A question for the former Soviets/Warsaw pacters

[Zor]

This is just something i have been curious about.

This is directed at all the people who lived in either the Soviet Union or the Warsaw pact states. How was the western world (europe, japan, Canada, the United States) depicted by the media and generally veiwed in said countries?

Zor

[Hugh]

In Romania, the media always insisted on the arms race craze and how bad that was. "For the price of one strategic bomber you could build hundreds of schools", and things like that. I don't remember what else they used to say. But the people always saw the Western world as an utopia. Which is no surprise, as few Romanians were able to go there, usually as tourists, and as such they saw very little.

Funnily enough, for us the symbol of the Western prosperity was the VCR and whatever tapes could be smuggled in. I'm not sure why, as home computers and music also came from there, and they were more plentiful. Oh wait...

[K. A. Pital]

We in the USSR usually didn't hear much about "the West" whatsoever.

If we (USSR and the West) entered a political crisis, then the papers usually lambasted "guddamn imperialists", like in those papers I have from Vietnam times. With that, usually the accent was put that the nations of European/American countries do not want war and want to be in peace, so that the governments of said nations are creating local wars against the will of their population (especially during Vietnam).

Usually the TV also centered on the West developing newer and better weapons and the arms race, as well as imperialist interventions throughout the world - if that happened. Mostly it centered on lambasting the USA and NATO as potential enemies and rivals of the Soviet bloc. Europe on the other hand wasn't paid much attention (save it's participation in NATO).

The West wasn't demonized, but it was depicted as a militaristic bloc. I still remember that "NATO - the militarist-agressive bloc" movie which detailed NATO interventionist actions, NATO weapons and NATO army groups on the border of the Warsaw Pact.

For 90% of time, nothing was said about the West. 90% of papers wrote about the events inside the Union, not outside it. The Soviet government chose to ignore the West as if it doesn't exist at all. Several movies about Western spies acting inside th USSR were made, but that was all.

During the 1991 frenzy a rather substantial part of the population thought that the West is "heaven on earth", the large mass of people were ambivalent and thought that the Cold War ended. There was no general emotion towards the West in 1991, but people viewed (and still view) these countries as partners.

[PeZook]

Heh...heheheheheh...

It was pretty hilarious actually, but depended on the times.

At the start of the PRL, the media were in "Paranoia mode". Did you know Americans dropped potato beetles from airplanes to destroy our crops? Yeah, pretty amazing stuff, eh?

Then it was pretty much as Stas Bush said - agressive NATO, decadence, corruptive influence on our youth. There were a lot of comparisons of living standards of workers in the West and in the PRL.

At the end, the media lowered their tune a bit. Lots of people thought the West wasn't as bad, and since people were becoming more and more disillusioned with the system, I guess they decided not to irritate them.

[Hugh]

I remembered one other thing. Back then, Japan was highly regarded, both in the media and the public opinion, as the most technologically advanced country in the world. I guess Japan wasn't really seen as a Western country. And of course, science and technology were held in high esteem in communist Romania.

[K. A. Pital]

I remembered one other thing. Back then, Japan was highly regarded, both in the media and the public opinion, as the most technologically advanced country in the world. I guess Japan wasn't really seen as a Western country.

Oh, that was cool with us too Broadcasts about Japan's advances in robotechnics, developing advanced particle physics. Yeah, Japan and oceanic Asia were like OK (probably because they were not in the NATO?).

What is even more interesting, China. In the 1960's and early 1970s there were several articles in the press that China is "acting against the socialist movement and is an unwilling agent of U.S. imperialism". By the 1980, however, the tone of articles changed. And China was taking a very, very small amount of mass-media information in the USSR since the times of the Split.

As for worker comparisons, I distinctly remember that our media focused on the Third World (Latin America) much more than the West. It was pretty much accepted since Khrushov that the West had higher standards of life and was more rich, while we were "running up to them". So instead of taking the West, the Soviet media centered on the horrible conditions in Latin America, Asia, Africa.

During the 1960-1970, the Soviet media was paying much attention to the racial segregation in America, just as it had paid attention to Apartheid, and generally the Soviet media often accused the West of racism, counterimposing the image of "brotherly socialist nations" which don't have racist policies and all nationalities have equal rights.

[PeZook]

As for worker comparisons, I distinctly remember that our media focused on the Third World (Latin America) much more than the West. It was pretty much accepted since Khrushov that the West had higher standards of life and was more rich, while we were "running up to them". So instead of taking the West, the Soviet media centered on the horrible conditions in Latin America, Asia, Africa.

I remember that there was a lot of emphasis on how an employers could freely exploit his workers in the evil, decadent West here, while our workers had it all - they could get a flat for free, enjoy cultural infrastructure and medical care et al.

I don't remember hearing much about the third world, though.

[K. A. Pital]

What, no one said about opressed colonial nations in Latin America? That's strange, we got the "America's conveyor of dictators" and "exploiters" description regarding the regimes of South America

[PeZook]

What, no one said about opressed colonial nations in Latin America? That's strange, we got the "America's conveyor of dictators" and "exploiters" description regarding the regimes of South America

It may be that I just don't remember that. I was born in 1983, so most of what I know before comes from my parents and from historical shows and books. I did post a picture a while back of a factory rally "supporting" the fighting Vietnamese nation, though

I wrote "supporting" in quotes because the workers weren't all that enthusiastic

[Oscar Wilde]

America is quite known for the anti-communism sentiments during the Cold War. My question is, were/are there feelings like that in the Soviet Union?

[K. A. Pital]

A good place where this has been discussed by board Eastern bloc people

I would be grateful if a moderator with greater Offtopic powers would merge that OT thread with this one.