ABSTRACT
Propaganda – broadly defi ned here as mass political persuasion – deserves a place of prominence in the fi eld of Cold War studies. Much of the world experienced the confl ict in the realm of communication and culture rather than that of physical combat. At the height of the Cold War the contending powers sought to use ideas and persuasion to rally, sustain and extend their respective blocs and bombarded one another’s home populations with messages to elicit political advantage. The bloated capitalist plutocrat of Soviet propaganda matched the dull, doctrinaire Red Fascist of American stereotype. But propaganda was not just a symptom of the confl ict. The propaganda deployed by East and West had a profound impact on the course of the Cold War: it surged in the early years; it fl ourished in the Third World during the middle years of the confl ict; it reshaped during the period of détente and arguably played a key role in the ending of the Cold War. No less signifi cantly, propaganda played a role in the outbreak of the confl ict and it is with that story that this chapter must begin.
