ABSTRACT
American attempts to study the peoples of the post-Soviet sphere, and, more precisely, the Intermarium, in particular, have been hampered by several obstacles. The United States had yet to be conceived when the Intermarium had arguably reached its peak of salubrious development under the auspices of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth century. During most of the United States' existence as an independent nation, the lands between the Black and Baltic Seas remained subjugated by outside powers—first the Russian, German, Austrian, and Turkish empires and then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There were several other external and internal reasons the United States remained unfamiliar with the Intermarium. Consequently, the Americans remained rather unfamiliar with the astonishing variety of cultural, religious, ethnic, and national forms in the Intermarium. As the immigrants came mostly from the uneducated peasantry or the urban lower classes, their unsophisticated knowledge of the Intermarium reflected their humble social station.
