In the rivalry between the Soviets and the Western allies after 1947, cultural life and cultural institutions moved from the sidelines to the center of the political confrontation. Both Soviet and American policymakers realized that to "win the minds of men" in Europe, they needed to appeal more to their cultural than to their political identity. Because much of this propaganda war concerned the division of Germany, Soviet and American policymakers dedicated more time, more activities, and more money to the cultural cold war in Germany than to any other region or continent. Consequently, we know more about the cultural cold war in Germany than in any other European country.
32. Kirov BaUet School, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), 1958: ballet performances were enormously popular abroad and counted among the most successful assets in Soviet cultural propaganda in Europe.
In the eastern zone, Soviet Military Administration in Germany (Sowjetische Militar Administration in Deutschland, SMAD) officials took culture much more seriously than their Anglo-American colleagues. While Americans regarded culture - above all, the fine arts - as elitist, Soviets viewed culture as intrinsically political and ideological; their efforts in this field preceded those of the Western allies. The Soviets presented themselves as the saviors of occidental culture (Abendlandkultur): their army had saved European culture fTom the onslaught of Adolf Hitler. This argument resonated powerfully in the smaller countries of Eastern Europe because it rested on two pillars: on the one hand, European high culture enjoyed more respect and a broader audience in the Soviet Union than in the United States. Communism did not just preserve high
Culture; it made it accessible to everyone with the help of heavy state subsidies. On the other, the Soviets posed as the only true inheritors and saviors of European culture because they had defeated Nazism.
Soviet propagandists hurried to sell this vision to target audiences in Germany in order to win their sympathies. While Allied officials in the West were still busy screening artists who had applied to perform in the western zones, the Deutsche Theater in the Soviet sector had already offered some ten productions, among them Lessing’s Nathan der Weise and Moliere’s L'Ecole des Femmes.636 In May 1945, SMAD invited two hundred artists, writers, sculptors, and painters to discuss the future of German culture. Soviet officers in charge of cultural programs were intensely familiar with German history, language, and culture; often, they were descendants of the Russian Jewish bourgeoisie with a degree in literature or a related field.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt about their instructions. These officials worked hand in hand with cadres of the German Communist Party (KPD) who had spent the war in the Soviet Union, such as Walter Ulbricht. Soviet intelligence officers developed a tight system of overt and covert activities and tried to mobilize art for the defeat ofcapitalism and fascism in Germany. In the field of contemporary art, Soviet cultural policy sought to denounce abstraction, surrealism, and expressionism as outgrowths of corrupt capitalism and fascism. The strategy was to reach the German cultural intelligentsia with the help of incentives, threats, and coercion.637
The cooperation between German intellectuals and artists and Soviet officials was key to SMAD’s propaganda strategy. This propaganda heaped praise on the Soviet Union and sought to diminish the image of the United States and, subsequently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In music, literature, and the visual arts, Communist propagandists argued that the West lagged behind and was, therefore, particularly aggressive. In the 1960s, the tone toward the United States changed and became more conciliatory. But the principal argument - the tension between Western imperialism and militarism on the one hand and Soviet pacifism on the other - remained in place until the 1980s.
In addition to these political charges the Soviets focused their cultural message on Russia’s classical tradition, its music, paintings, history, and performing arts. Their productions of orchestral concerts and their fairy-tale ballets evoked dreamy visions of the past rather than the harsh modern reality of collective farms and oppressed peasants around the world. The export of Russian and Soviet art remained a standard duty of VOKS, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.638
This cultural nostalgia provided Communist cultural diplomacy with its strongest asset. When Communist propagandists devised their advertising campaigns, the preservation of "Old World culture" - above all, German Kultur - formed the thrust of their argument. The Tagliche Rundschau, the Red Army newspaper in the Soviet occupation zone, often published reports on the respect the Soviet people had for the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ludwig van Beethoven. The subtext was clear: the Soviets had a high cultural background. Americans did not; they were dull and aggressive. Repeating their central argument over and over again, Soviet propagandists skillfully fanned the flames of anti-Americanism that had originated in the late eighteenth century.
