- How do we contextualize the dryness and “mediocrity” of TASS writing with other media that we have encountered this semester from the late-Stalinist era?
- What characteristics could be generally described of the shestidesiatniki and what can we learn from their new approach to foreign journalism?
- Do you buy the author’s claim that “the United States explicitly discriminated against Soviet correspondents and established a system of retaliation for their reporting from the US, although the existence of these practices was vehemently denied” (Fainberg 2020, 106)? What should we make of the series of bureaucratic battles fought by the US and Soviet Union in granting or restricting journalistic access?
- What were the terms of the debate between the US and Soviet Union as framed by journalists during the thaw?
- How did events like the launching of Sputnik redefine or affirm existing cultural narratives? Are there other examples of specific events that did so? In What terms might journalists have defined them?
Through the Iron Curtain
