Cold war

Question 1

Denazification

Answer 1

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’.

Question 2

The Gap between the “Free world” and others. The beginning of rivalry between Soviets and the free world.

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

New ideological, based on nuclear bomb fear, war

Answer 3

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’.

Question 4

1950’s propaganda

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

USA created enemy

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Two separate worlds and the creation of it

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

Bomb fear creation

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Emerging peace campaigns in Europe

Answer 8

Especially in war-ravaged Europe, caught between the two extra-European superpowers, peace movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament began to emerge.

Question 9

The fear of the enemy and role of the media

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

Soviet time propaganda

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

USA propaganda

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

Soviet Union impact on third countries

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

British impact on third world countries

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Moscow propaganda machine

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

USA propaganda machine

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

The start of the Cold War in USA

Answer 16

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’.

Question 17

Television in USA

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

The fear of bomb films in USA

Answer 18

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 .

Question 19

Campaign for Eastern Europe of USA

Answer 19

‘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.

Question 20

Soviet Union de-Stalinization campaign

Answer 20

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’.

Question 21

Television international diplomacy

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

Television role in third world countries

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Hot line

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

USA black propaganda in Cuba

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

Russian black propaganda

Answer 25

The Russians also retained their faith in black propaganda, which they termed ‘active measures’, and in front organizations, disseminating forged documents in the aftermath of the downing of the U-2 American spy plane over Soviet air space in 1960. Covert activity was felt to be ‘more forceful than diplomacy but less hideous than war’. The advantage of black activity was that it was, by definition, supposed to be emanating from sources other than the covert but true one. It therefore enjoyed considerably more latitude with such concepts as ‘the truth’ than its white counterpart, which was ostensibly subject to greater international agreements concerning the fostering of international unrest in other countries.

Question 26

KGB and CIA involvement

Answer 26

The Americans accordingly renamed psychological warfare into psychological operations while Soviet ‘active measures’ continued to spread dezinformatsia. This became a great game between the CIA and KGB to discredit the other side - by spreading rumours that one side was involved in this or that dirty deed.

Question 27

Psychological operations

Answer 27

Psychological operations were, then, no longer being confined to the traditional battlefield, for the battlefield had become the global information environment. They were still used in low intensity conflicts - in the colonial and guerilla wars, for example - which required high-intensity propaganda, and they were to be tried in the escalating conflict in Vietnam. The time-honoured techniques of leaflet dropping and clandestine radio broadcasting were now accompanied by more sophisticated experiments such as the placing of messages in bars of soap and on ping-pong balls dropped over enemy lines.

Question 28

Kennedy’s role

Answer 28

Kennedy’s youthful and dynamic image, combined with his ability to find the appropriate snappy phrase before the cameras (which we now call ‘sound-bites’) made for an attractive leader of the western world as it attempted to stem the advance of communism. He was quick to see that the space race would be perceived world-wide more in terms of prestige through technological achievement, and he launched an American space programme designed to steal the thunder of the Soviets following their successful launch of the first extra-terrestrial vehicle, Sputnik I.

Question 29

Rise of media politics

Answer 29

The increasing intrusiveness of the mass media into political life required greater attention to presentational skills on the domestic front, giving rise to the recent age of media politics. Propaganda could no longer operate in a vacuum divorced from social or political realities. But if the policy arrived at was one of peace, the propaganda which would follow from it had the poten- tial to reinforce it. It was Clausewitz who argued that war was the continuation of politics by other means but, in the Cold War, propaganda became the continuation of politics by other means. In terms of a possible nuclear confrontation, propaganda became the essential means by which the superpowers could fight each other verbally rather than physically.

Question 30

The important role of television

Answer 30

With the arrival of television, a significant new weapon had been found.

Question 31

Reporting

Answer 31

Anti-war propaganda by a growing vocal minority - fuelled, of course, by Moscow - now jostled with the patriotism of the majority, while the media attempted to steer a middle course in the tradition of objective reporting.

