Quote Originally Posted by Deborski View Post
It was all made up, Eric! That was not really Soviet propaganda. It was a White House briefing full of faked stuff.
It wasn't ALL made up or faked. Arguably, it was unfairly selective -- in that more positive discussions of the US in the Soviet media were omitted -- but a "lie of omission" is different from "fakery."

As for Soviet propaganda about America, didn't you ever read Крокодил?
...
This one, for example about sums up the corruption in DC...
Speaking of "lies of admission," I'd say that the Krokodil cartoon is only half-accurate, insofar as it does portray the real problem of corporate cronyism (as represented by the captions "Льготы монополиям" and "для миллионеров").

However, corporate lobbying does not nearly begin to "sum up" the varieties of corruption in DC. Corruption also occurs in populist lobbies representing blue-collar labor and various minority groups; and pork-barrel spending that creates jobs in low-income states by building bridges may be called "corruption" if it turns out that the bridges weren't really needed. But corruption of that type had analogous forms that existed in Soviet politics -- so it was "safer" for Krokodil to focus on a type of political corruption that was more or less unique to America and other Western countries, namely, multi-billion-dollar corporations "buying" special favors from the government.

In short, the Krokodil cartoon is a lot more accurate than, say, the National Lampoon cartoon that portrayed sex-starved Soviet women lining up to buy dildo-vibrators that were made of reinforced concrete and powered by diesel motors. But, at the same time, the Krokodil cartoon presents a somewhat oversimplified picture of the swamp that is DC -- and, more to the point, it simplifies the picture in a "Долой капитализм!" way that reflects the political biases of the editors. (Or, perhaps, the political biases of the bosses who signed the editors' paychecks!).