The United States is a country without history. This is the feeling that comes to anyone arriving in the States from Europe, including Eastern Europe, including Russia, by the end of the first day. Well, there is history, of course, but it's not the same history that Europeans carry with them.

Firstly, the history of the United States as a state is less than 250 years old – that's incredibly short. Secondly, this short history is remarkably simple and straightforward, lacking the fateful and tragic twists and turns that characterize European history: endless wars, occupations, annexations, displacements and exterminations of peoples, alliances of some states against others, conspiracies, coups, revolutions and counterrevolutions, devastating civil wars, tyrants and saints, religious intolerance, epidemics of deadly diseases, and so on – a history on whose bitter experience today's tolerant, wise, and balanced Europe is built.

Columbus discovered America in 1492, as any schoolchild knows. In fact, the ships of Columbus and his followers initially didn't reach the American continent itself; they turned back to Europe, reaching the West Indies in the Caribbean. Columbus, it so happened, targeted South and Central America in all his voyages, while North America, the territory of today's United States, was discovered and colonized by northern Europeans—the English, French, and Dutch. This process was slow and not without its difficulties. It took almost 200 years for the northern colonies, essentially international, to gain sufficient strength to recognize themselves as separate, independent states.

Essentially, the entire history of the United States rests on two fundamental events revered by Americans: the Revolutionary War (1771-1775) and the American Civil War (1861-64). The Revolution resulted in the union of the original 13 American states, which achieved independence from the British Empire. The Civil War, which led to the abolition of slavery in the United States, was essentially a war against the division of the country into North and South, a division that was caused by the different economic structures of the northern and southern states. The protagonist of the Revolution was George Washington, and the protagonist of the Civil War was Abraham Lincoln.

But neither event can compare—in scale, tragedy, human and economic losses, or geopolitical consequences—not only to the First or Second World Wars that shook Europe, but even to the very localized Russo-Turkish Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. And then there was Napoleon. And Charlemagne. And Byzantium. And the Roman Empire.

The first American settlements were located on the Atlantic coast. The country's westward expansion is another era in US history. We've all seen at least one Hollywood Western (from the word "West"), and we have an idea of ​​how it all happened. Indians, prairies, bison , pioneer wagons, sheriffs, and stockaded forts...

The second half of the 19th century was a time of rapid industrial growth in America. America was the birthplace of many technical and technological discoveries , which were immediately and practically implemented without delay and in true American fashion.

It's hard to imagine now, but America achieved its preeminent economic and political position relatively recently—less than a century ago. Before that, it was a country mocked and taken seriously. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the United States had a modest population of 13 million (Tsarist Russia alone had a population of almost 120 million) and was famous for its slaves, cotton, and cowboys. The second half of the century saw a colossal number of immigrants from all over the world (in some decades, as many as a million a year) come to the United States in pursuit of the American dream. These people wrote the country's history from a clean slate, free from the fatal burden of class, religious, national, and property conflicts that stretched back centuries.

The First World War, which bled, weakened, and ruined most European countries, was perhaps the watershed. The next war, World War II, created an even greater divide, once again sweeping across Europe from one end to the other. Europe, it seems, learned its lessons from history: it now essentially lives as a single federal state, without borders or customs. How good it would be for us to learn from this experience... How good it would be...

A preeminent position in the world inevitably breeds hegemonic tendencies among the country's politicians: in the second half of the century, America has repeatedly entered into wars on foreign soil. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, Iraq, Afghanistan... And wars are always cruel and tragic.

Americans openly and publicly acknowledge two shameful, or at least questionable, chapters in their history. The first concerns the displacement and expulsion of North American Indians from their ancestral lands. The second concerns Africans, who were brought as slaves from the neighboring continent in ships. And it must be said that society's efforts to instill the idea of ​​repentance and its success in eliminating racism and racial tensions are truly impressive.

Russians' attitudes toward America have fluctuated 180 degrees over the past century, depending on the political climate and the mood of our leaders. Mayakovsky admired America, and the young Soviet Union saw it as a young, prickly comrade in its confrontation with ossified bourgeois Europe. During World War II, Americans were our allies in the fight against fascism—we flew on American planes, drove American trucks, and went to see American films. In the post-war Stalin years, "Uncle Sam" became our country's number one enemy. Under Khrushchev, it suddenly became clear that Americans were great guys and very much like us. Under Brezhnev, it became clear that they were bloodthirsty aggressors and saw us as nothing more than an "evil empire." Gorbachev and Yeltsin, as best they could, built good-neighborly relations between our crisis-ravaged country and the headstrong, self-confident, and militant world economic leader...

Now we're back to a time of confrontation and hatred. And that's very, very sad. 

Pavel Vereshchagin