Thread: About Cold War and more

Originally Posted by rockzmom

I think this is the idea that my generation and my girl's generation has been raised with.

Yup. So, no sane US officer would dare to start a nuclear war having that thought in mind. (And it was broadly assumed that the US was doing the same kind of screening and testing to ensure only the sane and psychologically stable officers were in command of the strategic weapons.) If the US would not be directly attacked, the US would most likely not intervene with a very quick war in Europe. So, the USSR had never really planned to INVADE the US. (The Red Dawn was never to happen! ) The US Army was never really thought as a primary opponent (except for the limited contingent in Europe). As far as I remember, the first and foremost "possible enemy" for the Soviet Army was the Bundeswehr as the most able military opponent.

Originally Posted by rockzmom

I think this is the idea that my generation and my girl's generation has been raised with. I clearly remember the movie War Games. "The only winning move is not to play

I remember that too! It was a very good film.

And when it comes to who was right or wrong in the cold war, I am glad that I was never forced to take sides and made to think that one of the sides were good and the other bad. Things were considereably less black and white back in those days.

Some things were clearly more attractive about the USA, and some things about the USSR were admirable or nice too. And there were some very unattractive sides to both countries.

Plus, seeing TV and films from both sides made a difference too, but towards the end of the cold war, there was definitely a dominance of American material.

All through the 1990s there was a sort of ideological and power vacuum politically, where Communism had simply disappeared. Confusion for some, economic misery for some - a missionary fields, endless new markets and political allies for others.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

The cartoon version by "Узбекфильм" studios, crucially, retains the suburban-California setting of the original (instead of relocating it to, say, the reuins of a futuristic Odessa suburb!), and therefore the cartoon-skeletons that Soviet audiences saw crumbling to dust are the bodies of dead Americans, rather than dead Soviets. However, this isn't simply a case of the director trying to be completely faithful to the source, because the cartoon also adds some elements NOT found in Bradbury's story, such as a laser-shooting "Automatic Defense Robot" and a robotic "cuckoo clock" that plays the US national anthem and waves a little US flag (those damned American capitalists -- warmongers and jingoists to the end!).

So, there is a little bit of "Soviet propaganda" in the cartoon adaptation

Hmmm... I don't see it as intentional/additional propaganda. Bradbury was extremely popular in the USSR, and I think that relocating the setting to some Soviet suburb would've seemed weird to his fans and a bigger propagandistic "trick", i.e. a hint (among other theories), that the evil you-know-who attacked us and destroyed our cities.
Also I did not expect that a cuckoo clock which played an American anthem and waved a flag would be seen as "Soviet propaganda" from American POV. It did not exist in the original (so yes, there was an agenda behind adding it), but Americans are proud of their patriotism, are they not? )

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Hmmm... I don't see it as intentional/additional propaganda. Bradbury was extremely popular in the USSR, and I think that relocating the setting to some Soviet suburb would've seemed weird to his fans and a bigger propagandistic "trick", i.e. a hint (among other theories), that the evil you-know-who attacked us and destroyed our cities.
Also I did not expect that a cuckoo clock which played an American anthem and waved a flag would be seen as "Soviet propaganda" from American POV. It did not exist in the original (so yes, there was an agenda behind adding it), but Americans are proud of their patriotism, are they not? )

Certainly, we're proud of our patriotism, but a flag-waving cuckoo clock seems like a heavy-handed and unrealistic caricature of patriotism. (Also, our flag-waving tends to be on July 4th and a few other national holidays, such as Memorial Day, which is on the last Monday of May -- but the cartoon is set on New Year's Eve, when flag-waving and anthem-playing is not customary.) On the other hand, perhaps it's pointless to complain about an "unrealistic" caricature in a cartoon that features a robot-butler with laser beams!

But it's an excellent point you made that, if the cartoon had showed a destroyed Soviet city, that could also be seen as anti-US propaganda, blaming America for the attack. (Although I think it's implied in the original story and in the cartoon that the destruction was mutual and global, and thus blame is pointless because there's no one left to point fingers at, and also no one left with fingers to point!)

There were a number of really creepy books about a post nuclear war society which perhaps some remember? One that I remember one was about animals that lived in a Russian town after all the people had died in a nuclear war. The animals tried to understand what happened, and in the process made some wise observations about the madness of an arms race.

The general scenario reminds me of the famous cartoon short Peace on Earth (MGM, 1939), which was remade by Hanna-Barbera in 1955 as Good Will to Men. Needless to say, the remake was deeply concerned with the threat of nuclear annihilation, while the original was still concerned with mustard gas and other "high-tech terror weapons" of the First World War. As the wikipedia article notes, the remake made more direct references to the Christian Bible than the original one did, perhaps reflecting 1950s paranoia about Soviet atheism. But otherwise, the plots are the same -- humans are extinct, and cute little cartoon animals try to understand what happened.

But wikipedia doesn't say anything about the original cartoon being based on a book, whether set in Russia or elsewhere. But both versions of the cartoon are available on YouTube, and worth watching (they're under 10 minutes each).

Война во Вьетнаме. Танец со смертью.

Published on Aug 8, 2012 by KiryhaS


Документальный фильм о русских ракетчиках, воевавших во Вьетнаме.
В фильме о войне рассказывают советские, американские и вьетнамские военные.

Очень интересный фильм! Спасибо.