The immediate aims of United States propaganda programmes might range from building support for an existing government to promoting its overthrow or urging its citizens to defect; from encouraging a climate of opinion which will enable a friendly government to contribute military forces to the war in Vietnam to encouraging an Eastern European Communist Country to assert increasing independence from the Soviet Union; from promoting attitudes conducive to economic development in a new African State to minimising support for Castroism in parts of Latin America."

The propaganda services of the [current] Administration are sparing no efforts to implement these subversive aims of U.S. foreign policy propaganda. The . . . U.S. "information facilities" continue to serve the global aspirations of U.S. imperialism. They still seek importunately, though vainly, to create in people's minds an embellished image of the U.S. as the "world leader”. But all "psychological efforts" of U.S. imperialism's ideologists are futile.

In the spring of 1969, the U.S. Congress published a collection of documents, a sequel to the studies conducted by leading American experts on the U.S. "image" abroad. The collection also included recommendations aimed at improving the "Image." A very important goal of U.S. propaganda has always been to create an embellished U.S. "image" and a distorted "image" of its ideological adversary, corresponding to the general political lines and interests of the U.S. ruling circles.

The above-mentioned collection, entitled The Future of the United States Public Diplomacy, contains numerous facts attesting to the sharp deterioration of U.S. "image" in recent years and failures of U.S. foreign policy propaganda; the U.S. "image" abroad has considerably deteriorated owing to such events as U.S. aggression in Indochina, racial unrest and the increasing crime rate. The aforesaid experts conclude: “The mental picture that many foreigners have of our nation is increasingly that of a violent, lawless, overbearing, even a sick society."

They blame this unsatisfactory state of affairs partly on "modern communications" which tend to "stagger negativism". However, the conclusions also contain some rational ideas, such as, that foreign policy "begins at home", that foreigners judge the U.S. on its record not on its words, and that "propaganda of action is far more powerful, expressive, and persuasive than words." At the same time, these experts propose that the government should intensify efforts to prepare and implement all aspects of foreign policy propaganda, which, as they hold, ought to improve the U.S. "image" abroad and, as far as possible, denigrate socialism and the socialist community.

The Pentagon and all the forces that make up the U.S. militaryindustrial complex are playing a leading role in the ideological explansion of U.S. imperialsim. Pentagon propaganda is not only militaristic; it also fully reflects the viewpoint of the forces which comprise this complex and provide it with ideas.

Pentagon foreign propaganda aims to uphold the morale of U.S. servicemen as well as to "manage" public opinion in the countries where U.S. troops are stationed. According to the information released by the Pen

tagon, the radio and television services of the U.S. armed forces, numbering more than 350 radio and 90 TV stations, work for U.S. troops abroad." This vast radio and TV network is intended both to brainwash U.S. Defence Department personnel and to maintain the cold war and war hysteria atmosphere abroad.

Special groups of war correspondents are busy producing anticommunist films which also praise militarism and other "blessings" of the American way of life. For instance, Pentagon film-shooting groups brought 118 films from Vietnam in 1968 alone. Not one film, however, attempted to give an objective notion of the Vietnamese war . . . An international affairs expert at the University of Maryland observes that all films are nothing but dirty propaganda about the U.S. servicemen's "noble mission" in Indochina.

The Pentagon also puts out films which, at first glance, are unconnected with military affairs, yet incite blind hatred for Communism. They include Free People (the script written in the spirit of rabid antiCommunism cynically slanders life in socialist countries), The Line is Drawn, The Road to the Well, and other similarly stereotyped productions.

.

Pentagon military-propaganda services produce their own films and help private companies whose films are of interest to the Defence Department. Thus, in the spring of 1969, [a] congressman. openly condemned the backing lent by the Pentagon to actor John Wayne and his company in the filming of the ultra-militaristic film The Green Berets glorifying the "feats" of the U.S. Task Force in Vietnam. [The author] stressed that "the glorified portrayal of the Vietnam War, which is the heart of this film, raises serious questions about the Defence Department's role in using tax funds for direct propaganda purposes. . . . This alliance of Hollywood and the Pentagon seems to have brought out the worst in both institutions."

