Media and the Cold War in the 1980s: Between Star Wars and Glasnost

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media

Media and the Cold War in the 1980s Between Star Wars and Glasnost Edited by

Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke, and Rolf Werenskjold

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media Series Editors Bill Bell Cardiff University Cardiff, UK Chandrika Kaul University of St Andrews Fife, UK Alexander S. Wilkinson University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media publishes original, high quality research into the cultures of communication from the middle ages to the present day. The series explores the variety of subjects and disciplinary approaches that characterize this vibrant field of enquiry. The series will help shape current interpretations not only of the media, in all its forms, but also of the powerful relationship between the media and politics, society, and the economy. Advisory Board: Professor Carlos Barrera (University of Navarra, Spain) Professor Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) Professor Nicholas Cull (Center on Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California) Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley (Macquarie University, Australia) Professor Tom O’Malley (Centre for Media History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth) Professor Chester Pach (Ohio University) More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14578

Henrik G. Bastiansen · Martin Klimke Rolf Werenskjold Editors

Media and the Cold War in the 1980s Between Star Wars and Glasnost

Editors Henrik G. Bastiansen Volda University College Volda, Norway

Rolf Werenskjold Volda University College Volda, Norway

Martin Klimke New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ISBN 978-3-319-98381-3 ISBN 978-3-319-98382-0  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951560 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Cover image courtesy of Jan O. Henriksen This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The origins of this volume lie in a very productive gathering at Volda University College on 20–21 November 2014. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Fritt Ord Foundation, Norway, Volda University College, then-Dean Sverre Liestøl, as well as Solgunn Ose Bjørneset and Marit Gridseth Flø, along with the students at the Institute of Communication for all the support they provided in making that conference a success. We would also like to thank Thomas Lewe for co-producing the Cold War cartoon exhibit on display during the event, the foreign students in the Animation Department, and Andres Mänd and Dave King for co-producing the conference trailer. Above all, we would like to thank all the contributors for their collaboration on this book and our copyeditor Linda Truilo for tireless effort and expert guidance in matters of style and substance during the production process. At Palgrave Macmillan, our thanks go to Megan Laddusaw and Christine Pardue for their support and patience. Volda, Norway Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Volda, Norway June 2018

Henrik G. Bastiansen Martin Klimke Rolf Werenskjold

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Contents

1

Introduction: Mapping the Role of the Media in the Late Cold War 1 Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke and Rolf Werenskjold

2

Selling “Star Wars” in American Mass Media 19 William M. Knoblauch

3

Interviewing the Enemy and Other Cold War Players: US Foreign Policy as Seen Through Playboy During the Reagan Years 43 Laura Saarenmaa

4

Going Atmospheric and Elemental: Roger Moore’s and Timothy Dalton’s James Bond and Cold War Geo-Politics 63 Klaus Dodds and Lisa Funnell

5

Civil Cold War Aviation as Television Drama: The Popular Miniseries Treffpunkt Flughafen (GDR 1986) 87 Tobias Hochscherf

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Photojournalism East/West: The Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and the Trade of Photographs 115 Annette Vowinckel

7

Irony in Polish Punk of the 1980s as a Form of Contestation 137 Anna G. Piotrowska

8

Mediating Alternative Culture: Two Controversial Exhibitions in Hungary During the 1980s 161 Juliane Debeusscher

9

The Cold War Reporters: The Norwegian ForeignNews Journalists and Foreign-News Correspondents, 1945–1995 189 Jan Fredrik Hovden and Rolf Werenskjold

10 Orions Belte: The Birth of the Norwegian “HighConcept” Movie in the Shadow of the Second Cold War 223 Bjørn Sørenssen 11 Reporting Glasnost: The Changing Soviet News in a Norwegian Daily, 1985–1988 235 Henrik G. Bastiansen 12 Revolution as Memory: The “History Boom” on Late Socialist Television 263 Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable 13 Power and the Body: Images of the Leaders in Soviet Magazines During the Cold War 283 Ekaterina Vikulina 14 The Iconic Photograph and Its Political Space: The Case of Tiananmen Square, 1989 311 Stuart Franklin Index 339

Notes

on

Contributors

Henrik G. Bastiansen  is Professor of Media Studies and Media History on the Faculty of Media and Journalism at Volda University College, in Norway. His Ph.D. from the University of Oslo in 2006 focuses on how Norwegian television challenged the Norwegian party press during 1960–1972. He has published numerous books and articles on media history, which cover such topics as press history, political journalism, broadcasting history, and television documentaries. His latest book is The Nordic Media and the Cold War (2015), which he edited with Rolf Werenskjold. Bastiansen is also head of the Norwegian Association of Media History. Juliane Debeusscher is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of Barcelona, with a doctoral fellowship from the Spanish state (Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, 2016–2019). Since 2006 she has investigated artistic practices in Eastern Europe, focusing on the 1970s and 1980s. Her current research addresses the conditions and forms of circulation of Central European unofficial art across the Iron Curtain, relying on case studies of international exhibitions and transnational artistic networks. She is a member of the research project Decentralized Modernities: Art, Politics and Counterculture in the Transatlantic Axis during the Cold War. Klaus Dodds  is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. When not writing with Lisa Funnell on James Bond, he studies the interix

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section of ice, water, and geopolitics. His latest book is Ice, published by Reaktion in 2018, and he also published Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014). Stuart Franklin is Professor of Documentary Photography at Volda University College in Norway and, as an active Magnum photographer, is currently working on nature/society issues. Since graduating from the University of Oxford in 1997, Franklin has published nine books, as well as several articles on photography. His most recent book, The Documentary Impulse, was published by Phaidon in 2016. His current research on a forthcoming book explores the process by which we read and are affected by images, especially photographs and paintings. Lisa Funnell is Assistant Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) with Klaus Dodds and Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star (SUNY Press, 2014). Tobias Hochscherf is Professor of Film, Radio, and Television at Kiel University of Applied Sciences, Germany. He is author of The Continental Connection: German-speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1927–1949 (Manchester University Press, 2011) and co-edited the anthologies Divided, But Not Disconnected: German Experiences of the Cold War (Berghahn, 2010) and British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2011). He is the associate editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. His most recent book is Beyond the Bridge: Contemporary Danish Television Drama, co-authored with Heidi Philipsen (I.B. Tauris, 2017). Jan Fredrik Hovden is a sociologist and Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. His work includes studies of political and cultural elites, journalists (national comparisons, national journalistic fields, and professional socialization), cultural and media habits in the general population, and media coverage of immigration. His work is mostly quantitative and rooted in the European tradition for studies of social class. Simon Huxtable is Visiting Fellow in Media and Cultural History at Loughborough University, in the United Kingdom. His research centers

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on socialist mass media and its relationship to the public sphere, and culture and society during late socialism. He is the author of a number of journal articles and book chapters, and is currently working on a book manuscript on the history of the Soviet press after World War II. He was a research associate on the Screening Socialism project at Loughborough University, focusing on the comparative and transnational history of television during state socialism. Martin Klimke is Vice Provost of Academic Policies and Governance and Associate Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi, as well as an associated researcher at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg. Klimke is the author of The Other Alliance: Global Protest and Student Unrest in West Germany and the U.S., 1962–1972 (Princeton University Press, 2010) and co-author of A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African‐American GIs, and Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). His recent publications include “Trust, but Verify”: The Politics of Uncertainty and the Transformation of the Cold War Order, 1969–1991, co-edited with Reinhild Kreis and Christian Ostermann (Stanford University Press, 2016) and Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear and the Cold War of the 1980s, co-edited with Eckart Conze and Jeremy Varon (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is also a co‐editor of the Protest, Culture and Society publication series at Berghahn Books. William M. Knoblauch is Associate Professor of History at Finlandia University in Hancock, Michigan. He has published numerous scholarly articles examining the intersections between media, politics, and foreign policy during the Cold War. Knoblauch is the author of Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activism, and the End of the Arms Race (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017) and is co-editor of The Routledge History of World Peace since 1750 (2018). Sabina Mihelj is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University, in the United Kingdom. Her main areas of expertise are mass communication and cultural identity, comparative media research, television studies, and the cultural Cold War. She has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as two books: Media Nations (Palgrave, 2013) and Central and Eastern European Media in Comparative Perspective (with John Downey, Ashgate, 2012). Her most recent project, Screening Socialism (funded

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by the Leverhulme Trust), offers the first systematic transnational study of media under communist rule. Anna G. Piotrowska  studied musicology at Jagiellonian University and Durham University. Mainly interested in researching sociological and cultural aspects of musical life, she has authored numerous articles and books in English, including Gypsy Music in European Culture (2013), and in Polish. She held many internationally renowned fellowships and awards, such as a Fulbright Fellowship at Boston University, Moritz Csaky Preis at Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Mellon Fellowship at Edinburgh University. Currently, Anna Piotrowska is associated with the Institute of Musicology at Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. Laura Saarenmaa is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication (COMET) at the University of Tampere in Finland. Currently (2016–2017) she is working as a Visiting Research Fellow in Sweden at the University of Lund in the Department of Communication and Media. Her research project Meanwhile in Sweden: Society, Culture and World View in the Cold War Swedish Men’s Magazines develops further her investigation into the countercultural functions of men’s magazines in Cold War Finland. Her research interests include the intersections of politics and popular culture, Cold War media history, and the production histories of popular print media. Bjørn Sørenssen is Professor in the Department of Art and Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, where he teaches film studies. His main research interests are film history, documentary film history and theory, and digital audiovisual media. He has published books in Norwegian and numerous articles in English on film history and documentary film history and theory. Among his recent works in English are “Lindsay Anderson: The Polish Connection” in Lindsay Anderson Revisited: Unknown Aspects of a Film Director, edited by E. Hedling and C. Dupin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and “Frozen Kisses: Cinematographical Reflections on Norway’s Role in the Cold War,” in The Nordic Media and the Cold War, edited by Henrik G. Bastiansen and Rolf Werenskjold (Nordicom, 2015). Ekaterina Vikulina is Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Social Communication at Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies

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from the Russian State University and also degrees from the Russian Academy of Arts (I.E. Repin Institute) and from European University in St. Petersburg. She is a member of the Art Critics and Art Historians Association (AIS). Her research interests are in the field of cultural and visual studies, media studies, history and theory of photography, the phenomenon of the Cold War and Soviet “Thaw,” and urban studies. Annette Vowinckel received her doctorate from the Department of History at Essen University in 1999 and her Habilitation (second doctorate) from the Department of Cultural Studies at Humboldt University Berlin in 2006. She is a specialist in cultural and media history of the twentieth century and serves as head of the department for media history at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung/Center for Contemporary History Potsdam. Her recent publications include a book on the cultural history of photojournalism: Agenten der Bilder. Fotografisches Handeln im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011). Rolf Werenskjold  is Professor on the Faculty of Media and Journalism at Volda University College, Norway. He teaches Media Studies and Media History. He received his doctorate in Media Studies and Journalism from the Department of Media and Communication at Oslo University, Norway. He is a historian and media scholar who has published several studies on media and protests during the year 1968, modern American history, Norwegian media and the Spanish Civil War, and Norwegian foreign news journalism during the Cold War. His latest book is The Nordic Media and the Cold War (2015), which he edited with Henrik G. Bastiansen. Werenskjold is a member of the Norwegian National Board of Media Studies.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Images from High Frontier’s A Defense That Defends, 1984 Images from High Frontier’s A Defense That Defends, 1984 Images from Weapons in Space, 1984. Reprinted with permission from the Union of Concerned Scientists Images from Weapons in Space, 1984. Reprinted with permission from the Union of Concerned Scientists Child’s drawings from High Frontier’s “Crayola Ad,” October 1984 Child’s drawings from High Frontier’s “Crayola Ad,” October 1984 Scenes from the Committee for a Strong and Peaceful America’s “Star Wars I” ad Scenes from the Committee for a Strong and Peaceful America’s “Star Wars I” ad “The Growth of Tibet’s ‘Autonomy,’” New York Times, 22 May 1956. Reprinted with permission from Eastfoto Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ, “Three Men Riding a Public Transportation Vehicle,” in Lutz Rathenow and Harald Hauswald, Ost-Berlin. Die andere Seite einer Stadt [East Berlin. The Other Side of a City] (Munich, 1987), 26 Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ, “Old Woman Searching a Dustbin,” in Lutz Rathenow and Harald Hauswald, Ost-Berlin. Die andere Seite einer Stadt [East Berlin. The Other Side of a City] (Munich, 1987), 122 Sibylle Bergemann/OSTKREUZ, “The Monument,” from the series Marx Engels Monument, 1975–1986

24 25 27 28 29 30 31 32 120

124

125 126 xv

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Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5 Fig. 9.6 Fig. 9.7 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2 Fig. 14.3

Fig. 14.4

The location of Norwegian correspondent offices abroad at the end of the phase 1945–1964 The location of Norwegian correspondent offices abroad at the end of the phase 1965–1974 The location of Norwegian correspondent offices abroad at the end of the phase 1974–1995 The growth in numbers of Norwegian foreign-news journalists, 1945–1995 The changing generations of Norwegian foreign-news journalists, 1945–1995 The field of Norwegian foreign-news workers, selected characteristics, 1980 The field of Norwegian foreign-news workers, active individuals, 1980 The “nested narrative” of Orion’s Belt (Hjorthol 1995, 170). Reprinted with permission from Geir Hjorthol Goddess of Democracy, 30 May 1989. Photo © Stuart Franklin 1989 Tank Man, 4 June 1989. © Stuart Franklin 1989 4 June 1989. Tanks push through the standoff between the PLA and civilians on the morning after the massacre. Several civilians were shot and killed. Photograph © Stuart Franklin Tank Man as cartoon. © Inge Grødum 2014. Reproduced with kind permission of the artist

199 200 201 205 206 213 214 227 313 314

322 328

List of Tables

Table 9.1 Table 12.1

Characteristics by percentage of Norwegian journalists as a whole, total foreign-news journalists, and foreign-news correspondents in particular, 1950–1995 207 Historical settings of serial fiction in Soviet Union and Yugoslavia 269

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Abstract

The major economic, political, and cultural changes in societies during the last two decades of the Cold War have in recent years provoked increased scholarly attention. This volume examines the role of the media during the period from the Helsinki Conference in 1975 until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989– 1991. It explores how various forms of media engaged with the Cold War within Europe and beyond, including popular culture, audiovisual representations, photography, as well as artistic performances. The volume analyzes media actors and networks, as well as narrative and visual frames on a local and (trans-)national level. It investigates the complex interrelations between the media—both as a dependent and independent variable—and competing political, economic, and cultural elites, and seeks to explain the role of grassroots politics in the formation of public opinion.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Mapping the Role of the Media in the Late Cold War Methodological and Transnational Perspectives Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke and Rolf Werenskjold

When East German party official Guenter Schabowsky convened a press conference on 9 November 1989, little did he know that his actions at this somewhat routine briefing would initiate a chain of events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, thereby fundamentally and irrevocably dissolving the geopolitical landscape of the Cold War. Schabowsky’s appearance in front of the domestic and H. G. Bastiansen (*)  Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] M. Klimke  New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE e-mail: [email protected] R. Werenskjold  Faculty of Media and Journalism, Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_1

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international press corps took place in the midst of fundamental changes in the Eastern bloc occurring that year: Soviet troop withdrawals from Czechoslovakia (February) and Hungary (April), the Hungarian government’s decision to “lift” the Iron Curtain along its border with Austria (May), the election of the first noncommunist government in Poland (August), and the endorsement of the right of self-determination by the Warsaw Pact members (October), which effectively made the Brezhnev doctrine obsolete. Schabowsky’s task as secretary of information and representative of the East German Politburo during that press conference in November was to report on the tenth meeting of the Central Committee of East German’s Socialist Unity Party (SED) and to provide an update on existing plans of the new travel regulations that were to be officially announced the day after, so that border guards could be sufficiently instructed in advance. However, in response to a question by the Italian journalist Riccardo Ehrman about the new travel regulations, Schabowsky uttered these fateful words: “We have decided to create a regulation today which will allow every citizen of the GDR to cross any border crossing point.” When asked when these new regulations would take effect, he was clearly thrown off guard, stammering that “[a]ccording to my information, this is [to take effect] right now, immediately.” His announcement became an instant international newsflash, leading the Associated Press to report “GDR opens borders” at 7:05 p.m. and the Federal Republic’s German Press Agency to follow up with a similar statement, “The East German border to the Federal Republic and West Berlin is open.” As a result, thousands of East German citizens headed to the border crossings, where they encountered border guards who were completely uninformed and ill-prepared to deal with the situation. At 11:30 p.m. the guards finally gave way to the people’s demands, thereby initiating the final chapter of the state’s existence.1 Schabowsky’s handling of the media in the fall of 1989 had significant repercussions for the subsequent course of events. In recent years, the major economic, political, and cultural changes in societies during the last two decades of the Cold War have come into greater focus for academics from a variety of disciplines and countries.2 This volume examines the role of the media during the late part of the Cold War—from the mid-1970s until the end of the 1980s—before the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union. It explores the engagement of various forms of media with the Cold War, including alternative media representations, performances, and culture during these years. Media and the Cold War in the 1980s seeks to analyze media actors and networks and explores the political

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impact of the media, including narrative and visual frames, on a local and (trans-)national level. The purpose is to illuminate the complex interrelations between the media—both as a dependent and independent variable— and competing political, economic, and cultural elites, as well as explain the role of grassroots politics in the formation of public opinion. The subtitle of this book, Between Star Wars and Glasnost, suggests the mindset of the late Cold War’s key players and the cultures within which they operated. The words “star wars” conjure up specific associations for readers familiar with Western culture and politics. Most may primarily think of the outstanding films of George Lucas: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). The films were screened at cinemas all over the world throughout the following decades. Equally important, from early on the title of Lucas’s franchise was used to denote President Ronald Reagan’s plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative program. The program was officially shortened to SDI, but unofficially referred to as Reagan’s “Star Wars program.”3 Thus, the popular feature films about future star wars were linked to the discussions about the US presidential SDI program in the early 1980s. Similarly, glasnost (the Russian word for “openness”) carries strong cultural associations. It primarily refers to Mikhail Gorbachev and his reform policy in the Soviet Union after 1985, which he initiated as Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party. He linked his policy to his ideas of perestroika, the restructuring of Soviet economy and production, and his “new thinking” about the Soviet Union’s relations with the rest of the world (McNair 1991). The title also delineates the time period addressed by this book: the 1980s, or—more precisely—from the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s. The Star Wars films, the SDI program, and glasnost all belong to the same era in international history: the last decade and the last phase of the Cold War, which had dominated international politics since 1945, and which has only recently come under the scrutiny of Cold War historiography.4 In this book, we will point to the importance of writing the media into the Cold War history of the 1980s. As Nicholas Cull has argued, “[T]he cultural Cold War has emerged as a major concern of international history. The literature, film, and broadcasting of the Cold War period is at last being understood by historians, as it was by protagonists, not only as a product of the politics of that era but also as a front in the Cold War as real as that which divided Berlin, bisected Korea, or ran through the straits of Miami” (Cull 2010).

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Despite a significant amount of literature on Cold War culture, cultural diplomacy, as well as propaganda, historians have often neglected to systematically incorporate concepts of media and communications infrastructure, means and modes of dissemination, as well as their impact among various domestic and foreign audiences, in their work, all too often relying on rather static descriptions and explanatory frameworks.5 Scholarly analysis of the Cold War has only to a limited extent been concerned with the structural role the media played in international affairs during the second half of the twentieth century. Even though most Cold War historians would argue that the media was important—and media outlets under government influence, such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, or Radio Moscow have become the objects of intense academic and journalistic scrutiny—media has often been mentioned just in passing as part of a general explanation of phenomena that cannot be explained easily, such as changes in public opinion.6 The relative paucity of literature devoted to the subject indicates that the significance of the media during the Cold War has been underestimated, despite the fact that the Cold War was fought almost daily using the media—in newspaper columns, on radio, in cinema, and on television. The Cold War was indeed a media phenomenon in its own right—a cultural political struggle about the hearts and minds of ordinary people—and, as for the government leaders, it was meant to undermine each other’s ability to control the domestic public sphere. Studying the role of media and communication during this period thus does not only open a window onto the Cold War. It also provides crucial insights into the utilization of media and communication systems and products as a political tool on a domestic and international level. The Cold War affected the daily lives of millions of people in several parts of the world. Many experienced the Cold War and its events only through the mass media. It was primarily through the press, radio, and television that they stayed informed, with news coverage having perhaps the most pervasive effect in countries around the world. However, there were significant differences in how the Cold War events were perceived across the world and how they were framed by the media—whether in Washington or Moscow, in Stockholm or Berlin, or in the capital of a developing country (Nordenstreng and Varis 1974; MacBride et al. 1984). In each case, ordinary people had to deal with the news coverage that was available to them via the respective infrastructure they had access to. In theaters as well, the audiences—both in the East and

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West—saw films that portrayed the Cold War quite differently (Shaw and Youngblood 2010). The same was true of television programs. At the same time, we know that the period 1945–1991 was the era when modern mass communications evolved at an unprecedented pace. By 1945 the print press was active in most countries, Hollywood films dominated in theaters throughout most of the world, radio stations were found in all populated regions and played an especially important role in the developing world. And, above all, television came into many Western middle-class households during the 1950s and quickly expanded throughout the world, especially with the advent of television satellites in the 1960s (Chapman 2005). During the 1970s and 1980s, the world became increasingly connected by modern mass media, and the whole world was literally watching the interaction of the superpowers. Through the media, the lives of ordinary people became directly and indirectly influenced by the Cold War (Commission on Freedom of the Press 1947; Glander 2000; Baran and Davis 2009). This book highlights the role and importance of the media in the last decade of the Cold War. Our main theme is the media itself—as both an arena and an actor. Analyses of the media’s role in this era provide new knowledge and different perspectives compared to those focused on the first phase of the Cold War. In this book, the contributions are geographically limited to the classic East-West axis during the Cold War: the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, and a Europe divided by the so-called Iron Curtain between the east and west. The contributions address a number of topics that will greatly benefit from more research in the future. They furthermore illustrate the need to diversify methodological and geographical approaches to studying the role of the media during the Cold War, incorporating a whole range of media in different countries, including non-Western ones, as well as considering a transnational dimension. Although still very limited in scope, the thirteen articles in this book can be viewed as a first step toward establishing a more comprehensive as well as transnational way of studying the media in the last decade of the Cold War—one that expands the reach beyond a Western/Eurocentric focus of Europe and paves the way for a perspective that transcends traditional East-West dichotomies. There are still no studies of the Cold War that offer an overall perspective on the role of the media, which would include more than one country or region (Whitfield 1996). In the earliest phase of the Cold War, newspapers were an important factor contributing to the creation

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of the Cold War culture, especially the quest during the McCarthy era to rout out communists in the United States. Researchers have published widely on the role of the media in the United States during the Cold War, but without any systematic consideration of different categories within which the two-way relationship between the media and the Cold War played out—for example, in relation to the political decision level, opinion formation, and the cultural dimension, and in terms of their impact.7 The literature almost always discusses only one medium: the print press, film, radio, or television, one by one in isolation—without necessarily seeing them in a broader multimedia context.8 However, there are some comparative studies of a medium on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Shaw and Youngblood’s book from 2010 on Cold War movie production is one such example. The book addresses the main trends in American and Soviet films and covers the entire period from 1945 until the end of the Cold War. As for the 1980s, it is still the case that the various means of communication have not been addressed proportionally to their actual significance during this time. There are single studies that put the spotlight on either the United States and American media or on other individual countries and their respective media.9 Media and the Cold War in the 1980s points to the need for a much broader understanding of the role of the media, approaching the Cold War’s last decade, throughout the media field and in several countries simultaneously. That is the novelty of this book. The contributions thus span many media and many different countries with historically different media systems and political regimes (Siebert 1956; Hallin and Mancini 2004, 2011). The book also develops perspectives in recent studies of the Nordic media during the Cold War (Bastiansen and Werenskjold 2015). We have organized the thirteen different contributions in this book so that they geographically follow the East-West axis during the Cold War; from the United States in the West, through both sides of the Iron Curtain in Europe, to the Soviet Union and China in the East. The division thus follows the main axis of the Cold War. With few exceptions, the debate about the end of the Cold War in the years 1989–1991 and the collapse of communism itself are largely omitted in this book. Most articles are about topics before 1989. We begin with an essay by William Knoblauch, who highlights the media dimensions of US President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Knoblauch explores both the “High Frontier” media

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campaign spearheaded by retired General Daniel Graham on behalf of SDI, as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists’ anti-SDI campaign and their utilization of celebrities, TV commercials, documentaries, and mass-market paperbacks, as well as sweepstakes, to disseminate their respective messages. He describes how the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), directed by the Department of Defense, was launched in the midst of this battle for public support for SDI to promote this new defense system among the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers, the media, as well as the general public. Laura Saarenmaa discusses how the Cold War was portrayed through interviews in the American men’s magazine Playboy, best known for its photos of nude females. It has always stood outside the traditional media used for Cold War analyses. Nevertheless, Saarenmaa shows that Playboy actually can be seen in a Cold War perspective: in the early 1960s, the magazine developed an innovative interview format that provided room for both American and international opponents of the US government during the Cold War to explain their criticism of its foreign policy. Saarenmaa points out that Playboy had a critical perspective on American foreign policy throughout the 1980s and that the magazine questioned simple Cold War narratives. Thus, in this investigation of Playboy’s foreign policy interviews, Saarenmaa expands the analysis of American media during the Cold War to include men’s magazines, which could be viewed as belonging to an alternative public sphere, apart from the established news media. Klaus Dodds and Lisa Funnell explore the James Bond movies during the period 1974–1987, with an eye toward geopolitical and geophysical metaphors and representations. Their reading of the Bond movies underlines the Cold War dynamics and developments embodied in these films, and focuses on the ways in which natural elements, resources, and the atmosphere itself are characterized as geo- as well as bio-political factors in the films’ audio-visual representations. Dodds and Funnell meticulously examine how the low tension through the détente period is featured prominently in the franchise during the Roger Moore era as James Bond, before giving way to more personalized and uncertain geopolitical conditions during the late 1980s, when Timothy Dalton became Moore’s successor. Tobias Hochscherf investigates the production history and impact of the popular and highly successful East German mini-series Treffpunkt Flughafen (Meeting Point Airport, 1986), a co-production with the Cuban state broadcasting network. Hochscherf illuminates the institutional challenges involved in this broad-based effort to internationalize

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programing in the GDR, for example, by shooting the series in friendly socialist countries, such as Cuba, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Africa. Hochscherf not only shows how the programs offered a form of transnational escapism to an East German audience, largely constrained by travel restrictions in their country; but he also highlights the ways in which the producers aimed to underscore the ideological superiority of the socialist world in contrast to Western values through the accessible format of mass-entertainment television. Annette Vowinckel provides closer insight into the system of East German photojournalism, illuminating the various ways in which photographers maintained both personal and professional contacts with Western peers and publishers, thereby transcending the East-West divide. She details how, within the confines of the SED dictatorship of the GDR, photographers used their medium to voice their social and political criticism, had limited access to travel to the West, and were viewed by the East German security service as a “negotiable threat.” Anna Piotrowska writes about the role of punk music as a protest channel in Poland in the 1980s. The Polish opposition was by then far more complex than it had been during the 1950s and 1960s, when the authorities were able to stop protests by isolating opposition groups. The opposition in the 1980s, however, consisted of a large and wide alliance among intellectuals, cultural workers, labor, and the influential Catholic Church in Poland. Piotrowska is particularly concerned with how punk bands used irony as a nonviolent instrument in the protest against the communist regime, one that was deliberately used to circumvent the censorship in texts and performances. Punk music communicated with both a small and large audience in that it was understood locally, nationally, and across borders. The protests were directed at the official partycontrolled media that portrayed the punk genre as destructive. The Polish authorities also feared the political power that the music could have as a means of communication, and the official media were used in an attempt to pit different youth groups against each other. Juliane Debeusscher studies the conditions under which unofficial exhibitions took place in Hungary during the 1980s. The opposition in the alternative underground movement put together the exhibitions Hungary Can Be Yours in 1984 and The Fighting City in 1987. They faced strict countermeasures from the Hungarian authorities. The communist regime feared such free and critical cultural expression so much that they did everything to stop these events, including the full dismantling of the

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exhibitions. However, the exhibitions managed to earn considerable renown—and as a consequence, they both have been seen as important cultural and political expressions against communist-ruled Hungary just before communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe in 1989. In retrospect, it may be hard to comprehend what the initiators actually risked by organizing these exhibits. Debeusscher shows how merciless the communist regime fought against all kinds of cultural expression by the opposition during the years just before 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jan Fredrik Hovden and Rolf Werenskjold focus on foreign-news reporters. Using data from Norway, their work is based on previous studies of a single country’s total foreign news system throughout the Cold War era. They give a collective picture of an entire nation’s network of foreign news correspondents and reporters, analyzing all media forms throughout the period 1945–1991. The purpose is to map and analyze who the foreign correspondents and foreign news reporters were at the time—the ones who reported the Cold War news and were thus responsible for helping to shape public opinion at home and, in many cases, abroad. The authors show that the logic of the Cold War was an integral part of the expansion of the modern network of correspondents in Norway, influencing, for example, the way in which geopolitical “hotspots” were prioritized thereafter, and requiring greater professional experience on the part of the journalists who covered them. Bjørn Sørenssen points out that the Cold War was almost completely absent in the film production of small countries like Norway after 1945. However, there was one exception: the film Orions Belte from 1985. In Norway, this film is often seen as an example of implementing Hollywood films’ effective narrative style, with a lot of action and a classic tension curve—which can explain the movie’s big commercial success. The movie is set in the archipelago of Svalbard, an area where all signature nations of the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 have the right to exploit the island’s natural resources. The Soviet Union was operating mines and building its own cities. With Norway as the NATO country sharing a border with the Soviet Union, Svalbard became one of the focal points of the Cold War’s East-West conflict. Sørenssen writes about the film’s literary and political background and analyzes its narrative structure. The film’s connection to the Cold War gives it a major political dimension, which is unusual in Norwegian films. Sørenssen sees Orions Belte as an example of what Justin Watt has called Hollywood’s “high-concept” films, where the theme of the Cold War provided the impetus for

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filmmakers from a small country to create a work of fiction on a large scale. Henrik G. Bastiansen writes about the changes in Norwegian news coverage of the Soviet Union during the period 1985–1988. In 1985, Cold War tensions were at their peak. Four years later, the whole world knew the Russian word glasnost and recognized it as something positive. How the view of the Soviet Union changed is analyzed by exploring the news articles and editorials that appeared during this time in Aftenposten—the Norwegian newspaper with the largest foreign news desk and the most extensive coverage of Eastern Europe—as a case study. The main theme is the newspaper’s reporting of the glasnost policy itself. Bastiansen discusses how the emergence of glasnost before and especially after the Chernobyl accident in 1986 contributed to changing the newspaper’s view of the Soviet Union—and eventually that of journalists throughout the world. Bastiansen points out that experienced journalists with special regional expertise, who had served as foreign news correspondents in Moscow and who mastered the Russian language, excelled at the newspaper. Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable write about “the history boom” in the late socialist television era, with data retrieved from the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. They submit data from a huge mapping research project—248 drama series from the Soviet Union and 384 drama series from Yugoslavia—and show new insights about television as a mass medium in the communist world toward the end of the Cold War. As the ideology of a future communist society proved increasingly remote, due to the increasing stagnation of the regime, they find that both countries’ television producers began to change their focus from future visions to historical background. Mihelj and Huxtable have found a formidable growth in historical-drama series, both in Soviet and Yugoslav television. In these two countries, the states’ television producers had begun to devote their efforts to legitimizing the regime in terms of past achievements, instead of promoting the optimism of the future that the communist countries previously had embraced. Ekaterina Vikulina goes deeper into the visual style of the Soviet regime as projected in their media by analyzing images of Soviet leaders during the Cold War. She detects a significant change in public depictions from Stalin to Khrushchev, from paintings and drawings that embellished the physical features of Stalin to photographs that captured the ordinary, more informal, and relatable Khrushchev. The latter,

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in contrast to Stalin, was shown in motion, connected to both science, the media, and ordinary people, and was seen smiling and laughing. This democratization and sensualization of power representations were only partially continued under Brezhnev, whose personal representations in the media were overshadowed by an emphasis on the size of the Politburo and the comprehensive state apparatus he oversaw and characterized by a return to static, less emotional, and more staged moments. A shift came about again during Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure, in which a more dynamic and lively mode of depiction pervaded the media. Stuart Franklin analyzes in the final essay the iconic dimension of photographs in a given political context, using two images from the Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing in 1989 as his examples: the Goddess of Democracy and the Tank Man. The former, a depiction of a student-built statue inspired by the Statue of Liberty and erected in the courtyard of China’s leading art school, came to represent the democratic aspirations of the student movement as well as the complex political environment it was operating in. The latter, a standoff between a lone protester and an army tank, was advanced as a symbol of freedom and resistance in the face of a totalitarian government. Franklin underscores the intricate ways in which both images were disseminated, how they gained notoriety in the context of television coverage of the event, how their impact differed globally, and how their iconization can prompt us to think more critically about our visual canon of the Cold War. The contributions in this volume can be considered only a starting point toward an overall transnational and transmedia perspective on the relations between the media and the Cold War. The topic is, of course, very extensive and the field is still new. There are many areas that have not yet been fully explored, whether it be individual media events—covering topics as diverse as the Iran hostage crisis from 1979 to 1981, the shooting down of Korean Airlines flight 007 in September 1983, the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown of April 1986, the illegal landing of a young German pilot on Moscow’s Red Square in May 1987, or the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989—or the impacts of technological innovations, such as satellite television, strategic disinformation campaigns, and so forth. We also need more knowledge about the role of media in different countries in the last years of the Cold War. It may surprise some readers that we have included three essays from a single country, in this case,

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Norway. These contributions, however, explore topics that go beyond the geographical location of the country, delving into various facets of how foreign events were depicted at the time, and finding themes that could very well pertain to other countries as well: from the people who reported foreign news, to cinematic work that drew upon Cold War stories, to the evolving coverage of Soviet events in a single news source. Werenskjold and Hovden’s chronological study of the Cold War reporters is a case study pointing to the impact of individual correspondents and foreign-news coverage. Sørenssen’s analysis of an important feature film located in the Svalbard Islands in the Arctic area where Soviet and NATO interests ran up against each other illuminates how cinema in non-English speaking countries utilized the Cold War to produce dramatic narratives with great commercial success. Bastiansen’s study of the changing Soviet news in a Norwegian daily encourages similar study of how glasnost was reported in Western mass media more generally. Likewise, many of the articles in this book raise questions that have not been systematically studied so far and point to the need for more information and insight. They also suggest topics that researchers focused on other countries might address in the future. More studies of both large and small countries are needed along the East-West axis, as are explorations of the North-South dimension during the Cold War. These topics point far beyond the scope of this book.

Notes 1. For a detailed chronology of this day’s events, see, for example, Sarotte (2015) or Schabowsky (1994). 2. For example, see the following: Leffler and Westad (2010, vol. 3), Snyder (2011), Engel (2011, 2017), Kalinovsky and Radchenko (2013), Wilson (2014), Domber (2014), von Plato (2015), Service (2015), Nuti et al. (2015), Klimke et al. (2016), Conze et al. (2017), Savranskya and Blanton (2017), and Taubman (2017). 3. See the contribution by William Knoblauch in this volume for the origins of the “star wars” reference in the context of SDI. 4.  For contextualizing the second half of the Cold War in more general historical surveys of it, see, for example, the following: Gaddis (1992), Westad (2000, 2007, 2013, 2017), Hanhimäki and Westad (2003), Leffler (2004), Lundestad (2004, 2010), Leffler and Westad (2010, vol. 3), Loth (2010), Villaume and Westad (2010), Kalinovsky and Daigle (2016), and Fink (2017).

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5.  The scholarship on Cold War culture is extensive. For introductions, see Cull (2010), Cull and Mazumdar (2016), and Kozovoi (2016). Representative studies in this area include Hixson (1998), Cull (2008), Belmonte (2010), and Kuznick and Gilbert (2010). See also the works of Jessica Gienow-Hecht and the various volumes that she has edited for the series Explorations in Culture and International History (Berghahn Books). 6. For radio, see, for example, Cummings (2009), Johnson, (2010), Johnson and Parta (2012), and Schlosser (2015), as well as the Cold War History special issue (13 no. 2 [2013]), “Radio Wars: Broadcasting in the Cold War” edited by Linda Risso. For an attempt to systematically incorporate media into the study of protest movements, see Fahlenbrach et al. (2014). 7.  See the following: Caute (1978), Aronson (1990), Rojecki (1999), Glander (2000), and Emmons (2010). 8. See the following: Aronson (1990), MacDonald (1985), Bernhard (1999), Cummings (2009), and Cummings( 2010). 9.  See the following: Salminen and Campling (1999), Hammarlund and Riegert (2011), Petterson (2011), Riegert and Petterson (2011), and Salovaara-Moring and Maunula (2011).

References Aronson, J. 1990. The Press and the Cold War. New York: Monthly Review Press. Baran, S. J., and D. K. Davis. 2009. Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Bastiansen, H. G., and R. Werenskjold. 2015. Nordic Media and the Cold War. Gøteborg: Nordicom. Belmonte, Laura A. 2010. Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bernhard, N. E. 1999. U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947– 1960. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Caute, D. 1978. The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. London: Secker and Warburg. Chapman, J. 2005. Comparative Media History: 1789 to the Present. Cambridge: Polity Press. Commission on Freedom of the Press. 1947. A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines, and Books. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Conze, Eckart, Martin Klimke, and Jeremy Varon, eds. 2017. Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear and the Cold War of the 1980s. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cull, Nicholas J. 2008. The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2010. “Reading, Viewing, and Tuning into the Cold War.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, edited by M. P. Leffler and O. A. Westad, Vol. 2, 438–459. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Cull, Nicholas J., and B. Theo Mazumdar. 2016. “Propaganda and the Cold War.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War, edited by Artemy Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle, 323–339. London: Routledge. Cummings, R. H. 2009. Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950–1989. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ———. 2010. Radio Free Europe’s “Crusade for Freedom”: Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Domber, Gregory F. 2014. Empowering Revolution: America, Poland, and the End of the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Emmons, C. S. 2010. Cold War and McCarthy Era: People and Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Engel, Jeffrey A. 2011. The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Fahlenbrach, K., M. Klimke, and J. Scharlot. 2016. Protest Cultures: A Companion. New York: Berghahn Books. Fahlenbrach, K., E. Sivertsen, and R. Werenskjold, eds. 2014. Media in Revolt. Protest Performances in the Media. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Fink, Carol. 2017. Cold War: An International History. 2nd ed. New York and Oxford: Routledge. Gaddis, J. L. 1992. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations. New York: Oxford University Press. Glander, T. R. 2000. Origins of Mass Communications Research During the American Cold War: Educational Effects and Contemporary Implications. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum. Hallin, D. C., and P. Mancini. 2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011. Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Hammarlund, J., and K. Riegert. 2011. “Understanding the Prime Mover: Ambivalent Swedish Press Discourse on the USA from 1984 to 2009.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 1: 15–33. Hanhimäki, J. M., and O. A. Westad. 2003. The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Hixson, Walter L. 1998. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

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Johnson, A. Ross. 2010. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond. Cold War International History Project. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Johnson, A. Ross, and Eugene R. Parta, eds. 2012. Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: A Collection of Studies and Documents. Budapest: Central European University Press. Kalinovsky, Artemy, and Craig Daigle, eds. 2016. The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War. London: Routledge. Kalinovsky, Artemy, and Sergey Radchenko, eds. 2013. The End of the Cold War and the Third World: New Perspectives on Regional Conflict. Cold War Series. Oxford and New York: Routledge. Klimke, Martin, Reinhild Kreis, and Christian F. Ostermann, eds. 2016. Trust, But Verify: The Politics of Uncertainty and the Transformation of the Cold War Order, 1969–1991. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kozovoi, Andrei. 2016. “The Cold War and Film.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War, edited by Artemy Kalinovsky and Craig Daigle, 340–350. London: Routledge. Kuznick, P. J., and J. Gilbert. 2010. Rethinking Cold War Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Leffler, M. P. 2004. “The Beginning and End: Time, Context, and the Cold War.” In The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, edited by O. Njølstad, 29–59. London: Frank Cass. Leffler, M. P., and O. A. Westad, eds. 2010. The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Vol. 3, Endings. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Loth, W. 2010. “The Cold War: What It Was About and Why It Ended.” In Perforating the Iron Curtain: European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, edited by P. Villaume and O. A. Westad, 19–34. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen. Lundestad, G. 2004. “The European Role at the Beginning and Particularly the End of the Cold War.” In The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, edited by O. Njølstad, 60–79. London: Frank Cass. ———. 2010. East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics Since 1945. Los Angeles: Sage. MacBride, S., E. Abel, et al. 1984. Many Voices, One World: Communication and Society, Today and Tomorrow: The MacBride Report. Paris: Unesco. MacDonald, J. F. 1985. Television and the Red Menace: The Video Road to Vietnam. New York: Praeger. McNair, B. 1991. Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media. London: Routledge. Nordenstreng, K., and T. Varis. 1974. Television Traffic—A One-Way Street? A Survey and Analysis of the International Flow of Television Programme Material. Paris: Unesco.

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Nuti, Leopold, et al., eds. 2015. The Euromissile Crisis and the End of the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Petterson, L. 2011. “Changing Images of the USA in German Media Discourse During Four American Presidencies.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 1: 35–51. Plato, Alexander von. 2015. The End of the Cold War? Bush, Kohl, Gorbachev, and the Reunification of Germany. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Riegert, K., and L. Petterson. 2011. “‘It’s Complicated’: European Media Discourse on the USA from Reagan to Obama.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 1: 3–14. Risso, Linda. 2013. “Radio Wars: Broadcasting in the Cold War.” Special issue, Cold War History 13, no. 2: 27–47. Rojecki, A. 1999. Silencing the Opposition: Antinuclear Movements and the Media in the Cold War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Salminen, E., and J. Campling. 1999. The Silenced Media: The Propaganda War Between Russia and the West in Northern Europe. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Salovaara-Moring, I., and K. Maunula. 2011. “Geographies of Media and Power: The United States in Finnish Media Discourse, 1984–2009.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 1: 91–111. Sarotte, M. E. 2015. The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall. New York: Basic Books. Savranskya, Svetlana, and Thomas Blanton. 2017. The Last Superpower SummitsReagan, Gorbachev and Bush at the End of the Cold War. Budapest: Central European University Press. Schabowsky, G. 1994. Der Absturz. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Schlosser, Nicholas J. 2015. Cold War on the Airwaves: The Radio Propaganda War Against East Germany. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Service, Robert. 2015. The End of the Cold War: 1985–1991. N.P.: PublicAffairs. Shaw, T., and D. J. Youngblood. 2010. Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Siebert, F. S. 1956. Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Snyder, Sarah B. 2011. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taubman, William. 2017. Gorbachev: His Life and Times. New York: W. W. Norton. Villaume, P., and O. A. Westad. 2010. Perforating the Iron Curtain: European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen.

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Westad, O. A. 2000. Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, and Theory. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. ———. 2007. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory. London: Routledge. ———. 2017. The Cold War: A World History. New York: Basic Books. Whitfield, S. J. 1996. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilson, James Graham. The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Selling “Star Wars” in American Mass Media William M. Knoblauch

Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) remains a divisive topic for historians.1 Sympathetic scholars assess Reagan’s vision of space-based missile defense as part of a grand strategy to spend the Soviets into ruin. Skeptics see SDI as an unachievable program that impeded nuclear abolition and prolonged poor superpower relations. Others view “Star Wars” as a deft political calculation to halt the antinuclear movement’s momentum. Whatever the interpretation, most agree that SDI was one of the most unexpected and polarizing announcements of Reagan’s presidency.2 Announcing SDI amid a massive nuclear arms buildup, Reagan asked American scientists to create technology that might render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” Scientists, however, were divided on the issue. Some, like Edward Teller, zealously supported the program (Slayton 2013, 180; Boyer 2010, 203). Most American scientists, however, were highly critical of “Star Wars” and quickly organized to discredit it. Almost immediately, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), led by MIT physicist Henry Kendall and Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan, W. M. Knoblauch (*)  Finlandia University, Hancock, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_2

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used American mass media to convince citizens that “Star Wars” was both misguided and dangerous (Linenthal 1989, xiii; FitzGerald 2000, 380).3 Concurrently, another non-government organization (NGO), “High Frontier,” promoted SDI in books, television ads, documentary films, and other media. This was a curious conflict, one that began well before the government’s official Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) could even start to shape its own message. In this media battle, both the UCS and High Frontier believed strongly in their respective causes. According to High Frontier’s founder, retired Gen. Daniel O. Graham, stakes were high because “both sides realize that [SDI is] a political issue and that grassroots support is important” (Stengel 1985, 31–32; Linenthal 1989, 89). From 1983 until 1986, the UCS and High Frontier shaped Americans’ perceptions of “Star Wars” and delineated SDI’s possibilities before the White House could. Considering that SDI did not yet exist made this media battle all the more perplexing. As historian Edward Linenthal has stated, “[T]here has never been a nonexistent weapons system that has generated more passionate veneration and contempt” than SDI (Linenthal 1989, xiii; see also Franklin 1988; Smith 1989; FitzGerald 2000, 147–209). By 1987 this battle forced the SDIO to reframe the debate; abandoning Reagan’s initial hopes for perfect missile defense, the organization would have to settle on more modest claims of enhanced deterrence to maintain government funding.

Reagan’s Announcement Reagan announced SDI on March 23, 1983. In a nighttime televised address, the president expressed his belief that America should rise “above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence” and demonstrate “peaceful intentions by applying all our abilities and ingenuity to achieving a truly lasting stability.” Then, Reagan made his announcement: Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. Let us turn to the very strengths in technology that spawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today. What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?4

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These comments marked a radical shift from the Cold War paradigm of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the basis of nuclear deterrence for decades. In addition to abandoning accepted nuclear strategy, the reality was that the technology for such a program was nowhere in sight, a fact that alarmed many of Reagan’s advisers. In fact, only a few figures within the White House had advance knowledge of the speech. Even top-ranking officials like Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had little advance warning about these remarks (Gelb 1983; Cannon and Hoffman 1983; Wirls 1992, 135). Both men advised against the speech, but neither could deter Reagan, who had likely been dreaming of such a program for years (Boyer 2010, 196–223; Rhodes 2007, 178–179; Cannon 2000, 145, 287; FitzGerald 2000, 198). What influenced Reagan to make his announcement? Historians cite varying influences on Reagan’s thinking, some as deep-rooted as American insistence on self-reliance and rugged individualism (FitzGerald 2000, 19–25). Other influences included Reagan’s role as Brass Bancroft in the 1940 film Murder in the Air, which featured a sci-fi weapon, the “inertia projector,” that could intercept incoming missiles; a 1979 campaign visit to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), in which Reagan learned that the United States had no defense against a Soviet first strike; Reagan’s familiarity with Edward Teller (the so-called “father of the hydrogen bomb”) and his work on X-ray lasers; and Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop’s report in Strategic Review on rekindling Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems. Whatever the influences, for many Reagan’s pronouncement was both unexpected and unsettling. By 1983, Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) was nothing new, but previous missile defense programs had been used as diplomatic bargaining chips. For example, in the early 1970s, an era of détente, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed to limit ABM systems as part of their Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT); now, with SDI, Reagan was reneging on that agreement (Boyer 2010, 120–135, 202–205; Lettow 2005, 18–25, 37–41; Linenthal 1989, 6–7; Rhodes 2007, 138–140, 177–178; Wirls 1992, 138–140). In convincing Reagan that SDI was possible, another influential figure was Daniel Graham. A former deputy director of the CIA, Graham had been a Reagan campaign advisor in 1976 and 1980, but this retired general only made his missile defense zealotry public in 1979 with the book Shall America Be Defended? In February 1980, Graham argued to Reagan that MAD was an outdated strategy, one that should

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be replaced by the “new strategic framework” of BMD (Lakoff and York 1989, 9–10; Wirls 1992, 145; FitzGerald 2000, 125). After Reagan’s election, Graham sought support from Secretary of State Alexander Haig, but to no avail. He finally found sympathetic supporters in businessman Karl R. Bendetsen and Heritage Foundation member Joseph Coors; together, they founded High Frontier, a pro-military NGO that would promote space-based BMD. By 1982, High Frontier had raised over a quarter of a million dollars (Baucom 1992, 140– 149). Reassured, Graham revisited the White House to promote his ideas. Reagan may have liked what he heard, but high-ranking advisers like Defense Secretary Weinberger and Deputy National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane remained skeptical (FitzGerald 2000, 132, 198–199; Lakoff and York 1989, 10–11; Wirls 1992, 144–146; Rhodes 2007, 261–263; Boyer 2010, 5–7). Graham lacked scientific credentials, as did many members of his staff. Plus, he had a reputation for ignoring facts he didn’t like and “stretching the truth well beyond the breaking point.” Graham’s reputation led astute advisors to shield Reagan from the general. In response, High Frontier shifted its focus from seeking presidential support and toward gaining public support (FitzGerald 2000, 125–127, 132–137; Time 1984).

High Frontier’s Media Campaign Graham understood the importance of branding. He had hoped that his vision for space-based BMD would be called “High Frontier,” but critics had christened the program “Star Wars” after the sci-fi film it seemed to mimic (Rogin 1987, 42–43). Whichever title, in 1983 Graham pushed his ideas first in A Defense that Defends: Blocking Nuclear Attack, and later in a second book simply entitled High Frontier. Both works promoted “manned space station[s] in low Earth orbit” and some “high-capacity energy systems,” requirements that Graham believed could be met “with technology already in hand and off-theshelf hardware.” Both books were dedicated to Reagan for having “the courage to start this nation on a road to a true defense.” Such praise implied a collaboration between the White House and High Frontier, as did these books’ verbatim inclusion of Reagan’s March 23, 1983 SDI speech (Graham and Fossedal 1983; Graham 1983, 43). In reality, no collaboration existed.

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Graham’s publicity efforts intensified for the biggest antinuclear media event of 1983: the 20 November airing of the American Broadcasting Corporation’s film The Day After. Anticipating tens of millions of viewers, High Frontier hoped to capitalize on the event with a two-day “media blitz” that would promote SDI in newspapers and network television. Unfortunately, Graham lacked two important things: manpower and money. So, he solicited White House support. In a formal letter, Graham asked that White House staffers make calls on behalf of High Frontier. He even requested that administration officials court conservative philanthropists and potential donors to fund his efforts, hopefully to raise $500,000. The White House was not receptive, as Graham’s books were making promises that SDI might not be able to keep. Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff Jim Cicconi warned staffers “not to become involved” with Graham.5 The general’s continued use of Reagan’s words, this time in a new publication, We Must Defend America and Put an End to MADness, further irked Cicconi.6 By February 22, 1984, Counsel to President Fred Fielding made clear to Graham that “the inclusion of the President’s [words and image] in the fundraising” violated White House policy.7 In 1984, High Frontier released an SDI-themed television documentary, A Defense that Defends. It featured Lorne Greene, the actor who played cattle rancher Ben Cartwright on Bonanza and Commander Adama in Battlestar Galactica. The documentary opens with Greene strolling through a garden and sharing his thoughts about SDI: I’d like to talk to you about a very important idea: a non-nuclear defense against nuclear missiles. If you’ve heard it called “Star Wars” that’s unfortunate, because it’s a misleading name for the concept. It conjures up notions of futuristic science fiction space machines blasting away at each other in outer space. I’m not a scientist—although I wish I were sometimes—but I do know the difference between fantasy and reality … after all I did command a fantasy spaceship, as some of you may recall. Now the proper name for the idea I mentioned is “High Frontier,” not Star Wars. It’s a proposal for a non-threatening, non-nuclear defense system to be set up in the high frontier of space to defend against the most awesome of destructive weapons: the nuclear ballistic missile. The concept was put forward in a report prepared by a group of non-governmental scientists and engineers as a result of an effort called High Frontier; the report

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was the catalyst behind the President’s launching of his Strategic Defense Initiative in March of 1983. You know, I find it puzzling, very puzzling, that this search for a non-nuclear defense against the destructive power of nuclear weapons should arouse such bitter opposition. (Graham 1984)

Greene warned that “if only a few nuclear missiles were launched at us, by accident, by a breakdown in communications, or even on purpose” the president could not defend Americans, at least not “until High Frontier is set into place” (ibid.). To show why, the documentary included a graphic depiction of SDI, a “three-tiered” system of ground-based defenses and space-based lasers. These graphics visually represented how this nonexistent system might work seamlessly (ibid.) (Figs. 2.1 and 2.2). Greene linked High Frontier with arms race reductions, claiming that it “so effectively reduces the risks of a Soviet first strike, [America] will have little need to continue amassing ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.” All America needed to do to break free from the

Fig. 2.1  Images from High Frontier’s A Defense That Defends, 1984

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Fig. 2.2  Images from High Frontier’s A Defense That Defends, 1984

arms race is “put the same effort into High Frontier as we did putting a man on the moon.” If so, High Frontier would be “operational by the end of the decade.” “This is no fantasy,” assured Greene, but America needed to act fast, as the “Soviets were already at work” on their own SDI-like program, and had “already sent seven space stations into orbit” from “Star Town,” a secret camp where cosmonauts trained to staff these space stations for up to two hundred consecutive days (Graham 1984). To the UCS, such claims seemed absurd. By their logic, any SDI program would not halt but actually accelerate the arms race, as all the Soviets would need to overwhelm any SDI system was to send more nuclear weapons. Additionally, many UCS scientists saw space as their purview and sought to keep nuclear weapons out of the stratosphere.

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To combat Graham’s propaganda, the UCS crafted its own media campaign. Although their message was starkly different, the UCS’s methods of using mass media mimicked those of High Frontier.

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Anti-SDI Campaign Since forming in 1969, the UCS sought to inform Americans about issues of “nuclear arms control, energy policy, and nuclear-power safety.” After Richard Nixon signed the 1972 ABM Treaty, the UCS shifted its focus toward containing nuclear power, but Reagan’s arms buildup brought the organization back to the cause of nuclear disarmament (Tirman 1985, 295; Moore 2008, 158–189). In this battle, no UCS member more publicly criticized “Star Wars” than Carl Sagan; the idea of weaponizing space especially appalled the well-known host of PBS’s Cosmos. In the early 1980s, Sagan left NASA to devote all of his “energies on saving the world from nuclear holocaust” (Davidson 1999, 356–359). His media activism began with a May 18, 1983, New York Times op-ed piece in which he and physicist Richard L. Garwin pleaded that all “spacefaring nations … negotiate, for their benefit and for the benefit of the human species, a treaty to ban weapons of any kind from space” (Garwin and Sagan 1983, A26). Later that month, the UCS published a critical report, “Anti-Satellite Weapons: Arms Control or Arms Race?” When Kendall forwarded a copy to the White House, the State Department responded dismissively.8 Like Graham, Kendall and Sagan quickly realized that the White House was not going to be receptive to their requests; like High Frontier, the UCS now shifted its focus away from the White House and toward mass media. It published a paperback, The Fallacy of Star Wars, which Kendall promoted in a Time magazine feature. In the piece, he called SDI “unattainable” and explained that even if “Star Wars” existed, the Soviets could simply bypass it with submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), suitcase bombs, or overwhelm it with Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) decoys.9 Unhappy with these critiques, the White House responded by ending Kendall’s privileged access to SDI-related meetings.10 The UCS sought a broader audience with Weapons in Space, a multimedia presentation featuring an instantly recognizable voice: James Earl Jones. He was a fitting narrator. Jones had appeared in the atomic satire Dr. Strangelove and was the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. It was his bass voice that opened the presentation:

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Space weapons, laser battles, and death stars exist only in the movies. I’m James Earl Jones, and I would like to talk to you about this space war fantasy becoming a reality. The greatest fear people have today is that of nuclear war. Recently, space-based defenses against ballistic missiles have been proposed that allegedly would make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a national organization with extensive experience in weapons technology, has completed a study of the proposed systems. They have found that space defense is a dangerous fantasy. None of the systems have been built. All of them face enormous technical hurdles and staggering costs. Worst of all, none of them will protect us from the huge missile buildup they will provoke. (Lomberg and Derkach 1984)

Like High Frontier, the UCS used graphic illustrations of this nonexistent system to support its points (Figs. 2.3 and 2.4).

Fig. 2.3  Images from Weapons in Space, 1984. Reprinted with permission from the Union of Concerned Scientists

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Fig. 2.4  Images from Weapons in Space, 1984. Reprinted with permission from the Union of Concerned Scientists

Jones concluded the presentation by suggesting that the White House replace SDI with new arms reduction negotiations: “The treaty limiting anti-ballistic missile defenses is the most important existing arms control agreement … [but] it will be swept aside if we proceed with space defenses.” All Americans, he noted, should “demand that all weapons be banned from space” (ibid.). This five-minute multimedia presentation enhanced Sagan’s university talks and his private meetings with politicians. His next step was to bring this message to millions of Americans via television (Linenthal 1989, 86). Sagan, however, was not the first to bring the SDI media war to TV.

“Star Wars” Commercials The first television commercial to mention SDI was High Frontier’s “Crayola Ad,” which appeared in late 1984 during Reagan’s re-election campaign. The thirty-second spot opened with a child’s narration:

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Fig. 2.5  Child’s drawings from High Frontier’s “Crayola Ad,” October 1984 I asked my daddy what this “Star Wars” stuff is all about. He said that right now we can’t protect from nuclear weapons, and that’s why the President wants to build a Peace Shield. It’d stop missiles in outer space … so they couldn’t hit our house. Then nobody could win a war, and if nobody could win a war, there’s no reason to start one. My daddy’s smart.

Next, crayon-drawn red missiles descend, harmlessly popping when they hit this “peace shield.” The Crayola family is safe, the sun’s frowning face transforms into a smile, and an American flag flies over the house (Figs. 2.5 and 2.6).11 With its combination of childlike crayon drawings and dire nuclear overtones, the commercial did not go unnoticed. Newspaper editorials critiqued the ad for its use of children in discussing nuclear weaponry— much as they had Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 “Daisy” ad against Barry Goldwater twenty years earlier. Doonsbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau lampooned the commercial, drawing a new ending with a mushroom cloud obliterating the house and family; its caption read, “Oops, one got through. Bye” (Stengel 1985, 31–32; Linenthal 1989, 110).

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Fig. 2.6  Child’s drawings from High Frontier’s “Crayola Ad,” October 1984

The left-leaning Committee for a Strong and Peaceful America also lampooned High Frontier’s ad, this time in their own televised spot, “Space Wars I.” In the ad, a child, Matthew, watches the “Crayola Ad” on TV while playing with letter blocks. A narrator explains that Matthew “has the same problem the White House does. He’s trying to turn Star Wars into something called the Peace Shield. But it doesn’t fit. Matthew is learning what adults already know: when someone wants to mislead you, then they try to change the name. But when you look closer, it’s still the same old thing.” The ad concludes with Matthew’s reconfigured letter blocks which instead of “Peace Shield” now spell “Space Wars” (Figs. 2.7 and 2.8). The UCS’s May 30, 1985 ad “Twinkle, Twinkle” also criticized proSDI propaganda. It opens with a pajama-clad boy peering out his bedroom window, gripping a teddy bear and gazing at the stars. As he sings “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” one star begins to grow increasingly

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Fig. 2.7  Scenes from the Committee for a Strong and Peaceful America’s “Star Wars I” ad

bright until it finally explodes. The commercial ends with James Earl Jones narrating, “The heavens are for wonder, not for war. Stop Star Wars. Stop weapons in space.” A second UCS spot reinforced criticisms of SDI and attacked Reagan directly. It featured former Manhattan Project member Victor Weisskopf who expressed his hopes for arms control: “I helped design the atomic bomb. I know what would happen in a nuclear war. I only wish President Reagan did.”12 NBC Nightly News took notice of UCS’s anti-SDI media offensive.13 So did CBS. Either seeking a balanced perspective or anticipating a shouting match, on November 14, 1985 the network invited both Graham and Kendall to debate on the CBS Evening News. Kendall attacked the “Crayola Ad” for being simplistic, calling it a “fraud on the American public.” Graham responded that at least his “child gets protected [while] in the Union of Concerned Scientists [commercial], she [sic] gets blown up.” It was a curious debate; both commercials ignored the technicalities

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Fig. 2.8  Scenes from the Committee for a Strong and Peaceful America’s “Star Wars I” ad

of SDI, preferring instead to consider whether or not SDI, as they imagined it, would save children’s lives (Linenthal 1989, 112). In the summer of 1985, Graham took a new approach: The “Star Spangled Sweepstakes.” This mailer resembled the “Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes,” a ubiquitous piece of 1980s American junk mail that promised participants the possibility to win millions. Graham’s sweepstakes offered more modest prizes. For Americans who entered this sweepstakes “for a Safe, Secure America,” there were “over 135 chances to win valuable prizes.” The three grand prizes included $5000 in gold coins, a Mercury Lynx Hatchback, and an entertainment center; runners-up might win a Polaroid Auto-focus Instant Camera, a General Electric Countertop Oven, a Smokeless Indoor Grill, a Re-Dial Telephone, or a Regal “Polly-Pop” Corn Popper … all in the name of supporting SDI. Participants were simply asked to return “a questionnaire that will get [their] feelings about a major national issue counted in

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the U.S. Congress” as well as provide input on “the major national issue … President Reagan’s plan to put a network of special satellites in space that would make all of us safe from nuclear missile attack!” Graham was “strongly in favor of it [and] after all, everyone enjoys a sweepstakes. It’s an ideal way to reach great numbers of Americans with the facts about this plan to free mankind from the menace of nuclear confrontation.”14 Graham concluded that “the proposed new space-based shield against nuclear weapons could actually save tax dollars [because] the technology needed for [SDI] either already exists or has been well proven.… [O]nce it’s working it will replace [other] far costlier military hardware.”15 After the release of paperbacks, commercials, documentaries, and one SDI-themed sweepstakes, this colorful media war could no longer be ignored. In December 1985 Time magazine ran a story entitled “The Great ‘Star Wars’ P.R. War,” in which commentators agreed that it was High Frontier and the UCS—not the White House—that had established extreme visions and quixotic boundaries of SDI zealotry. High Frontier ads showed that “if you oversimplify Star Wars, it sounds terrific,” but UCS ads revealed that the more you “explain [SDI], the worse it sounds.” Any effective government SDI propaganda needed to seek something new: a moderate course. “The goal is to stay in the middle, not to be like High Frontier, which has been labeled as zealots, or the Union of Concerned Scientists, who have also been labeled as zealots.” If SDI was going to remain a credible government program, it needed an air of plausibility and respectability (Stengel 1985, 31–32). In the wake of this media war, the Reagan administration scrambled to redefine SDI’s promise. The White House tasked the SDIO, which had done little to sell its vision of missile defense, with crafting positive propaganda. The SDIO desperately needed to show that its research and development programs were making progress.

