Kirill Kobrin: Anti-Western sentiment in today's Russian society are largely a legacy of Cold War propaganda stereotypes. This conclusion was reached, in particular, by the participants of the international seminar "Culture and Power in the Period of the Cold War". This seminar was held in Saratov. The conference, in which Radio Liberty employees also take part, was organized scientific project Saratov State University and Temple University in Philadelphia. The Saratov correspondent of Radio Liberty Olga Bakutkina worked on the topic.

Olga Bakutkina: Says the organizer of the seminar from the Russian side, director of the Saratov Interregional Institute of Social Sciences, Professor Velikhan Merzikhanov.

Velikhan Merzikhanov: The idea for this conference was born during my visit to the Temple University Department of History. We decided to develop this theme together because " cold war", the legacy of the Cold War is a very important problem, still even politically relevant for today's Russia. And we wanted to take this story: how propaganda campaigns took place, how people were mobilized during the Cold War, both in our country and in America, and compare it.

Vladislav Zubak: Personally, I am a product of this era, we grew up in the 70s, using the cultural baggage that was created by the sixties and the culture of the "thaw", which is why it is interesting for me to study what actually shaped me as a person. Secondly, I believe that the culture of the 50-60s - the culture of the "thaw" - partly played a role in the fact that the "cold war" ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the loss of the will to imperial creation, so to speak, within the Soviet elites, that is, it ended peacefully, indeed, as a rivalry of cultures. I don't mean to say that American culture has won against Soviet culture, it’s just that within the framework of Soviet culture there was a lot of dissatisfaction with oneself, a lot of contradictions. Soviet intelligent people could rarely say: “I am a Cold War warrior,” while in America there were really many such people who identified themselves with the Cold War and believed that they really served the people, the state, America in this Cold War ".

Olga Bakutkina: Talking about the Cold War era is important today because its stereotypes are alive.

Vladislav Zubak: Certainly, since they are alive and they reproduce in latest literature, they can be found on bookshelves, in bookstores. This is not only literature about the Cold War, it is literature that justifies the Stalinist empire, some geopolitical writings that postulate that we will always be in confrontation with the West. These are all, of course, stereotypes that were formed during the years of the Cold War, and the authors who write these books feed on the propaganda baggage that was created during the years of the Cold War.

Olga Bakutkina: The American historian, Professor Anna Krylova made a political anecdote the object of her research, as a counterargument to the mass propaganda that existed in the Soviet Union.

Anna Krylova: The political anecdote is very critical of the Soviet Union. Image Soviet country in a joke, he is very complex. The image of America is simplified and idealized. The Soviet joke shows alienation, a departure from Soviet ideology. Anti-American propaganda is all denied. It turns out such an idealized image of America, where, in general, you can only come and immediately get everything you want. It seems to me that the way during perestroika, and immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia hoped for rapid economic changes and the way they perceived American ideals, the way American specialists came and offered their solutions, the way it was perceived uncritically, was perceived with a bang, this reaction is already inherent in this uncritical attitude towards the West, which can be seen in the Soviet political joke.

Olga Bakutkina: But even in the West, the generation of the 60s refused to perceive Russia according to imposed stereotypes, even if their source was the Russian emigration of the third wave. By Jane Taubman, professor of Russian language and literature at a college in Massachusetts.

Jane Taubman: The most interesting for us, of course, is the third wave, which appeared in the early 70s. I already taught and they became my very close friends, especially Viktoria Alexandrovna Schweitzer, who studies Tsvetaeva, as I did then. And she wrote the main book "Life and being of Marina Tsvetaeva". And daily tea parties, conversations when she came to America with her family. She was from the sixties, her husband was a dissident, she studied with Sinyavsky, so this whole culture of dissent came to us. They were for us not only teachers, but witnesses of history. Well, of course, usually they were very critical of Russia. This did not mean that we, too, were always critical of Russia, but they instilled in us a love for Russian culture, especially for Russian literature. And this is the most important thing that they did for us, even if we did not quite share their political views.

Olga Bakutkina: Propaganda during the Cold War period had the opposite effect on the choice of profession and the fate of Jane Taubman.

Jane Taubman: The launch of the first satellite, when they said that it was necessary to catch up with the Russians and overtake in the field of science, I decided to do science and the first year at the university I intensively studied mathematics and chemistry. After this course, I decided that it was better to join them than to fight, and I took up Russian, in which I got much better marks than in mathematics and chemistry. The second moment was when I finished school in the 60th year, on TV we were shown the Berlin crisis and a sign: "Now you are leaving the American sector." It was written in English, in French. In Russian, I could not even read the letters. This made me sad and curious. I said: "I want to know this language." It's so stupid, but because of this, my whole life has changed.

Olga Bakutkina: The seminar, organized by Russian and American scientists, was the beginning of a great joint work. Its results will be summed up in two years at an international conference, which will also be held in Saratov.

« The best way to make propaganda is

it never look like leading propaganda».

Richard Crossman

At the height of the Cold War, the US government invested heavily in a secret cultural propaganda program in Western Europe. The central aspect of the program was the dissemination of the claim that it did not exist.

Propaganda was directed in the strictest secrecy by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The focus of this covert campaign was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was led by CIA agent Michael Josselson from 1950 to 1967. His achievements, despite the short time of existence, were very significant.

