Page 199 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

outbreak of the Second World War. It is not without irony, then, that
precisely when the evils of Soviet communism were becoming evident
even to socialists, the content of Western media images of the country
began to change, in accordance with changing perceptions of political
and military requirements.
Between 1939 and 1941, while the Soviet Union maintained an
uneasy distance from the war with Nazi Germany, anti-Bolshevism
remained highly visible in the Western capitalist countries. Following
Hitler’s Operation Saragossa and Russia’s entry into the war on the
Western allies’ side, it became necessary for governments to mobilise
public opinion behind the war effort in general, and that of the Soviet
Union in particular, locked as it now was in a fight to the death with
Germany. From being the pre-eminent enemy of and threat to
capitalism the Soviet Union was recast in the Western media as a
valued and brave friend and ally. Philosophical and political
disagreements with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were
placed on one side in the interests of defeating a common and far
more dangerous enemy.
The political objective of mobilising support for the Soviet
Union was achieved by a propaganda and public relations
campaign designed to overturn the negative images of the
preceding two decades. A new, more positive picture emerged of
the Soviet Union as a welcoming, friendly place inhabited by noble,
hard-working proletarians, honest communists and peace-loving
armies. Stalin became ‘Uncle Joe’, as Western populations were
exhorted to donate food and money to the starving Russians in
the siege of Leningrad.
All of these positive images were included in Warner Brothers’
1943 movie Mission to Moscow, in which Hollywood star Walter
Huston played the part of the real-life US ambassador to Moscow.
The film gave an ‘account’ of events in the Soviet Union leading
up to the outbreak of war, including lengthy courtroom scenes in
which state prosecutor Vyshinsky dealt firmly but fairly with
Bukharin, Radek, and other ‘Trotskyite’ conspirators. Vyshinsky,
Soviet President Kalinin, even Stalin himself, were all depicted in
the film as kindly, sympathetic figures, for whom no sacrifice
would be too great for the cause of humanity. In America, as in
Britain and other countries, the media were given the task of
building an international political environment in which, contrary
to the pre-1939 period, Nazism was the enemy and Bolshevism
the friend of the West. 2

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