Deconstructing the American way of life: Soviet responses to cultural exchange and American information activity during the Khrushchev years

Under the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union expanded cultural relations with several different foreign countries. While the government controlled all international cultural policy, a more open relationship with the USSR's primary rival, the United States, presented a special challenge to Soviet officials. The Soviet government faced a dilemma in its desire to expand cultural contacts with the U.S. while seeking to insulate the Soviet people against the very ideas that would penetrate the iron curtain through exchange. As this dissertation shows, Soviet officials attempted to solve this dilemma by molding its own image of America for the people of the USSR. In other words, those ideas which the State Department wanted to present, an entire image of the "American way of life" being sold around the world in the post-war years, could be countered in the Soviet Union with propaganda to the contrary. In this way, the Soviet government used anti-American propaganda, often a specific response to U.S. claims about life in America, as a form of damage control.; Of course, the Soviet image of America would contrast sharply with the official American image presented by the United States Information Agency (USIA). For example, while U.S. officials continually pushed the idea that everyone enjoyed equal opportunity in America, not just party members, Soviet propagandists pointed out the hypocrisies of a system in which racism prevented non-whites from taking advantage of the supposed opportunities. When USIA, the branch of government within the State Department charged with "telling America's story to the world," held exhibits pointing to the benefits of "people's capitalism," the Soviets quickly pointed to unemployment statistics and the problems encountered by average workers in the U.S. who had no guarantees of health care or other forms of social security when they fell on hard times. In this way, the Soviet government constantly sought, mainly through printed media, to deconstruct the image of the "American way of life" so consistently presented by the USIA.