At its peak, the Congress for Cultural Freedom had chapters in 35 countries, had dozens of employees, published more than 20 prestigious magazines, owned news and television services, organized prestigious international conferences, music performances and exhibitions of artists, and awarded them with prizes.

His task was to distract the intelligentsia Western Europe from her lingering fascination with Marxism and Communism and lead her to views more suited to adopting the "American way of life".

Drawing on a vast and highly influential community of intellectuals, political strategists, corporate elites, and old Ivy League university connections, this CIA effort began in 1947. year since the founding of a consortium whose dual mission was to vaccinate the world against the communist taint and to facilitate the advancement of the interests of the American foreign policy abroad.

The result was a tight-knit community of people who worked hand in hand with the CIA to spread the same message: the world needs Pax Americana. new era Enlightenment, which could be called the "American Century".

The CIA consortium, composed of what Henry Kissinger described as "an aristocracy dedicated to the service of the nation on the principle of impartiality," was America's covert weapon in the Cold War, the use of which had far-reaching consequences. Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were very few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists and critics in post-war Europe whose names were not associated with this secret enterprise.

Undisputed and undiscovered for more than 20 years, US intelligence has run a sophisticated, secure cultural front in the West, for the West, under the pretense of freedom of expression. Defining the Cold War as "a battle for human minds," she stocked up on a vast arsenal of cultural weapons: magazines, books, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, concerts, awards.

Among the members of the consortium was a mixed group of former radicals and left-wing intellectuals whose faith in Marxism and communism was undermined by evidence of Stalinist totalitarianism. Originating in the "Rose Decade" of the 1930s, lamented by Arthur Koestler as "an artificially interrupted revolution of the spirit, an inconclusive Renaissance, a false dawn of history", their disillusionment was accompanied by a willingness to join a new consensus, to establish a new order, replenishing the expended forces .

The tradition of radical dissidence, in which intellectuals took over the study of myths, questioned the prerogatives of institutions, and alarmed the complacency of authorities, was interrupted for support" American project". Encouraged and subsidized by powerful organizations, this anti-communist group became as much a "cartel" in the intellectual life of the West as communism was a few years before (and often included the same people).

“There comes a time ... when, apparently, life loses its ability to arrange itself,” says Charlie Citrine, narrator in Saul Bellow's Gift of Humboldt (Saul Bellow, Humboldt "s Gift). - It was arranged. Intellectuals took on it's like for your job.

From the time of, say, Machiavelli to the present day, the arrangement of life has been a grandiose, magnificent, painful, deceitful, disastrous project. A man like Humboldt—inspired, insightful, captivating—was overjoyed at the discovery that human enterprise, so majestic and infinitely varied, would henceforth be led by eminent personalities.

He was an outstanding personality and therefore an acceptable candidate for power. Well, why not?" . Likewise, many Humboldts - intellectuals devoted to the false idols of communism - now found themselves scrutinizing the possibility of building a new Weimar, an American Weimar. If the government and its secret arm, the CIA, were willing to assist in this project, why not?

The fact that former leftists had to go along with the CIA, participating in a common cause, is not as incredible as it seems. In the Cold War, on the cultural front, there was a genuine commonality of interest and belief between the Office and the hired intellectuals, even if the latter were unaware of it.

The eminent liberal Jewish American historian Arthur Schlesinger noted that the influence of the CIA was not only "reactionary and sinister ... In my experience, its leadership was politically enlightened and sophisticated." Seeing the CIA as a haven for liberalism was a powerful incentive to cooperate with it, or at least justify the myth that cooperation was motivated by good intentions.

However, this perception was hampered by the CIA's reputation as a ruthless aggressor and a frighteningly dangerous tool for US forces in the Cold War. It was the organization that led the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, the removal of the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954, the disastrous operation in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961, the notorious Phoenix program in Vietnam .

She spied on tens of thousands of Americans, harassed democratically elected leaders in other countries, planned assassinations, denied her presence in Congress, and to top it all, took the art of lying to new heights. By what wonderful alchemy was the CIA able to present itself to lofty intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger as the golden container of cherished liberalism?

The depth that American intelligence reached in its penetration into the cultural affairs of the Western Allies, acting as an unrecognized intermediary in the widest range of creative activity, placing intellectuals and their work in the position of chess pieces in big game, remains one of the most disturbing questions in the legacy of the Cold War.

The defense built by the patrons of the CIA during this period, based on the assertion that significant funds were provided without additional conditions, has not yet been seriously challenged by anyone. Intellectual circles in America and Western Europe continue to readily accept as truth that the CIA was only interested in expanding opportunities for free and democratic cultural expression.

“We just helped people say what they would have said anyway, that's how win-win this line of defense is built. “If the recipients of CIA funds were not aware of this fact, if their course of action did not subsequently change, then their independence as critically thinking individuals was not affected.”

However, official documents relating to the cultural front of the Cold War undermine this myth of altruism. The people and organizations paid by the CIA were ready to fulfill their role as participants in a broad campaign of persuasion, a campaign of propaganda warfare, which defined propaganda as "any organized effort or movement aimed at disseminating information or a particular doctrine through news, special arguments or appeals intended to influencing the thoughts and actions of any given group.

A vital component of these efforts was psychological warfare, which was defined as "the planned use by a nation of propaganda and activities other than military ones that convey ideas and information designed to influence the opinions, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors of the populations of other countries in order to support the implementation of national tasks".

