The article presents the impressions of Milan Vidmar, electrotechnician and greatest Slovene chess player from his two visits in the USA (1927, 1936). The USA were by Vidmar marked by poor history and nationally mixed population, hence they did not yet have a “soul” and authentic culture. The Americans were to have been “a human army” struggling for survival, the American freedom and democracy only fictitious, and elections a formal dictate of the majority. Vidmar refused American liberal capitalism, which was to him an imitation of the “chaotic universe”. Only planned economy and policy based on reason could lead humankind (and the USA) from the crisis. Therefore, he greeted with sympathy president Roosevelt and his reform endeavours. According to the author of the article, Vidmar’s book indicates that critical conceptions on the USA have on Slovene ground a longer history we generally think.