The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization: Redefining Reagan’s Promise Created in 1984, the SDIO was an independent body under the Department of Defense. Its director, former astronaut Lieutenant General James A. Abrahamson, Jr., worked hard to reshape SDI’s potential to Congress and the press. Abrahamson once briefly considered hiring Daniel Graham as an upper-level SDIO staffer, but he found High Frontier proposals for “smart rocks” (later dubbed “brilliant pebbles” by Edward Teller)

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as well as X-ray and chemical laser weapons too outlandish (FitzGerald 2000, 242–249). Instead, the SDIO sought to “move public opinion” toward the belief that “SDI will work.” To execute this new public relations plan, Abrahamson courted “pro-SDI scientists,” especially “older, sage types,” to lead “collateral press opportunities.” These experts could contest UCS skeptics and promote SDI as “the scientific challenge [of] this generation, as Apollo was to scientists of the 60s.” Such patriotic statements had “excellent regional press possibilities.” Above all else, the organization needed to show that “SDI research has made remarkable progress.” According to Deputy Director of Public Affairs Thomas Gibson, repetition was key: “If we say this long enough, with conviction, then public impression will turn to the assurity [sic] that SDI is technically feasible.”16 The SDIO’s first task was to persuade the Congressional Budget Office that SDI would pay dividends, an especially important task because Congress had recently demanded a “return on investment” for SDI. Initially, the Department of Defense had allotted $1.4 billion to the SDIO who had little to show for it. Some congressional leaders began questioning the value of this funding, such as fiscally conservative Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI), the congressman who created the “Golden Fleece Award,” which he conferred upon supposedly wasteful public projects monthly. On CBS’s Face the Nation, Proxmire took aim at SDI and described the evidence against “Star Wars” as “overwhelming.”17 To combat such criticisms and maintain funding, the SDIO needed to reassure Congress. In 1986, the organization considered a “new program” that sought “strong Congressional endorsement” to achieve “new funding and [remove] restrictive amendments to research and development and production cooperation.” This “Congressional endorsement” would provide “a real justification for increased funding for [Fiscal Year] 1986” and “take pressure off the overall SDI budgetary squeeze.”18 To secure these funds, the SDIO pursued a second goal: to promote each SDI technological breakthrough as a “tangible product” to the public. For years, the UCS had been accusing Reagan of “negotiating away arms reductions for a pie in the ski [sic] idea.” It was a valid criticism; SDI proved to be a major obstacle during Reagan’s October 1986 summit with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland (Wilson 2015, 114–115). Now, Abrahamson sought to ground SDI’s promise (ibid.). The SDIO abandoned hopes for a fully functional missile defense; instead, SDI would simply shield “our allies and troops … against tactical ballistic missiles” or perhaps protect “our key satellites against attack.” Any SDI technologies that were “not yet be mature enough

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for deployment” might still “be designed for dual application [in] theatre and conventional force improvements.” Such pronouncements were a sharp contrast from Reagan’s initial dream of making nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” By 1986, only three years after SDI’s announcement, the goal of civilian missile defense had been abandoned by the organization that Reagan had tasked with realizing it.19 The SDIO courted positive media attention by promoting SDI “breakthroughs,” no matter how incremental. For example, ABC News covered a “railgun” test, in which a compact cannon shot projectiles through the metal sheets of a (hypothetical) incoming missile. Millions of Americans watched ecstatic SDI scientists toast champagne after this successful test. No matter that the railgun was a far cry from High Frontier’s hopes for X-ray lasers—at least it was tangible. This was Abrahamson’s strategy in action (ABC 1988; Manoff 1989, 60). The UCS responded with a book, Empty Promises: The Growing Case Against Star Wars, and a TV documentary, False Frontier; both were highly critical of the SDIO’s new approach. The UCS observed that “one of the ironies of the SDI debate … is that the critics are gradually being proved correct, while the program itself continues to receive ample appropriations from Congress.” SDI’s new tactical applications marked “a complete change in the goal of the Star Wars program. No longer do we hear President Reagan’s promise that the SDI will render ‘nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete,’ to the contrary, it now appears that the SDI will ultimately be designed to protect nuclear weapons, not our people.” Abrahamson would have agreed (Tirman 1986, x; UCS 1986). Abrahamson’s strategy worked. Congress validated expenditures, and in the process continued to funnel Department of Defense money for SDI research and development into their districts. In part, Abrahamson’s success was made possible through his work with the American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA), a group that Reagan administration officials liked far more than High Frontier. The ADPA promoted itself as an organization that “unites, through membership and activities, military officers and civilian defense officials; key executives and managers in military installations, plants, and factories; scientists and engineers; weapons designers … and other concerned American citizens” all in the name of national defense. In the 1980s, the ADPA had over forty thousand members and a reputable newsletter, The Common Defense.20 In other words, this was a respected national security organization with close ties to administration officials, the very people Abrahamson sought to convince of SDI’s potential.21

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In 1987 the ADPA produced SDI: A Prospect for Peace, a film that promoted “a variety of major viewpoints on SDI and related strategic issues.” In reality, this film sought to secure continued SDI research funds. It featured Abrahamson, Secretary of State Shultz, Defense Secretary Weinberger, and National Security Advisor Frank C. Carlucci. Graham would have been infuriated to learn that ADPA camera crews enjoyed this level of White House access. Not that the May 12, 1987 filming was hard work; the ADPA provided all participants with advanced questions and “proposed response” talking points. These responses avoided any mention of Reagan’s initial dream or Graham’s “peace shield.” Instead, talking points promoted only important research that was “vital to future Western security” interests. Now, SDI would only help America “maintain a strategic balance” against the Soviet Union that had been “deeply involved in strategic defense programs … for at least 15–20 years.” According to the ADPA, the Soviet “laser weapon program” alone involved “10,000 highly trained scientists and engineers and costs the U.S. equivalent of about $1 [billion] a year.” SDI would simply reinforce the “NATO strategy … to deter any Soviet aggression, nuclear or conventional.” Before SDI, the Soviets had enjoyed a “virtual monopoly in strategic defense,” but that monopoly has finally “ended … and that’s a good thing.”22 Additionally, Reagan never really envisioned a “leakproof” defense, only improved deterrence. In fact, SDI might even lead to arms reductions. According to Carlucci, “[I]f we can establish effective defenses [or] the effectiveness of deterrence thru defense,” SDI would act as “a level for deep reductions in offensive arsenals.” Finally, any accusations that Reagan had no “clear goal or mission for SDI” were clearly unfounded.23 To create SDI: A Prospect for Peace, the ADPA hired production firm Smith & Harroff, Inc., for $250,000. Reagan appears in the film, as do Weinberger, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle, and, for increased credibility, John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. This film might be seen as just the latest propaganda piece on SDI, but it differed from High Frontier and UCS productions in one important way: it was never intended for network television or the general public. Instead, the SDIO screened the film to White House aides and congressional leaders in a private viewing at Washington, DC’s L’Enfant Plaza Hotel. For the event, Reagan taped a personal video message praising this new SDI film. It aired publicly, only once, on November 1, 1987, and only in Washington, DC (ADPA 1987; New York Times 1987).24 Clearly, the SDIO had shifted focus. No longer seeking public support, it simply

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sought continued congressional funding. Working with the ADPA, an organization that benefited from defense contracts, the SDIO persuaded Congress to continue funding SDI. Program spending increased from $1.2 billion in 1984 and $2.5 billion in 1985, to $3 billion by 1986, and over $4 billion by 1987. By some analyses, by the end of Reagan’s presidency total SDI-related funding topped $22 billion (Mallove 1984, C1; Collins 2007, 203; Pike et al. 1998, 291; Wirls 1992, 155).

Conclusion What allowed this media battle to take place? Historian Edward Linenthal suggests that when it comes to SDI, citizens “easily forget … that there is no ‘it’; there is only the ‘I’.” In March of 1983, Reagan had provided Americans either “an appealing vision of a world made secure through missile defense or an appalling vision of a world nearer nuclear catastrophe because of missile defense” (Linenthal 1989, xiii, 89). These were the polarizing sides that High Frontier and the UCS assumed, respectively. Neither extreme position, however, was politically preferable for the White House. The UCS and High Frontier media campaigns showed Washington insiders that successful SDI propaganda needed to focus on short-term, tangible results. Examining the evolution of SDI propaganda reveals how, in the atomically tense 1980s, American mass media increasingly became a contested forum in which arms race proponents and antinuclear activists battled over public opinion. Regarding SDI, that battle was quickly defined by two NGOs. Through the use of print media, multimedia presentations, television ads, and a mail-in sweepstakes, High Frontier and the UCS battled to convince Americans to join their side. In the process, they delineated the promise and pitfalls of a nonexistent program. Whether or not they were successful in convincing Americans of their arguments is uncertain; what is certain is that the NGOs’ potential to shape public opinion so alarmed the Reagan administration that the SDIO raced to reshape SDI’s promise. In this media war, the White House engaged in a delicate balancing act. Many Reagan administration officials remained wary of “Star Wars” hype from High Frontier, but equally disdainful toward critical scientists in the UCS. Avoiding these extremes, the SDIO promoted only modest technological advances to enhance deterrence. Such promises may have betrayed Reagan’s vision, but they also secured continued congressional funding (Rhodes 2007, 179; FitzGerald 2000, 121–146).25

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The evolution of SDI media reflects more than a political battle. It shows how private interest groups can shape Congress’s conceptions of a government program. Bombarded with demands from two groups of “experts,” the White House rejected both High Frontier and the UCS’s visions of SDI, opting instead for a more moderate media strategy. When Congress demanded a return on investment, the SDIO obliged, presenting incremental steps toward missile defense, the finances of which were defendable. However rudimentary the tests, SDI could no longer be called a boondoggle, even if in the process it became a shadow of its initial intent. By 1987, SDI became just another atomic acronym that held the promise of pork barrel spending. After the Cold War, such spending on missile defense could not last. By George H. W. Bush’s presidency, Reagan’s dream had regressed back to détente-era hopes for an effective ABM system. Yet this media battle, between NGOs and the White House over an unrealized idea, suggests a simple lesson: sometimes the most profitable approach for the defense industry is to avoid media publicity altogether.

Notes







1. Excerpt from Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activism, and the End of the Arms Race (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). Used by permission of University of Massachusetts Press. Thanks to Justin Plichta and “JJ Productions” for capturing the images in this chapter. 2. There’s little archival evidence thus far to suggest that SDI had a major impact on the Soviet economy. For a sober analysis of Reagan’s economic Cold War efforts, see Esno (2018); for skeptical historical takes on SDI, see FitzGerald (2000) and Rhodes (2007); on SDI as a political calculation, see Boyer (2010). 3.  See also Union of Concerned Scientists, newsletter, September 1986, found in Charles Z. Wick, memo to John Poindexter, October 24, 1986, ID#469629, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, Ronald Reagan Library (hereafter abbreviated “RRL”); thanks to Mr. Kelly D. Barton and Ms. Shelley Nayak, Reagan Library archivists. 4. Full text of the March 23, 1983 announcement archived at http://www. reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm (accessed June 18, 2015). 5. David B. Waller, memo to Fred F. Fielding, November 8, 1983, ID# 183666, PR016-01, WHORM: Subject File, RRL.

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6. Ibid.; Fred F. Fielding, letter to Gen. Daniel Graham, February 22, 1984, ID# 202239, PR014-09, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 7. Ibid.; We Must Defend America, ID#202239, PR104-09, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 8. Henry W. Kendall, letter to Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1983, ID#140203, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, RRL; Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., letter to Craig Fuller, July 7, 1983, ID#154721, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, RRL; John H. Hawes, letter to Dr. Henry Kendall, August 16, 1985, ID# 293106, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, RRL; Union of Concerned Scientists, letter to Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Michael [sic] Gorbachev, May 29, 1985, ID#304980, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 9. Ibid. 10. Sven Kraemer, memo to Robert C. McFarlane, February 8, 1985, ID# 298088, FG006-12, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 11. Edward Linenthal provided copies of these commercials to the author (hereafter: “Star Wars Commercials”). 12. Star Wars Commercials. 13. Robert Bissell, NBC Nightly News, May 30, 1985. 14.  “Star Spangled Sweepstakes,” ID#: 337322, PR014-09, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 15. Daniel O. Graham, letter, ID#337322, PR014-09, WHORM: Subject File RRL; Hugh Hewitt, memo to Fred F. Fielding, September 4, 1985, ID#: 202239CU, 218856CU, 337322CU, PR014-09, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 16. Thomas F. Gibson III (aka “Tom G.”), note to Pat Buchanan, October 28, 1986, ID#440212, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 17. Ronald Lehman Papers, “Nuclear Winter,” WHORM: Subject File, page 14, RRL. 18. Tom G., note to Pat Buchanan, October 28, 1986. 19. “Course for SDI,” ID# 448445, ND018, WHORM: Subject File, RRL. 20. “History of NDIA,” access April 8, 2011, www.ndia.org/ABOUTUS/ Pages/HistoryofNDIA.aspx. 21.  “American Defense Preparedness Association—Individual Membership Services,” file 504620, Box FG 013, “ADPA,” WHORM Subject File, RRL. 22. Steve Steiner and Bob Linhard, memo to Frank C. Carlucci, May 11, 1987, Box FG006-12, file 504032, RRL. 23.  “Script—SDI Video,” Box PR011, “Motion Pictures—Film Strips— Recordings” file 461086, RRL. 24. Grant S. Green, memo to Anthony R. Dolan, October 16, 1987, Box PR011, file 540829, RRL.

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25. See also Sven Kraemer, memo to Robert C. McFarlane, February 8, 1985, NSC Box 8409195, File 298088, RRL.

Archival Sources Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, Files: European & Soviet Affairs Directorate: NSC Records White House Office of Media Relations: Records, 1981–1989 White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Alpha Files: “Carl Sagan” White House Office of Records Management (WHORM) Subject Files: “American Defense Preparedness Association” (ADPA) “High Frontier” “Popular Media” “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI) “Strategic Defense Initiative Organization” (SDIO) “Union of Concerned Scientists” White House Staff and Office Files: “Ron Lehman”

References American Broadcasting Company (ABC). 1988. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: Part 12, Reagan’s Shield. 1 hr. American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA). 1987. SDI: A Prospect for Peace. VHS, 29.5 minutes. Arlington, VA: Smith and Harrott. Baucom, Donald R. 1992. The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Bissel, Robert. 1985. NBC Nightly News, 30 May. Accessed at Vanderbilt University’s Network News Archive. Boyer, Paul. 2010. “Selling Star Wars: Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.” In Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century, edited by Kenneth Osgood and Andrew K. Frank, 196–223. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

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Cannon, Lou. 2000. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. New York: Public Affairs. Cannon, Lou, and David Hoffman. 1983. “President Overruled Advisors on Announcing Defense Plans.” Washington Post, 26 March. Collins, Robert. 2007. Transforming America. New York: Columbia University Press. Davidson, Keay. 1999. Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: Wiley. Esno, Tyler. 2018. “Reagan’s Economic War on the Soviet Union.” Diplomatic History 42, no. 2 (April): 281–304. FitzGerald, Frances. 2000. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster. Franklin, H. Bruce. 1988. War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Garwin, Richard L., and Carl Sagan. 1983. “Space Weapons: Andropov and the American Petitioners.” New York Times, 18 May, A26. Gelb, Leslie H. 1983. “Aides Urged Reagan to Postpone Antimissile Ideas for More Study.” New York Times, 25 March. Graham, Daniel O. 1983. High Frontier: A Strategy for National Survival. New York: Tom Doherty Associates. ———. 1984. A Defense that Defends. VHS, 27 minutes. Washington, DC: High Frontier. Graham, Daniel O., and Gregory A. Fossedal. 1983. A Defense That Defends: Blocking Nuclear Attack. Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair. “History of NDIA.” Accessed 1 May 2018. http://www.ndia.org/ABOUTUS/Pages/ HistoryofNDIA.aspx. Lakoff, Sanford, and Herbert F. York. 1989. A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Lettow, Paul. 2005. Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. New York: Random House. Linenthal, Edward. 1989. Symbolic Defense: The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Lomberg, Jon, and Bob Derkach. 1984. Weapons in Space. DVD Copy. Berkeley, CA: Impact Productions, Distributor for Union of Concerned Scientists. Mallove, Eugene. 1984. “The Inevitable Asteroid: The Way Our World Will End?” Washington Post, 26 August, C1. Manoff, Robert Karl. 1989. “Modes of War and Modes of Social Address: The Text of SDI.” Journal of Communication 39, no. 1 (Winter): 60. Moore, Kelly. 2008. Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945–1975. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. New York Times. 1987. “Washington Talk: Briefing: ‘Star Wars,’ a Sequel?” 20 October.

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Pike, John E., Bruce G. Blair, and Stephen I. Schwartz. 1998. “Defending Against the Bomb.” In Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, edited by Stephen I. Schwartz. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press. Rhodes, Richard. 2007. Arsenals of Folly. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Rogin, Michael Paul. 1987. “Ronald Reagan” the Movie: And Other Episodes in Political Demonology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Slayton, Rebecca. 2013. Arguments That Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949–2012. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smith, Jeff. 1989. Unthinking the Unthinkable: Nuclear Weapons and Western Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stengel, Richard. 1985. “The Great Star Wars P.R. War: Kindergarten Imagery Obscures a Vital and Complex Debate.” Time Magazine, 9 December. Time Magazine. 1984. “An E.S.P. Gap.” 23 January. ———. 1985. “Great Star Wars P.R. War.” 9 December, 31–32. Tirman, John, ed. 1985. The Fallacy of Star Wars. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 1986. Empty Promise: The Growing Case Against Star Wars. Boston: Beacon Press. Union of Concerned Scientists (USC). 1986. The False Frontier. VHS. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists. Wilson, James Graham. 2015. The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wirls, Daniel. 1992. Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Interviewing the Enemy and Other Cold War Players: US Foreign Policy as Seen Through Playboy During the Reagan Years Laura Saarenmaa

US involvement in General Augusto Pinochet’s overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende was among the topics touched upon in an interview with Democratic Party presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in Playboy magazine in November 1976. The issue flew from the newsstands as Carter, known for his strong Christian beliefs, confessed mental infidelity from his wife in the interview. The interview as a whole, however, mainly focused on his foreign political views, such as how to deal with Latin American countries in the Cold War context. Carter also claimed in the interview that he wished he had publicly condemned the Vietnam War much earlier, capturing the critical view of the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate era. With an extensive focus on international affairs, the volumes of Playboy magazine, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953, offer a remarkable archive of critical reviews of US foreign politics throughout the Cold

L. Saarenmaa (*)  University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_3

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War decades. While the complex, contradictory, and often progressive messages of Playboy’s sexual politics have been highlighted in a number of books and articles (e.g., Pitzulo 2011; Fraterrigo 2008, 2009; Osgerby 2001; Beggan and Allison 2001; Conekin 2001; Jancovich 2001), the magazine’s critical coverage of international affairs during the Cold War era has not perhaps been fully recognized. This chapter approaches Playboy as one of the spaces for expanding the political understanding of the American public during the global Cold War, by discussing the magazine’s engagement with international figures on issues of US foreign politics published in its innovative question-andanswer interview format1 during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.2 The impact of the Cold War on American culture was enormous. Widespread fear of domestic, as well as foreign, enemies stands as a defining characteristic of the era. Playboy interviews were one platform that gave these feared enemies opportunities to explain their views to American audiences and present overt critiques of US foreign policy. The first interviewee in the magazine to comment on foreign political tension was British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was interviewed in its March 1963 issue (41–52), only a few months after the dangerous escalation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Russell, known as an antimilitarism activist, served as a forceful intermediary between the opposing parties at the time of the missile crisis. In the Playboy interview, Russell criticized both the Soviet and US governments and called for neutral third-party countries to solve the conflict and neutralize the East-West opposition. In addition, Russell gave credit to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for showing himself to be “less belligerent” than Kennedy and, thus, responsible for avoiding a war of nuclear devastation (42). In January 1967, Playboy gave the floor to Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro (59–84). In addition to a lengthy account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro explained the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States from his point of view. He listed a number of motivations for these exiles: some used to be privileged and were concerned for their future under the new regime, and some longed for a better material life. In any case, the ultimate culprit was Fulgencio Batista, the overthrown president and dictator of Cuba. Castro questioned the hypocritical rhetoric of US foreign policy: “Tell me, for what purpose did the United States come to liberate us at the Bay of Pigs [in 1961]? To re-establish the power of the landowners, of thieves, of torturers, of the managers

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of its monopolistic businesses? In what sense can that be called liberty?” (69) Castro’s criticisms were supported in Playboy by British historian Arnold Toynbee, who, in an April 1967 interview (57–76, 166–169), welcomed the Latin American revolution. According to Toynbee, the region needed the “putting down of the selfish minority that is in power in most Latin American countries” (66). In the interview, Toynbee also joined early critics of the Vietnam War and the conflict-oriented foreign policy of the United States. In his opinion, America wanted to play the role of “Saint George” on a world scale and needed a worldwide “imaginary dragon”—monolithic world communism—to oppose (58). These kinds of critical claims received inside-circle confirmation in a Playboy interview with former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Philip Agee in August 1975 (49–64, 78, 164–166). According to Agee, “[T]he Marxists [were] right about American economic imperialism” (53). Agee’s cynical account of CIA covert operations, assassinations and attempted coups in Cuba, Uruguay, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Ghana set the standard for discussions of the global Cold War in Playboy interviews during the 1970s and 1980s. The Agee interview was published alongside an excerpt from his book Inside the Company (1975), first published in the United Kingdom due to legal problems in the United States. In the August 1975 interview, the ex-CIA agent argued that the ongoing Cold War was a genuinely American invention intended to protect the economic interests of American industries operating in global markets: “The Soviets helped to start the Cold War, but militarily they were much weaker than the U.S. public was led to believe.… The scenario of an innocent but defensive America struggling to save the world from Communist dictatorship provided the rationalization for the dominance of foreign economics by American companies. This was the CIA’s main mission, to guarantee a favourable foreign-investment climate for U.S. industry” (52). According to Agee, CIA covert operations began a secret political warfare against those who opposed the Marshall Plan, the American initiative to aid Western European economies after World War II. For example, the CIA broke dock strikes against Marshall Plan aid and got noncommunist labor unions to withdraw from the World Confederation of Trade Unions and establish the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. By the 1950s unions supported by the CIA had become an effective counterweight to those controlled by communists in Western Europe. As Agee described, in the 1960s,

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the CIA expanded its operations to African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American countries (52). Two years after the Agee interview, Carter, now president, launched a vocal international campaign criticising human-rights violations by the Argentina junta. A year later, he cut off military aid to the dictators of Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Paraguay. Although the US government continued to provide commercial credit to dictatorships, Carter’s principled attempt to penalize human-rights violators in Latin America stood in stark contrast to the actions of both his predecessor and his successor. In 1981 the new Republican president, Ronald Reagan, signalled a clear change in policy. He enlisted Argentina’s military help in Central America, a collaboration that led to more atrocious rights violations (Livingstone 2009, 69–70). The following sections discuss Playboy interviews focused on Cold War issues in Central America during Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s.

Invoking the Misinformed President In recent historical writing, the Cold War has been characterized as one of the most disturbing periods in the history of US foreign policy toward Latin America. In the name of containing communism, the United States supported dictators, undermined legitimately elected governments, and colluded with authoritarian governments to repress dissent. It has been argued that the United States distorted Latin American political life to such an extent that it changed the course of history in several sovereign nations in the region (Livingstone 2009, 23–24). According to journalist and Latin American scholar Grace Livingstone, this development resulted from the division in the American political establishment after the defeat in Vietnam. Democratic Party liberals thought the war had been a mistake and that, from then on, Third World politics should no longer be viewed through the lens of the Cold War. An alternative view, however, began to gain support within the New Right: the United States had lost Vietnam as it did not use sufficient force early in the conflict. According to this view, the Cold War framework was topical, and the Soviet Union was the greatest threat facing the United States. Consequently, Soviet sponsorship of Third World liberation movements could leave the United States isolated in a hostile world. Military actions in Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Iran, Grenada, and Nicaragua, thus, were all seen by the New Right as examples of Soviet aggression (ibid.,

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71–72). Jeane Kirkpatrick, one of Reagan’s closest advisers, argued in an influential essay that Carter’s human-rights policy had allowed anti-American forces to come to power. Dictatorships in Latin America were no longer viewed as international pariahs but, instead, were seen as valuable allies against the Soviets in the new Cold War (ibid., 72). Following this policy, the Reagan administration unleashed unparalleled military and economic aggression against the tiny Central American country of Nicaragua. The Reagan administration claimed that “in the American continent, there is no regime more barbaric and bloody, no regime that violates human rights in a manner more constant and permanent, than the Sandinista regime” (Livingstone 2009, 82). Determined to overthrow the Sandinistas but convinced that the US public would not accept a conventional invasion in the aftermath of Vietnam, the Reagan administration seized upon a new military strategy: lowintensity warfare. Crucially, this strategy did not require large numbers of US troops but relied on special forces and intelligence operatives to train foreign paramilitary forces (ibid., 76). A covert paramilitary war against Nicaragua began in the spring of 1981. Playboy covered the event with several exclusive interviews presenting covert criticism of the Reagan administration’s Central American policy. Playboy’s editorial policy was by no means exceptional. To the contrary, since the last years of the Vietnam War, the American news media had tended to question the simplistic Cold War narrative, and in coverage of Central America, the Reagan administration often stood on the opposing side from the journalists (Hallin 1984, 22; 1987, 5). Nevertheless, as Daniel Hallin has remarked, information on Third World countries appeared in the news in limited and fragmented form due to the focus on US officials as the premier newsmakers (Hallin 1987, 15). Moreover, Hallin has argued that, as a consequence of a public relations campaign by the US government, significant changes in Central American reporting can be seen, including the tendency of journalists to pull back from reports that challenged official accounts of events, which in turn strengthened the Cold War framing of “Communist interference” (Hallin 1987, 13–14). While the Washington administration’s perspective dominated the agenda in Central American news coverage, Playboy kept publishing question-and-answer format interviews, presenting the views of Central American representatives in lengthy, direct quotations. The interviews provided readers with background information, analysis, opinions, and

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experiences from “behind the news” through the statements of interviewees often representing the voice of the enemy. These interviews presented covert criticism of the Reagan administration through the comments of prominent international figures, such as Nobel Prizewinning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the “unofficial ambassador for Leftist Latin America” (February 1983, 66). At the time, Marquez was a controversial figure in the United States due to his socialist sympathies and warm friendship with Castro and French president François Mitterrand (France was among the NATO countries selling weapons to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas). In his Playboy interview, Marquez identified the core problem of US Latin and Central American policy: the Reagan administration saw any nonconformity by the people of Latin America not as the end product of the miserable conditions in those countries but as a Soviet operation (71). Marquez confirmed the good intentions of the Sandinistas and their efforts to work out their own system independent of the world powers. However, he warned that if the United States continued its interference, there was a danger of expanding the war throughout all of Central America. He added that the situation was even more dangerous if the president of the United States really was “as misinformed about Central America as it looked like” (72). Marques also remarked on the differences between the Reagan and Carter administrations: Since Reagan’s election, you have Jeane Kirkpatrick running off to Chile and telling Augusto Pinochet that he is the kind of “authoritarian democracy” Latin America needs. Since her visit, it’s impossible to get one prisoner out of Pinochet’s jails! Nor can we get answers from the Argentine government about the 15,000 Argentine citizens who’ve disappeared. Carter took away support from the dictators to the greatest possible extent. Reagan gives them more support than should be possible. (72)

Notwithstanding the difficulty of estimating how exceptional these kinds of critical accounts are, it can be suggested that Playboy’s countercultural status as a nude magazine gave it some advantages in raising issues and presenting contradictory voices. Playboy shared the premises of the liberal political press (Cook 1998, 110) but also challenged the political establishment and its norms of decency. This role could make Playboy a forum for interviewees representing the enemy. Giving an interview to Playboy instead of more established news magazines could be seen as a way of ridiculing the US political establishment and media elite. The often-repeated

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references to the exceptionality and exclusivity of these interviews were, of course, the magazine’s promotional message to its audience. However, the magazine also drew attention to the actual competition among various media outlets to get interviewees with notorious personalities behind the enemy lines. For instance, an exclusive panel interview of the top leadership of the Sandinista revolutionaries opened with a sassy account of the Playboy journalist misleading competitors hunting for a story in the city of Managua. In response to competitors’ questions about what Playboy was doing in Nicaragua, the writer Claudia Dreifus claimed that she was working on a piece on “the Girls of Managua” (September 1983, 58). The Sandinista interview itself embodied higher principles than beating the competition. It noted that the United States had financed counterrevolutionary activities against the Nicaraguan government for years, and so the American people deserved to know more about those people “who so obsess the Reagan administration”: “For [the American] people, … they are a group whose views, aims, and personalities are remarkably unreported” (57). Dreifus was also the name behind the Marquez interview published earlier that year. The interviewed panelists were Sergio Ramirez Mercado, Father Ernesto Cardenal, and Comandante Tomás Borge Martínez. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was interviewed separately in the same issue (September 1983, 63, 196–200). The panel interview began with a lengthy introduction of Nicaraguan history and the country’s relations with the United States, and then turned to the interviewees’ personal experiences, family backgrounds, civil professions, life goals, and views of ongoing military activities and rising death rates. They also got an opportunity to comment on the behavior of US leaders, such as Secretary of State George Shultz, who had, according to panelists, ignored concerns raised by the Sandinistas and refused to shake hands with the Sandinista government Foreign Minister Father Miguel d’Escoto. According to panelist Sergio Ramirez Mercado, “That incident shows the mental and ideological problems the Reagan people have. They despise us. As people. As a revolution. From their viewpoint, we deserve only annihilation. Why should they waste their time in speaking with such a small, weak country?” (66). The revolutionaries also wondered about Reagan’s address on Latin America to the joint session of the US Congress. “It all sounds like some Wild West movie he’s acting out. He’s playing a cowboy who is killing all the ‘bad guys’ in Nicaragua” (67). Although criticism of the United States dominated the interview, difficult questions about Nicaragua’s postponed elections, civil rights record,

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support for freedom of speech, and censorship of the press were not avoided. Political prisoners and the threat of Nicaragua turning into a Soviet base were also raised. The Sandinistas categorically denied these claims, calling them pure propaganda: “Some [of] Reagan’s propaganda against us is really quite fantastic. For instance the charge that Nicaragua is going to permit the Soviet Union to build a canal through our country, … it’s exactly like the missile thing: Reagan says we plan to let the Soviet Union … install nuclear missiles here—an incredible fiction!” (190) Rejecting the Cold War narrative, the Sandinistas boasted of their “excellent relations” with European NATO countries, “such as Holland, Belgium, Spain and Greece” (190). They admitted to receiving military aid from Muammar al-Gaddafi’s feared dictatorship in Libya but also from France: “Reagan never mentions that” (190). In response to the accusation that the Sandinistas dealt imported weapons to other Central American revolutionaries, Ortega remarked that the greatest stimulator of revolution in Latin America was the United States, not the Sandinistas (200). Ortega also stressed that Reagan was lying when he claimed that he had tried to negotiate with Nicaragua (200). In his concluding remarks, Ortega directly addressed the Reagan administration, pleading with the US government to start negotiations hosted by a neutral, thirdparty country: [Ortega:] We have a proposal; we’ve made it elsewhere, but we’ll make it here in Playboy, too. We propose contacts with the U.S. to establish a dialogue in the presence of a third country—any common friend of the United States and Nicaragua. It could be in Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, France. There could be several countries represented. That would prevent the problem we’ve encountered in the past: everyone leaving the meeting saying what he pleased. [Dreifus]: So you’re saying here, categorically: we want to negotiate. Name the place! [Ortega]: Yes! Yes! (200)

Analyzing Hostile Media Images President Daniel Ortega was interviewed by Playboy again a couple of years later, for its November 1987 issue, and discussed the thencurrent Iran-Contra affair, the political scandal that occurred when it was revealed that senior Reagan administration officials had facilitated the sales of arms in Iran, embargoed at the time, in order to fund the

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Contras in Nicaragua (59–78, 130). In addition to repeating his claims that Reagan was “obsessed” with Nicaragua, Ortega claimed that the American media created Nicaragua’s poor reputation. As an example, he cited one-sided reporting of his visit to Moscow a week after the US Congress had decided to stop financing the Contras. His Moscow visit was used in the Congress as an excuse to overturn its decision. Ortega also visited many other countries, including Italy, France, and Spain, but this, he claimed, was not mentioned in the reporting. Hostile image politics and the media’s role in constructing public opinion was an overarching theme of the interviews with Latin American representatives. The Nicaraguan Sandinista argued for the existence of “great ignorance in both sides”: What is stressed most to the North American people is that we have a revolution tied to the Soviet Union, and the danger is that, little by little, that view will become accepted by the U.S. public. Conversely, Nicaraguans may begin to think of the United States as synonymous with aggression, invasion, dictatorships, and threats. Both images are equally superficial. (195)

The reshaping of public opinion was also discussed by El Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, who was interviewed in Playboy in November 1984 (63–74) after he took office with the support of the Reagan administration. According to the magazine, the civil war in El Salvador was a “pivotal conflict in what the Reagan administration perceived as a life-and-death struggle against the Soviet’s ‘evil empire’” (63).3 The Duarte interview brought forward the contradictions between the Reagan administration’s rhetoric and reality: the massive amount of civilian political murders in the country and the inability of Duarte’s government to deal with the situation. The Playboy interviewer straightforwardly addressed the issue with Duarte: Most human-rights organizations say that the period in which you were president of the junta was the bloodiest in recent El Salvadoran history. Between 15,000 and 20,000 innocent people were massacred by the army and the security forces. How do you reconcile your demands on the military with what they did? (71)

It was brought up that Duarte’s opponents considered him no more than a frontman for the right-wing oligarchy and military, charging that his promises to end the death squads had led to no firmer actions than

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the transfer of a handful of officers. Duarte defended himself, blaming the media for focusing on the death rates and romanticizing the guerrillas: “You have to sell your news, and news about El Salvador is death, violence, abuse, the ‘bad army,’ the destruction. That is what you have to sell to America, because that is what America wants to buy.… What we [the El Salvadoran government] are doing is not glamorous enough for you to sell. That’s why the media doubts us. It is easier for a reporter to believe the guerrillas” (64). In the 1980s, the bias of the American media was also criticized in Playboy by Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader was interviewed in the magazine for the second time in August 1985 (57–70, 174–183), with the purpose of helping him “launch a new dialogue with the American public” (57). Before the Playboy piece, this mission had been attempted in PBS and CBS television interviews, which turned out to be unsatisfactory experiences for Castro due to their anecdotal touch and overemphasis on trivialities, such as his decision not to attend the funeral of Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The Playboy interview instead focused on the hostile relations between Castro and the Reagan administration, as seen in Castro’s analysis of Reagan’s unlimited power: Reagan can order an invasion, such as the one against Grenada, or a dirty war such as the one against Nicaragua. He can even use the codes in that briefcase he always carries around with him to unleash a thermonuclear war that could mean the end of the human race.… Not even the Roman emperors had that kind of power. (62)

This interview shows that relations between the countries had deteriorated dramatically since Reagan took office. US economic sanctions, embargoes, and travel bans impoverished the Cuban people during the 1980s. Even the export of medicines to Cuba was banned. The US government also accused Cuba of cooperating with Colombia in drug trafficking. Castro rejected that allegation, claiming that, instead, drug traffickers avoided Cuba due to strict narcotics laws. In Playboy, he accused America of fomenting violence instead of looking for diplomatic resolutions: “It is as if the Reagan Administration wants to teach an unforgettable lesson so that no one else in Central America or Latin America will ever think of rebelling against the tyrannies serving U.S. interests” (68). And Castro raised this penetrating question: “You have made allies [with the] worst tyrants in Argentina and Chile, you have

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used the worst murderers in the world to organize the contra revolution—and yours is the country of freedom?” (64). In addition to his views on Reagan’s foreign policy, Castro was asked about his opinion on what would be the best US policy toward the region. In addition to resuming economic relations with Cuba, Castro suggested that the massive debts incurred for armed conflicts in the Third World countries should be cancelled. This could be done by cutting defense spending to compensate for the losses to US banks (181). Similar proposals were later presented by politicians and economists around the world, but when introduced by Castro in Playboy in August 1985, the idea hardly awakened further reactions—perhaps it was not even supposed to. It was noted in the Castro interview that, despite available media coverage, average Americans were badly informed about the Third World realities in Asian, Latin American, and African countries. However, this ignorance did not mean that information about Third World problems and their intimate links with US foreign policy was not available, even in Playboy. The following section discusses examples from Cold War–related conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Exiles and Enemies Playboy interviews covered issues in Cold War hotspots in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, as well as Central America. Readers of the magazine received a wide range of analyses concerning the direct or indirect role of the United States in various world conflicts. Through the interviews, the issues in the farthest corners of the world became closer, and the US role as the world policeman more evident. An early example is a November 1977 Playboy interview with Henry Kyemba (77–109), an exiled Ugandan minister and cabinet officer who discussed the atrocities of Idi Amin, the feared military dictator who came to power in 1971 and ruled Uganda until 1979. Kyemba gave a detailed account of the bloody genocide executed by Amin, describing a horrid mass of dead bodies that floated in a river, too many for the crocodiles to eat. Kyemba also directly criticized the United States and United Kingdom for maintaining an undisrupted coffee trade with Uganda despite the ongoing genocide in the country. Another genocide reconstructed in the pages of Playboy was that in Kampuchea, presented as a consequence of the Vietnam War. Interviewed in Playboy in May 1987 (61–80), Norodom Sihanouk, the

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exiled prince and former president of Kampuchea, justified his changed stance toward US troops in Kampuchea: “In the seventies, I supported the Viet Kong and the North Vietnamese because I believed they were defending a just cause, leading a just struggle for the freedom of Vietnam. And I fought the Americans because I could not accept their illegal intervention in the internal affairs of my country.… And now I am fighting Vietnam” (74). In addition to pointing out the crucial role of America in the destruction of Kampuchea during the Vietnam War, it was recalled in the interview that, despite the massacre that the extremist communist Khmer Rouge executed at the command of its feared leader Pol Pot, the United States kept supporting the Khmer Regime: “The U.S.A. wants Cambodia to be independent, not a slave of Vietnam. That is why the U.S.A. votes for the Coalition of Democratic Kampuchea even though the Khmer Rouge are still there” (74). The consequences of American intervention in world conflicts was also commented on in the case of the Lebanese civil war between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Lebanese government that broke out in 1973, followed by Syrian occupation and Israeli involvement. In July 1984, Playboy interviewed Walid Jumblatt (51–60), the leader of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party and head of the Islamic Druse sect, which allied with the Syrian army to crush the PLO in Lebanon. Jumblatt’s troops were responsible for bombing a US Marines base on the Lebanese shore in 1983, after which the US Congress pressed Reagan to pull out the Marines from Lebanon. In response to a question about why the base was shelled, Jumblatt insisted on blaming the United States and claimed that the US battleship New Jersey attacked civilian targets in Lebanon: “The Marines destroyed so many villages, they killed so many people! Ask Reagan: Why did he send the Marines to Lebanon? What for?” (55). Jumblatt explained the spread of anti-Americanism in the region and the inflamed relations between Syria and the United States, illustrating the importance of the Cold War dynamics of the conflict: “America is a superpower; it’s just protecting its own interests. It doesn’t really care about other people and nations. Other people sense that” (60). These accounts of complicated ethnic and religious groupings, hostilities, and alliances seem ominous when read from a historical distance, especially after the wars and conflicts in the region during the late 1980s and the 1990s, which planted the seeds for the rise of the extremist Islamic State in Syria in the 2010s.

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Yet another Playboy interviewee who stressed the responsibility of the United States in the peace process in Middle East was PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who was interviewed in the September 1988 issue of the magazine (51–66). Arafat urged that the Reagan administration stop “hiding the sun with its little finger” and deal with the rights of five million Palestinians to find the right road to peace: “If not, it is the United States who will be responsible for the misery and bloodshed in the region” (56). As in the case of Central American conflicts, a Playboy interview was used to directly address the Reagan administration: “We repeat our offer here, through this interview, in your magazine: Let’s work for peace, a just peace, a balanced peace, so that we can achieve security for all in the region.” In return, the Palestinians would recognize Israel “within international legalities” (59). Arafat’s criticism focused on Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza, despite United Nations resolution 242 requiring withdrawal. The interview also shed light on the private life of this controversial leader and what it was like to live under constant life threats and to dedicate one’s life solely to work. Feared Middle East military leaders, such as Jumblatt and Arafat, were interesting to US audiences due not only to their rivalry with Israel but also to broader Cold War tensions and US interests in the region during the 1980s. For the interviewees, published dialogues with Playboy could be considered a beneficial form of populist cultural diplomacy for their cause (e.g., Chamberlin 2012). After all, it is likely that giving an interview to a magazine with such a particular image and international reputation was done with certain expectations.

Voices Behind the Iron Curtain While the Cold War in Third World countries was marked by wars and conflicts, the European Cold War was characterized most of all by an economic boom in Western Europe, made possible by the durable peace on the continent. In Eastern Europe, however, growth slowed as the problems inherent in top-down planning models became evident, and the Cold War military and foreign policy consensus began to erode (McMahon 2003, 111–112). In December 1981, the Soviet-backed government of Poland cracked down on the noncommunist labor union Solidarity and arrested the officers of the movement, among them the

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admired leader Lech Walesa. Walesa had become globally famous for his rise from shipyard worker to massive political celebrity, inspiring his entire country to stand up to Soviet domination. Time magazine, which selected Walesa as “Man of the Year” for 1981, described him as “one of the communist world’s most charismatic figures” (Time, January 1981, 40). Walesa was also interviewed in Playboy magazine. In the interview published in February 1982 (61–70, 162), he was asked about the aims and objectives of Solidarity and his personal political views. However, the interview made no direct reference to the banning of Solidarity or martial law (in effect from December 1981 to July 1983). It was mentioned that Solidarity faced “tough confrontations with the Polish leaders” and “has also watched the Soviet Union mass thousands of troops and artillery along the Polish border in a not-so-subtle reminder of what happens to Russian satellites when they stray too far from the socialist orbit” (61). General Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of the Communist Party and prime minister of Poland, was also mentioned but only to speculate about his possible upcoming presidency. Thus, there is a slight discrepancy between the historical timeline and the time of the interview’s publication. The piece seems to have been written sometime before martial law took effect. It is noted in the introduction of the interview that Polish-speaking journalists Ania and Krusia Bittenek were sent to Warsaw in October 1981, but their meeting with Walesa was postponed for several weeks. Presumably, the interview was done some time in November 1981, immediately before martial law took effect and Walesa was arrested in December 1981. Even so, it is puzzling that the introduction was not updated to reflect the changed circumstances in Poland and Walesa’s imprisonment before publication in the February 1982 issue. The reasons can be only speculated on here. It is hard to believe that it can be explained by editorial flaws or information gaps in the magazine. Perhaps there were difficulties confirming up-to-date information about the latest situation, and it was seen as better to publish the piece with its historical context focused solely on the rise and achievements of the Solidarity movement and the international media celebrity of its charismatic leader, without any references to his imprisonment. The article celebrates inevitable, ongoing change: “Poland has freedom in its blood; no one can hold us captive” (61); “This revolt is not a challenge to the Soviets but to ourselves. We are responsible for this mess” (162). From the perspective of transforming Poland, this Playboy interview attests to the importance of attention and visibility in international,

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namely Western, media to achieving change in Eastern Europe. Moreover, this interview attests to the particular status of Playboy magazine as an iconic example of American commercial popular culture, especially repulsive to communist authorities, and a high-profile showcase opportunity for nonconformist political thinking (Saarenmaa 2014, 2017). Poland and Walesa’s Solidarity movement were also important to Americans. The Reagan administration reacted to the crackdown on the movement with broad-based sanctions against Moscow. However, as has been argued, rather than making an ideological commentary, the Reagan administration used Poland as a pretext for subverting a planned natural gas pipeline deal between the Soviet Union and several Western European countries, infuriating European leaders and precipitating a serious European-American clash of interests (McMahon 2003, 150–151). Apparently, European defense planners no longer saw the Soviet threat in the same apocalyptic terms as their colleagues across the Atlantic (ibid., 152–153). At the same time, there were mass demonstrations against American and Soviet missile deployments across Europe, and an antinuclear consciousness was growing among the American populace. In response to these political realities, Reagan had to back off and soften his rhetoric (ibid., 154). Soviet–American relations transformed radically after the 1985 election of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev’s foreign policy aimed at halting the arms race with the United States and was intimately linked with his domestic push for perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Gorbachev’s attempts to restructure the social and economic base of the Soviet Union were broadly commented on in a Playboy interview with chess player Garry Kasparov. The interview came out in November 1989 issue (61–73), just as the Berlin Wall was collapsing and during the last days of the Soviet empire. It was recalled in the interview that, despite the ongoing liberalization in Soviet politics, Playboy was still banned in the Soviet Union. Playboy had become a symbolic landmark of the liberalization of the state, and the posing of Russian model Natalia Negoda in Playboy in the May 1989 issue had been a massive event. As Kasparov noted, “[Soviet women] have been liberated for seventy-two years, and all they want is to become sex objects. It’s almost hundred per cent the opposite of the West. That’s why Natalya’s appearance in Playboy was such an event” (72). Kasparov was somewhat pessimistic about the future prospects of the Soviet Union, despite the ongoing reforms and negotiations with

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the West: “Our country isn’t ready to become a real partner in world cooperation. It’s too old fashioned and slow, too sleepy and too jealous of the West. It’s been more than seventy years of the wrong direction, you know. You can’t just change your identity like jumping off the wall” (73). Other problems were that the country’s economy was in ruins and that the mentality of people used to the communist system could not be changed overnight: “The new mentality called by Gorbachev hasn’t come to the minds of our leadership yet. As for the people, the system that they have had for more than seventy years has killed their ability to think in a normal way and work to improve their lives” (72). As we know today, Gorbachev’s government was indeed a short-lived enterprise. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries in 1991, less than two years after the Kasparov interview. Playboy’s interview with Kasparov captured this very specific moment on the historical timeline, when the future of the Soviet Union was still full of questions, concerns, and hopes for the future.

Conclusion After the passing away of Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Enterprises, in September 2017 at the age of 91, the legacy of Playboy magazine has been, once again, discussed worldwide. As it has been argued, Playboy, throughout its history, has contributed to covering many controversial topics other than estheticized female nudity, not the least US foreign politics. The examples discussed here are a small share of the amazingly rich, varied content of Playboy in the late 1970s and 1980s. Again, the largest share of Playboy interviews during this time focused on personalities in the aggressively expanding American entertainment industry. Nevertheless, as pointed out here, foreign politics was a regularly covered subject in the format, and it was discussed in detailed, in-depth interviews focusing on the political ideas, ideologies, and opinions of world-famous political leaders. Perhaps the most notable feature of the interviews was that they did not avoid views unfavorable to the United States but, rather, tended to challenge the contemporary foreign political discourses and official authorities of the US government. This characteristic situates the Playboy interview format within the liberal tradition of American news journalism, part of the long legacy of the American press that can be associated with

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anti-authoritarian views, liberal stances, and support for Democratic Party candidates (Cook 1998, 110). Playboy magazine shared the premises of the liberal political press, and also challenged the political establishment and its norms of decency. As has been suggested here, it was perhaps precisely this function that made Playboy a forum for non-American interviewees representing the enemy in the political context of the Cold War. In some cases, giving an interview to Playboy, globally famous for its nude girl pictures and liberal stances toward pre- and extramarital sexuality, was considered a means of ridiculing the US political and media elite. Without doing comparative research on content from other (liberal) US news media, it is not possible to make claims about the exceptionality of the Playboy interviews. Instead, this analysis shows that Playboy should be counted among those forums that covered global Cold War conflicts and US foreign politics from the liberal point of view. As attested here, Playboy approached the subject of world politics with specific expertise in various geopolitical contexts. This approach was due to the magazine’s bright editorial policy and high-quality network of freelancers willing to contribute in-depth interviews in their specific areas of expertise. In earlier accounts, Playboy has been associated with the American popular culture that reinforced and maintained Cold War myths, fears, and juxtapositions (e.g., Osgerby 2001). Playboy has also been considered part of the vibrant counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s and the fight against restrictive moral codes and hostile social institutions (Osgerby 2001; Miller 1984). As well, Playboy has been connected to the contradictory American modernism and male rebellion against the nuclear family ideology (Pitzulo 2011; Ehrenreich 1984). The examples discussed here further complicate both the political significance of Playboy magazine in American culture and the understanding of the role of popular media culture and sexually explicit material in the global Cold War.

Notes 1. The Playboy question-and-answer interview format was introduced in 1962 with a one-on-one with jazz musician Miles Davis by Alex Haley. The interview format has remained the same ever since: the title, “A Candid Conversation,” an introduction printed in italics and the opening page

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including three black-and-white upclose photos of the interviewee, shown deep in conversation with the interviewer. According to Playboy historian Russel Miller, Murray Fisher, the first editor in charge of the interview feature, pressed the interviewers to “probe deeper and ask questions that no one had dared to ask before” (Miller 1984, 130). Playboy interviewers were often well-known professionals and experts in their field of journalism. They knew their subjects well, even personally at times, but would offer the disclaimer that for the purpose of the story, they were representatives of the magazine, not of themselves. Their identity and background were often mentioned in the introduction, but the interview itself was always a dialogue between the interviewee and Playboy. Thus, the various voices and fields of expertise were united into one, undifferentiated voice of Playboy magazine, emphasizing the variety of fields of expertise and sophistication as characteristic of the brand. For more on Playboy interviews, see Saarenmaa (2017). 2. The material for this chapter was collected by utilizing the “Playboy Cover to Cover—The Complete Playboy magazine” online archive provided by Playboy Inc. http://www.iplayboy.com/covertocover/. To locate the interviews with politicians and other political actors, the study benefited from online database cataloguing of the Playboy interview subjects and interviews: http://daggy.name/cop/bkofdead/pboyintv.htm. Link read January 11, 2016. On the analysis of this material, see also Saarenmaa (2017). 3. The civil war in El Salvador, which lasted from 1979 to 1980, was fought between the Junta government and the leftist guerilla groups. The United States supported and financed the creation of a second junta to stop the spread of a leftist insurrection in the country (Livingstone 2009, 85–96).

Archival Source “Playboy Cover to Cover—The Complete Playboy Magazine,” Playboy, Inc., http://www.iplayboy.com/covertocover/.

References Agee, Philip. 1975. Inside the Company: CIA Diary. London: Penguin Books. Beggan, James, and Scott Allison. 2001. “The Playboy Rabbit Is Soft, Furry and Cute.” Journal of Men’s Studies 9: 341–370. Chamberlin, Paul Thomas. 2012. The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Conekin, Becky. 2001. “Fashioning the Playboy: Messages of Style and Masculinity in the Pages of Playboy Magazine, 1953–1963.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 4, no. 4: 447–466. Cook, Timothy. 1998. Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1984. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. New York: Anchor Press. Fraterrigo, Elizabeth. 2008. “The Answer to Suburbia: Playboy’s Urban Lifestyle.” Journal of Urban History 34: 747–774. ———. 2009. Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press. Hallin, Daniel C. 1984. “The Media, War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of and Oppositional Media.” Journal of Politics 46: 2–24. ———. 1987. “Hegemony: The American News Media from Vietnam to El Salvador: A Study of Ideological Change and Its Limits.” In Political Communication Research: Approaches, Studies, Assessments, edited by David L. Paletz, 3–25. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Jancovich, Mark. 2001. “Placing Sex: Sexuality, Taste and Middlebrow Culture in the Reception of Playboy Magazine.” Journal of Cult Media 1: 14. Livingstone, Grace. 2009. America’s Backyard: The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror. London: Zed Books. McMahon, Robert. 2003. The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miller, Russell. 1984. Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy. London: Michael Joseph. Osgerby, Bill. 2001. Playboys in Paradise: Masculinity, Youth and Leisure Style in Modern America. Oxford and New York: Berg. Pitzulo, Carrie. 2011. Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Saarenmaa, Laura. 2014. “Playboys and Politicians: Men’s Magazines as Political Counterpublics.” In A Man’s World? Political Masculinities in Literature and Culture, edited by Teoksessa Kathleen Starck and Birgit Sauer, 181–193. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. 2017. “Candid Conversations: Politics and Politicians in Playboy Magazine.” Media History 23, no. 1: 50–66.

CHAPTER 4

Going Atmospheric and Elemental: Roger Moore’s and Timothy Dalton’s James Bond and Cold War Geo-Politics Klaus Dodds and Lisa Funnell

James Bond is an iconic spy and loyal agent who goes on state-sanctioned missions designed to ensure the physical safety, resource security, and geopolitical standing of Britain worldwide. He appears to be most in his element when taking to the “field” rather than receiving his instructions from his superiors back in London. He manages, nonetheless, to excel during these briefings and staged encounters with other experts to demonstrate his awareness of topics ranging from the gold exchange standard (Goldfinger, 1964, dir. Hamilton) and satellite technology (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977, dir. Gilbert) to diamonds (Diamonds Are Forever, 1971, dir. Hamilton) and the energy crisis (The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974, dir. Hamilton). Although he works at the behest of Britain, he is depicted from the outset of the series in Dr. No (1962, dir. Young) as an independent actor and K. Dodds (*)  Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. Funnell  University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_4

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reluctant team-player who revels in improvisation. He rarely misses an opportunity to “cock a snook” at figures of authority. He is not afraid to query orders and pursue his own lines of enquiry. In other words, Bond may be handed a mission file in London, but once outside the “Universal Exports” (the cover-name for the British security agency, MI6) building it is not clear that he reads the contents all that carefully. In his professional world, the practice of fieldwork encompasses a great many activities in a wide range of social settings. From playing baccarat and poker in casinos and gentlemen’s clubs to clambering up mountains and plunging into the world’s seas and oceans, Bond’s body and accompanying sense of touch is integral to his mission’s success (Funnell and Dodds 2015a). Bond is the master of legerdemain. He has to juggle his actions with his judgments about who to trust, who to seduce, and who to provoke. With only a loyal American ally like Felix Leiter to whom he routinely turns, the success of Bond lies in his capacity for forming relationships with others and especially women, who often act as proxies for international relationships. Cold War geopolitics, for Bond, is always personal. James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, was writing at a time of great upheaval in world affairs. Bond’s appearance in the inaugural novel Casino Royale in 1953 coincided with the cessation of formal hostilities in Korea, a hardening of relations between Western and Eastern European nations, and the confirmation of the Soviet Union as a nuclear weapon state (see Black 2001). While welcoming a new monarch in the form of Queen Elizabeth II, Fleming’s postwar Britain was also overseeing imperial dissolution and national reformation. Writing from his home, Goldeneye, in Jamaica, Fleming’s literary imagination was coming into contact with an everyday Caribbean geopolitics shaped by local political parties and leaderships hedging toward independence (see Parker 2015). Jamaica’s export of bauxite also meant that it was a strategically significant supplier to the United States in the midst of a global demand for aluminium. By the time the filmic version of Dr. No was released in 1962 to global and critical acclaim, Fleming’s Jamaica and post-revolutionary Cuba were Cold War hotspots. The 1959 Cuban Revolution with Fidel Castro as the new leader sent shock waves throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Cuba was no longer a benign American playground for the rich and privileged. For all of that, however, the novel Casino Royale opens with Bond sitting in the casino cogitating on the effects of smoke and sweat on his body and on others around him. As Fleming noted about his agent,

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“This helped him to avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes” (1953, 1). Fleming’s literary oeuvre, in combination with the prevailing popular geopolitical culture of the Cold War, provided ample opportunities to side-step what we term an “elemental staleness.” Our chapter explores in more detail a Cold War period characterized by détente and the return of the so-called Second Cold War (ca. 1974– 1987). If there is a “Bond formula” as film historians such as James Chapman (2000) and literary critics such as Umberto Eco (2009) argue, we contend that it is neither formulaic nor institutionally ritualized as the term might imply (Bennett and Woollacott 1987). For Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott, writing some thirty years ago, the Roger Moore epoch was quite different from the inaugural Bond era associated with Sean Connery. A more episodic Bond (with a new release every two to three years) becomes ever more predictable as a diet of fast cars, exotic locations, gadgets, and women intermingle with one another. Moreover, the image and narrative arc of Bond were entrenched and widely consumed as Bond became a global cultural phenomenon albeit one that was not available to Soviet and Chinese audiences during the Cold War era (Hines 2018, 170). We argue that the Bond formula becomes more explicitly atmospheric, elemental (air, earth, fire, and ice), and resourceful in the 1970s and 1980s. Bond in the Moore-Dalton era also found itself in the midst of a new wave of Hollywood filmmaking with younger directors such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas experimenting with generic traditions and focusing on high-grossing summer releases. It was a highly competitive environment for filmmaking with The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, dir. Gilbert) grossing $46 million in the North American market compared to the extraordinary achievements of Jaws (1977, dir. Spielberg) and Star Wars (1977, dir. Lucas), which netted $260 million and $307 million respectively.1 In our reading of Roger Moore’s and Timothy Dalton’s Bond, they can be situated within a broader geopolitical-cinematic-environmental context (Fleming 2010; Shaw and Youngblood 2010). First, the 1970s and early 1980s were a period of change for Hollywood studios with the emergence of blockbuster films as well as new techniques of production and marketing associated with spectacle, lavishness, product placement, and scale (King 2000). Roger Moore’s introduction as James Bond in 1973 was understandable after his success in the United States with the television series The Saint. He was well known to American television rather than film-watching audiences, and Moonraker (1979, dir. Gilbert)

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was a response to the archetypal blockbuster, Star Wars (1977, dir. Lucas). Second, the Moore era (1973–1985) benefited greatly from the investment in spectacular set design associated with Ken Adam (Frayling 2005). His work on the outlandish super-tanker in The Spy Who Loved Me and space facilities in Moonraker provided impressive and immersive environments for Bond to grapple with. Finally, the Moore and Dalton periods were notable for not only Cold War tension but concern over environmental degradation, climate change, and space-based imagery of Earth (e.g., the Blue Marble image from NASA in 1972). For the evil geniuses that haunt the Bond films, manipulating the elemental, profiting from natural resources, and designing and protecting spherical bodies such as underground bases, space stations, and secret hideouts were based on the assumption that unwanted intruders such as James Bond and his allies could be foiled. As if echoing some of the arguments presented in Peter Sloterdijk’s Terror from the Air, the evil geniuses in the Bond franchise find ever more ingenious ways to use the atmosphere and underground to wreak terror (2009). But they also find solace and protection in bubble and sphere-like structures that kept others out while also ensuring internal survival. They anticipated that Bond and his allies would try to penetrate these outer barriers, and they planned accordingly; in some cases, the villain was prepared to abandon the protective sphere altogether (e.g., Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me). The breaking of the villain’s material line of defense becomes a defining feature of Bond’s mission success, and it sent powerful messages about Britain’s role in navigating and even surviving late-Cold War geopolitics. Bond and his allies, both American and occasionally Soviet, prevent unthinkable (but not unimaginable) global destruction and in so doing normalize AngloAmerican geopolitical power (Funnell and Dodds 2017a).

