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Enemy Number One: The United States of America in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959

Online ISBN:
9780190681494
Print ISBN:
9780190681463
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Enemy Number One: The United States of America in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959

Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Rósa Magnúsdóttir

Associate Professor of History

Associate Professor of History, Aarhus University, Denmark
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Published online:
20 December 2018
Published in print:
7 February 2019
Online ISBN:
9780190681494
Print ISBN:
9780190681463
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

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