Didėjančios balsingos mažumos – kurstoma, žinoma, Maskvos – vykdoma antikarinė propaganda dabar grūmėsi su daugumos patriotizmu, o žiniasklaida mėgino nukreipti vidurinį kursą pagal objektyvaus pranešimo tradiciją.

Question 32

The loss of credibility of American propaganda

Answer 32

The American media did not necessarily become anti-war after 1968; they merely became less willing to accept uncritically the official version. The official propaganda line, in other words, had lost its credibility - while the media have since shouldered a large proportion of the blame for in fact doing their job more effi- ciently than they had before 1968.

Amerikos žiniasklaida nebūtinai tapo antikarine po 1968 m.; jie tiesiog tapo mažiau linkę nekritiškai priimti oficialią versiją. Kitaip tariant, oficiali propagandos linija prarado savo patikimumą, o žiniasklaida nuo to laiko prisiėmė didelę kaltės dalį dėl to, kad iš tikrųjų atliko savo darbą efektyviau nei iki 1968 m.

Question 33

Politicians and television

Answer 33

The 1960s saw democ- ratically elected politicians becoming increasingly sensitive to what they saw as the power of television to sway public opinion.

Question 34

Vietnam war and reporting

Answer 34

Vietnam certainly reveals some of the dangers of war in the tele- vision age. Reporters and cameramen were in fact unable to present a ‘true’ image of the war by virtue of the circumstances in which they operated. The ‘limitless medium’ does in fact suffer from several significant limitations. Whisked in and out of combat zones by any helicopter on which they could hitch a ride, reporters in Vietnam were looking for the kind of exciting footage demanded by their editors without searching for a context in which the action needed to be seen.

Bias, naturally enough, affects the entire reporting process - from what the camera was pointed at in the first instance to how the film was subsequently edited and packaged and even to how the images and messages were received by individual members of the public.
The My Lai massacre may not have been filmed, but the very fact that it happened reinforced the overwhelming visual ‘evidence’ that the war was about something more than the authorities pretended. The comparative shortage of equivalent material from the enemy side - the difference between rigid media control and unfettered media access - meant that Americans began to fight amongst themselves about the respective merits of the war, and many could only draw one conclusion. Television helped to simplify a compli- cated war. By its very nature, it relies upon sensational coverage generalization and selection.

As the non-televisual period of detente between the superpowers unfolded in the 1960s and 1970s, television news instead settled into a pattern of picture- led reporting of disasters, earthquakes, coups and terrorist activi- ties - confirming the medium as best suited to event-based reporting and entertainment rather than as an issue-based mecha- nism capable of providing detailed, contextualized analysis. This would not matter so much but for the fact that most people were now gaining most of their information about what was happening in the world from television rather than from the older media of press and radio. By its inherent predisposition to simplify, television thus became an ideal medium for propaganda.

Question 35

Russia propaganda role in 1970’s

Answer 35

As America looked in on itself in the second half of the 1970s, this in turn.gave them a lead in international propa- ganda, as strategic arms limitations talks crept on to the agenda in which the Soviets appeared to be the victim, not the aggressor. Their most spectacular propaganda coup of this period was the highly effective international campaign it orchestrated against the American deployment of the neutron bomb that would have shifted the balance back in America’s favour. The neutron bomb was depicted as an inhumane, but typically capitalist, weapon capable of destroying people but which left everything else - the economic as well as the military infrastructure - intact for subsequent exploitation. Precisely how much other popular agitation against the US during the late 1970s was inspired by Soviet agents of influ- ence working in western and Third World media or with terrorist groups will remain unknown.

Question 36

The reasons behind Vietnam defeat

Answer 36

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was a stark reminder to the western world that a militaristic enemy was still very much in existence. A new injection of western confidence was needed and the decade’s close found it in the forms of two determined leaders: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
As the Soviets became embroiled in their own Vietnam, the Americans continued to examine the reasons for their defeat.
Despite all the research that was appearing pointing to confusion about US war aims and high casualties being significant factors influencing public opinion - not the media coverage - the myth of media responsibility took root.

