Early Soviet Propoganda

• The earliest days of the Soviet Union were ones of existential conflict with the anti-communist forces within Russia, so little propaganda to the outside world was deployed. Beginning in the 1920s, the more stable communist government began to exert influence on socialist and working class movements outside of Russia through print media and film. Some of this propaganda espoused the positive virtues of collective ownership and claimed agricultural and industrial successes in the Soviet Union. Others were negative portrayals of the capitalist world powers. In this era, the Soviet Union enjoyed a high point of positive views among left-leaning thinkers throughout the world.
  
  

World War II

• The 1938 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a blow to idealistic feelings about the Soviet Union throughout the world. The pact with the Nazis that divided Poland made the Soviet Union seem much more like an authoritarian regional power than a beacon for universal rights. By the end of the war, it became apparent that the Soviet Union and United States were locked in an ideological world struggle, so Soviet propaganda became much more specifically anti-American in nature.
  
  

Post-War Soviet Propaganda

• Much of the Soviet propaganda in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s focused on the negative aspects of the United States. It emphasized the gross racial inequalities in much of the country, the civilian cost of U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the domestic social upheaval of the 1960s. As the Soviet economy stagnated, and much of the world's working class industrialized, the allure of the traditional agrarian propaganda lessened. Instead, the Soviet Union courted the western peace movement and anti-nuclear movement, despite the fact that the Soviet Union itself possessed the world's largest nuclear arsenal and was a frequent belligerent.
  
  

Late Soviet Propaganda

• As the Vietnam War ended and Civil Rights era concluded in a victory for activists, the anti-American Soviet propaganda evolved. Soviet propagandists saw an advantage in growing distrust among Americans and other westerners in the American government after the Watergate scandal. These propagandists spread Kennedy conspiracy rumors, as well as allegations that the CIA had created and deliberately spread the AIDS virus. Some of these rumors live on long after the dismantling of the Soviet Union. They also continued to emphasize the large disparity in living standards between the United States and its capitalist client states in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, cultivating anti-American sentiment that continues throughout the world in many countries.