This article explores the sources and application of Philip Roth’s understanding of Russian writing and culture to his fiction. It examines Russian texts he owned, the influence of select authors, and the translations of Roth’s work in Russia. It also considers Roth’s reaction to the Cold War and offers an alternate triangle of influence: not Franz Kafka/Bruno Schulz/Primo Levi but Anton Chekhov/Fyodor Dostoevsky/Isaac Babel.