Cold war Flashcards
(39 cards)
Denazification
Denazification was propaganda to eradicate propaganda, an entire psychological programme to eliminate totalitarianism and militarism.
For the British, however, re-education was designed to rescue the world from Germany, and Germany from herself. Not only were the constitutions of the defeated nations re-written to benefit the victors as well as, it was felt, the vanquished, but so also were their educational curricula re-written in an attempt to avoid the catastrophe of another major war caused by a future generation of fanatical militarists inspired by hate propaganda.
From school lessons to the printed press, domestic radio stations and the cinema, allied representatives set about ‘democratizing’ the defeated peoples so that they would never wage aggressive war again.
In the democracies, the war had been presented in terms of a struggle between the ‘free world’ and the ‘slave world’.
The Gap between the “Free world” and others. The beginning of rivalry between Soviets and the free world.
The democratic aspirations of peace equality, liberty and fraternity were embedded in important new international documents such as the Charter of the United Nations and the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. The problem, of course, was that the war had not just been won by Britain and the United States. Victory had only been achieved with considerable help from an ally in the form of the Soviet Union whose soldiers may have fought heroically but whose rulers were more than willing to deny their people the kind of freedoms in the name of which the war had been justified in the West.
With the defeat of the Axis powers, the cement that had bound together the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance crumbled.
In the years following the Potsdam and Yalta conferences at the end of the war, deep-rooted ideological differences resurfaced following from the occupation and suppression of Eastern Europe by the Red Army and the Americanization of Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. Worse still was to come with the victory of Mao’s Communist forces in the Chinese civil war by 1949, the year in which the Soviets first tested their own atomic bomb.
New ideological, based on nuclear bomb fear, war
With the rapid deterioration of wartime allegiances into what came to be known as the Cold War, a new type of conflict emerged. This was a war on the mind, a contest of ideologies, a battle of nerves which, for the next forty years or so, was to divide the planet into a bi-polar competition that was characterized more by a war of words and the threatened use of nuclear weapons rather than their actual use. It was a conflict in which the idea of nuclear war was constantly on the mind of international public opinion.
Soviet- American relations became the focal point around which post-war thoughts of war and peace came to revolve. The erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 was to become the perfect symbol of a divided world separated by the ‘Iron Curtain’.
Despite repeated superpower jostling for position in the decades following the Second World War, there was a fundamental recognition that, even if one side should ‘win’ a nuclear conflict, it could at best achieve a Pyrrhic victory because the other side was bound to have inflicted massive devastation in the process of ‘losing’.
1950’s propaganda
As a consequence, international diplomacy appeared to be developing by the 1950s into a great game of bluff, counter-bluff and double bluff all set against a climate of terror. Because both sides had to project the impression that they were in fact serious and that this was not a game of bluff, an atmosphere was created in which propaganda could only flourish.
The high costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal and of developing missile delivery systems to carry them across continents (with the race extending into Outer Space in the 1960s), meant there was a need to justify year after year such consistently high peacetime military expenditure to domestic audiences in both the USSR and the USA.
USA created enemy
For western taxpaying voters, a genuine ‘enemy’ was required and, as Soviet actions in the suppression of Eastern Europe seemed to indicate - one had clearly been found. The Great Russian Bear was thus transformed into the Red Bolshevik Menace.
Two separate worlds and the creation of it
From 1946 onwards, and for a period lasting four decades, the rhetoric of the free world and the slave once again came to dominate public discourse about international conflict. The Truman Doctrine of 1948 served to narrow this down to a black and white confrontation between two seemingly incompatible ways of life:
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of personal liberty, freedom of speech and religion and freedom from political repression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and repression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
Bomb fear creation
Yet on both sides, sustained military preparation was justified in accordance with the maxim that ‘he who desires peace must prepare for war’.
This combination of of theoretical and historical justification for maintaining a nuclear balance was a significant area in the propaganda battle for the hearts and minds of war-fearing citizens.
At the root of this battle was, indeed, fear. The problem was that fear of ‘The Bomb’ and possible global thermo-nuclear annihilation undoubtedly helped to fuel a pacifist mentality.
Emerging peace campaigns in Europe
Especially in war-ravaged Europe, caught between the two extra-European superpowers, peace movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament began to emerge.
The fear of the enemy and role of the media
Official propaganda therefore had to ensure that fear of the enemy was sustained at a higher level than fear of the bomb. Both in Russia and America, as well as in their alliance blocs of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, it was imperative to convince people that fear of the enemy was genuine, legitimate and justified. This in turn would legitimate and justify the need to sustain a nuclear arsenal that would have to be at least the equal of the other side, in which case there might never be a use for it. And so the nuclear arms race continued through its inescapably logical course.
