Mind-Munitions

262
Propaganda in the Age of Total War and Cold War
for Russian audiences. As the popular singer, Bing Crosby, said on
one fund-raising film shown in America’s cinemas:
I want to tell you something I found out over in Europe. We’ve got
plenty of good friends behind the Iron Curtain – probably 50 or 60
million of them. Naturally, they’re not Russians, they’re not communists.
They’re freedom-loving peoples in the captive countries who
refuse to believe the big red lies the commies tell them. And do you
know why they don’t believe those lies? It’s because we, you and I and
millions of other private US citizens have found a way to pierce the
Iron Curtain with the truth. And that way is Radio Free Europe, the
most powerful weapon in the Crusade for Freedom. You know we’re
actually helping to prevent World War Three. But that way takes
dollars. Truth dollars. All we can spare.
In fact, public subscription alone proved insufficient to subsidize
this campaign, and so the CIA decided to back it secretly. Ronald
Reagan, then best known as a Hollywood ‘B’ movie actor who had
done his bit to weed out communists from Hollywood, added his
support: ‘The Campaign for Freedom is your chance and mine to
fight communism. Join now by sending your contributions … or
join in your local communities’. It emerged much later that,
together, Radio Liberty, the VOA, the BBC World Service and
German service Deutsche Welle were collectively nicknamed ‘The
Voices’ by the KGB.
With the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union also experienced
a significant domestic propaganda campaign in the form of
Khrushchev’s ‘de-Stalinization’ programme and his denunciation
of the former leader’s ‘cult of personality’. This chiefly took the
form of expanding the system of political education from around 4
million pupils in 1953 to just under 40 million at the time of
Khrushchev’s dismissal in 1964 to create the ‘New Soviet Man’.
Sporting prowess assumed a new significance in international competitions
such as the Olympic Games and even chess tournaments.
This remained a considerable factor in demonstrating national
prestige, with the Soviets even recruiting athlete-soldiers to test the
limits of human endurance not just on earth but, later, in space. In
1967, they launched the Cosmonauts Number Zero project to
participate in medical experiments. Likewise, Soviet prowess in
medical achievements was a key element in demonstrating the allround
superiority of the Soviet superman.