Public opinion polls taken by the American military government in Germany between 1945 and 1950 confirmed the success of this propaganda approach: Germans clearly feared the adoption of democratic values at the expense of their cultural heritage. Letters to the US radio station in Berlin revealed that it lost many listeners due to its supposedly "Western" (jazz) music program. Communism evidently supported high culture to nurture the sensibilities of people. Democratic systems such as the United States, in contrast, anesthetized minds with popular culture and jazz.639
Communist media spokespeople relentlessly stressed the status of high culture in their society, often tying this message to political propaganda. The foremost instrument of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) for cultural propaganda was the broadcasting station Deutschlandsender. From 1948 to 1971, the station targeted audiences outside the Soviet zone and, later, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in an effort to convince listeners of the Communists’ cultural priorities as well as their resistance to fascism, militarism, and the imperialism of the Atlantic alliance. The Deutschlandsender reached a significant fraction of the West German audience, above all because to many West Germans its classical music program constituted a welcome
Alternative to the modem music programs offered by local Western stations in the 1950s and 1960s.640
But, for all their anti-Western propaganda, East European Communist countries often combined cultural criticism in theory with cultural rapprochement in reality. As a result of internal political pressure, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, Poland, and other states developed viable cultural contacts with West European countries in the 1950s. Many Communist countries experienced a series of internal conflicts and massive upheavals in the 1950s and 1960s. Domestic critics of these Communist regimes focused on their lack of openness and lamented the absence of an international dialogue. Such charges forced Communist policymakers to develop a more conciliatory foreign policy and cooperate culturally with the West.641
By the early 1950s, the Soviets had mounted a significant exchange program. Some 17,000 foreigners visited the Soviet Union in 1950. Three years later, their number had grown to 45,000.642 In the mid-1950s, the Soviets joined UNESCO, where they soon embarked on a struggle for a new information order, an international press code, and a licensing system for journalists to facilitate state control of the press. In 1967, the Warsaw Pact states suggested the formation of a Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in order to improve the intra-European cultural and political dialogue along with confidence-building in military affairs. Their efforts were crowned by success: the CSCE first met in 1973; simultaneously, the European Council developed a number of cultural programs such as student exchanges between the countries of the Warsaw Pact and NATO.
As in other East European countries, the GDR established an exchange program designed to develop permanent cultural contacts with the United States in the 1960s. In the spring of 1962, shortly after the building of the Berlin Wall, the East Berlin theater review, Theater der Zeit, invited West German dramatic advisers to visit theaters in Berlin, Weimar, Leipzig, Dresden, Halle,
And Magdeburg.643 The GDR Peace Council also extended an invitation to Western intellectuals: in 1966, a small group of Americans visited the GDR, where they were welcomed by leading officials such as Walter Ulbricht and Willi Stoph, chairman of the Council of Ministers. In 1972, Gunter Kunert worked as a visiting writer at the University of Texas in Austin for five months.
East German officials used cultural relations to establish the GDR as a state celebrating high and working-class culture. By doing so, they hoped to gain international recognition of their state. Throughout the 1970s, GDR officials lobbied for a cultural treaty that would cement US-GDR relations, though with little success. In Washington, officials feared that the Communists would exploit any exchange program as an avenue for espionage. East Berlin officials, in turn, insisted on the right to select American exchange visitors according to their own ideological criteria.
Nonetheless, the GDR maintained a number of international cultural programs. The state participated in the activities of the New York-based International Research Exchange Board. The board organized academic exchange programs between the United States and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. The GDR also managed to sign on with exchange programs at various US universities. The export of GDR orchestras, paintings, and performing artists likewise formed part of the country’s effort to establish lasting cultural ties with the United States. But the ends often conflicted with the means as well as with each other: ideologically, GDR officials fought and ridiculed the imperialist United States; politically and culturally, they hoped for rapprochement and recognition.644
World History