And the most efficient view propaganda is achieved when "the subject moves in the direction you want, believing that he is guided by his own motives" . It is useless to deny these definitions. They are scattered throughout government records, a given of American post-war cultural diplomacy.

Undoubtedly, in disguising financial contributions, the CIA acted on the assumption that an invitation to cooperate could be rejected if made openly. What kind of freedom can be distributed in such a fraudulent way? Freedom of any kind is certainly not on the agenda in the Soviet Union, where writers and intellectuals, not yet sent to the camps, servilely serve the interests of the state.

It would, of course, be fair to oppose such lack of freedom. But by what means? Were there any grounds for considering it impossible to revive the principles of Western democracy in post-war Europe in accordance with some internal mechanisms? Or in order not to believe that democracy can be more complex than the famous American liberalism suggests?

To what extent is it acceptable for another state to secretly interfere in the fundamental process of natural intellectual growth, free discussions and an unrestrained flow of ideas? Wasn't there a risk of creating instead of freedom a kind of ur-freedom, where people think they act freely, while in fact they are limited by forces over which they have no control?

The entry of the CIA into the war on the cultural front raises other questions. Could financial aid distort the process of becoming intellectuals and spreading their ideas? Have people been selected for their position on grounds other than their intellectual merit? What did Arthur Koestler mean when he ridiculed scientific conferences and symposiums as "travels of international academic call girls"?

Was the reputation protected or enhanced by members of the CIA Cultural Consortium? How many of the writers and scholars who were given access to an international audience to spread their ideas were really second-rate, one-time publicists whose writings were doomed to gather dust in the basements of second-hand bookshops?

In 1966, the New York Times published a series of articles demonstrating the wide range of clandestine activities carried out by American intelligence. That as soon as stories of attempted coups and political assassinations (mostly ineptly committed) pour into the front pages of newspapers, the CIA enters a state that resembles an elephant straying from the herd, breaking through the jungle of world politics, destroying everything in its path, not limited by any liability.

Among these dramatic espionage revelations were the details of how the American government exposed itself to the Western cultural priests who provided intellectual authority for its actions.

The suggestion that many intellectuals acted according to the dictates of American politicians, and not according to their own principles, generates general disgust. The moral authority enjoyed by the intelligentsia at the height of the Cold War is now seriously undermined and often ridiculed. The consensusocracy collapsed, its foundation could not hold.

Indeed, history itself has become fragmented, partial, altered, sometimes blatantly, by forces on both the right and the left who would like to twist the truth to achieve their own ends. Ironically, the circumstances that made the revelations possible have themselves contributed to obscuring their true meaning.

When the frantic anti-communist campaign in Vietnam brought America to the brink of social collapse, when scandals of the Pentagon Papers or Watergate level ensued, it became difficult to maintain interest in or resent the cultural struggle (Kulturkampf) case - against the background of everything else, it seemed only minor oversight.

"History," wrote Archibald MacLeish, "is like a poorly designed concert hall with dead zones where no music can be heard." This book is an attempt to identify and fix such dead zones. She is looking for a special acoustics, a melody different from that performed by the official virtuosos of the era.

it secret history because she believes in the effectiveness of the power of personal relationships, "soft ties" and collusion, in the importance of salon diplomacy and boudoir politicking. The book challenges what Gore Vidal described as "official fictions agreed upon by too many and too partisan parties, each with its own thousand days, in which their own misleading pyramids and obelisks are built, claiming to tell time by the sun." .

Any story that comes from the study of these “consensual facts” inevitably becomes, in the words of Tzvetan Todorov, “an act of profanity. This is not about helping to create a cult of heroes and saints, but about the maximum possible approximation to the truth.

This is part of what Max Weber called "the disenchantment of the world", which is on the opposite side of idolatry. It's about releasing the truth for the sake of truth itself, not extracting images that are considered useful for the present.

1. Exquisite corpse

« The place is inhospitable
in times past and in the future
in the dim light».

T. S. Eliot,

"Burnt Norton"

Europe woke up to a frosty post-war dawn. The winter of 1947 was the coldest on record. She opened her front, passing through Germany, Italy, France, Britain, and from January to the end of March she led the offensive without any pity.

Snow fell in Saint-Tropez, storm winds caused impenetrable blizzards, floating ice reached the mouth of the Thames, food trains froze to the rails, barges carrying coal to Paris froze into the ice. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin was horrified by the frozen city, "abandoned, empty and dead, like an exquisite corpse."

Across Europe, water supplies, sewerage and most other public amenities ceased to function, food supplies dwindled, coal stocks fell to their lowest levels ever as miners struggled to get their hands on frozen hoists.

Short thaws were again followed by frosts, which fettered the canals and roads with a thick layer of ice. In Britain, the number of unemployed rose by one million in two months. State administration and industry are literally stuck in the snow and ice. It seemed that life itself was freezing: more than 4 million sheep and 30 thousand cows died.

Willy Brandt, the future chancellor, saw Berlin in the grip of a "new terror", the city most emblematic of the collapse of Europe. The terrible cold “attacked people like a wild beast, driving them into houses. But even there they found no respite. There were no glass in the window openings, they were hastily boarded up with boards and plaster panels. The walls and ceilings were full of cracks and holes, people stuffed them with paper and rags. Benches from the parks were used for heating ... old people and the sick froze to death in their beds by the hundreds.

