This dissertation focuses on the experiences of American men and women who traveled to the Soviet Union for leisure, work, or study during the long sixties (1958-1972). It draws on mass-published travelogues, private correspondence, government records, and newspaper articles to analyze the observations that Americans made about everyday life in the USSR, the opinions they expressed about the socialist system, and the conversations they had with ordinary Soviet citizens. On the one hand, Americans met friendly and warm people who were curious about the United States, infatuated with American culture and technology, and yearned for peace and mutual understanding. On the other hand, personal contact with Soviets, coupled with unfavorable firsthand impressions, left no doubt in Americans' minds concerning the superiority of their way of life. This descriptive duality allowed American Cold War travelers to simultaneously humanize and individualize the faceless Soviet masses and criticize what they considered to be deficiencies inherent (and detrimental) to the Soviet system. Nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers was not inevitable, they concluded, given the longing for peaceful coexistence expressed by Soviet men and women, but the triumph of the United States in the Cold War was, given the alleged inferiority of the Soviet way of life.
I argue that that their personal experiences on the other shore convinced Americans of the necessity of finding a peaceful modus vivendi with the Soviet foe, given the dim chances for the long-term success of the socialist experiment in the absence of a nuclear confrontation. Their physical presence behind the "Iron Curtain" laid the groundwork for a popular detente. There was a shared desire on the part of American guests and Soviet hosts to place the competition for global supremacy between the capitalist and socialist systems on a peaceful footing and avoid suicidal conflict at all costs. Therefore, detente was not simply imposed on docile and indifferent subjects from above; it was also made at the grassroots by American men and women who traversed geographical and ideological boundaries and observed how the other half lived with their own eyes.