In a word: yes! Khrushchev-era Soviet citizens were very aware that the U.S. was a more advanced country in terms of consumer technology, industry, etc. While Stalin after the war attempted to establish a universal image of Soviet superiority – discussing anything Western favorably was criminalized –Khrushchev recognized that Soviet citizens weren’t being sold on this and continued to retain their own images of the West (Sometimes favorable, sometimes not). Khrushchev was honest with the public that the USSR still needed to “catch up and overtake” the West. But he was also confident that the Soviet system would be able to achieve this, and quickly. Letting people know that the West was better off was no threat to Soviet socialism – it was just a preview of the luxuries Soviet citizens would themselves have in the near-future!

The “Thaw” of the 1950s and early 1960s, therefore, saw an explosion of cultural diplomacy and open information exchange between West and East. Soviet citizens were permitted to travel more freely to the West, Western exhibitions were allowed in the USSR, and Western citizen diplomats and tourists were given greater leeway to interact with Soviet society.

Faulty Foundations: Official Culture and Public Knowledge before Khrushchev

Since the growth of literacy in Russia in the 1800s, a general idea of America disseminated into popular culture. This image stressed the country’s technological and economic prowess but contrasted it with a society that was unequal, racist, and decadent. Among intellectuals, America was sometimes used as a foil – for example, comparing slavery to serfdom in the 1860s. In the prewar Soviet Union the U.S. continued to exist as a land of contrasts. American technology and expertise were fetishized while the country’s social inequality and racism were maligned. In general, the U.S. took a backseat during this period in the Russian/Soviet cultural imagination to the U.K., France, Japan, Germany, and Poland – the country’s more traditional close contacts and rivals.

The Second World War provided the impetus for a much larger place for the U.S. in Soviet popular culture. Soviet citizens came into direct contact with US material wealth and abundance via Lend Lease, which played a significant and very appreciated role in the daily lives of civilians and soldiers. Hundreds of downed U.S. pilots landed near or behind Soviet lines, putting U.S. servicemen in direct – and uncontrolled – contact with their Soviet counterparts. In propaganda, discussions about the Second Front and international politics were regularly held and Soviet servicemen and civilians were kept up-to-date about world politics and the USSR’s role in it. Rescued POWs and airmen noted that Soviet servicemen were quicker to recognize them as Americans when they shouted “Roosevelt” rather than the Russian “Amerikantsi”. Even after the war, Americans played a prominent role in the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s extensive aid programs in Ukraine and Belarus, in 1946 and 47 bringing U.S. aid workers and aid material into direct contact with grateful Soviet citizens.

Naturally, Soviet propaganda and political agitation wasn’t always effective at swaying popular culture and rumors. While the USSR consistently portrayed the U.S. and U.K. as loyal, if sometimes unreliable, friends in wartime propaganda, it failed to fully allay popular suspicions that the lack of a Second Front in the West was due to betrayal, disloyalty, and capitalist scheming. Soviet propaganda’s struggle to offer a coherent explanation for the delay in the opening of the Second Front added further fuel to the fire, as did propaganda which focused almost exclusively on Soviet sacrifices and contributions.

These popular opinions weren’t necessarily anti-Western, however. Many citizens – some fearful, some hopeful - believed that the U.S. and U.K. would invade the USSR to abolish the Soviet system. Soviet propaganda which consistently emphasized to citizens that their lives, struggles, and socio-economic system was at the center of world attention and culture further encouraged the belief that Soviet domestic issues were very important to the U.S. and U.K. As Soviet propaganda had insisted that despite their different socio-economic systems these nations were still essentially freedom-loving friends and partners, many Soviet citizens believed that the West would attempt to enforce these values in their own imperfect nation. Subversive war scares and panics were exceptionally common in the immediate postwar era even as Soviet propaganda, at least until 1947, continued to insist that the Grand Alliance with the capitalist West was strong. In a country still devastated by war, even the most diehard Soviet patriot worried what a new conflict would bring.

As the Cold War crystallized, Soviet agitation and propaganda tardily began adopting new narratives about the West in general and America in specific. This cultural counteroffensive faced serious problems. Soviet citizens, both supporters and detractors of the regime, were tired of war and unenthusiastic about the increase in tensions the propaganda campaign focused on. Materially, the US had made great inroads with Lend Lease, and many Soviet citizens and soldiers had met Westerners firsthand and seen how people lived in non-Soviet European countries during the war. US and Western cultural artifacts such as jazz and modern fashion had penetrated Soviet society as a result of loosened wartime cultural restrictions and increased contacts which war brought. Far from tempering the official anti-Western backlash, however, these subversive penetrations only confirmed the need for a radical campaign against American influences.

Domestically, this campaign involved a wholesale assault on any positive portrayal of the West. Even propaganda which wasn’t suitably critical came under attack, even in the case of works such as the unabashedly anti-American play The Voice of America. While this culture war remained confined to the intellectual sphere, physical contact with Americans became a frequent pretext for arrest and prosecution. The criminalization of marriage between Soviet citizens and foreigners underscores this desire to isolate and purify Soviet society of foreign influences and dissident images of Americans and American society.

In the foreign policy realm, the anti-American drive emphasized that not only were “inevitable contradictions” between capitalism and communism leading to war, but that America was consciously creating the conditions for a new world war. American arms dealers were so rapacious and cruel that they were provoking international crises in order to bring about global conflict. While the intention of this narrative was to provoke greater mobilization and support for the Soviet state, the actual outcomes were challenged by changes in the USSR.

This propaganda was primarily undermined by Soviet society’s profound fear of a new war. While in the prewar era conflict was portrayed as inevitable, a bloodless triumph was also promised. The devastation of the Second World War and the omnipresence of nuclear weapons in foreign policy discussions made a return to such promises impossible. As a result, the overwhelming reaction to propaganda about the upcoming new war was fear and uncertainty. Even loyal citizens expressed defeatist attitudes about the seemingly unbeatable strength and unquenchable thirst for war America supposedly possessed. In a country so recently ruined by war, talk of a new conflict was demoralizing and harmful for the population. The weakness of this narrative helps add context to why the post-Stalin leadership, especially Khrushchev, chose to emphasize “peaceful coexistence” and friendly economic competition in propaganda over the Stalinist inevitability of imperialist war.

While Soviet citizens didn’t find the supremacy of oppressive capitalism and racism in U.S. society hard to believe, claims that it was weak or on the verge of collapse drew greater skepticism. U.S. radio propaganda and in magazines such as Amerika - which was legal and in circulation until 1952 - consciously chose to focus on the country’s material wealth, strong economy, and modernity. This fit nicely with longstanding perceptions of American wealth and prosperity. People in the USSR remained generally certain that the U.S. was wealthier and that workers were better off than they were, despite capitalist inequality. Adjusting this narrative towards competition and overtaking the West formed part of Khrushchev’s shift of Soviet narratives towards greater realism and believability. But this, as with many reforms, would have to wait until Stalin’s death in 1953.