In Reid’s chapter in Parting the Curtain, she examines an exhibition held in Soviet territory where the U.S. was invited to present various homewares, appliances, and other sorts of articles that could be found in a “normal” American home. In preparation for this exhibition, “The Society for the Propagation of Political and Scientific Knowledge, a national lecture society, conducted conferences and seminars offering data, financial assistance, and sponsorship of lecturers. The society arranged some 10,000 lectures to anchor the propaganda counteroffensive against the exhibition” (Reid 188). Despite all these preparations for the arrival of the U.S. exhibition, “The Soviet campaign fizzled, the once highly visible agitators toned down their criticisms and increasingly gave way to teeming crowds of ordinary citizens. In fact, one U.S. diplomat reported, the remaining agitators themselves became ‘rapt with attention at U.S. displays and only hypocritically went about their tasks'” (Reid 202). What appeared to win over the crowds, by and large, with the images and wares of a new kitchen, automobiles, and clothing. The Soviet citizens were even enamored by all these things to the extent that they continuously wished to know how much things cost. With the amount of propaganda that the Soviets put into this campaign to disparage the exhibit (which they invited to their shores), they were unsuccessful in maintaining some of the illusion of the East being better off than the West. I am rather curious, however, of what others think of this seeming miscalculation. And it seems like it was a rather large miscalculation that the Soviets thought that they could win over their own citizens with just more propaganda. Why do you think that the Soviets thought that they could merely win over their citizens by using “agitators” and not a competing exhibition or by not bringing the West over at all? Should the remaining agitators continued vivaciously in their agitations would that have been successful or was there nothing the Soviets could have done to win back their citizens during this month(s)-long period? Or was the appeal of keeping up with the American “way of life” and consumerism too powerful of a motivator to keep the Soviets from trying to “keep up with the Jones.'”
Through the Iron Curtain
I think that the Soviet’s dependence on the influence of agitators rather than a competing exhibition demonstrates two things with the first being how strongly Soviet officials believed in the communist ideology and how strongly they believed the people (through Soviet education and propaganda) also believe in this ideology. The second reason that I believe resulted in the use of agitators is that the Soviet officials could not rely on the “bells and whistles” that Americans had. They knew that their consumer market was smaller. They knew that their houses were smaller and their products inferior. Rather than compete with Americans at their own game of capitalist production and make a display that, if accurately portraying Soviet everyday life, would appear inferior to the American display, the Soviet Union has no choice but to play to their strengths here – and this strength is a strong ideological base.