Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
Reposting a YouTube video that someone linked here a couple years ago -- it's a short film produced by the CIA as a briefing for President Reagan before his visit to the USSR, and purports to show "What the Soviet Media Say About America." (Keep in mind as you watch that it was not originally produced for the general public or for use in school classrooms -- it was a briefing for the White House. In other words, it's supposed to be "objective, accurate, and balanced," and was not actually intended to be anti-Soviet propaganda -- even if it seems that way.)



Two key quotes:

1:50


8:20


In fairness, I suppose that the "Miss America" pageant technically counts as a representation of America's middle class -- although this may or may not have been apparent to Soviet viewers.

PS. Don't miss the gibberish Cyrillic at 1:30 -- nice work there, CIA-tards! :fool"
That is a very interesting video. It causes mixed feelings, but the primary one is, "darn, it doesn't even take freedom of press to be made and shown to the public!" xD The Soviet propaganda failed to dig out any real problem the U.S. had at that point, and instead it was "exposing" the same naive and foolish stereotypes (racism, militarism, the anti-commie policies, etc.) over and over again. I think even most of the Soviets who watched it didn't believe it, as they were starting to learn more about the "evil capitalism" on their own. (whatever it sounds like, that 1.5 mile long line before the Soviet only McDonald's kind of proved that).

Now, was anything like that video, exposing the "America's view on the USSR" broadcasted to the public in the USSR? It seems not, for the Soviet authorities were really afraid of speaking aloud about any hypothetic problem that country might've had, not to mention the real problems they had, that could've easily been exposed. That was the reason anything that diverged from "everything's super awesome in our communist state" was banned from any media sources. If I'm being incorrect here, please share a proof link, anyone. =))