As a last resort, each German family was given one tree for heating. At the beginning of 1946, the Berlin Zoo was already completely cut down, its statues stood in the middle of a wasteland, surrounded by frozen mud; in the winter of 1947, the forests in the famous Grunewald were destroyed. The blizzards that covered the ruins of the bombed-out city could not hide the terrible legacy of Hitler's maniacal dream of Germany. Berlin, like the destroyed Carthage, led to despair, cold, full of ghosts, defeated, conquered, occupied.

The weather was cruelly convincing of the physical reality of the Cold War, which was making its way into the new, post-Yalta topography of Europe, whose national territories were dismembered and the former composition of the population was forcibly changed. Allied occupation administrations in France, Germany, Austria and Italy struggled to manage the 13 million homeless, demobilized and displaced people.

The growing ranks of Allied administration personnel arriving in the occupied territories exacerbated the problem. Everything more people forced to leave their homes joined those who had already spent the night in public buildings, entrances, basements and bomb shelters. Clarissa Churchill former guest British Control Commission in Berlin, recalled that she was “protected both geographically and materially from the effects of the chaos and poverty that reigned in the city.

I walked around the warm bedroom in the former home of some Nazi, lay on the lace-trimmed sheets, studied his shelves of books - even these simple steps allowed me to feel the taste of the frenzied triumph of the conqueror, which, however, immediately disappeared, as soon as I took a short walk through the streets or visited an unheated German apartment.

For the winners, it was a dizzying time. In 1947, a box of American cigarettes cost 50 cents on an American military base, while on the black market it was valued at 1,800 Reichsmarks, which equaled $180 at the legal exchange rate.

For four packs of cigarettes, you could hire a German orchestra for an evening, and for twenty-four packs, you could buy a 1939 Mercedes-Benz. Penicillin and the Persilscheine (Whiter than White) certificates, which guaranteed the wearer had no Nazi ties, were the most expensive. Thanks to such economic miracles, ordinary soldiers from the working families of Idaho could live like new kings.

Lieutenant Colonel Victor Rothschild, the first British soldier to arrive in Paris on the day of his release as an unexploded bomb disposal specialist, reclaimed his family home on Rue Marigny, which had been taken by the Nazis. There he treated young intelligence officer Malcolm Muggeridge to vintage champagne.

The old family butler, who worked in the house and under the Germans, noticed that nothing had changed. Requisitioned by millionaire intelligence officer John Hay Whitney, the Ritz hosted David Bruce, a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald at Princeton University. Bruce, along with Ernest Hemingway and a whole army of liberators, sent the manager an order for 50 martini cocktails. Hemingway, like David Bruce, who served in the Office of Strategic Services - the American secret service during the war, settled in the Ritz with his bottles of whiskey and there, in an alcoholic haze, hosted the nervous Eric Blair (Eric Blair; aka George Orwell) and the more sedate Simone de Beauvoir (Simone de Beauvoir), along with her lover Jean-Paul Sartre (Jean-Paul Sartre; who, as he later wrote, got drunk and experienced the worst hangover of his life).

Philosopher and intelligence officer E.J. "Freddie" Ayer (A.J. "Freddie" Ayer), author of Language, Truth and Logic, became an easily recognizable person in Paris as he drove around with a chauffeur in a large Bugatti equipped with an army radio station. Artur Koestler and his girlfriend Mamaine Paget "dined poorly" with Andre Malraux on pancakes with caviar, salmon, vodka and souffle siberienne.

Again in Paris, Susan Mary Alsop, the young wife of an American diplomat, hosted parties in her "delightful house full of Aubusson carpets and good American soaps." But when she left the house, she met “only stern, exhausted and full of suffering faces. People had nothing to eat, except for those who could afford to buy food on the black market, and there weren't many of them there either.

Confectionery stores were empty, displaying, like Rumplemeier's, an artfully crafted cardboard cake or an empty chocolate box labeled "Model" and nothing else.

A shop window on the rue Faubourg-Saint-Honore might proudly display a pair of boots labeled "real leather" or "model" surrounded by hideous-looking things made of straw. Somehow, being not on the territory of the Ritz, I threw away a cigarette butt - and a well-dressed elderly gentleman immediately grabbed it.

Around the same time, the young composer Nikolai Nabokov, cousin of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, threw away his cigarette butt in the Soviet sector of Berlin: “As I walked back, a figure jumped out of the darkness and picked up the cigarette I had thrown.”

Since the super-race was busy scouring the dumpsters for cigarette butts, fuel and food, the ruins of the Führerbunker attracted little Berliners. But the Americans, who served in the military administration, on Saturdays explored the basements of the destroyed Reich Chancellery of Hitler with the help of flashlights and stole exotic finds: Romanian pistols, thick bundles of half-burned banknotes, iron crosses and other orders.

One looter opened a women's wardrobe and picked up several brass buttonholes from uniforms engraved with the Nazi eagle and the word Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery). Vogue photographer Lee Miller (Lee Miller), who was once the muse of Man Ray (Man Ray), posed dressed in the bathroom of a Nazi bunker.

However, the fun soon wore off. Divided into four sectors, like an observation post on a ship's mast in the middle of the sea of ​​Soviet-controlled territory, Berlin became a "traumatic Cold War synecdoche".