Elemental Mr. Bond? Atmospheres, Bodies, and Elements In the traditional reading of the Bond formula, attention is drawn to the role of established conventions and structures that have shaped the franchise (Bennett and Woollacott 1987; Chapman 2000). As its own sub­ genre of action, the Bond film opens with a pre-credit action sequence and then credits featuring a title track and stylized visuals are followed by a key scene in which Bond receives his mission directives.2 Bond typically

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arrives at M’s office in central London and converses not only with his boss but also with colleagues and helpmates like Q and Moneypenny. These exchanges—be they serious, playful, or flirtatious—set up the storyline and prepare audiences for what might lie ahead. After being dispatched into the field, Bond inevitably encounters the villain, comes into contact (quite literally) with henchpeople, draws upon the help of allies, seduces women who possess relevant professional/ spy intelligence, and subsequently prepares for an assault on the villain’s secret headquarters or lair. This infiltration is rarely unproblematic, with Bond often being captured and/or punished. Bond (usually) escapes by deducing a flaw in the prevailing security and/or sensing vulnerabilities in the architectural design of the imprisoning structure. He then sets in motion a plan to destroy the villain’s lair. The film ends with Bond killing the villain and obliterating his base often in a spectacularly explosive fashion. A close female ally and actual/potential lover (i.e., the Bond Girl) frequently survives thanks to Bond’s quick-witted actions while others, including evil/villainous women, perish.3 The release of the inaugural Bond film Dr. No in 1962 coincided with worsening tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union over particular spaces and territories ranging from Cuba to Turkey. This geopolitical tension, however, was not limited to formal borders and the control over physical territory and resources. The Cold War, by the early 1960s, encapsulated Earth’s atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere. Major international scientific endeavors such as the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958) contributed to an acceleration in human knowledge and understanding of planet Earth and the interconnections between elemental processes, such as ice, wind, fire, and water. Nuclear testing, including atmospheric and underground explosions, brought to the fore the capacity of humankind to put techno-scientific knowledge and practices to work (Hamblin 2005; Turchetti and Roberts 2015). Nuclear physics and seismology were integral to developing and detecting nuclear activity respectively. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were investing heavily in the geosciences, and perhaps then it was more than appropriate that one of Bond’s adversaries in Dr. No is Professor Dent, a notable geolo­ gist, while Dr. No himself is a nuclear scientist. For much of the Cold War, geology and physics were privileged academic disciplines and typified what we might think of the distinct qualities of Cold War geopolitics

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(Kaiser 2006; Doel and Harper 2016). Geologists and geoscientists were vital to the developmental needs of states, including the United States, which embarked on a huge investment in postwar infrastructure, defense, transport, and housing. Bauxite was a strategic mineral during this time, as aluminium was integral to America’s plans for the production of planes, rockets, bridges, buildings, and cars. For post-independent Jamaica, the bauxite industry was an essential element in the country’s immersion in global commodity markets. By 1957, Jamaica was already the largest exporter of bauxite and later the driving force behind the International Bauxite Association (Sheller 2014, 176). Dr. No’s secret lair, within the confines of a bauxite mine, seems apt for a country caught up in regional and elemental geopolitical and geoeconomic networks respectively. The 1950s was also a period of great change regarding the world’s commons.4 Both superpowers were eager to maintain freedom of access to Earth’s skies, waters, and space. Developments in international law complemented efforts to manage these global resources. In the case of the seas, the first Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1956 began to transform the sovereign rights of coastal states. The 1958 Continental Shelf Convention, for example, set out the sovereign rights of nationstates to explore and exploit the resources of the continental shelf, which was defined through its inherent exploitability and not by its underlying geology. A maximum territorial outer limit for the continental shelf was not identified in the provisions of the Convention. Coastal states accumulated new rights to lay submarine cables, to control superjacent waters and airspace, and to regulate fisheries, navigation, and scientific research. The maritime commons were being enclosed by extending the sovereign rights of coastal states while great powers insisted on access and mobility beyond the world’s territorial seas (United Nations 1958). The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 in effect created “space law” as the superpowers recognized that outer space was a new domain for human activity. A year later, the United States and the USSR discussed the future of outer space at the UN and in 1959 a UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space was established. Within a decade, the Outer Space Treaty was negotiated declaring that the moon and outer space could not be nationalized and militarized via weapons of mass destruction. As for the atmosphere, the release of Dr. No in 1962 coincided with growing public concern about the effects of nuclear testing,

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and in 1963 the three main nuclear weapon states (the United States, USSR, and UK) agreed to the Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibiting any weapons being detonated in the atmosphere, underground, underwater, and in outer space (US Department of State 1963). In Thunderball (1965, dir. Young), Bond’s use of a miniature Geiger counter mirrored a wider US concern about the salience of monitoring the possible development, use, and storage of nuclear materials by adversaries. The Bond films appeared at a pivotal moment in the Cold War where geopolitics was taking on an explicitly elemental and geophysical quality. Minerals such as bauxite and uranium were considered “strategic” and the major powers were investing ever more time and money in the scientific investigation, commercial exploitation, and military domination of the world’s commons (on aluminium and bauxite, see, e.g., Sheller 2014). US and Soviet submarines were mapping the ocean depths, oil and gas companies were mining onshore and offshore, rockets and missiles were orbiting Earth, and scientists continued to log and record information from the Polar Regions. Scientific disciplines such as seismology served a dual purpose at once monitoring the seismic rhythms of Earth while helping to monitor any covert underground nuclear explosions (Barth 2000). Biologists, in the pay of an evil genius, play an altogether different role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, dir. Hunt), as Bond discovers a sinister plot to poison the world’s food supply via bacterial agents. So our reading of the Bond formula is rather different and less preoccupied with Cold War narrative templates and characterization, and more attentive to how elements, resources, and atmospheric activity shape this conflict. The Bond formula was inherently geo-political rather than simply geopolitical—in other words, we draw attention to the way in which the “geo” contributes to the making of the “political” in more affective and material ways rather than via a representational register (cf. Black 2001). It is not hard to discern the reference to the Cold War geopolitical divide with rival spy organizations such as the KGB pitted against MI6 and the CIA, and cities like Istanbul and Vienna residing on the proverbial fault line of East and West. But the Bond films also took seriously what was ultimately at stake during the Cold War, the mastery of Earth itself. What Dr. No began other evil geniuses such as Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me) and Hugo Drax (Moonraker), as we discuss, continued, and they were deadly serious in their globalizing ambition. They sought to destroy the world and/or remake/reshape

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it with their distinct geopolitical and biopolitical imprimatur. Audiences were left in no doubt that all of this was thrilling, as alarm systems, gadgetry, computer screens, loudspeaker systems, and flashing lights animated the evil genius’s heavily guarded secret lairs and laboratories. To foil their evil plans, Bond had to run a gamut of affective and material encounters with bodies, objects, and technologies. What audiences were witnessing in the midst of all this global scheming was an overturning of the conventional cartographies of the Cold War. Highly wealthy individuals, such as Stromberg and Drax in the 1970s, advanced their own fiendish plans to dominate, pollute, and secure Earth. They were not interested in stewarding the Earth. In their devilish imaginations, its common spaces such as the oceans and atmosphere facilitated such planning, and highlighted the proverbial blind spots and frailties of the superpowers and their allies. They proved capable of harnessing scientific knowledge, managing data flows, recruiting researchers, and sustaining scientific laboratories and control centers. And they were able to employ their own scientists with fully equipped and state-of-the-art laboratories. Bond films featuring outlandish plots of geoengineering, such as The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, tend to ensure that audiences are shown that the villain has the scientific-technical capacity and infrastructure management to enact such plans. James Bond’s missions were often therefore about disrupting those who either tried to dominate the commons (air, outer space, ice, oceans) using disruptive and/or colonizing technologies as well as to monopolize particular elements, such as gold, oil, and uranium. In our reading, we identify three distinct elements to the geopolitical formula underwriting the Bond films. The first involves the manipulation of air. In the early films, Bond is often gassed and rendered unconscious. The capacity to control and regulate the air around Bond and the air beyond ground level is pivotal to the scheming of SPECTRE.5 The capacity of Bond’s body to recover from such atmospheric privations is a second element of the Bond formula. Bond’s body is productive of geopolitics. His resilience is vital as his body is stress-tested by gases and poisons as well as by more overtly physical forms of violence.6 In the midst of a Cold War era where both the Soviet Union and the United States were experimenting with gases and poisons, the fate of Bond’s body and that of his adversaries would appear to be in keeping with such interests.

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Finally, rocks and minerals are elemental to the Bond formula. If Bond is not pursuing leads relating to natural resources like gold, uranium, diamonds, and oil, then his behavior is being shaped and (con) strained by air, water, earth, and fire. The elemental is a source of danger but also a medium for Bond to escape and habituate. “Going elemental” for Bond is then a tactic, which takes full advantage of what the air, water, ice, earth, and fire can do to either facilitate a mission or ensure his very survival. In the early Bond films, Bond has to sail, dive, crawl, fly, and parachute his way out of danger. While the basic narrative arc was established in the Connery-era films, Bond’s elemental engagement becomes more manifest and spectacular in the Moore era onward. The intersection of atmospheres, bodies, and elements helps to exhibit and enhance the vertical dimensions and volumetric qualities of spaces and territories rather than depicting them through flat and horizontal cartographies. In the past, there has been a tendency among Bond scholars to view places as simply “exotic locations” and to posit that they are part of a rather passive Bond formula and/or a marketing tactic to attract people interested in those places to see the film. The films convey the lively, animated, and vibrant materiality of these environments and show them to be vital to Bond. His encounters are always embodied and felt,7 as he works his way on and through land, sea, and air. In order to resolve geopolitical conflict, Bond has to withstand, mobilize, and overcome the elemental.

Roger Moore’s Bond: Geoengineering and the Late Cold War By the late 1970s, the Bond franchise was well established with a string of films embracing the thrilling dynamics of East–West division and the specter of global domination and destruction. Blockbuster movies such as Jaws (1975, dir. Spielberg) and Star Wars: A New Hope (1977, dir. Lucas) raised the bar; the Bond franchise would need to continue to be spectacular and even “out of this world.” To be at his very best in this new commercial-geopolitical era, Bond would need to enroll good intelligence, extraordinary endurance, a sure touch with allies and enemies, and a little bit of luck. But he also needed to understand and harness wherever possible the power of the elemental. Success in The Spy Who Loved Me, for example, depends on him BASE jumping,8 traversing ice, surviving underwater chases, and using the spherical capsule designed by the villain

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Stromberg to escape the exploding underwater complex, Atlantis. Cold War geopolitical subjectivities get remade through the spectacular manipulation of the elemental and by sabotaging the unthinkable. Shifts in Cold War geopolitics brought forward creative opportunities for the screenplay writers and directors to experiment with the “Bond formula.” Lighting, music, and the use of ice, cold, and darkness were integral to how the Soviet Union was represented. Moreover, the descriptor “Cold War” was inherently elemental (Funnell and Dodds 2017a, 3). In You Only Live Twice (1967, dir. Gilbert), the majority of the film takes place in a summertime Japan, but it opens with British, Soviet, and American representatives meeting inside a radio dome somewhere in a cold location. The very nature of both the spherical dome and exterior coldness captures the elemental nature of the Cold War—claustrophobic, intense, suspicious, and raw. Yet the domed environment also serves as a place to protect, direct, and nurture life on Earth. The British delegate’s intervention acts to de-escalate the rising tensions between Soviet and American colleagues. British intelligence concerning Japan, collected from its spy station in Hong Kong, helps to defuse tension over the fate of a space capsule in outer space. In The Spy Who Loved Me, which depicts the first warming of these “cold” relations, the commitment to détente through a new era of national (UK and USSR) and institutional (M16 and KGB) collaboration is framed through the warming of the weather. The film opens with Bond and his Soviet counterpart Anya Amasova (Agent XXX) operating separately in the colder climates of Austria and the Soviet Union respectively. Her boss, General Gogol, the Head of the KGB in Moscow, is shown to be working in a dark and austere-looking office in wintry Moscow. When the agents first meet in a highly orientalized Cairo, they initially compete with each other in order to prove which agent and, by extension which intelligence agency and nation, is superior/dominant (Funnell and Dodds 2017a, 90–96). Their first meeting is tense as they race to discover who has the secret plans for satellite tracking technology. On a dhow heading back to Cairo, Amasova tells Bond about the importance of “shared body heat,” something she had allegedly learned as part of her cold weather survival training. As the pair begins to cultivate a more cooperative and romantic relationship, they operate in much warmer regions and ultimately end up in Sardinia, an Italian island located in the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, the changing climate in the

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film reflects the thawing of Cold War relations between the UK and the USSR through the collaboration and budding romance between Bond and Amasova respectively. As Bond begins to partner with these once “cold” enemies in an era of relative Cold War détente, the elemental threat once associated with the USSR is displaced onto Bond’s individual adversaries who devise fiendish plans that become even more elemental. The representatives of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union begin to recognize that the truly outlandish threats facing the world do not come from within their own countries or allies but rather from outsiders and/or national traitors such as the East German-born Zorin (a rogue KGB agent in A View to a Kill [1985, dir. Glen]). Three films, in particular, typify the turn to the geoengineering—The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, and A View to a Kill. In each case, the villain’s maniacal plan is to interfere with the earth’s systems and cause global destruction by turning the US-Soviet military-industrial complex against itself. For Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me, Atlantis is his underwater refuge from the world he intends to destroy through a nuclear holocaust. Before carrying out his operation, however, he invites Bond (masquerading as a marine biologist, Robert Sterling) to visit Atlantis. While there, he shows Bond a model of an underwater colony and posits that it represents the future for humanity. Later, it becomes clear that Stromberg intends to use the rival superpowers to destroy the earth by getting their respective submarine forces to unleash a nuclear attack on each other. What made Stromberg’s work possible was the location of Atlantis beyond the territorial waters of any one coastal state. Stromberg took advantage of the limited surveillance of international waters to create an underwater world that appeared to be engaged in marine scientific research but was ultimately far from it. His experimentation might never have been discovered if Bond and his Soviet counterpart had not noticed a marking on a secret document, which revealed the possible involvement of Stromberg in a plot to steal advanced naval intelligence. Significantly, Bond and Amasova noticed the insignia from Stromberg’s subterranean marine laboratory, which was operating off the coastline of Sardinia. In the case of Hugo Drax’s conniving in Moonraker, Bond discovers a vast biopolitical plot to destroy the earth’s biosphere from outer space and then to return eventually to re-inhabit the planet. Drax’s plan centers on the dispatching of capsules containing highly toxic poisons,

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which, Bond knows, target only humans rather than animals and plants. Bond accidentally discovered a secret germ-testing laboratory in the port-city of Venice. As with The Spy Who Loved Me, it is again Italy that either hosts elements of the secret lair or does not appear to appreciate the danger lurking offshore. Inadvertently or not, continental European cities in Bond films, while recognizable to cinema audiences around the world, often function as hubs for evil geniuses to test, plot, and store money and resources. A film depicting the testing of deadly atmospheric gases to deliberately destroy human populations occurred during a time of renewed concern about “population time-bombs” and a Club of Rome report in 1972 warning about the “limits to Earth.” With the world population standing around 4 billion at the time of the film’s release, this was arguably the most ambitious and murderous scheming that Bond has ever had to foil. The atmosphere and outer space were elemental accomplices in this plan to pollute and habituate the Earth. Although the USSR does not play a central role in Moonraker, the film continues to reflect a warmer/warming partnership facilitated by détente. On the one hand, the mission takes Bond to warmer climates before he travels into outer space. The rare orchid used to manufacture the poison is from the thinly populated and poorly policed Amazon jungle, and the base of the Drax’s manufacturing operation is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The weather associations established in The Spy Who Loved Me are carried forward into Moonraker. On the other hand, the Americans contact the USSR when Bond and his CIA counterpart Dr. Holly Goodhead relay intelligence from the space station. Although General Gogol is not directly involved in the Anglo-American operation, he sanctions the mission by giving M16 and the CIA twelve hours to complete their assignment before he involves the KGB and Soviet space forces. Thus, the film presents the head of the KBG, in the midst of the Cold War, relying on Western intelligence agencies to safeguard the Soviet Union, which is, like the rest of the world, vulnerable to mortal attack.9 Such a conceit is possible if we remain embedded in the franchise’s depiction of a new era of “Anglo-Soviet cooperation,” which is rooted in General Gogol’s ongoing confidence in Bond to “finish the job.” In Roger Moore’s final film, A View to a Kill, Bond has to tackle the threat of an artificially induced earthquake destroying Silicon Valley in California. Bond’s female companion is tellingly a geologist, and knowledge of the earth’s physical structures proves vital in terms of

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anticipating and preventing what the evil genius has in mind. Early on in the film, the audience witnesses a meeting in an airship where the industrialist Max Zorin reveals his audacious proposal to trigger the San Andreas Fault so that an earthquake followed by extensive flooding would destroy the high-tech industry of the state of California. A scalemodel is used to demonstrate the likely consequences of the scheme, and Zorin promises his co-conspirators a new deal based on a global monopoly of silicon chip technology. Preventing the blueprint from being put into action requires that Bond and his allies circumvent a massive operation involving large-scale underground explosions. By the time seismic monitors registered the blast, it would be too late for Silicon Valley. Unlike Moonraker, A View to a Kill is more obvious in its depiction of détente and the warming of Cold War relations. It features the same shift from colder to warmer climates as The Spy Who Loved Me, but this time Bond is pit against a KGB-trained agent, Max Zorin, rather than being paired with a female Soviet ally. Importantly, the Soviet Union is still presented in a fairly positive and cooperative light. General Gogol intervenes midway through the film to chastise Zorin for supposedly killing Bond and his frustration clearly reflects the relationship he has personally developed with Moore’s Bond over the years. For instance, in Octopussy (1983, dir. Glen), a rogue KGB general, Orlov, sets in motion a plot to attack an American military base in West Berlin and subsequently invade Europe. Bond stops this plot and returns the Romanov Star stolen from the Kremlin in order to help Gogol and the KGB save face (Funnell and Dodds 2017a, 97–99). Additionally, through this exchange, Gogol makes it clear that Zorin (like Orlov) has gone rogue and is not acting at the behest of the KGB. Gogol is so concerned that he sanctions his own team to conduct surveillance on Zorin. Bond accidentally intrudes on their mission and subsequently seduces Soviet agent Pola Ivanova in order to steal the recording. Interestingly, this scene takes place in a hot tub as Russian music plays intermittingly in the background. At one point during their steamy scene, Bond comments that “détente can be beautiful!” Through the use of heat and steam, the film presents the impression that Cold War relations have definitely warmed across the Moore era and that these former adversaries now pose much larger (existential) threats that they need to battle together. Bond eventually does take down Zorin, who falls to his death from a blimp flying over the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

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Across the Moore era, Bond’s success in safeguarding Britain depends on his ability to forge new relationships with KGB generals and agents while reversing or tampering with the designs of (nationally unaffiliated) villains to re-engineer the earth. The air, sea, and outer space, which extend across and beyond traditional national boundaries, have to be saved from poisoning, manipulation, and enclosure. Given the stakes, it will take collaboration with both American and Soviet forces, as facilitated by Bond and Britain, to ensure international security. In this shifting geopolitical climate, it becomes clear that mission success depends on Bond putting the elemental to use in order to penetrate the physical borders and protective spheres of his adversaries: the oil tanker and Atlantis in The Spy Who Loved Me, the space station in Moonraker, and the airship in A View to a Kill. All three are shown to be destroyed in spectacular fashion as their spheres had to be destroyed in order to safeguard a much larger sphere, namely Earth itself.

Timothy Dalton’s Bond: Darker Moods and Worlds Timothy Dalton’s tenure as Bond is much shorter and consists of only two films released in late 1980s: The Living Daylights (1987, dir. Glen) and License to Kill (1989, dir. Glen). They are also quite different in scale and scope. If Roger Moore’s Bond confronted global challenges and even existential threats to Earth itself, Dalton’s Bond is more straightforwardly personal. This is not to say Bond does not travel around the world but he does so pursuing particular (personal) objectives as opposed to addressing threats that pose grave danger to Earth and humanity in general. Rather than the planet going up in smoke, for example, Bond torches his arch-enemy Sanchez in Licence to Kill. The two films present a notable departure from the more playful and even light-hearted tone of the Moore era. Dalton’s Bond is far more serious and his films present a more realistic image of a secret agent. But the Dalton era is also defined by institutional conflict, defiance of authority, and general geopolitical uncertainty. In The Living Daylights, Bond disagrees with M’s assessment of intelligence and even threatens to resign until he learns that another 00 agent will be sent in his place. He relents and takes on the mission but follows his instincts rather than the formal orders to complete it. Licence to Kill takes this institutional challenge one step further by having M strip a defiant Bond of his 00 licence. Bond

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goes rogue and escapes M16 custody in order to avenge the attack on his ally Felix Leiter and his wife, Della. In both films, Bond’s instincts and moral compass are proven right while the intelligence and diplomacy of M16 and by extension Britain are drawn into question. These narratives of institutional uncertainty are couched within broader geopolitical contexts. This is made manifest in the opening scene of The Living Daylights when Bond is on a training mission in Gibraltar. Plunging out of a plane containing his boss and M’s makeshift office, Bond and his companions parachute down the side of the immense Rock of Gibraltar. Their mission is to penetrate the British base at the top of the rocky structure, and thus practice both their stealth approaches and rock climbing skills. Echoing earlier assignments designed to penetrate remote and high-altitude secret lairs, the mission becomes disastrous when a rogue Soviet assassin infiltrates the group. While Bond is able to kill his adversary, his reserve parachute is put to good use as he escapes from a plunging jeep. But unlike The Spy Who Loved Me, in which a freefalling Bond glides to safety using a parachute emblazoned with the Union Jack, The Living Daylights features a black-and-white camo printed parachute and the scene lacks the same nationalistic/patriotic tone thus suggesting a shift in the focus and thus geopolitical context of the film. The Rock of Gibraltar seems an appropriate place for Dalton’s Bond to begin operating in the late Cold War. His improvised escape alongside the immense rocky structure foregrounds his capacity to harness the physical properties of rock, air, water, and ice. The scale of the threat facing Britain in both of the Dalton’s films is quite different from that of the Moore era. There are no evil geniuses seeking to re-engineer the earth or even destroy it. Instead, the focus turns toward the trafficking of two types of objects—guns and drugs—and the impact they might have on Britain and America’s collective security in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill respectively. What does, however, matter in both films is Bond’s ability to harness the elemental to foil smuggling operations. Having learned of a plot to kill British spies, Bond is charged with extracting information from a Soviet defector, General Koskov, in The Living Daylights. But in so doing, he discovers that he has been misled about who might be at the heart of the plotting. What becomes clear later in the film is that the so-called plot is an elaborate bluff designed to get Bond to kill the new head of the KGB, General Pushkin, as an act of revenge for the death of a British agent in Gibraltar.

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The Living Daylights emphasizes the importance of border crossings aided by technology designed to transport and/or use natural resources and elements. For instance, Koskov is smuggled out of the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian pipeline into a dark and chilly Vienna. The choice of the pipeline seemed particularly apt because it was part of a Westernfunded project designed to bring Russian gas from Siberia to European markets. Constructed in the early 1980s, the film suggests that Sovietera technology made it comparatively easy to send the Soviet defector in a spherical cleaning unit, which would be barely noticed by pipeline security forces. A simple act of sexual distraction by a local female operator ensures Koskov’s safe passage into Czechoslovakia. When he emerges from a spherical gas storage unit, he is rushed to an awaiting Harrier jump jet, all of which is suggestive of Britain’s ability to protect their “asset” by ensuring that he was encased in securable objects. However, their proficiency is drawn into question when Koskov later evades British custody as a consequence of an audacious escape/rescue attempt facilitated by a medical helicopter. The film’s narrative arc has three distinct geographical locales. Cold War central Europe, Morocco and the Mediterranean, and Afghanistan. In Austria and Czechoslovakia, Bond finds himself among ice, cold, and darkness. Unconvinced that Pushkin is guilty of ordering the assassination of British spies, he travels back behind the Iron Curtain to track down a female musician (and faux sniper) Kara Milovy, who was used to corroborate Koskov’s lie that he was being targeted for assassination by the state. In snow-covered Bratislava, Bond and Milovy manage to execute an escape plan involving a cello case being used as an impromptu toboggan to cross back into the comparative safety of neutral Austria. But in dark and cold Vienna, Bond and local British allies appear vulnerable to assault. Crossing the East–West divide does not necessarily offer a security advantage. The only comparative moment of intimate security for Bond and Milovy is when they ride inside a small compartment of the Vienna “Big Wheel” (Wiener Riesenrad) attraction. In a spring-like Morocco, Bond’s unwillingness to kill Pushkin appears warranted as it is revealed that Koskov has embezzled Soviet funds in order to finance arms deals, which profit from the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Tangier is presented as a commercial hub for well-connected unscrupulous people to make money with minimal stateled supervision. If Vienna is the archetypical Cold War city, then Tangier is presented as a post-Cold War trading hub. Pushkin is said to be in the

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city for an official trade convention, and after Bond confronts him in his hotel room the two men decide to work together and forge a partnership that clearly goes against Bond’s M16 directive. After Bond facilitates the fake assassination of Pushkin, he escapes across the rooftops of Tangier, which contributes to the visual orientalism of the city and seems in keeping with the city’s motif and the promotion of cross-border mobility. The final substantive section of the film’s narrative arc is situated in and around a Soviet base in Afghanistan. Bond’s forced transport from Morocco to Afghanistan is treacherous in that Koskov pretends that the flight is carrying urgent medical supplies. Underlining the theme of geopolitical transplantation, the plane replaces the pipeline in ensuring that this time it is Bond who is transported into a late-Cold War Soviet zone, made possible by the military invasion and occupation of the country in 1979. Bond’s capacity to disrupt the arms and drugs dealing in the country is achieved through local assistance provided by anti-Soviet resistance forces. Navigating the desert-like landscapes of Afghanistan, Bond discovers how extensive the drug-smuggling operation is, and remarks that the raw opium will be worth “half a billion dollars on the streets of New York.” While the landscape might appear dusty and unproductive, the resilient poppy plant is the source of comparative advantage for those who produce and export opium. Soviet military infrastructure is being used to transport the drugs to North American and European markets, using Morocco as a point of transhipment. Bond’s remark to Milovy about New York serves to remind us that his actions are also benefiting American security interests, even though the presence of his American ally Felix Leiter in the film is fleeting, limited to the scenes in Tangier. While Bond’s physical mobility mirrors that depicted in The Spy Who Loved Me—from colder to warmer regions signifying the warming AngloSoviet partnership—his eventual triumph requires him to move backward through three climatic regions (temperate, mountainous, and Mediterranean) thus altering the geopolitical implications. From overcoming Koskov’s henchmen in Afghanistan, he travels back to Morocco to confront a duplicitous arms dealer called Brad Whitaker in his fortress in Tangier. Finally, Bond returns with Milovy to a civilized and orderly Europe to witness a performance by her as a lead musician. The film concludes with an “image of a new (and idealized) era of cooperation” encapsulated by a shot of “a Mujahedeen leader, two Afghan fighters, a Czechoslovakian defector, the head of M16, and the former head of the

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KGB … interacting politely at the symphony, a space of refinement and high culture” (Funnell and Dodds 2017a, 102). While creatively imagining a new era of geopolitical relations in the late-Cold War era, the film does neither address the potential implications of having M mistakenly sanction the assassination of the head of the KGB, nor does it explain if the drugarms economy has been disrupted for the long term by Bond’s action in Afghanistan, thus dislodging Soviet control over the region. By shifting from warmer to colder climates, the film calls into question the strength and certainty of Anglo-Soviet relations. The disastrous consequences of the Soviet invasion and occupation are glossed over, and when Bond does return to Central Asia it is to address the messy consequences of Soviet-era nuclear contamination in The World Is Not Enough (1999, dir. Apted). In comparison, Licence to Kill is notable for being the only Bond film since The Spy Who Loved Me (released in 1977) to provide no explicit reference to the Soviet Union in either plot or characterization. Instead, it focuses on how the American drug trade is fueled by cartels in Central America and the Caribbean (Funnell and Dodds 2015b). Released in June 1989, some five months ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has often been read as a commentary on the American-led “war on drugs,” a term that originated with the Nixon administration in 1971. In the 1980s, US military aid was being directed increasingly toward producer states such as Colombia and transit states such as Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean. But the film can also be read as a geopolitical commentary about the end of the Cold War because it addresses institutional uncertainty and is fundamentally rooted in the transition and transformation of elemental forces like fire and water, and material objects like drugs. While Bond, in The Living Daylights, is confronted with an elaborate smuggling operation involving “raw opium” in Afghanistan, he uncovers a cunning plot in Licence to Kill in which processed cocaine is hidden in gasoline tanks in Central America. Licence to Kill is the most American-centric Bond film of the 1980s. This is curious, given the period in which the film was released. On the one hand, The Living Daylights provides a creative resolution to the Cold War and presents an ideal image of geopolitical collaboration. This can be interpreted as the final word of the franchise on the subject. On the other hand, Licence to Kill deals with broader geopolitical uncertainties by transposing them onto the American drug trade and presenting Bond

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on a personal mission to re-establish order. The film incorporates and arguably reworks some of the core aspects of The Living Daylights, and Bond’s engagement with the elemental signifies a lack of certainty about the future. As before, License to Kill opens with an airborne action scene, which culminates in Bond and Felix Leiter capturing a notable drugs baron, Franz Sanchez. Once the villain is apprehended, Bond and Leiter, dressed in wedding attire, skydive down to a church where a tearful Della awaits. Both men use white parachutes and the scene is coded more in terms of Anglo-American spy brotherhood than international border crossings. Shortly after the wedding, Felix and Della Leiter present Bond with a cigarette lighter—a play on their last name, the Leiters10—which is capable of producing an excessively large flame. But hours after the reception, the newlyweds are attacked on the direct orders of Sanchez. Della is killed while Felix is seriously injured by an engineered shark attack. The emphasis on heat and fire is consistent throughout the film. Bond does not travel from colder to warmer climates, but instead appears consistently hot and bothered as he operates in southern Florida, Central America, and the Caribbean. He is ill-tempered and ungracious to everyone he meets, including Lupe Lamora and Pam Bouvier, the two women vying for his affection. Not only does M strip a defiant Bond of his licence to kill, but as a rogue agent Bond blunders into a secret Hong Kong-based anti-drugs operation, which is tracking Asian drug lords who are eager to do business with Sanchez. By way of contrast from The Living Daylights, this film suggests that there are new transnational flows of contraband to worry about stretching across the Pacific Ocean and not the Euro-Asian landmass. And Bond is struggling to make sense of these new transoceanic networks. On the other hand, Bond’s persistence pays off because he eventually worms his way into the trust of Sanchez. While in the drug laboratory, Bond learns that there is a plan to extract the cocaine from the petrol tankers using filtration. Bond is able to destroy the facility by quickly taking advantage of a Bunsen burner to ignite some petrol deposits left on filtration paper. The spectacular explosion and raging fires that follow appear to give elemental force to Bond’s smouldering anger about the assault on his close American colleague and his wife.

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Having failed to kill Sanchez once with the help of a smaller explosion, Bond pursues Sanchez via a stolen petrol tanker. Throughout the final scenes of the film, explosions rock the progress of the remaining convoy of tanker trucks. After their final confrontation, Bond uses his “Felix Leiter/lighter” to set Sanchez on fire as he is standing perilously close to a drug-stained petrol leak. As flames consume Sanchez, Bond drags himself away from the explosion and lingers for support on a large rock. The air appears to be filled with the smell of gasoline and drugs as Bond visibly grimaces. Unlike other Bond films of the 1980s where heat signifies the warming of geopolitical relationships, in License to Kill fire is the means through which revenge is secured; although first being introduced as a token of love and affection at a wedding, fire ultimately appears in its extreme and destructive form. Following the attack on Felix Leiter and the violent death of Della, fire enables Bond to resolve his internal chaos and re-establishes moral order, even though his actions are unsanctioned by M16; with his licence to kill revoked, Bond is essentially committing murder. Water, the elemental antithesis to fire, is shown in this film to have an ambivalent relationship to the elemental geopolitics of Bond. In Licence to Kill, water provides the medium of escape for Sanchez (an underwater mission involving the deliberate sinking of a prison van), a killing method (through the use of sharks), and a cover for part of Sanchez’s drug smuggling operation courtesy of a marine laboratory and research vessel. And yet water also proves itself adept at facilitating Bond’s amorous liaisons with a former CIA pilot and Sanchez’s lover. Both women are seduced by Bond on boats, and by the end of the film Bond dramatically jumps into a swimming pool in order to demonstrate his love for the American Bond Girl Pam Bouvier. Their watery embrace is indicative of the special relationship between America and the UK and the bridging of water divides. As the Cold War draws to a close, Licence to Kill emphasizes the ongoing importance of Anglo-American relations as a new era of geopolitical fluidity begins.

Conclusion Our reading of the Bond franchise’s use of the Bond formula and depiction of popular geopolitics has been more elemental and earthly than that of other Bond scholars. Rather than concentrate on the intersection of exotic locations, gadgets, and gender (i.e., heroic masculinity and “safe” femininity), we argue that the Bond films involving Roger Moore

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and Timothy Dalton can be more profitably understood as exemplars of what we would distinguish as Cold War geo-politics rather than a geopolitics characterized by representation and identity politics. What matters more is not whether we can detect Cold War schisms but rather how we account for the importance of the elemental and material in shaping geopolitics. The Roger Moore era was particularly attentive to the perils posed by geoengineering and the ways in which it might be possible to pursue a deadly politics in and beyond the common spaces of the earth. The Timothy Dalton-era films addressed the role of drugs, specifically opium and cocaine, as not only predicated in transplantation economies but also capable of being hidden and disguised within other elements and objects, including cotton and petrol. The visual and affective repertoire of the Cold War proved profitable as these Bond films work with the spectacular potential of nuclear weapons and other forms of mass destruction to wreck earthly life. The threats facing Bond and the world in the 1970s and 1980s were diabolical in scope. What this reminds us more generally is that Cold War geopolitics was not just an ideological conflict punctuated by proxy wars around the globe, but it was also profoundly an elemental struggle over the mastery of Earth itself. An overarching scheme of the late-Cold War Bond films is the willingness of evil geniuses to carry out ecological violence against the Earth. The common spaces of Earth, such as the biodiversity, oceans, atmosphere, and outer space are integral to those violent projects. The drug-related films of the Dalton era continue that theme albeit more indirectly by focusing on the poisoning of human bodies through the use of opium and cocaine. The Bond films are integral to any examination of Cold War media in the 1970s and 1980s. What makes Britain and America, as well as their allies, safe in Bond’s world is ensuring that vulnerable spaces—the global commons and thinly governed spaces in the global South, such as Afghanistan, Morocco, and Central America—are brought under his supervisory touch, feel, and knowledge. Going elemental and atmospheric is not just a survival strategy but also a mechanism for control, enclosure, and discipline. The world remains safe from evil geniuses, drug barons, and rogue Soviet/communist agents because AngloAmerican geopolitical power is normalized. The vast majority of Soviet and East European citizens never got to see Roger Moore playing the British superspy, but they might have taken some comfort in knowing that when the chips were down Bond was trying to save all of us.

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Notes



1. Box office receipts available from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/. 2. For a discussion of the history and stylization of Bond credit sequences, see Planka (2015). 3. For a detailed discussion of the gender politics surrounding the contrasting of Bond Girls and Bad Girls, see Funnell (2011). 4. For a review, see Bosselman (2015). 5. For a detailed discussion of gas, see Funnell and Dodds (2017b). 6. For a detailed discussion of Bond’s body, see Funnell and Dodds (2017a). 7. For a detailed discussion of the haptic geographies of James Bond’s body, see Funnell and Dodds (2015a). 8. BASE jumping refers to a type of low-altitude jump in which the participant uses a parachute or a wingsuit to glide to safety. BASE is an acronym that stands for the types of surfaces from which one can jump: building, antenna, span, and earth (usually a cliff). 9. For a detailed discussion of General Gogol and the depiction of “hawks” and “doves” in the Moore era, see Funnell and Dodds (2017a). 10. In Live and Let Die (1973, dir. Hamilton), Bond remarks “a genuine Felix Leiter” when his ally speaks to him through the lighter in a car. This joke is carried forward in License to Kill as David Hedison reprises the role of Leiter in the film.

References Barth, K.-H. 2000. Detecting the Cold War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bennett, T., and J. Wollacott. 1987. Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero. London: Routledge. Black, J. 2001. The Politics of James Bond. Newport, CT: Praeger. Bosselman, K. 2015. Earth Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Chapman, J. 2000. Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. New York: Columbia University Press. Doel, R., and C. Harper, eds. 2016. Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice. London: Palgrave. Eco, U. 2009. “Narrative Structures in Fleming.” In The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader, edited by C. Lindner. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fleming, I. [1953] 2012. Casino Royale. Las Vegas: Thomas and Mercer. Fleming, J. 2010. Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate. New York: Columbia University Press. Frayling, C. 2005. Ken Adam and the Art of Production Design. London: Faber.

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Funnell, L. 2011. “Negotiating Shifts in Feminism: The ‘Bad’ Girls of James Bond.” In Women on Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture, edited by M. Waters. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Funnell, L., and K. Dodds. 2015a. “The Man with the Midas Touch: The Haptic Geographies of James Bond’s Body.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 43, no. 3: 121–135. ———. 2015b. “The Anglo-American Connection: Examining the Intersection of Nationality with Class, Gender, and Race in the James Bond Films.” Journal of American Culture 38, no. 4: 357–374. ———. 2017a. Geographies, Genders, and Geopolitics of James Bond. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2017b. “‘You’re a Kite Dancing in a Hurricane, Mr. Bond’: The Elemental Encounters of James Bond.” International Journal of James Bond Studies 1, no. 1: 7. Hamblin, J. 2005. Oceanographers and the Cold War. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hines. C. 2018. The Playboy and James Bond: 007, Ian Fleming, and Playboy Magazine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kaiser, D. 2006. “The Physics of Spin: Sputnik Politics and American Physicists in the 1950s.” Social Research 73, no. 4: 1225–1252. King, G. 2000. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris. Parker, M. 2015. Goldeneye. London: Windmill Books. Planka, S. 2015. “Female Bodies in James Bond Title Sequences.” In For His Eyes Only? The Women of James Bond, edited by L. Funnell. London: Wallflower Press. Shaw, T., and D. Youngblood. 2010. Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Sheller, M. 2014. Aluminum Dreams. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sloterdijk, P. 2009. Terror from the Air. New York: Semiotext(e). Turchetti, S., and P. Roberts, eds. 2015. The Surveillance Imperative: Geosciences during the Cold War and Beyond. London: Palgrave. United Nations. 1958. Convention on the Continental Shelf. http://www.cfr. org/world/united-nations-convention-continental-shelf/p21071. US Department of State. 1963. Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water. https://www.state.gov/t/isn/4797.htm.

CHAPTER 5

Civil Cold War Aviation as Television Drama: The Popular Miniseries Treffpunkt Flughafen (GDR 1986) Tobias Hochscherf

Owing to its division along the geopolitical fault lines of the Cold War, Germany occupies a central role in any comprehensive account of the conflict. The Iron Curtain that separated the two German states was not simply a metaphorical predicament, it was a heavily fortified border made of concrete and steel. As the only partitioned country in Europe, Germany became a site where the two blocs blatantly confronted one another. Yet, despite being divided, West and East Germany were far from being disconnected. As Christoph Laucht, Andrew Plowman, and I have argued before, “the inner-German border … was also a site of competition and trade-offs between the two Germanys” (2010, 1).

I am indebted to Dr. Jörg-Uwe Fischer at the DRA for his thoughts and help. All translations in this chapter, if not stated otherwise, are my own. T. Hochscherf (*)  Kiel University of Applied Sciences, Kiel, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_5

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Like many other examples of cultural interaction, such processes were complex and more often than not uneven. The FRG, on the one hand, looked toward the United States, France, and Britain to become part of a Western community sharing values and alliances. Particularly young generations were inspired by cultural trends including French existentialism, the Nouvelle Vague, American rock’n’roll, and British popular culture from mods to punks. Trying to establish a socialist German state, the GDR, on the other hand, sought to distance itself from the “other,” capitalist Germany. If it wanted to become a state of its own, it had to develop a distinct culture. This view helps to explain why cultural politics were a vital part of the Cold War experience as John Lewis Gaddis (1997) and others have shown. Yet the delimitation of the GDR was ill-fated. Television and radio signals, in particular, traveled freely across the inner-German border, offering Germans on both sides more than a glimpse of each other through the Iron Curtain. This is why Thomas Lindenberger rightly ascertains that [c]ompeting and mutually exclusive claims to represent the same – German – nation logically incurred attempts to undermine the competitor’s ability to control its domestic public sphere. While such control was feasible to an always limited extent with regard to print-based communication, such as newspapers, magazines and books, it was doomed to failure in the realm of electronic media. As a result the media publics of the two German states were never neatly separated, but rather overlapped and influenced one another.… [The endeavour of both sides to make use of such cross-border channels] contrasted with the asymmetry of the prevailing orientation toward the West in both German states. Consuming West German radio and TV programmes became everyday practice in the GDR while the reverse was restricted to a tiny minority of experts and political sectarians. (Lindenberger 2010, 22)

Looking closely at the fictional GDR television series Treffpunkt Flughafen (Meeting Point Airport, DDR1, 1986), this chapter looks at a telling case of media competition across political divides. The East German primetime television drama, indeed, was produced to counterbalance similar Western programs. To locate Treffpunkt Flughafen within broader national and international contexts, this article seeks to reconstruct its production history. In doing so, I not only look at individual episodes of the show but also consult reviews and production documents held by the German Broadcasting Archive (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, DRA) in Potsdam and the German National Archives (Bundesarchiv, BArch) in Berlin.

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Aspirational East German Television Treffpunkt Flughafen was produced with the use of significant financial, personal, and organizational resources to reassure audiences that GDR television was on par with West German popular audiovisual entertainment. Its high production values also opened up possibilities for export, if not to the West then at least to other socialist countries. The miniseries stands out as one of the most expensive and ambitious projects by East German television in the 1980s. As such, it helps to substantiate the more general observation that competition between the two German states increasingly “shifted to the realm of the culture industry” (Lindenberger 2010, 23). From an East German point of view, television—besides music, literature, comics, and film—became a site where “the vilified products of Western decadence … were to be countered by home-grown adaptations of the same genres and formats” (Lindenberger 2010, 23). Such productions were meant to be less a window onto the East for potential Western audiences than as a way to prevent East German audiences from watching West German TV. They, moreover, were to express cultural differences by establishing a distinct socialist identity. Audiovisual media in the GDR, as in the West, was, after all, a means of mass persuasion and public diplomacy. The entanglements and relationships between television culture in East and West Germany, thereby, add to our understanding not only of the cultural impact of the Cold War but also its aftermath. The Western orientation of both countries meant that the East knew much about the West, but not vice versa; Western citizens knew almost nothing about East German popular culture. In hindsight, this could help to explain why East and West Germans felt somewhat estranged in the years after unification. Treffpunkt Flughafen was certainly an attempt to offer a fictional program that conformed to viewing habits on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but it did so with a difference. The 1986 drama was produced as a joint project of GDR television with the country’s national film production company DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) and was produced with the Cuban state broadcasting channel ICRT (Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión). This transnational nature meant that individual episodes were set abroad. The collaborative television project could thus be seen as an indication of an attempt by GDR television to internationalize its programing without relying entirely on imports. By infusing a travelogue-adventure genre with East German protagonists and perspectives into the program, Treffpunkt Flughafen attests to the

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GDR’s endeavor to produce exclusive and alternative content for TV. In contrast to comparable Western shows, the action takes place in other socialist countries—such as Cuba, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and parts of Africa—suggesting a friendly brotherhood of socialist nations as a host for escapist entertainment. Yet such an image could be refuted by studying what had happened on the sets and production floors. The international activities by DEFA have become the subject of academic interest only recently (Wedel et al. 2013). Treffpunkt Flughafen, however, has been largely neglected. By looking at a specific case study of cross-media and cross-border collaboration, this essay pushes forward the idea that such relationships did exist during the Cold War. In contrast to simply seeing the Cold War as a world of solid blocs and departmentalization, such a view helps us to get a more nuanced understanding of the conflict that shaped the world for decades. In that way, Treffpunkt Flughafen offers a revealing case study for the Cold War mediascape more generally.

Preproduction at Adlershof: Popular Appeal and Political Impact Treffpunkt Flughafen was produced by the GDR’s leading film studio DEFA at Potsdam-Babelsberg as a commissioned fictional program for the country’s first television channel (Fernsehen der DDR, Erstes Programm) based at Berlin-Adlershof. Even if the GDR wanted to compete with Western media and was prepared to spend significant resources on prestige productions, financial means only went so far. Under the conditions of a command economy, the financially weak state was adamant not to establish a second fully developed production facility for television production besides the existing film studio in Babelsberg near Berlin. As Thomas Beutelschmidt explains, “[B]oth media [institutions] were forced to cooperate in clearly defined matters: they had to make better use of existing production capacities” (2013, 96). And so the partnership between Adlershof and Babelsberg was state-induced and did not develop naturally. This resulted in a number of resentments on both sides that forced them to find the basis for a working relationship by a very clear allocation of tasks. “As a result,” Beutelschmidt outlines, “an exact number of commissioned productions were agreed [upon] yearly, whereby [the television channel]

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was responsible for the political-ideological content and basic artistic considerations; the DEFA studios were in charge of organizational and technical matters” (2013, 96). Most commissioned fictional programing was produced for Sunday evening primetime. The 8 p.m. timeslot was held in high regard by television officials not only because of the millions who watched television at that time of the evening, but also because it was instrumental in influencing public opinion on GDR television more generally. People, as they saw it, used Sunday’s shows as an occasion to talk about the overall quality of programs when they were back at work on Mondays (see Dittmar 2004, 337). In accordance with the production agreement between Adlershof and Babelsberg for Treffpunkt Flughafen, the television company was largely responsible for the preproduction process: developing storylines and characters, casting the leading actors, and getting the script approved by the responsible State Committee for Television (Staatliches Komitee für Fernsehen). The script had to be aligned with official state policies and had to appeal to large audiences. The responsible person at Adlershof was senior script editor (Dramaturg) and head of the script department (Chefdramaturg Bereich Dramatische Kunst, Serienproduktion) Dr. Manfred Seidowsky. DEFA was to take care of the production and post-production stage, including organizational matters as well as aesthetic considerations during the making of the miniseries. In charge at Babelsberg was producer Martin Sonnabend and his production collective (Sonnabend 1984/1985). It was common practice that the leading television script editor has the final say and was to be held responsible for the entire collaboration. Whereas Seidowsky and his colleagues typically oversaw a number of simultaneous productions, this extraordinary transnational project was more labor-intensive than usual. In a letter to the head of GDR television, Ingrid Günther, Seidowsky explains, As head of the fiction department I am in charge of the miniseries Treffpunkt Flughafen from developing the idea to the final broadcast. In this case, moreover, I’m also the script editor. This is why a continuous production supervision is requisite. This is particularly important when the production team will be abroad to render possible consultations with the director about script issues, casting problems with Cuban actors, and collaboration with foreign partners and the crew. (Seidowsky 1984b)

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Why did GDR television, which always sought to deal more efficiently with resources, engage in such a bold project? GDR television in the late 1970s and early 1980s was going through a process of renewal. Whereas television in the GDR was generally seen as means of modernization, it gradually lost viewers to West German channels (see Steinmetz and Viehoff 2008, 415). This was problematic insofar as GDR officials saw TV as an ideal way to exercise political influence. As one of the leading figures behind media policy in the GDR, Werner Lamberz, put it, mass media were “instruments of political leadership by the party, the quickest and most direct means of communicating with a mass audience” (Lamberz 1972, 58). Rejecting reception theories that are somewhat reserved in their assessment of the impact of mass media on personal beliefs, Lamberz and many of his comrades strongly believed—or at least emphasized—that particularly television was instrumental in winning the minds and hearts of East Germans for a socialist cause. As a working paper by the Central Committee’s Abteilung Agitation (a central department for the implementation of the information policy by the Socialist Union Party SED) from 1975 makes explicit, Television … very intensively and variously affects the consciousness of working people and the satisfaction of their increasing intellectual-cultural desires. The great mass interest television receives allows the medium to gain an especially distinct intellectual influence on people of all classes and ranks, of all age-groups, of all levels of awareness and education. (Working Paper, “Abteilung Agitation des Zentralkomitees,” 1975, cited in Dittmar 2004, 332)

Within the ranks of GDR propaganda and mass persuasion, as Claudia Dittmar argues, people believed or acted upon “a simple theory of media effects, which fit well into the idea of television as a social weapon: A special stimulus must lead to a definite response” (2004, 332). This view, of course, is very disputed by media and communication studies researchers, who increasingly argue in favor of a more nuanced description of an active, discerning audience (see, for instance, McQuail 1994; Werenskjold 2011, esp. 414). Following a broad East German reception study conducted in 1971/1972, GDR television tried to adapt its own programing more closely to the routines and expectations of audiences. The findings led to programing reforms in 1972 and 1982/1983 that emphasized the

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entertainment value of television without changing its overall political agenda (see Hickethier 1998, 384–387). As the head of the State Committee for Television, Heinz Adameck made this clarification: “More variety and a fair balance of content and genres, primarily an increase of shows that are cheerful, adventurous and exciting, is the decisive task of our authors and script editors” (Adameck 1972, cited in Hickethier 1998, 385). East German television wanted to compete with West German public service broadcasters ARD and ZDF in the West by emulating its most successful fictional and factual programs. As audience research had demonstrated, particularly young viewers were turning their backs on GDR television and now preferred television from across the Iron Curtain. In 1986, only one-third of 15–25-year-olds were content with what GDR television had to offer (see Wolff 2002, 166). Casting mainly younger actors for Treffpunkt Flughafen in roles that had rebellious traits, Adlershof tried to buck this trend. Politics conveyed through entertainment and exotic locations was the new formula. And for the prestigious and very contested 8 p.m. time slot, GDR television was successful. As Michael Meyen’s (2002) research demonstrates, until the end of the 1980s more East Germans were watching their own country’s television program than those broadcast by Western media at primetime.

Competing with West German Television Programing None less than the head of the State Committee for Television, Heinz Adamek, spread the message that “the scheduling policy of the enemy had to be studied so that it can be countered with one’s own, open strategy” (Adameck 1984, 3). The Western orientation of GDR television meant that its production policy followed Western trends like the popularity of fictional primetime soap operas such as Dallas (CBS, 1978–1991), first shown on West German ARD in 1981, or ZDF’s Das Traumschiff (Dream Boat, 1981–) about the adventures of a cruise ship traveling the world with West German tourists. Once again, East German TV executives looked to the Federal Republic as a role model for strategic program development in their reform efforts, rather than trying to come up with genuinely original ideas for new formats and shows. To sum up, Adlershof tried to popularize its programing by interweaving political messages with Western entertainment formulas (see Dittmar 2010, 359–363; Steinmetz and Viehoff 2008, 435–444).

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In keeping with West German trends, East German television screened a number of shows with an international angle, appealing to the wanderlust of GDR audiences, who themselves were very limited as tourists outside their own country. This development was advanced by strategic decisions within Adlershof as well as external political developments. As Franca Wolff argues, both information and entertainment formats became increasingly cosmopolitan around the time of the 27th CPSU Party Congress from 25 February to 6 March 1986 in Moscow and in the run-up to the 11th SED Party Congress in Germany the same year. In the general context of renewal and change that is commonly associated with Mikhail Gorbachev, GDR television was to remind audiences about socialist ideals and longing for world peace (Wolff 2002, 160–161). Besides documentaries about German-Soviet collaboration in science and technical projects and shows featuring popular Western stars such as ABBA, Western European and American films and series were habitually shown at the primetime 8 p.m. timeslot. The list includes the BBC crime drama Miss Marple (1984–1992), the French youth films La Boum (The Party) and La Boum 2 (Claude Pinoteau 1980 and 1982) starring Sophie Marceau, as well as a number of US films (Wolff 2002, 163). It was interestingly Manfred Seidowsky’s brother, Hans-Joachim, who, as head of the Department for International Programme Exchange (Leiter der Abteilung “Internationaler Programmaustausch”), was central to the acquisition of foreign film and television rights. Yet, the new internationality of GDR TV was not entirely created by imports. Manfred Seidowsky and his colleagues also wanted to establish their own cosmopolitan shows. The aim, however, was less to celebrate foreign cultures and societies and more to demonstrate how amicable life was back home in the GDR. The cross-national storylines emphasized how East Germany peacefully existed as part of an international community of socialist states. This latter concern was made explicit when the State Committee for Television ordered Adlershof “to schedule interesting accounts of life in the Soviet Union and other brother countries and how we work together” (State Committee for Television 1985, 39; cited in Wolff 2002, 162). Treffpunkt Flughafen is exemplary of this type of programing that catered to the desire for travel, idealized GDR citizens’ ability to solve dangerous situations with pluck and teamwork, and create a general feeling of tolerance and cosmopolitanism. To this end, GDR television in 1983/1984 was exploring ways to collaborate with Cuban television that could be seen as trial runs for future collaborative projects across the Atlantic.

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The eight-page cooperation agreement that was signed between the national television networks of East Germany and Cuba had clearly expressed that both partners had to cover costs and provide personnel and other services in their respective countries so as to rule out money transfers. GDR television was the lead partner, whereas Cuba station ICRT was granted the right to show Treffpunkt Flughafen indefinitely in Cuba and sell the rights in South and North America (Selbmann 1983). A very similar arrangement was signed with the Vietnamese partners, who also received copies of the miniseries at their own disposal in Vietnam (Busch 1985). Preproduction of Treffpunkt Flughafen began in spring 1983 under the working title “The Crew.” The scripts, written by Gert Billing and Manfred Mosblech, were approved without revisions on July 4, 1983 (episodes 1–4) and February 10, 1984 (episodes 5–8). Mosblech also directed the miniseries in collaboration with cameraman Günter Eisinger and production designer Klaus Winter (Seidowsky 1984a, 1). Unlike most GDR family series, which usually comprised seven episodes, Treffpunkt Flughafen was planned with eight installments. It revolves around the adventures of an airplane crew of the GDR’s commercial airline Interflug. Flying with their Russian-built IL62 aircraft to various destinations around the (communist) world, they encounter people from different cultures and face a number of difficult situations, including technical problems, political crises, and personal tragedies. Often professional missions and job requirements are at odds with their personal and family lives. The series, as such, combines traits of the travelogue documentary with that of a melodrama. Teaming up with Interflug was a rather clever move. Interflug was the national civic airline of the GDR from 1963 to 1990. From its hub Berlin-Schönefeld it flew to various destinations, predominantly to other Eastern Bloc states in Europe but also to Africa and Cuba. Western destinations were in Austria, Scandinavia, the Benelux states, Italy, and Greece. Besides appealing to business passengers flying to Eastern Europe, Interflug was gaining popularity among other customers, too, given that its ticket prices were up to 70% cheaper than those of comparable Western airlines—as a result of dumping, according to Western competitors (Spiegel 1981, 74, 76). Despite a tragic crash of an IL62 on August 14, 1972, in which 156 people died, Interflug was held in very high regard within the GDR. The state saw it as a vital instrument for economic development and international connections. For East Germans more generally, the airline was surrounded by an air of exclusivity given

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that traveling and flying were politically restricted and therefore desirable and prestigious. Like in many other countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Interflug not only played a role in connecting people across borders but also became a national symbol and part of a specific GDR identity (on GDR aviation history, see Braunburg 1992; Breiler 2012; Michels et al. 1994; Erfurth 2004; Seifert 2008). In the case of Treffpunkt Flughafen, what might account for its greater display of creative freedom and experimentation with hybrid genres and international subject matter was its effort to emulate the previously mentioned West German television program Das Traumschiff— although such evidence cannot be found among the production files, as this would have meant that GDR television was indeed modeled directly after West German shows. Yet, Treffpunkt Flughafen was also rooted in GDR television’s own tradition in that it followed in the footsteps of the immensely successful miniseries Zur See (At Sea, GDR Television, 1977), an adventure series about the East German merchant navy with very similar plots (see Steinmetz and Viehoff 2008, 443). To be certain, most GDR citizens were not able to experience exotic adventures. Zur See and Treffpunkt Flughafen, therefore, were fantasies rather than probable scenarios for many television audiences.

Televisual Civic Aviation: Multicultural Locations and Socialist Citizenship The cast of Treffpunkt Flughafen featured very popular actors in its leading roles: Günter Naumann, who previously appeared in Zur See, as pilot Werner Steinitz; Walter Plathe as his co-pilot, Paul Mittelstedt; his sister, played by Regina Beyer as stewardess Karin Mittelstedt; Jürgen Zartmann as navigator Jürgen Graf; Günter Schubert as flight engineer Karlheinz Adler; Marijam Agischewa and the Vietanmese-German actress Pham Thi Thanh as stewardesses Viola Vallentin and Li Tam. While all members of the crew dominate storylines in one episode or another, the overall drama often focuses on the young and charismatic co-pilot Paul Mittelstedt. He tries to establish himself as a prospective pilot and seeks to find a partner, but his temper and boyish behavior often cause problems and lead to dangerous situations. Mittelstedt repeatedly disappoints his mentor and flight instructor, Werner Steinitz, and other members of the Interflug crew. In the first episode, his lovesickness gets in the way of passing an important flight test with the IL62. In the second episode, Paul has an affair with the

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fiancée of a Cuban colleague; and during a dangerous mission to deliver medical goods to Angola (episode 3), he struggles with crooked officials over exuberant airport landing fees after an emergency landing at the fictitious African Mununga airport. Illustrating the importance of teamwork and the value of experience, it is repeatedly Werner Steinitz who solves critical situations with diplomatic skills and patience. As such, he reminds Paul that the African country has only recently become independent from its capitalist colonizers and that he has to be more understanding of the situation. In a key scene (39:00–40:14 minutes), Werner and Paul share dinner with the head of airport security. He offers them some papayas from his brother’s farm. During their conversation, the captain and his co-pilot learn that the man they thought was a crook is a very likable and decent fellow. He explains that farmers like his brother work very hard trying to make a living, but only big companies selling his produce make real money. As he explains, “We thought that with independence comes equity; but we now realize that this isn’t so easy.” When an American and a British petty criminal try to steal medical goods out of greediness from the Interflug aircraft soon thereafter, the crew learns how true the officer’s evaluation of the situation actually was. Another lesson for them and socialist audiences. Flying to foreign destinations for Interflug, as it becomes clear here as well as in other episodes, is more than a job. The crew are ambassadors of the German Democratic state as the “better Germany.” Their decisions and behavior ought to be aligned with what could be labeled “Socialist citizenship,” a certain mind-set that accepts social responsibilities. The crew, as such, always seem to vouch for those in need of help. In so doing, they are acting in compliance with socialist attitudes and upholding subsequent ethical standards and norms to help other nations in their struggles against inequality and conflict. Through humane missions delivering medical supplies, the GDR is presented as a peace-loving nation in a number of episodes. And when crew members turn an assignment into their own mission, they must confront the cold reasoning of capitalism and other obstacles. As allies of the Sandinistas’ fight against aggressive Contra militia (episode 7) or when opposing a British and an American mercenary in Africa, the Interflug crew stands for the GDR’s role in fighting what was perceived as Western aggression. By featuring dialogues in languages such as English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, the show conveyed an urbane and multicultural feel, which in turn helped position the crew—and the GDR—as intelligent players on an international stage.

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Besides the struggles with political tensions, technical difficulties, bad weather, and accidents that are habitually used as dramatic plot devices, another narrative strand encompasses the personal lives of the leading protagonists: Paul, who tries to challenge limitations, to live his life to the full (episodes 2 and 6); his boss, Werner Steinitz, who is called on duty just when he promised his wife an overdue holiday at the Baltic Sea (episode 5); and the stewardess Karin Mittelstedt, who struggles with her demanding job and being a single parent (episode 4). Their colleagues, too, find it hard to balance their careers with their family and love lives. The onboard navigator, Jürgen Graf, learns that he became a father during a life-anddeath mission rescuing Sandinistas from Nicaragua (episode 7), and stewardess Li quarrels with her protective fiancée, Hanh, who wants her to give up flying and stay at home instead (episode 6). It is the final episode when most of these overarching narrative loose ends come to a close. Paul Mittelstedt is injured back home in the GDR in an accident caused by a drunk driver, his dream of becoming a pilot is at stake. Yet his new girlfriend, his colleagues, and the Sandinistas he has just helped to rescue are encouraging him not to give up. The message is clear: like anyone else, Paul must not be left behind. As Interflug’s medical examiner explains to a hospital doctor, “[Of course we have to consider economic aspects], yet the human being always comes first. You know, I have known Paul Mittelstedt for a long time. He is one of our best pilots. If he is impatient and unrestrained, one must be patient with him. To be frank, I like this type of person, people who are besotted with their jobs, for whom an occupation is more than earning money. Where would we be without them?” (episode 8, 15:10–15:40). Following his recovery, Paul continues with his pilot training. He has learned from his mistakes and seems to settle down by becoming a valuable member of the GDR—giving something back to society. Just like the head of the rescued Sandinistas explained to him, “You really have it too good, you are living in a safe country without threats to your freedom.… I know, you have your sorrows, too, but ours are bigger, a young revolution, always threatened by foreign powers. The first steps into a new life are difficult. A decent person has to serve his people” (episode 8, 49:53–50:15). What can be inferred from the storylines is that the program was inextricably linked to political messages and scheduling strategies. In their edited collection on television broadcasting in the GDR, Rüdiger Steinmetz and Reinhold Viehoff maintain that the way in which

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Treffpunkt Flughafen included very obvious ideological lessons seems out of step with mid-1980s’ East German television and was more reminiscent of the 1970s (2008, 443). Yet, the mix of experimentation and didactics was very much the outcome of 1980s television policies that were a balancing act of change and continuity, renewal and assurance. Treffpunkt Flughafen was a prestigious project designed to compete with Western television and to reassure audiences about modern-day socialism. Given that all scripts were closely examined by the staunch socialists of the State Committee for Television often meant that productions were not quite like some of the critical films DEFA produced around the time. The DEFA film Solo Sunny (Konrad Wolf, GDR 1980), to give but one example, offered significantly more interpretative openness than many television series. The cosmopolitan diegetic world of Treffpunkt Flughafen, too, contrasts with Konrad Wolf’s representation of the GDR as provincial dystopia (Gersch 2004, 396–397). The context of television production thus aimed for audience approval and clear political standpoints. In a report on upcoming productions from April 11, 1984, Seidowsky expressed his intention that Treffpunkt Flughafen (then still known under the working title Die Crew) would specifically appeal to younger audiences. Using Zur See as a blueprint, Treffpunkt Flughafen was intended to be a popular transnational project with a dual strategy of high audience ratings at home and international recognition from other Socialist countries: With this series, we would offer interesting, adventurous storylines and very popular protagonists, who will particularly appeal to younger audiences. The show, moreover, will reflect the international status of the GDR, strengthen the feeling of solidarity (instead of transporting material goods, the crew assists in moving sick persons, assist with initiatives for literacy, etc.) and will help to make visible our relations with other nationstates. (Seidowsky 1983, 1)

More specifically, Seidowsky wrote a full six-page follow-up report on Treffpunkt Flughafen, in which he outlined not only production details but also the program’s intended impact on audiences. As such, he explains that the miniseries ought to offer more than mere attractions and exoticism (1984a, 3). It was written to demonstrate the preeminence of socialism. The airline crew in Treffpunkt Flughafen

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“always represent the first socialist state on German soil in every situation, wherever they may be” (1984a, 1). And he adds that the leading protagonists were created to “reflect, in their individual ways, character traits that are born out of socialist behavior. Their achievements, their optimistic attitudes, but also their discipline, stem from their clear political standpoints as well as their ability to make good use of past experiences in their professional lives” (1984a, 2). Throughout the series, members of the crew are tested by professional dilemmas or personal problems only to pass such tests with flying colors. “In the fourth decade of the existence of our [East German] Republic,” as Seidowsky explains, “the qualified actions of our protagonists, the way they approach problems and how they manage to solve them, are exemplary for the workers’ exercise of power and their leading strength” (1984a, 4). Treffpunkt Flughafen, as can be ascertained from such statements, was produced with an East German and foreign socialist audience in mind. It was not made with an eye on Western audiences. Given that the miniseries was to create a sense of belonging and solidarity within the GDR as well as stressing its good foreign relations, Seidowsky was certain that the miniseries would be ideal to be broadcast just before the 11th Party Congress from 17 to 21 April 1986. And indeed, when Gorbachev outlined his future international strategies and perestroika reforms at the Berlin Palace of the Republic in front of GDR party officials, millions had just seen the final episode of Treffpunkt Flughafen the week before. Whereas overall programing decisions led to what could be seen as a depoliticization of GDR television in favor of Western-like programs and imported films, Treffpunkt Flughafen, in contrast, clearly tries to combine an orientation on entertainment with storylines that also represented GDR social realities and world problems. Whereas many research articles on the programing reform of 1982/1983 argue that GDR television “gave up the plan to mediate its own contents in favor of keeping viewers tuned to its own channels” and that it had “taken on a defensive position in the competition with Western television” (see Dittmer 2004, 339), the last decade of GDR television seems to be more complex. Treffpunkt Flughafen, at least, challenges views that GDR and Western television became increasingly interchangeable. Rapprochement did not mean pure mimicry. In trying to learn from its West German competitors, the East German makers of television drama

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tried to understand the formulas of success only to infuse them with a socialist message. Treffpunkt Flughafen stresses clear socialist messages, yet it does so by achieving a new cosmopolitan look. This “mimicry of survival” is not a revolution, but it feels different. At the time of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR, this particular television drama might well suggest that socialism was capable of reform without giving up its most fundamental beliefs.

