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"Least Known to Americans": Content Materials about the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s

Union still was an “evil empire” and the United States “encroached on the achievements of Socialism,” Ira Jay Winn wrote, “students who scream ‘Kill the Russkies’ or who believe that the Soviets fought against us in World War II . . . are not simply ignorant of historical facts or the power of words; they are living with a dangerous mythology that reflects the attitudes of the adults around them” (1984, 289). In part, that mythology, whether we like it or not, was created by teachers who heavily depended on the information they obtained from articles, books, and media. The American general public never trusted the Soviets. According to a Gallup/NORC-GSS poll taken in October 1953, only nine tenths of one percent of Americans felt favorably toward Russia. Almost a year later, in September 1954, even that meager number decreased more than twice to a hardly visible four tenths of one percent (Smith 1983, 280). Although later the number of people with positive attitudes toward the Soviet Union increased, it never exceeded nineteen percent (1974) in the years of the cold war. Jennings condemned “the climate of public opinion” that often “made it difficult or impossible for teachers to deal effectively in their classes with the Soviet Union” (1958, 213). Three fairly distinct patterns in teachers’ motivation to teach about the USSR in the mid-1940s and 1950s are evident (Rapoport 2004). In the last years of World War II and first postwar years, the motivation was hope for the new and almost friendly relations between the two nations; in the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, it was fear and the necessity to learn more about the principal enemy; and in the late 1950s, it was a newly conceived interest that was blended with fear and hostility. In this article, I cite published sources that educators might have used or probably did use to teach about the USSR in the 1940s and 1950s. I show that the appearance of those materials was congruent with the three phases of teacher motivation that I describe. In the preInternet and pre-TV era, printed materials were the main sources available to teachers. The number of books and articles with descriptions and analysis of contemporary events in the Soviet Union decreased dramatically in the 1930s, primarily as a result of Stalin’s domestic and international policy. The events and outcome of World War II revived public interest in a new ally and encouraged educators to search for reliable information about the USSR. The situation changed with the beginning of the cold war. Using the examples from Indiana’s local papers of that period, I show how the political situation hindered the efforts of educators to present various, and sometimes opposing, views on the situation behind the Iron Curtain. I argue that printed materials about the Soviet Union in general corresponded with teachers’ motivations to teach about the USSR and, probably, determined the latter.