Working with ostentatious solidarity in the Allied Commandant's Office (Kommandatur) to "denazify" and "reorient" Germany, the four powers struggled against rising ideological winds that exposed the fragility of the international situation. “I felt no hostility towards the Soviets,” wrote Michael Josselson, an Estonian-Russian American officer. - At that time I was actually apolitical, and this made it very easy for me to maintain excellent personal relations with most Soviet officers whom I knew."

However, in addition to the “friendly” administration of the Soviet zone of influence, there was the reality of mass show trials and overcrowded camps in Russia itself, which severely tested the spirit of cooperation. In the winter of 1947, less than two years after American and Russian soldiers embraced on the banks of the Elbe, the relationship escalated into hostility.

"Only after Soviet policy became openly aggressive when reports of atrocities occurring in the Soviet zone of occupation began to appear daily ... and when Soviet propaganda became grossly anti-Western, then my political consciousness awakened, ”Josselson wrote.

The headquarters of the United States Military Administration was known as OMGUS (Office of Military Government US), and the Germans at first thought that this was the spelling of the word "bus" in English, since this abbreviation was painted on double-decker buses requisitioned by the Americans.

Time not occupied by spying on the other three powers, OMGUS officers spent at office desks littered with huge stacks of the ubiquitous Fragebogen (questionnaires) that every German job seeker had to fill out, answering questions about citizenship, religion, criminal record, education, professional qualifications, civil and military service, about what he wrote and what speeches he made, about income and property, trips abroad and, of course, about membership in political organizations.

Checking the entire population of Germany for the presence of even the slightest traces of "Nazism and militarism" was an inefficient bureaucratic undertaking. While a janitor could be blacklisted for sweeping the corridors of the Reich Chancellery, many Hitlerite industrialists, scientists, administrators, and even high-ranking officers were quietly returned to their places by the Allied authorities, who were desperately trying to save Germany from collapse.

For Michael Josselson, filling out endless forms was not the way to deal with the complex legacy of the Nazi regime. He took a different approach. “I didn’t know Josselson then, but I had heard of him,” recalled the philosopher Stuart Hampshire, then working for MI6 in London. - His fame spread through the secret communication channels of all European intelligence services.

He was a great master, a man who could take on any business. Any. If you wanted to cross the Russian border, which was almost impossible, Josselson could arrange it. If you needed Symphony Orchestra, Josselson could arrange it" ...

Of course, there were good reasons for resisting the Soviet Union, which was advancing rapidly along with the front.

In January, the communists came to power in Poland. There were rumors in Italy and France about a coup d'etat being prepared by the communists. Soviet strategists quickly learned to exploit the enormous potential for instability in post-war Europe. With energy and ingenuity showing that the Stalinist regime, for all its monolithic inflexibility, could pursue its goals with an impressive force unmatched by Western governments, the Soviet Union deployed a battery of special weapons designed to penetrate the minds of the Europeans and prepare their opinions. in your favor.

An extensive system of centers of influence was created, some new, some revived from the dormant state into which they fell after the death in 1940 of Willi Munzenberg, the head of the Kremlin's secret pre-war propaganda. Trade unions, women's organizations, youth groups, cultural institutions, the press, publishing houses have all been targeted.

With a great deal of experience in using culture as a weapon of political propaganda, the USSR did a great deal to make the cultural question central to the Cold War.

Deprived of the economic power of the United States and, more importantly, still lacking nuclear weapons, the Stalinist regime concentrated on achieving victory "in the battle for human minds." America, while engaging in massive arts cleanup during the New Deal, was inexperienced in international cultural struggles.

Back in 1945, one of the intelligence officers predicted the possibility of using unconventional tactics, which Moscow later mastered. “The invention of the atomic bomb has changed the balance between peaceful and belligerent methods of exerting international pressure,” he reported to the head of the Office of Strategic Services, General Donovan. “And we should expect a marked increase in the importance of peaceful methods.

Our enemies will be freer than ever to carry out propaganda, organize coups, subversions and other pressures on us, and we ourselves will try to tolerate these challenges and indulge these methods - in our desire to avoid the tragedy of open war at all costs; peaceful techniques will become more effective in calm pre-war times, relevant in times of open war and post-war manipulations.

This report demonstrates his foresight. He proposes a definition of the Cold War as a psychological confrontation, the possibility of achieving positive results by peaceful means, the use of propaganda to weaken the positions of the enemy. And, as the open “sally” to East Berlin fully demonstrated, culture has become an operational weapon. The Cold War on the cultural front has begun.

So, in the midst of the general degradation, the artificial cultural life was tethered at the feet of the occupying forces as they competed with each other for propaganda points. As early as 1945, “when the stench of human corpses still hung over the ruins,” the Russians staged a brilliant opening of the State Opera with a production of Gluck’s Orpheus in the beautifully lit, red-velvet upholstered Admiral Palast.

Chunky, buff-lined Russian colonels glared at the American military administration with a haughty smirk as they watched a production of Eugene Onegin or an anti-fascist interpretation of Rigoletto together, the music punctuated by the tinkle of medals.

One of Josselson's first assignments was to find and deliver several thousand costumes belonging to the former German State Opera (the only serious rival of the Russian State Opera), which were carefully stored by the Nazis at the bottom of a salt mine, now in the American zone of occupation.

