I know this question is pretty pedestrian, but I was thinking earlier about how actually, seriously weird the incident with North Korea and the Interview (the movie) was. I really couldn't think of any other time in history something like that had happened. I doubt there will be anything in history as strange as a stupid Seth Rogan film precipitating a cyber war, but I would love to hear about any examples that even comes close.
Although turmoil is a relative term, the publication of the Boris Pasternak's novel Dr. Zhivago in the West was partially due to the machinations of the CIA and British intelligence which seized upon the novel's themes of idealism being squashed by apparatchiks as useful elements in the cultural Cold War. The official Soviet cultural organs attacked Pasternak quite vocally after he won the Nobel in 1958, causing considerable distress to the author.
The CIA has recently released a number of documents and the *New York Review of Books has a good review article and author's response about this footnote to the Cold War .