Question 37

British propaganda role in Argentina conflict

Answer 37

The conflict that erupted in the South Atlantic following the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands Islands was to provide a model for any democratic government wishing to conduct a propaganda war in the television age. As British diplomats in Washington and New York worked hard to secure the safe passage of Resolution 502 through the United Nations (calling for the withdrawal of Argentinian troops prior to any further negotiations over the issue of sovereignty), a Royal Navy Task Force was quickly mobilized and despatched south It was important for the British to have the United Nations, as a forum for world opinion and the ‘international community’,’sanc- tion the British action if the Thatcher government was to portray the idea of a ‘just war’. The Argentinians were presented as invaders who had violated international law and abandoned the negotiating process. There could be no appeasing of dictators - and stones of missing Argentinian dissidents were issued to confirm that the regime of General Galtieri was the nasty dictatorship the British claimed it to be. The Argentinians had no historical claims to South Georgia, but this had not deterred them from invading that island and was thus ‘proof of the aggressive actions of a right- wing totalitarian regime that violated human rights. Ever since President Carter’s renewed emphasis on human rights in the late 1970s, this issue had provided a significant plank for international propaganda: a yardstick by which ‘good’ and ‘bad’ regimes could be judged.The Americans were thus left in no doubt that their sympa- thies should now lie with their NATO partner - a democratic regime fighting the excesses of dictatorship and with whom they had enjoyed a special historical relationship over such issues. With Resolution 502 safely through the United Nations with American support, the Thatcher government had to confront the question of domestic morale in a real war fought 8000 miles from home in the television age. Equipped with some degree of experi- ence of media management derived from the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and with the ‘Vietnam effect’ very much in mind, there would be no uncensored war in the South Atlantic. Only 29 jour- nalists and crew were permitted to accompany the Task Force - all British; the foreign media were to be served by the Reuters repre- sentative. Even that small number was only agreed to reluctantly by a Royal Navy holding on to its reputation as the ‘silent service’.

The opportunity for near complete military censorship was achieved. Reports could only be compiled on the basis of what military personnel on the spot were prepared to say or show, and could only be sent home via military channels.

A third phenomenon was also closely observed, that of ‘bonding’ between reporters and soldiers. Journalists dependent upon the military for their safety, let alone their copy, soon came to identify closely with the troops who shared their confined sea-borne quar- ters and their anxieties. Ironically, therefore, when the BBC back home tried to treat the enemy’s case objectively, it was criticized by the government for being ‘unacceptably even-handed’.

The fact that the war was short, lasting barely two months, helped to sustain the patriotic mood that swept the country. After the war, the House of Commons Defence Committee which inves- tigated the media coverage conceded that there had been more to censorship than mere ‘operational security’, namely the ‘further- ance of the war effort through public relations’. During the war itself the philosophy underlining this appeared to take the form that late news is no news for the media, which in turn is good news for the military.

When footage from British journalists did finally arrive, it had been sanitized by the censors. Phrases such as ‘horri- bly burned’ were cut out, news of setbacks such as the loss of HMS Sheffield were delayed, even the substitution of the word ‘cleared’ for ‘censored’ were all part of an attempt to present a particularly one-sided view of a war with little bloodshed. As one public rela- tions officer told an ITN correspondent with t
The press may have disagreed, but whether the public would have done so is another matter, especially as polls revealed a consider- able majority of public support for the war. The cheerful mood of despatches from the fleet, combined with the jingoism of the tabloids (‘UP YOURS, GALTIERI!’ and ‘ARGIE-BARGY’ ran other Sun headlines) and high domestic morale, seemed only to justify the military’s restrictions on the media. The overall result was that the British public received comparatively little information - and some disinformation - about what was happening when it was happen- ing.