One dreary, rainy day, Josselson and Nabokov went to get their suits. On the way back to Berlin, Josselson's jeep, which was ahead of Nabokov's requisitioned Mercedes, crashed into a Soviet checkpoint at full speed. Josselson, unconscious and covered in cuts and bruises, was sent to a Russian military hospital, where Soviet female doctors sewed up his wounds.

When he was well enough, Josselson returned to his apartment in the American zone, which he shared with aspiring actor Peter van Eyck (Peter van Eyck). If the Soviet doctors had not taken care of him, Josselson might not have survived and become the Diaghilev of American anti-Soviet cultural propaganda. The Soviet Union saved a man who, over the next two decades, did a great deal to frustrate the USSR's attempts to establish cultural hegemony.

In 1947, the Russians fired another "volley", opening the House of Culture on Unter den Linden. This event struck with the splendor of one of the employees of the British Ministry of Culture, who enviously reported that the event "exceeded everything that the other Allies had done, and completely overshadowed our miserable attempts in this field ...

The interior was the most luxurious - good furniture, many of which are antique, carpets in every room, magnificent chandeliers, almost melting and all newly painted ... the Russians simply requisitioned everything they wanted ... there was a bar and a smoking room ... which, with its soft carpets and chandeliers, looked most inviting, almost chic...

This grand cultural event will reach the broad masses and will do a great deal to neutralize the generally accepted idea here that the Russians are uncivilized. Their latest initiative will simply crush - so much as to sensitively hurt our interests, and the possibility of our influence is very small: one information center and several reading rooms, which should already be closed due to lack of coal! ..

This entry of the Russians into the cultural struggle should spur us on to implement the same bold plan in return for the sake of achieving new successes for Britain here in Berlin.

While the British were in need of coal to heat the reading room, the Americans plucked up the courage to take the step back by opening the American House (Amerika-Hauser). Designed as "outposts of American culture," these establishments provided shelter from the harsh weather in comfortable, furnished reading rooms where films were shown, music was performed, lectures were given and art exhibitions- all with "America as the main theme".

In a speech entitled "Climbing Out of the Debris," the Director of Education and Cultural Relations outlined the epic scope of their task to American Home workers: "There are few people who would be honored to be part of the a mission more important, more promising, or fraught with greater difficulties than yours.

You have made it your goal to help achieve the intellectual, moral, spiritual and cultural reorientation of defeated, conquered and occupied Germany." However, he further remarked that “despite the enormous contribution made by America in the field of culture, it is still not recognized even in Germany, as well as in the rest of the world. Our culture is considered materialistic, and one can often hear the saying: "We have skill and brains, but you have money."

Largely due to Russian propaganda, America was presented to the world as a cultural desert, a nation of gum-chewing, Chevrolet-driving, DuPont-clad townsfolk, and the American House did a lot to change this negative stereotype. “One thing is absolutely clear,” wrote an enthusiastic American House administrator, “the printed materials brought here from the United States ... will leave a strong impression among those circles in Germany who for generations considered America culturally backward, and among those who condemned the whole of for the shortcomings of individual parts.

Old clichés based on the historical "prejudice about America's cultural backwardness have been shattered by the program" good books"and those circles that were previously dismissive are now reportedly very impressed."

Some clichés proved particularly difficult to discard. When one of the lecturers at the American House expressed his point of view about " current situation Negroes in America,” questions rained down on him, some of which “were not dictated good will". The lecturer "began to decisively figure out which of the speakers could be a communist."

Fortunately for the organizers, immediately after the lecture, “the performance of the “colored” quintet began. The Negroes continued to sing long after the official end of the event, and ... the impression from this performance remained so favorable that it was decided to invite this Negro group to a second performance.

The problem of racial relations in the United States was actively exploited by Soviet propaganda, and many Europeans were in doubt about America's ability to put into practice the democracy that it now declaratively brought to the whole world. The uprisings of African Americans in Europe were meant to dispel these devastating fears.

From the book by F.S. Saunders The CIA and the art world. Cultural Front of the Cold War”.

Translation of mixednews

Call of Duty: Black Ops throws players right into the thick of things at the height of the Cold War - but this isn't the first fictional scenario to play off the conflicts of that period. Let's look back and look at notable examples of how the Cold War was portrayed in the film industry, on television and in books.

The United States emerged from World War II as the champion of democracy and the free capitalist market. It didn't take long for another philosophy, however, to challenge American dominance—the embers of war were still cooling when the second conflict that would define the course of the second half of the 20th century, the Cold War, broke out.

Between the United States and the Soviet Union is not the only example of such a conflict in world history (England and France during the American Revolution were in a state of cold war). But only the dismantling of the philosophies of the USA and the USSR earned capital letters in its name (in the USA, unlike Russia, the Cold War is always denoted only in capital letters; approx. mixednews), and are now known to us as the “Cold War”.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

The next part of the Call of Duty game takes place during the Cold War. The major military conflict of the time was the Vietnam War, where US and Soviet proxies fought each other until America entered the war. But the Cold War is more than the tearing apart of capitalism and communism that took place in the jungle South-East Asia. The Cold War influenced events around the world, as well as the media (on both sides). And these films, shows and books give us the best idea of ​​what is the backdrop for the next part of the Call of Duty game.

