Page 213 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

awaken them to the joys of American capitalism. These films
complemented journalistic accounts of Bolshevik atrocities and
contributed to the consolidation of anti-Bolshevik, anti-Left
ideology at the heart of American culture and politics.

The grand alliance
By the 1930s, of course, Stalinism had been established in the Soviet
Union and the atrocity stories of earlier years had acquired a degree
of substance. Show trials, famine and mass executions of political
dissidents led to millions of Soviet casualties between 1934 and the
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

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