Production at Babelsberg: A Prestigious Miniseries with International Flair Following some minor dramaturgical adjustments—the portrayal of the captain and his co-captain were slightly changed following meetings with the leading actors—production began. As an index for the scale and ambition of the project, the shooting phase lasted, with several interruptions, from May 7, 1984 to June 28, 1985 (Seidowsky 1984a, 1). Part of the exterior locations was shot abroad in Cuba, the USSR, and Vietnam. Because the cast and crew stayed abroad for weeks, Treffpunkt Flughafen was one of the most expensive and ambitious projects of the production collaboration between Adlershof and Babelsberg. Besides the usual drafting of call sheets and organizing catering and equipment, shooting abroad also meant obtaining the required travel documents, vaccination cards, and filming permits; booking flights and accommodations; organizing transport; and compiling comprehensive bills of materials for transport companies and customs. Correspondence, memos, and other materials by East German television and DEFA show a very contradictory picture regarding the effectiveness of the production. Besides limited resources, bureaucracy was a problem. Painstakingly DEFA lists every kitchen utensil that was to be needed for the on-set catering, including an egg slicer, a meat tenderizer, and a pair of sausage tongs (Ihlefeldt 1984). Apart from the everyday business of organizing supplies, finding suitable locations was also an issue. Sonnabend wanted to film the various hotel scenes in the Hotel Neptun in Rostock-Warnemünde. The hotel was not just one of many hotels in the GDR, it was one of its finest with a panorama bar on the top floor, a saltwater swimming pool with artificial waves, and the first East German nightclub. Because Hotel Neptun was not part of GDR’s Interhotel chain, which in order to obtain

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much-needed foreign currency was reserved for state guests and foreign tourists (so-called Devisenausländer), GDR citizens could also stay there—if they could afford it. Research for the television documentary Hotel der Spione—Das “Neptun” am Ostseestrand (NDR, 2006) revealed that the prestigious international hotel, whose guests included Fidel Castro and Willy Brandt, was one of the espionage hotspots of the GDR. All in all, a perfect location for a glamorous and escapist television series. Yet, it was initially difficult for DEFA to gain access. Sonnabend’s request to book fifty-five beds for two entire weeks and additional rooms for filming scenes during the main tourist season in June 1985 (Sonnabend 1984a, b) was declined by the district manager of the nationally owned retail organization HO on the grounds that a block of rooms had to be reserved for the GDR tourist board (VEB Reisebüro der DDR) and international guests (Gröpler 1984). Administrative assistance only went so far when economic interests were at stake. Filming at the hotel was eventually postponed to May 1985. The production team, however, had to stay at basic and inexpensive accommodations in nearby Zingst rather than the highstatus hotel. Another problem involved cooperation with Interflug. The television series, of course, offered much potential for improving the already positive public image within and beyond the GDR. And Interflug was happy to supply technical advisors, train the actors about how to behave on board one of their IL62s, provide filming locations on the ground and in the air, and offer charter flights for DEFA’s cast and crew to foreign locations. Yet, unlike tie-in marketing and film sponsoring in the West, the agreed-upon contract terms between DEFA and Interflug were rather modest. In the GDR—where extensive film sponsorship was unusual—DEFA did not seem to realize the full opportunities that the partnership provided for an increased awareness of its services and for brand-building. In fact, Interflug seemed more interested in the mock-up cockpit built at Babelsberg for training purposes (Glaser 1985). DEFA, after all, still had to pay for all film-related costs (DEFA/ Interflug, n.d.). Matters of national security posed yet another challenge to the otherwise very friendly partnership of DEFA and the Interflug. The East German airline was not exclusively a civil air carrier, it also had close relations to the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit).

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The Stasi even operated two Tupolev Tu-134 jets from BerlinSchönefeld, their exteriors painted with Interflug’s company colors. Following an incident in which the DEFA film team was hindered from entering the airport apron with their camera equipment (Sonnabend 1984c), both parties had to come to more detailed agreements. To this end, Martin Sonnabend corresponded directly with Interflug’s Remote Sensing, Industrial and Surveillance Flight Department (Betrieb Fernerkundung, Industrie- und Forschungsflug). As part of their correspondence, which was repeatedly marked “For Official Use Only” (Nur für den Dienstgebrauch), a formal statement had to be signed by Sonnabend and the respective camera crews. It stated that aerial footage and filming at the airport was restricted. Military complexes and “important buildings of economic value regardless of their use” were not to be documented and the entire footage had to be cleared before it could be used by DEFA (Rieger 1984). Such obstacles, of course, slowed down the production process. Concerned about the tight production schedule, director Manfred Mosblech wrote a four-page letter on February 4, 1985 to a representative of the DEFA production unit to explain that besides the usual problems he was particularly worried about the reliance on foreign partners in Vietnam, the USSR, and Cuba, who refused to make binding commitments. Whereas television and film production within the GDR was meant to be organized as a collaborative process, clear hierarchies and tight levels of political control often prevented an open discussion of problems and concerns. Speaking to a confidante rather than his direct superiors, Mosblech felt confident in expressing his criticism about overoptimistic targets by senior management and top-down decision-making processes: The facts [about various problems and holdups] have been known to us for some time now. Yet, based on our high responsibility, we tend to sugarcoat the situation. It will all work out fine because it must! I, for my part, just see wishful thinking. You may scold me now as you like, but do not call me a liar or a dreamer. It sometimes is hard talking to you [senior managers]. You have your responsibilities and tasks to fulfil, and you are dependent on those in charge. You have to spread optimism, but sometimes you do so at the expense of reality. (Mosblech 1985)

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A Transnational Cold War Television Series Despite such internal problems, the overall tone of communication between those in charge of the production and external partners and stakeholders was rather comradely and supportive. Seidowsky’s lengthy vindication of the miniseries’ political aims aside, party political intervention was rather limited, and in some instances actually helpful, to the production process. When needed, Sonnabend and Seidowsky had the support of the highest ranks of GDR media functionaries. To establish contact with Cuban, Vietnamese, and Nicaraguan officials, DEFA’s Director Hans Dieter Mäde repeatedly asked none other than the Film Minister Horst Pehnert, head of the Film and Cinema National Administration (Hauptverwaltung Film) at the Ministry of Culture (Ministerium für Kultur), for assistance (Mäde 1985a, b). And Pehnert responded quickly in helping DEFA getting in touch with foreign nationals through their respective embassies (Pehnert 1985). It was through such diplomatic channels that DEFA found suitable amateur actors who could be used as extras during production days in Babelsberg in spring and summer 1985. Sometimes, though, the Sonnabend production collective could well have hoped for an easier task. Unlike other transnational projects, such as the documentary film exchange between DEFA and the UK-based Amber film collective (see Hochscherf and Leggott 2008), the foreign partners were far less reliable this time. As the production files demonstrate, Treffpunkt Flughafen required immense logistics and meticulous planning. The scripts were thus very detailed, listing camera angles and movements as well as suitable transitions and descriptions of the overall montage and the use of music (see BArch DR 117/2206). This level of detail was needed to maintain a very low shooting ratio (i.e., the overall footage filmed vs. the amount finally used in the film) and to cut down on production days. That way shooting could be limited to sixty-two days (sixteen in the studio and forty-six on location in East Germany and abroad) for the nearly six hundred minutes that were broadcast. The transnational dimension of Treffpunkt Flughafen offered a form of escapism as it took audiences to faraway places most GDR citizens could not go to themselves because of travel restrictions. Each episode began with wide-angle shots of atmospheric cloud formation and the English-German radio message “Guten Tag Schönefeld, Interflug 953 descending from 1850 meters to 700 meters altitude.” What can

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be ascertained from the study of the production documents, however, is that what was portrayed on screen differed substantially from what happened behind the scenes. Whereas the fictional characters in Treffpunkt Flughafen are generally on good terms with people from other socialist countries, or are able to put their differences aside in the end, the off-screen partnership with Cuban national television proved to be much more difficult. With the exception of a rather satisfactory trip to Leningrad for filming at the airport in late May 1985 (Sonnabend 1984d), filming abroad in Vietnam, Cuba, and Nicaragua was ill-fated after all. The visit to Vietnam in April 1985 was overshadowed by the death of Günter Hufenreiter, a technical advisor provided by Interflug, who died on May 5, 1985 in part because of a blackout at the Hanoi hospital after having suffered from a heart attack (Busch 1985, 8). This personal tragedy aside, DEFA were satisfied with the quality of their work in Asia. The trips to Cuba and Nicaragua, however, from August to November 1985 with twenty-seven members of the crew and twelve actors from Germany, were very different in this regard. Notwithstanding five preparatory visits and extensive negotiations with Cuban colleagues prior to filming—including a number of handouts and detailed plans for required material, actors, and settings, the team was rather disappointed about working conditions and the assistance provided by ICRT. In addition to the limited resources typically experienced in an economy of scarcity, it was their Cuban colleagues’ lack of organization and commitment to the transnational project that irritated the East German production team. “Upon arrival in Cuba,” Sonnabend wrote to the foreign department at DEFA, “we were disappointed to realize that our partner at ICRT, despite the long planning phase, was not sufficiently prepared for our stay” (1985a, 1). This was particularly unfortunate, given that not only was episode 2 set in Cuba, but also portions of episodes that were set in Nicaragua and Africa were also to be filmed there. Sonnabend later wrote a full twenty-five-page report including a production diary (1985b), with very frank passages about the insufficient assistance. For comparison, the report about the admittedly shorter trip to the USSR was just one page long. The television company in Nicaragua was not able to assist at all with the realization of on-location shooting (1985b, 2). It was only owing to help from befriended members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front that shooting could be finished without exceeding the budget (1985b, 3). Only very few scenes, as a result, could actually be filmed in Nicaragua.

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In the extensive report on Cuba, Sonnabend lists a number of external problems (weather, holdups with customs, and a break-in), but also the shortcomings caused by poor planning on part of the ICRT, including a shortage of overnight accommodations, unfinished sets, missing props, insufficient transport, and the absence of promised Cuban actors as extras. As he put it, “a comprehensive list of drawbacks would fill pages” (1985b, 4). “Every day brought about nuisances and subsequent arguments. Every day we asked about the promised props, sets, and supporting actors, every day we fought for keeping in step with the original shooting script. Yet, we had to make concessions on a daily basis” (1985b, 5). Because of his experiences with the inefficiencies of Cuban television, Sonnabend advised his superiors that in the future they should avoid at all costs overburdening the Cubans with challenging tasks, because they were constantly wrong about what they could deliver (1985b, 5). This, of course, did not match the optimistic image of a friendly and competent brotherhood of socialist nations working together for a bright future. Behind the camera, at least, the initial optimism was dampened by the work experience itself.

The Most Successful Fictional Miniseries for Years Treffpunkt Flughafen was eventually finished in late 1985 and was aired at 8 p.m. on Sundays from 23 February to 13 April 1986. Episodes were repeated on Mondays from 10 to 11 p.m. To measure the success of the series, GDR television not only relied on informal feedback by peers, reviews in the press, and opinions expressed by party officials, but also by data provided through the Department of Audience Research (Abteilung Zuschauerforschung). The department collected audience ratings for individual programs and an overall approval rate. The data was collected weekly through representative and anonymous surveys and in face-to-face interviews. Reports by members of staff, moreover, were written to give more detailed feedback about the content of the shows against the background of television policies. None of the results were made public, instead, they were handed out as classified information (“For Official Use Only” [Vertrauliche Dienstsache]) to a very limited number of people, including members of the State Committee for Television and senior staff at Adlershof (on GDR audience research, see Seifert 1993). Since reports were occasionally tweaked to fulfill party expectations, they are not entirely reliable but

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nevertheless a source very indicative of a certain kind of success (on the reliability of the reports, see Braumann 1994; Lietz 2005). The first two episodes were behind expectations with ratings of about 38% and a mediocre audience assessment of 3.0 (satisfactory). Yet the two members of Audience Research on duty that week were still optimistic. They noted that the responses of their survey suggested “a promising start of a new series” and that “the different characters and private situations make one curious about more episodes with attractive settings and storylines with substance” (GDR TV Audience Research 1986a, program week 8, p. 12). And indeed, Treffpunkt Flughafen finally became one of the most successful programs in 1986 with an average audience share of 48.3% for the entire series. In fact, episode 7 became the mostseen television program that year with a whopping rating of 58.8% (GDR TV Audience Research 1986b, 24)—slightly above the immensely popular detective program Polizeiruf 110, which Franca Wolff identified as the most popular show in 1986 (2002, 165). The qualitative assessment of the program, however, was mixed according to the reports. The head of the dramatic art department and deputy chair of the State Committee for Television Erich Selbmann, for example, was very benevolent. Reflecting on the television program in February 1986, he wrote, “Every member of the crew is introduced to the viewers. The episode’s emotional impact does not only have its source in the conflict between Paul and Steinitz but also emanates from the very detailed social environment of our hero” (GDR TV Audience Research 1986a, program week 10, p. 3). Two weeks later, he particularly singled out episode 5 for praise, saying that “it is effective because of its actiondriven plot, especially the superb cockpit scenes and the sequences that were filmed in Ethiopia and Cuba” (GDR TV Audience Research 1986a, program week 12, p. 4). Yet other program reviewers at GDR television were more critical. They pointed out that despite the good ratings, the difficult production history of Treffpunkt Flughafen sometimes had a detrimental effect. One of the observers of the episode aired during week 9, for example, reflected back on episode 2: “the second instalment of the series Treffpunkt Flughafen certainly provided attraction as well as information … yet unlike the first episode, the plot related to Cuba took on a life of its own. This time, Treffpunkt Flughafen was merely a point of departure for the beautiful adventures of Paul Mittelstedt” (GDR TV Audience Research 1986a, program week 9, p. 12). The dramaturgical problems, though, seem to have vanished with later

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episodes. After two more episodes, which were considered “satisfactory,” the reports noted that the miniseries had some “good achievements” from calendar week 10 on. Despite the odd criticism that narrative developments sometimes felt a bit forced (GDR TV Audience Research 1986a, program week 13, p. 9), most views expressed in the ensuing reports were generally happy about different aspects of the series: the way it manages to make audiences smile by way of showing the cheerful atmosphere during Interflug flights, the good acting (week 13), the exoticism and beautiful images (weeks 12, 13). It is difficult to ascertain, however, if the remark that “the makers of the series apparently tried to offer moments of political didacticism” was meant as a compliment or a critique (week 14). Following the broadcast of the entire miniseries, the report in week 15 provided an overall assessment for the decision-makers of GDR television. One of the main findings was that “72 percent of viewers who have at least seen three episodes thought the series to be consistently entertaining.” These were very reassuring figures for Adlershof. Whereas there were undeniable problems with cooperating with Cuban state television, the decision-makers within GDR television could be satisfied with the collaboration with DEFA and the commercial airline Interflug. After Treffpunkt Flughafen, they commissioned a follow-up seven-part miniseries: Flugstaffel Meinecke (Flight Squadron Meinecke, 1990). This time, so as to circumvent the problematic transnational angle, it revolved around the adventures of an Interflug crew flying agricultural aircrafts within the GDR. Produced in 1989 and broadcast in 1990, it was the last GDR television series on civic aviation. With the collapse of the Wall and the subsequent unification of Germany, GDR television ceased to exist. Flugstaffel Meinecke, however, was repeatedly shown on East German regional public service channels throughout the 1990s, while Treffpunkt Flughafen has been readily made available on DVD. Both Cold War miniseries have become part of a feeling of Ostalgie (Eastalgia), a widespread fascination with and nostalgia for GDR culture in the post-unification years (on the phenomenon of Ostalgie, see, for instance, Ahbe 2005; Berdahl 2002; Cooke 2005). Yet what happened behind the scenes offers a more nuanced picture. Treffpunkt Flughafen imitates Western television models and offers GDR citizens escapist trips to faraway places they could not go to themselves in most cases. On the part of the television officials, the miniseries was seen as an opportunity to test collaborating with Cuban national television.

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The hopes at Adlershof, however, were thwarted by the unwillingness and also the incompetence and lack of commitment on the part of the Cuban partners according to the production travel reports. In this way, Treffpunkt Flughafen really is a drama about unfulfilled desires on a number of levels.

Archival Sources Abbreviations BArch: Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Berlin-Lichterfelde, Finckensteinallee 63, 12205 Berlin, http://www.bundesarchiv.de/bundesarchiv/dienstorte/berlin_ lichterfelde/index.html.de. DRA: Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (German Broadcasting Archive), PotsdamBabelsberg, Marline-Dietrich-Allee 20, 14482 Potsdam, http://www.dra.de. Adameck, Heinz. 1984. Sekretär des Komitees 1984, Minutes from the Meeting on 18 and 20 September 1984. BArch DR 8/185. Agitation des Zentrakomitees. 1975. “Thesen zur Funktion und zu den Aufgaben des Fernsehens der DDR in der entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft” [Theses About the Functions and Objectives of GDR Television in the Developed Socialist Society]. Working Paper, DRA Babelsberg Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen, Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden (1973–1983), AG Fernsehwissenschaft, Sekretariat Glatzer. Busch, Hans-Erich. 1985. Travel Report by Head of Production Hans-Erich Busch from 29 May 1985. BArch DR/117 29622. DEFA/Interflug. n.d. Cooperation Agreement. BArch DR/117 29622. GDR TV Audience Research. 1986a. DRA Babelsberg Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen, H023-00-02-0120, Zuschauerforschung, “Bericht der 8.-15. Programmwoche 1986” (Report of Calendar Weeks 8 to 15). Accessed 7 June 2017. http://www.dra.de/online/bestandsinfos/zuschauerforschung/ zuschauerforschung/H023-00-02-0120.pdf. ———. 1986b. DRA Babelsberg Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen, H-048-01-04/0183, Zuschauerforschung, “Sehbeteiligungskartei (1965–1990), Dramatische Kunst, Eigenserien” [Viewer Ratings (1965–1990), Dramatic Arts, Own Serial Production], 1–33. Accessed 6 June 2017. http://www.dra.de/cgi-bin/zuschauerforschung/sehbeteiligungskartei.pl?Filecode=DK14&Page=1. Glaser, Uwe. 1985. Letter from the Head of the Interflug Flight Simulation Center to Martin Sonnabend, 2 December. BArch DR/117 29622.

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Gröpler, Günter. 1984. Letter from the HO District Manager to Martin Sonnabend from 14 August 1984. BArch DR/117 28034. Ihlefeldt, [first name unknown]. 1984. List of Supplies for On-Set Catering, Memo to Martin Sonnabend from 13 June 1984. BArch DR/117 28034. Mäde, Hans Dieter. 1985a. Letter to Horst Pehnert, 11 January. BArch DR 117/28034. ———. 1985b. Letter to Horst Pehnert, 26 April. BArch DR 117/28034. Mosblech, Manfred. 1985. Letter to Margit [Schaumäker?], 4 February. BArch DR/117 29622. Pehnert, Horst. 1985. Letter to the Cuban Ambassador Ramiro del Rio Perez Teran, 30 May 1985. BArch DR 117/28034. Rieger, [first name unknown]. 1984. Letter from the head of the Remote Sensing, Industrial and Surveillance Flight Department to Martin Sonnabend, 13 June 1984. BArch DR/117 29622. Seidowsky, Manfred. 1983. Letter to Heinz Adameck, 11 April 1983, DRA Babelsberg Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen: Dramatische Kunst/Bereichsleitung: Schriftverkehr mit dem Vorsitzenden 1982–1984. ———. 1984a. Production Overview for Treffpunkt Flugplatz, 14 May. DRA Babelsberg Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen: Dramatische Kunst/Bereichsleitung: Schriftverkehr im Bereich 1984. ———. 1984b. Letter to Ingrid Günther, 9 May 1984, DRA Babelsberg Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen: Dramatische Kunst/Bereichleitung: Schriftverkehr im Bereich 1984. Selbmann, Erich. 1983. Coproduction Agreement Between GDR Television (Erich Selbmann) and the ICRT (Roberto Villar), 18 November, Barch DR/117 29623. Sonnabend, Martin. 1984a. Letter to the regional board of the Handelsorganisation HO, ttn.. Neptun, ttn.. Assistant Director Hasse, 17 July. Barch DR/117 28034. ———. 1984b. Letter to the Hotel Neptun, attn. of Assistant Director Knoblauch, 21 August. Barch DR/117 28034. ———. 1984c. Memo, 15 February. Barch DR/117 29622. ———. 1984d. Travel Report About Filming in Leningrad from 22 June. Barch DR/117 29622. ———. 1984/85. Production Schedule and Overview Treffpunkt Flughafen. Barch DR/117 28439. ———. 1985a. Report on the production trip to Cuba for the foreign department at DEFA. n.d. Barch DR/117 29621. ———. 1985b. Travel Report About Filming in Cuba and Nicaragua. Barch DR/117 29621. State Committee for Television. 1985. “Vorlage [Guideline] des StKF Nr.” 10/85, Barch DR 8/186.

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References Adameck, Heinz. 1972. “Welche Pläne hat unser Fernsehen?” [What Are the Plans for Television?]. Interview. Neues Deutschland, 23 January. Ahbe, Thomas. 2005. Ostalgie: Zum Umgang mit der DDR-Vergangenheit in den 1990er Jahren.[“Eastalgia”: Ways of Dealing with the GDR Past in the 1990s]. Erfurt: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen. https://www.dbthueringen.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/dbt_derivate_00023351/ostalgie_internet.pdf. Accessed 7 June 2017. Berdahl, Daphne. 2002. “Ostalgie und ostdeutsche Sehnsüchte nach einer erinnerten Vergangenheit” [“Eastalgia” and East German Longing for a Remembered Past]. In Inspecting Germany: Internationale Deutschland Ethnographie der Gegenwart [Inspecting Germany: Contemporary International German Ethnography], edited by Thomas Hauschild, 476–495. Münster: Lit. Beutelschmidt, Thomas. 2013. “Grenzüberschreitung intern. Die Zusammenarbeit zwischen der DEFA und dem DDR-Fernsehen” [Crossing Institutional Lines. Collaborations Between DEFA and GDR Television]. In DEFA International. Grenzüberschreitende Filmbeziehungen vor und nach dem Mauerbau [DEFA International: Film Relationships Across Borders Before and After the Building of the Wall], edited by Michael Wedel et al., 93–110. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien. Braumann, Christa. 1994. “Fernsehforschung zwischen Parteilichkeit und Objektivität. Zur Zuschauerforschung in der ehemaligen DDR” [Television Research Between Partiality and Objectivity. On Reception Studies in the Former GDR]. Rundfunk und Fernsehen 42, no. 4: 524–541. Braunburg, Rudolf. 1992. Interflug: Die deutsche Fluggesellschaft jenseits der Mauer [Interflug: The German Aviation Company of the other Side of the Wall]. Augsburg: ADV-Mediendienste and Verlag. Breiler, Klaus. 2012. Vom Fliegen und Landen. Zur Geschichte der ostdeutschen Luftfahrt [Of Flying and Landing. East German Aviation History]. Leipzig: Passage-Verlag. Cooke, Paul. 2005. Representing East Germany Since Unification: From Colonization to Nostalgia. Oxford and New York: Berg. Dittmar, Claudia. 2004. “GDR Television in Competition with West German Programming.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24, no. 3: 327–343. ———. 2010. Feindliches Fernsehen: Das DDR-Fernsehen und seine Strategien im Umgang mit dem westdeutschen Fernsehen [Adversarial Television: GDR Television and the Strategies of How to Deal with West German Television]. Bielefeld: Transcript. Erfurth, Helmut. 2004. Das große Buch der DDR-Luftfahrt [The Comprehensive Book of GDR Aviation]. Munich: GeraMond.

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Gaddis, John Lewis. 1997. We Know Now: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gersch, Wolfgang. 2004. “Film in der DDR: Die verlorene Alternative” [Film in the GDR: The Lost Alternative]. In Geschichte des deutschen Films [German Film History], edited by Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and Hans Helmut Prinzler, 2nd ed., 357–404. Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler. Hickethier, Knut, in Association with Peter Hoff. 1998. Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens [German Television History]. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler. Hochscherf, Tobias, and James Leggott. 2008. “From Marx and Engels to Marks and Spencer: A Trans-national DEFA and Amber Film Documentary Project Across the Iron Curtain.” Studies in Documentary Films 2, no. 2: 123–135. Hochscherf, Tobias, Christoph Laucht, and Andrew Plowman. 2010. Divided, but Not Disconnected: German Experiences of the Cold War. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Lamberz, Werner. 1972. “Referat” [Presentation]. In Die Aufgaben der Agitation und Propaganda bei der weiteren Verwirklichung der Beschlüsse des VIII. Parteitages der SED [Conference Proceedings of the Central Committee of the SED], 16–17 November. Berlin: Dietz. Lietz, Thomas. 2005. “Fernsehnutzung in der DDR als kommunikationshistorisches Problem: Methodologie und Quellen” [TV Reception in the GDR as a Challenge of Communication Historiography: Methodology and Sources]. Medien & Zeit 2: 30–43. Lindenberger, Thomas. 2010. “Divided, but Not Disconnected: Germany as a Border Region of the Cold War.” In Divided, but Not Disconnected: German Experiences of the Cold War, edited by Tobias Hochscherf, Christoph Laucht, and Andrew Plowman, 11–33. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. McQuail, Denis. 1994. Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed. London: Sage. Meyen, Michael. 2002. “Kollektive Ausreise? Zur Reichweite ost- und westdeutscher Fernsehprogramme in der DDR” [Collective Emigration? The Reach of East and West-German Television Programs]. Publizistik 47: 200–232. Michels, Jürgen, et al., eds. 1994. Luftfahrt Ost 1945–1990: Geschichte der deutschen Luftfahrt in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone (SBZ), der Sowjetunion und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (DDR) [Aviation in the East 1945–1990: German Aviation History in the Soviet Zone, the Soviet Union and the GDR]. Munich: Bernard and Graefe. Seifert, Christa. 1993. “Begehrte Zahlen. Der Beginn der Zuschauerforschung im Deutschen Fernsehfunk” [Sought-After Data: The Beginning of Audience Research in East German Broadcasting]. In Unsere Medien, unsere Republik 2: deutsche Selbst- und Fremdbilder in den Medien von BRD und DDR [Our Media, Our Republic 2: Self-Perception and Other People’s Perception of the FRG and GDR in the Media], 25–27. no. 4. Marl, Germany: Adolf-Grimme-Institut.

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Seifert, Karl Dieter. 2008. Weg und Absturz der Interflug: Die Geschichte des Unternehmens [The Path and Crash of Interflug: The Company History]. Berlin: VDM Heinz Nickel. Spiegel. 1981. “Volkseigener Köder” [The People’s Bait]. Spiegel, 21 September, 74–76. Steinmetz, Rüdiger, and Reinhold Viehoff, eds. 2008. Deutsches Fernsehen Ost: Eine Programmgeschichte des DDR Fernsehens [East German Television: A Programming History of GDR Television]. Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg. Wedel, Michael, et al., eds. 2013. DEFA international: Grenzüberschreitende Filmbeziehungen vor und nach dem Mauerbau [DEFA International: Film Relationships Across Borders Before and After the Building of the Wall]. Wiesbaden: Springer. Werenskjold, Rolf. 2011. “That’s the Way It Is? Protestene og mediene i 1968 [That’s the Way It Is? The Protests and the Media in 1968].” Ph.D. diss., Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. Wolff, Franca. 2002. Glasnost erst kurz vor Sendeschluss: Die letzten Jahre des DDR-Fernsehens (1985–1989/90) [Glasnost Not Before the End of Broadcast: The Final Years of GDR Television (1985–1989/90]. Edited by Jürgen Wilke. Medien in Geschichte und Gegenwart 18. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau.

CHAPTER 6

Photojournalism East/West: The Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and the Trade of Photographs Annette Vowinckel

On the face of it, a history of Cold War media would distinguish between a free and market-oriented system in Western democracies and a state-controlled and censored system under Eastern European dictatorships. While this distinction is surely not false, it only allows for half of the story. The other half might include a story of self-censorship, economic constraint, and “democratic propaganda” for the West, and a story of subversion as well as trial and error for the East.1 For East German photojournalists, for instance, there was a wide range of options that went far beyond either supporting or opposing the government. Drawing on the ambiguous nature of images, photojournalists managed to set up niches, to undercut official requirements,

A. Vowinckel (*)  Department of Media History, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung/Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_6

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and to set up professional contacts spanning both the East and the West. Some of these photojournalists were in touch with or were themselves members of the photography department of the Kulturbund (the Cultural Association of the GDR), while others kept a distance from all institutions, especially the state-run photo agency ADN-Zentralbild, a stronghold of “protocol photography” as a standardized and rather uncreative way of picturing politicians and political events. Still others were party members and politically compliant—if not official or unofficial collaborators of the Stasi—who would provide information about their colleagues.2 In turn, travel cadres, or Reisekader (see Niederhut 2005), enjoyed free travel worldwide and reported not only from places like Cuba, the Soviet Union, and (North) Vietnam, but also from Western European and African countries. Some East German photojournalists had their pictures published in the Federal Republic, most prominently in the West German Stern magazine (a kind of West German equivalent to Life), or as illustrated books. Their networks included Westerners like photo editor Rolf Gillhausen and photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Barbara Klemm.3 It is thus not too surprising that several East German photographers smoothly arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany after the Fall of the Wall in 1989. Today, the Ostkreuz photo agency, founded by seven former GDR photographers, successfully runs a school of photojournalism and is at times compared to the famous Magnum agency founded in 1947 (which, in fact, served as its model). In this chapter, I will first describe the system of East German institutions in the field of photojournalism. I will then focus on East German photographers’ publications in West German books and magazines, and on personal contacts between Eastern and Western photojournalists, which were made possible both by Westerners traveling the East and by Easterners traveling the West. My aim is to show that East German photojournalism was anything but a closed system, and that there were various ways of dealing with the socialist government and state surveillance. Photographers—like other professionals—could agree with, escape from, or somehow make arrangements with the state; and an exchange between the East and the West—be it in form of personal contact or the exchange of photographs—did take place, both before and after the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961.

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My work is based on archival material from the German Federal Archives Berlin (including, e.g., reviews for censorship on photo books and the proceedings of the Kulturbund board of photography) and from the BStU (archives of the East German State Security or Stasi), on published material including newspapers, magazines, illustrated books and documentary film, and on a few interviews with contemporaries. Since it is neither my aim to uncover former unofficial collaborators (or Informelle Mitarbeiter, IM) nor my intention to render any moral judgment here, I have at times anonymized my sources. In some cases this is because the respective person did denounce colleagues; in other cases, I am protecting the privacy of photographers who are still active and do not want to have their files reviewed by the public—even if there is nothing in there they would want to hide.

Photojournalism and Its Institutions in the German Democratic Republic In the GDR, photojournalism centered around two institutions: The main employer for (politically conformist) news photographers was ADNZentralbild, the state-run official photo agency. ADN-Zentralbild was the successor of ILLUS, the illustration department of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Verlag (the publisher of Berliner Zeitung, which had been founded by the Soviet military administration but was soon handed over to the magistrate of the city of Berlin) (cf. Ulfert 2010, 53–61). During the Soviet occupation, ILLUS absorbed the picture archive of Scherl-Bild, one of the Weimar Republic’s largest photo agencies (cf. ibid., 56). When the Soviet News Bureau closed, ILLUS became the largest supplier that officially sold East German pictures outside the GDR. In 1952 ILLUS was detached from the publishing house Berliner Verlag and renamed Zentrale Bildstelle GmbH, or Zentralbild for short. From then on it was a state institution and under control of the State Information Agency (Amt für Information), even if it tried to appear as an independent photo agency (ibid., 57). In 1956 ADN-Zentralbild officially became part of the news agency Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN).4 A second large institution in the field of photography was the Cultural Association (Kulturbund)—the East German central institution for the support of cultural activities of any sort, which had already been founded under the Soviet Occupation in August 1945. In 1947 the Kulturbund set up the

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Central Committee for Photography (Zentrale Kommission für Fotografie). Its main objectives were to supervise all organizations and institutions active in the field of photography, to foster activities ranging from the establishment of local photographers’ groups in manufacturing plants and communities to the organization of local photo competitions, to set up and maintain cooperation with other (mainly socialist) countries’ photo institutions, and to make photography an “active factor for the development of a Socialist attitude and the aesthetic education of the people.”5 ADN-Zentralbild and the Kulturbund closely cooperated, and they were dominated by a circle of functionaries who engaged in both institutions at the same time. Walter Heilig, for example, was the chief editor of ADN-Zentralbild from 1952 to 1957 and its director from 1957 to 1974. During this time he was also elected head of the Kulturbund’s Central Commission for Photography, a position he maintained until 1989.6 For Heilig, photography and photojournalism were clearly a means of ideological propaganda, as he summarized in an article for the East German National-Zeitung in 1981: We cannot imagine a world without photographs today, we live in a world of images. Photography has become an indispensable carrier of information, which is easily accessible and understandable because of its immediacy and clarity. Today a photographer has to have a good general education, and has to respond to the problems of our time. For photographs not only are a visual testimony of facts and events, but also inform us about the photographers’ ideological attitude. We want to enhance the persuasive power of photographs, their impact on the masses and their contribution to aesthetic education in order to strengthen their impact on the development of socialist personalities.7

While this statement properly summarizes the official attitude toward photography, many freelance photographers in the GDR took radically different stances. Yet instead of articulating their critique verbally they chose to let their pictures speak. This may be best illustrated by what photographer Ludwig Rauch told me in an informal conversation in the spring of 2013. After finishing his training as a photojournalist in 1985 he was assigned to ADN-Zentralbild. This was the last job he would have chosen. However, he could not easily turn down the offer without getting himself into trouble. Since he disliked the kind of “protocol photography” he was supposed to deliver, he took any opportunity to make

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visual statements that would disqualify him for this kind of work. When commissioned to document the uncovering of a bust depicting a Socialist personality in a Berlin park, he did not take close-ups of the bust and the functionaries who attended the event; instead, he took some longdistance shots that emphasized the dark and stormy sky, which gave the scene a surrealist touch. Having handed in pictures taken in a similar vein several times in a row, he was fired—which he appreciated; and he was banned from publishing photographs in any official GDR journal, magazine, or newspaper—which equaled an occupational ban. Thus, in the short run, he supported himself by selling his work to the West German editors of Stern and taz, and he left the GDR for good in 1989, only months before its collapse. As a matter of fact, East German photographers had long developed photography as a medium of social and political criticism, and they had also had their pictures published semi-legally in the West for decades. I will therefore not only describe official ways of placing photos from the East in Western publications but also explain informal publishing strategies practiced by freelance photographers.

Eastern Photojournalists’ Work in Western Publications Soon after the onset of the Cold War, an exchange of pictures took place in both directions. Western photo agencies offered their pictures to Eastern newspapers and magazines and vice versa, and soon the Sovfoto/Eastfoto agency specialized in selling pictures taken in the communist world to Western publishers. This Moscow-based agency (with a branch in New York) had been founded in 1932 and since then covered Eastern Europe as well as Russia and China for US newspapers (Schwartz 1953).8 The photographs stemmed both from official sources like the state-run photo agencies of China (Xinhua, founded in 1931) and the Soviet Union (Tass, founded in 1925), sometimes from unnamed photographers, probably freelancers. For example, on 22 May 1956 the New York Times published a picture (Fig. 6.1) showing a Chinese delegation in Tibet, the caption reading as follows: “This photograph from the official Communist Chinese picture agency shows the inauguration April 17 at Lhasa of the preparatory committee to organize Tibet in Communist China’s national framework” (p. 3).

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Fig. 6.1  “The Growth of Tibet’s ‘Autonomy,’” New York Times, 22 May 1956. Reprinted with permission from Eastfoto

Altogether the New York Times printed more than 1400 Sovfoto pictures between 1932 and 1990 (and some hundred thereafter), but only eight pictures provided directly by the East German agency ADNZentralbild (and credited as such).9 Likewise, Zentralbild photographs only rarely appeared in West German newspapers. A photograph taken in Halle (and credited to ADN-Zentralbild) illustrates a 1969 feature article on “The Cosmetics of Communism” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Naturally, the caption was not the one given by ADN but was most probably written by the responsible editor in West Germany: “The corrugated roof with

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a concrete ornament reveals the reluctant Modernism of ‘GDR’ architecture, which has overcome the Eastern wedding cake style. HalleNeustadt, 9,000 apartments for 25,000 inhabitants” (Schulz 1969). A full-text search in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung archives reveals that between 1949 and 1990 the paper published only five(!) Zentralbild pictures captioned as such. It is, however, possible that at times photographs from “the East” were used with no credit for it was virtually impossible to be sued by anybody for payment—be it in the West or in the East, where this way of providing illustration was labeled Scherenredaktion (scissor editing).10 Eastfoto pictures appeared in Western newspapers and magazines (including Life magazine) until the end of the Cold War, and the agency still exists and has a New York City business address.11 The examples show that pictures were traded legally—if not copiously—across the East–West divide. At the same time, it does not require too much imagination to figure out that legal trade went along with semi-legal and, according to GDR law, illegal practices. In 1972, for instance, head of ADN-Zentralbild Walter Heilig reported that ADN staffer Michael Illner was caught selling his pictures to the West German ALU-Color company without either reporting this or paying taxes on the West German income. He was fired on the spot.12 While the exchange of photos via professional agencies seems to have been relatively easy, the realization of individual projects was far more difficult. In the 1970s, East German photographer (and travel cadre) Thomas Billhardt came up with the idea of publishing a photo book documenting the Vietnam War together with Swedish television journalist Erik Eriksson. Both had worked in North Vietnam and argued that the West should finally gain some insight into North Vietnamese perspectives. The idea was to complement—or rather, oppose—South Vietnamese sources, which were strongly represented in Western mass media (Billhardt 2014). According to Billhardt, East German authorities did not openly object to the project but sabotaged it indirectly by postponing the developing process for Billhardt’s film until it was too late to realize the book. Unfortunately, I have not found any evidence of this project in the Federal Archives or the archives of the State Security Service; it is therefore not clear whether Billhardt’s own record is accurate or whether other factors prevented the publication. After all, the book would both have served the GDR’s ideological stance and provided foreign currency in case it became a bestseller, as Billhardt expected. In his view the book would “have sold by the millions in America, it would have supported

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the antiwar movement, it would have made a lot of money” (Billhardt 2014). As a matter of fact, no such book ever appeared—despite the fact that Billhardt’s pictures had already been published in West Germany: In February 1968, Stern magazine printed the photographs he took of American prisoners of war in Vietnam within the context of a film project with Walter Heynowsky (Stern 1968). While Billhardt legally sold his work to the editors of Stern, other GDR photographers published their work in West Germany semi- or illegally. In 1983, for instance, a group of East German writers and photographers aligned themselves with the West German peace movement, which opposed NATO’s plan to establish more nuclear weapons in Western Europe in response to the Soviet Union’s setting up nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe. In this context, the West German Piper Verlag published an anthology featuring texts by ten East German authors and photos taken by Harald Hauswald, who had worked as a freelance photojournalist in East Germany since the late 1970s. In November 1983, five of the contributors—including Hauswald—were arrested and charged for unauthorized publication outside the GDR (formally, they had “established unlawful contacts” abroad (§219 of the GDR’s penal code), “publicly vilified” the GDR (§220), and violated the customs, tax, and currency laws).13 The authorities insisted that the authors were obliged to seek permission for publication abroad; in turn, the authors argued that the book was going to be published in the GDR anyway, soon thereafter, and that seeking permission would have unnecessarily slowed down the publishing process in West Germany (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1983a). Already in February 1983, there was a note in Hauswald’s State Security file stating that he “notoriously publishes photos conveying anti-Socialist and pacifist messages in West German/West Berlin newspapers.”14 When State Security officers searched Hauswald’s apartment and laboratory in December 1983 they found pictures, which he had passed for publication to the West Berlin newspaper die tageszeitung (taz). Incidentally, these photos were published on the very day when Hauswald was arrested for contribution to the Piper anthology, illustrating an article on his current exhibit at Samariterkirche, a Protestant church in East Berlin (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1983b). In any case, Hauswald—and other East German photographers like Ute and Werner Mahler, Sibylle Bergemann, Gundula Schulze-Eldowy, and Ludwig Rauch—occasionally sold their pictures to West German papers and magazines, be it the conservative FAZ, the liberal Tagesspiegel, the leftist taz, or the popular Stern magazine (e.g., Hauswald 1988, 9;

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Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1988, 8; Rauch 1989, 24). Often the authorities refrained from intervening, silently accepting that some photographers made their living on foreign currency.15 A 1988 entry to the Stasi file of a female photographer (whose name is of no interest here) states that it “came clear unofficially that [she] repeatedly tried to have her photos transferred to the NSW [Non-Socialist West].”16 According to this report, she asked a West German visitor to sew the prints into the lining of his jacket and take them back after his visit to East Berlin.17 This time the act was illegal in the eyes of the East German authorities (and tax bureau). Yet the real offense was in the pictures, for in “her depiction [the photographer] predominantly shows the dark sides of socialist society.” The officer concludes that the photographer’s intention was to “seek close contacts to oppositional circles, for here she can turn into practice her hostile and negative stance on the social reality of the GDR.”18 Further—and in contradiction to what he just stated—he renders the judgment that the main purpose of visually criticizing the GDR was of monetary interest and that displaying a critical view of the GDR, in this case, was primarily a marketing strategy (at least this assessment would spare him from having to take the pictures seriously). In the late 1980s it was, however, not uncommon for East German photographers to sell their work across the Wall. In May 1988, for example, Stern published a richly illustrated article entitled “DDR ’88. Flucht vor dem Staat” (GDR ’88. Getaway from the State), featuring photos by Evelyn Richter, Ute Mahler, Harald Hauswald, Wolfgang Gregor, Helfried Strauss, and Sibylle Bergemann. Only two of the pictures are credited to individual photographers (Evelyn Richter, 25; Ute Mahler, 26–27). The other photographers are named in a byline on the first page (“Fotos: Mahler; Hauswald; Gregor; Strauss; Bergemann”), without specifying which picture was taken by whom. The article indicates that the photographers belonged to or sympathized with the political opposition in the GDR, however, this may be misleading. While Hauswald was, as mentioned, repeatedly arrested for (semi-)political activities, Sibylle Bergemann was a member of the Kulturbund’s Central Photography Committee and, as far as her Stasi file tells, not politically active. Despite the fact that the State Security Service observed her, the Kulturbund promoted books and exhibitions featuring her work and allowed her a trip to Paris in 1979. Likewise, Ute Mahler and Evelyn Richter were allowed to travel to Cologne in order to receive a prize at the photokina photo fair in 1978.19

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It is worthwhile, at this point, to take a close look at the pictures published by Stern in 1988. Altogether they create a rather dreary picture of daily life in the GDR: We see a young woman putting on makeup under the lurking eyes of a Honecker portrait, a group of Punks at Alexanderplatz, a drunken couple after attending a funfair in Thuringia, a deserted cityscape in Leipzig (the only funny picture is that of a farmer having a picnic on top of his tractor). All pictures were taken and reproduced in black and white, adding to the overall tristesse, which seems to be the central subject and message of the article. Interestingly, this is exactly what Hauswald was criticized for in state-commissioned reviews of his work. A review of the book OstBerlin—Die andere Seite einer Stadt (East-Berlin. The Other Side of a City) states that Hauswald’s pictures, published with a text by Lutz Rathenow, drew a negative picture of the GDR’s capital (Figs. 6.2 and 6.3): “The choice of photographs conveys a tendentious and extremely defacing picture of the Capital.… The authors gathered whatever gloomy,

Fig. 6.2  Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ, “Three Men Riding a Public Transportation Vehicle,” in Lutz Rathenow and Harald Hauswald, Ost-Berlin. Die andere Seite einer Stadt [East Berlin. The Other Side of a City] (Munich, 1987), 26

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Fig. 6.3  Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ, “Old Woman Searching a Dustbin,” in Lutz Rathenow and Harald Hauswald, Ost-Berlin. Die andere Seite einer Stadt [East Berlin. The Other Side of a City] (Munich, 1987), 122

oppressive, humble, and most primitive milieu they could find and utilize.… Three ill-tempered passengers in a public service vehicle, customers standing in line at Karl Liebknecht-Straße, a police stop-and-search operation—cf. police state GDR—an old woman searching a garbage can for salvageable items…. What would you photograph at the Pionierpark? The [pioneers’] palace? Or the train? Or anything interesting? No! For what purpose do we have an outdoor stage, which was neglected at that time? After all, this is typical for the overall decline of East Berlin!… Somebody demonstrating his attitude toward [social] solidarity in such a personal way as Hauswald does has truly earned his eight pennies—in Western currency!”20 In contrast to Hauswald, who was reckoned to be (and in fact was) part of the political opposition, Bergemann let her pictures alone speak—and apparently, the authorities failed to understand her message. Therefore, she was able to publish and exhibit pictures in the GDR that from today’s perspective look like bold anti-GDR statements. When, for example, she documented the formation of the Marx Engels

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Fig. 6.4  Sibylle Bergemann/OSTKREUZ, “The Monument,” from the series Marx Engels Monument, 1975–1986

statue by Ludwig Engelhardt, which was eventually set up at the Marx Engels Forum in East Berlin in 1986, she took a shot of the two intellectual giants and arch symbols of communism rendering them headless, chained, and exposed to unfriendly weather—Honi soit qui mal y pense! (Fig. 6.4). Nobody seems to have seen that the photo resembled a Magritte painting—a glorious piece of Socialist surrealism. To conclude, many East German photographers—be they “conformist,” (seemingly) politically neutral, or critical of the GDR—published their work in Western newspapers, magazines, and photography books. Some of them did so legally; others had to find illegal ways of selling and transferring their pictures to the West because their opportunities at home were limited: many were observed by the Stasi, which at times made sure that the exhibits were closed and that overly critical photographers would not be allowed to publish their work in the GDR press. Interestingly, launching a photo exhibit could be rated as “oppositional action,” as the Hauswald case shows. As early as 1983, there is an entry in his Stasi file stating that the photographer “takes part actively

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in oppositional action of the so-called political underground and at times initiates such actions as bicycle rallies, photo exhibits, and collection of signatures [for petitions].”21 In other words: While, on the one hand, photography had become a medium of subtle criticism, the critical attitude was ascribed to the photographer and “proven” by words and actions as well as by the photographs themselves. At the same time, critical photographers successfully used their West German contacts as a shield against the State Security. Some of them may have lost their jobs with ADN-Zentralbild, but to my knowledge no photographer was ever legally charged for criticizing the GDR in his or her pictures.

Personal Contacts Between Photojournalists East/West Contacts between East and West German photographers were manifold. Naturally, traveling—and setting up contacts abroad—was more easy for members of travel cadres and employees of ADN-Zentralbild than it was for freelancers and critical photojournalists. In theory, travel cadres were not supposed to get in touch with their Western colleagues, but since it was difficult to control them abroad as intensely as at home they did, of course, meet Western colleagues. Thomas Billhardt, for instance, cooperated with Swedish television journalist Erik Eriksson, with West German Michael Ruetz in Chile, and with Thomas Höpker in New York. When the NGBK (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst/New Society of the Fine Arts) in West Berlin asked Billhardt to attend a photo exhibit in 1988 he turned down the invitation in agreement with the State Security Service. However, in the same year, he did accept an invitation to the opening of a UNICEF exhibit of children’s photos in New York to which he had contributed—and traveled via West Berlin on a flight, which the East German authorities had arranged for him. For photographers not enjoying the privilege of being part of a travel cadre it was, of course, more difficult to travel outside the socialist sphere. However, it was not altogether impossible to get travel permission, even after the construction of the Berlin Wall. When East German photographers Evelyn Richter and Ute Mahler won the “Arbeit und Freizeit” (Work and Leisure) photo competition at the 1978 photokina,22 they were allowed to travel to Cologne in order to personally receive their awards. The reason was simple: the GDR made a large effort to prove that cultural life in the East was up to international

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standards. But of course, there were restrictions in order to make sure that the two photographers would not use their trip to bash the GDR in public, as a detailed directive explains: “Invitations by institutions or individuals from the FRG are to be accepted only after consultation with the GDR delegation and the GDR’s Permanent Representation in the FRG [the diplomatic unit substituting for the nonexistent embassy].… No interview or information is to be given to the mass media in the FRG.… Upon return from the trip a detailed report is to be given to the [Kulturbund’s] central bureau before 15 October 1978.”23 To be sure, Evelyn Richter and Ute Mahler received the prize money in West German currency but had to hand it over to the East German authorities upon return and were refunded in East German currency.24 In 1979 Sibylle Bergemann received one-time-only permission to travel to Paris and then to West Berlin on the way back. However the permission was valid for only ten days and she did not get—as she had hoped—permanent permission to travel to West Berlin.25 Another photographer applied for a travel permit in January 1988 and was permitted to visit an exhibit featuring her photos in Switzerland with the support of the Artists’ Union (VBK), of which she was a member. In view of the fact that the Stasi had already observed her and searched her apartment in 1982, suspecting that she sympathized with the political opposition, this is somewhat surprising. In any case, her visa allowed her to travel to any place abroad (including West Berlin) and was valid from 1 January through 25 May 1988. It allowed her to go to Switzerland and return via Berlin once. However, she used her visa for fifteen border crossings to Switzerland and West Berlin and spent forty nights abroad.26 Subsequently, the VBK banned her from all travel activities to the West—which, according to her Stasi file, “annoyed her very much and diminished her ability to market her work in the non-Socialist West [NSW].”27 When the same photographer applied for a visa in order to visit the Arles Photo Festival—where more of her photos were on exhibit—the application was turned down.28 In any case, the fact that there were even more requests for her photos from France and Italy shows that this photographer had already set up a European—if not international—network for herself.29 Likewise, Harald Hauswald got permission to travel to West Germany in 1988. Early that year he unsuccessfully applied for a travel permit to West Berlin to attend the opening of a photo exhibit featuring his work.

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When he was turned down he again applied for a travel permit to attend the celebration of his father’s seventieth birthday in Stuttgart. This time he was successful and took the opportunity to proceed to West Berlin—a trip of which the Stasi did not approve but was unable to prevent.30 While some East German photographers had a chance—however sporadically—to travel to the West, several West German photojournalists spent long stretches of time in the East (like Thomas Höpker and Harald Schmitt for Stern31) or traveled there frequently. Höpker was the first West German photographer to be officially accredited in East Germany in 1974. With his wife, journalist Eva Windmöller, he lived and worked there for two years—enough time to get to know the entire photography scene. (Unsurprisingly, representatives of the Kulturbund disregarded Höpker’s work for being merely a “new edition of reactionary cliché images of the GDR.”32) As a matter of fact, the photographic community at that time had long been an international network, which permeated the Iron Curtain. Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White had worked in the Soviet Union, Höpker (and others) in East Berlin. Among the Western photographers who frequently visited their friends and colleagues in East Berlin were celebrities like the above-mentioned Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, Robert Frank, Thomas Höpker, Barbara Klemm, and Josef Koudelka. Through them East German photographers established contacts that allowed them to work for Western magazines and photo agencies. Nevertheless, most East German photographers were not eager to leave their country. Their home was the GDR; here they could work successfully and still maintain their Western contacts—and with some luck they would once in a while be able to travel across the Iron Curtain. Unsurprisingly, the State Security Service supervised Western photojournalists who visited or covered East Germany for Western publishers—or had them observed by conformist GDR citizens. As a Stasi file reveals, a female ADN-Zentralbild staffer was considered suitable to “observe and report on operatively interesting Western correspondents during events … dealing with press politics” in 1978.33 But the effect was meager: One photographer’s file mentions that contacts with the NSW (“Non-Socialist West”) were intense, but no names of Western photojournalists are given.34 Another file contains information about various and frequent guests at the photographer’s apartment; again the names are missing.

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Generally speaking, it seems that photographers—compared to writers, playwrights, and singer-songwriters—were rated to be a negotiable threat to the socialist state. Consequently, it was easier for them to muddle through Stasi control, to maintain networks spanning both the East and the West and to articulate a kind of criticism that was systematically underrated because of the Stasi’s inability to “understand” documentary photography.

Conclusion East German photojournalism during the Cold War was neither a closed nor a homogenous field. Along with the protocol photographers of ADN-Zentralbild, there were many freelance photographers who documented daily life in a socialist country—sometimes critically, sometimes with deep sympathy for the ones they depicted. Officially, agencies like ADN-Zentralbild and Eastfoto/Sovfoto sold pictures to Western publishers; unofficially various photographers did the same—whether legally or illegally. We can thus state that, visually, the Wall was a permeable membrane in both directions. While I have here mostly focused on pictures traveling westward, it would also be worth taking a closer look at pictures traveling eastward: as photographs from the East—like Billhardt’s pictures of US prisoners of war and Harald Hauswald’s East Berlin punks— appeared in Western publications, photographs from the West—like, for instance, Eddie Adams’s Execution of a Vietcong or Nick Út’s Napalm Girl—were published in East German newspapers and magazines.35 While it is appropriate to speak of differing visual memories in East and West Germany, it is also true that there is a joint pool of iconic pictures that transcend the material border as well as the ideological borders of the Cold War. Nevertheless, we should carefully distinguish between those pictures that crossed the Wall while it existed and those that have established a visual memory of the GDR in hindsight. The work of many East German photographers, who were rather unknown before 1989, has been retrospectively projected onto the GDR. The result is an optical illusion: it would seem as if all East German photographers were future Ostkreuz members and as if Zentralbild was a comparatively minor player in the field. This, obviously, is a distorted perception of the past, for many of the pictures that today seem to form the visual memory of the GDR were published only after the GDR itself ceased to exist. Nevertheless, a large number of East German photographers were so

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familiar with the international photography scene that, instead of being marginalized, they made a smooth transition to the West when the Wall finally collapsed.

Notes











1. For the concept of “democratic propaganda,” see Mergel (2010, 349– 364, esp. 364). 2. In the course of my investigations at the BStU archive (holding the former East German State Security’s files) I found out that several—if not many—photographers did work for the Ministry of State Security. However, my focus in this chapter is not on (individual) collaboration but on professional structures; I will therefore not specify them. 3.  Cf. short biography Sibylle Bergemann, http://www.altenburg-auktionen.de/21/sibylle_bergemann.html; Schmitt (2011). 4. ADN-Zentralbild was sold to the West German news agency dpa in 1991. The German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) took over its historical archives, part of which is available online at http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/. 5.  Entwurf: Aufgaben der Zentralen Kommission Fotografie der DDR [Draft: Tasks of the Central Committee for Photography], 1960–1990, Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde (in the following: BArch), DY 27/5605, [75–78], 1 (“die Fotografie zu einem aktiven Faktor für die sozialistische Bewußtseinsbildung und die ästhetische Erziehung des Volkes zu machen”). 6.  Letter, 24 November 1960, in Walter Heilig: Kulturbund der DDR (Bundessekretariat) 1960–1987, BArch, DY 27/7728; http://www.fotografenwiki.org/index.php?title=Walter_Heilig. 7. “‘Wir leben auch in einer Bilderwelt.’ Gespräch mit dem Vorsitzenden der Gesellschaft für Fotografie im Kulturbund der DDR, Walter Heilig” [“We are living in a world of images, too.” Conversation with the head of the Society for Photography in the Cultural Association of the GDR], NationalZeitung, 29/30 May 1981 (also in Walter Heilig: Kulturbund der DDR [Bundessekretariat] 1960–1987, BArch, DY 27/7728 [no pagination]). 8. See also http://www.sovfoto.com. 9. The figures result from of a search of the ProQuest Historical Newspapers Database. 10.  As Eszter Kiss told me, the word is commonly used in Hungary to describe the use of the Western press (including photographs) without seeking permission. She describes this practice in her dissertation on the

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visual politics of late-state socialist Hungary (2016). See also Kiss (2015, esp. 298). 11. See http://maclarenart.com/permanent-collection/the-sovfoto-archive. Sovfoto’s picture archive is stored at the McLaren Art Center in Barrie, Ontario. 12. Heilig, Walter, Bericht über Treffen mit IMS Fritz vom 19.9.72 [report on meeting with informant “Fritz,” 19 September 1972, protocol written 20 September 1972] BStU, MfS, AIM, No. 12630/89-2.3: 5. It is not clear what the subject of the photographs was and what ALU-Color (probably a company producing special paint for aluminium surfaces) used them for. 13.  Hauswald, Harald, “Radfahrer,” [Cyclist]  BStU, MfS, AOP, No. 17395/91-Beifügung 2: 21f. 14.  Hauswald, Harald, “Radfahrer,” BStU, MfS, HA XV, AOP, No. 17395/91-1: 2. 15.  The Stasi repeatedly considered taking Hauswald to court but never did because it would have stirred bad publicity in the West (cf. Information über gegen die DDR gerichtete Aktivitäten der DDRBürger RATHENOW, Lutz (Schreibender) und HAUSWALD, Harald (Fotograf) …), 11 September 1986, file: Hauswald, Harald und Rathenow, Lutz, BStU, MfS, HA XX, No. 12290: 4; Kurt Hager to Erich Mielke, 10 October 1986, ibid., 6. 16. BStU, MfS, HA XX, No. 1518: 88. 17. Ibid., 103. 18. Ibid., 89. 19.  “Reise von Ute Mahler und Evelyn Richter zur Entgegennahme von Preisen des Fotowettbewerbs ‘Arbeit und Freizeit’ im Rahmen der ‘Photokina 78’ vom 15.-19.9.1978 nach Köln/BRD” [Ute Mahler’s and Evelyn Richter’s trip to Cologne in order to receive the prices won in the photo competition ‘Work and Leisure’ at the ‘Photokina 78,’ 15–19 September 1978], file: Kulturbund der DDR, Besuch der photokina in Köln durch Mitglieder des Kulturbundes 1968–1990, BArch, DY 27/9925: 15. 20.  “Zum Bild/Text-Band ‘Ost-Berlin’ (von Rathenow u. Hauswald)” [Regarding the photo book ‘East Berlin’ (by Rathenow and Hauswald)], in Hauswald, Harald, BStU, MfS, HA XX/9, No. 358: 11–24 (here: document pages 10–12). This text was first quoted in the documentary film Radfahrer (2008). 21.  “Übersicht zur operativen Personenkontrolle ‘Radfahrer’ (8 February 1983)” [Overview regarding the operational monitoring ‘Radfahrer’], BStU, MfS, HA XV, AOP, No. 17395/91-1: 5: “Hauswald beteiligt sich aktiv an feindlichen Handlungen oppositioneller Kräfte und Personen des sogenannten politischen Untergrundes und initiiert teilweise selbst

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derartige Handlungen, wie Fahrradkorsos, Fotoausstellungen und Unterschriftensammlungen.” 22. The photokina is the West German biannual photo fair, which attracted (and still does) much international attention. 23.  “Vorlage: Betr. Reise von Ute Mahler und Evelyn Richter zur Entgegennahme von Preisen des Fotowettbewerbs ‘Arbeit und Freizeit’ im Rahmen der ‘photokina 78’ vom 15.-19.9.1978 nach Köln/BRD, in Kulturbund der DDR: Besuch der photokina in Köln durch Mitglieder des Kulturbundes, 1968–1990” [Memo regarding Ute Mahler’s and Evelyn Richter’s trip to Cologne in order to receive the prizes won in the photo competition ‘Work and Leisure’ at the ‘Photokina 78’], 15–19 September 1978, BArch, DY 27/9925 (no pagination). 24. Ibid. 25.  MfS, Oberst Stange (HA XX) an die Bezirksverwaltung für Staatssicherheit Abt. XX (Leiter), Berlin, 1.6.79, in BStU, MfS, BV Berlin, HA XX, No. 1456: 24–25. 26. “Sachstandsbericht, 14.6.1989,” in BStU, MfS, HA XX, No. 1518: 99. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 100. 29. Ibid.; BStU, MfS, BV Berlin, AOPK, No. 5676/91: 157. 30.  “Information über Aktivitäten des operativ bekannten Harald HAUSWALD, 14. November 1988.” [Information on the activities of operationally monitored Harald Hauswald], in BStU, MfS, AOP, No. 17395/91-3: 257. 31. See Vowinckel (2018). 32.  Alfred Neumann, “Bericht über die Dienstreise nach Köln, BRD, zur photokina ‘76’” [Report on the official journey to Cologne, FRG, for the photokina ‘76’], in Kulturbund der DDR: Besuch der photokina in Köln durch Mitglieder des Kulturbundes 1968–1990, BArch, DY 27/9925 (no pagination). 33.  Beschluss des MfS vom 6.9.78: “Es sind objektive und subjektive Voraussetzungen vorhanden, ‘Gabi’ zur operativen Sicherung und Kontrolle operativ interessierender ausländischer Korrespondenten während pressepolitischer Veranstaltungen (Aktionen) einzusetzen,” in BStU, MfS, AIM, No. 13592/85-1. 34.  “Einleitungsbericht zur OPK ‘Auslöser’ (5.5.1988)” [Introduction to report on operational control ‘Auslöser’ (5 May 1988)], BStU, MfS, HA XX, No. 1518: 87. Auslöser (translation: release) was the observed photographer’s telling cover name. 35.  Neues Deutschland (6 November 1968, 7) and Schäfer (Neues Deutschland, 14 April 1976, 7) both feature a cutout of Adams’s photo); Berliner Zeitung (7 June 1972, 7) features Út’s photo.