The United States and the Soviet Union have never encountered each other on the battlefield (the author apparently does not know what they encountered, but with mutual losses - for example, in Korean War; approx. mixed news). But the two countries confronted each other with their proxies of trust. There have been several proxy conflicts between the US and the Soviet Union in the Middle East—the Arab wars against Israel, the Iraqi-Iranian War, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

There were other cases as well. For example, the CIA-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953, when efforts were made to stop communism from taking root. You can also remember the coup in Iran. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, ran Operation Ajax as "James Lockridge" while playing tennis at the Turkish embassy. As Countercoup writes: The Fight to Take Control of Iran nearly collapsed when he called himself “Ah, Roosevelt” in court. He fought back by telling a fable that the Republicans allegedly use the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a curse.

The Western world is still dealing with the aftermath of the Iranian coup, and such proxy wars in the Middle East led to a loss of confidence in the US and laid the foundation for the 1979 Islamic revolution. They also led the US to support one despot, the Shah of Iran, against another, Saddam Hussein. The disorganization in Afghanistan after the Soviet occupation has provided fertile ground for Al Qaeda and the current wars we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the Call of Duty: Black Ops style combat took place in Vietnam, the defining conflict of the Cold War. The Battle of Hue, which was part of the Tet Offensive in 1968, is well documented in films, literature, and games, playing a role in Black Ops. As one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War, it was meant to be. Stanley Kubrick's full metal vest explores the battle through the eyes of young Marines. Based on the book A Short Working Day, Full Metal Vest captures the brutality of the conflict.

Another war was fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia. These actions went beyond the bombing of Laos and Cambodia by order of President Richard Nixon. Echoes of the conflict in Laos, known as the Secret War, can be seen in the film Apocalypse Now, which some see as the film that defines the Vietnam War era. Director Francis Ford Coppola denied that the role of the maniac Colonel Kurtz is not based on the story of Anton Poshchepny (Tony Poe), an American military agent who trained the Hmong forces in Laos to fight the North Vietnamese and Laotian communists. Coppola said Kurtz was "based on" Colonel Robert Ralt, the Green Beret's commanding officer in Vietnam. Both America and its culture are still dealing with the aftermath of the Secret War. Many Hmong came to the US after the war, and you can see their plight as they try to fit into American society and maintain their culture in Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino.

Dr. Strangelove: or how I learned not to worry and love the atomic bomb, by Stanley Kubrick, is arguably the best political satire of the 20th century. The film plays on the nuclear arms race, people who have to wait out Armageddon in a safe haven, doomsday machines, and the use of Nazi scientists in the development of the American nuclear program.

And the world came very close to a nuclear conflict - the Cuban crisis. Depicted in films such as Thirteen Days (the film itself is not based on a book by Robert Kennedy, but on a recording of Kennedy: Inside the White House during the Cuban Crisis), the standoff ended in an amicable decision when both countries retreated, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles from Cuba, and USA - from Italy and Turkey. The crisis led to the creation of a "hot line", a link between the US and the USSR, known in popular culture as the "red phone". The Cuban Missile Crisis inspired such works as Dr. Strangelove, Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe, a more realistic, fictional film about nuclear conflict. It is sometimes said that the Cuban crisis and the threat of nuclear annihilation inspired the developers to create the Fallout series of games.

» Soviet propaganda

© O.A. Kostereva

The Image of the Enemy in the Russian Political Culture of the Cold War Period
Experience in visual source analysis

The image of the enemy in the context of the Cold War seems rather promising topic for studying. The entire historiography of the Cold War focuses mainly on the study of events political history. But we must not forget that any political event, especially such a significant phenomenon as the Cold War, finds its place in political culture.

