Mass immigration to the United States from the Russian Empire began in the last decades of the 19th century. The statistical data of both states reflect the rapid increase in the flow of departing/arriving overseas on the eve of the First World War. The shift in the composition of immigrants toward the predominance of incomers from Eastern Europe, mostly Jews, was characterized by contemporaries as a “new” immigration to America, whose specificity was determined by “cultural” isolation, traditionalism, and religious orthodoxy. The problems caused by the “new” immigration were topical and acute in both Russian and American societies. In Russia, mass economic (labour) emigration to America was largely provoked by national and religious conflicts. This issue was raised on the pages of the Russian press and in separate publications, and the discussion was initiated by departmental officials who made use of statistical data and produced recommendations for resolving the situation. In the United States, the increased influx of immigrants led to the changes in legislation and immigration policy, which meant the introduction of restrictive measures, and also led to the growing influence of the nativist movement, and the creation of the special Dillingham Commission to study all aspects related to immigration. This article analyzes the US immigration policy, in particular, the restrictionist legislation. The US intellectual elite got involved in the discussion of the “new” immigration problem and shared their vision of the problem through the press. The Russian and American historiography has not paid due attention to the New England press. Meanwhile, the New England press showed a steady interest in the problem of “new” immigration from Russia, namely, its significant Jewish component. The columnists noted the trends in the labour market, the difficulties related to the adaptation of the settlers, and their perception by the New Englanders. The wave of “new” immigration from the Russian Empire, which had marked features, influenced the socio-economic and socio-political processes in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The article attempts to interpret an important type of mass sources — letters “to the authorities” — from the standpoint of the new institutional history, based on the assumption that prospects for society’s development depend on the quality of the institutional system. Several concepts of neo-institutionalism, such as information asymmetry, the propensity of individual subjects for opportunistic behavior, the principal-agent problem, are used to analyze public attitudes toward the Soviet bureaucracy in the 1920s — early 1930s. The information asymmetry was dual, as each participant in the interaction within the “authorities–people” system tried to use it to promote their interests and achieve their goals. The article analyzes the patterns of behavior of the Soviet officials and of ordinary citizens on the basis of letters “to the authorities”. Those patterns were generated by the desire to benefit from the asymmetry of information. The opportunism of the subjects of social interactions is viewed from different angles, inter alia the negative attitude of citizens towards the opportunism of grassroots nomenclature figures who supposedly sabotaged the “proper” party policy in general. The principal-agent problem is considered in the context of the evolution of the Soviet political system. The state, due to the specifics of its political organization, strove for all-encompassing control and the dismantling of social compromises. This was most clearly manifested in the process of the curtailment of the NEP, which in itself was a model whose functioning was based on numerous compromises: between the city and the country, the Communist Party and the “specialists”, the wealthy peasants, NEPmen, and other population groups. Society responded to the breakdown of the system of compromises with high incidence of opportunistic behavior: overt and covert religious practices, hiding their property and income from taxation, violation of prescribed norms of behavior, low labor discipline, direct resistance to acts of violence by the authorities, etc. Opportunism (both malicious and non-malicious) in the Soviet system of relations of domination and subordination manifested itself everywhere, and citizens recorded its manifestations in letters.