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Archival Sources (a) Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (Federal Archives of Germany, BA Berlin) BArch, DY 27/5605 BArch, DY 27/7728 BArch, DY 27/9925 (b) Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (BStU Berlin) BStU, MfS, AIM, No. 12630/89-2.3 BStU, MfS, AIM, No. 13592/85-1 BStU, MfS, BV Berlin, AOPK, No. 5676/91 BStU, MfS, BV Berlin, HA XX, No. 1456 BStU, MfS, HA XV, AOP, No. 17395/91-1 BStU, MfS, HA XV, AOP, No. 17395/91-3 BStU, MfS, HA XV, AOP, No. 17395/91-Beifügung 2 BStU, MfS, HA XX, No. 1518 BStU, MfS, HA XX, No. 12290 BStU, MfS, HA XX/9, No. 358

References Berliner Zeitung. 1972. “DRV erneut für friedliche Lösung in Vietnam” [DRV Favors Peaceful Solution in Vietnam]. 7 June, 7. Billhardt, Thomas. 2014. Interview with the author. Kleinmachnow, 18 March. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 1983a. “Eine Friedens-Anthologie aus der DDR. Fünf der zehn Autoren ‘vorbeugend’ festgenommen” [An Anthology on Peace from the GDR. Five of Ten Authors Jailed “Preemptively”]. 14 November, 4. ———. 1983b. “Festnahmen, Verhaftungen, Hausdurchsuchungen. Die Friedensgruppen der DDR fürchten das ‘Beispiel Jena’” [Arrests, Detentions, House Searches. GDR Peace Groups Fear the Jena Paradigm]. 28 December, 5. ———. 1988. “Schiller wieder an seinem alten Platz” [Schiller Returned to His Old Site]. 30 December, 8. Hauswald, Harald. 1988. “Fans des FC Union Berlin” [Fans of FC Union Berlin]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 March, 9. Kiss, Eszter. 2015. “Vorbilder, Spiegelbilder und Feindbilder. Der Umgang mit Fotografien im ungarischen Magazin ‘Képes 7’ Mitte der 1980er-Jahre” [Role Models, Mirrors and Enemy Images. The Handling of Photographs in the Hungarian Illustrated Magazine ‘Képes 7’ in the Mid-1980s]. Zeithistorische

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Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 12, no. 2. http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2015/id=5228. Printed issue pp. 289–313. Mergel, Thomas. 2010. Propaganda nach Hitler [Propaganda After Hitler]. Göttingen: Wallstein. Neues Deutschland. 1968. “Eine kriminelle Clique, die nur sich selbst vertritt” [A Criminal Clique That Only Represents Its Own Interests]. 6 November, 7. New York Times. 1956. Photo. 22 May, 3. Niederhut, Jens. 2005. Die Reisekader: Auswahl und Disziplinierung einer privilegierten Minderheit in der DDR [Travel Cadres: Selection of and Disciplinary Measures for a Privileged Minority in the GDR]. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Rathenow, Lutz, and Harald Hauswald. 1987. Ost-Berlin. Die andere Seite einer Stadt [East Berlin. The Other Side of a City]. Munich: Piper. Rauch, Ludwig. 1989. “Waldoff starb 1957 und erhielt seitdem vom Senat … ‘nur wenig Ehrensold’” [Waldoff Died in 1957 and Received But a ‘Moderate Pension of Honor’ from the Senate]. die tageszeitung, 23 December, 24. Schäfer, Horst. 1976. “Feiger Mord bleibt ungesühnt” [Cowardly Murder Remains Unpunished]. Neues Deutschland, 14 April, 7. Schmitt, Harald. 2011. “Als Fotograf musste man an Arno vorbei” [As a Photographer You Had to Get Beyond Arno]. Art. Das Kunstmagazin, 20 September. http://www.art-magazin.de/fotografie/45655/arno_fischer_nachruf. Schulz, Eberhard. 1969. “Die Kosmetik des Kommunismus. Zwanzig Jahre Bilanz hinter der Elbe” [The Cosmetics of Communism. Twenty Year Balance Beyond the Elbe]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bilder und Zeiten section, 20 September, 2. Schwartz, Harry. 1953. “Report from the U.S.S.R.” New York Times, 19 July, SM6. Stern. 1968. “Ein über Nordvietnam abgeschossener US-Pilot wird in Hanoi gesundgepflegt” [U.S. Pilot Shot Down over North Vietnam Is Being Nursed in Hanoi]. 6 February, 34–38. Thümmler, Marc. 2008. Radfahrer [Cyclist]. Film written, directed, and produced by Marc Thümmler. 27 mins. Potsdam: University of Potsdam. http://www.bpb.de/mediathek/125419/radfahrer. Ulfert, Stefan. 2010. “Zentralbilder. Über Pressefotografie in der DDR” [Central Images. On Press Photography in the GDR]. Fotogeschichte 30, no. 115: 53–61. Vowinckel, Annette. 2018. “Photographic Nuisance. Stern photographers Thomas Höpker and Harald Schmitt in the GDR.” Journal of Modern European History 16, no. 1: 126–145.

CHAPTER 7

Irony in Polish Punk of the 1980s as a Form of Contestation Anna G. Piotrowska

In this chapter I discuss Polish punk bands of the 1980s, arguing that their songs, and especially performances, can be read as reactions targeted against the restrictions imposed by communist authorities. At the same time, I demonstrate how the disseminators of official Polish propaganda responded—inscribing into their rhetoric the Cold War discourse condemning Western-influenced cultural and musical trends. Although punk in Poland shared its fate with such musical genres as jazz or such cultural movements as that of the beatniks, it seems that in the 1980s— in the face of new political endeavors—punk became the object of a certain reciprocity: it was resisted by a regime that heavily depreciated punk as an imported product, while the punks themselves resisted the system. In the communist bloc the dominating rule had been resisted with different degrees of involvement and for various reasons—because it was Marxist, imposed, or foreign. In Poland, Soviet control was always opposed vehemently due to the historical legacy: the participation of the Russian Empire in the partitions of Poland between 1772 and 1918 A. G. Piotrowska (*)  Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_7

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(White 2001, 53). Consequently, the constant struggle for independence and legitimacy led in Poland to the erosion of the supreme role of the communist government, especially in the 1980s when intellectual dissidents were joined by common workers, and supported by those connected with the very influential (in Poland) Roman Catholic Church (the then-pope, John Paul II, was a Pole). The situation ripened for changes to occur, as the Polish government—trying to muffle social outcries of discontent and waves of strikes—resorted to radical solutions such as delegalizing independent organizations (e.g., the most powerful trade union with millions of members) or introducing martial law. Among the opposition, peaceful ways of rationalizing the political situation were sought and nonviolent forms of resistance were preferred. On the road to resuming independent authority, in the Eastern bloc, it was Poland that paved the path to post-communism in the process described as “the most paradoxical of European revolutions” (Ash 2002). In order to overcome the power of the communist government, various forms of cultural actions were undertaken, cleverly playing with the state’s aspiration to maintain control over the arts, literature, media, and so forth. The political monopoly of the communist party affected those “who had little power but struggled to make ‘their’ discourse visible, audible” (Ekiert and Kubik 1999, 4), among other young people: activists and musicians (e.g., in punk bands). It seems to me that one of the tools of resistance in Polish punk was irony: while recognized as such by involved parties in this particular context, it may be treated as a specific form of protest characteristic of Polish youth, especially in the early and mid-1980s.1 As an integral part of cultural life, music (not only punk music) is often actively exploited for political purposes regardless of the type of the society and historical period. The importance of music is thus related to, sometimes even predefined by, aesthetic values or social concerns, and it also may be strongly connected to government regulations. Robin Ballinger (2005, 430) argues that music can, in fact, shape political consciousness “through its complex system of signification,” which “is a powerful site of struggle in the organization of meaning and lived experience.” Since music transcends communication barriers and can be understood locally as well as nationally or even transnationally, its political power is feared by rulers aware of its tremendous impact on human emotions, especially among participants in revolutionary movements.2 Hence politicians may try to influence music production by motivating and stimulating musicians to undertake

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certain types of politicised expressions, or involuntarily make them attempt boycotts or other forms of resistance (Barbalet 1985, 531). As Katherine Turner (2013, 45) puts it, “[P]rotesting and musicking are such natural companions that the association need only be whispered to be true.” Alas, “there is little consensus on the definition of resistance” (Hollander and Einwohner 2004, 534), as the term has been used by scholars in a multitude of contexts. Acts of resistance can occur at various levels and take different forms: collective or individualist, referring to constant actions and permanent behaviors or to one-time-only acts. This diversity stems from three factors identified by Hollander and Einwohner as a mode of resistance (understood literally as an act of physical resistance or as a type of symbolic action), the scale of resistance, and the motivation or goals (ibid., 536).

Disturbing Similarities: Irony and Resistance As already noted, the complex character of resistance is circumstanced by several conditions and results from the very sophisticated nature of opposition. However, it seems that the inevitable element of resistance is action, broadly defined, targeted against certain groups. Such acts require at least two parties: the opposing one and the one being opposed. While irony may work as a specific tool of resistance it is hardly surprising that the phenomenon of irony is equally difficult to define as one of resistance. Claire Colebrook (2004, 1) has even declared that irony is “curiously indefinable.” Both phenomena bear, nevertheless, disturbing similarities. Just like resistance may take on several forms: overt, covert, unwitting, target-defined, externally defined, missed, or merely attempted (Hollander and Einwohner 2004, 536), so can, in fact, different types of irony. Furthermore, some theoreticians maintain that an act of resistance should be acknowledged as such by others (the public, the press or the authorities, etc.) (ibid., 541), others believe that there is no need for recognition (e.g., Scott 1985). And in the case of irony, it is also often argued that it ought to focus on the interaction between the emitter and the receiver (Finlay 1988, 17) as “one of the most crucial aspects of successful irony is that there is an in-crowd who ‘gets’ the irony. Otherwise, the objective fails and the proponent or creator may come across as inept, which has the same practical effect as explaining a joke” (Turner 2015, 8–9).

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Moreover, irony—just like acts of resistance—is targeted against a particular “victim” (Rose 1995, 79). It may be “someone or something— creator, addressee, or a third party—that is (negatively) postured as the subject of the criticism” (Turner 2015, 8–9). While the victim is ridiculed, mocked, or sometime parodied, those who get the ironic message create a kind of “amiable community” that excludes the naïve victim— presumably unaware of being laughed at (Booth 1974, 28). Conversely, we can risk stating that Polish punk bands and their fans, also quite naïvely (even falsely), might have believed that their irony went unnoticed by their victims—the communist authorities. Documents show that in fact the governing bodies closely watched the development of the punk movement in Poland, monitoring the events, surveilling the musicians, censoring the lyrics. Yet, for these bands, the affirmative effect of employing irony was the consolidation of their fans into a community of young followers. In other words, understanding the ironic message required an almost intimate closeness between those involved—musicians and fans—while (presumably) excluding the others (ibid., 31). Whether one was included in or excluded from the intimate circle of those who—back in the 1980s—appreciated the irony residing in Polish punk depended on a specific interpretation of cultural norms. Irony relied on cultural norms as a background for sharpening “disjunctive non-totality” while dwelling on that disjunction (Finlay 1988, 17). Being, in fact, a cultural pose (Bohrer 2005, 93), irony proved to work as a strategy of resistance deeply situated within a cultural field (Dettmar 2006, 134): irony not only observed but also respected certain cultural standards. One theoretician of irony, Wayne Booth, would actually talk here about so-called “stable irony,” seminally defined as a type of irony that would require “a shared understanding of the situation and applicable cultural norms; the ironic statement is one that disrupts those mores, but meaning is never truly lost because both parties comprehend the unlikelihood of the utterance’s literal meaning” (Turner 2015, 8–9). Irony aims at confusing the communication process “by offering more than one message to be decoded,” while the “duplication of messages can be used … to conceal the author’s intended meaning from immediate interpretation” (Rose 1995, 87). There arises, however, another important question concerning intentionality of ironic statements and ironic behaviors as observed among Polish punk bands. Did the irony have to be intended, in other words, designed rather than simply accidental, so that we could consider the statement as a conscious strategy of nonviolent resistance adapted by Polish

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youth in the 1980s? Or was it enough for irony to be deducted or just sensed, merely suspected? Turner (2015, 8–9) observes that in general “irony studies often speak of ironic intention—that is, a creation or performance purposely designed to be understood as pointedly ironic. In contrast, ironic interpretation is the cognitive determination by the receptor of a statement/action/musical gesture as ironic whether or not the creator/ enactor so intended.” I would argue that in the case of 1980s Polish punk both instances were highly politicized and as such they highly mattered, since the overall character of Polish punk performances took on a character of protest often understood as aiming against communist authorities. We deal here with the situation where “rather than concealing the truth or evidencing a disdain for the truth, irony seems, in this case, to be serving to educate its audience about vital political issues” (Dettmar 2006, 141).

Political Situation: Communism in 1980s Poland It is difficult not to agree with the statement articulated by, among others, Travis A. Jackson that “since its emergence into public consciousness in the mid-1970s, punk has increasingly seemed, for self-selected and overlapping groups of scholars and fans, to be the apotheosis of protest music” (2013, 157). Although the same author continues that “there was also widespread concern over whether punk constituted a form of protest and, if so, of what kind” (ibid.), it needs to be stated that the essence of 1980s Polish punk resided in its ability to present reality in a distorted mirror, thus provoking reflection upon the state of affairs, and possibly also encouraging resistance (Marciniak 2015, 6–7). The aforementioned deformations (seen mostly in the levels of meaning in the lyrics, but also in the style of music, as well as the gestures, apparel, etc., used during performance) often served as provocations to think critically. It seems that the actual means of achieving the desired effect—whether verbal, purely musical, dramatic, or contextual—were of secondary importance. The resulting “ironic” quality served as a particular contestation tool. In my opinion it is irony, although not always deductible at first glance, that proved to be of crucial importance in the realm of musical practices undertaken by Polish punk bands active in 1980s. The irony that they resorted to was the critique of what they—as representatives of the youth—could not possibly afford “not to want.” By poking clever fun at, among other things, the inequities of the socialistic system they expressed their inner dissension with the communist reality that they happened to experience.

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The uniqueness of opposition in Poland in the early 1980s was conditioned by several circumstances complicating the very sophisticated nature of resistance. Notably, the changing position of the intelligentsia influenced the Polish situation because “as educated people were more and more working as technocrats, often their dissatisfaction with the system grew. Party elites were discredited and general dissatisfaction was marked by alienation [from] party rule in particular” (Simons 1993, 174). The weakness of the leading Communist Party (PZPR; Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza translates as The Polish United Workers’ Party) was revealed, as on other occasions, in June 1979 when a visit by the Polish pope—John Paul II—was tolerated. In Poland, hailed for its liberal approach, liberation endeavors included the rise of the noncommunist National Commission of the Self-Governing Trade Union, called “Solidarity.” Destabilization was deepened by, among other actions, frequent strikes leading to the dramatic events of 1981, prompting the communist government on 13 December to impose martial law. Its declaration brutally brought the advancements of social and political conditions to an abrupt end while driving the Solidarity movement underground. Although the watchword “no Freedom without Solidarity” remained popular, the movement was worn out by suppressive actions undertaken by the government (ibid., 202). The proclamation of martial law, as well as the consequent repressions coupled with the economic crisis, led to the strengthening of the illegal opposition among society as a whole, including young people. Polish historian Marek Wierzbicki (2012, 409) argues that most young Poles remained critical of the government’s doctrine of “real socialism,” and for good reason. People were acutely aware of the escalating sociopolitical crisis as well as the easily observed discrepancy between ideology and practice. Neither economic nor status advancement was within reasonable reach of workers as the economy quickly spiraled downward (Simons 1993, 175). Young people’s frustration was, in many cases, also deepened by “the inability to fulfil personal needs” (Wierzbicki 2012, 420). Hence young people were prone to express openly their views against the communist regime by taking part in forbidden street demonstrations, engaging in conspiracy movements, or communicating through popular entertainment—as in performing punk music. Since, for example, street demonstrations were forbidden, irony—as expressed in punk—was an alternative way to subvert the rule in a public venue. It was crucial to resort to such strategies, especially since young people who actively

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participated in these prohibited demonstrations were carefully monitored by the authorities. In 1983, a so-called Instytut Badań Problemów Młodzieży (Institute for Researching Youth Problems) was organized to meticulously document such facts as the percentage of youth present at demonstrations, their behavioral patterns, and their preferred ways of spending leisure time.

When Irony in Polish Punk Originated The irony in Polish punk was directly linked to the audience’s perception of it, as determined by the timing of performances, location, and situation (Austern 1985–1986, 485). Leaving very little room for anything other than political interpretation, Polish punk songs presented life through the eyes of narrators, that is, the musicians themselves, who were members of Poland’s disillusioned youth (Muecke 1982, 42).3 The themes and images of Polish punk reflected social and political circumstances: in hindsight, Polish punk musicians admit that the punk movement was about opposing the system (Grabowski 2010, 6). Even the characteristic punk look was cultivated to the extreme in Poland to ensure that “no one else looked like a punk.… It was like an open declaration: I am out of the system’s control. Punk meant the devastation of the current status quo” (Michalak 2007, 5).4 Criticizing Polish politics required delicacy while at the same time calling for obvious if not blunt tools. Hence, irony, as enabling the interpretation of life and art (Elleström 2002, 28), together with sarcasm and gibe or mockery, were common tools of critique targeted against powerful institutions.5 Paweł Koñjo Konnak—one of the doyens of the movement, though not a musician himself—says that around 1981 he started taking part in various inventive actions trying to oppose the prosody of communist life as he began to realize what he calls the decadence of the situation. Hence he became one of the initiators of the artistic group Totart (established in 1986 in Gdańsk) specializing in alternative activities (Skiba et al. 2011, 12). For example, young group members would proclaim manifestos during punk concerts agitating against procreation (!) or would organize the distribution of illegal leaflets featuring swear words (e.g., arse, its other than literal meaning in Polish suggesting that things are “crappy”) (ibid., 20). Thus the disapproval of the status quo was unleashed, entailing the harsh diagnosis of the system, which became its immediate target—its “victim” (Hutcheon 1994, 15).

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This type of resistance was predominantly developing in metropolitan areas among well-educated young people. The first Polish punk bands were formed as early as the late 1970s. Lesław Danicki (b. 1953)—a street musician from Warsaw known as Walek Dzedzej—founded together with Maciej Góralski (b. 1957) his Walek Dzedzej Punk Band active during 1977–1978 (Kulesza 2011, 55). It is believed that among those early forerunners was also the band Poerocks from Wrocław (Michalak 2007, 10), as well as Zwłoki (Dead Corpse), also established in the same city. Among other pioneering punk bands were Nalot (Air Raid)6 and Deadlock. Punk bands were formed spontaneously, on the spot, but they also ceased to exist suddenly, often having performed only a few concerts (Kasprzycki 2013, 171). For instance, Detonator was active solely in 1981, Auschwitz (again from Wrocław) in the years 1981–82, and Czołg Wasyla (Vasili’s Tank) in 1983 (Michalak 2007, 109). Early Polish punk bands relied heavily on simplification: chord structure, rhythm, and harmonization, for example, depended on predictable, modest forms, and performers resorted to minimal vocal solutions such as hoarse shouting or shrieks. As commonly known, punk generally rejected the rich arsenal of elaborate musical devices, becoming rather famous for its use of strange visual imagery on stage and treatment of provocative, political subjects in its lyrics. Indeed, “the degree to which one might characterize punk sonically as a form of protest music, … rests discursively and relationally on how the music resonates after and alongside other styles in a broader field of musical practice” (Jackson 2013, 161). Also, the Polish punk movement was influenced by Western punk practices in terms of aesthetics and performance, which were used to transmit certain ideas and sounds into the public sphere. In the mid-1980s, there occurred a period of apparent “normalization” whereby most Poles (including young ones) resigned themselves to government authority and shunned open protests. But that changed again in 1988, the year marking the twentieth anniversary of the 1968 uprisings across the globe, when opposition in Poland resumed with reborn vitality. So-called Round Table debates (also known as Polish Round Table Talks) were organized by the government from 6 February through 5 April 1989, in which selected representatives of the unofficial (or banned) political opposition were allowed to discuss the future of the country with the communist authorities. Overall the venture was judged successful by the public and by politicians (Simons 1993, 205),

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and it helped pave the road to further changes, such as the first partially free parliamentary elections in Poland, which were held in June 1989. By that time the use of provocative irony among Polish punk bands had weakened, and post-punk bands active in Poland in the 1990s later abandoned—for obvious reasons—irony as a tool of political resistance.

Where Irony Resided: The Names of Polish Punk Bands The first visible sign of irony as employed by Polish punk bands was embodied in their choice of name. These names often referred to Polish conditions, either by (1) recalling the economic crisis or (2) alluding to the political system and its oppressions. The first group of names was represented by Brygada Kryzys (Crisis Brigade), whereas in the second one we can distinguish several variations. For example, many band names were innuendos to Polish-Soviet relations, like Moskwa (Moscow), an apparently innocent name that was nevertheless provocative enough to give the band trouble with authorities when trying to organize their concerts (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 28). (The very fact that an edgy group of young musicians would take on a super official-sounding name in itself implied mockery.) The same was true for the band initially called SS-20 after a Soviet nuclear missile. Ironically, the name was interpreted by the authorities as an open promotion of Nazism because of the abbreviation SS (Kasprzycki 2013, 172). In 1982 the band was renamed Dezerter (Deserter). Other bands alluded to the Soviets by incorporating the word “red” in their names. For instance, Aya RL was deciphered as Aya Red Love. There were also references to the younger generation’s socialistic upbringing visible in names such as Dzieci Kapitana Klossa (Children of Captain Kloss), which referred directly to the popular TV series about a fictional World War II (WWII) agent working for the Soviet intelligence service. The ironic identification with the generation growing up with Captain Hans Kloss (watching him on television as well as reading comic books about the spy) was strengthened by the fact that the hero did not, in fact, have any offspring. Another category of names used toilet and/or sexual (rather vulgar) associations as if stressing the quality of life in communist country. There existed bands called Brak WC (No WC), Kontrola W (W Control), and Przychodnia W (W Health Center), where the letter W in the latter two

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names stood for the word “venereal,” suggesting problems with sexually transmitted diseases. Alongside these names were also other, equally outrageous ones: Patologia ciąży (Pathology of Pregnancy), Defloracja (Defloration) (Kasprzycki 2013, 134), OBS (Orgazm bez Stosunku [Orgasm without Coitus]), SJK (Synowie jednej kurwy [Sons of the Same Whore]) (Michalak 2007, 196). Toilet associations were used by the band Sedes (Toilet Seat), whose members’ aspiration was to sport a really innovative and original name. They initially considered being tagged as Cmentarz (Cemetery), profoundly enjoying the thought of people saying that they are “going to see the Cemetery”—meaning to attend their concert (ibid., 67). The initial name reveals yet another typical tendency observed among Polish punk bands, that is, to make use of mortal connections, like in the case of the band Ekshumacja (Exhumation). In 1981 a telling example of such a band—Zwłoki (Dead Corpse)—was established. The group adapted the name from an English band called Mortal Remains (ibid., 58). To what degree this labeling was designed as a provocation (and not merely a translation) is revealed by the fact that originally the band was to be called Twarz Pedała (Faggot’s Face). Cezary Kamienkow (b. 1982) from Zwłoki confessed later that “it was all about provocation” (ibid., 53).

How Irony Worked: The Lyrics Although verbal irony dominated in Polish punk, different types of irony—dramatic (Reynolds Thompson 1948, 5–9) and musical—were also employed, creating an amalgam of visual and aural ironies immersed in specific political context. Humor observed in Polish punk—in the names of bands, titles of songs, as well as in lyrics and stage rituals—was predominantly of referential character, and markers of irony were often hidden in minor signs or trifle gestures. As they were limited to selected associations and allusions of an often extra-musical nature, their irony might have seemed totally unprompted. Political arguments became one of the main axes of Polish punk, expressed mainly through verbal irony. Yet, the bands tried—perhaps quite naïvely or rather ironically—to remain apolitical, claiming that their songs and performances were politicized only by the audience and the authorities. For example, in 1978 the press announced that the band Poerocks was playing to honor the October revolution (Michalak 2007, 38). Certain bands like Dezerter even argued that they were totally

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apolitical by definition (Grabowski 2010, 8), and that it was the press and their audiences who interpreted their every word and comment as an ideological declaration (ibid., 9). Especially lyrics “carrying unambiguous anticapitalist memes” were often believed to be charged with “elements of that radical social critique” (Robinson 2013, 200). But, for example, a song like “Nowy program” (New program) by Strefa destrukcji (Destruction Zone) indeed could not be interpreted as anything but ironic (Michalak 2007, 140). Similarly, “Odnowa” (Renewal) by Dezerter from 1981 rather ironically diagnosed what it called the “new” situation in the country, while saying nothing about real restitution or regeneration. The lyrics went as follows: “There is renewal in the whole country, the new power will rule. All those dicks bugger about it everywhere, who needs that renewal?” (Grabowski 2010, 213).7 What these bands were achieving in their lyrics was a constant recontextualization and redefinition of the reality described and thus an ironic diagnosis of life in 1980s Poland. There may be no general agreement that these lyrics contained elements of irony, at least not without understanding the context and times. When Dezerter sang “you are building fascism by intolerance, you are building the system by ignorance,”8 the group actually addressed the current communist circumstances than the situation in the Third Reich. In some instances, the key to understanding the whole piece could be even hidden in petty details like one line in the seemingly very happy though emotionally charged 1984 song “Po co żyć?” (Why live?) by Prowokacja. The words “nobody can see any sense in that” (nikt nie widzi sensu w tym) discreetly allude to the current political situation. In such lyrics opportunity for interpretation was more important than actual meaning (Elleström 2002, 31–32). In the seemingly submissive lyrics of Dezerter’s song “Spytaj milicjanta” (Ask a militia officer), the listener would learn that only a militia man “will tell you the truth” and “will show you the way.” While the line can be read as ironic, it also reveals the importance of the uniformed services in the world dominated by the power discourse. There were more examples of such ambivalent lyrics that, when read by themselves without specific socioeconomic and political context, could be perceived as enigmatic, metaphorical, allegorical, or simply funny or taunting. Take, for instance, just the titles of a few songs by the band Śmierć kliniczna (Clinical Death): “Sadysta” (Sadist), “Panienki” (Chicks), “Edukacja” (Education); or by the group Defekt Muzgó (Brain Defect, spelled in Polish with an intentional mistake):

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“Korupcja” (Corruption), “Norma” (Norm). When Dezerter declared that “when a day begins, a new day. Everyone gets up, even a lazy one, you are going somewhere, you don’t know where to because the system leads you” (Dzień się budzi, nowy dzień. Każdy wstaje nawet leń, idziesz gdzieś, nie wiesz gdzie, bo system prowadzi cię), the band appeared to proclaim the government’s ideology, although their mock-serious tone lent the words an ironic perspective. Most lyrics featured ironic expressions easily deciphered by the majority of listeners. These included, for example, references to the color red as a symbol for the Soviets. Mariusz Janiak from the band Sedes says that in Poland of the early 1980s all that young people, not only punks, wanted was to “ignore the reds” (quoted in Michalak 2007, 71). In order to veil the immediate association of the color red, lyrics to some songs also mentioned other colors—as in a song by Przychodnia W where the singer rhetorically asks “Do you love blacks? No. Do you love yellow faces? No. Do you love reds? No.” In 1984 the same band openly sang about money spent on the Cold War arms race (“one more billion on the weapons”). Those ironic lyrics, easily decoded by most Poles as targeted against the system and Soviet influence on the country, were sometimes bordering on the line of moral acceptance. The band Fornit (with their leader Paweł Rozwadowski) innocently sang during the concert in Kołobrzeg “Lepsza kiła od Iła” (Better off with lues than with the Ilyushin, alternatively Pox/syphilis better than Ilyushin). The rhyming refrain carried the obvious message (i.e., preferring to contract a sexually transmitted infection rather than fly in a Soviet plane designed by Ilyushin). However, when the band was about to perform the song at a concert a few months after the crash of a such a plane in March 1980 (with a death toll of eighty-seven people, including the popular Polish singer Anna Jantar [1950–1980]), the band was forbidden to play it and eventually was asked to leave the venue (Kasprzycki 2013, 176). The mention of the plane designed by the Soviet Ilyushin Aviation Complex—known, among other things, for its military aircraft—hints at the actual social climate: the issues of the arms race was internalized by the young musicians to such a degree they involuntarily alluded to it even in their songs. The overall context of Soviet influence still mattered, but the specific situation (here of national mourning) would always call for adaptations and modifications on the part of punk musicians.

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Converting popular song formulae into punk songs and emulating a quasi-socialistic tone was a popular tactic. Musically it entailed a shift toward irony marked by a change in “the stylistic character of the music or the nature of the genre” (Turner 2015, 8–9). In these imitations, there could be found “a sabotage of narrative conventions” (Furst 1984, 47) that created an overall ironic effect whereby humor was both mischievous and ingenious. Typical of any ironic ventures, these fake mass-market songs presented one code concealing, in fact, two messages (Rose 1995, 89). As a displacement of the symbolic order (Yurchak 2006, 250), this irony boiled down to the sort of mockery in which what was actually said/sung did not equal its meaning (Finlay 1988, 17). Furthermore, these fake popular songs required “mental flexibility to recognize how inadequately flexible are our minds, and the languages we use, to the world we try to represent in them” (Egan 1997, 155). For example, the text of the 1983 song “Ku przyszłości” (Toward the future) by Dezerter by no means could be taken—at least at face value—as a typical popular song just because it expressed ideas to be found in any supreme socialistic manifesto, such as the chances for a bright future offered only by communistic countries. Also, the song by WSK entitled “Lenin” resembled a pasticcio of a socialistic popular song that featured a melodic recitative part introducing the figure of Vladimir Lenin, thus imitating the pompous style of mass-market songs hailing socialist heroes. KSU’s song “1944,” although referring to the year of the Warsaw uprising, in fact ironically critiqued the current Polish situation, namely compulsory army service. In the middle section of the song the musical quotation is introduced: the tune and words of a song “Ballada o pancernych” (The ballad about tank men) from a popular Polish TV series for children produced in the late 1960s called Czterej pancerni i pies (Four tank men and a dog). It was often rebroadcast on Polish TV and became extremely popular among youngsters—everyone knew it. The plot was about the adventures of the brave Polish and Soviet soldiers operating the same tank who collaborated during WWII, fighting together against the German army. While the song’s use of musical quotations from the TV show reinforces and supports the authoritative power of all-present socialistic ideas, its citation of the ballad did actually the opposite (Rose 1995, 78), as the original song was clearly associated with socialistic propaganda and its introduction into the fabric of punk performance seemed nothing but ironic. Yet again, we can talk about internalization of the Cold War rhetoric in the form of indirect references to the superiority of Soviet weapons.

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How Irony Was Performed: Punk Concerts Initially, Polish punk bands could play only in small clubs, often those fostering student culture. The concerts were quite popular among young people, even though the government restrictions placed on advertising was crippling. Punk musicians remember that their gigs, for example, in Warsaw were well attended, despite the fact that it was forbidden to distribute any posters promoting the show (Grabowski 2010, 14).9 The first big event featuring so-called rebellious bands—Pop Session (full name: Międzynarodowe Konfrontacje Muzyczne [International Confrontations in Music]: “Pop Sessions”) was organized in Sopot in 1978 (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 25). While the Przegląd Zespołów Nowej Fali (New Wave Bands’ Festival) held in Kołobrzeg on 8–10 August 1980 was short-lived, the Festiwal Nowofalowych Grup Rockowych (Festival of New Wave Rock Bands) in Toruń with its launch on 8–9 November 1980, became an annual event up until 1984 (Kasprzycki 2013, 176). However, the most important venue for the punk scene became the music festival in Jarocin, where the man behind the scenes was Walter Chełstowski (b. 1951). Although the event was carefully monitored by the authorities, it was designed as a place where young people could express themselves and blow off steam (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 9). Since concerts were monitored, Polish punk bands resorted to various devices to achieve the effect of ironic distance, including performative practices such as smashing their instruments on stage.10 The humor exhibited at the concert could be assessed as droll or waggish sometimes, while on other occasions it came across as black, almost bordering on absurdity. Elements of art performance, which often involved interaction with the audience, were initiated by, among others, the band Dezerter. They would throw newspapers at the audience, showing disdain for the dependent press. Konnak mentions in his memoirs that the newspapers were soaked with water, and that throwing them marked the end of the event, as if to say “tonus finalis” (Skiba et al. 2011, 21). In fact, having fun with scraps of newspaper was very popular during punk concerts; musicians, for example, would make comic hats featuring (in a visible spot) the name of the journal. These games with newspapers were observed by Kevin Ruane from BBC, who noted that punks in Poland ridiculed official media (Grabowski 2010, 41). He was right in his suspicions that throwing damp or dry newspapers into the crowd was a form of contestation and showing disrespect for lying authorities. Toilet

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paper was also used extensively during concerts alluding to the overall sociopolitical situation, which could be interpreted as “shitty”—hence the appearance of the toilet paper seemed more than appropriate. For example, the leader of the band Armia would wear a big pendant with rolls of toilet paper hanging from it like beads (by the way it was a common way of selling toilet paper at that time in Poland, where the shortage of it in shops was considered embarrassing and became the subject even of jokes in movies and other media11). In this way, musicians of punk bands sometimes purposely adopted the role of jokester (Moreno 2003, 115) while resorting to “various clues like gesture, tone of voice, or context” in order to convey “precisely the opposite” of what they were actually— often quite ostensibly—saying (Bonds 1991, 84).

Who Felt the Irony: Press Attacks Although punk bands were able to perform in youth clubs, even there they experienced many problems. The managers responsible for running these cultural centers were often scared by punk bands’ message of rebellion and were afraid of riots. Hence it was a common practice to break the circuit during punk concerts and create a sudden power outage (Michalak 2007, 58). In 1982 it happened to Dezerter, but the band decided to play unplugged (Grabowski 2010, 21, 55). The reason for their bad reputation among club managers was—in the eyes of punk musicians themselves—the result of press attacks. For instance, Krzysztof Grabowski from Dezerter says that it was journalists who fought against punk (ibid., 66–67). Konnak echoes these words noting that around 1983 the discrediting efforts of the press were already well known. He even suspected that criticizing youth movements was a planned action to pit different social groups against each other in the vein of “divide and conquer” (Skiba et al. 2011, 165). Punk was degraded as a Western import: anything that stemmed from behind the Curtain was supposed to be of lower standards, bad quality, morally rotten, and so forth. Indeed, when punk was reported in Poland in the late 1970s as having originated in London, it was described with such words as “hideous” and “dirty” (Sobolewski 1978). At the same time, Polish journalists who analysed the movement reached the conclusion that despite the outrageous looks and clothes, punk music was so simple, that it could almost be called banal (Rzewuski 1978, 14–15). The emphasis in these instances was placed on the social aspects of the movement. In the February 1981

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issue of Magazyn Gazety Robotniczej (Magazine of Workers’ Gazette), the following denouncement appeared: “Punk. Another fashion dragged from far away by and for those bored, frustrated and alienated. Those bored with the vastness of knowledge they possessed during their eight years in elementary school, frustrated with the prospect of finding a job, and alienated from their families toiling for their bread. In the streets of Wrocław they began to be visible about two years ago” (Michalak 2007, 9).12 The author of the article, who signed it with the nickname “Bogdan,” also mentioned problems that punks had with their parents, dwelt on their predilection to intoxicate themselves by sniffing cleaning products like Roxy (ibid., 12). In the press, punk culture was for the most part portrayed as a rebellion characteristic of the conflicts arising from any generation gap (Kasprzycki 2013, 182). Punk concerts were ridiculed as hosting no more than twenty listeners, including a few drunk bouncers (ibid., 178). In 1983 while reviewing the Jarocin Festival, a journalist, Anna Dąbrowska, teasingly wrote that having participated in punk riots, the same teenagers will afterward obediently go back to school, will resume wearing nice uniforms, and will behave as if nothing ever happened (1983, 17). But when it came to reviewing the musical content of punk songs, the commentators had relatively little to say. The situation was, to put it mildly, curious since journalists were required to report on some gigs in their publications, but they were genuinely afraid of attending these events. Eventually, at least some of them were rumored to have made up their accounts (Grabowski 2010, 32). Some journalists demonstrated their ignorance and disdain by equalling punk with the new wave, or calling it “dead wave”—prophesying no future for punk in Poland. Rarely if ever was Polish TV (there existed only one official TV station with two channels) present at punk concerts, and some snippets of the performances recorded, for example, at Jarocin were used as an illustration for TV commentary dealing with such topics as degenerate fashions influenced by decadent Western clothing styles (ibid., 27). Punk was decried in the press, while the militia—on the whole— refrained from overt forms of suppressing the movement (Skiba et al. 2011, 257). It was in line with policy to allow teenagers enjoying superficially normal life after the epoch-making year 1981: young people could keep their school proms, enjoy private parties, and so forth (Kasprzycki 2013, 33). The militia, however, carefully yet discreetly observed punks. From various reports written in the 1980s by militia officials, we learn

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that the punk movement was assessed as generally peaceful, being more of interest to the press than to pedagogues or therapists (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 145). If anything, it was the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, SB) that would contact individual musicians asking to monitor their surroundings. These were always very cultural conversations, as remembered by former punks (ibid., 27). Nevertheless, at some concerts the militia was present, sending ZOMO squads (Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej [Motorized Reserves of the Citizens’ Militia]). These were paramilitary formations designed to provide security during mass events, hated by Poles as they pacified political demonstrations often resorting to physical power, including charging the crowds with batons and using riot shields, truncheons, etc. ZOMO was assigned to prevent aggression at punk concerts, as it was feared that punks might be able to undermine the system (Grabowski 2010, 15). In the end, the invigilation by authorities proved that among Polish punks some were very emotional, there were also groups in control, with anarchic views, intelligent and manipulative. Above all, however, punks came across as combative (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 153). Even though the media often exaggerated the danger surrounding punk groups, there were some grounds on which to base unfavorable opinions about their concerts, and sometimes there were reasons to bring in ZOMO forces. To begin with, punk concerts were constantly publicized as dangerous since they were believed to provoke riots and fits of aggression. However, the media often misconstrued the behavior of punk band members when they were simply using theatrics to interact with their audiences. Sometimes punk musicians would disapprovingly comment on the quality of the organization or management at concert venues, or parody other mainstream musicians, which was immediately interpreted as aggressive behavior (Kasprzycki 2013, 18). Their bad reputation grew every year, especially after the pogo dance was introduced at punk concerts, although some commentators judged it as superficially aggressive, perhaps even having the therapeutic function of releasing tension (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 30). Unfortunately, other incidents were noted such as an apparent altercation at Jarocin 1983 in which fans threw mud at each other. Reported by the press as hazardous, these happenings were building an image of punk as an instigator of riots. On the other hand, government authorities (especially the militia), after noticing such anomalies as disappointed audiences throwing apple cores at punk musicians during performances (ibid., 126), classified these behaviors

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as largely “harmless,” having no particular goal other than causing a lot of noise or buzz (Kasprzycki 2013, 191). Over time, however, punk bands began to behave more and more provocatively. In 1984 during the Jarocin Festival the band Dezerter asked a fire brigade to splash cold water straight from hoses onto gathered people supposedly to cool them off during a heatwave. Since the organizer Chełstowski was against this radical move, it became the cause of some tension between the musicians and the management (Lesiakowski et al. 2004, 36). When in 1985 the band Karcer (The Cooler/The Block) was denied the opportunity to perform on the main stage at the Jarocin Festival they ostentatiously performed a public striptease, at the Festival, as there were many stages available (Kasprzycki 2013, 192). The atmosphere of aggression was envenomed with the appearance of skinheads at punk concerts. Their presence would trigger violent outbursts, during which the militia often arrested not the true instigators but instead the punks (Grabowski 2010, 67). Hence some punk musicians speculated that these fits of aggression were staged by the militia, as it was believed that brazen skinheads felt some sort of impunity (Skiba et al. 2011, 194). Yet, as former punks confess today looking back at those times, they also shared some fault in the process of intensifying aggression. Waldemar “Ace” Mleczko, from the band Poerocks, admits that one day he simply “had to” use chains as a weapon in self-defense (punks usually wore chains merely for decoration). This new situation of escalated violence led him to rethink the ideology of punk (Michalak 2007, 41), especially as incidents of criminal behavior (fights, brawls) led to manslaughter taking place in front of clubs playing punk music. Since the victims were usually fans of punk, under these circumstances some bands like Dezerter decided to refrain from performing (Grabowski 2010, 83–84). It needs to be added that the environment in which punk bands lived and worked was not safe either, as a few musicians were killed, like Leniwy (Lazy) from Zwłoki, while the death of Kucharz (Cook) from Sedes still remains “unexplained” (Michalak 2007, 49).

Who Was Afraid of Irony? Censors Contesting the dreary political and economic reality and thus critiquing the system, Polish punk bands needed to resort to various methods of elusion as they were subjects of censorship. However, as Robert Darnton (2014) rightly argues, when the state decides about the suitability of the artistic content, the overall consequences of imposing these restrictions

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can never be foreseen and may result in unpredictable, even surprising tactics employed by the artists. For example, the band Poerocks dealt with censorship in a rather naïve yet effective way by showing authorities different lyrics than those that it actually planned to perform (Michalak 2007, 38). Generally, Polish punk musicians who refused to yield to the system got around it by employing various strategies, including the restitution of irony. Indeed, one traditional definition of irony implies “saying one thing and meaning another,” suggesting the distance “between the said word and meant sense” (Finlay 1988, 11). The monopoly of power was thus threatened by the means of presenting a complicated tangle of motives in a new light, with music being “the ultimate … communicator, transcending language, barriers and undermining censorship unlike any other medium of protest” (Byerly 2013, 230). The determination to work within the system and avoiding unpleasant consequences when condemning it often prompted punk bands to resort to irony as an effective tool of resistance.

Why Irony: No Irony Without Context In the West “there is abundant evidence to suggest that the equating of punk with protest was indeed an after-the-fact form of justification for the style” (Jackson, 2013). However, in Poland early punk bands, as well as other musicians and activists involved in such protest movements as Pomarańczowa Alternatywa (Orange Alternative) or anarchistic Ruch Społeczeństwa Alternatywnego (Movement of Alternative Society) or Federacja Anarchistyczna (Anarchic Federation), resorted to irony as a tool of resistance. Due to its appliance, difficult topics were facilitated (Hutcheon 1994, 26). This irony was of referential character (Finlay 1988, 22), in other words, its verbalization was heavily dependent on context, and, in this case, was directed at dissatisfaction with a painfully inefficient economic situation and sociopolitical system. It is “by virtue of context the irony exceeds the naming function and cannot be confined to word-thing or a word-concept dyad. It goes beyond strict binary opposition” (ibid., 23). In acts of jaded cynicism, explicit ridicule, and subversions of dominant norms, musical styles such as punk “might register as protest and the discursive and ideological commitments that have encouraged punk commentators to read the music, often against the grain, as protest” (Jackson 2013, 159). Although poking fun in the case of Polish punk may have seemed disempowering, punk, in fact, proved its role as a crucial and meaningful tool of contestation (Yurchak 2006, 277).

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While generally adapting two strategies, either overidentification with the system and its norms or their decontextualization in a new, unexpected way (Yurchak 2006, 252), Polish punk bands were contesting the social injustice, economic chaos, and feeling of hopelessness that seemed to engulf their country. Hence punk music became interpreted as a form of resistance against unsuccessful government policies, with irony serving as a “satiric weapon” (Thompson 1948, 5; see also Berland 1969, 742) that took the place of real, grassroots opposition in a closed political system. Its value cannot be then measured as “a commodity of its own right” (Hutcheon 1994, 28). Determined to weaken the communistic regime as its nation’s ideological backbone, Polish punk created its own, somehow radical in its simplicity, black-and-white world. The discrepancy between the existing reality and the parallel one, defined through its negation, was portrayed as a chasm difficult (impossible?) to cross. It was the use of irony that helped to present the current Polish situation in this distorted mirror, enabling young people to comprehend the dismaying incompatibility between utopian promises made by the government and the actual state of affairs, and finally perhaps even facilitated their awakening to undertake further, more radical actions to change the situation. The irony of the situation was, however, that the rhetoric of the Cold War was already internalized by the young people adhering to punk ideals: their songs aimed against the regime were deeply embedded into the discourse. And perhaps—again quite ironically—this cultural phenomenon constituted the common plane for the musicians and their fans, as well as their adversaries, enabling an instant understanding of the ironic message conveyed by the Polish punk bands of the 1980s.

Notes



1. On the problem of “ironic consciousness” in Polish punk, see also Anna G. Piotrowska, “Ironic Consciousness’ in the Early Polish Punk Music,” in Turner (2015, 131–143). 2. For example, the events between 1987 and 1991 taking place in Baltic countries such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania leading to regaining their independence from the Soviet rule are known as part of the Singing Revolution. 3. In cases when the actual irony is missed, its existence may be sensed by the listeners, commentators, and critics. 4. “Tak jak punk nie wyglądał nikt.… Było to oświadczanie: jestem poza kontrolą systemu. Punk oznaczał dewastację istniejącego stanu rzeczy” (Michalak 2007, 5).

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5. In his book Piotr Kulesza (2011, 137) discusses why Polish punk can be, in his opinion, understood as an anti-Christian movement, resorting to jeers and taunts while scoffing religious issues. 6. The name alludes to the Cold War obsession with the possibility of air raids and taking necessary precautions against them. 7.  “W całym kraju jest odnowa, rządzić będzie władza nowa. Wszędzie pierdolą o niej różne chuje, kto tej odnowy potrzebuje” (Grabowski 2010, 213). 8. Budujesz faszyzm przez nietolerancję, Budujesz system przez ignorancję. 9. “[P]rzyszło mnóstwo ludzi, a przecież nie można rozwieszać plakatów” (Many people came, despite the ban on distributing posters). 10.  Polish punk bands followed in the footsteps of their Western predecessors, and would readily destroy their instruments during concerts. Unfortunately, some groups, like Poerocks, would smash their guitars, forgetting that buying new ones was not that easy in Poland at that time. See Michalak (2007, 38). 11.  For example it was already funnily portrayed in 1971 comedy film directed by Tadeusz Chmielewski entitled Nie lubię poniedziałku (I don’t like Monday). 12.  “Punk. Kolejna moda przywleczona z daleka przez i na użytek znudzonych, sfrustrowanych i wyalienowanych, znudzonych ogromem wiedzy, jaką posiedli przez osiem lat podstawówki, sfrustrowanych perspektywą pracy i wyalienowanych z rodzin tyrających na chleb powszedni. We wrocławskim krajobrazie zaczęli być widoczni mniej więcej dwa lata temu” (Michalak 2007, 9).

References Ash, Timothy Garton. 2002. The Polish Revolution. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Austern, Linda Phyllis. 1985–1986. “Sweet Meats with Sour Sauce: The Genesis of Musical Irony in English Drama After 1600.” The Journal of Musicology 4, no. 4: 472–490. Ballinger, Robin. 2005. “Sounds of Resistance.” In The Global Resistance Reader, edited by Louise Amoore, 421–436. London: Routledge. Barbalet, Jack M. 1985. “Power and Resistance.” The British Journal of Sociology 36, no. 4: 531–548. Berland, Ellen. 1969. “The Function of Irony in Marston’s Antonio and Mellida.” Studies in Philology 66: 739–755. Bohrer, Karl Heinz. 2005. Nagłość [Suddeness]. Translated by Krystyna Krzemieniowa. Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa. Bonds, Mark Evan. 1991. “Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the Origins of Musical Irony.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 44, no. 1: 57–91.

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Booth, Wayne C. 1974. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Byerly, Ingrid Bianca. 2013. “What Every Revolutionary Should Know: A Musical Model of Global Protest.” In The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman, 229–247. New York: Routledge. Colebrook, Claire. 2004. Irony. New York: Routledge. Dąbrowska, Anna. 1983. “Daleko od Woodstock” [Far Away from Woodstock]. Non Stop 10, no. 133 (October): 17. Darnton, Robert. 2014. Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature. New York: W. W. Norton. Dettmar, Kevin J. H. 2006. “‘Authentically Ironic’: Neoconservatism and the Backlash.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 39, no. 1: 134–144. Egan, Kieran. 1997. The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ekiert, Grzegorz, and Jan Kubik. 1999. Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989–1993. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Elleström, Lars. 2002. Divine Madness: On Interpreting Literature, Music and the Visual Arts. Lewisburg, PA and London: Bucknell University Press. Finlay, Marike. 1988. The Romantic Irony of Semiotics: Friedrich Schlegel and the Crisis of Representation. Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Furst, Lilian R. 1984. Fictions of Romantic Irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grabowski, Krzysztof. 2010. Dezerter: poroniona generacja [Deserter: A Miscarried Generation]. Warsaw: Kayax Music/“Agora”. Hollander, Jocelyn A., and Rachel L. Einwohner. 2004. “Conceptualizing Resistance.” Sociological Forum 19, no. 4: 533–554. Hutcheon, Linda. 1994. Irony’s Edge: the Theory and Politics of Irony. London and New York: Routledge. Jackson, Travis A. 2013. “Falling Into Fancy Fragments: Punk, Protest, and Politics.” In The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman, 157–170. New York: Routledge. Kasprzycki, Remigiusz. 2013. Dekada buntu: Punk w Polsce i krajach sąsiednich w latach 1977–1989 [The Decade of Rebelion: Punk in Poland and Neighbouring Countries in the Years 1977–1989]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Libron. Kulesza, Piotr. 2011. Muzyczna i piśmiennicza twórczość antychrześcijańska w polskiej kulturze punk i jej krytyka [Musical and Written Anti-Christian Creativity in Polish Punk Culture and Its Critique]. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza “Atut”—Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe. Lesiakowski, Krzysztof, Paweł Perzyna, and Tomasz Toborek. 2004. Jarocin w obiektywie bezpieki [Jarocin in the Pictures of Security Service]. Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu.

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Marciniak, Marta. 2015. Transnational Punk Communities in Poland: From Nihilism to Nothing Outside Punk. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Michalak, Jakub. 2007. Nie będę wisiał ukrzyżowany: 30 lat punk rocka na Dolnym Śląsku: ludzie, teksty, inspiracje, kapele [I Will Not Hang Crucified: 30 Years of Punk in Lower Silesia: People, Texts, Inspirations, Bands]. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut—Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe. Moreno, Jairo. 2003. “Subjectivity, Interpretation, and Irony in Gottfried Weber’s Analysis of Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ Quartet.” Music Theory Spectrum 25, no. 1: 99–120. Muecke, Douglas D. 1982. Irony and the Ironic. London: Methuen. Reynolds Thompson, Alan. 1948. The Dry Mock: A Study of Irony in Drama. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Robinson, David Alexander. 2013. “Anger Is a Gift: Post-Cold War Rock and the Anti-capitalist Movement.” In The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman, 198–210. New York: Routledge. Rose, Margaret A. 1995. Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-modern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rzewuski, Jerzy A. 1978. “Brytyjski rock A.D. 1978” [British Rock A.D. 1978]. Jazz 9, no. 265: 14–15. Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Simons, Thomas W., Jr. 1993. Eastern Europe in the Postwar World. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Skiba, Krzysztof, Jarosław Janiszewski, and Paweł Koñjo Konnak. 2011. Artyści, wariaci, anarchiści: opowieść o gdańskiej alternatywie lat 80-tych [Artists, Idiots, Anarchists: The Story of the Gdańsk Alternative Movement of the 1980s]. Warsaw: Narodowe Centrum Kultury. Sobolewski, Krzysztof. 1978. “Nowy styl punc” [The New-Style punc]. Kurier Polski 277/6434, 17 December. Turner, Katherine L. 2013. “Sonic Opposition: Protesting Racial Violence Before Civil Rights.” In The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman. New York: Routledge. ———. 2015. This Is the Sound of Irony: Music, Politics and Popular Culture. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. White, Stephen. 2001. Communism and Its Collapse. London: Routledge. Wierzbicki, Marek. 2012. “The Phenomenon of the Youth Political Opposition in Poland in the Years 1980–1990 and Its Initial Interpretation.” In Anticommunist Resistance in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Peter Jašek, 408–425. Bratislava: Ustav Pamati Naroda. Yurchak, Alexei. 2006. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 8

Mediating Alternative Culture: Two Controversial Exhibitions in Hungary During the 1980s Juliane Debeusscher

Making Art Visible Through Information, and Vice Versa The wide range of unofficial or alternative artistic practices developed in the Eastern bloc during the Cold War can by no means be embraced as a homogeneous set. The diversified map of artistic experiments and scenes that arises from a close observation of the region contradicts, in fact, the idea of a single culture, identifiable today under general rubrics such as “Eastern European art,” or “art in Communist countries.” Differences were marked indeed in both spatial and temporal terms. First, the states belonging to the Soviet sphere of influence were marked by historical, political, and cultural coordinates that largely bypassed the shared experience of state socialism. Those specificities were of great importance for the framing and development of unofficial art in each national context.1 Second, if we examine the relation between alternative

J. Debeusscher (*)  University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_8

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culture and communist authorities—in other words, the degree of repression that nonconventional artists and cultural practitioners suffered—the idea of a regular progression in time bridging, for example, the dark times of Stalinism to the height of liberalization in the 1980s, promptly proves to be inaccurate. The whole Cold War period alternates in fact between episodes of harsh repression and relaxation, with the timing and duration of such episodes differing for each national scene. Such spatially and timely temporally based differences turn any attempt to build a general overview of unofficial cultural practices in the Eastern bloc into a delicate proposal. We can hardly compare, for example, the harsh repression suffered by artists in Czechoslovakia during the normalization period that followed 1968, with the rather liberal ambiance that the Hungarian neo-avant-garde enjoyed at that same moment; in the same way that the cultural sphere in Poland after the imposition of martial law in December 1981 has little in common with the situation of the art scene in Hungary, which somewhat took advantage of the growing inconsistency of official policy. But neither can Hungary, as we shall see, be described as a state in which unofficial culture could freely develop; it was under constant surveillance and subject to the whims of the changing cultural policy. Besides the importance of taking the specificity of national and local contexts into account, it is imperative to replace alternative cultural practices within a broader setting, which includes the contacts and connections established across national and bloc divisions. On one hand, since the doctrine of socialist realism ceased to be imposed by communist leaderships as an aesthetic guideline in the late 1950s, the attitude of the authorities toward nonconventional artistic production increasingly relied on a series of entangled, fluctuating national, regional, and international interests. On the other hand, transnational exchanges— through networks of communication or artistic collaboration like the International Mail Art Network, for example, had a great influence on the increasing visibility of unofficial culture not only within the Eastern bloc but also far beyond the boundaries of the Iron Curtain. Keeping those aspects in mind is particularly important if we seek to challenge the perspective of a purely antagonistic East-West relationship and a hermetically closed Eastern realm.2 Focusing most particularly on Hungary during the 1980s, this essay examines the relation between its unofficial art scene and the means through which artistic activities and the social and political circumstances

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of art production were reported and publicly disclosed. To do so, it relies on two cases: the exhibitions Hungary Can Be Yours (1984), organized by the artist György Galántai at Budapest’s Young Artists Club, and The Fighting City (1987), planned by the artist group Inconnu in a private apartment, also in the Hungarian capital. Both exhibitions were censored by communist authorities, and this intervention gave rise to a wide range of reactions on the part of many, including artists, intellectuals, journalists, and dissidents, from Hungary and abroad. They were reported most particularly in the Hungarian samizdat press and by several Western media organizations.3 Questioning the role that information and mediation played in the visibility and public acknowledgment of Hungarian alternative culture over the 1980s, this essay presents the following hypothesis: The period spanning the late 1970s–1989 was marked by the implementation by Hungarian artists and cultural agents of strategies aiming at giving greater visibility to artistic practices that hadn’t enjoyed public exposure so far. This situation, I suggest, contrasted with the previous conditions of existence of unofficial art, which had mostly developed at the margins of public and institutional space (Forgács 2008). In fact, a significant part of the progressive, experimental artistic practices that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s happened in conditions of isolation and withdrawal, not only as a consequence of the state’s repressive attitude, but also as a way to avoid self-censorship, ironically designated by Miklós Haraszti (1988) as a “progressive” form of censorship, characteristic of Central European post-totalitarian regimes. This shift toward greater visibility in the artistic and cultural sphere ran parallel to the growth of oppositional movements of political and civil nature in Central Europe. Either individually or collectively, these movements pointed to the inconsistencies of Soviet-type political and economic policies and asked communist leaders to meet their obligations toward society. The signature of the Final Act of the Helsinki Accords, in 1975, was of crucial importance for the consolidation of such movements and the implementation of new modes of resistance against state control and censorship. In particular, the agreement’s famous “Third Basket” offered them a solid argument for pressuring communist signatories to revise their government’s attitude about human rights.4 It legitimized the public naming and shaming of those regimes that did not honor their commitment to “human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.”5

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The media played a crucial role in this process of public denunciation. On one hand, political samizdat publications in the East composed important platforms of utterance and (semi-)visibility for nonauthorized discourses and representations, pointing regularly to the surveillance and repression under which citizens from Central and Eastern Europe lived their daily lives. On the other hand, news agencies and periodicals in the West, as well as Western radios broadcasting in communist territories— like Radio Free Europe and the BBC—provided information on this situation to a broader audience. Numerous studies have reported the use of public divulgation and denunciation by political activists and dissidents, especially from the Hungarian democratic opposition; however, the implementation of such strategies by artists—or in relation to artistic events—has rarely been addressed.6 This is particularly surprising if we accept the fact that political and cultural realms were not really separated but rather met in what the Hungarian sociologist Elemér Hankiss designated as the “Second Society.” In fact, the actors belonging to what Hankiss described as a dimension of social existence governed by a different set of organizational principles shared the same aspirations to autonomy, freedom of opinion and expression, and political pluralism (Hankiss 1990, 87).

Resistance Through Informality: Hungary Can Be Yours From Collaborative Publication to Exhibition Conceived by Hungarian artist György Galántai, Hungary Can Be Yours was, initially, the theme for the fifty-first issue of Commonpress, an arts assembling magazine, with contributors from around the world, conceived by Polish artist Pawel Petasz.7 As is customary in publications based on collaboration, the artists were invited to submit an artistic contribution of their own choosing or, in the case of issues devoted to a theme, one related to that subject matter. In this particular case, Galántai proposed the theme “Hungary Can Be Yours!/International Hungary” (Magyarország a tiéd lehet!/Nemzetközi Magyarország). György Galántai has been an important figure in the Hungarian art scene since the early 1970s: not only as a prolific artist, but also as a tireless initiator of artistic events and collaborative projects. These include the cycle of exhibitions and performances organized in his Studio Chapel

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in the small locality of Balatonboglár, between 1970 and 1973, as well as various collective exhibitions of Mail Art over the 1980s. Galántai also cofounded the Artpool Archive with his wife, Júlia Klaniczay, in 1979, and both edited several cultural samizdats, providing Hungarian artists with news on cultural production and events in Eastern and Western Europe at a moment when such information was not easily available.8 Many of these activities and projects relied on the International Mail Art Network, of which Galántai understood well the potential for artistic exchange and creation.9 Since the 1960s, and with a particular expansion over the 1970s, creative use of mail by artists from a large range of countries and regions around the world enabled them to communicate and share artistic projects across national boundaries. If artists in the West—especially the United States and Western Europe—saw in it an opportunity to bypass the institutional grip on artistic production and set alternatives to art-market structures, the use of the postal system had a very different meaning and function for their counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe. For the latter, Mail Art offered, in fact, an opportunity to elude the system of authoritarian control and in so doing, it fulfilled the existential function of an escape valve (see Berswordt-Wallrabe et al. 1996). As Jasmina Tumbas (2012, 90) notes, “Mail art and samizdat publications expanded artists’ communication by means of metonymy, conveying corporeal sovereignty among artists across geographical boundaries.” In fact, in a context where nonconventional artistic practices remained under strict surveillance, artists recovered a feeling of artistic and social existence by projecting themselves into those pieces of paper, often the only part of themselves allowed to travel without restriction (see Röder 1996). Sent to Galántai’s list of extensive contacts from the International Mail Art Network with a request for further dissemination, the first announcement and call for participation in Hungary Can Be Yours was a simple letter-size sheet illustrated with a portrait of György and Júlia Galántai, holding a map of Hungary.10 In line with Mail Art’s leading principles of “no jury, no return,” the short text below the portrait stated that “every material related to Hungary [would] be reproduced,” and it recommended that the participants register their mail in order to ensure its delivery at Galántai’s personal address. Once received, contributions would be assembled by the editor—Galántai himself—and reproduced, before being distributed through the same mail network.

