The Cold War developed when the two largest and most powerful victors of World War II became the only two nations possessing the atomic and then the hydrogen bombs. The United States and the Soviet Union had never been particularly at ease with one another, but when the latter successfully detonated an atomic bomb in 1949, the countries’ relationship changed forever. From the U.S. point of view, the U.S.S.R. was no longer only the unknown, exotic “other,” it came to represent a serious threat to all aspects of American life, and indeed, American existence.
Most Americans came to believe these threats as a result of a carefully orchestrated U.S. government propaganda program. During the early years of the Cold War (1949-1962) this program designed and implemented a number of specific campaigns within two major approaches: psychological warfare and cultural infiltration. Both presented images and messages that completely polarized the two countries and their political and cultural institutions, but it was the latter, gradual approach – cultural infiltration – that ultimately won the Cold War for the west.
The first widespread (and one of the most effective) U.S. propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union was the development of the Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts. Evidence of the success of this campaign came as early as 1949, when the U.S. learned that while both nations spent a great deal of time, money, and manpower jamming each other’s radio signals, the U.S.S.R. was spending four times the capital and ten times the manpower of the Americans (Hixon 36). American diplomat George V. Allen said at the time, “They would hardly go to this trouble if the programs were not affective” (46).
By 1951, the VOA was broadcasting in forty-five languages, with special attention to Soviet republics and countries in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. The major themes contained in the broadcasts included praise of the “captive” nations interest in maintaining their religious traditions, languages, and their own way of life in the face of communist godlessness and Stalin’s Cult of Personality (37). These themes were some of the more tame variety, however. According to a VOA employee, the Truman administration “expected us to make propaganda…anything more subtle than a bludgeon was considered ‘soft on communism’” (38). The VOA staff had a great deal of help with this from Soviet and East European émigrés, many of whom were bitter and eager to verbally retaliate against hated communist regimes. Many times this took the form of crudeness, and VOA broadcasts took on a tone of “all-out offensiveness,” focusing on “the weaknesses and evils of imperialistic communism, while emphasizing ‘the virtues of democracy’” (38). The VOA did offer a solution to the legions of suffering listeners by describing the U.S. as the “Promised Land” for those fleeing the tyranny of the “communist yoke”(40). Broadcasters neglected to mention U.S. legislation restricting immigration.
A number of émigrés who had written books about their experiences behind the Iron Curtain, read aloud excerpts from those books on VOA programs, encouraging those left behind in the “slavery of Communism” that others were doing everything they could “…to help our brethren…to unfetter the shackles of godless communism and to emerge from darkness behind the Iron Curtain to the light of the civilized and free world” (42). The imagery and stark contrasts of “light and dark, good and evil, God and atheism were staples of the polarization of east and west perpetuated by U.S. propaganda. The VOA did not advocate any particular religious faith; rather, it focused on the religious persecutions the U.S. government believed were taking place behind the Iron Curtain. Other themes the VOA frequently discussed in their broadcasts included pointing out the Soviet citizen’s lack of rights to own property or to travel, the horrors of slave labor in Stalin’s work camps (and how nearly every Soviet family has a member in one of those camps), and contrasting the average Soviet’s bleak existence with the life led by upper ranking Communist Party members.
These images were daily contrasted with an emphasis on the high standard of living in the west, including superior health care, leisure time, household conveniences and abundant consumer goods. The point was driven home continually that every American enjoyed such an existence, not just the political elite (43). The same types of messages were emphasized on the home front. Americans were reminded through government-made films and newsreels about how the United States was the happiest and most prosperous nation on earth. It was during the Cold War that Americans became taken with the notion of “We’re number one!” and that no other country could ever surpass their own. In one government film, the host of the program offers examples of “concrete expressions of American capitalism,” including a shopping center where the stores contain a “sparkling assortment and parking for all the cars we capitalists own” (Loader). These images and suggestions were almost always followed by the polar-opposite view of the Soviet Union, where people were treated as slaves, forced to wait on line for soup, where editors were thrown out of newspaper offices and presses seized. Americans were warned repeatedly that if any citizen remained less than vigilant, the Soviets could attack and destroy the American way of life (Loader).
Films such as “Duck and Cover” reminded school children that a Soviet bomb could strike at any moment, 4-H members demonstrated how to stock a nuclear fallout shelter with supplies to survive an attack, and newsreels portrayed priests and other authority figures supporting the development and use of the H Bomb (acceptable since it was defending the American lifestyle). Even country music musicians jumped on the bandwagon, producing toe-tapping communist and nuclear-themed songs with such titles as, “Communists and Spies Are Making Monkeys Out of Us,” and odes to capitalism that insisted, “I believe a man should own his own house and car and cow” (Loader). The message to Americans was loud and clear: only in America are all these things possible and worth defending against the slavery of communism.
By 1951 it was clear that the “bludgeon” approach was working both on the home front and abroad, through the VOA. The estimated listening audience of VOA for that year was one hundred million worldwide. Soviet citizens were not supposed to be listening, but legions were, and few expressed fear of retribution (Hixon 48). Sailing into the new decade with great success, the U.S. decided to take their propaganda program a step further, and in the realm of covert organizations. A pseudo-private radio company called Radio Free Europe (RFE) was formed. Though the U.S. government fully backed the venture, it functioned as a private company and thus was free to broadcast something that went out of the realm of propaganda and into psychological warfare. Use of ridicule and derision were daily fare on RFE programs, for as one U.S. official put it, “we enter this fight with bare fists” (61).
Psychological warfare contains elements of force. In the case of RFE, broadcasters sought to berate and verbally pummel listeners into convincing them of the superiority of all things western. As the official CIA handbook from 1951 stated, “…the monstrous all-devouring ambitions of Soviet imperialism; the cruelty and unworkability of communist institutions and the proven advantages of the democratic way of life” (61).