This climate of fear - or balance of terror - was played out in the media.
Propaganda exploited these fears with such themes as ‘nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented’ (technological determinism), ‘because they are pointing weapons at us we must point the same weapons at them’ (deterrence), ‘if they attack us first, we have effectively lost’ (first strike capability) and so on. The other side had always to be portrayed as aggressive, militaristic and repressive - as a genuine threat to peace and freedom however such concepts were defined by either side.
Soviet time propaganda
On this aspect, it might be thought that the Soviet Union, with its state-controlled media and thus its greater capacity to shape the information and opinions of its citizens concerning the intentions of the outside world, enjoyed a considerable advantage over its democratic rivals. This was certainly so on the domestic front within the borders of the Soviet Union and in its Moscow-imposed allies. It held this advantage until the 1980s when new communications technologies were finally able to penetrate the Iron Curtain and provide alternative images of what ‘The Enemy’ was really like which ran counter to the ‘accepted view’ decreed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Until then, however, it was possible for the CPSU to maintain an information environment that was just about hermetically sealed, an environment in which the official Soviet world-view could prevail, while it simultaneously exploited the very freedoms cherished by the West.
USA propaganda
Paradoxically , that same sealed environment provided the United States with advantages of its own in its propaganda when it came to painting a particular image of ‘the enemy’. It meant that the ‘freedom-loving’ public could only perceive the Soviets as being afraid to permit alternative ways of seeing and believing, and thus by way of contrast reinforce their views about the undesirability of communist totalitarianism.
because the view from Moscow was clearly orchestrated by the CPSU authorities and not by the Russian ‘people’, this in turn made it difficult for ‘we, the people’ to accept a view of Moscow that was different from’that presented by Washington. So when President Nixon said that ‘it may be melodramatic to say that the United States and Russia represent Good and Evil, but if we think of it that way, it helps to clarify our perspective on the world struggle’ or when President Reagan spoke of the Soviet Union as an ‘Evil Empire’, it was tricky for Moscow to provide an alternative or acceptable point of view.
Soviet Union impact on third countries
Although the United States had always professed itself to be anti-imperialist — citing its own revolutionary history of independence from British rule - its commitment to capitalism enabled the Soviets to portray a Marxist-Leninist view of a free- market enterprise system as a form of imperialism under an economic disguise. Former colonies in Africa and Asia therefore had a choice - which was something they had not enjoyed before. They could not survive in an increasingly interdependent world economy defined by the Bretton Woods system unless they became part of that system which, the Soviets argued, would merely perpetuate their dependence upon the western capitalist powers rather than encourage their independence from them. But there was now at least an alternative. Moscow would help - with economic subsidies, with advisers and arms supplies to aid their struggle and with guidance on how to provide political and social stability in the transformation from colonial dependency to a Marxist-Leninist version of independence that would dismantle the differences between the fortunate rich and the less fortunate, exploited poor.
British impact on third world countries
British were also trying to achieve their own version of the future in the transformation from Empire to Commonwealth, the Soviets argued that former colonies needed to look no further than the uprisings in Kenya or Malaysia to see the disastrous consequences of that particular route.
Moscow therefore offered a new way forward, a way that could once and for all provide an alternative to the exploitation of oppressed peoples, a socialist paradise in which everyone would benefit equally.
Moscow propaganda machine
To reinforce these messages, the Soviet Union launched a propagandist onslaught, orchestrated by Agitprop (the Administration of Agitation and Propaganda of the Communist Party Central Committee) and Cominform (established in 1947 to replace the now defunct Comintern). Every available media were utilized, as appropriate to local conditions, from books and pamphlets to press, radio and film. No matter how sophisticated the methods and media used, however, it is important to remember that the Soviets always regarded language as a fundamental aspect of policy to secure Marxist-Leninist ‘historical imperatives’. Words as weapons in this ideological struggle thus assumed an active and highly potent role in defining such concepts as ‘peace’, ‘disarmament’, ‘independence’ and ‘liberation’ in an attempt to seize the initiative from, and set the perceptual framework about, ‘the West’.
The objective was quite simply to control the terms of the debate on international affairs and to set the agenda of international discourse. A major strategy in this once again was to play on fear, both within the West and, within the Third World, fear of the West. For this, ‘Front’ organizations were required so as to disguise the fact that Moscow was conducting the orchestra: far better to have foreigners playing the tune in their own countries than musicians with a Russian accent. Fear of nuclear war was exploited by such various front organizations.