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This initial plan changed when Antal Vásárhelyi, artistic director of Budapest’s Young Artists Club (Fiatal Művészek Klubja), offered Galántai the opportunity to exhibit the magazine contributions in his space. This proposal enabled the inclusion of tridimensional artifacts—at least for Hungarian artists, since foreign participants remained limited by the conditions and costs of the mail service—and the publication of the Commonpress issue as an exhibition catalogue. Galántai accepted, and a new call for participation was put into circulation, which fixed the opening to 27 January 1984. In total, 110 artists from both sides of the Iron Curtain mailed their contributions to the Hungary Can Be Yours magazine issue-turned-exhibition, or brought it personally to the organizer. The Young Artists Club was a state institution, affiliated with the Hungarian Communist Youth League (KISZ). Despite its openness to cultural experiments in the 1970s–1980s, which turned it into an important place for the alternative cultural scene, it was also, however, a privileged location for the authorities to monitor this scene—the Club wasn’t immune to control procedures. A few hours before its opening, the exhibition Hungary Can Be Yours was inspected by an official committee including the artists András Baranyai and Adam Kéri (the latter himself a participant in the exhibition), who decreed its banning. Due to the Young Artists Club’s status as a professional organization, Hungary Can Be Yours remained on view for three days, as a private event to which access was reserved for the Club’s members; also, its opening took place despite the official resolution, in keeping with the requirement that only individuals holding an invitation could access the exhibition space. Of course, this last imperative was resourcefully bypassed by most of the visitors, who shared their invitation with others. After three days, the exhibited pieces were removed; since then, they have been conserved in the Artpool Archive. An Unnoticed Event, Until Its Banning We will now examine the media coverage of Hungary Can Be Yours, with a focus on its preparation and the moments that followed its banning. How was the exhibition announced and presented in the media and what other means of communication were used to publicize it? What reactions did the censoring give rise to? What do the exhibition’s media

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coverage and the other forms through which its existence became publicly acknowledged reveal about the alternative cultural sphere and, in particular, about the ways in which information related to it was produced and circulated? Before the news of its banning got out, the existence of Hungary Can be Yours went unnoticed in Hungarian official media, and also in Western and samizdat publications. On one hand, the silence of state-controlled media is not really a surprise; while in previous decades, the activity of artists who did not conform to official expectations was sometimes critically or ironically reported in authorized newspapers or magazines, the situation in the 1980s was different. In fact, the media at that time deliberately ignored unofficial artistic events, following the idea that “he who agrees to being controlled exists” and, conversely, that which doesn’t appear publicly doesn’t exist.11 By minimizing the importance of alternative culture or keeping it invisible to most of the Hungarian society, János Kádár’s decaying regime could maintain the illusion of status quo, crucial for its grip on power. As for the Hungarian “independent”—a euphemistic term for “unauthorized”—press, or samizdat, it must be pointed out that the political publications that reflected the views of the democratic opposition— among them such journals as Beszélő, Hírmondó, and Demokrata— rarely reported on visual arts events or activities, unless they were closely related with political issues and particular episodes of repression. The case of Hungary Can Be Yours was, however, not reported. Information concerning the censored exhibition first filtered into Western media, which had received it through the intermediation of Hungarian sources. On 6 February 1984, the news agency Bibó Press reported the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours. Bibó Press was a Vienna-based agency established by the Hungarian sociologist Zoltán Zsille, who also worked as a correspondent for Radio Free Europe. Zsille had probably been informed about the censoring by a member of the democratic opposition who had attended the opening on 27 January. On 14 February, the Hungarian unit of Radio Free Europe disclosed a report entitled “Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” which cited the Bibó Press source.12 Describing the circumstances under which Hungary Can Be Yours had taken place and speculating on the motives of its interdiction, the report suggested that some specific exhibited works could have influenced the authorities’ reaction:

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The art show had two themes: “International Hungary Seen from the Outside,” which presented the works of foreign artists, and “Hungary Seen from Inside.” One example of the former was a map of Hungary wrapped like chocolate in tinfoil and entitled “Life is Sweet There.” A young Hungarian artist, however, exhibited a map of Europe with the border of Hungary lined in black, its capital, Budapest, not in its proper place but shifted far to Hungary on which the frontier was composed of nails each 20 centimeters long. A third showed Hungary wrapped and tied with a rope, entitled “Committed Literally [“roped” in Hungarian] to the Cause of Socialism.” The traditional friendship between Hungarians and Poles also provided a theme for works in the exhibition. The well-known slogan Hungarian and Poles: two good friends, who fight and drink wine together” was depicted in Polish and beneath it the words “We fight together, 1956–1981!” in Hungarian.13

If we compare the report’s descriptions with the images of the art pieces available in the Artpool Archive, we find out, however, that some of these comments were not totally accurate.14 For instance, one of the pieces mentioned in the report was the erroneous conflation of two distinct ones. The first artwork was a traditional geographical map of Europe, manipulated by the artist: Budapest and Hungary had been relocated in the Soviet Union, leaving a black hole in place of their real location, as if the real Hungarian territory had completely disappeared. The second artwork, probably one of the most discussed in the exhibition, showed Hungary—this time, in its correct location—emerging from a red “sea,” scattered with red nails. The author of both contributions was the Inconnu Group, a collective of artists known for its provocative and politically engaged art. The Radio Free Europe report depicted the group’s members as “young artists who are followers of so-called action art with a political content,” involved in the Mail Art Network and regularly subject to police harassment, in particular, because of their acquaintances with the democratic opposition and the samizdat Beszélő. Inconnu’s contributions to the exhibition were undoubtedly polemical, as they directly alluded to Hungary’s situation, being literally “devoured” by the Soviet Union and submitted to its hegemonic power and authority. Given the group’s participation in Hungary Can Be Yours, the reporter concluded, “It came as no surprise that the authorities disapproved of the art show and closed it.”15 Interestingly, the RFE report also referred to a statement previously made by Inconnu, in which the group affirmed to “consider every kind

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of official atrocity committed for political reasons the concrete form [sic], medium, and manifestation of political art. Political aggressiveness of this type … will be used by it as an art medium and the eventual materials, objects, and documents deriving from it, as art objects.”16 Written in 1982, Inconnu’s “Christmas Manifesto” exalted a strategy that consisted of exposing any kind of official documents issued by the communist administration as artworks. In a context in which social and cultural life were dominated by the single-party system, argued Inconnu, bureaucracy was indeed the last field where art could really exist without retaliation. I will come back later to this strategy, when addressing the case of The Fighting City, organized by Inconnu itself. (Extra-)Official Reactions and International Impact If, as I previously mentioned, the communist authorities remained silent about the Hungary Can Be Yours exhibition, this indifference was, obviously, publicly staged. Extra-officially, Galántai’s movements were constantly monitored by the secret police, as some reports conserved in the State Security Archive attest.17 A curious exception to the authorities’ apparent disregard was noted in the Radio Free Europe report. While the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours had been officially sanctioned, a well-known arts-and-culture reporter from Hungarian Television (Magyar Televízió), György Baló, visited the exhibition accompanied with his crew, who carefully recorded all the exhibited pieces.18 Considering that the broadcast of such images in a public TV program—Baló’s cultural television-magazine Stúdió 84—was highly improbable, what was this filming made for, then? While there is no available clue to its final use, the recording could have been destined to party officials concerned about the event’s impact or, perhaps, it was simply kept in official records as proof of Galántai’s subversive activities, likely to be used at any moment for blackmailing him or justifying any kind of mistreatment (Debeusscher 2011). In either case, the TV crew’s awkward presence at the Young Artists Club confirms the close connection and collaboration between the government apparatus and the media, and the latter’s involvement in control procedures over the life of Hungarian citizens. We have to wait until November 1986 to find another brief reference to the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours in a Helsinki Watch report about the violations of the Helsinki Agreements in Hungary.19

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Here again, the description of the event in the section “Freedom to publish” is a bit distorted, identifying, for example, the exhibition’s organizer as Tamás Molnár, a member of the Inconnu Group. This error highlights the fact that information concerning nonofficial culture in communist states hardly circulated, and when it did, it frequently happened to be twisted by the successive stages of transmission and interpretation it had gone through. Besides the scarcity of primary sources and the difficulty foreign journalists had when trying to access them directly, another explanation for the exhibition’s lack of press coverage is György Galántai’s personal decision not to react openly against the official banning. This reluctance was influenced by his previous experience of being watched and attacked for his artistic and cultural activity in the early 1970s, causing him serious difficulties in his professional and personal life.20 If Galántai sought to avoid repercussions on his personal life by maintaining a low profile while the communists were in power, such a decision can in no way be considered cowardly or passive; it rather reflects the thoughtful choice to keep producing and showing nonconventional art under adverse conditions, despite its prohibition or its limited access to a restricted audience. As this essay will further expose, Galántai has been committed since 1989 to building new contextual and interpretational frames for a large number of artistic productions and events from the communist period, including Hungary Can Be Yours. Before addressing this aftermath, however, I will discuss the case of The Fighting City, an exhibition organized by the Inconnu Group. In the following sections, I will examine the strategies implemented by the members of the group to publicly denounce the machinery of state repression and alert the international community of their situation.

Against Silencing: Public Disclosure—The Fighting City International Announcements for a Forbidden Commemoration Inconnu was founded in the late 1970s in the city of Szolnok, southeast of Budapest. The group, whose name was, in reality, attributed only a few years later, brought together young artists with similar artistic and political interests. It became rapidly known for its provocative happenings and actions, as well as its visual production incorporating national

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motives and references to the history of the struggle for independence in Hungary since the nineteenth century. After Inconnu was banned from Szolnok, some of its members moved to Budapest in the early 1980s and started to work in the capital with other artists who joined the group. If a complete list of Inconnu members cannot be reported, we can at least name its most active representatives once in Budapest: Tamás Molnár, Péter Bokros, and Róbert Pálinkás, who were joined on various occasions by Tibor Philipp and Magdolna Serfőző. Inconnu’s critical stance against Kádár’s regime was manifest not only through its artistic production but also through its relations with the Hungarian democratic opposition. As such, its members were subject to constant harassment, fines, and threats of various kinds. The group produced illustrations for Beszélő and Demokrata, two of the most important political samizdats in Hungary, and it was close to the opposition member György Krassó, veteran of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Although its members were too young to have directly experienced the uprising against the country’s Stalinist leadership, they were particularly attached to this legacy. In view of this background, Inconnu’s decision to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution with an exhibition came as no surprise. The Fighting City—in Hungarian, A Harcoló Város—surged as a commemorative artistic initiative involving Hungarian and international creators, and was planned for October 1986. Unlike that for Hungary Can Be Yours, the call for participation in The Fighting City was diffused throughout the press, during the summer 1986: the Hungarian samizdat press on one hand, and several Western periodical publications on the other. Among them, the New York Review of Books included a small insert in its issue of 14 August 1986 stating, Inconnu, an independent art group, and Arteria, a samizdat publisher in Hungary, are sponsoring a fine arts competition to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The theme of the competition is: The Fighting City.

It specified that works of any dimension and technique were admitted, like for György Galántai’s exhibition. Artists could send their contributions to either Tamás Molnár, Péter Bokros, or Róbert Pálinkás from Inconnu, or to the samizdat editor Jenő Nagy and the art critic Sándor Szilágyi, whose postal addresses were openly displayed. According to the

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call, artists could sign with their real name or, in order to prevent repressive measures against them, use a working name. Also, the samizdat publisher ABC would issue an album for the occasion. Within the general timeframe of the 1980s in Hungary, 1986 was a particularly rough year for the members of the Hungarian opposition and for any citizen involved in non-officially sanctioned activities. Several reasons explain this situation. In the first place, the year was marked by the rebound of official actions against dissidence, which had been previously impeded, or even suspended, in the wake of the CSCE Cultural Forum held in Budapest in October–November 1985.21 This international event actually forced Hungarian authorities to moderate their attitude and show—at least on the surface—benevolence with regard to unofficial cultural and political practices in their country. This seeming liberality went to the point of letting an extra-official Alternative Cultural Forum, organized by the International Helsinki Federation and the Hungarian democratic opposition, be held.22 Once the international conference ended, the Hungarian leadership abandoned any self-restraint and its politics of harassment and repression resumed their course. Second, the year 1986 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. In order to prevent the democratic opposition, as well as artists and common citizens, from commemorating the event, the Hungarian leadership hardened its position and strengthened the surveillance of any individual suspected of carrying out potentially critical activities. On 1 September 1986, the first “press law” in the history of the Hungarian People’s Republic entered into force. It stipulated the rights and duty of the press, insisting on its mission of providing “true, precise and timely information” and avoiding views that would contradict “international interests, or the rights and legitimate interest of the citizens and legal entities, or public morals” (Green 1990, 246). Following the institution of this new legal framework, various members of the opposition—many of whom participated in illegal press activities, working as either editors, contributors, or simple diffusers of anti-government viewpoints—had their houses searched during September and were heavily fined for being in possession of unauthorized press material. Among them was the editor of ABC press Jenő Nagy, who collaborated with Inconnu in the production of The Fighting City’s exhibition catalogue. Because of the new repressive measures, which included also a more stringent monitoring of the national postal service, very few works had reached Inconnu by the end of September 1986. On 7 October, the

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group sent out another announcement through the Hungarian October Cultural and Information Centre, a news agency set up in London by the Hungarian dissident György Krassó, who had immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1985.23 The announcement stated the following: “There is a reason to suppose that some of the artworks sent through the mail were never delivered by orders of the authorities.” Denouncing the threats received by Inconnu, whose members had been “told that they would be banned from Budapest if they were to go ahead with the exhibition scheduled to open in October,” it fixed a new date for receiving the contributions and specified that all the collected works would be put up for auction to benefit the SZETA (Szegényeket Támogató Alap [Fund to Support the Poor]), an illegal organization created in 1979 to fight against poverty in Hungary, the existence of which was denied by the government. Speaking Out: Mediated and Direct Reactions to Censorship The announcement was representative of Inconnu’s determination to speak out and make a broader audience aware of the illegitimate barriers posed against their project. To do so, it disclosed several assets. Listing the names of the artists from whom it had received a contribution, Inconnu invited those “whose name [did] not appear on the list above to make an official complaint to [the] Hungarian Embassy in her or his country.”24 With this recommendation, Inconnu sought to strike the regime through its foreign diplomacy, a major player in Cold War’s power games. The group played then another crucial card, disclosing the names of four important personalities designated as the sponsors of The Fighting City: British journalist Timothy Garton Ash, Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš, Hungarian writer and dissident György Konrád, and American critic and writer Susan Sontag. Inconnu assumed that the involvement of such eminent figures, who were engaged in favor of Eastern European dissidence or involved themselves in oppositional activities (as was Konrád, the only one still residing within the Eastern bloc), would help to rouse international public support and, possibly, inhibit state-sanctioned actions against The Fighting City. It is not easy, however, to measure the real impact of Inconnu’s strategic use of information against the Hungarian authorities. Did such public announcements influence their behavior? The only clear evidence of awareness and concern regarding the group’s activities rests in the

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consistent record conserved in the State Security Archive, which attests to the police’s constant monitoring of Inconnu’s members.25 On the other hand, there is no doubt that Inconnu’s second announcement alerted Western journalists to its plight, and they, in turn, reported on the situation. In The Spectator, Jessica Gwynne (1986) observed, The situation of the Hungarian artist is in one way less happy than that of his Czech or Polish counterpart. For his work has the backing of no organised attempt to restore the social order to which it refers, Hungary has neither a mass movement of opposition, in the manner of Solidarity, nor an institution like Charter 77, devoted to the maintenance of law and to the defence of society against the apparatus. Nor has it any strong Catholic or Evangelical ties. Art cannot be seen therefore as one part of a general effort to legalise opposition. Official propaganda notwithstanding, this makes Hungary not the most, but one of the least disposed of East European societies to reform itself from within.26

Referring most particularly to the case of The Fighting City and its thwarting by the authorities, the article pointed at the inner contradictions of late-socialist post-totalitarian regimes: Unlike the Czech or Polish authorities, those who hold power in Hungary do not usually imprison their fractious citizens. However, the group [Inconnu] which dared to invite their Western colleagues to join with them in remembering the humiliations of their country will be punished in a more subtle way…. Last week they were threatened with expulsion from Budapest should they try to publish photographs of the work that was sent to them. Meanwhile we should perhaps join with them in questioning the propaganda which presents the Hungarian experiment as the human face of communism. (ibid.)

The comments in this article are worth bearing in mind, since large and documented articles concerning the living and working conditions of artists under communist rule are rather unusual. Gwynne questioned directly the image of liberality and openness the Hungarian regime tried to spread abroad, allowing The Spectator’s broad readership to become aware of a situation and a context rarely tackled in Western mainstream media (see also The Economist [1986]).

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Meanwhile, the opening of The Fighting City was fixed on 28 January 1987 in the apartment of Inconnu member Tibor Philipp, in Budapest. The event and its location were kept secret as long as possible, in order to avoid any interference from the authorities. Despite these measures, the police searched Philipp’s place a few hours before the opening. The officers confiscated all the art pieces, along with other samizdat publications and printing material, the presence of which exposed Philipp to legal proceedings for violation of the law and possession of illegal material. The opening nonetheless took place, with no art on display. In their introductory speeches to the vanished exhibition, Tamás Molnár and Robert Pálinkás, SZETA’s cofounder Ottilia Solt, as well as the art historian Sándor Radnóti vehemently denounced the police intervention. Soon after, Molnár’s speech and some extracts from Radnóti’s were reproduced in the samizdat Demokrata (1987). Both didn’t hesitate to compare the aspiration for greater civic and artistic freedom at that time with the struggle for independence and sovereignty waged by the 1956ers. The works presented here, declared Molnár, have a common message expressed in various forms—the commemoration of the Hungarian people and their love of freedom. Modern political inquisitors of our age do their best to fight lasting and universal ideas of mankind. In the ruthless experimental furnace of Marxist ideology people, periods, events, objects and works of art are burnt, annihilated forever.… The heresy of persecuted art lies exactly in its concrete, activating truth and radiating sovereignty. Thus it is clear why modern inquisitors have persecuted with such greatest fervour the works presented here. By their attitude they spat in the face of international cultural relationships, and of exchange and free encounters of art and ideas. (Demokrata 1987, 31/Roundtable: Digest of the Independent Hungarian Press 1987, 29–31)

Molnár touches upon the same sore point as does Gwynne’s (1986) article in The Spectator: the double standards applied by the Hungarian leadership with respect to human rights. On one hand, Kádár’s regime was bound to comply with its commitment to the Helsinki Agreements; on the other hand, it maintained the same heavy grip on anyone expressing a critical viewpoint, as the fate of The Fighting City confirmed.

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Appearance Through Information Channels We should now examine the motives behind the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City. At a time when the Hungarian leadership was striving to show a liberal face, what could justify the closing of the exhibitions and even, in the case of The Fighting City, the complete destruction of its artworks? Two main factors probably motivated such strong reactions. First, the events’ connection to the idea and representation of a national identity (expressed in cultural, historical, and social terms) at odds with the official communist narrative. On one hand, György Galántai’s invitation to reflect freely on the idea of “Hungary” couldn’t help produce specific associations, starting with those of Hungary as a vassal state of the Soviet Union. Even if most of the contributions didn’t disclose explicit political content, Hungary Can Be Yours undoubtedly offered a fragmented and disarticulated vision of the country, contradicting the vision of a strong and cohesive collective body promoted by the communist regime. The heterogeneous corpus of artifacts weakened this myth of unanimity, revealing its cracks. To aggravate the case, the exhibition included a high number of foreign artists, some of them referring explicitly to the authoritarian nature of the Hungarian regime.27 On the other hand, The Fighting City commemorated the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, considered a counterrevolution and excluded from all official narratives. As such, the authorities saw the exhibition as an illegal event, displaying hostile views. Given that all the works included in The Fighting City were destroyed after their confiscation, their formal appearance and contents can be restituted only through a unique record: the photographs made to illustrate the exhibition’s catalogue. Seized by the police, they nevertheless escaped destruction and are still conserved today in the State Security Archive.28 Through a large variety of formats and techniques—paintings, drawings, objects, photographs, and a short story, among others—artistic contributions to The Fighting City declined 1956-related motifs like tanks, soldiers, grids and barbed wire, dead bodies, the cipher ’56, the Hungarian flag, and the tricolor rosette recalling patriotic republican ideals. While Hungarian artists often insisted on the situation of confinement and captivity, foreign participants—from the United States, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Yugoslavia—generally focused on the uprising’s violent crushing by the

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Soviet troops. The latter’s empathetic vision, in part influenced by the event’s coverage in the Western media of the 1956 events and their aftermath, was totally unacceptable for the regime and could explain the violent response, leading to complete destruction of the artifacts. This aspect is directly related to the second factor of repression: the organizers’ involvement in—and use of—international networks of communication and solidarity. In fact, besides the exhibitions’ highly sensitive topics, what most probably aggravated the authorities’ reaction in both cases was the involvement of non-Hungarian—and, most particularly, Western—artists, reacting on what the regime considered internal and national issues. The recent history of Hungary and its current situation were placed under a critical foreign gaze. Be it by oneself or through the intermediation of an external agent, embodied in this case by foreign artists and intellectuals, as well as information carriers, “becoming public” implies leaving a condition of invisibility and entering a state of appearance. Coined by Hannah Arendt in her seminal essay “The Human Condition,” this expression could especially apply to the singular moment in which those unofficial activities of cultural and political nature in Hungary started to spread out in public, even discretely and through fragile means. The space of appearance, according to Arendt, is “the space where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly … to be deprived of it means to be deprived of reality, which, humanly and politically speaking, is the same as appearance” (Arendt [1958] 1998, 198–199). In a single-party reality like Kádár’s Hungary, appearance and existence (or “reality,” in Arendt’s words) turned to acquire a very close meaning; they relied on visibility, and visibility was strictly conditioned by the possibility to become public. Regarding the case of The Fighting City, we could suggest that its protagonists had entered a state of appearance with Inconnu’s first announcements in the press. This state was confirmed when the news agencies AP, Reuter, and UPI, probably informed by György Konrád and György Krassó, reported the police intrusion at Philipp’s apartment. On 28 January, UPI and Reuter issued two short releases entitled “Hungarian police confiscate dissident art exhibition,” which apparently shared the same source.29 Both recalled the exhibition’s topic and commemorative purpose, mentioning the names of its renowned sponsors. According to UPI, “[D]espite the seizure, more than 70 people arrived

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at Philip’s apartment for the evening exhibit; many of them were members of the Hungarian ‘Democratic opposition.’” Both reports included testimonies from Robert Pálinkás and Tibor Philipp on the threats and persecutions they had faced during the whole process of organizing The Fighting City. The news of the exhibition’s confiscation also appeared in the print press. In a short note for The Independent, journalist Edward Steen expressed his surprise at the authorities’ disproportionate reaction: “Such jumpiness is superficially a mystery,” he wrote, “given the relative official openness about the 1956 ‘counter-revolution’ and the marginal character of the opposition. But the authorities have achieved their high level of control largely through unpredictable reactions to such faint stirrings of opposition” (Steen 1987). The regime’s relative openness prior to this incident didn’t fool anyone, as it did nothing but conceal the authorities’ high concern with the rise of critical stances against their government, as well as the opposition’s increasing visibility. This hidden anxiety regarding unofficial practices, as well as the regime’s constant efforts to prevent their public acknowledgment, was fully exposed after a particular information leak. In March 1987, the secret report of a Politburo session held on 1 July 1986 was leaked to the samizdat press, as well as to publications in the West run by Hungarian emigrés. The confidential report addressed the rise of the opposition and prescribed the regime’s policies with regard to these activities. For the unofficial and independent press, the file’s disclosure was an opportunity to provide “an unusual insight into the Hungarian authorities’ inability to deal with growing oppositional activities” (“Secret Politburo report on opposition published” 1987). In fact, “[a]lthough the document’s authors took great pains to stress that the opposition was small and ineffective,” observed a reporter from Radio Free Europe, “the report’s content and tone betrayed their lack of confidence in dealing with dissent” (ibid.). Making the party’s concern about the spread of dissenting ideas and actions obvious, the document’s leak had a disastrous impact on the regime’s already weakened authority. This particular episode was, again, indicative of the growing inconsistencies of Kádár’s politics due to its double agenda; it also revealed the strategies of marginalization implemented against the fraction of the Hungarian society who aspired to greater freedom and pluralism. As the journalist from Radio Free Europe unequivocally concluded, “The leaking of

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the Poliburo report has done little for Hungary’s reputation as a more ‘liberal’ communist country.… The Hungarian opposition is clearly a problem that the authorities continue to be incapable of dealing with consistently or effectively” (ibid.). Significantly, The Fighting City was cited as an example of the leadership’s continuous changeover between two opposite poles: On the one hand, a new intolerance toward the opposition could be seen, for example, in the closure by the police in January 1987 of an exhibition of art about the 1956 uprising called The Fighting City…. On the other hand, this year’s spontaneous demonstrations, in Budapest on March 15 were the first in a long time not to be broken up by force. It seems that the authorities still feel the need to present an image of moderation to the West. (ibid.)

The information leak happened a few weeks after the seizure of The Fighting City. Inconnu had already started to send letters of complaint to the officials in charge of their case, with copies to the samizdat and Western press. In a letter dated 1 February 1987, the group exhorted the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party Pál Lénard to restitute the confiscated art pieces. The whole letter was published several months later by the magazine Index on Censorship (1987), with the title “No ‘Glasnost’ in Hungary.” Its tone, imperative and virulent, reflected the group’s exasperation. The intervention against The Fighting City was called an “act of folly,” which “offend[ed] and disturb[ed] public opinion everywhere in the world.” Hungary’s obligations toward human rights were implicitly evoked to put the authorities under pressure. With a harsh critique of the Stalinist spirit that still haunted art institutions, the letter compared the Hungarian communist regime to other political systems that were, supposedly, its exact ideological opposite: “Such brutal assaults on culture may be carried out by lawless national socialists, mad military dictatorship, hysterical totalitarian regimes but not by liberal institutions of a democratic constitutional state” (ibid., 6). The letter to Lenard is only one of the many communications sent to the authorities by the group; however, it was probably the most diffused in the Western media. Although his requests remained unanswered, Tamás Molnár tirelessly sent letters to the authorities asking for the restitution of the art pieces until 1990, when a laconic answer from a state

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functionary finally informed him that the totality of the material subtracted on 28 January 1987 had been completely annihilated.30

Aftermaths: Reporting on the Exhibitions After 1989 The cases of Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City illustrate the multiple forms and levels of intensity through which censorship was applied in Hungary over the Cold War’s last decade. They also exemplify strategies adopted by artists and their supporters in response to conditions of repression and imposed silence—in particular, the production of information and its public disclosure, relying on independent media from both sides of the Iron Curtain, as well as informal networks of communication and solidarity. In such a context of opacity and retention of information, independent and unofficial information carriers played a crucial role in making controversial and/or nonconventional artistic events more visible, preventing them from being definitely silenced and forgotten. If this essay focuses mainly on the production and diffusion of information about alternative culture during the 1980s, it is legitimate to wonder how the cases of Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City resonated after the political and economic changes of 1989–1991 in the Eastern bloc, and into what historical, social, and artistic narratives were they incorporated, and who were the agents of such reports? To give a full account of this aftermath would require an entire chapter; however, we can briefly expose their central characteristics and the intentionality behind them, which differed in each case. In the case of Hungary Can Be Yours, the system change in Hungary opened a new phase, characterized by the reorganization and release of the exhibition’s pieces and documentation, accordingly with the purpose of the Artpool Archive.31 Along with Júlia Klaniczay, György Galántai orchestrated various reconstructions of Hungary Can Be Yours, integrating new elements of information about the event and its banning.32 The aim of such initiatives was, first, to shed light on the motives behind official censorship and its application and, in a successive phase, to reflect on Hungary Can be Yours’s inscription into art history, both on a global scale and as an event representative of unofficial cultural practices in the former Eastern bloc.33 They also reflected a will of

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self-historicization and, less overtly though, a demand for retroactive justice and recognition. Inconnu’s position regarding The Fighting City was quite distinct and resulted in the exhibition’s loss of visibility after 1989–1990. While, as explained above, the group immediately reacted to censorship by engaging in protests, trying to make the system’s disciplinary and repressive skeleton visible with the means at its disposal—first, by exhibiting the “absence” of art pieces and substituting them with pieces of state bureaucracy and then, by making the facts public through their diffusion in the media—its members abandoned definitely the struggle for the restitution of the pieces in 1990, when it came to light that they had been destroyed. After that moment, the possibility to testify on the exhibition’s history in a postcommunist context was not contemplated by Inconnu, which progressively dissolved and ceased its activity as a group. Facing the dismantlement of the system they had fought hard against, the members pursued their artistic and professional careers individually and adopted different positions along the political spectrum, some of them forming close ties to the nationalist right-wing party Fidesz.34 Hopefully, the cases of Hungary Can be Yours and The Fighting City addressed in this essay bring to light how the public diffusion of information could disrupt, and even possibly challenge, the politics of secrecy and invisibility imposed on alternative culture by communist regimes. The strategies put under scrutiny here largely contributed to the process of becoming visible and public—a process in which Central European cultural and political agents engaged since the late 1970s and over the entire decade of the 1980s. We could also suggest that they may have indirectly influenced subsequent attempts to provide a historical and cultural framework to experimental art, by creating greater awareness of the importance of information and its exchange and circulation in the articulation of a cultural sphere out of the official realm.

Notes

1. The terms “unofficial” and “alternative” used in this essay refer to the range of cultural practices and productions spanning from those that were explicitly forbidden and subject to state censorship, to those whose existence was known and tolerated by the authorities as long as they remained

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marginal and didn’t express explicit anticommunist views. In the context of Hungary and György Aczél’s cultural policy determined by the famous “3T” (referring to the categories of supported, tolerated, and prohibited culture), alternative culture could be either tolerated or prohibited. See Bozóki (2015, 4), Szabó (1997), and Wessely (1993, 166–170). 2. Recent studies and projects have provided significant insights into cultural exchanges within Central-Eastern Europe and within other geopolitical and cultural areas during the Cold War. Among them is Klara KempWelch’s project “Networking the Bloc,” which is soon to be published as a book (2018); and the special section on artist networks in Latin America and Eastern Europe, edited by Klara Kemp-Welch and Cristina Freire, in ArtMargins 1, nos. 2–3 (June–October 2012). See also Bazin et al. (2016), Cseh and Czirak (2018, part 1), Piotrowski (2015), and Stegmann (2007). 3. Part of the sources on Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City cited in this essay was collected thanks to a grant received from the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP, French Ministry of Culture, 2010), which supported the first field research in the following Budapestbased archives: Open Society Archives (OSA Archivum), Artpool Art Research Centre, and the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL). I am particularly thankful to Julia Klaniczay, from Artpool, for sharing key information on both cases during my stay in Budapest and afterward. This writing is the preliminary step in doctoral research developed in the Department of Art History at the University of Barcelona, supported by a predoctoral grant (Spanish Government, Ministry of Economy, 2016–2019) associated with the Research Group “Decentralized Modernities. Art, Politics and Counterculture in the Transatlantic Axis during the Cold War” (HAR2014-53843-P and HAR2017-82755-P). 4. A full version of the Helsinki Declaration is available online: accessed May 2018, http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/osce/basics/finact75.htm. 5. On the strategy of shaming, see Drinan (2001) and Leathermann (2003). 6. On the political opposition in Hungary and Central Europe, see Bozóki (1994), Falk (2002), Schöpflin (1983), and Skilling (1989). 7. Commonpress was conceived and coordinated by Polish artist Pawel Petasz, who delegated the editorship to other artists involved in the International Mail Art Network. Between 1977 and 1990, more than fifty issues were published, embracing a large variety of formats and issues. In 1982, because of the imposition of martial law in Poland and the authorities’ strict control of mail service, Petasz was forced to hand over the coordination to Canadian artist Gerald X. Jupitter-Larsen.

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8. The first aim of the Artpool Archive was to collect and preserve artistic and cultural material of its time. Its archival fund based in Budapest is of crucial importance for researchers whose work focus on artistic production from the late 1970s to today. See Galántai and Klaniczay (2013). 9. Galántai’s detailed biography is available on his personal website, accessed May 2018, http://www.galantai.hu/appendix/biography.html. On the Balatonboglár Chapel episode, see Júlia Klaniczay and Edit Sasvári (eds.), Törvénytelen avantgárd: Galántai György balatonboglári kápolnaműterme 1970–1973 [Illegal Avant-Garde: The Chapel Studio of György Galántai in Balatonboglár 1970–1973], Artpool–Balassi, 2003. 10.  See the page dedicated to Hungary Can Be Yours on Artpool’s website, accessed May 2018, http://www.artpool.hu/Commonpress51/ defaulte.html. See also Debeusscher (2011). On the exhibition, see also Debeusscher (2011), Forgács (2016), and Fowkes and Fowkes (2017). 11.  György Konrád, “Foreword,” to Miklós Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism (New York: Basic Books, 1987), xiii, quoted by Tumbas (2012, 99). 12. “Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” Radio Free Europe report, 25 February 1984. Source: Records of RFE/RL Research Institute at the Open Society Archive in Budapest. Reference: HU OSA 300-8-47, container n. 24. 13. Ibid., 1. 14.  Most of the works can be seen on http://www.artpool.hu/ Commonpress51/defaulte.html, accessed May 2018. 15. “Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” 2. 16. Inconnu, “Christmas Manifesto” (1982), quoted in ibid., 2. Originally published in the samizdat Inconnu. Unknown Underground Line. Actionalistic Journal/Egyes Számú Ismeretlen Földalatti Vonal. Akcionista Folyóirat, no. 2 (Szolnok: Punknown Kiadó, 1982), 72–75. 17.  Galántai’s code name for the authorities was “Festö” (painter) in Hungarian. A number of important documents related to this name were found in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security after 1989. On Hungary Can Be Yours, see the report by the agent “Zoltán Pécsi” on the opening of the exhibition, accessed May 2018, http:// www.artpool.hu/Commonpress51/report.html. 18. “Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” 1. 19. Violations of the Helsinki Accords: Hungary, report for the Helsinki Review Conference in Vienna, US Helsinki Watch Committee, November 1986, 19. 20.  Particularly after the episode of the Balatonboglár Chapel, in 1973, György Galántai was subject to various attempts of intimidation and

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sanctions, and was also directly attacked in the press for his exhibition activities. See the complete events timeline: accessed May 2018, http:// www.artpool.hu/boglar/1971/chrono71.html. 21. Held from 15 October to 25 November 1985, the CSCE Cultural Forum was the first cultural meeting organized in a country of the Warsaw Pact after the Helsinki Agreements of 1975. It gathered delegations from all the thirty-five countries signatories of the agreements to discuss issues of cultural cooperation and exchange. 22. In reaction to the official Cultural Forum and its uncritical agenda, the International Helsinki Federation and the Hungarian democratic opposition planned an Alternative Cultural Forum, involving international participants. During three days, intellectuals, artists, and activists from East and West debated on issues like writers’ integrity and the future of European culture. It is highly probable that Inconnu attended the Forum’s sessions and met some of its key participants like Susan Sontag, Danilo Kiš, and Timothy Garton Ash, who later offered their support of The Fighting City. This first contact could also explain the coverage of The Fighting City in The New York Review of Books, of which Susan Sontag was a frequent contributor. 23.  P. Bokros, T. Molnár, R. Pálinkás, S. Szilágyi, and J. Nagy, “Announcement,” 7 October 1986, released by the Hungarian October Information Centre, London. Source: Records of Index on Censorship, Open Society Archive, Budapest. Reference: HU OSA 301-0-3, no. 165. The same announcement was published in the New York Review of Books, 4 December 1986. 24. Ibid. 25.  Files ÁBTL 4.1 A—2020, ÁBTL 1.11.1 45–3/10/1990 and ÁBTL 3.1.2. M-41752 in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest, are related to The Fighting City. 26. Gwynne (1986), accessed through the Records of RFE/RL Research Institute at the Open Society Archive in Budapest. Reference: HU OSA 300-120-13, no. 48. 27.  Among the example of political allusions, “I think of the courageous Hungarian people, who have to submit to strong overlords and to defend themselves” (from Carlo Pittore, Italy); “Hungarians: STOP the fascism” (from Clemente Padín, Uruguay); or “I love the Hungarian Zoll!” (from Joachim Stange, GDR), referring to the border officials. 28. See Debeusscher (2012) and Sümegi (2010). 29.  “Hungarian police confiscate dissident art exhibition,” January 28, 1987, 20:41 (Reuter) and “Hungarian police confiscate dissident art exhibition,” January 28, 1987, 23:24 (UPI); both from the Records of

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RFE/RL Research Institute at the Open Society Archive in Budapest, Reference: HU OSA 300-120-13, no. 50. 30. ÁBTL 1.11.1 45–3/10/1990, Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest. This late outcome is particularly significant for the fact that the substitution of former communist administration with a new democratic apparatus was far from being immediate in the so-called transition period, and left numerous functionaries in their places for a longer stretch of time. 31. Artistic practices excluded from the official narrative could not be known today without the commitment of individuals (artists, intellectuals, and cultural agents) who collected and archived information on them, as György and Júlia Galántai did with the Artpool Archive (later the Artpool Art Research Institute). Their continuous activity of archiving since the 1970s testifies to their remarkable engagement for the diffusion of information on experimental art within the Eastern bloc and beyond. 32.  The first reconstruction of Hungary Can Be Yours took place in December 1989 at the Young Artists Club, along with a roundtable discussion including some of the individuals involved in the banning in 1984 (Attila Zsigmond, director of Budapest’s Visual Arts Directorate; Tamás Törok, art historian; György Galántai himself, and, as a moderator, the journalist Péter Rosza). In 2000–2001, the exhibition was set again in Budapest (at the exhibition space Artpool P60 and the Centralis Gallery at the Open Society Archive), with an unseen section disclosing secret reports elaborated by State Security agents (see note 23). On this respect, see Tamás Szőnyei, “A szabadság rekonstrukciója” [The Reconstruction of Freedom], in Mancs (Kultúra), 25 October 2001, and Gábor Tölgyesi, “Rekonstruált országimázs” [A Reconstructed Image of the Country], in Magyar Hírlap (Tárlat), 29 October 2001. Successively, works and documents from Hungary Can Be Yours were exhibited at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London (2003) and Switch Room gallery in Belfast (2006). For a complete list of events, see ARTPOOL: The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe, cited in note 10, 81. 33.  In particular, the exhibitions Interrupted Histories (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana Slovenia, 2006) and Museum of Parallel Narratives (MACBA, Barcelona, 2011), both curated by Zdenka Badovinac Organized within the framework of the museums’ consortium L’Internationale, Museum of Parallel Narratives questioned “how the history of art originates,” especially in the former Eastern bloc, where no art system as such existed. 34. So far the most extensive study of Inconnu’s political positioning, shifting from apolitical radicalism to nationalism and populism, has been provided by Kristóf Nagy (2016).

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Archival Sources Artpool Art Research Centre, Budapest Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL), Budapest Open Society Archives (OSA), Central European University, Budapest

References Arendt, Hannah. [1958] 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. First Published 1958 by University of Chicago Press. Bazin, Jérôme, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, and Piotr Piotrowski, eds. 2016. Art Beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe (1945–1989). Budapest: CEU Press. Berswordt-Wallrabe, Kornelia von, Guy Schraenen, and Kornelia Röder, eds. 1996. Mail Art—Osteuropa im internationalen Netzwerk [Mail Art—Eastern Europe in the International Network]. Berlin: Staatliches Museum Schwerin. Bozóki, András. 1994. “Intellectuals and Democratisation in Hungary.” In A New Europe? Social Change and Political Transformation, edited by Chris Rootes and Howard Davis, 149–175. London: UCL Press. ———. 2015. “Counter-Cultural Pluralism: Informal Political Initiatives in Hungary in the 1980s.” Retrieved from Researchgate. Accessed August 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 278034494_Counter-Cultural_Pluralism. Cseh, Katalin, and Adam Czirak. 2018. Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere: Event-Based Art in Late Socialist Europe. Abingdon: Routledge. Debeusscher, Juliane. 2011. “Interview with Artpool Cofounder Júlia Klaniczay.” ARTMargins online (June). ———. 2012. “Information Crossings: On the case of The Fighting City.” Afterall, no. 31 (October): 72–83. Demokrata. 1987. “Egy kiállítás vége/Molnár Tamás és Radnóti Sándor beszéde A harcoló város című kiállítás mognyitoján – az elkóbzás után.” ABC Kiadó, Budapest. No. 1: 20–22. English-language version: “The Fighting City: An Opening Within Empty Walls.” Roundtable: Digest of the Independent Hungarian Press (Budapest) 1, nos. 1 and 2, edited by Gábor Demszky, György Gadó, and Ferenc Kószeg, 29–31. Drinan, Robert F. 2001. The Mobilization of Shame. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. The Economist. 1986. “Hungary for Art.” 25 October. Falk, Barbara J. 2002. The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe: Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings. Budapest: Central European University Press.

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Forgács, Éva. 2008. “Does Democracy Grow Under Pressure? Strategies of the Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde Throughout the Late 1960s and the 1970s.” Centropa 8, no. 1 (January): 36–48. ———. 2016. Hungarian Art: Confrontation and Revival in the Modern Movement. Los Angeles: Doppelhouse Press. Fowkes, Maja, and Reuben Fowkes. 2017. “Eastern Europe Can Be Yours! Alternative Art of the Eighties.” Afterall (September). Accessed June 2018. https://www.afterall.org/online/eastern-europe-can-be-yours-alternativeart-of-the-eighties#.Wx2FN_ZFyM8. Galántai, György, and Júlia Klaniczay, eds. 2013. ARTPOOL: The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe. Budapest: Artpool Art Research Center. Green, Jonathan. 1990. Encyclopaedia of Censorship. New York: Facts on File. Gwynne, Jessica. 1986. “Art in The Fighting City.” The Spectator, 18 October. Hankiss, Elemér. 1990. East European Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haraszti, Miklós. 1988. The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism. London and New York: I.B. Tauris and New Republic. Index on Censorship. 1987. “No ‘Glasnost’ in Hungary.” 16, no. 6 (June): 5–6. Kemp-Welch, Klara. 2018. Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965–1981. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Leathermann, Janie. 2003. From Cold War to Democratic Peace: Third Parties, Peaceful Change and the OSCE. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Nagy, Kristóf. 2016. Aesthetics and Politics of Ressentiment: The Inconnu Group’s Shift Towards National Populism. Master’s thesis, Central European University, Budapest. Piotrowski, Piotr. 2015. “The Global NETwork: An Essay on Comparative Art History.” In Circulation in the Global History of Art, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, 149–166. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Röder, Kornelia. 1996. “Art Today Is the History of Tomorrow (Robert Rehfeldt).” In Mail Art—Osteuropa im internationalen Netzwerk [Mail Art—Eastern Europe in the International Network], edited by Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe, Guy Schraenen, and Kornelia Röder. Berlin: Staatliches Museum Schwerin. Schöpflin, George, ed. 1983. Censorship and Political Communication in Eastern Europe: A Collection of Documents. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Secret Politburo Report on Opposition Published.” 1987. J.R. Radio Free Europe Situation Report. 22 July, pp. 25–28. HU OSA 300-8-47, box 26, folder 1. Skilling, Gordon H. 1989. Samizdat and an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Macmillan Press.

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Steen, Edward. 1987. “Hungary Police Raid 1956 Art Show.” The Independent, 29 January. Stegmann, Petra, ed. 2007. Fluxus East: Fluxus Networks in Central Eastern Europe. Berlin: Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. Sümegi, György. 2010. “Inconnu: A harcoló város/The Fighting City, 1986.” In Állambiztonság és rendszerváltás [The State Security and the Regime], edited by György Gyarmati, 169–210. Budapest: L’Harmattan. Szabó, Miklós. 1997. “Kádár’s Pied Piper.” Hungarian Quarterly 38, no. 147: 91–103. Tumbas, Jasmina. 2012. “International Hungary! György Galántai’s Networking Strategies.” ARTMargins 1, nos. 2–3 (June–October): 9–26. Wessely, Anna. 1993. “Art as Archive.” Budapest Review of Books: A Critical Quarterly 5, no. 4 (Winter): 166–170.

CHAPTER 9

The Cold War Reporters: The Norwegian Foreign-News Journalists and Foreign-News Correspondents, 1945–1995 Jan Fredrik Hovden and Rolf Werenskjold

The Cold War affected the media in many ways, in regard to both domestic and foreign news reporting. The media also played an important role in the development of a Cold War culture in most countries in the period after World War II (Hallin 1989). Even if not every aspect of life during the Cold War was directly linked to it, the conflict had a very deep impact on society and culture. Academic attention, in fact, has been rightly expanded beyond first-hand diplomatic and political events to

J. F. Hovden (*)  Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway e-mail: [email protected] R. Werenskjold  Faculty of Media and Journalism, Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_9

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their representations in the media. In doing so, historians have acknowledged that the public’s notions of the Cold War have come about mostly by way of mass media. As famously noted by Walter Lippman (1922), the pictures in our heads of the world around us is largely mediated by journalists and media coverage, and for events beyond our immediate control, and especially those beyond the reach of local news coverage and outside our nation´s borders, we are traditionally even more dependent on the media to set the agenda of “what goes on.” Studies of the events of “1968,” for example, have demonstrated a reciprocal relationship between media content and the organization of Norwegian foreign-news journalism (Werenskjold 2011, 294–296, 301–358). We will argue in this chapter that a similar relationship existed during the whole Cold War era until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War was the golden age of the Norwegian foreign-news system, and its logic was integral to the establishment, development, status, and inner workings of the Norwegian foreign-news system during this period. In research on the Cold War, foreign-news journalism has mainly been studied on a case-by-case basis as it related to certain news themes or issues in one or several different media. This study asks a different question: who were the journalists who created the foreign media content during the Cold War? In most countries, such a study would at best be a very difficult task. Norway, however, is a small country and foreign journalism has largely been run by a small number of news media and news agencies in the capital and by a small group of journalists. Covering all major categories of Norwegian foreign-news workers—foreign-news editors, foreign-news correspondents abroad, foreign-news reporters, and the journalists in the foreign newsroom at home—our analysis focuses on five years: 1945, 1950, 1965, 1980, and 1995. The year 1945 heralds a new phase of professional news reporting from abroad after the end of World War II, when, after the German occupation, Norway reoriented its prewar foreign policy from being a neutral state to becoming a member of the UN in 1946 and NATO in 1949. The network of loosely connected freelance reporters, stringers, and writers abroad, which characterized the Norwegian foreign news reporting in the 1930s, was in 1945 replaced by a permanent employed professional corps of foreign-news correspondents in the major Norwegian dailies. The correspondents were located in the most important Western allied capitals affecting Norwegian foreign interests. The changes and the expansion of the Norwegian foreign-news

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system during the next forty years followed the development of the Cold War, from its original “East versus West” orientation to its inclusion of a North-South axis in the early 1970s, which reflected the increasing importance of the Third World. The end year 1995 offers a window onto those who worked in the foreign newsrooms at the end of the Cold War, and onto some of the changing characteristics of the new generation of foreign-news workers, suggesting a mainstreaming process in which they became more similar to other journalists. The overall research question—who were the Norwegian foreign-news journalists—involves a series of sub-questions. First, what characterizes them as a social and professional group from the Norwegian population at large and from journalists in general? Is the common portrayal of foreign journalists as members of an urban, social elite accurate in their case? What type of educational background and career paths were common among them? Second, how did such overall characteristics of the corps change in the post-war period? Third, because Norwegian newspapers throughout much of the Cold War were part of the political party press system until it gradually dissolved during the 1970s and 1980s, is it reasonable to ask whether there were any characteristic internal differences related to political affiliations among those who worked in the various foreign newsrooms, and did the extent of such differentiation depend on the media format, such as print press or broadcasting? How did levels of education and extent of work experience differ between those who went abroad as correspondents and those who staffed the foreign journalism newsrooms in Norway? How did the newsroom editors differ from regular foreign-news journalists? Finally, how did the logic of the Cold War infuse the historical development of the corps and system of foreign journalism in Norway?

Research in the Field The existing literature on Norwegian foreign journalism after World War II can—similarly to most countries—be divided in four broad categories. The first is a relatively voluminous correspondent literature written by the journalists and correspondents themselves, representing a huge selection of sources about individual correspondents’ thoughts and experiences abroad. At its best, this literature gives insight into the working conditions and the everyday life of a journalist and into the routines of the editorial processes underlying what ends up as media content (e.g., Johansen 1976; Steinfeld 1982, 1984, 1986).

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The second category is scholarly content analyses of media coverage of major foreign international events in the near and distant past,1 involving organizations like the UN, NATO and the EU (Eriksen 1972; Rasmussen 1986; Allern and Ihlen 2008). This category includes both historical analysis and media studies (Eide and Simonsen 2010). The analyses are usually case studies focusing on the media texts, and are seldom complemented by discussion of the organization of foreign-news journalism, journalists, the editorial processes, or the reality outside the media texts (extra media data). The third category is the literature dealing with news agencies and international news flow. Galtung and Ruge’s renowned article “The Structure of Foreign News” (1965) is an example of this kind of approach. The fourth category is the literature referring to media coverage as a phenomenon and as an explanation of phenomena, but not based on empirical media studies. Most historical overviews fall into this category of studies that consider the media as important, but without situating mass communications within history as an independent actor. In this form of literature, the media’s agenda is often synonymous with public opinion. The media factors or assumed effects are then often used as a residual category, to explain in general the unexplainable without any real empirical studies to back the assumptions. There exists no larger study of Norwegian foreign-news journalists. There are, however, several U.S. studies of foreign correspondents who at various times were stationed in the United States (Lambert 1956; Suh 1971; Mowlana 1972; Ghorpade 1983, 1984a, b; Nair 1991; Willnat and Weaver 2003), and American correspondents abroad. These studies were based on surveys administered to a select group of foreign correspondents in 1955, 1975, 1983, and 1991 (Maxwell 1954, 1956). There are also some European studies, but none of these are studies of the total national system of foreign journalism. Charles C. Self has provided an overview of previous research in this area (Self 2011, 29–44), and Stephen Hess, Peter Gross, and Gerd G. Kopper have provided a broad overview of the foreign correspondent in the role and function of international news reporting (Hess 1996; Gross and Kopper 2011). The Norwegian foreign-news system during the Cold War era has been described and analyzed in terms of the major Norwegian newspapers and broadcasting. Maria Nakken has studied the establishing and development of the Norwegian Broadcasting Company’s

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(NRK) foreign-news correspondent network from 1964 to 2004. Rolf Werenskjold has analyzed how the Norwegian foreign-news system— print and radio/television—evolved through three main phases from 1945 to 1995. The latter study includes the largest Norwegian media organizations with an independent foreign newsroom and correspondents of its own (Werenskjold 2011, 227–258). So far, however, we know very little about the background of the foreign-news journalists and correspondents in the Norwegian media during the Cold War. Our study here has its origin in Werenskjold’s four historical case studies of individual foreign-news journalists (Werenskjold 2006a, b, 2007, 2008) and has been expanded to include data on their colleagues in all the largest foreign newsrooms in Norway during this time. A systematic collection of this information has made it possible to construct a complete overview of the foreign newsroom staff, foreign-news editors, correspondent offices, and foreign-news correspondents for the entire period from 1945 to 1995. After giving an overview of the data and the sources used in its construction, we will suggest the main transformations of the field of foreign news in Norway, focusing first on its formal organization, then on the systematic changes in the corps of foreign journalists. Special emphasis is, here, placed on the reconstruction of Norwegian foreign journalism after the German occupation ended in 1945. Finally, the overall changes and differences in the foreign-news system are discussed in light of the logic of the Cold War.

Data and Method The study follows the French prosopographic tradition. Roughly put, a prosopography is a collective biography of individuals belonging to the same area, based on the comprehensive collection of data—on social origin, educational background, career path, and so forth, often from a wide variety of sources (biographical works, schoolbooks, obituaries, personal interviews, etc.). The main object is not the individuals per se but the systematic history and the structure of the field as a whole. There are many examples of historians working with prosopographies.2 In addition to making it possible to study a historical situation using the logic of the modern survey, the method has also shown itself to be useful when studying groups who tend not to answer questionnaires eagerly—which is a problem often noted in studies of foreign journalists

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(Willnat and Weaver 2003). In sociology, prosopographic analysis is often associated with the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who has published several influential studies (Bourdieu and Saint Martin 1978; Bourdieu 1984). In studies of journalists, however, there are very few examples of works in this methodological vein.3 The main data used in this analysis consist of information on 107 journalists employed in the foreign newsrooms of all the major news publications in Norway covering foreign news in the period 1945–1995: two national tabloids, Dagbladet and Verdens Gang (VG); the largest regional newspaper covering the capital, Aftenposten; the largest social democratic daily, Arbeiderbladet (renamed Dagsavisen in 1987); the main business newspaper, Norges Handels og Sjøfartstidende (renamed Dagens Næringsliv in 1987); the largest national news agency, the Norwegian News Agency (NTB); and the national public broadcaster, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). Rather than compiling a complete list of everyone working in these newsrooms during the whole period, we have instead reconstructed the historical situations for the five years under study: 1945, 1950, 1965, 1980, and 1995. For this reason, the dataset includes 107 unique individuals, but 230 registrations (eighty-four are present at two time points, thirty-nine at three). The statistical data on the individuals have been collected from a wide variety of sources. Parts of the biographical information about individuals who are no longer alive were collected from various editions of the Pressefolk (biographical information about members of the Norwegian Journalist Association [NJ] in 1950, 1979, 1990, and 1997), and supplemented and checked with other biographical encyclopedias, including Hvem er Hvem (Who’s who), Store Norske leksikon (the largest Norwegian Encyclopedia), Norsk Biografisk Leksikon (the Norwegian Biographical Encyclopedia), and the Norwegian Biographical Encyclopedia of Norwegian Students up to 1944. In addition, news coverage about journalists appointed to new positions, and searches of obituaries in the press and direct contact with family members have given useful information. Systematic searches of each year in the relevant newspapers have also helped us to identify who reported from different areas of the world and worked in the foreign newsrooms at any time. Where journalists were alive and willing, personal interviews were conducted.

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Given the enormous challenges of this methodological exercise, there will no doubt be instances where our knowledge of these journalists is incomplete or even erroneous. The multiplicity of sources used, however, has in most cases provided us with multiple readings of the most important characteristics we sought, which makes us confident that the quality of the data is adequate for suggesting the broad historical traits of this group and the major divisions within it.

A Typology of Correspondents The term “correspondent” is not consistent throughout all phases, and one can historically and chronologically distinguish among four main categories of foreign-news correspondents. The first category comprises the freelancers who supplied foreign news reports to the foreign-news editors with or without prior agreements. In such cases, the editors were free to consider whether to buy the news reports or not. This category of foreign-news correspondents characterized the Norwegian newspapers in the interwar period. Also through much of the post-war period this category of foreign correspondents existed, and still does. A large number of modern war correspondents who move from one conflict zone to another belong in this category. The second category covers journalists who were employed by newspapers in other countries, with whom editors made special agreements; they were called stringers. The stringers could deliver relevant news, but they were rewarded only to the extent that their news reports were published. This category of foreign correspondents was used by the major Norwegian newspapers through all three phases discussed here. The stringer system was widespread in most Western nations, and helped to secure media access to news from many different countries and sources without substantial additional costs. All the media included in this study had such agreements. A number of Norwegian journalists in Norway were also stringers for foreign newspapers and news agencies throughout the period. Most of the stringers abroad used by the Norwegian media were not Norwegians, but local foreign journalists or correspondents for other Scandinavian media—mainly Danish or Swedish journalists.

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Those falling into the third category of foreign-news correspondents were permanently employed journalists whom the foreign-news editors sent abroad for shorter or longer periods. The editors paid all expenses incurred by the foreign correspondents during their stay abroad, including residential and office costs, school fees for their children, and additional compensation for living abroad and for bringing their spouse along. The noticeable aspect of using this category of correspondent was that it was expensive and entailed high fixed costs for the media. Such correspondents dominated and constituted the core of the Norwegian foreign-news system throughout the post-war period, as was the case especially with Aftenposten and NRK. Until the early 1970s, a distinguishing feature of these correspondents was that they stayed in the same assignment for numerous years before being moved to a different country. From the 1970s, the assignments abroad were reduced to three to four years in the same country. When the journalists got home, they generally entered the permanent staff in foreign news departments before they were again given new correspondent positions. These correspondents were or evolved into regional experts on foreign policy and foreign-news journalism. Experience as foreign-news correspondent was also a springboard for senior editorial positions in the media (see, e.g., Werenskjold 2006a, b, 2007, 2008). The fourth-category foreign correspondents were the so-called stringer correspondents. This category is complex and evolved over time. In principle, it included local resident journalists abroad who were not formally permanent employees in the foreign news department or the newsroom, but were still perceived as correspondents for the media that published their news reports. They got a low monthly compensation and were paid extra for each article by agreement, but there were no standard agreements. Their arrangements were designed individually by the editors, and not always in writing. This category of foreign-news correspondents was basically used in newspapers not able to finance a permanent correspondent office abroad in the 1950s. The stringer correspondents in the early phase after World War II shared clear similarities with freelancers and the newspapers’ foreign-news correspondents during the interwar period. It was primarily an inexpensive way of getting foreign news. This category of correspondent also pointed to the stringer correspondents in the Norwegian media in the years after 1995. From 1995 onward, a stringer correspondent was a journalist who was formally self-employed and not a permanent employee. He or she was an independent journalist who signed a contract with one or more

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media for the delivery of news stories, features, or other reports from abroad. The contracts varied from one stringer correspondent to the other. Many of the stringer correspondents received a basic fee based on an agreed-upon number of articles, as well as bonuses for providing material beyond the basic package. If they produced a good amount of news material, the wages were correspondingly high. All costs for housing and maintaining an office were paid by stringer correspondents themselves. Editors also did not have any formal employer responsibility. The stringer correspondents were free to submit news stories to other media, and could also refuse to cover issues. This new correspondent category was first used by NRK in 1995, but was also later an established norm for similar arrangements in both Aftenposten and Dagbladet when they replaced older correspondents abroad.4 The change to a new type of correspondent after the Cold War was primarily enacted as a savings measure in the major media. The economic crisis hit the Norwegian media hard in the 1990s, but the transition to a new foreign-news correspondent category was also part of a larger international trend toward the dissolution of permanent staff correspondents, or at least toward cutbacks of favorable financial arrangements that they had traditionally benefited from. The new category of foreign-news correspondents thus contributed to lower fixed costs within the media (Hess 1996, 2006; Gross and Kopper 2011). In contrast to the other categories (full-employed correspondents and the early form of freelancers and stringer correspondents), the new stringer correspondents were characterized as generalists, many of whom had no previous experience of the foreign news field; and only a few of them went back to work in foreign newsrooms at the end of their correspondence period abroad (Werenskjold 2013).

The Norwegian Foreign-News System, 1945–1995 The foreign-news journalism in Norway from 1945 to 1991 was concentrated in Oslo, among the aforementioned news organizations, each with its own foreign newsroom, and with separate foreign-news editors, foreign-news reporters, and correspondents. In practice, this meant NTB, Aftenposten, Arbeiderbladet, and Dagbladet, and NRK, which dominated the field in terms of foreign-news correspondents abroad and foreign-news reporters at home. NTB was, however, the main supplier of newswire reports from abroad for all of the Norwegian media. Both the size of the foreign news departments and the size of the foreign-news

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correspondent network in the different media varied in size and scope over time. As a state broadcasting monopoly, NRK was politically independent, while the newspapers had clear political affiliations—with Aftenposten, Dagbladet, and Arbeiderbladet serving as the largest organizations within their respective political circles—until the party press system was brought to an end during the 1970s and 1980s. Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper until 1981, was the flagship of the conservative press and clearly supported the Conservative Party (Wasberg 1960; Damsgaard et al. 1991; Bastiansen 2009). Dagbladet was the country’s premier cultural liberal organ (Vedø 1979; Dahl 1993; Seim 2002; Bastiansen 2009) supporting the Liberal Party at the elections, though not always consistently. Dagbladet, so the Norwegian political mythology goes, often promoted Norwegian radicalism and alternative perspectives. Arbeiderbladet was the flagship of the Labor press and was probably the strongest party-controlled newspaper in Norway (Bjørnsen 1984; Fehr 1999; Bastiansen 2009). VG was a politically independent newspaper established in 1945, based on close ties to the Norwegian resistance movement during World War II. The newspaper was seen as a politically bourgeois publication in tabloid format and became Norway’s largest newspaper after 1981 (Eide 1995). Dagens Næringsliv (formerly Handels og Sjøfartstidende) was a politically independent conservative business paper (Møst and Bugjerde 2015). All the newspapers in the sample were in print during the entire period from 1945 to 1991 and were strong advocates for the political establishment and in varying degrees supporters of the long enduring terms of Norwegian foreign policy. It is still unclear what impact the end of the party press arrangement had on the content of the foreign news coverage in Norwegian newspapers. The foreign-news system, with regard to the foreign correspondent network, was developed through three phases in the period from 1945 to 1995 (Werenskjold 2011). In the first period, from 1945 to 1964, the newspapers and the news agencies established a new network of correspondent offices abroad. This was the build-up phase of modern Norwegian foreign post-war news journalism. The stringers were replaced by permanent employed foreign-news correspondents in the major capitals abroad within the framework of the Western War Alliances and the East-West axis of the Cold War. Starting with offices in London, New York, and Stockholm and expanding later on to Paris

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Fig. 9.1  The location of Norwegian correspondent offices abroad at the end of the phase 1945–1964

and Bonn, and in the 1960s to Moscow. Even the foreign-news system expanded considerably compared to the situation before World War II, when four continents were without Norwegian correspondents and only one was located east of the Iron Curtain. The whole of Asia, Australia, Africa, and Central and South America were blind spots and not seen with Norwegian eyes. Important Cold War events such as the Chinese Revolution, Korean War, the Hungarian uprising, the Suez crisis, and the Vietnam War in the 1950s and 1960s were mainly reliant on foreign news sources and some Norwegian news reporters traveling on short assignments (Fig. 9.1). During the second period, from 1965 to 1974, the foreign-news system went through an expansion phase. NRK established its own correspondent network and, along with NTB and Aftenposten, dominated the foreign news field in Norway. New correspondent offices were opened in the Middle East and in Hong Kong/Beijing. The small players in the foreign news business started to close down their activities abroad because of high costs and internal financial problems. The establishment

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Fig. 9.2  The location of Norwegian correspondent offices abroad at the end of the phase 1965–1974

of new correspondent offices followed the Six Days War in the Middle East and the Cultural Revolution in China. Both areas were considered to be of growing geopolitical importance within the Cold War framework. China was considered more politically important than Japan, even though Japan was of greater economic importance to Norway than China at the time. The political changes in China after Mao’s death were followed closely (Fig. 9.2). The Norwegian foreign-news system reached its zenith during the years 1975–1995. During this third period, the major actors developed their correspondent networks and expanded the initial East-West framework of the Cold War. NRK was the leader in this development. It established new offices in the developing world and was expanding the Cold War perspective to include the North-South dimension. NRK opened new offices in Africa, Latin America, and Singapore. The new offices in Africa monitored the many African wars and conflicts. The struggle between the superpowers in the Third World was fought by proxies in countries like Angola, Namibia, and Mozambique. Ethiopia and Somalia came under increasing scrutiny in the 1970s and 1980s for their role in Cold War dynamics. The Apartheid conflict in South

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Africa was an even more important news area in the eyes of the Norwegian media. As for Central and South America, the military coup in Chile, as well as the American involvement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, drew huge interest from the Norwegian public, especially among students and people on the political left connected to the 1968 protest movement. The location of the Norwegian news bureau in Chile gave direct access to many of the conflict areas in Latin America without going through American news sources and agencies. In Southeast Asia, the Singapore bureau was opened to follow the new economic development in the region. Finally, due to the developments in Europe during the end of the Cold War, both Aftenposten and NRK opened bureaus in Central and Eastern Europe. When Germany reunified, their correspondent offices were moved from Bonn to Berlin. During this period, the smaller media organizations were again failing to maintain foreign news coverage based on the work of their own correspondents abroad (Fig. 9.3).

Fig. 9.3  The location of Norwegian correspondent offices abroad at the end of the phase 1974–1995

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Year Zero: Establishing the Norwegian Foreign-News System in 1945 The organization of Norwegian foreign-news journalism in 1945 can best be understood in light of how it was organized before World War II. During the inter-war period of the 1920s and 1930s, only a few Norwegian journalists had experience working as long-term foreign-news correspondents living abroad. The foreign newsroom in Norwegian newspapers consisted mainly of one or two journalists in charge of editing the foreign news. Their coverage was based mostly on newswires from three major monopoly agencies Agence Havas, Reuters, and DPA, and on reports from random Norwegian freelance reporters and stringers abroad. Aftenposten already had a special arrangement with the British newspaper Daily Telegraph dating from the 1930s. Some of these British journalists had special agreements with the Norwegian editors. The conservative newspaper Aftenposten was the largest Norwegian daily in 1945. It was also the first daily to establish its own foreign news network during the last days of the war. Many other Norwegian newspapers came out of the war in bad financial shape, while Aftenposten had ample funds to meet the new situation. The newspaper had been running throughout the whole war, while many of its competitors had been shut down by German occupiers. At the war’s end, it hired four foreign-news correspondents: one each in Paris and in New York, and two located in London, on account of Great Britain’s financial and diplomatic importance. All sites were directly connected to the Western war alliance during World War II, and, in the case of New York, to the Norwegian government’s strong affiliation with the newly formed United Nations, where the former Norwegian foreign minister Trygve Lie had served as the first Secretary General. In addition to the four correspondents abroad, Aftenposten’s foreign newsroom in 1945 consisted of five journalists led by a foreign-news editor and a co-editor. Later, in 1951, Aftenposten expanded its network to Bonn. As a close neighbor to Berlin, which was the very hotspot of the Cold War, the Western capital of the newly divided country became a crucial location from which to monitor the relations between the big powers. The Labor newspaper Arbeiderbladet had a staff of five foreign-news journalists in 1945. Foreign-news editor Finn Moe was effectively a part of the Norwegian diplomatic corps in New York when the UN was established. Arbeiderbladet also launched its first correspondent office in

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London in 1945. The new correspondent assigned there had been a part of the Norwegian government’s information service in London and Stockholm during the war. The foreign newsroom in Oslo consisted on a daily basis of only two journalists, who shared the editing of the foreign news and writing commentaries on events abroad (Werenskjold 2008). The liberal cultural newspaper Dagbladet established a correspondent office in London in 1945. We know very little about it. At home, the foreign newsroom practically consisted of one person—Ragnar Vold who alone accounted for the editing of foreign news in the newspaper. Vold was renowned for his bold warnings against the German Nazi-regime and Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, when he had been a correspondent in Germany (1929–1935). He studied languages at the École d’Études Internationales in Geneva, but did not graduate. Also, the politically independent business newspaper Norges Handels og Sjøfartstidende launched a correspondent office in London in 1945. Given the paper’s focus on trade topics related to Norway’s immense merchant marine, the choice of London, the leading European financial center at the time, was useful for its news coverage. The newly appointed foreign correspondent Martin Marius Martinsen had been living in London since the early 1920s and had worked for the British Information Ministry during the war. A graduate of the Norwegian Naval Academy, he had been working as a journalist since 1917. The newspaper did not establish any foreign newsroom at its office in Oslo; instead, the news from abroad was handled by the general newsroom staff. And finally, the NTB also chose London when it created its first foreign-news correspondence office in 1945. The foreign newsroom in Oslo at the time included only three journalists. The new correspondent in London, Johannes Seland, had already worked as a journalist before the war. Shortly after war broke out, he served as part of the British Intelligence, Special Operation Executive, and later as a secretary for the Norwegian Government’s Information Service. At the end of the war, he was a press officer in the Norwegian Army in Norway. He had no college-level education. The NTB was the main provider of foreign news telegrams to the Norwegian newspapers. NTB also provided news from such large international news agencies as AP and Reuters. The total number of foreign-news journalists in the Norwegian press amounted only to twenty-one in 1945. Eight of these were foreign correspondents assigned abroad. This was the point of departure for the development of modern Norwegian foreign-news journalism after Wold War II.

