ABSTRACT
AMONG AMERICAN BUSINESSMEN, A FASCINATION WITH THE VAST, untapped Russian market had existed long before the Bolsheviks came to power. A significant degree of economic investment in Russia emerged in the late nineteenth century as contemporary observers quickly and eagerly reported the opportunities available to American capitalists. In 1896, the secretary of the U.S. legation to Siberia described the region as a “rapidly developing country, not yet itself in train to manufacture,” where many possibilities in industry and commerce offered themselves for American enterprise. Consul Thomas Smith concurred, noting in 1899 that the time had arrived for Americans to “take advantage of the unexampled opportunities offered in Russia for the investment of capital.”1