Patriotic journalists, especially those working alongside fighting soldiers from their own country, do not want to reveal information that might be of value to the enemy because of an identification of shared risks and shared interests. But within a democratic frame- work, they demand the right to retain their critical judgement. They know that their reports have an important bearing on civilian morale, yet they reserve the right to criticize. Governments that attempt to censor views, as distinct from news, are their natural enemies.

Question 38

Reagan’s image and the end of the Cold War

Answer 38

Reagan’s first administration had been particularly hawkish towards the Soviet Union and its communist allies. Many feel that ‘the Great Communicator’, as he was known, enjoyed his greatest propaganda success with the announcement of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI or ‘Star Wars’) designed to protect the United States from a nuclear attack. Whether or not SDI was real-izable - and there was a good deal of domestic and overseas propa- ganda surrounding it implying that it was more real than imagined - it scared the Russians who knew that they could not compete with the Americans financially or technologically. Following the death of Brezhnev in 1982, the Soviet leadership underwent a crisis as former KGB chief Andropov followed him to the grave only to be replaced by the weak Chernenko who was unable to extricate the Soviet Union from the quagmire of Afghanistan. With both Thatcher and Reagan reinstated in further terms of office, there then arrived on the Soviet scene a leader in the form of Mikhail Gorbachev. He was, as Thatcher informed Reagan, a Russian with whom the West could finally do business. Together, they ended the Cold War.

The West did not really ‘win’ the Cold War. If anything, the Soviet Union lost it by default. After almost 70 years of communist rule, the Soviet economy had singularly failed to deliver its promises. The arms race, for all its expense, had contributed to the end of this war rather than its outbreak. By 1985, Gorbachev recognized that wide-sweeping economic reconstruction was necessary - perestroika - but in order to promote debate about how this should be done, he also introduced the concept of glasnost, or openness.

Yet if glasnost is now seen as ringing the death-knell of Soviet authoritarianism - with its increased news coverage of mistakes and problems, the reporting of bad news, even the ‘space bridge’ chat shows between ordinary American and Russian TV audiences - Gorbachev was bowing to the inevitable march of communications technology. The 1980s saw a massive expansion in international satellite television broadcasting and the arrival of such global news services such as Cable New! Network (CNN). Direct Broadcasting by Satellite (DBS) provided alternative ways of seeing and perceiving what was happening in the outside world, which was made further possible by the secret and easy importation of foreign radio and television programmes on small audio and video-cassette formats. Fax machines were to provide another route. Many Soviet officials seemed more afraid of DBS and CNN than they were of SDI. In a sense they were right, since CNN and DBS were among the new technological realities of the 1980s. News of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for example, reached Soviet audiences from foreign sources and prompted completely its domestic propaganda policy.
With hopeful signs that the West was now proving more co-opera- tive than confrontational (such as in arms reductions talks) the jamming of the BBC World Service, VOA and even RFE and RFL was halted in 1987 and 1988. A long-standing ban on the unofficial use of photocopiers was lifted while the state control over the mass media was eased to permit greater internal communication and discourse. Former dissidents were permitted to return while others were released from the Gulags. At last, the old Cold War enemy was extending to its citizens the type of freedoms which the West had insisted were fundamental human rights. Few noted the irony that this was taking place at a time when the US was search- ing for ways of restricting its media from covering conflicts such the American invasion of Panama in 1989. In that same year, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. The ultimate twist came during the attempted coup of 1991 when Gorbachev, under house arrest in the Crimea, was able to listen to what was happening in Moscow via he very same BBC World Service which he had stopped jamming a few years earlier. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was watching his eventual successor, Boris Yeltsin, climb aboard a tank to lead the forces of resistance in support of Gorbachev - live on CNN

Question 39

Soviet Film industry and others

Answer 39

1960-70s mark secret espionage stories in the Soviet film industry.
In Russian, has negative connotation. But Russian spies are called intelligence officers.
Conclusion:
Division between friends and foes;
Dualism;
Spy games.