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All the newspapers in the sample had established their own bureaus in London. Only Aftenposten was able to extend its foreign news network to several other major Western countries. All the newspapers assigned foreign-news correspondents who had served in the Norwegian Government’s Information Service in the United Kingdom or Sweden during the war. Some had also been involved in American propaganda efforts in Europe. One of Aftenposten’s new foreign-news correspondents, Theo Findahl, had stayed in Berlin during the whole war. The other foreign newsroom journalists had various ties to the Norwegian Resistance Movement during the German occupation. The close relations between the Norwegian government and the Norwegian press continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The Norwegian foreign minister Halvard Lange (1946–1965) had regular informal meetings with the foreign-news editors in the major dailies for many years. These relations were especially important when Norway became a member of NATO in 1949. The Norwegian government was in general backed by a very loyal press in terms of support for its foreign policy (Werenskjold 2008, 128). A number of the foreign-news correspondents had received higher education—sometimes interrupted by the war—or had served as experienced journalists before the war. The organization and establishment of the Norwegian foreign news network in the Western capitals contributed to what several studies have defined as the great “Western turn” (the substantial increase of news from Western Europe and the United States) in Norwegian foreign journalism. Some have argued that this change was directly associated with developments between 1947 and 1949 that led to Norway’s membership in NATO (Skre 2010a, 169–191; 2010b). There is good reason to believe, however, that the Western turn came earlier. The foundation was laid when the modern Norwegian foreign-news system was established in 1945. It seems obvious that having more Norwegian journalists abroad generated more foreign news in the newspapers at home. World War II also altered the old monopoly system of the interwar period, and opened the European market for American news agencies. When Aftenposten established its foreign news network after the war, it also helped bring about the elite status enjoyed by foreign correspondents among Norwegian journalists, by offering wage and working conditions that surpassed industry averages and that became normative for all Norwegian correspondents abroad up until 1995. Aftenposten,

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in 1945, paid its correspondents the same rate that the Norwegian state department paid attachés at embassies. Compared to ordinary Norwegian wages, this was very high. The system resulted in a foreign-news system that became increasingly expensive, with high fixed costs (Werenskjold 2006a, 127).

The Transformation of the Foreign-News Corps From 1945 to 1995, the corps of foreign journalists was constantly expanding. The number of foreign-news workers doubled from twenty-one in 1945 to thirty-nine in 1965, nearly doubled again in the next fifteen years, and then stagnated after 1980. This growth roughly corresponds with the general expansion of the total journalistic corps during this period (Fig. 9.4). The number of correspondents during the same time-period rose from six to thirty-five, increasing their percentage within the general group of foreign-news workers. Meanwhile, Norwegian foreign newsrooms underwent constant change in terms of personnel, partly as result of turnover

Fig. 9.4  The growth in numbers of Norwegian foreign-news journalists, 1945–1995

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Fig. 9.5  The changing generations of Norwegian foreign-news journalists, 1945–1995 (Note The chart shows the percentage of foreign-news journalists in each cohort who were present in the earlier cohorts studied. Of foreign-news journalists active in 1950, for example, only half (47%) were active in 1945)

(journalists leaving the beat or the profession altogether) and partly as a result of the expansion of the total workforce of journalists. In 1950, only half of the foreign journalists from 1945 remained in the field of foreign news, and in the following intervals that we have studied, typically less than a third of the journalists remained fifteen years later (Fig. 9.5). In studies of foreign correspondents in other countries, they are commonly found to experience a “more elite” status than reporters in other fields (Hess 1996, 2006). Compared both to other journalists and to the general Norwegian population, foreign-news workers throughout this period were characterized by privileged upbringing, considerable educational investment, and high public and internal recognition (see Table 9.1). It was also a markedly male group, even by journalistic standards: Aftenposten had one female foreign-news journalist in 1945, but there were no female foreign journalists in 1950 or 1965 (when approximately one in ten journalists in all fields were female), and after 1980 women were still less likely to be found in foreign journalism than in other fields within the industry.

Educational level Some form of higher education Bachelor’s degree or higher (4 + yrs higher education) Master’s degree Studies abroad

Father’s occupation (if known) Farmer, fisherman, craftsmen, manual Clerk or salesman Teacher or public official Technician Businessman Professional or academic Father university education Born in Oslo

Age (mean) Female Married

21 34

10

12 25

38 11

0 50 0 25 25 13 13

19 24 0 14 19 10 28 52 27

0

41 0 62

24

38 0 76

24 13

42 11

9

26 13

43 12

JOU

COR

JOU

FJOU

1965

1950

24 29

50 36

26 37 7 7 15 8 29

7

40 0 79

FJOU

13 33

27 12

30 10 10 0 30 20 33

20

40 0 80

COR

5

30 13

40 16

JOU

1980

25 23

77 54

21 19 9 11 15 13 20

25

40 12 75

FJOU

25 21

75 50

20 15 10 10 10 13 24

35

40 8 71

COR

6

78 34

43 28

JOU

1995

14 14

89 43

9 18 18 23 18 29 32

14

44 21 43

COR

(continued)

20 14

80 42

13 26 13 15 13 20 25

21

44 19 59

FJOU

Table 9.1  Characteristics by percentage of Norwegian journalists as a whole, total foreign-news journalists, and foreign-news correspondents in particular, 1950–1995 9  THE COLD WAR REPORTERS: THE NORWEGIAN FOREIGN-NEWS … 

207

Professional experience (years, mean) In foreign journalism In journalism in total Years as a correspodent Age when first held job as a foreign journalist

Military, state and political experience London press office in war or resistance Military education PR worker for state organization Political position 0

14 4 16 3 36

0 25

14 10

7 13 1 32

38

40 0 20 30 30 30 0

31

21 3 21 17 17 17 0 13

JOU

COR

JOU

FJOU

1965

1950

Educational subject (incl. minor) History Political science Social science, law, or economy English Norwegian or literature Other language Journalism education 7

Table 9.1  (continued)

12 15 3 29

3

3 13

13

26 11 13 29 8 24 11

FJOU

10 17 6 30

0

0 13

20

64 0 9 55 18 36 20

COR

25

JOU

1980

10 17 2 30

16

19 17

5

38 31 21 25 11 16 14

FJOU

8 17 3 31

21

25 17

0

50 19 12 38 12 12 17

COR

32

JOU

1995

12 21 4 32

21

21 11

0

50 10 30 10 10 30 32

COR

(continued)

14 22 4 31

14

17 12

0

41 31 24 15 12 20 31

FJOU

208  J. F. HOVDEN AND R. WERENSKJOLD

22

14 21

21

0 13

12

24

JOU

COR

JOU

FJOU

1965

1950

18 16

13

FJOU

27 27

13

COR

26

JOU

1980

11 22

23

FJOU

21 38

21

COR

16

JOU

1995

12 42

19

FJOU

18 57

25

COR

Sources For Norwegian journalists 1950, 1979, 1990, see Høyer and Ihlen (1998); for 1995, see Hovden (2008) Notes Age 1965 is stipulated as the mean of the mean age of 1950 and 1979. For 1980, the 1979 data are used. For journalists in 1950 and 1979, the registers of journalists for 1950 and 1979 are used (Høyer and Ihlen 1998). For 1965, a weighted average between the registers for 1950 and 1979 is used. For 1995, a weighted average has been made combining the 1990 register data and the 2005 survey of Hovden (2008). Data for 1945 are not included in the table because of the small number of foreign journalists at that time.

Various Prize for journalism Written nonfiction book

Leadership in press organization

Table 9.1  (continued)

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In the later periods under study, however, foreign journalism appears to have been a career path increasingly reserved for experienced journalists rather than expert journalists, with less prior specialist knowledge of the countries from which they reported. Hiring practices also became more democratic: whereas in the early periods, it was not uncommon to find foreign-news journalists whose fathers occupied the country’s highest professional and political positions (e.g., professors, members of Parliament, and justices on the Supreme Court), such elite backgrounds were rare in the last two periods. While until 1995 foreign journalists were more likely than other journalists to have been born abroad, they were not more likely to have been born in the largest cities of Norway. In the latest period studied, however, this pattern has reversed. Whereas only 4% of the male population in Norway had received some form of higher education as of 1950, more than half of the foreign-news journalists had some college experience, and one in five had the equivalent of a master’s degree. In 1980 and 1995 higher education appears to have been more or less a requirement for those working in foreign journalism—approximately 80% had received at least some college education or experience at a similar institution. It is notable, however, that the percentage of those holding a master’s degree did not increase from 1945 to 1995—a period when the educational level of the population in general rose considerably. And while foreign journalists from the fifties to the early eighties were much more likely to hold a master’s degree than other journalists and to have contact with academia—by writing for scientific journals, appearing at conferences, holding part- or full-time posts as lecturers—this difference largely disappeared by 1995. Foreign-news workers were becoming less involved in academia. In terms of educational subjects, there is a great deal of continuity: history, languages, and various aspects of social and economic-legal sciences—usually studied at the University of Oslo—are the most common areas of study for foreign-news journalists in all periods. After 1965, however, there appears to be a slight shift from the humanities toward the social sciences, where comparative politics and, after 1980, journalism, become more popular, and language studies less so. It is notable that while more foreign-news journalists in 1995 had some form of higher education, studies abroad became less common, dropping markedly from 1980. In terms of actual experience in foreign settings, however, a more striking difference can be found. Given that the earlier foreign-news journalists were also very likely to have lived and

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worked abroad during the war years, whether working for publications or in state organizations operating outside Norway, international experience appears to have decreased markedly overall among foreign-news journalists in the later period. This seems to be a part of an international trend. As noted, the first generation of foreign-news journalists were heavily embedded in Norwegian state and military organizations. In 1945, every correspondent had served the war government in London’s press office, and many had served in the resistance movement or spent their time in Stockholm or the United States during the war. Although only a minority of foreign-news journalists may have undergone a military education, four of the six major foreign newsrooms (Aftenposten, NRK, NTB, and VG) nevertheless had journalists or correspondents with such backgrounds in 1980 and 1995. Also, working directly for state organizations in the area of public relations was not uncommon, and such involvement gave many of these journalists continuing ties with the military and state apparatus during the last part of the Cold War. Foreign-news correspondents have very high public visibility. This was particularly true for those employed by NRK, given that Norway did not have other national television and radio channels until the 1990s and thus its foreign news reporters would be familiar faces and voices to every citizen. The typical newspaper layout—with pages devoted to opinion columns and special features and displaying headshots of the writers—made it so that correspondents and regular columnists in the largest newspapers would be familiar to most of the reading public. Importantly, however, their role as intermediators and interpreters of world affairs was not limited to their reporting. Many were active public speakers and lecturers, tour guides and authors, and they played a prominent role as public intellectuals. Two outstanding examples are Jahn Otto Johansen and Hans Wilhelm Steinfeld, both correspondents for NRK. Johansen (Moscow 1975–1977, Washington 1985–1990, and Berlin 1995–2000) has written over sixty books—including several national bestsellers on international politics and history—and in 1991 was voted as the most trustworthy Norwegian in a national poll. Steinfeld (Moscow 1980– 1984, 1988–1994, 2000–2003, 2010–2014 and the Balkans in 1999) has similarly written dozens of books and given countless speeches on political history.

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Correspondents in all years studied are more likely to have had fathers with higher education and higher social positions than those of other types of foreign journalists. Compared to descriptions of the recruitment of foreign correspondents in other countries, their backgrounds do appear, however, to have had fewer of the traditional elite markings, and to have been more comparable to those of regular journalists. In Norway, even educational capital does not appear to have been decisive for such assignments: correspondents were more often educated in history and languages than were other foreign journalists, but were not more likely to have had a master’s degree or longer experience working in foreign news—actually, quite the reverse (see Table 9.1). Norwegian foreign-news editors and co-editors usually had markedly longer careers in foreign journalism behind them and were generally more highly educated than correspondents, more likely to be married, and more likely to hold positions in press organizations.

The Cold War in the Field of Foreign-news Journalism While our investigation so far has suggested some broad and persistent differences among some groups of Norwegian foreign-news journalists, such group-by-group comparisons are limited. First, they disregard the enormous variation inside each of these categories—not all foreign correspondents are equal in status and experience, and there are many examples of news workers working in Norway having more experience and status than many foreign-news correspondents, and so forth. Second, focus on such editorial categories leaves out many of the other characteristics that contribute to the structure of the corps. Given our interest in the Cold War, we are particularly interested in the differences among newsrooms (with strongly varying political affiliations) and the status of various cities as assignments for correspondents. We think it instructive to consider the field of foreign-news journalism as Pierre Bourdieu would have conceived it, that is, as an area of symbolic struggles where one’s strength and stature are based on the ability to access various scarce resources (internal forms of capital), which is linked to a journalist’s whole prehistory, not only his or her educational and professional trajectories but also social inheritance.5 Using the data from 1980—which is not only the zenith period of the Norwegian

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Fig. 9.6  The field of Norwegian foreign-news workers, selected characteristics, 1980 (Note Cities and publications in monospace font refer to present or previous postings and places of work, regular fonts refers to position in 1980)

foreign-news system, but also a time of deteriorating relations between the Soviet Union and the West—we have constructed a model of this field via an analysis of multiple correspondence analysis (Figs. 9.6 and 9.7).6 The vertical axis on the graph sets apart the more experienced foreign-news journalists (at the top of the graph) from the younger (at the bottom), and foreign-news correspondents from other journalists. Seniority in the field—which tends to go with various forms of distinction and recognition (e.g., being mentioned in Who´s Who, having published books or received prizes for journalism)—separates journalists for the NTB and Arbeiderbladet from the older journalists in Aftenposten and NRK, with the tabloids (VG and Dagbladet) in a more intermediate position. The horizontal axis nuances this opposition by separating foreign journalists with higher educational investments (on the left of the graph) from those

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Fig. 9.7  The field of Norwegian foreign-news workers, active individuals, 1980

with less or no university experience at all, while the latter more often have some form of journalism education. More extensive university educations also tend to be linked with slightly more socially advantageous backgrounds in terms of cultural capital. In regard to the more experienced journalists, the axis separates younger correspondents and editors from the older editors (who are themselves often former correspondents), where the former not only more often have spent more years in college—often studying history and languages—but often have some link with academia and political organizations; whereas the older editors more often have held positions in journalist organizations. Such traits also underlie the contrast between Dagbladet and NRK versus Aftenposten and VG.

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One should here note the tendency for correspondents who occupied the central postings during the Cold War (Moscow, Washington, Bonn/ Berlin) to have fulfilled the strictest requirements in terms of previous experience and general capital in this field, reflecting the importance and prestige bestowed to these places by their importance in the Cold War.

Conclusion The locations and the extension of the correspondent offices abroad were determined by the political events taking places in a region, the international news events during the Cold War, and especially by the financial resources of each publication. As stated in the introduction, the Cold War was in fact the golden age of the Norwegian foreign-news system. Its organization developed through three main phases. In the period 1945–1964, the modern foreign system of permanent hired foreign-news correspondents working abroad was established. In the second phase—from 1965 to 1974—the system expanded with an increasing number of foreign-news correspondents located in new countries and continents, but still within the main East-West axis of the Cold War. Most offices were located in the West. In the third phase—from 1975 to 1995—the Norwegian foreign system reached its peak, before the economic crisis in the media industry toward the end of the 1990s forced the closing of correspondent offices and changes in the organization of foreign-news journalism in Norway. In the third phase, the Norwegian foreign-news system also adjusted to the North-South dimension of the Cold War, by establishing new foreign-news correspondent positions in the Third World countries in Africa and Latin America. Aftenposten and NRK dominated the Norwegian foreign-news system during the Cold War. The other Norwegian media failed to maintain their correspondent network at the same level. The most experienced foreign-news journalists and correspondents were employed by Aftenposten or NRK. We have demonstrated not only the numerical expansion of the news corps in this period, but also its transformation. Whereas foreign-news correspondents in the first decades after World War II were a journalistic elite—especially those assigned to Cold War hotspots (Washington, Bonn, and Moscow), many of whom included active public intellectuals and celebrities with relatively higher educational attainment and a more privileged social upbringing—the data suggest a general mainstreaming

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of the foreign-news corps, in particular after 1980. Foreign journalists have become increasingly similar to regular journalists in their recruitment, and journalistic experience appears to have become gradually more important than formal expertise on the regions covered. It seems likely that new journalistic ideology, often referred to as journalism (Petersson 1994), was well adapted to the needs of organizational changes during the media crisis in the late 1990s, when many of the Norwegian media companies instituted a hiring freeze to save money. The idea that a good journalist could write about anything was combined with economic imperatives. The management refrained from hiring new journalists with expertise, and instead very often reused journalists from other departments in the publication. This appears to be in line with common trends in the media worldwide. By 1995, few of those who had reported world news for Norwegians during the most important years of the Cold War remained, and there was considerably less expertise within foreign newsrooms and among correspondents than in previous decades. There are reasons to believe that the foreign-news system developed during the Cold War made the Norwegian public better informed about the world affairs than if they had been totally dependent on foreign sources alone. There is also reason to believe that changes in the foreign-news system also contributed to changes in the media content. What impact this had on shaping Norwegians’ worldviews we still do not know.

Notes 1. Melle (1973), Ottosen (1991, 1993, 1998, 2002, 2010), Bastiansen (1997), Ottosen and Nohrstedt (2001, 2005), Hagvaag et al. (2002), Nohrstedt et al. (2002), Ottosen and Eide (2002, 2013), Melle (2006), and Godbolt (2010). 2. For a more comprehensive discussion and bibliography, see Broady (2002). 3. In Norway, two examples are the earlier mentioned study by Werenskjold (2011, 2013) and Høyer and Ihlen (1998). The latter collected data on the education and social background of Norwegian journalists active during the period 1930–1990 from the biographical collections published by the Association of Journalists. 4.  When NRK closed the permanent correspondent office in London in 1994, Anne Groth continued as a stringer correspondent in the British capital from 1995 to 2000. She was the first journalist who signed onto the new stringer correspondent role in the major media. See Nakken (2007).

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5. Bourdieu (1996). Some early works in this tradition are collected in Benson and Neveu (2005). In Norway, the journalistic field has been studied by Hovden (2008, 2012). 6.  Space does not permit us to go into the details of this statistical construction. More details can be found in an earlier version of this chapter (Hovden and Werenskjold 2014).

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Lippman, W. 1922. Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan. Maxwell, J. W. 1954. The Foreign Correspondent: His Problems in Covering the News Abroad. Iowa City: Graduate College and School of Journalism, State University of Iowa. ———. 1956. “Foreign Correspondents Abroad: A Study of Backgrounds.” Journalism Quarterly 33, no. 2: 346–248. Melle, O. 1973. Frå kommunistisk aggresjon til nasjonal kamp: Vietnam-debatten i norsk politikk 1964–1968 [From Communist Aggression to National Struggle: The Vietnam Debate in Norwegian Politics 1964–1968]. Bergen: University of Bergen. ———. 2006. “Den langvarige opinionskrigen: Vietnam-konflikten i USA, Noreg og Sverige” [The Protracted Opinion War: The Vietnam Conflict in the United States, Norway, and Sweden]. Internasjonal Politikk 64, no. 3: 311–340. Møst, M., and P. S. Bugjerde. 2015. Kroner og røre: Historien om NHST og Dagens Næringsliv [Money and Mess: The History of the NHST and Norwegian Daily Business Review]. Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk. Mowlana, H. 1972. “Who Covers America?” Journal of Communication 25, no. 3: 86–91. Nair, M. 1991. “The Foreign Correspondent: Dateline Washington, DC.” [International Communication] Gazette 48, no. 1: 59–64. Nakken, M. 2007. “Å bringe verden hjem. En studie av NRKs utenrikskorrespondentnett 1964–2004” [To Bring the World Home. A Study of the NRK’s (Norwegian Broadcasting Company) Foreign Correspondence Network 1964–2004]. Master’s thesis. Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. Nohrstedt, S.-A., R. Ottosen, et al. 2002. Kosovokonflikten, medierna och medlidandet: Ett projekt om medierapporteringen, propagandan och allmänhetens reflektioner [The Kosovo Conflict, the Media, and Compassion: A Project on Media Reporting, Propaganda and Public Reflections]. Stockholm: Styrelsen för psykologiskt försvar. Ottosen, R. 1991. The Gulf War with the Media as Hostage. Oslo: International Peace Research Institute. ———. 1993. Fiendebilder i avisenes utenriksdekning: En studie av endringer i fiendebilder i tre norske aviser [Enemy Images in the Newspapers’ Foreign News Reporting: A Study of Changes in Enemy Images in Three Norwegian Newspapers]. Oslo: Prio. ———. 1998. Mediestrategier og fiendebilder i internasjonale konflikter: Norske medier i skyggen av Pentagon [Media Strategies and Enemy Images in International Conflicts: Norwegian Media in the Shadow of the Pentagon]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

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———. 2002. Avisbildet av NATOs krigføring på Balkan: Norske avisers dekning av Kosovokrigen i 1999 [Newspaper Images of the NATO War in the Balkans: Norwegian Newspapers’ Coverage of the Kosovo War in 1999]. Oslo: Høgskolen i Oslo Avdeling for journalistikk bibliotek- og informasjonsfag. ———. 2010. “Krigsjournalistikk i en global medieverden” [War Journalism in a Global Media World]. In Norsk Presses Historie 1660–2010: Imperiet vakler 1945–2010 [The History of the Norwegian Press 1660–2010: The Empire Stumbles, 1945–2010], vol. 3, edited by G. Hjeltnes, 237–247. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Ottosen, R., and E. Eide. 2002. Krigens retorikk: Medier, myter og konflikter etter 11. september [The War’s Rhetoric: Media, Myths and Conflicts After September 11]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 2013. Den lengste krigen: Mediedekning av krigen i Afghanistan [The Longest War: The Media Coverage of the War in Afghanistan]. Oslo: Abstrakt. Ottosen, R., and S.-A. Nohrstedt. 2001. Gulf War, National News Discourses and Globalization. Gothenburg: Nordicom. ———. 2005. Global War—Local Views: Media Images of the Iraq War. Gothenburg: Nordicom. Petersson, O. 1994. “Journalistene som klass, Journalismen som ideology” [Journalists as Class, Journalism as Ideology]. In Media og samfunnsstyring [Media and Society Management], edited by Terje Steen Edvardsen, Olaf Petersson, et al. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Rasmussen, T. 1986. “Presse og politisk protest. Rapport nr. 2” [The Press and Political Protest. Report No. 2]. Bergen: Institutt for massekommunikasjon, Universitetet i Bergen. Seim, K. 2002. Dagbladet ei kultur-tabloid [Dagbladet, a Culture Tabloid]. Volda: Volda University College. Self, C. C. 2011. “Theoretical Perspectives and Research Methodes in Studies of Foreign Correspondence.” In Understanding Foreign Correspondence: A Euro-American Perspective of Concepts, Methodologies, and Theories, edited by P. Gross and G. G. Kopper, 29–44. New York: Peter Lang. Skre, A. 2010a. “Den store vestvendingen” [The Great Western Turn]. In Norsk Presses Historie 1660–2010: Imperiet vakler 1945–2010 [The History of the Norwegian Press 1660–2010: The Empire Stumbles, 1945–2010], vol. 3, edited by G. Hjeltnes, 170–91. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. ———. 2010b. “‘En kostbar og farlig tid:’ Den store vestvendingen i norsk presse 1947–1949” [A Valuable and Dangerous Time: The Great Western Turn in the Norwegian Press 1947–1949]. Pressehistoriske skrifter no. 14: 41–106. Steinfeld, H. W. 1982. Arven etter Bresjnev [The Inheritance After Bresjnev]. Oslo: Cappelen.

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———. 1984. Istid i Moskva [Ice Age in Moscow]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 1986. Tøvær i øst [Relaxation in the East]. Oslo: Cappelen. Suh, C. W. 1971. “The Socio-Professional Aspects of Foreign Correspondents in the United States: A Study of International Communications.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Vedø, H. B. 1979. Dagbladet: Kronikker 1946–1970 [Dagbladet: Chronicles 1946–1970]. Oslo: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo. Wasberg, G. C. 1960. Aftenposten i hundre år: 1860–1960 [Aftenposten in One Hundred Years: 1860–1960]. Oslo: Schibsted. Werenskjold, R. 2006a. “Utenriksjournalisten Ingebrigt Løberg” [The Foreign News Reporter Ingebrigt Løberg]. Pressehistoriske skrifter no. 6: 121–40. ———. 2006b. “Anton Blom: Journalist og utenrikskorrespondent i dagspresse og kringkastning, 1948–1994” [Anton Blom: Journalist and Foreign News Correspondent in the Daily Press and Broadcasting, 1948–1994]. Pressehistoriske skrifter no. 7: 137–173. ———. 2007. “Hans Lauritz Hanssen: Utenrikskommentator og utenrikskorrespondent i Morgenposten og Aftenposten, 1945–1976” [Hans Lauritz Hanssen: Foreign News Commentator and Foreign News Correspondent in Morgenposten and Aftenposten, 1945–1976]. Pressehistoriske skrifter no. 8: 101–139. ———. 2008. “Erik Loe og utenriksavdelingen i Arbeiderbladet, 1949–1989” [Erik Loe and the Foreign News Department at Arbeiderbladet, 1949–1989]. Pressehistoriske skrifter no. 10: 106–149. ———. 2011. “That’s the Way It Is? Protestene og mediene i 1968” [That’s the Way It Is? The Protests and the Media in 1968]. Ph.D. diss., Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. ———. 2013. “The Norwegian Foreign-News System During the Cold War 1945–1995.” Paper presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research, “Crises, ‘Creative Destruction,’ and the Global Power and Communication Orders,” Dublin. Willnat, L., and D. Weaver. 2003. “Through Their Eyes. The Work of Foreign Correspondents in the United States.” Journalism 4, no. 4: 403–422.

CHAPTER 10

Orions Belte: The Birth of the Norwegian “High-Concept” Movie in the Shadow of the Second Cold War Bjørn Sørenssen

During the Cold War, Norway’s geographical position placed it in a special situation among its Western allies. The country was only one of two NATO members (the other was Turkey) to share a border with the Soviet Union, a fact that made the northern and Arctic areas of Norway a frontline in an assumed military confrontation. Furthermore, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, allowing citizens of signatory countries equal rights to exploit natural resources, made it possible for the Soviet Union to maintain the Barentsburg community of more than one thousand people on Norwegian soil in connection with the coal mines in Grønfjorden on the Spitsbergen Island. In Norwegian fiction cinema, the Cold War theme is largely absent from films produced after 1945. The great exception is Orions belte (Orion’s Belt) directed by Ola Solum in 1985, a film that, according to Gunnar Iversen,

B. Sørenssen (*)  Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_10

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marks a watershed in Norwegian film history (Iversen 2011, 253–261). Iversen maintains that the movie made an impact on two levels: as an example of new financing methods for Norwegian fiction film, and as a model of economic success achieved through emulating the Hollywood action movie in a convincing way, thus serving as a paradigm for other filmmakers. Interestingly enough, Iversen makes no mention of the conceivably controversial subject matter of the film, produced, as it was, at the end of the “Second Cold War” and remarkably explicit in its description of the political situation in the Svalbard Archipelago during the “first” Cold War. The film is based on Jon Michelet’s 1977 novel by the same name.1 This chapter will try to contextualize the film by drawing attention to the background of Michelet’s novel (1977)—the emergence of Norway’s Workers’ Communist Party (Arbeidernes Kommunistparti, AKP (m-l)) and its Maoist ideology. Furthermore, the movie adaptation of the novel, filmed eight years later, will be discussed in view of the change in the political situation during this period, utilizing Justin Wyatt’s term “high-concept cinema” in a national context.

Background to the Novel Orions Belte: The Norwegian Maoists and Their Authors The Norwegian Maoist movement of the 1970s and 1980s was a remarkable phenomenon in Europe. According to historian Hans Petter Sjøli, The Maoist movement was the most visible expression of the 1968 uprising in Norway. But the Maoists soon waved goodbye to the anti-authoritarian vibes of 1968, and what had started out as a pacifist and slightly anarchistic movement soon evolved into one of the strongest MarxistLeninist movements in the Western world in the 1970s. Maoism was first and foremost an imported package, but found fertile soil in the egalitarian and to some extent puritan Norway. (Sjøli 2008, 478)

Whereas Maoist (Marxist-Leninist) parties emerging from the 1968 student revolt in Europe turned out to be rather short-lived, the Norwegian AKP (m-l) became a highly visible and abiding presence in Norwegian public life for several decades. As the only Maoist party in Europe, it managed to get a parliamentary seat (through the party’s “Red Electoral Alliance” 1993–1997) and it also gave birth to a daily newspaper, Klassekampen (Class Struggle), today a highly

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respected cultural and political publication. Another remarkable aspect of the Norwegian Maoist movement was its appeal to authors and artists. The young and vociferous generation of authors connected to the modernist literature journal Profil—they included Dag Solstad, Espen Haavardsholm, Tor Obrestad, and Edvard Hoem—while older, established authors like Kjell Askildsen and Arnljot Eggen eagerly toed the party line; another party member, Bjørn Nilsen, was elected as chairman of the Norwegian Authors’ Union. Although AKP (m-l) had little success in convincing Norwegian workers of the need for revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, a strictly organized and extremely active membership of around three thousand (Kolmannskog 2006) managed to make its mark on Norwegian society to an extent unknown in other European countries. In the early 1980s, the Maoist project more or less collapsed, following internal party strife and disillusion with the development in the “model” countries China and Albania, with Dag Solstad writing the epitaph of the movement in a 1982 novel with the telling title High School Teacher Pedersen’s Account of the Great Awakening That Has Haunted Our Country, before returning to his modernist roots. Jon Michelet was another of the AKP (m-l) authors. As a sailor in the Norwegian merchant marine, Michelet could, unlike the intellectuals of the Profil generation, claim some proletarian background.2 Having climbed the ranks of the merchant marine, first mate Michelet went ashore in the early 1970s to become a journalist and was soon captivated by the fledgling Maoist movement, where he became a central person as a writer, journalist, founder of a chain of radical bookstores, and, eventually, creator of the publishing house Oktober, the latter, like the daily Klassekampen (Class Struggle), another successful Maoist enterprise from the 1970s that survived the movement to attain respectability. In 1976, while working as a journalist for Klassekampen, Michelet went to the Svalbard Archipelago and, based on his investigations there, wrote an article on how the Soviet Union was circumventing an agreement with Norway to keep the islands demilitarized by stationing war helicopters in the Soviet mining town of Barentsburg. Having already had success as a writer of progressive crime novels, he decided to publish a political thriller based on this material. Orions belte is a first-person narrative penned by maverick sailor Tom Jansen from a jail cell in Oslo, recounting how he and two shipmates aboard the small freighter Sandy Hook accidentally discover that the Russians are installing an electronic early-warning system on Kvitøya, one of the islands in the archipelago. They are discovered by the

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Russians and have to escape from units of the Red Army, killing several soldiers and downing a Soviet helicopter in the process. Eventually, Tom, as the lone survivor, reaches Longyearbyen, the administrative center of Svalbard. He tries to report about the Soviet activity, but finds himself whisked away to Oslo, awaiting trial on charges of murder and embezzlement. With the help of his girlfriend, who is a Svalbard member of AKP, he manages to convey to the public the truth about the events at Kvitøya. Eva-Lill, the girlfriend, gives birth to a daughter in Oslo, and while Tom Jansen is given furlough from prison to see his daughter, he is murdered by a KGB agent, who, in turn, is caught and delivered to the police by AKP comrades. The theme of the novel was in line with what Michelet, Klassekampen, and the Maoist party AKP was claiming at the time: that the superpowers USSR and the United States were heading for a new war, that Norway very soon might become a battleground, and that AKP members should prepare for this. According to AKP chronicler Håkon Kolmannskog, this phase marked the period of “ideological maximation” (Kolmannskog 2006, 121–125) in the movement, in other words, a situation in which the entire membership was mobilized to defend the ideological underpinnings of the party. This crisis maximation eventually led to the demise of the movement in the early 1980s. Michelet, who was a central party member, wrote Orions belte as part of this mobilization and in 1978 followed up with the pamphlet-novel Angrepet på Longyearbyen (The attack on Longyearbyen), a dystopian sci-fi book from the very near future, where the Soviet soldiers in Barentsburg, at the start of World War III, attack and occupy the Norwegian settlements in Svalbard, leaving a tiny group of guerrillas in the frozen waste of the islands to continue the resistance. While this latter book is hastily (and rather sloppily) written—in an introductory “warning” Michelet admits as much, but justifies it by saying that it is warranted by the critical political situation—Orions belte has genuine literary value according to Norwegian literature professor Geir Hjorthol, who wrote the following in 1996: [T]his, the most explicitly political novel written by Jon Michelet—with a message subservient to a [political] party program that long since has been placed on the rubbish heap of history—is still one of this author’s most readable books. (Hjorthol 1995, 168)

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Hjorthol, noting that the novel was a considerable success with audiences before the film version gave it an extra boost (the 1977 version sold more than 20,000 copies, augmented by an additional 68,000 following the release of the film), ascribes the enduring quality of Michelet’s novel to a combination of solid thriller-genre craftsmanship and a sophisticated narrative construction that extends the usual conventions of the genre. Hjorthol here points to Michelet’s multilayered set of nested frame narratives in the novel, consisting of three narrative levels (see Fig. 10.1). He describes these as follows: an external third-person narrative framing (the “Prologue” and the “Epilogue”), an internal first-person narrative (Tom Jansen’s notes from prison) recounting the adventures of Jansen and his friends, and, lastly, several historical and documentary narratives within this frame. The historical/documentary elements provide an overview of Norwegian Arctic history, with an emphasis on the Svalbard Archipelago during World War II, as experienced by a Norwegian whaler and Jansen’s father’s experiences in the

Fig. 10.1  The “nested narrative” of Orion’s Belt (Hjorthol 1995, 170). Reprinted with permission from Geir Hjorthol

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Norwegian merchant marine during the war. In addition to this came (for the author) the highly important message that in a time of crisis, the Norwegian Marxist-Leninists are the only ones who see the danger of Soviet “social imperialism” and are prepared to counter it. Whereas this last element has been “placed on the rubbish heap of history,” to use Hjorthol’s phrase, the other narrative elements still function in Michelet’s narrative, giving depth and perspective to the traditional action-based structure of the classical thriller.

A New Start for Norwegian Filmmaking: Ola Solum’s Orions Belte 1985 At the beginning of the 1980s, Norwegian fiction film production was considered at its nadir—Norwegians, seemingly, did not want to see movies in their own language and instead opted for Hollywood blockbusters. The quest for Norwegian “quality” films had not yielded anything for the critics or at the box office, the only enduring success here (to the chagrin of the critics) being a string of Norwegian versions of the popular Danish comedy series The Olsen Gang (Sørenssen 1994). The austerity of the AKP dominance in literature had spilled over into the field of film production with a string of social realist movies in addition to several decades of unsuccessful Norwegian attempts at producing “serious” films in the European art cinema tradition. The Norwegian Ingmar Bergman had, however, failed to materialize. Gunnar Iversen’s pronouncement of Orions belte as a “watershed” in Norwegian film history must be seen against this background. There were several reasons behind the success of this film, with the critics as well as at the box office. One was economical: Norwegian film production had been hampered by the fact that it was completely dependent on state subsidies. Starting in 1983, the government opened up for a risk/ incentive system, whereby the acquisition of private financing for a film project would be supplemented by an equal amount of state financing. At the same time, the establishment of so-called Kommandittselskap in Norway, a type of company representing something between a limited and unlimited company, made film projects an attractive investment options for private persons as it gave them considerable possiblilities for tax deductions. Taken together, these new economic conditions made it possible for an enterprising producer to aim for success at the box office with a Norwegian-produced film.

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When producers Dag Alveberg and Petter Borgli from the small production company Filmeffekt A/S decided to embark on the ambitious project of making a Hollywood-style action movie in Norway, they realized that they needed the following: 1. a fetching subject suitable for an action movie, 2. a professional screenplay and, most importantly, 3. a considerably larger budget than usual for a Norwegian feature film. The newly established rules for investment in high-risk enterprises through tax breaks facilitated by the kommandittselskap laws made this last point possible. A Kommandittselskap called K/S Orion film was established and managed to ensure NOK 8.5 million from private investors. This automatically resulted in state grants and guarantees, and so the final budget was more than NOK 15 million, or double the size of a “normal” Norwegian feature film. At this point, they had already decided on the subject matter: Jon Michelet’s novel had been a success, showing that an action-packed political thriller did not scare audiences, and the exotic locations provided by the plot further enhanced the chances for a box office hit. The director, Ola Solum, was a young, promising director, who had shown his flair for meeting audience expectations in a movie adaptation of the popular Christmas play for children Reisen til julestjernen [The Voyage to the Christmas Star] in 1976, and had Hollywood experience as an assistant director in the opening sequence of Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), which was shot in Norway. As for securing a professional screenplay, the producers decided to go beyond the borders of Norway and turned to British screenwriter Richard Harris, who had written scores of screenplays for British commericial television since the 1960s (The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre, Man in a Suitcase, The Avengers, Spyder’s Web, and many run-of-the-mill action series and comedies), for the task of turning Michelet’s four-hundred-page book into a ninety-minute action movie. This was done by concentrating on Michelet’s own action-packed sequences and leaving out his documentary, historical, and political excursions, and by downplaying the AKP connection. However, the screenplay still concentrated on the highly charged foreign policy premise of the book—that the Soviet Union secretly was militarizing supposedly demilitarized Norwegian territory.

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This fact made one of the reviewers of the film take notice. In an otherwise positive review in Dagbladet, Thor Ellingsen remarked, Some will find it frivolous and irresponsible to make an entertainment movie in the style of Maclean and Bagley about a … politically extremely sensitive area, by portraying Norwegians and Russians shooting at each other. (Ellingsen 1985)

Ellingsen needn’t have worried. The political aspects were drowned out by the spectacular (by Norwegian film standards) action events involving helicopters and fantastic scenery from Svalbard. Norway had been presented its first example of high concept film production.

Internalizing Hollywood—National Adaptation of High Concept In 1994 Justin Wyatt, a Briton who had worked as a market analyst in Hollywood prior to embarking on an academic career, published a book with the title High Concept. Movies and Marketing in Hollywood, where he turns the term “high concept,” which was already used by Hollywood insiders, into a descriptive analytical tool for film studies dealing with popular cinema. According to Wyatt, “[O]ne can think of high concept as comprising ‘the look, the hook, and the book.’ The look of the images, the marketing hooks, and the reduced narratives form the cornerstones of high concept” (Wyatt 1994, 22). Central to “the look” aspect in high-concept movie-making is style, and for this Wyatt points to the aesthetic qualities of the product, comprising cinematography, editing, music, and intertextuality. “The hook” concerns the marketable qualities, whereby the movie star system is central, while “the book” expresses the narrative economy of high concept— in trade parlance this means that “you should be able to pitch it in three sentences.” Wyatt himself goes even further: In the high concept film, the narrative frequently is composed of stock situations firmly set within the bounds of genre. In fact, with the high concept film, one can see the movement of the narrative single-sentence concept.” (Wyatt 1994, 16)

“Style, stars, and story” might be an additional description of the high-concept movie.

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In this context, I suggest that the movie version of Orions belte represents the first implementation of the high-concept filmmaking in Norwegian cinematic history. This kind of national implementation is/was not unique for Norwegian film: Erik Hedling (1998, 246) has made the same claim for Swedish film in connection with Kjell Sundvall’s Jägarna (The Hunters, 1996), on the basis of a situation very much like the one behind Orions belte—a national film industry struggling in its competition with Hollywood (Hedling 1998, 246)—and Hedling’s explanation of the unprecedented sucess of this film is its application of the “high concept” thesis on a national scale. To return to the case of Orions belte, the adaptation of Michelet’s book by Richard Harris is a precise example of the kind of narrative economy alluded to in Wyatt’s catchphrase “the book”: three sailors on a ship in the Arctic stumble by accident upon sensitive Cold War activities and suffer the consequences trying to escape Russian soldiers and the Norwegian secret service. Or, as expressed in three terse sentences used in the International Movie Database to describe Orions belte, “A group of seamen from Norway find a Soviet listening station. Then they become targets for both America and Russia. Another cold war takes place.”3 Harris’s screenplay manages to distill the genre-relevant sequences already in place in Michelet’s novel and also provides stock character descriptions, three macho and seemingly carefree sailors on the fringe of society suddenly having to confront the realities of a cold war turning hot. The novel’s lack of a happy ending is consistent with several high-concept spy thrillers, for example, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (Martin Ritt 1965), and thus did not need to be changed for the movie version. As for style, the very opening of the movie, the title sequence, makes a statement signaling “high concept”: cinematographer Harald Paalgaard pans over mountains and glaciers on the Svalbard coast, before the ship Sandy Hook glides into the frame. From the very first image, the music, by the then young and promising composer team of Geir Bøhren and Bent Åserud, attracts attention with sounds inspired by and to an extent augmenting the frozen beauty of the Arctic landscape with a leitmotif that will haunt the audiovisual narrative to the very end. This was the beginning of a successful career for the two composers, after which they went on to write music for more than forty Norwegian movies and television series, up to the present Scandinavian noir series Øyevitne (Eye witness) in 2014. The exotic, pristine landscape of Svalbard is in itself unmediated, a classic high-concept aesthetic benchmark.

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The “hook” aspect of the film’s stars is not as prominent in Orions belte as in its Hollywood models, but both Helge Jordal, who portrays Tom, and Sverre Anker Ousdal as the skipper, Lars, were both among the most recognizable and popular stage, film, and TV stars of the mid1980s in Norway. Jordal, through his long affiliation with AKP as a member of the North Norwegian Hålogaland Teater group, gave extra credence to a film based on the novel of Jon Michelet. But the main marketing “hook” of Orions belte was the much-publicized cost of production. Thanks to the extended budget, the film would include action sequences similar to those expected from a “real” Hollywood action movie. Special interest was directed at the sequences where the three sailors aboard the Sandy Hook take up a battle against Soviet helicopters attacking the ship with machine guns, bombs, and rockets. The fact that a Hollywood-style action sequence was shot and shown in a Norwegianproduced movie was a major marketing attraction, and twenty years later, Orions belte and some of its emulations have been referred to as “the helicopter period of Norwegian film” (Iversen 2011, 260–261). And, as befits a high-concept movie, Orions belte did extremely well at the box office—more than 600,000 Norwegians flocked to cinemas to see it, securing a solid profit for the producers. (Some of the investors in K/S Orion film might not have been so happy with this turn of events, however, since it meant that the tax deduction possibilities disappeared.) And what is more, the movie managed to do well even abroad, especially in Sweden, where a Norwegian film usually was considered poison at the box office. Orions belte attracted almost 100,000 Swedish movie-goers.

Orions Belte in 1977 and 1985 and the Thawing of the Cold War Implicit in the above discussion of Orions belte as a Norwegian high-concept film lies the assumption that the implementation of Hollywood high-concept production values overshadowed the worries that the reviewer in Dagbladet had about the possible danger of stoking the flames of Cold War confrontation. There is, however, an additional argument, pertaining to the timing and the international political situation. Not only does the year 1985 mark the year of the first Norwegian high-concept film, but it also marks the beginning of the end of the Cold War with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev

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as First Secretary of the CPSU in March 1985. Whereas a movie version of Michelet’s novel five years earlier, during the height of the Second Cold War, undoubtedly would have been regarded by Soviet officials as a provocation, the rise of perestroika and glasnost meant that Orions belte had become, in addition to a high-concept movie in the thriller genre, a film dealing with a historical situation that no longer existed.

Notes 1. Although the concept of a “second cold war” is strongly contested, I find Fred Halliday’s (1986, 1–23) use of “Cold War II” useful as a period marker for the years between 1979 and 1985 in the relationship between the Soviet bloc and the Western democracies. 2. In spite of his proletarian credentials, Michelet came from a family of artists, a fact that his political opponents always took pleasure in reminding him of. 3. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089740/?ref_=ttco_ql, Orions belte.

References Ellingsen, Thor. 1985. “‘Den holder, den,’ review of Orions belte.” Dagbladet, 9 February. Hedling, Erik. 1998. “Kjell Sundsvalls Jägarna: svenskt High Concept.” In Blågult flimmer. Svenska filmanalyser [Blue/Yellow Flicker. Swedish Film Studies], edited by Erik Helding. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Halliday, Fred. 1986. The Making of the Second Cold War. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Hjorthol, Geir. 1995. Populærlitteratur: ideologi og forteljing [Popular Literature: Ideology and Discourse]. Oslo: Samlaget. Iversen, Gunnar. 2011. Norsk filmhistorie: spillefilmen, 1911–2011 [Norwegian Film History: Feature Films, 1911–2011]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Kolmannskog, Håkon. 2006. Ideologisk leiarskap i den norske ml-rørsla. Det umogleges kunst 1965−1980 [Ideological Leadership in the Norwegian MarxistLeninist Movement, 1965−1980]. Master’s thesis, University of Oslo. Michelet, Jon. 1977. Orions belte [Orion’s Belt]. Oslo: Oktober. ———. 1978. Angrepet på Longyearbyen [The Attack on Longyearbyen]. Oslo: Oktober. Sjøli, Hans Petter. 2008. “Maoism in Norway and How the AKP (m–l) Made Norway More Norwegian.” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 4: 478–490.

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Solstad, Dag. 1982. Gymnaslærer Pedersens beretning om den store politiske vekkelsen som har hjemsøkt vårt land: roman [High School Teacher Pedersen’s Account of the Great Awakening That Has Haunted Our Country]. Oslo: Aschehoug. Sørenssen, Bjørn. 1994. “‘I Have a Plan!’ The Olsen Gang Captures Denmark and Norway: Negotiating the Popular Culture Gap.” The Velvet Light Trap 34 (Fall): 71–83. Wyatt, Justin. 1994. High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: Texas University Press.

CHAPTER 11

Reporting Glasnost: The Changing Soviet News in a Norwegian Daily, 1985–1988 Henrik G. Bastiansen

The state leaders of the Soviet Union have always had a great influence on how the world has perceived this country. This was the case not only under Lenin and Stalin, but also under Krushchev and Brezhnev and their successors Andropov and Chernenko. On 10 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took over as the new general secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. It did not take long before he announced the need for reforms. Gorbachev’s reform policies can roughly be divided into three parts: perestroika, glasnost, and foreign policy reorientation. The aim of these policies was to bring the Soviet Union out of its stagnation and more in line with Western countries. The object of the perestroika policies was to effect a fundamental restructuring of the Soviet economy. Glasnost was meant to create a new climate in Soviet news coverage and public debate that would facilitate the introduction of these reforms. The reform policies

H. G. Bastiansen (*)  Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_11

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also contained a foreign policy dimension that called for a new approach to the country’s relationship with the United States, the West in general, and Eastern Europe. This new foreign policy included the issues that had been most hotly contested throughout most of the early 1980s: the arms race, weapons control, and disarmament. Gorbachev frequently signaled his reform intentions to the rest of the world. These signals of reform were widely reported in the Western press and broadcast media, which were soon overflowing with news of perestroika, glasnost, and the new foreign policy ideas (see Gorbachev 1996; Gorbatsjov 1987, 2013; McNair 1988, 1991). Such sources enable us today to study how the Western press covered each one of these reform areas during the Gorbachev era. This article is a case study of the coverage of the glasnost policy in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. During the 1980s, Aftenposten was Norway’s largest subscription newspaper, and together with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), it employed the largest number of foreign policy journalists in the country (Werenskjold 2011). The position of Aftenposten as a major informative newspaper can be compared to international quality newspapers like the New York Times and the Times of London. Aided by the paper’s digital archive, I have gone through every single issue of Aftenposten (both the morning and evening editions) from 1 January 1985 to 31 December 1988. In early 1985, the word “glasnost” was unknown outside of the Soviet Union, but by the end of 1988, it had become world famous. In the course of those four years, it seems that widespread knowledge of glasnost had contributed significantly to changing the world’s opinion of the communist superpower in the East, but we still do not know very much about the media’s role in this process. This chapter, therefore, raises this overarching question: To what extent did glasnost help change Aftenposten’s opinion of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1988? This would seem to imply three subsidiary questions: (1) When and how did the concept of glasnost achieve its breakthrough in the pages of Aftenposten? (2) What role did the news about the reform policy play in the paper’s running commentary on the Soviet Union? and (3) Did the paper’s views on glasnost change during the period from the beginning of 1985 to the end of 1988? The Soviet Union’s glasnost policy constitutes a central theme in the final phase of the Cold War (Gaddis 2005; Hanhimäki and Westad 2003; Lundestad 2010; Gorbachev 1996; Gorbatsjov 1987, 2013;

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Sakwa 2010; Smith 2004; see also Roth-Ey 2011). There exist several interesting studies of the coverage of the Soviet Union in the Western media (see, for example, McNair 1988, 1991; Roslyng-Jensen 2012), but the subject is treated very sparingly in research on the Norwegian press and on journalism in Norway more generally.1 Not even comprehensive works on the historical relations between Norway and Russia have included studies of journalism (Büchten et al. 2004). Because the subject has been given such little attention, this study is primarily of an exploratory nature. My approach is historical and empirical, and I am using a qualitative historical method (Bull 1929; Dahl 2004). The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was at the core of the Cold War between 1945 and 1991. It was really not a given how the various Western mass media channels, such as those in Norway, were going to respond to this situation, but the newspapers with the biggest Norwegian foreign affairs sections rose to the occasion by developing a corps of foreign correspondents with special regional expertize, stationed along the East–West axis—where the United States and the Soviet Union constituted the pivotal points (Nakken 2007; Werenskjold 2011).2 The Aftenposten journalist Aasmund Willersrud, after a conference in 1985, summed up the challenges of the foreign correspondents in the Soviet Union this way: The most fundamental and imminent threat lies in the Soviet strategy of undermining the Western democratic system by influencing and intimidating public opinion. If we are going to have any chance of winning this political conflict with the Soviets, it will not be enough to prepare for a military battle. Information and understanding of the Soviet Union must be our primary strategy. The only thing that Communism is unable to withstand, is knowledge. That is why the Soviet Union is trying to suppress all information about itself. (30 April 1985)3

Thus, the level of insight about the Soviet Union in the Western press was very important during the Cold War’s rivalry between the two superpowers. Willersrud himself was one of those who came to inform the readers of Aftenposten about the Soviet Union in the following years— but he was not the only one.

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Journalistic Treatment of the Soviet Union in Aftenposten Aftenposten was a large newspaper with a foreign affairs section that was as large as the entire editorial staff at an ordinary, medium-sized Norwegian newspaper (14 May 1985). It had its own correspondent offices in a number of countries around the world, including Moscow. In addition, the paper subscribed to a greater range of foreign affairs subjects from the international news agencies than did all the other Norwegian newspapers. This made Aftenposten a leading newspaper when it came to the coverage of news from abroad (cf. Bastiansen 2015; Werenskjold 2011). The perusal of Aftenposten for the period 1985–1988 reveals that the paper published many articles about the Soviet Union; they printed one almost daily. This was due to the fact that no other Norwegian newspaper had dedicated such large resources to the coverage of the Soviet Union. The paper employed several Russian-educated journalists who read Pravda on a regular basis and followed the news from the Soviet Union vigilantly. They frequently wrote running commentaries on what was happening. Several of them had completed the army’s Russian course, where they had learned the language and acquired a basic knowledge of the country (8 September 1987). During the period 1985–1988, there were six journalists who were particularly important contributors to the paper’s coverage of the Soviet Union: Bobo Scheutz (correspondent shared with Svenska Dagbladet), Aasmund Willersrud, Per Egil Hegge, Kjell Dragnes, Nils Morten Udgaard, and Halvor Tjønn. All of these had, through their long journalistic careers in Aftenposten’s foreign affairs department, developed into high-profile Soviet experts who gave the paper a special foreign policy profile in the Norwegian media landscape. All six of them had periodically been the paper’s Moscow correspondent. This study is limited to articles written by these six correspondents, supplemented by Aftenposten’s own editorials.

“Scary Days” The greatest single news story during the period of this study was the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl. “Serious Soviet Reactor Accident,” wrote Aftenposten on its front page in the morning edition of 29 April 1986. That headline was followed up by a number of large and small entries with dramatic headlines. In its evening edition, Aftenposten announced that it was still “unknown” if the reactor accident had taken any lives.

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These reports inaugurated Aftenposten’s coverage of the Chernobyl disaster. The news items during the first week were characterized by great seriousness. The paper summarized the events of the first week as “scary days”: “We have been forced to learn to adjust to circumstances that we have never experienced before” (5 May 1986); “Radiation for More Than Thirty Years” the paper announced a few days later (10 May 1986). In a new editorial, the paper wrote that the Soviet government’s handling of the information relating to the disaster had been “reprehensible, to say the least.” The paper severely criticized the Soviet authorities for their silence, and wrote that “when those who have the information refuse to share it, they will also have to take responsibility for the speculations” (12 May 1986). During the following weeks, Aftenposten continued to publish dramatic news about the Chernobyl disaster. The news coverage was massive, not just in the ensuing months, but for several years afterward. The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl was a worldwide news event. It also had an impact on the Soviet press and mass media, which in turn had important consequences for Western newspapers. For even if Aftenposten, for example, had its own Moscow correspondent, the paper’s running coverage of the Soviet Union was also dependent on what the Soviet media themselves reported—and on how they did it. The effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the Soviet press thus constituted a first step in the conveying of information to the West; and in the next round Soviet journalists’ perception would have an important influence on the reporting done by Western newspapers such as Aftenposten. By the spring of 1986, the Soviet and Western press had had a year’s experience of Mikhail Gorbachev as the new leader of the Soviet Union. The journalists had from the beginning noted his new attitude to public debate, and in January of 1986, Bobo Scheutz from Aftenposten’s Moscow office summarized the new atmosphere that had become noticeable in Soviet newspapers, starting in the autumn of 1985. The most significant new departure was that critical letters to the editors now saw print in newspapers that traditionally had existed only as vehicles of propaganda for the politics of the Party. The Soviet Communist Party had full control of the Soviet press, but by opening up for a few critical letters to the editor, the way the newspapers now did, it revealed, paradoxically enough, its continued loyalty to the new Party leadership (9 January 1986).

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The Chernobyl Effect Bobo Scheutz’s observations on the new openness in the Soviet press were picked up by Aftenposten’s other Soviet experts. Per Egil Hegge, one of the paper’s most well-known Soviet experts and an earlier Moscow correspondent, commented in July of 1986 that “in comparison to what is usual in the Soviet Union, the reports from Chernobyl have been surprisingly personal, comprehensive, and critical—when they finally got started.” Even in the Party newspaper Pravda, the criticism directed at insufficient information and bureaucratic incompetence was scathing. Hegge asked if this was the beginning of “a totally new Soviet information policy, a sharp turn along a line that had relied on penetrating exposures of all major accidents in the capitalist world, but extremely limited coverage of catastrophic events in socialist countries.” According to the head of the main Soviet TV news program and the deputy chief editor of the official government newspaper Izvestiya, the answer was “yes.” This remark was made in a rapid-fire interview with the newly appointed Moscow correspondent for the Rome newspaper La Repubblica. Both of them admitted that it had taken “too long” for the Soviet mass media to begin reporting from Chernobyl, but that the disaster since then had been described with an openness that would have been “unthinkable” before Gorbachev. Hegge made the following comments on the situation: Soviet newspapers, from Pravda on down, have given thorough reports about the development of the catastrophe, about heroism and deficiencies in the rescue work, about the danger of radioactive radiation, about lack of information and about families who were separated for weeks because they had been evacuated to different locations. There have been no denials of the fact that some people were seized by panic, that some local leaders are still in hiding after fleeing their posts, that some officials have been relieved of their duties, since the generally low level of knowledge has resulted in some people believing that alcohol can protect one against nuclear radiation, or that people from Chernobyl represent a danger of infection. (15 July 1986)

Then he recapitulated the press coverage. The first few days after the disaster on the night of 26 April, it was silence that reigned throughout the Soviet press. Almost three days had gone by before the news agency TASS distributed the first official report. It took four days before

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Pravda printed its first, short news bulletin. Up until 6 May, information was very scanty. The first extensive Soviet newspaper treatment of the disaster saw print on 7 May, and then only as a summary of a press conference held in the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Pravda presented its first on-the-spot report on 8 May. The next day, another one followed, and then there were nonstop reports for an entire month. In the pages of Aftenposten, Per Egil Hegge gave an attention-grabbing evaluation of this news coverage: A close reading of these reports instills a respect for Soviet journalism, which before may have been difficult to summon. Stories are told about the ghost town Pripjat close to Chernobyl, complete with barriers, guards, empty streets, clothes hanging out to dry, wilted flowers and a lone doll behind a window.… We are also told about a large number of letters sent to the newspapers, some with thanks for what has been done, especially addressed to those who have sacrificed their lives, but others complaining bitterly about failure and begging for help. The last group appears to be very large, and the complaints are quite varied. The lack of information seems to have been a serious problem on every level. (15 July 1986)

Per Egil Hegge had, as a Kremlinologist for decades, been accustomed to reading between the lines in the Soviet press in order to find hidden messages, but now he gave Soviet journalism an unusually good assessment: The descriptions are characterized by a far more direct and critical style that has been Gorbachev’s distinctive mark from the first days after his rise to power sixteen months ago. On the whole, this openness has passed a test during a catastrophe that was bound to create extremely negative consequences for the international reputation of the Soviet Union, and also to some extent for the population’s confidence in their government—which is not very strong to start with. This is something new in Soviet public life. Whether it will also be a lasting feature, nobody can say today. (15 July 1986)

Hegge’s assessment of this as “something new in Soviet public life” was a little different from the opinion of the paper’s Moscow correspondent, Bobo Scheutz, who in his reports during 1985 and 1986 often regarded Gorbachev as a continuation of the old Soviet regime (Bastiansen 2015, 318).

