Mind-Munitions

Propaganda, Cold War and the Television Age 263
At the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, Khrushchev
confirmed the acceptance of ‘varying roads to socialism’, namely a
loosening of Moscow’s previous iron grip on its Eastern European
satellites. Although the discrediting of Stalin of which this was a
part was originally supposed to be a secret policy, news of it quickly
spread and created repercussions in Hungary where many saw an
opportunity of creating socialism ‘with a human face’. When
Russian military force suppressed the 1956 uprising, it was a chink
in the armour of the Soviet-inspired view of the Eastern bloc as a
happy band of willing fellow travellers. Western propaganda
exploited it as such, stepping up its broadcasts beyond the Iron
Curtain. Khrushchev responded in spectacular style by appearing
on CBS television in 1957, telling American viewers of his intentions
to engage in what he called ‘peaceful competition’. Television
was heralding in a new age of international diplomacy, allowing
politicians to address the public of other countries directly. But
until television achieved majority penetration in advanced societies
after the 1960s, international radio remained the most significant
medium in the international battle which, in the context of the
Cold War, was a far cry from the notion encapsulated by the BBC
motto that ‘Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation’. Hence the
continuing Soviet need for the jamming of western broadcasts that
became a characteristic of the ebbs and flows of Cold War tension.
By transmitting a continuous ‘buzz-saw’ noise on the same
frequency as the offending broadcasts, the Soviets hoped to seal
their citizens off from the alternative interpretations offered by the
opposition and thus sustain their own view of international events.
The competition must not be too equal and peace must be on the
terms of the new Soviet men. The western powers did not engage in
jamming Russian broadcasts, although considerable resources
were poured into to monitoring them constantly.
As for television broadcasting, which began in Russia in 1949, it
was not until the 1970s that it became a truly mass medium covering
most of the Soviet Union. Between 1960 and 1981, the number
of domestic TV sets rose from just under 5 million to around 75
million (a rise from 5 per cent to 90 per cent of the population) and
it was only really then that it superseded the press and radio as the
principal sources of news and information. Like those media, however,
television broadcasting was rigorously controlled by the State,
from the granting of licenses and finance to the selection of media