Word: propagandas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Whether subtle or blatant, the role of propaganda is becoming increasingly critical. Television images, bounced off satellites to the remotest corners of the world, have made the cliche of the global village a reality. The polarization of nations along East-West lines has intensified the ratings war. Totalitarian states, by virtue of their complete control over the media, are relentless producers of propaganda. Democracies are sometimes gullible consumers. Complex issues can be twisted and made dangerously simple by clever opinion shapers, and if the masses can be moved, their elected leaders must follow. Nuclear weapons have raised the stakes...
...past, Kremlin propaganda has often sounded to the rest of the world, and even to Soviet citizens, like, well, propaganda. The Soviets were once clumsy and loutish as salesmen. When Nikita Khrushchev wanted to make a point at the United Nations in 1960, he took off his shoe and waved it. Mikhail Gorbachev, by contrast, is a walking advertisement for a different Soviet way of doing things. He is a smooth performer in public and a skillful articulator of the Kremlin line. Like the new man in charge, Soviet propaganda has become subtler and more adroit. A recent example...
Kremlin watchers caution, however, that underneath their new veneer, most Soviet bureaucrats are the same old dogmatic apparatchiks. Propaganda within the U.S.S.R. is just as shrill and paranoid as ever. Reagan is sometimes & likened to Hitler by news organs. One wall poster currently displayed in Moscow shows a grim image of a U.S. monster threatening to rain down bombs from outer space. Overseas, disinformation remains a favorite tactic; the Kremlin rarely overlooks an opportunity to plant a false rumor. While grieving last week over the death of Samantha Smith, the American girl who visited the U.S.S.R. on a peace mission...
...budget for USIA by 85%, to $795 million in 1985, and launched a six-year $1.3 billion modernization program for the VOA, four of whose transmitters were so old that they had been used by the Nazis in World War II. USIA Director Wick has made combatting Soviet propaganda a personal crusade. On occasion, he has gone overboard. Shortly after taking over the information agency in 1981, he produced a worldwide television extravaganza called Let Poland Be Poland, which featured Frank Sinatra crooning Ever Homeward in pidgin Polish. The show drew howls of ridicule. But Wick has scored some coups...
...does have one weapon the Soviets cannot begin to compete with: its mass culture, so pervasive that Moscow teenagers pay black-market prices for blue jeans and television viewers the world over are addicted to Dallas and Dynasty. Radio Marti, the Reaganauts' new propaganda tool aimed at Castro's Cuba, is a huge success, not for its anti-Communist editorials but for its pop music and steamy soap opera Esmeralda...