Other ‘agents of influence’ such as sympathetic journalists, academics and even intelligence officers operating in the West were cultivated by Moscow while massive disinformation campaigns were also launched by the KGB to disguise the real strength of the Soviet armed forces while exaggerating the threat posed by the West. It was a ‘divide and rule’ approach designed to divert attention from Soviet intentions.
USA propaganda machine
To counter this onslaught, the Americans responded vigorously on two fronts that were closely connected: the domestic and the international. In 1 9 4 8 , the Smith-Mundt Act revitalized the American post-war information services ‘to promote a better understanding of the United States in other countries, and to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries’.
Usually, such activity involves the dissemination of literature and other cultural products such as visiting speakers, films, travelling theatre groups and orchestras, the promotion of language teaching and other ‘educational’ activities such as student exchange schemes. All are designed to create over time ‘goodwill’ towards the country subsidizing the activity.
The Americans, however, tended to leave this type of activity to private ‘philanthropic’ or commercial concerns, and when one bears in mind the universal attractiveness of such American products as Coca-Cola, Levi jeans or McDonalds, or Hollywood films and American music, it is an approach which commanded its supporters. As Walter Wanger pointed out in 1950, Hollywood represented a ‘Marshall Plan of Ideas’ in 115 countries around the world where 72 per cent of the films being shown were of American origin.
the critics unable to counter effectively with attractive products of their own, was ‘Coca-Colonialism’ - a ‘cultural imperialism’ designed to homogenize the world into a global village where American values and perspectives prevailed.
Regardless of the validity of whether this activity was a conspiracy by an American military-industrial complex, or merely the coincidental consequence of American economic power and prowess in popular culture products, successive political administrations in Washington were concerned to promote directly American beliefs and outlooks abroad. This had first become apparent in 1950 when President Truman launched his ‘Campaign for Truth’ against communism following the outbreak of the Korean War, with $121 million appropriated by Congress. Such increased expenditure on propaganda was to be merely the psychological component of a massive rearmament programme that was all based on an infamous 1950 policy document known as NSC 68, in which Soviet intentions were identified quite simply as world domination.
The document went on to state that the Soviets were to be countered by the rapid build-up of political, economic and military strength in order to create ‘confidence in the free world’. While the military prepared for a surprise Soviet atomic strike, the American propaganda machine was cranked up to justify the consequences to tax-payers and to reassure NATO and other alliance partners that they would not be overrun, that communism would be, and could be, ‘contained’ if not ‘rolled back’.
Cultural activity, however, was a long-term process. What was also urgently required was a short-term strategy based upon news and information to counter rapidly any Soviet-inspired misinformation about US intentions. To this end, several decisions were taken. In 1950, the Voice of America (VOA - the USA’s official external broadcasting service) was transmitting 30 programme hours daily in 23 different languages around the world. In 1951, the President had also created a Psychological Strategy Board to advise the National Security Council and in 1953 a personal adviser on psychological warfare was working at the White House for President Eisenhower, Truman’s successor. Government-sponsored research into psychological warfare was also stepped up and even civil defence programmes at home which played on fears of the bomb came within its remit.
The start of the Cold War in USA
In the United States, the start of the Cold War was accompanied by a hate-inspired anti-Soviet propaganda campaign that permeated all aspects of American life, especially between 1947 and 1958.
This campaign created a climate of fear in which sympathy for the ‘Enemy’ was equated with sympathy for the Devil. The conversion of a former wartime ally into a peacetime enemy was fuelled by media representation of post-war events in a specifically hostile light. The ‘Red Menace’ was not just a threat to Europe and Asia: it threatened the very existence of the ‘American way of life’ itself. Books, magazines, films and even the new medium of television were scrutinized by self- appointed watchdog groups of red-hunters, often sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to create an atmosphere in which no view of the Russians other than as demons could be tolerated. It was a campaign which, by comparison, made the Second World War search for Nazi ‘Fifth Columnists’ pale into insignificance.
The new ‘Enemy Within’ now became all members of American society who had ever shown any sympathy with communist, socialist, or even liberal causes - regardless of the wartime alliance. More ominously, anyone who protested against government measures came to be labelled ‘a subversive’.
Television in USA
The growing number of television viewers from 1948 onwards could witness the menace for themselves as people previously unconcerned with political affairs were sucked into the climate of fear from the (dis)comfort of their own living rooms. They were told that the media were full of Soviet spies and communist lackeys, which merely brought the media into line. Hollywood suddenly became keen to demonstrate what we would now call political correctness by making a succession of anti-communist movies.
Science fiction films are an especially rich genre for analysing such themes as ‘the enemy’ or ‘the invader’ as metaphors for reflecting contemporary fears of hostile aggression and invasion.
The fear of bomb films in USA
The ‘fear of the bomb’ genre of films and the ‘fear of invasion’ genre came together.