Through propaganda, the image of this or that phenomenon enters the public consciousness and forms the corresponding attitude of society. In this sense, visual propaganda has a very powerful potential for influencing society. In the Soviet state, it was primarily a poster, in which all the symbols were embodied Soviet era. The theme of the "cold war" in the poster is given significant place throughout the duration of the confrontation. There were whole albums with posters, dedicated to events foreign policy, presented in the genre of political caricature. First of all, it is necessary to single out such masters of this type of creativity as the brilliant triad of Kukryniksy: Kupriyanov M.V., Krylov P.N. and Sokolov N.A. Their cartoons were also published in the Crocodile magazine, which was very popular. This source provides rich material for historical analysis: it is possible to single out the mechanisms of formation of the image of the enemy and see this image itself. By the image of the enemy, in this case, we mean: who is the enemy for us, what qualities does he have and what does it mean for the state and society in a certain period of time. The image exists, firstly, in propaganda, and, secondly, as a result of this propaganda, in the public consciousness. It is extremely difficult to analyze public consciousness, but propaganda, even under the conditions of a totalitarian state, is created by representatives of society, therefore, by the image presented in the press, one can judge the attitude of the authorities and, in part, society to any problem. A historiographic precedent for such an analysis has been created: this the work of S. Keane “Faces of the Enemy. Reflections on the image”, published in 1986 in New York. The book is dedicated to the image of the enemy in the political caricature of the 20th century. The study was carried out within the framework of the historical and psychological approach. The author, relying on the works of K.G. Jung, prescribes his methodology in detail, highlighting the archetypes of the image of the enemy. The archetype of the enemy has many hypostases: a stranger, an aggressor, a non-believer, a barbarian, an invader, a criminal, a rapist. This approach works when it comes to the collective image of the enemy, in front of which society rallies in danger. Very often, real political opponents are portrayed, and then you need to portray them in such a way as to emphasize the superiority of your own political leadership. For this, the depiction of historical figures in the form of animals or mythological characters is very often practiced. Thus, the author gives us an analysis tool. Unfortunately, this work is still the only one of its kind. The subject of my research is the image of the enemy in Kukryniksa's album "The Delusional Anglo-Americanizers", published in 1951. The purpose of my research is to analyze the collection as an element of influence on public consciousness during the period of late Stalinism. Within the framework of this goal, the following tasks can be distinguished: to establish the characteristic features of the image of the enemy (to understand who the enemy is for us and why he is dangerous for us) and to identify the degree of relationship between the image of the enemy and the real political content. A single concept-forming idea of ​​the collection: "America is to blame for everything." America attacks the UN: "By the Sweat" cartoon depicts a tree (UN) being sawed down by Dulles and Marshall through the creation of an Interim Committee. America is credited with a connection with the Nazis: dollar signs and a swastika are present on all enemies of the Soviet Union. The caricature "New Year's Divination" is very indicative, where Truman, looking in the mirror, sees Hitler. The idea is clear: Truman is today's Hitler. De Gaulle is also presented in the role of a fascist (cartoon "Another candidate for Fuhrer"). This idea is continued in the theme of war. America prepares for war: numerous images of nuclear weapons with dollar signs. And everyone else helps her: Churchill, together with Dulles, in the form of a nuclear missile, rush across the sea to Europe from the coast of America (“American Defense”). Churchill is depicted, as a rule, with a forehead in the form of bricks - this is the embodiment of perseverance and stubbornness that characterizes the English Prime Minister. The collection also reflects the devaluation of the pound sterling ("Duel", "At the bedside", "The offensive of the pound against the dollar") . The pound sterling in the famous cartoon "Wall Haircut" is depicted as a lion being sheared by Americans. England and the British were very often portrayed as the king of beasts - after all, this animal is a symbol of Great Britain. After the break with Yugoslavia, Tito ended up in the camp of the "imperialists" ("Viper's Nest"). In Spain, at the end of the 1940s, according to the United States, there were tendencies towards democratization - the collection illustrates the position of the USSR on this issue: in the caricature "Democracy" of Franco's executioner, the dictator in the form of a snake wraps around a Spanish worker, which can mean "What were you [Fascist], that's how you remained." "The Marshall Plan" was also reflected in the collection. The cartoons "Rider with Satellite", depicting the entry of the Crisis in the form of death along with the "Marshall Plan" into Europe, and "The distribution of credit under the" Marshall Plan ", carried the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe threat to the economies of Western Europe from this project. Such an interpretation was supposed to explain the USSR's refusal to participate in this action. The balance of power in the world, as it was represented in the USSR, is best characterized by the caricature "New Year's fortune-telling." In the center of the composition is a fortuneteller - Acheson (who played a significant role in the creation of NATO), in line for the fortuneteller are: Bevin and Attlee (England), Georges Bidault (France), de Gasperi (Italy) and Spaak (Belgium). Another "sculptural group": Truman, sitting in an armchair made of Adenauer and Franco, guesses on the mirror and sees Hitler instead of his own reflection (Tito - as a footstool). In the corner are those who are preparing the war: Eisenhower, Ridgway, MacArthur, Churchill, Montgomery and Chiang Kai-shek. Above them is the ghost of Forrestal, who has gone mad and thrown out of a window. Finally, Tojo is depicted separately, holding his head in his hands, a reminder of the verdict of the military tribunal. Next to him is Yoshida, his anti-Soviet heir. This cartoon continues the idea of ​​the United States as a force directing the outbreak of a new war. The USSR, on the other hand, is a fierce fighter for peace: the poster "Stop preparing a new war" depicts a Soviet worker who stops the hand of American imperialism with an atomic bomb, presenting the signatures of millions of fighters for peace. This is the only example where the Soviet Union appears in the collection. It is very significant that the USSR appears in a generalized image - it is easier to form a positive image on depersonalized material. The analysis allows us to state that there is a certain degree of correlation between the content of the cartoons and the real political situation, but all events are given a powerful figurative emphasis, which forms a certain emotional predetermined , which gives rise to a feeling of confidence in the ability to resist the enemy. Thus, a system of mythologemes is created that successfully functions in political culture, and caricature is one of the most powerful mechanisms for the formation of certain images. In the system of myths constantly broadcast by Soviet propaganda, a special role was played by the myth that in case of war we could counter attack. In the late 40s - early 50s. most of society had a very vague idea of ​​the lethal potential of nuclear weapons. And this fact was actively used by the authorities. On the example of the cartoon of this collection, it can be seen that the attributes of a Soviet person called to fight for peace are, firstly, “the signatures of millions of fighters for peace”, and, secondly, his labor hands. As a rule, such an approach gives rise to moods of hatred, which, in a situation of a real collision with the enemy, quickly disappear and give way to another feeling - complete despair, which leads to the inability to do anything. Therefore, it is very important to take into account the image in which this or that political event enters the culture. O.A. Kostereva, Russian State University for the Humanities, Faculty of History, Political Science and Law.