How was the USA portrayed in the USSR during the Cold War?

by wwxxwwxx
Bob9999999999999

As a capitalistic warmonger, of course, with greedy corporations running everything and the country constantly engaging in imperialist wars. Basically, the sort of stuff which Noam Chomsky says about the U.S., but with an added nationalistic emphasis on the threat to the U.S.S.R. in particular.

While American propaganda emphasized the lack of political freedom in the U.S.S.R. (freedom of speech, etc.), Soviet propaganda emphasized the lack of economic and racial equality of the U.S. "They lynch Negroes there" was a popular parody of the tu quoque arguments which the Soviet government made in response to Western criticism of its human rights record.

American social conservatives who think of the Soviet Union as having been "godless" may be surprised to hear that Soviet propaganda liked to portray the West as "decadent". Up until glasnost in the late 1980s, the Soviet Union had, by U.S. standards, 1950s levels of censorship against sexual themes in film. Thus, Soviet propaganda portrayed American film as being full of pornography, presumably to distract the workers from rebelling against capitalism.

This video was created by the CIA to show Reagan how Soviet media portrayed America.

OldWorldGlory

You might be interested in some threads from the FAQ section on "What Did Soviets Think..":

Soviet Media in General

Soviet Media on American History and Events

Soviet Government