Spies were also everywhere in the movies.
But the anti-communist menace was most pronounced in the early 1 9 5 0 s .
Campaign for Eastern Europe of USA
‘The Crusade for Freedom’ was launched, ostensibly to promote the ability of freedom-loving peoples in Eastern Europe to shake off the Soviet militaristic yoke by providing them with ‘objective’ news and information through the newly-created Radio Free Europe. Radio Liberation (later Liberty) was set up to cater purely for Russian audiences.
Soviet Union de-Stalinization campaign
With the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union also experienced a significant domestic propaganda campaign in the form of Khrushchev’s ‘de-Stalinization’ programme and his denunciation of the former leader’s ‘cult of personality’. This chiefly took the form of expanding the system of political education from around 4 million pupils in 1953 to just under 40 million at the time of Khrushchev’s dismissal in 1964 to create the ‘New Soviet Man’. Sporting prowess assumed a new significance in international competitions such as the Olympic Games and even chess tournaments. This remained a considerable factor in demonstrating national prestige, with the Soviets even recruiting athlete-soldiers to test the limits of human endurance not just on earth but, later, in space. In 1967, they launched the Cosmonauts Number Zero project to participate in medical experiments. Likewise, Soviet prowess in medical achievements was a key element in demonstrating the all-round superiority of the Soviet superman.
At the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, Khrushchev confirmed the acceptance of ‘varying roads to socialism’, namely a loosening of Moscow’s previous iron grip on its Eastern European satellites. Although the discrediting of Stalin of which this was a part was originally supposed to be a secret policy, news of it quickly spread and created repercussions in Hungary where many saw an opportunity of creating socialism ‘with a human face’.
Television international diplomacy
Television was heralding in a new age of international diplomacy, allowing politicians to address the public of other countries directly. But until television achieved majority penetration in advanced societies after the 1960s, international radio remained the most significant medium in the international battle which, in the context of the Cold War, was a far cry from the notion encapsulated by the BBC motto that ‘Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation’. Hence the continuing Soviet need for the jamming of western broadcasts that became a characteristic of the ebbs and flows of Cold War tension. By transmitting a continuous ‘buzz-saw’ noise on the same frequency as the offending broadcasts, the Soviets hoped to seal their citizens off from the alternative interpretations offered by the opposition and thus sustain their own view of international events. The competition must not be too equal and peace must be on the terms of the new Soviet men. The western powers did not engage in jamming Russian broadcasts, although considerable resources were poured into to monitoring them constantly.
As for television broadcasting, which began in Russia in 1949, it was not until the 1970s that it became a truly mass medium covering most of the Soviet Union. Between 1960 and 1981, the number of domestic TV sets rose from just under 5 million to around 75 million (a rise from 5 per cent to 90 per cent of the population) and it was only really then that it superseded the press and radio as the principal sources of news and information. Like those media, however, television broadcasting was rigorously controlled by the State, from the granting of licenses and finance to the selection of media personnel, from providing access to news gatherers to the supervision of journalistic training.
Television role in third world countries
Many domestic radio and television services around the Third World evolved out of a local demand created following the spillage of signals from armed forces networks established to entertain and inform foreign military personnel from advanced countries stationed in those nations. There was, however, a growing feeling that such services could serve a greater function than mere entertainment; that they could invariably help economic development. The problem was that the world was divided into rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, media ‘haves’ and media ‘have-nots’. Moreover, many newly independent countries possessed illiterate or poorly educated populations, and radio especially offered a comparatively inexpensive route to informing and educating their peoples. But a further problem was that once a domestic radio infrastructure was established, it became a target for external broadcasting and thus became prone to involvement in the ideological struggle of the Cold War. Indeed the very debate about international communications became entangled in the divide, with the Americans arguing for a free flow of information while the Soviets felt this would jeopardize their position in the competition. Moscow backed Third World calls through UNESCO for a New World Information Order to redress the balance of western (especially American) media domination.
Hot line
The aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, Washington and Moscow agreed to establish a direct ‘hot-line’ so that their leaders could communicate directly with one another to avoid any future misunderstandings in crises that were now characteristically propaganda-driven.
USA black propaganda in Cuba
This is not to suggest that the public confrontation diminished. One USIA official warned in the early 1960s that ‘unless there is a suicidal nuclear war, the balance of power between ourselves and the communists will be largely determined by public opinion’.
The problem was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to ascertain precisely where the word-weapons were coming from thanks to increased covert involvement by the secret intelligence services. To undermine Fidel Castro’s regime, for example, the Americans launched covert ‘black propaganda’ transmissions to Cuba from the CIA’s Radio Swan.
