Page 210 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

EAST–WEST RELATIONS AND THE COLD WAR

Between 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized
control of the Russian empire and the late 1980s, when Mikhail
Gorbachev brought it to an end, relations between the Soviet Union
and the capitalist powers were, with some exceptions which we
shall discuss later in this section, characterised by the term ‘Cold
War’. Cold War signified a state of hostility and tension which
teetered on the bring of, while never quite tipping over into, full-scale
military conflict, or ‘hot war’. While the phrase is usually applied to
the period between the end of the Second World War and the era of
perestroika, ‘Cold War’ is an apt phrase for the pre-war decades too.
From the political communications perspective, the Cold War is
an interesting case for two reasons. First, it was a real conflict,
fought over spheres of economic and political influence which at
times, such as the Cuban missile crisis and the Korean Airlines
disaster, could have led to the direct exchange of fire between the US
and the Soviet Union, with unthinkable consequences for the entire
world. Second, the Cold War furnished the US and other Western
governments, for most of this century, with an ‘enemy’. The ‘threat’
posed by this enemy – expressed in military and moral terms – was
frequently invoked in the service of domestic politics, such as the
undermining and eradication of socialist parties, trade unions and,
as late as the 1980s, anti-nuclear protest movements. Symbols of the
‘communist’ or ‘Red’ threat were used to justify resistance to, or
refusal of, social welfare improvements, workers’ rights and other
‘Left’ causes throughout the century. 1
There is a sense, of course, in which the 1917 Bolshevik
revolution did present a real threat to the Western capitalist powers.
The revolution occurred at a time when millions were dying in
Europe over an imperialist struggle for territory and resources. With
the help of propaganda techniques and atrocity stories young
men from Britain, France, Russia, and the US were being persuaded
to lay down their lives in the struggle against Germany. As
hundreds of thousands died in battles for a few metres of land here
and there, opposition to the war increased, spearheaded by the
Bolsheviks and their socialist allies in the Third International.
When they took power in Russian the Bolsheviks withdrew from
the war and agitated for an international proletarian revolution to
replace the imperialist conflict. This ‘export’ of revolution was a
potent slogan, rightly perceived as threatening by the custodians of
the capitalist order in Europe and America.

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