Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
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. =))
It was all made up, Eric! That was not really Soviet propaganda. It was a White House briefing full of faked stuff.

As for Soviet propaganda about America, didn't you ever read Крокодил? I have a stack of issues dating back to the Brezhnev and Krushchev eras and they actually pointed out the flaws with capitalism fairly accurately. In fact, I was leafing through some of them recently and it struck me that the cartoons in them are still quite relevant today. In fact, maybe especially relevant.

This one, for example about sums up the corruption in DC...




But where America really "out did" the Soviets was in our movies. All the movies like Red Dawn which portrayed Russians with such bad stereotypes that to this day, a majority of Americans still cling to them! In American movies, Russians seem to fit into one of three categories:

1. Evil Russky
2. Cannon Fodder
3. Comic Relief

For more about America's bad stereotypes of Russians, these articles are helpful:

Russian Stereotypes: Western perception of Russia as seen through Russian’s eyes. Part I. | Russian Universe

Representation of Russia(ns) in Western Popular Culture: Klyukvification and Russian Character Types. | Russian Universe


The USSR never created movies with such terrible stereotypes about Americans, at least none that I ever saw. In fact most of their movies were based on literary works or сказки.

American propaganda is the best in the world, but personally that is not a fact I am proud of.