The CIA also addressed other forms of psychological warfare. It covertly financed the “Free Europe Press,” which published magazines and booklets condemning communism. These publications were geared mainly to westerners, though a balloon program (whereby thousands of leaflets were dropped from balloons) was effective in Eastern Europe. A typical passage from these publications read, “…Tyranny cannot control the winds, cannot enslave your hearts. Freedom will rise again” (65).
The combined efforts of propaganda and psychological warfare were so successful that in early 1956 the U.S.S.R. made an official complaint against the relentless U.S. propaganda campaign. The U.S. government was in the greatly advantaged position of being able to technically claim that they were very sorry but the RFE and the publishers in question were private, and thus out of government control. It is also seldom pointed out that the U.S. had another advantage – apparently the Soviets were uninterested in performing similar balloon and leaflet feats, despite the large number of supposedly hard-at-work communist “plants” the U.S. claimed were in the west.
By the time the Soviets lodged their complaint, however, two major changes had occurred in world politics, changes that would take the Cold War in an entirely new direction and at the same time plant the seeds of the propaganda program that would lead to a decided victory for the west and it’s culture. In 1952, Americans elected war hero Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to the presidency. He brought a new tone to Washington, expressing a strong interest in not only sharing the ideas of western “freedom,” but also in improving U.S.-Soviet relations, particularly on a cultural level. Despite frequent protestations and interference from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (124), the Eisenhower administration put into place an elaborate cultural infiltration propaganda program.
This program was greatly aided by news from the Soviet Union in 1953. Stalin died, and in the wake of that event the Soviet Union struggled to determine what political course should be taken. Stalin had reigned as a cruel dictator for more than two decades and his death came as something of a shock to many Soviet citizens.
By 1956 (the same year they officially complained about U.S. propaganda), the U.S.S.R. appeared to have found it’s political footing in the words of the new Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech.” This speech detailed many of the crimes and atrocities committed by Stalin and his regime and called for a new openness in politics and culture, including a sharing of ideas with the United States. With both nations eager and willing to improve relations (both due to and in spite of their different motives), the Eisenhower administration and the United States Information Agency (USIA) embarked on a number of new cultural exchange programs. The Soviets were first to step to the plate and issue visas for visiting American scholars, entertainers, scientists, and athletes.
The Eisenhower administration initially balked, expressing concern that visiting Soviets might be spies or simply serve as a bad influence to Americans. When the Soviets made political fun of this American version of the Iron Curtain, the U.S. relented (102) and reciprocated by providing visas for visiting Soviets. The VOA began a new and much more friendly method of sharing western culture by broadcasting music. U.S. officials quickly discovered this to be a powerful propaganda tool, as Soviet listeners were captivated by the rebellious strains of American Jazz and Rock and Roll. The Soviet government attempted to dissuade listeners by sending out members of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) to protest against the “decadent” music from the west. The protests had little effect, and according to historian Frederick Star, western music “…had burgeoned into a full-scale revolt by alienated Soviet youths” (116). What followed these initial forays into cultural infiltration was something that might be described as a form of international “Show and Tell.”
Both nations took their culture show “on the road,” the U.S. opening exhibitions in Moscow, and the Soviet Union displaying its technical and cultural wares in New York. These exhibitions were a major contributing factor to the eventual downfall of Soviet Communism (117). Simply put, the American exhibitions included consumer goods Soviet citizens had not even imagined. To borrow the English vernacular, the American exhibitions proved that U.S. citizens had more and “neater stuff” than anything the Soviet Union could offer at that time. This was not due to lack of Soviet ability, but had more to do with Russian history. It was only during Stalin’s rule that Russia developed any significant infrastructure, or the industry and utilities that made consumer goods manufacture possible.
Much of that infrastructure had been destroyed during the war or fallen into disrepair. The thousands of Russian women gazing longingly at electric washing machines at the U.S. exhibitions of the 1950s, and the Russian men imagining themselves behind the wheel of one of the large, chrome-encrusted American cars featured recognized it was unlikely they would ever own either. It was noted by U.S. officials that the two most popular pilfered items from U.S. exhibitions in Moscow were plastic cups displaying the Pepsi emblem, and Sears-Roebuck catalogs (193). Capitalism was winning hearts and minds, hands down.
Even the Soviet government acknowledged their people were fascinated with the west, and when Khrushchev (upon viewing the model U.S. house) repeatedly and petulantly complained, “We have all these things in the Soviet Union,” anyone in earshot realized that the Soviet leader had “protesteth too much” (218). If officials and citizens from both “polar opposites” detected a permanent thaw along with a new and future sense of friendly cooperation, they were soon disappointed. In 1960, the pilot from an American spy plane (Francis Gary Powers) was shot down over the Soviet Union. Even Khrushchev recognized this event and the political fallout that resulted as what finished both “The Thaw” and his own political career (220).
Neither the Powers case nor the Cuban Missile Crisis that would follow two years later would diminish the accomplishments of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the thaw of the 1950s. No doubt the Sears-Roebuck catalogs were cherished and shared, and stories of the magical American life observed at exhibitions told and retold in dismal Soviet flats and country villages. The desire for the lifestyle offered by the west was too irresistible, and though the Cold War on occasion over the following two decades became decidedly chillier (Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the 1980 Olympics), Soviet citizens never forgot their brush with capitalism, and by the end of the 1980s they stood up and demanded it for themselves.
WORKS CITED
Hixon, Walter L. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997.
Loader, Jane, dir. The Atomic Café. New York: New Video Group, 1982.