CBS, NBC, ABC and U.S. private corporations supply their productions to Pentagon radio and television services free of charge. The Pentagon also uses The Voice of America, operated by the USIA. The magazines' and books' divisions of the Pentagon Office of Public Affairs puts out special military and military-propagandist publications. The Defence Information Office holds press-conferences and publishes and distributes pamphlets, books, magazines and newspapers under more than 125 titles with a total circulation of close to ten million copies.

The reporters of U.S. newspapers and magazines who write "favourably" about Pentagon activities are asked to write for military magazines which pay them substantial fees. At the same time, the journalists who cover events objectively, the war in Vietnam in particular, find themselves under the surveillance of the Pentagon security service. Such measures by the Pentagon special services make the civilian mass media distribute the information which comes directly from the Department of Defence or the newspapermen who are very close to it and have won a reputation as ultra-patriots.

The Pentagon special services try hard to influence the younger generation outside the U.S. ideologically and psychologically, achieving this through the Defence Information School of the Defence Department. It was set up soon after the Second World War and now covers 28 countries on three continents where 8,000 Pentagon-appointed instructors teach over a million U.S. servicemen's and local children.

. .The dangerous influence of this "state within a state," is increasingly more openly discussed in U.S sociopolitical and academic circles. A conference on U.S. national goals and war budget was held in Washington in March 1969. The 45 Congressmen and 19 academics and experts who took part in the conference severely criticised Pentagon activities. Pentagon leaders, however, ignore U.S. public criticism. Speculating on the "Communist menace" and fanning chauvinism and obscurantism, Pentagon top-brass and the military-industrial complex seek to fashion the American way of life after a pattern of a "garrison state."

The ramified apparatus of the U.S. State Department, which of late has been more widely used for foreign policy propaganda, is one of the most important channels of U.S. ideological expansion.

The speeches and statements of the Secretary of State and other U.S. foreign policy leaders, as well as the messages sent to heads of state, are invariably meant to influence public opinion in those countries. At pressconferences regularly held by the State Department, its high-ranking officials brief reporters on various aspects of U.S foreign policy. Even in the U.S. the substance and quality of information given to the reporters at those press-conferences are often severely criticised. . . .Washington correspondents often feel that the State Department "is seeking to use them as instruments of psychological warfare." 8

The ideological and "psychological" action of the State Department is not confined to press-conferences and briefings. It is also evident in the practical measures carried out in cultural and educational exchange arranged, as a rule, jointly with the USIA. As an important form of foreign policy propaganda, such exchanges have served and continue to serve the global aims of U.S. foreign policy. A report of the Bureau of the Budget of the House of Representatives in charge of the State Departments's budget openly stated: "Culture for culture's sake has no place in the United States Information and Educational Exchange Program. . . cultural activities are indispensable to all propaganda.

. . . [A] former U.S. Ambassador to the UN. . . has said that contacts with East European states are not "awards" conferred on communist governments but a means of getting Western ideas through to Eastern Europe and diminishing dependence on the Soviet Union. It was hardly surprising therefore that . . . [the] former head of Radio Free Europe, one of the main centres of anti-Communist and anti-Soviet propaganda, was appointed Assistant-Secretary of State for cultural and Educational exchange.

The notorious American aid to foreign countries administered through the Agency for International Development (AID), a special body of the

State Department, is but a poorly camouflaged political diversion by U.S. imperialism against peaceloving peoples. A professor who served for many years in the State Department, the AID, Department of Trade and the CIA, disclosed the ideological and political meaning of the aid when he said that its most important function was "to counter the spread of Communism," and emphasised that it was just these considerations that are "preponderant in decisions to provide aid" 10 to a particular country. Specialists from developing countries who come to the U.S. under the AID exchange programme are taught not so much technical subjects as unquestioning admiration for the virtues of the American way of life. On the other hand, U.S.specialists sent abroad take special courses of training in accordance with the ideological and political policies of the U.S. State Department.

The Peace Corps comes under the State Department and is an instrument of ideological expansion in developing countries. Its volunteers are often regarded by the governments of the recipient countries as subversive and, consequently, as having nothing in common with "strengthening mutual understanding" avowed by the Corps Charter.

