Cold War Propaganda

Report Outline
Soviet-Free World Propaganda Rivalry
Record of Reds in Use of Propaganda
Propaganda Efforts in the Free World

Soviet-Free World Propaganda Rivalry

Propaganda in the Competition for Leadership

Violent demonstrations against Vice President Nixon during his good-will tour of Latin America, sacking of United States information centers by mobs in the Middle East, and rapid worsening of the situation in Algeria have afforded a field day for Communist propagandists. Exploitation by the Soviet propaganda machine of these and other Western embarrassments following closely upon several world propaganda successes for the United States. These had been preceded by a series of notable propaganda victories for the Russians. Anti-United States demonstrations, particularly in Latin America, have been laid at least in part to inadequacies of the American propaganda effort.

Re-examination of Western propaganda operations and values was made urgently necessary when the Soviet Union scored a propaganda triumph last autumn by launching the first earth satellite. That event not only enhanced Russia's scientific prestige but also indicated that it had gone further in missile development than had been supposed. The result was to increase uneasiness among peoples close to the shadow of Soviet power and make them more ready than formerly to grasp at plans, however imperfect and dangerous, that seemed to give hope of warding off nuclear holocaust. Some Western leaders were thus put under obligation to make their own peoples aware of pitfalls in Soviet proposals as well as to combat the effects of Red propaganda among peoples not directly lined up in the East-West struggle.

The cold war has been described as basically a contest for men's minds, and countries of the free world have found that ideals of freedom do not always speak for themselves among ignorant and poverty-stricken masses. Communists long have been ardent battlers for the minds of all peoples. Nikita S. Khrushchev declared in a television interview broadcast in the United States on June 2, 1957, that the ideological struggle—the competition between Socialism and capitalism—was “a battle of ideas,” and that “Victory is insured for the idea which will be stronger, more viable, and which will be supported by the people.”