where Iljf's travel photos included in this edition were also published), and then they were published in their entirety in the magazine Znamja in 1936, while in 1937 they were published as a separate book.
During the Soviet era, the book was republished in 1947, 1961, and 1966, but in these editions the text was subject to political censorship. Thus, references to Stalin and other political figures disappeared from the text. The text underwent particularly many changes when it was published in the Collected Works of Ilf and Petrov in 1961. For example, the text removed references to Charles Lindbergh's move from America to Europe after the kidnapping and murder of his son, which was linked to Lindbergh's later collaboration with the Nazis.
After 1947, in connection with the beginning of the campaign to "fight against Western sycophancy" and the anti-American direction of Soviet foreign policy, the book was removed from public view and placed in a special warehouse. For quoting the book or its individual fragments, people began to be sent to camps under the pretext of "counter-revolutionary propaganda or agitation". After Stalin's death in 1953, during Khrushchev's rule, the book reappeared in public view, just like other works by Ilf and Petrov.
Mr. Adams, the Soviet duo's guide to America, was an engineer in the Russian division of General Electrics, real name Solomon Abramovich Tron (1872–1969), who played an important role in the electrification of the USSR, Israel, and India. He was born in what was then the Latvian Republic of the USSR. In 1916, he emigrated to the United States. He was a Marxist by conviction and a sympathizer of the USSR. Because of this, his passport was not renewed in the USA in 1956. He spent the rest of his life mainly in London.
Iljf and Petrov write about him in their travelogue: Mister Adams had a simple attitude towards money - little humor and very little respect. In that sense, he was not at all like the typical American.
They also write about his second wife, in a book called Becky, whose real name is Florence Wagner Tron. The four of them crossed America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and back in two months (from the end of 1935 to the beginning of 1936) in a new , noble mouse colored Ford .
On the pages of this book, the authors reveal in detail the ordinary life of Americans of that time. This is especially true in the chapters in which hitchhikers they took as companions in their Ford tell them about their lives; the reader is introduced to many American celebrities such as Ernest Hemingway, Francis Townsend, Henry Ford and others; they describe many cities and places in America such as New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego; they visit the Indian settlements of the Pueblo and Navajo tribes where they pity their life on reservations; they also visit a Mexican city where they attend a bullfight there and are disgusted by the torture and killing of bulls; they occasionally meet Russian emigrants, including the Molokans in San Francisco; they describe some American sports and events: rodeo, wrestling and American football; they climb to the top of the Empire State Building in New York and descend deep underground into the Carlsbad Caverns; They describe in detail the unique American invention - the electric chair of Sing Sing prison and the creation of the light bulb and Edison's phonograph; they present the most beautiful landscapes of America, located in the prairies, mountains, national parks and deserts; they visit the White House where US President Roosevelt spoke to reporters; they talk in detail about the extensive film production in Hollywood, where they watched as many as a hundred films and concluded that they were "below any level of human dignity" and that they were "intended for the bird brain". They wanted to meet Charles Chaplin, whom they believe stands out from other American film directors who only care about profit. Unfortunately, they did not succeed in this because he was working on the film Modern Times at the time.
Unpleasant traits such as the standardization of life, the intellectual passivity of Americans, especially the young, and their gullibility are constantly criticized. At the same time, the authors admire American roads and excellent service, work capacity, cleanliness, and organization in everyday life and at work.
From Down Under America, the Soviet reader first learned about the terms publicity , living on credit, and the ideology of consumption. This influenced some American writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, especially in his novel A Mechanical Piano (1952), in which an Indian rajah, while staying in America, marvels at what Ilf and Petrov marveled at.
They note that advertising has penetrated American life to such an extent that if Americans woke up one incredible morning and saw that advertising had disappeared, most of them would find themselves in the most desperate situation . They would be unsure of what to smoke, drink, buy, and even which God to believe in!
Ground-level America has been published in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Czech, Bulgarian, and many other languages.
In the United States, Ground America was first published after Ilf's death, in 1937, under the title Little Golden America . This title was invented by the publisher, despite protests from author Petrov and translator Charles Malamuth. According to the publisher, this title was intended to remind readers of Ilf and Petrov's previous book, The Golden Calf , which had previously been published in the United States under the title The Little Golden Calf . Ground America was a success among American readers and received critical acclaim.
Since 1947, during the Soviet era, several books of travelogues have been published in America, but none have been nearly as successful as this one.
In the summer of 2006, Russian TV hosts Vladimir Pozner and Ivan Urgant traveled to the United States in the footsteps of Ilf and Petrov, seventy years later. In February 2008, their 16-episode documentary series , Down-to-earth America – In the Footsteps of Ilf and Petrov, premiered on Russian television, depicting ordinary life in contemporary America. A DVD of the entire TV series was released, and their book of the same name was published in 2008.
The English-Hungarian humorist and journalist George Mikes (1912–1987), known for a series of travel books, also wrote under the great influence of Iljf and Petrov.
Posner and Urgant showed how a number of things in America have changed in the present day, but at the same time, not a few things have remained the same. The masterful Down- to-earth America can still be read today mostly because of its sharp and witty style and excellent observations. Without a doubt – it's a travelogue for all time .