Author: Joe Arencibia

In the beginning of the movie Alex is seen protesting for freedom of the press but once his mother returns home he begins his plan to make her believe that the GDR hadn’t ended he did this by controlling his mothers life. He controlled the clothes, food, furniture and even made fake news reports anytime his mother questioned what was happening he would make up some reason or justification usually by making another fake news report. Alex ended up becoming the very government he was protesting in the beginning of the movie.

To build off of Veena’s post the meeting definitely seemed tense and uncomfortable, especially for Nixon. He was trying to be kind and respectful and very thoughtful of what words he used and Kruschev was very blunt and said what he was thinking. One part that really stuck out to me was at 0:44 when Krushchev starts talking about the US has been around for 150 years and the Soviet Union only 42 years and will soon pass the United States.

I was wondering how the debate and that part, in particular, were interpreted by each countries people. Did the US view Krushchev as disrespectful and did it give them even more of a negative view towards the Soviet Union and did Nixon’s more relaxed passive speech make the Soviet people view the US as weak.

In the begging of chapter 3 it’s mentioned that Ivan Konev the man who led the Red Army’s liberation of Prague wrote a book about fighting in Czechoslovakia and how Czechoslovakians and Russians had a friendship by fighting against fascism. “Soviet- Czechoslovak friendship, strengthened and tempered in the battles with fascism, became the unshakable basis for the cooperation between our peoples in the postwar period.” (Applebaum 81) The interesting thing about this is what blatant propaganda it is since Konev was asked by the Slovak Communist leader Vlado Clementis to get control of his men because of their horrible behavior. The book I’m sure ignored all the horrible acts committed by Soviet troops on the citizens of Czechoslovakia. This made me think did the people who experienced the atrocities tell their children and grandchildren and how did it affect the whole idea that the soviets kept pushing of we are united against fascism.

One thing I found very interesting was at the beginning of the reading its stated that the Soviets allowed western books to be translated. Kovaly states that the books made life in the west look grim. “gave such a grim picture of life in the west that we would only conclude that the party was right, that the west had reached the terminal stages of moral and economic decay.” (Kovaly 94) After researching the authors he was right they wrote about was pretty bleak in the US the books sold pretty well and I’m sure most of the readers only thought of them as entertainment but the soviets were smart enough to use these books as propaganda. Even more interesting was Howard Fast the first author mentioned was actually a member of the American Communist Party which probably another reason the Soviets allowed the books to be in their country. I just think it was a great move on the soviets to use what Americans most likely thought of as harmless books and turn them into great pieces of propaganda.

In Naimark’s article show trials are mentioned significantly. One of the most intriguing lines that really showed how similar Stalin’s show trials were to McCarthyism in the US was. Stalin and Beria dispatched NKVD “advisers” to the capitals of all the people’s democracies in order to quicken the hunt for “enemies of the people.” (Naimark 192) Most of the allegations made didn’t have much evidence but both Stalin and McCarthy did it to maintain order and to stop the country from being overthrown by the others’ ideology. Both would make the trials or investigations very public to either intimidate the population or destroy the reputation of the person who was on trial.