The most important objective of U.S. ideological expansion carried out by the strategists and tacticians of American foreign policy propaganda is to split the ranks of imperialism's opponents and to sow discord between the socialist countries, to poison the minds of workers, and to denigrate socialism. Bourgeois propaganda seeks to break up the common front of struggle for peace and socialism by appealing to nationalistic and chauvinistic feelings, juggling with all manner of anti-socialist ideas and trends and speculating on the slightest errors of its ideological adversaries.

The world balance of forces is continuing to change in socialism's favor. Despite all their variegated attempts, the capitalist ideologists are incapable of turning the clock back. The influence of the noble and lofty Communist ideas on world sociopolitical development is irreversible.

NOTES

1 R. Perusse, "Psychological Warfare Reappraised" in W. Daugherty, M. Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook, Baltimore, 1958, pp. 34-35.

2 M. Johnson, The Government Secrecy Controversy, New York, 1967, p. 20.

1 W. McGaffin and E. Knoll, Anthing but the Truth, New York, 1968, p. 64.

• See Washington Evening Star, July 2, 1964.

1. S. Appleton, United States Foreign Policy, Boston, 1968, p. 570.

• The Future of the United States Public Diplomacy, Report No. 6, Together with Part XI of the Hearings on Winning the Cold War: the U.S. Ideological Offensive, 91st Congress, 1st Session, 1969, pp. 1R, 3R, 4R.

7.

1 See Department of Defence, Appropriations for 1971, Part 3, p. 751.

* See J. Reston, The Artillery of the Press, New York, 1967, p. 38.

* See C. Thomson, W. Laves, Cultural Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy, Bloomington, 1963, p. 86.

10. Cyril E. Black, The Strategy of Foreign Aid, Princeton, 1968, pp. 18–19.

INFLUENCING POLITICAL CHANGE
BY BROADCASTING TO THE SOVIET UNION*

BY ROBERT L. TUCK**

There is competition for the ear of the Soviet listener in international broadcasts. Listeners are becoming more discriminating and expect to hear more interesting programs than before. The role of international radio is that of a source of information and ideas, rather than an instrument of mass persuasion.

ABSTRACT

External communications are an increasingly important factor for influencing political change in the USSR. The number of citizens who can hear radio broadcasts from abroad has increased fifteen times since Sta

*Prepared for delivery at the 1966 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Statler-Hilton Hotel, New York City, September 6-10. Reprinted with the permission of the American Political Science Association and the author.

**Author's Note:

When this paper was written in 1966, there was only scattered evidence of efforts by individual Soviet citizens to challenge the regime by insisting on their legal rights to justice and freedom, that is, to work for political change in their own interests. The paper was, therefore, an outline of assumptons and suggested methods and techniques for communicating with the Soviet listener to overcome his isolation and to broadcast relevant information and ideas which would help him in his own efforts toward political reform.

During the intervening six years it has become possible to test these assumptions and the broadcasting methods and techniques to an increasing amount of concrete documentation—that is, to samizdat, the “self-published" and distributed materials of dissent and protest which describe the thinking and actions of individuals who contribute to a small but vital democratic movement within the USSR.

Samizdat is a communication among the democrats; they take considerable risks to get documents to the West to inform and win support of world opinion; they depend on radio from abroad for further dissemination back within their own country. (As author Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated in his interview in The New York Times of April 3, 1972, "If we ever hear anything about events in this country, it's through them,” referring to Radio Liberty.)

As samizdat documents arrive in the West they provide the broadcaster with program content to inform Soviet listeners about the efforts of the democrats and to win support for their often heroic insistence that legal guarantees of individual rights be implemented for all Soviet citizens.

This mutual interplay and interaction of supporting information and ideas between external broadcasters and their Soviet listeners has become a unique form of communication. By studying and broadcasting samizdat documents along with other relevant information and ideas denied the audience by a regime which insists there can be no "peaceful coexistence" in ideology, today's international broadcaster has an unprecedented opportunity to help his Soviet listeners in their own quest for justice and freedom-and therefore to hasten political change. [April 1972]