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In spite of this, Scheutz also came to report astounding news after Chernobyl: “It was irresponsibility, sloppiness, and a failure of discipline among the officials at the nuclear power station in Chernobyl that caused the catastrophe on the night of 26 April this year, the Politburo of the Communist Party has concluded,” he wrote (21 July 1986). By that time, there had “leaked out reports of unrest and strong discontent.” He believed that the Politburo’s campaign “was directed at the domestic opinion, which one needed to pay attention to, after all.” Scheutz saw this reaction as typical of the Soviet regime: It was “no surprise” that the Politburo put “all the blame on individuals and promised severe punishment for the culprits. This is a form of problem-solving that Soviet history can show rather too many examples of” (22 July 1986). In an editorial, Aftenposten wrote that “the open policy that Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev stands for is a controlled openness.” The paper reminded its readers that a “free press” did not exist in the Soviet Union. The regime had recently “established clear limits as to what was permissible.” In Aftenposten’s opinion, a newly discovered manifesto was “a sign that the ideas that had been sown during the Czechoslovakian reform experiment in Prague during the spring of 1968, had sprouted under barren conditions … ideas like a free press, full freedom of expression, and what is known as alternative political organizations.” The paper saw the manifesto as “a sign that something is brewing in the Soviet Union”. (editorial, 31 July 1986) Between August and September 1986, Bobo Scheutz was replaced as Moscow correspondent by Aasmund Willersrud. The new correspondent was only thirty-five years old, but he already had six years of experience on the foreign affairs staff, and had contributed, among other things, sporadic articles about the Soviet Union. On his very first day in his new job as correspondent, he was able to present dramatic news: a Soviet cruise-ship had been wrecked in the Black Sea. Aftenposten ran the shipwreck as front-page news for two days in a row: “Ship Down with a Thousand People on Board?” (2 September 1986). The shipwreck was characterized as “the worst in Soviet history” (3 September 1986). Willersrud quickly commented on the new openness that he had found in Soviet newspapers relating to this disaster:

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Soviet newspapers are at the same time beginning to outdo each other in their attempts to give candid eyewitness reports from the survivors and from the rescue crews. Compared to the silence of the first days and even weeks after the Chernobyl catastrophe, the Tuesday papers are a virtual exhibition of “Glasnost” or openness that the Party Leader Gorbachev has made into a slogan. Leading the field was the Party organ Izvestiya, which as early as Monday night was on the street with a report on the disaster. (4 September 1986)

A month later, Willersrud reported on a similar case of openness. “Moscow’s Openness Prevented Crisis” was the title of a report on how Gorbachev himself informed U.S. President Ronald Reagan of the fact that a Soviet nuclear submarine with strategic nuclear missiles on board was on fire off the American East Coast. The Soviet press reported that three of the crew members were dead, but there did not appear to be any danger of an explosion. This time it took only a day and a half before the official news agency TASS sent out a bulletin about the fire. Willersrud noted that it was “the first time the Soviet Union has admitted to an accident involving one of its nuclear submarines, setting what must be close to a record as far as openness about major catastrophes is concerned” (6 October 1986). Aftenposten commented on the new openness in an editorial: The accident is not the first one involving a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine carrying nuclear weapons. The difference this time is that both the United States and the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna were notified as soon as Moscow had found out about the problems.… It is at least a promising sign that the accident was made known. The secretive Soviet Union does not easily make a complete turnaround, which is shown, among other things, by Gorbachev’s complaints about too many people obstructing his domestic reforms. But perhaps the notification of this accident is one more sign that the Kremlin will no longer be as secretive as they have been before. (7 October 1986)

Willersrud shortly afterward presented a more detailed assessment of this new tendency of the Soviet media to call a spade a spade, and observed that even Pravda’s editors had begun to criticize letters to the editor that wrote negatively about the new openness. Willersrud gave the following evaluation of the new glasnost policies:

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The campaign is a “revolution from the top,” which the Party Leader himself has initiated. It has come so far by now that the media’s debate about the new openness has itself become the subject of open debate. It is clearly no secret that the “glasnost” campaign has powerful adversaries in the Soviet state. The arguments presented in the letter that Pravda quotes from, belong to the crude variety. Pravda interprets the letter as an expression of concern that openness about such troublesome realities is going to damage the party’s authority, but the paper still upholds the new party line. Times have changed, and today we call a spade a spade. As Lenin put it, “The people must above all, and most of all, get to know the truth.” But the truth that is revealed in the newspaper columns is often brutal. It is not strange that many people feel that such exposure is hard to take. A society full of scoundrels and bandits, fraud and deception, all the way up to the highest circles of power. (18 October 1986)

With the new openness in the Soviet media, things like serious accidents, hijackings, abuse of power, fraud, and corruption were exposed in full daylight. These were news items that would have been unthinkable just a short time earlier. The Moscow correspondent wrote that “the breakthrough for this type of ‘glasnost’ came after the Chernobyl catastrophe, even if scandalously delayed.” After Chernobyl, it had taken eighteen days before Party Leader Gorbachev had commented on the disaster that had created an uproar throughout the world, except for short, official announcements. But when Gorbachev finally made his television speech, in the middle of May, it let loose “a veritable flood of reports and critical commentaries in all the media, every single day.” The Soviet press led the way, and the letters to the editor went further than anything else: Much of the most scathing criticism is expressed in letters from the readers, but when they are printed, it will be with the blessing of the right officials. When the storm surrounding Chernobyl … gradually diminishes in the Soviet press, an important consequence will live on, namely the critical journalism that has been given fairly free rein in the reporting of the nuclear catastrophe. One cannot so easily wring the necks of critical journalists, even if some people have expressed the opinion that this type of journalism does not really benefit the cause. (18 October 1986)

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Willersrud wrote that “the Soviet press and other mass media have gone through a rapid and fundamental change since Mikhail Gorbachev became Party Leader a year and a half ago.” He quoted a colleague who now for the first time approached “the daily pile of newspapers in eager anticipation,” because “what a few years ago was an exercise in utter boredom, is today an exciting journey of discovery through the columns.” According to Willersrud, the changes in the press had their origins under Andropov, but he was still quite explicit in his belief that what was happening now represented something new in the Soviet media (18 October 1986). Few other Norwegian foreign correspondents have covered such a dramatic era as Willersrud did in Moscow between 1986 and 1990. His tenure included almost the entire Gorbachev epoch and the breakdown of communism, seen from the vantage point of the capital of the Soviet Union—even if his newspaper articles tended to be eclipsed by the many dramatic radio and TV reports on the NRK broadcasting network. Many of Aftenposten’s news articles during the summer and autumn of 1986 appeared to confirm the new openness in the Soviet Union, as Scheutz, Hegge, and Willersrud pointed out.4 The headlines plainly showed that something new was on the point of happening: “Top Officials in Moscow Arrested for Fraud” (12 September 1986); “Russian Health Minister Speaks Out: The Soviet Union Has Closed Its Eyes to the Drug Problem” (24 September 1986); and “A Peek at a Soviet Top Secret” (29 September 1986). The last-mentioned article dealt with the fact that the Soviet state was now opening up, for the international press, the top-secret mine shafts that had been used for the testing of nuclear weapons. Another article focused on the fact that crime statistics—“one of the Soviet Union’s best-kept secrets,” according to Willersrud—ought to be “the next subject of Gorbachev’s glasnost” (27 November 1986). And about the Soviet movie Anger, which was reviewed in a Soviet weekly, he wrote, “Sensationally honest Soviet film: Berija and Stalin are exposed” (28 November 1986). It was through articles and commentaries such as these that Aftenposten made the concept of glasnost known to its readers. In the beginning, the journalists found reason to explain what the word meant. On the first occasions that the word appeared in 1986, they put it in quotation marks, accompanied by the Norwegian word for “openness” (27 September 1986). Per Egil Hegge’s article entitled “Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’: Limited Openness,” is also an example of the fact that

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Aftenposten did not equate glasnost with the freedom enjoyed by Western democracies. There were differences in principle: “The difference is that it is possible to criticize a government and its policies in our countries, while only a few consequences of official policies can be criticized in socialist systems,” he wrote (6 December 1986). Concurrently with this early description of glasnost, the paper continued its traditional support of the dissidents in Eastern Europe, such as Charta 77 and the famous Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. In October 1986, Aftenposten featured the book Alone Together, written by Sakharov’s wife, Jelena Bonner, on its front page. Inside the paper, there followed a page-long excerpt from the book (4 October 1986). Aftenposten also wrote about the activist Jiri Hajek from Charta 77 who, together with other dissidents, had signed a critical manifesto “without parallel in Eastern Europe.” The paper expressed the opinion that people living west of the Iron Curtain must do their utmost to keep the engagement of the Eastern dissidents alive (24 October 1986). In December 1986, Aftenposten printed what up until that time was arguably the biggest personal news of glasnost politics: Gorbachev terminated Sakharov’s exile in Gorky. The married couple were now allowed to return to Moscow after six years of banishment (19 December 1986). In an editorial, the paper expressed its pleasure at the release, but reminded people that it ought not to be the new norm that Gorbachev and his men “should be left standing with flowers in their hands” because they had simply lived up to the agreements that the Soviet Union had signed with regard to respect for human rights. In the paper’s opinion, they should certainly have set him free sooner (22 December 1986). Less than twenty-four hours after the Sakharovs had returned to Moscow, Willersrud rang their doorbell and got an exclusive interview. The paper printed the interview on 27 December 1986 under the headline, “Freedom: A Heavy Responsibility.” Willersrud summed up the news-year 1986 by pointing out that “after Chernobyl, there was a display of openness that no one has seen before in this country.” People actually felt sorry for Mikhail Gorbachev, who was hit by so many disasters, he wrote, but added immediately, “It is not as if Gorbachev has been hit by more disasters than his predecessors, but he is the first one who has told not just foreign correspondents, but also an entire nation all the details of these catastrophes. Earlier, such embarrassing truths were usually kept secret” (31 December 1986).

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The First Half of 1987: The Breakthrough If we are looking for the breakthrough for Aftenposten’s use of the concept of glasnost, we will have to go to the first few weeks of 1987. It started in a spectacular fashion: Right after New Year’s the paper printed three long articles about the Soviet Union, by the American sociologist Alvin Toffler. He discussed whether Gorbachev with his “glasnost” had smashed a hole in the frozen structures that Brezhnev had left behind (5, 7, and 8 January 1987). Toffler’s fresh impressions were the start of a great deal of glasnost news reported by Aftenposten on the Soviet Union during the following months, appearing under headlines like, “Openness About Drugs in the Soviet Union” (7 January 1987), “Boris Pasternak’s Forbidden Novel, Dr. Zhivago, to Be Published” (8 January 1987), and “The KGB Admits to Abuse of Power” (9 January 1987). Not even the KGB were immune to the new openness. Aftenposten wrote that the leader of the KGB announced in Pravda that one of his officials in the Ukraine had been sacked because of criminal behavior and abuse of power (Aftenposten, 9 January 1987). Just as astounding as the realities of the case was the fact that it had been exposed in Pravda itself— the official organ of the Central Committee—and on the front page. Pravda’s presentation of the news and Aftenposten’s reports showed that a new era had arrived in the Kremlin. And more followed shortly afterward. Gorbachev soon came out with a scathing criticism of the Brezhnev period and announced new, drastic reforms (28 January 1987). Aftenposten commented on these developments in an editorial entitled “Historic in Moscow” (29 January 1987). The paper noted that “there’s a fresh whoosh from the whip that Gorbachev is swinging over high and low, past and present, in the Soviet Union. He is using words about the Brezhnev period and its leaders that only a short time ago would have been branded as lies and anti-Soviet fabrications if they had appeared in the Western press.” The paper pointed out the paradox that Gorbachev did not want to leave the one-party system behind, but wanted to “soften up society inside of the same straitjacket that had made it congeal in the first place.” The paper reminded its readers that the openness he was talking about was “a democratization and an openness on certain conditions,” a reality important “to keep in mind when the developments in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev are evaluated.” This way Aftenposten demonstrated its skill when it came to interpreting Soviet news, even when political realities were changing fast.

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Aftenposten now printed a number of news items about the Soviet Union that would have been unthinkable in the past, such as “Brezhnev Debunked” (31 January 1987). Many of these news stories were so dramatic that the paper found reason to comment on “The Signals from the Kremlin” in an editorial: Every day we are getting unusual news from Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his inner-circle among the powers that be in the Kremlin. Surprising announcements and directives must primarily occupy the everyday lives of the Soviet leader’s own fellow citizens. They are not used to what they are hearing these days. But in the Western world, too, the signals emanating from the center of power in the Soviet Union demand attention. In rapid succession, we are getting announcements from Moscow that carry the message that Gorbachev is in the process of changing the direction of the Soviet Union. In his address to the Central Committee, he announced reforms that were going to open up the road toward secret elections, and promised that critics of the regime were going to be released.… It seems as if Mikhail Gorbachev has started a thorough house cleaning in his Soviet society. (5 February 1987)

The amazement expressed by the author of the editorial may be seen as an example of how a comprehensive stream of news from one country can make an overwhelming impression of change when it is presented by the press in other countries. And it did not end there. Aftenposten soon afterward printed more sensational news from Moscow: The Soviet Union intended to remove the articles in the criminal code directed against oppositional activities (5 February 1987). Andrei Sakharov was again allowed access to speakers’ platforms in the Soviet Union (6 February 1987). Aftenposten made room on its front page when the news broke that the Soviet Union was going to set free 140 prisoners (11 February 1987). In an editorial, the paper pointed out that “Moscow is reaping great propaganda benefits from these releases. Let that be as it may. As long as innocent people who have been wrongly convicted are let out of the prison camps, this is positive” (12 February 1987). At the same time, the paper’s correspondent John Crowo reported that Soviet representatives were on a public relations tour of the United States. They were going to “tell the Americans about the wind of reform that Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev had let loose over the Soviet Union.” Crowo added that “no one on the American side can remember that Soviet internal conditions have ever been taken up in this

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way.” Aftenposten illustrated the news item with a large photograph of a smiling Gorbachev (10 February 1987). After studying the news of the Soviet Union in Aftenposten during January and February of 1987, one must conclude that from its perspective the Soviet press’s coverage of events during this timeframe was the definitive breakthrough for the concept of glasnost. And the type of news that was now emanating from the Soviet Union was definitely at odds with the country’s traditional news policies. Aftenposten had understood what was going on, but not without a measure of scepticism. In February, the paper cleared its front page for an additional dramatic Soviet news story: “Gorbachev: Without Reforms, I Will Resign” (20 February 1987). Some of the journalists in Aftenposten now wrote about the crisis of communism, others warned against really believing the Russians, while still others unpacked the concept of “thaw” from the liberal Krushchev period (5 March 1987). When Aasmund Willersrud in March 1987, summed up Gorbachev’s first two years in power, he used the concept of glasnost to explain what he could now observe every day in the Soviet media: With “glasnost” in hand, the media are daily criticizing both failure and negligence within the Party as well as within the administration. In January, even the Party organ Pravda took the mighty KGB to task and exposed a case of criminal power abuse. Not to speak of all the accidents, calamities, and social destitution that have been hushed up completely in the past. Still, all of this does not transform the formidable Soviet system, but it has created an atmosphere of anticipation—of real change, improvement, and liberalization. (11 March 1987)

The reports from Willersrud were marked by this atmosphere of anticipation and hopes for a change for the better. He summarized his analysis by observing that “the goal seems to be to make the Soviet Union function as a capitalist society, but without introducing capitalism.” After all, the socialist system should be retained. Willersrud drew clear parallels to the Krushchev period, but believed that Gorbachev was “a wiser leader, more balanced and more cautious, after all.” He added, however, that Gorbachev had still not become a popular leader: “His ‘perestroika’ contains positive prospects for the future for most people, but tastes like an incredibly bitter medicine for the time being.” All Soviet citizens were affected by the changes, and there was considerable opposition, both among ordinary people and in the Party (11 March 1987).

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One noticeable change for the readers was that Aftenposten gradually stopped explaining the concept of glasnost and putting the word in quotation marks (27 March 1987). “Openness Gives Strength,” wrote Kjell Dragnes in an article where Gorbachev was drawn as a muscular he-man with chains (29 April 1987). “The Kremlin Praises People’s Outspokenness” was a headline that would have been absurd before (15 July 1987). Aasmund Willersrud made use of the new freedom to interview Nikita Krushchev’s son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei, who had been removed from his position as editor-in-chief of Izvestiya when the Soviet leader was deposed in 1964 (30 May 1987). Willersrud declared that “the openness, compared to what was the case a few years ago, is astonishing. It is no less than a revolution that has taken place in Soviet media.” Problems and phenomena that it had earlier been forbidden to discuss, or that had consciously been swept under the carpet, were now the subjects of spirited discussion. He quoted a Soviet dissident who said, “What I was convicted of, can now be read about in the newspapers. We have almost got [something akin to] public dissenters” (15 July 1987). For Aftenposten, Pravda was one of the most important sources of Soviet news during these years. Since the Revolution, sovietologists all over the world had been used to reading Pravda between the lines in order to discover the realities behind the news. Aftenposten’s Sovietoriented contributors also practiced this sport. It came as a surprise, therefore, that a complete edition of Pravda was going to be published in Norwegian in April 1987. This initiative came from the SlavicBaltic Institute at the University of Oslo. Now, Norwegians without any knowledge of Russian would be able to read for themselves what the Soviet newspaper wrote about Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika (30 April 1987). Glasnost also colored Aftenposten’s relations with Pravda in other ways. When Pravda celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in the spring of 1987, Aftenposten allocated extensive coverage of the occasion, strongly influenced by the glasnost politics of the two latest years. Willersrud made the following observation: Under the current “glasnost” politics, Pravda’s famous greyness is in the process of softening through the appearance of certain journalistic splashes of color. The paper has brought revelations during the past year that earlier would have taken the breath away from many an old-style

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censorship bureaucrat. Even so, the Party’s most important mouthpiece is not at all counted among the most daring in the Soviet press. In the anniversary edition, the paper printed letters from readers who thought that the editors did not utilize the “glasnost” directives to their full extent. (9 May 1987)

One editor of Pravda, Yevgeny Grigoryev, said to Aftenposten’s correspondent that “at the moment, we have no zones that are exempt from criticism.… Without ‘glasnost’ (openness), it will be impossible to implement ‘perestroika’ (reorganization) throughout society.… Our newspaper has a leading position when it comes to strengthening this openness. This is how it has been, and this is how it will be.” The answers turned a little more woolly, however, when the correspondent asked when Pravda was going to interview Andrei Sakharov (9 May 1987). It is quite evident that Aftenposten had now begun to regard Pravda as a glasnost organ. Soon opinion polls appeared that seemed to suggest that Pravda and other Soviet media, in collaboration with Gorbachev, were perhaps on the point of succeeding in an attempt to change opinions in the West toward a more positive view of the Soviet Union. “Gorbachev has impressed millions of Western Europeans,” Aftenposten observed in an editorial in July. Their view of the Soviet Union “had become more positive.” But the paper found it “quite alarming” that a “substantial segment” of public opinion in the NATO countries regarded Gorbachev as “more peace-loving” than Reagan (3 July 1987). Opinion polls showed that Norwegians, too, had more trust in the Soviet party leader than in the American president. Aftenposten found it “deplorable” that Norwegian public opinion had also become such an “easy prey for Gorbachev’s new style” (7 July 1987). These judgments are not surprising, coming from a liberal-conservative newspaper like Aftenposten, which supported both NATO and the European Economic Community. Nor is it strange that the paper complained that public opinion in the West had greater confidence in Gorbachev than in Reagan. What is more curious, however, is that the paper did not reflect more about the role of the news media—and its own influence—for these changes in attitude. This article clearly shows in detail how Aftenposten’s presentation of the Soviet Union shifted in a positive direction after 1985. In this light, the results of the opinion polls

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are not very surprising, since the respondents naturally reacted on the basis of the impressions they received from news coverage that in 1987 gave a surprising and positive picture of the politics of glasnost. In an editorial, Aftenposten concluded that “not since the word ‘sputnik’ had entered the international language, has a Soviet concept spread so rapidly as Mikhail Gorbachev’s slogan ‘glasnost’—openness. It is understood all over the world” (28 July 1987).

The Second Half of the Year 1987: Glasnost Becomes Retrospective From the summer of 1987, the perception of glasnost in Soviet public life also turned toward the past, with a new openness about the terror under Stalin and the darkest aspects of Soviet history, “to an extent that the Soviet regime had never before wanted or been able to reveal,” as Willersrud put it in one of his commentaries (21 May 1987). Such an openness even extended to the fates of the czar family and Leon Trotsky. When these fates were finally exposed in Soviet public life, they were also news for Western correspondents (16 and 17 July 1987). The Soviet experts in Aftenposten soon began to leverage the opportunities that were created when the Kremlin opened up for “glasnost from the past.” Many possibilities arose for shedding a more critical light on the Soviet state. Aftenposten’s articles on the Soviet Union now often contained sensational news of former state secrets and concealed atrocities. The paper made use of headlines about the Soviet leaders that would have been unthinkable before. Among other things, the myths of Brezhnev’s and Chernenko’s heroic war efforts were demolished (11 August 1987). Aftenposten commented on the significance of this revisionist version of Soviet history under this editorial heading, “Adjustment of the Soviet Past”: “In Soviet mass media there is an ongoing campaign to inform people about the full truth of the past of the communist state.… Constant evaluations of the Stalin era are formulated that no one would have dared to express earlier. The claim is made that the dictator’s excesses damaged the Soviet Union as much as, or perhaps even more than, the two world wars” (12 August 1987).

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Such incredible statements were now openly expressed in Soviet public life. In the autumn of 1987, Aftenposten’s editorial writers began to reflect on how ordinary Soviet citizens might perceive the changes that were a part of the glasnost policy. In a commentary on Gorbachev’s confrontation with the country’s past, Per Egil Hegge called attention to the many “sensitive questions” that had traditionally been “swept under the carpet” or “described in a grotesquely misleading way.” He claimed that “this cleanup is also influencing contemporary politics” and the Soviet Union’s relations with its neighbors: “The most sensitive subjects are now more boldly treated than during the most liberal Krushchev period.” Even Pravda, he noted, had exposed Stalin’s forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture in the 1930s, “a catastrophe it still has not overcome, almost 60 years later.” Hegge was convinced that this exposure would have “immediate practical consequences” and would determine whether the Soviet Union would be able to put food on the tables of its own citizens (24 August 1987). Aftenposten’s historical articles about the Soviet Union coincided in time with the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution in the autumn of 1987. Willersrud made a comparison between Lenin and Gorbachev and asked how long it would take before glasnost would threaten even Lenin’s position (6 November 1987). The official Soviet anniversary celebration in the Red Square was described by Willersrud as a “well-directed softening-up in Moscow.” At the same time, he included interviews and articles that brought his readers very close to the Revolution of 1917 (7 November 1987) and to Gorbachev’s showdown with the Stalin era (2 November 1987). Willersrud also wrote about the Soviet weekly magazine Ogonjok’s confrontation with Stalin and his times (23 December 1987). Nevertheless, these examples do not show the whole range of glasnost-related material in Aftenposten during these years. For concurrency with articles that followed up the new openness in Eastern Europe, the paper also on several occasions printed critical views of the whole glasnost process, both from Gorbachev’s opponents in the Soviet Union and from Western sources. An example of the latter was a statement from the Norwegian organization Mission Behind the Iron Curtain to the effect that the Soviet internment camps were as bad as ever, “in spite of glasnost” (13 November 1987; see also 16 and 17 November 1987,

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and 3 and 15 December 1987). Aftenposten thus from time to time presented glasnost as a controversial phenomenon. All in all, however, it seems clear that the main body of printed material presented the politics of glasnost as something positive. Many of the articles tied the glasnost policies directly to Gorbachev in person, partly because he had been extremely accommodating in many interviews with Western mass media. Aftenposten frequently reproduced and commented on such interviews. In “Turned on His Charm—and Won,” the paper’s U.S. correspondent John Crowo portrayed Gorbachev as a charismatic figure after watching an interview with the Soviet leader on American television (2 December 1987). In an editorial entitled “Gorbachev’s TV Victory,” the newspaper concluded that he, by “negotiating” through the mass media, was able to influence public opinion in the West: “Because he talks and acts in a more human way than his predecessors, he is credited with more likeable characteristics in our part of the world. We must not forget that he is primarily out to take care of Soviet interests and that his attitudes are not really liberal in our Western sense” (3 December 1987). The third summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev, which took place in December 1987, represented a breakthrough and led to a wide-ranging disarmament treaty. Aftenposten gave the summit thorough coverage (8 and 9 December 1987). Then the paper translated verbatim the entire text of the treaty and printed it on two full pages. The paper reported that a joint American-Soviet glasnost spirit had prevailed among the media representatives during the meeting, where the press spokesmen from both countries appeared together (10 December 1987). Shortly afterward, the American news magazine TIME chose Gorbachev as Man of the Year for 1987. On this occasion, Aftenposten expressed the opinion that Gorbachev ought to be praised for his willingness to compromise, but still warned its readers against trusting him too much (29 December 1987).

1987–1988: Recoil During 1987–1988, the nature of the articles about glasnost began to change. Now they started to focus more on the consequences of such policies, both internally in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The glasnost policy at this point seemed to have created a recoil that no one could have foreseen or controlled: national antagonisms and ethnic riots flared up in several Soviet republics. The Soviet experts at Aftenposten followed these developments with great interest.

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On the three-year anniversary of Gorbachev’s rise to power in March 1988, Aftenposten’s editorial writer found a direct connection between the riots and the politics of glasnost. The paper considered glasnost to be the immediate cause of the unrest that was now more and more visible in Soviet republics like the Baltics and Armenia. It also pointed out the contradiction between an increase of domestic freedom and the discipline that was also required to hold the Soviet empire together. The paper thus implied that the unrest threatened the very existence of the Soviet Union. The great paradox, the paper suggested, was that the Armenian protesters were using pictures of Gorbachev in support of their nationalist demands for freedom (11 March 1988). These consequences were also noticeable in Eastern Europe, where many people now demanded independence from the Soviet Union. Nils Morten Udgaard pointed out that since the Soviet leadership was now loosening its grip, the multitude of national tensions would come to the surface. In the Baltic states, this was a particularly sensitive situation, since the Soviet reign there was a result of the infamous Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 (25 August 1987). The Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviet Union was an important area of interest for Aftenposten. Most of the reports from these countries were written by Stein Savik, who was the paper’s own correspondent in Eastern Europe. Savik reported, among other things, on the consequences of glasnost politics. In September 1987, he commented on the meeting between Gorbachev and the Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski. They had agreed that historians from both countries should now be given access to formerly classified archives and thereby remove the holes in the historical record that had existed on both sides (19 September and 16 October 1987). In October, Savik reported that glasnost was beginning to have a similar impact in Czechoslovakia (31 October 1987). Aftenposten also discussed Eastern Europe in its editorials. The paper saw “the smouldering political unrest” in the region as a confirmation of the wave of reform expectations that the Soviet Union’s new signals had created, even in Eastern Germany, where the government was “very reluctant” to embrace glasnost policies. Even so, several thousand young people gathered together on the east side of the Berlin Wall, shouting “Down with the Wall” and “Gorbachev, Gorbachev.” Aftenposten noted that “the political longings among an overwhelming majority of Eastern Europeans” pointed in the direction of the liberalization that the Soviets had announced. The expectations of more freedom and openness were ostensibly created by Gorbachev himself (12 June 1987). In Aftenposten,

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these reflections led on to the question of whether the Berlin Wall might be torn down (17 August 1987; see also 2 July 1987). In addition, the paper pointed out that in Poland, it was now possible for many households with satellite dish aerials to see Western television programs. In the DDR, large parts of the population could now receive television programs from Western Germany, while Austrian TV was available in half of Hungary and in parts of Czechoslovakia (14 September 1987). Both inside and around the media, then, there were now new times in Eastern Europe, Aftenposten reported. “Glasnost has charmed the journalists of the world,” explained the paper’s editor, Harald Brynildsen, in the wake of a conference held at the International Press Institute. There Western journalists had been amazed at the openness they now witnessed on the part of the Soviet participants. He also quoted a Soviet editor to the effect that “it has never been so interesting—and never so challenging—to be a press worker as now.… Our newspapers are snatched away more than ever” (26 May 1988). In an editorial, Aftenposten began to consider the possibilities of the Soviet Union becoming a democracy (3 December 1988). And after Gorbachev’s speech at the United Nations on 7 December 1988,5 the paper observed that it was “astonishing, to put it mildly. Here Gorbachev, in effect, rejected the greater part of the Communist heritage.” The headline of this editorial was “1989 Holds Great Promise” (31 December 1988).6

Conclusion The approach for this article has been to determine to what extent glasnost contributed to changes in Aftenposten’s opinion of the Soviet Union during the period 1985–1988. To be able to answer this question, the introduction formulated three sub-questions which were necessary to answer first. The first of the three focused on when and how the concept of glasnost made its breakthrough in the pages of Aftenposten. The press material that I have examined shows that it took a good while before the word glasnost first appeared. Aftenposten did not begin to use it as soon as Gorbachev became the new Soviet leader in 1985, even if the paper very early began to show an interest in the new reform signals he sent (Bastiansen 2015). The Moscow correspondent Bobo Scheutz registered the new tone in Soviet media in the autumn of 1985, but did not comment on it more extensively until early in 1986. And it was not until some months later that Aftenposten gradually began to introduce

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the concept of glasnost to its readers. At that time, the word was often put in quotation marks and followed by the word “openness” as a way of explanation. The budding openness in the Soviet Union was thus something that Aftenposten had noticed before the Chernobyl disaster, but the nuclear catastrophe still represents a decisive dividing line. After the initial silence from the press, Aftenposten’s Soviet experts began to notice that the Soviet media were starting to practice a far more open and critical journalism than before. It was in the atmosphere of this special “Chernobyl effect” that Aftenposten began to use the concept of glasnost more extensively, during the summer and autumn of 1986. Even so, we have to go to January and February of 1987 before we can find the definite breakthrough for this word in Aftenposten’s columns. By that time, Aftenposten had presented so many sensational glasnost news stories that even the paper’s editorial writer had begun to wonder about them. The second sub-question initially had to do with what role the concept of glasnost played in Aftenposten’s running commentary on the Soviet Union. Seen from the Kremlin, one might say that glasnost politics had two dimensions, one domestic and the other international. In terms of his domestic policies, it was a signal of Gorbachev’s desire for a freer atmosphere for criticism and public debate. Gorbachev regarded glasnost as a prerequisite for his most important goal of perestroika, which was going to transform the Soviet economy. At the same time, he must have realized that glasnost had the potential to change the image of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the world: when formerly taboo subjects and nonpersons were again the subjects of public debate, and when political prisoners were given amnesty, the world saw a very different Soviet Union than before. The term “glasnost” contained all of these developments and was, therefore, perfectly suited for Gorbachev’s goal of creating a more positive impression of the Soviet Union in other countries (see Gorbachev 1996; Gorbatsjov 1987, 2013). For these reasons, the politics of glasnost represented a special challenge for Western journalists. They would have very much liked to cover all the exciting things that were happening under Gorbachev, but at the same time, they needed to keep a critical distance. This also applied to Aftenposten’s commentators on the Soviet Union. They followed the glasnost campaign with great vigilance. They often identified inconsistent elements and focused on the discrepancy between the glasnost ideal and the realities of Soviet life. Even so, there can be little doubt that Aftenposten’s Soviet experts allowed themselves to be fascinated both by Mikhail Gorbachev the person and by his glasnost politics. This can be

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seen in the sheer bulk and range of this material. The concept of glasnost excited the journalists. It epitomized and symbolized the liberal winds that now exemplified the Soviet Union. Glasnost also gave the world radically different Soviet news than it had been used to. The journalists’ job of reporting what was happening in the Soviet Union during the glasnost era was, therefore, made very different from what it had been when their main task was to repeat the official bulletins of the Brezhnev period. Western commentators could not fail to see that the glasnost campaign was giving the Soviet Union a public arena that was beginning to resemble “business as usual” in Western countries, where people could openly present criticism and discuss social problems. The third subsidiary question focused on the extent Aftenposten changed its view of glasnost during the period 1985–1988. The immediate answer is simple: There can be no doubt that Aftenposten’s opinion of glasnost in 1988 differed significantly from what had been the paper’s view in 1985 and the early part of 1986. In 1985, Aftenposten had been hedging its bets with regard to Gorbachev. It described him as reform friendly but did not use the concept of glasnost. After the paper’s tentative introduction of this word in 1986 and its breakthrough in early 1987, glasnost became a key concept in the paper’s understanding of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Aftenposten also used the glasnost enthusiasm to bring historical revelations from the Soviet past, news that challenged the legitimacy of the regime and thus the future existence of the Soviet state. Then, during 1987 and 1988, we can see that the news material increasingly began to deal with the recoil effects of the glasnost policies, especially the emergence of nationalist and ethnic unrest in the Soviet republics. Glasnost stimulated dissidents and other oppositional groups both in the Soviet Union and in the rest of Eastern Europe. In this way, the whole region was set in motion. The newspaper material from 1988, therefore, had a different nature than the earlier glasnost coverage. The world began to realize that Gorbachev occupied a precarious position, and that his status and his reforms were threatened by strong internal tensions. In 1988, Gorbachev had become a sympathetic Soviet figure that the West had begun to like. Aftenposten expressed its concern about the future of Gorbachev and glasnost. Would he succeed or fail? The press coverage explained how the opposition had its source in the politics of glasnost itself, since it was the glasnost atmosphere that had allowed hidden tensions and internal conflicts to come to the surface. The news reports from 1988 showed that the internal solidarity inside the Soviet Union

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was at risk. At the same time, many newspaper articles testified to the enormous appeal of glasnost politics in Eastern Europe, not least to the opposition in the Baltic countries and to the demonstrators in East Berlin, who demanded that the Berlin Wall be torn down. So great was the contrast between the news reports from 1985 and those from 1988. Against this background, we can now answer the primary question posed by the introduction: to what extent did the concept of glasnost contribute to a change in Aftenposten’s view of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1988? The answer is now clear: The politics of glasnost contributed in important ways to significant changes in Aftenposten’s opinions of the Soviet Union during these years. This took place as a gradual change that can be traced in the paper’s news items about the Soviet Union from year to year—sometimes almost from day to day. They revealed that the old truths about the Soviet Union were no longer valid. Glasnost opened new perspectives in all directions. Even Pravda was not its old self any more. The Soviet Union was changing in many important ways. An atmosphere of anticipation of a better future arose from the glasnost policies and began to color Soviet mass media. Soon this mood also crept into the reports that Western journalists sent home from Moscow. In this way, the Western opinion of the Soviet regime began moving away from the deadlock of the Brezhnev era. We can also see this in the innumerable opinion polls that showed that public opinion in Western Europe put greater trust in Gorbachev’s disarmament plans than in Reagan’s. Seen against the background of the West’s strong anticommunist sentiment and hostility to the Soviet Union since the Revolution of 1917, further confirmed and enhanced during the Cold War since 1945, this change of attitude in the West happened surprisingly fast. The nature of the news coverage during these years—in an intimate interaction with Gorbachev and his glasnost politics—may clearly be seen as the primary cause of this development. In hindsight, the glasnost policies and Gorbachev’s other reforms have been regarded as major reasons for the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe during 1989–1990 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 (Smith 2004, 1). In this perspective, it becomes important to study how Western newspapers such as Aftenposten interpreted the events as they were happening. What the journalists wrote may be seen as a first version of what has later been codified in the history books, even if the difference between them and the historians of posterity is clear: the journalists wrote about glasnost without knowing how the Cold War would end.

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Notes 1.  For Denmark, see Roslyng-Jensen (2012); for Finland, see Lounasmeri (2015), Saarenmaa (2015), and Salokangas (2015). For Soviet conditions, see Sakwa (2010), Service (2009), Smith (2004), McNair (1991), and Roth-Ey (2011). For a Norwegian context, Røed-Fauske (2014), Berghei (2010), and Bastiansen (2014) are partly relevant. 2. Two of Norway’s best-known foreign affairs journalists were Jahn Otto Johansen (b. 1934) and Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld (b. 1951). Both of them were specialists on the Soviet Union, and both worked as NRK correspondents in Moscow. See Johansen (1976, 1977) and Steinfeld (1982, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1991). 3. Unless otherwise noted, all dates in parentheses following quotations are references to the publication date of Aftenposten. 4. See Aftenposten, 4 June, 7 June, 18 June, 1 July, 1 August, 28 August, 30 August, 12 September, 13 September, 24 September, 29 September, 2 October, 6 November, 8 November, 11 November, 27 November, 28 November—all from the year 1986. 5. The speech is reproduced in Gorbatsjov (2013, 490–501). 6. To study how Norwegian media covered the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, see Bastiansen (2018).

Archival Sources Aftenposten: A complete examination of the volumes 1985–1988, all issues. Pressefolk 1997, Institute for Journalism, 1998.

References Bastiansen, Henrik G. 2014. “Norwegian Media and the Cold War 1945–1991.” In Defending Democracy, edited by Kristin Skare Orgeret and Harald Hornmoen. Nordicom Review Special Issue, August 2014. Gothenburg: Nordicom. ———. 2015. “Towards Glasnost? A Case Study of the Norwegian News Coverage of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet Leader in 1985.” In The Nordic Media and the Cold War, edited by Henrik G. Bastiansen and Rolf Werenskjold. Gothenburg: Nordicom. ———. 2018. “Da Berlinmuren falt. En komparativ studie av presse, radio og TV i 1989” [The Fall of the Berlin Wall. A Comparative Study of Norwegian Press, Radio and Television]. Mediehistorisk Tidsskrift, no. 29: 34–90.

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Berghei, Jan Tore. 2010. “Russland i norsk presse. En undersøkelse av hovedstadsavisene i perioden 1880–1905” [Russia in the Norwegian Press. A Study of the Oslo Papers 1880–1905]. Master’s thesis, University of Tromsø. Büchten, Daniela, Tatjana Dzjakson, and Jens Petter Nielsen, eds. 2004. Norge-Russland. Naboer gjennom 1000 år [Norway-Russia. Neighbors in 1000 Years]. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press and Spartatus. Bull, Edvard. 1929. Den moderne pressen som historisk kilde [The Modern Press as Historical Source]. Oslo: Scandia. Dahl, Hans Fredrik. 2004. Mediehistorie.Historisk metode i mediefaget [Media History. Historical Method in Media Studies]. Oslo: Cappelen and Damm. Gaddis, John Lewis. 2005. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin. Gorbachev, Mikhail. 1996. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday. Gorbatsjov, Mikhail. 1987. Perestroika. Nytenkning for vårt land og verden [New Thinking for Our Country and the World]. Oslo: Hjemmets Bokforlag. ———. 2013. Min egen historie [My Own History]. Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof. Hanhimäki, Jussi M., and Odd Arne Westad, eds. 2003. The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Johansen, Jahn Otto. 1976. Hos oss i Moskva [With Us in Moscow]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 1977. Sovjet er ikke bare Moskva [Soviet Is Not Only Moscow]. Oslo: Cappelen. Lounasmeri, Lotta. 2015. “A Careful Balancing Act: Finnish Culture of SelfCensorship in the Cold War.” In The Nordic Media and the Cold War, edited by Henrik G. Bastiansen and Rolf Werenskjold. Gothenburg: Nordicom. Lundestad, Geir. 2010. Øst,vest,nord,sør. Hovedlinjer i internasjonal politikk etter 1945 [East, West, North, South. Major Developments in International Politics Since 1945]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. McNair, Brian. 1988. Images of the Enemy: Reporting the New Cold War. London: Routledge. ———. 1991. Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media. London: Routledge. Nakken, Maria. 2007. Å bringe verden hjem. En studie av NRKs utenrikskorrespondentnett 1964–2004 [Bringing the World Home: A Study of the Foreign Correspondent System in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation]. Master’s thesis in Media Studies, University of Oslo. Røed-Fauske, Atle. 2014. “Atomkrigsforestillinger og krigsfrykt i avisen. Fra Tsjekkoslovakia til Cuba-krisen – en studie av norske aviser under den kalde krigen i perioden 1948–1962” [Nuclear Fear and Fear of War in the Newspapers. From Chezoslovakia to the Cuban Missile Crisis—A Study of Norwegian Newspapers During the Cold War 1948–1962]. Master’s thesis, University of Agder, Kristiansand.

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Roslyng-Jensen, Palle. 2012. “From World War to Cold War: Scandinavian Media Attitudes to the Soviet Union 1945–1948.” Scandinavian Journal of History 37, no. 4: 526–48. Roth-Ey, Kristin. 2011. Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Saarenmaa, Laura. 2015. “Political Conformity in Finnish Men’s Magazines During the Cold War.” In The Nordic Media and the Cold War, edited by Henrik G. Bastiansen and Rolf Werenskjold. Gothenburg: Nordicom. Sakwa, Richard. 2010. Communism in Russia. London: Palgrave. Salokangas, Raimo. 2015. “The Shadow of the Bear. Finnish Broadcasting, National Interest and Self-censorship during the Cold War.” In The Nordic Media and the Cold War, edited by Henrik G. Bastiansen and Rolf Werenskjold. Gothenburg: Nordicom. Service, Robert. 2009. The Russian Revolution 1900–1927. 4th ed. New York and London: Palgrave. Smith, Jeremy. 2004. The Fall of Soviet Communism. London: Palgrave. Steinfeld, Hans Wilhelm. 1982. Arven etter Bresjnev [The Breznev Legacy]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 1984. Istid i Moskva [Ice Age in Moscow]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 1986. Tøvær i øst [Thaw in the East]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 1990. Nærbilder av et politisk jordskjelv [Close-Ups of a Political Earthquake]. Oslo: Cappelen. ———. 1991. Tilbake til Europa [Back to Europe]. Oslo: Cappelen. Werenskjold, Rolf. 2011. “That’s the Way It Is? Medienes rolle i proteståret 1968” [That’s the Way It Is? The Role of the Media in the Protest Year 1968]. PhD diss., University of Oslo.

CHAPTER 12

Revolution as Memory: The “History Boom” on Late Socialist Television Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable

The choice of history as a key focus for an inquiry into state socialist media may come as a surprise. The political discourses and practices of communist-led countries were distinctly future-oriented, premised on the belief in a revolutionary break with the past and continued revolutionary progress. The everyday life and popular culture of state socialist societies, as conveyed in media ranging from literature and film to popular magazines, was shaped by the pursuit of utopian ideals tied to visions of a better future (e.g., Balina and Dobrenko 2011), which seemingly left little This research is based on the project “Screening Socialism: Popular Television and Everyday Life in Socialist Eastern Europe,” funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2013-025). We would like to express thanks to Mike Pickering, Ann Gray, and the participants of the COST workshop “The Audiovisual Production of Transcultural Memory in Europe” in September 2015 in Dubrovnik, Croatia, for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter. S. Mihelj (*) · S. Huxtable  Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_12

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room for historical narratives. However, recent research indicates that historical events and narratives, especially those linked to the foundational myths of communist revolution, were among the central themes of state socialist media and culture, and they assumed a particularly prominent role in the last two decades of the Cold War. From the 1970s onward, the Soviet mass media witnessed an explosion in the discussion of World War II (Tumarkin 1994) and media and popular culture elsewhere in state socialist Eastern Europe also turned to narratives of the revolutionary past. Many of the most famous serial dramas produced in this period, such as the iconic Soviet serial 17 Moments of Spring (Semnadtsat’ mgnovenii vesny, dir. Tat’iana Lioznova, 1973), the Polish serial Four Tankmen and a Dog (Czeterej pancierni i pies, TVP, 1966–1970) as well as the Yugoslav serial The Outcasts (Otpisani, TV Belgrade, 1974) and The Bonfires of Kapela (Kapelski kresovi, TV Zagreb, 1975) all revolved around events and characters from World War II, and served as reminders of the heroic struggle against fascism (Mihelj 2013; Lovell 2013).1 This turn to history came at a point in time when it was becoming increasingly clear that the repeated attempts to fast-forward history brought only moderate improvements in the quality of life, and failed to deliver the communist utopia. As the turmoil of the socialist sixties gave way to the “normalization” and “stagnation” of the socialist seventies (Shlapentokh 1988; Raleigh 2012, 236–242; Klumbytė and Sharafutdinova 2013, 1–14), the goal of building communism was postponed to an ever-receding future, and past revolutionary achievements became an increasingly important source of stability for communist-led countries. Heroic deeds of the past were used as a means of inspiring continuing commitment to revolutionary goals, and thereby ensuring the continuity of the revolutionary project across time and between generations. It is also tempting to argue that historical myths, now packaged in ways appealing to younger generations, had the effect of diverting attention from the difficulties of building a communist society in the present. In contrast to the contested and uncertain achievements of communist rule in the here and now, the revolutionary glories of the past offered a seemingly uncompromised source of collective inspiration. Yet, as we shall demonstrate here, these political functions of history in the context of communist rule are not sufficient to account for the “history boom” in late socialist media. It is important to note that a parallel turn to history, including a rise of serial historical television fiction, was visible elsewhere in the world at the time. In the United States, television serials such as Roots (ABC, 1977) and Holocaust (NBC, 1978)

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demonstrated the power of television fiction to tackle difficult historical subjects, engender public empathy with victims (in these cases, of slavery and Nazi politics), and stimulate public discussion among mainstream audiences (Creeber 2004). In West Germany, television and film likewise played a key role in coming to terms with the Nazi past, and increasingly resorted to fictional narratives and popular formats designed to make historical experiences appealing to wider audiences (Kaes 1989; Kansteiner 2006). British television saw an expansion of historical fiction as well. From The Forsythe Saga (BBC, 1967) and The Six Wives of Henry VIII (BBC, 1970) to Days of Hope (BBC, 1975) and Upstairs Downstairs (ITV, 1971–1975), British public and commercial broadcasters realized that the past not only appealed to audiences domestically but also sold internationally, and even attracted coproduction investment abroad (Bennett et al. 1981). In relation to the latter, it is worth noting that many of these serial dramas circulated internationally, both within and occasionally also across the two Cold War blocs, thereby further enhancing the transnational nature of the televised turn to the past. The “history boom” in late socialist media, while in part stimulated by domestic developments, should therefore also be seen as part and parcel of a wider, transnational growth of popular historical fiction that spanned the Cold War divide. We argue that this transnational proliferation of popular historical narratives in the 1970s, albeit stemming from very different political and ideological contexts, emerged from broadly similar cultural and social developments—namely, a confluence of new forms of popular cultural expression, especially those associated with television, and the challenge of “postmemory” (Hirsch 2012) linked with the coming of age of the first postwar generation. To demonstrate this, we examine historical serial fiction and its reception, as well as the context that stimulated their production, in two state socialist countries—Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.2

The Challenge of Postmemory: Television as a History Teacher In both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, the late 1960s and especially the early 1970s saw a marked surge in public debates about the importance of intergenerational transmission of revolutionary values and memory of World War II. As the first postwar generation was coming of age, anxieties were raised over the ability of the young generation to appreciate the sacrifices of its parents and grandparents, and contribute to the

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ongoing revolutionary struggle in the present. These anxieties were in no small part fueled by the cultural and political contestation that started mounting across socialist Eastern Europe in the 1960s, and formed part of the global ferment that we have come to associate with the decade (Gorsuch and Koenker 2013). Youth was often at the forefront of these developments, contesting established hierarchies in the sphere of culture and everyday life as well as politics. As a consequence, young generations became a key focus of public concern and later also the main target of state-led educational campaigns. Passing on the memory of revolutionary achievements became a central part in these educational efforts. As the gap between the utopian visions of a communist society and people’s lived reality showed no sign of abating, the revolutionary past offered a convenient source of heroic deeds and characters and tales with a clear resolution. World War II, in particular, emerged as one of the central foci of commemorative efforts in both countries, in part because, as Prokhorova (2003, 133) argues in relation to the Soviet Union, it remained “the only uncompromised collective experience” despite its devastating effect on the population and economy. From the end of hostilities in 1945, there was a drive to remember the war both from above and from below (Weiner 1996; Kirschenbaum 2006). If during the Khrushchev era commemoration of the war was relatively subdued, Brezhnev made it the center point of a new ruling myth. In 1965, shortly after his rise to power, 9 May was reinstituted as a public holiday to be accompanied by military parades, which formed the starting point for the now-familiar narrative of World War II that prominently features the Soviet Union as the savior of Europe and the world (Turmakin 1994, 134). In Yugoslavia, Victory Day celebrations also gained prominence in 1965, and were marked for the first time with a military parade. The 1960s were also a time when several of the key Yugoslav memorial sites dedicated to World War II began to be built or renovated, including the Jasenovac Memorial Park, built on the site of the former concentration camp in Croatia; Tjentište, the Valley of Heroes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, commemorating the Battles of Sutjeska; and Partisan Hospital Franja in Slovenia. As Renata Jambrešić Kirin (2006, 170) points out, these memorials were explicitly designed with the intent to serve as sites of commemorative rituals and practices aimed at young generations.

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In trying to find appropriate ways of passing on the memories of World War II, communist authorities were facing the challenge of what is often referred to as “postmemory” (Hirsch 2012). Unlike memories rooted in lived experience of a historical event or period, postmemory “describes the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before” and is “mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection and creation” (2012, 4). Although originally coined to make sense of the role of generational change in the shaping of Holocaust memory, the concept of postmemory can be applied also to the state socialist context, and has been used to elucidate changes in the Soviet cinema of the 1960s (Kaganovsky 2013). Narratives of the war, of course, constituted a staple of cultural production in both countries from the very beginning of communist rule, especially in film and literature (Youngblood 2006; Jakiša and Gilić 2015). However, it was only from the 1960s onward that war narratives came to the forefront in forms of cultural narration explicitly designed to appeal to a mass audience. In both countries, the late 1960s and the 1970s saw a proliferation of lavish and widely watched cinematic spectacles. In Yugoslavia, this period is often associated with the “Red Wave,” a series of films that adhered to the Manichean vision of World War II and benefited from ample support of the Yugoslav National Army, but also borrowed from Hollywood films, and in many ways mimicked the narrative structures and dramatic conventions familiar from spaghetti westerns (Stanković 2015). In the Soviet Union, the emphasis on the cult of World War II likewise stimulated the production of epic combat films such as Iurii Ozerov’s Liberation (Osvobozhdenie, 1970–1972), as well as more personal, critically acclaimed films like Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (Voskhozhdenie, 1976) and Aleksei German’s Twenty Days without War (Dvadtsat’ dnei bez voiny, 1976). In this context, broadcast media were also increasingly tasked with sustaining the core principles and memories of the revolutionary struggle, and anniversaries of key events often served as a pretext for investment in commemorative programming. In Yugoslavia, for instance, a 1980 editorial policy document stated that the task of television was to use “important jubilees of our revolutionary past and cultural heritage” to “contribute to the strengthening of the awareness of our workers’ [movement] and of the continuity of the revolution, to the affirmation

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of the Marxist approach to the national question, to the critical questioning of cultural and other traditions, and to the education of young generations in the spirit of the most progressive examples from our history.”3 The preparations for the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the end of World War II in 1975 offer a case in point; the federal Committee for Propaganda and Information reported a wide range of radio and TV programs planned for the occasion, and emphasized the importance of the jubilee for the education of young generations in the spirit of the revolution.4 Similar developments can be found in the Soviet Union, where television was expected to participate in the process of propagandizing the country’s glorious past. This was a long-standing goal for television, proclaimed in many resolutions, but it also arose on particular occasions, such as historical anniversaries. For example, a resolution of 1975, “On the 70th Anniversary of the Revolution of 1905– 1907 in Russia,” called on television to participate in the “uncovering of the full glory of the historical achievements of our Party, the liveliness of its revolutionary traditions, and the foresightedness of its Leninist policies” (Kommunist 1975, 2). In line with such requirements, the main state broadcaster was expected to deliver quarterly plans that showed how the state broadcaster intended to satisfy the Party’s requirements.

The Rise of Historical Television Fiction Of course, the presence of such editorial and policy principles alone does not say much about how and to what extent they were implemented in creative practice. To ascertain that, we conducted a content analysis of serial television fiction produced in the two countries—a genre that was widely popular at the time and often featured in prime time programming. All domestic serial fiction broadcast until 1991 on main channels in each country were included,5 starting with the first domestic serial drama in Yugoslavia in 1959 and in the Soviet Union in 1965. This search, based on published television guides from the period, yielded a total of 384 serial dramas for Yugoslavia and 248 for the Soviet Union. Using descriptions published in television guides, occasionally supplemented by information collected from other sources, we identified the prevailing temporal setting for each serial drama, that is, whether it was set in the past, the present, or the future. Historical serial dramas were subdivided further depending on the historical period they focused on. The inter-coder reliability test confirmed that our measurements are sufficiently robust and reliable.6

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The results of our analysis show that the policies and editorial principles outlined earlier were indeed implemented in production and resulted in a high volume of historical television fiction, particularly so in the Soviet Union, where almost two-thirds (62.5%) of all serial dramas are set in history, in contrast to about one-third (35.4%) of Yugoslav serial fiction (Table 12.1). The results also confirm that the majority of historical serial dramas were set in periods that featured most prominently in officially sanctioned public memories and were seen as foundational moments in national revolutionary histories. In the Soviet Union, the highest proportions of historical dramas were dedicated to the period from 1917 to 1941 (20.6%), followed by the pre-1917 period (11.3%), and then World War II (9.3%) and the post-1945 period (8.1%). Each of these periods had a particular significance within the country: the pre-revolutionary period was represented as a period of Tsarist oppression and of the emergence of the Bolsheviks as a mass workers’ movement; the Revolution and Civil War were used to show how the regime overcame its enemies to build the world’s first socialist state; World War II increasingly became a founding myth of the country, showing how it united to defeat the Nazi enemy; while the postwar period was painted as a time in which the people, under the Party’s guidance, was able to rebuild the country from

Table 12.1  Historical settings of serial fiction in Soviet Union and Yugoslavia Yugoslavia

Historical 18th and 19th centuries Pre-communist period Revolution to 1941 (USSR) World War I World War II Post–World War II Historical progression Other historical Contemporary Future Other Total

USSR

N

%

N

%

136 17 13 n/a 1 56 17 20 12 245 2 1 384

35.4 4.4 3.4 n/a 0.3 14.6 4.4 5.2 3.1 63.8 .5 0.3 100.0

155 13 28 51 0 23 20 17 3 92 1 0 248

62.5 5.2 11.3 20.6 0.0 9.3 8.1 6.9 1.2 37.1 .4 .0 100.0

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the ruins of the war. However, as the figures show, World War II never displaced the Revolution and Civil War on the small screen: even in years where memories of World War II took center stage in official commemorations (1970, 1975, and 1985—respectively the twenty-fifth, thirtieth, and fortieth anniversaries of victory), other historical periods took precedence in representations of history on television. In Yugoslavia, the majority of serial dramas in historical settings took place during World War II (14.6%), followed by dramas covering a longer historical span (historical progression) that typically incorporated World War II as well (5.2%), and by dramas set in the eighteenth or nineteenth century and in the post–World War II period (both 4.4%). As in the Soviet Union, this pattern is consistent with officially sanctioned historical narratives at the time, which privileged World War II as the key foundational moment of socialist Yugoslavia, emphasizing the “brotherhood and unity” of Yugoslav nations at the time and their heroic struggle against Nazism and fascism. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were seen as important moments in the formation of individual Yugoslav nations, associated with the “awakening” of national consciousness and struggles against imperial powers. If we look more closely at how the proportions of historical serial fiction changed over time, it also becomes clear that the 1970s and the early 1980s, in particular, were a period of sustained growth of historical dramas. In Yugoslavia, the proportion of serial fiction set in history first rose to over 40% in 1971, and stayed around the same level or above until the mid-1980s. In the Soviet Union, historical settings prevailed throughout but became particularly prominent from the mid-1970s onward, when they sometimes represent more than 60% of all serial production in a given year, peaking at 83% in 1988. In this respect, perestroika seems to have had little effect on Soviet television’s historical priorities until the very last gasp of the USSR, when there was a modest but noticeable decline in historical serial fiction.

Mnemonic Imagination: Between Historical Authenticity and Popular Appeal In light of the growing body of research on the role of television in mediating history, the prominence of the small screen in the “history boom” of late socialism does not come as a surprise. As Gary R. Edgerton asserted in his introduction to an edited volume on television histories,

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“[T]elevision is the principal means by which most people learn about history today” (2001, 1), a statement echoed by a range of contributions to the volume that demonstrate the wide range of ways in which the small screen became involved in the shaping of memory in the twentieth-century United States. More recently, researchers from across Western Europe have begun investigating the multiple forms of historical narration on television, noting the shared growth of televised history across the western half of the continent (e.g., Hérnandez Corchete 2008; Dillon 2010; Keilbach 2010; Gray and Bell 2013). However, this rise of televised history in the West was not necessarily viewed positively by critics and television audiences. On the contrary, much of the reaction expressed by early viewers, as well as in scholarly debate on the relationship between television and history in the West, was marked by a distinct distrust of the small screen, which was often tied to a more general distrust of popular culture as a reliable purveyor of factual information (e.g., McArthur 1978; Postman 1985). As our investigation suggests, anxieties over televised history were to some extent present also in Eastern Europe at the time. For instance, Yugoslav serial dramas such as The Outcasts and The Bonfires of Kapela were occasionally criticized for the simplistic portrayal of the enemy and an overinflated sense of power among resistance fighters (see, for instance, TV Novosti 1975b, 2). Related concerns were sometimes raised by the audiences; according to a study conducted in Croatia, especially older viewers of Bonfires of Kapela felt that the serial depicted the reality of the war in an overly idealized manner (RTZ 1982, 17). In the Soviet Union, concerns about authenticity were not as prominent, at least judging from debates in professional publications. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that issues of historical accuracy occasionally surfaced: for instance, a consultant on the World War II made-for-television film Drawing Fire (Vyzyvaem ogon’ na sebia, 1965) raised complaints with a number of ministries about the historical inaccuracies,7 while viewers of 17 Moments of Spring complained about the anachronisms in the serial in their letters to the broadcaster (Lovell 2013, 313). Despite such occasional criticisms, however, the public response to the historical blockbuster serials of the mid-1970s in both countries was rather positive. Several Yugoslav critics emphasized the aesthetic qualities of serial dramas and their ability to appeal to young audiences. As one review of The Outcasts noted, the serial includes “appealing characters” and “a lot of action,” and the young actors “talk in contem-

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porary jargon, they behave as the young people today imagine heroes to behave, as they have learned to see them” (TV Novosti 1975a, 3). Another review of the same serial likewise commends the portrayal of the key protagonists, arguing that the acknowledgment of their weaknesses makes them more appealing to young audiences, who can identify with them and thereby imagine themselves as resistance fighters (TV Novosti 1974, 5). The reception of The Bonfires of Kapela was even more enthusiastic in this respect, with one commentator eagerly concluding that the success of the serial suggests there should be more content of this kind on television, and that such programming in fact represents the most effective way of countering the influence of foreign programs: “Isn’t this the best way to counter the many ‘heroes’ of imported serial fiction with our own characters, our own heroes, our own values?” (Studio 1976, 5). Likewise in the Soviet Union, journalists and critics spoke enthusiastically of serial dramas that would captivate the widest popular audience, meaning that “the streets immediately empty, everybody tries to finish their housework as quickly as possible, they turn the television on early, so as—God forbid!—not to miss the very beginning” (Mikhailov 1980, 27). By fostering such popular identification with characters, the shows’ ideological and historical messages were far more readily digested, critics noted (ibid., 27–28). What transpires from these positive responses to popular historical fiction is an understanding of memory as a creative process in its own right, tied to historical reality yet also reliant on imaginative investment by those engaging in memory work. As Keightley and Pickering (2012) argue, the “mnemonic imagination” can be seen as a key element of modern societies more generally, yet it is perhaps not a surprise that it was so prominent precisely in the context of state socialist countries. Due to the teleological nature of the communist project, communist-led societies were under constant pressure to reassess their past and present experiences in light of future goals, which required not simply a mechanical reproduction of memories but rather its continued imaginative revision. Of particular interest in this context is the fact that in both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, those involved in producing the mnemonic imagination were not only the cultural elites and media producers, but also the audiences. In Yugoslavia, the Croatian

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TV magazine Studio continually encouraged the young generation to watch the serial and use it not merely as a history lesson but also as a prompt to imagine their own relationship to the wartime struggle and the revolution. Throughout the period when the serial was being broadcast, the magazine invited pupils in primary and secondary schools to send in their own artwork inspired by the serial. Every week, a selection of the best creations was reproduced in the magazine and awarded a prize (see, e.g., Studio 1975). The Soviet documentary Our Biography similarly invited viewers to write to the show’s producers with news of “events great and small in our history” that could be included in the program, offering a way of writing ordinary viewers into history (Mares’ev 1979, 8). The issue of how memory could be transmitted across generations was similarly a key factor in the Soviet context. Soviet young people of the late socialist period lacked the formative wartime experiences that previous generations had undergone: they had “never heard the screech of a falling bomb, never seen collapsed houses, sinister ruins, and the roar of fire” (Mares’ev 1979, 10). In light of this, Soviet television was charged with what we might call the “postmemorial” transmission of historical memory and historical myth in order to ensure that future generations would burn with revolutionary zeal. The ideal viewer-response (which, presumably for that reason, was printed in the professional press) was that of a group of eighth graders from a school in Norilsk who watched The Last Summer of Childhood (Poslednee leto detstva, 1974), a film about young members of the Communist Youth (Komsomol) during the Civil War, and said of its hero, “Some people say that young people like Misha Poliakov don’t exist—he has too many [good] qualities and too few faults. But we want to be like him” (Borisova 1976, 34). Thus, historical fiction on Soviet television offered a whole new range of heroes, from Ania Morozova in Drawing Fire to Max Otto von Stierlitz/Maksim Isaev in Seventeen Moments of Spring, who offered viewers sources of identification that both conformed to Party ideals and attracted huge audiences. In this sense, historical shows were an easier sell for the Communist Party than contemporary series, for who could argue with a Bolshevik fighting for his/her nation against its enemies?

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Something for Everyone: The Narrative Structures of Serial Fiction It is tempting to see these serial dramas purely as vehicles of political power, as instruments that allowed communist elites to promote a heroic vision of revolutionary history that buttressed the continued legitimacy of the Party in the present despite its apparent inability to deliver on the promises of a communist utopia. As our analysis of historical documents so far attests, there is little doubt that popular fiction was indeed often produced with a rather explicit attempt to spread a victorious vision of history that chimed with official history. However, this does not necessarily mean that this vision did not allow for diverse readings, sometimes including interpretations that represented a challenge to the dominant vision of the past. To understand this possibility, it is important to consider the particular narrative structures of television drama, and acknowledge the ability of the genre to appeal to diverse audiences at the same time, and enable different interpretations (Thornham and Purvis 2005). Since serial fiction often relies on multiple plot lines, and allows for different characters to assume the role of key protagonist at different points in the narrative, it is capable of offering audiences multiple points of identification. This is particularly clear in serial fiction that combines personal and public plots, as in the case of the already mentioned US serials Roots and Holocaust, which use stories portraying everyday experiences and family life to tell a story about broader public events (Creeber 2004). Most of the historical serial fiction produced in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union was characterized by similarly layered narrative structures. In Bonfires of Kapela, the epic story of World War II, resistance against the oppression in Axis-occupied Croatia is interwoven with a tragic love story between high school students Zlatko and Ina. Caught up in the turmoil of the war, Zlatko gradually evolves from a carefree teen to a wartime hero, who understands that revolutionary goals need to take precedence over his own personal desires, and thereby—as a contemporary commentator in a television magazine put it—becomes a “self-conscious and ideologically conscious personality” (TV Revija 1975, 2). Other young characters, including Zlatko’s sweetheart Ina, undergo a similar transformation, thereby functioning as role models to both male and female members of Yugoslav schoolchildren of the 1970s. Alongside school-age characters, however, the plot also involves central protagonists of other age groups, including a teacher and older partisan fighters.

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The results of contemporary audience research confirmed that these multiple plotlines and characters did indeed work well as a means of appealing to diverse audiences. According to a survey conducted in Croatia, the Bonfires of Kapela were particularly popular among young audiences, with 83.1% of participants aged 10–14 watching the series on a regular basis and 81.7% giving it a positive assessment (RTZ 1982, 16). Different segments of the audience were attracted to different characters, with younger audiences mostly preferring younger characters while older and better educated participants preferring slightly older characters, such as the teacher and the partisan fighter nicknamed Chimney Sweep (ibid., 17). The popular press at the time also reported on numerous letters received by the actors in the serial, many of which were addressed to the fictional characters as if they were real people, or compared the characters and events in the serial to the writers’ own experiences (Studio 1976). Similar arguments about polyvalent plots and multiple points of identification and interpretation can be applied to Soviet historical serial fiction from the period. According to Lovell (2013, 309–311), the major accomplishment of 1970s television, and especially of the serial dramas of the period, was its ability to appeal to diverse audiences at the same time. He demonstrates this through his analysis of the 17 Moments of Spring, which managed to satisfy both mass tastes and ideological postulates while also allowing for sophisticated interpretations against the grain, which involved subtle criticism of the Soviet nomenklatura and the Soviet present more generally; or, as he puts it, the serial achieved a “remarkable ambiguity” and could appeal equally to KGB officers and war veterans and to ironically minded academics (2013, 310). Something similar could be said of the later serial The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Mesto vstrechi izmenit’ nel’zia, 1979), which featured the cult actor and musician Vladimir Vysotskii in one of the lead roles. His relationship with colleague Sharapov (Vladimir Konkin) was classic “good cop/bad cop,” allowing more ideologically orthodox viewers to identify with the latter, and intellectuals with the former. Indeed, as Elena Prokhorova argues, the show’s appeal rested on the show’s suturing of a formulaic narrative with elements beyond the text (its actors’ celebrity status, “visual tropes,” and “culturally agreed upon meanings”) (Prokhorova 2003, 158). Prokhorova argues that Soviet serial dramas—largely because of their serialized plots—served to fragment the typical Soviet “master plot,” based around a series of binaries, mythemes, and themes. Particularly in historical serial fiction, she claims, the fact that the outcome was already

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known forced directors to focus on individual psychology over collective, class-based motivations (Prokhorova 2003, 41–42). The family emerged as a privileged site for renegotiating the path and rewriting old myths, and television was extraordinarily successful in doing so. Shows like Shadows Disappear at Noon (Teni ischezaiut v polden’, 1972), The Eternal Call (Vechnyizov, 1976–1983), and State Borders (Gosudarstvennaia granitsa, 1980–1988), which offered a historical sweep from before the revolution to the present day were an attempt to create new founding narratives for the country. Their focus on individual families allowed viewers to personalize historical processes in a way that straight documentary accounts struggled to achieve. This presence of multiple points of identification and interpretation demonstrates that the historical serial dramas, despite their mythological character, did not function as a seamless conveyor belt for the dissemination of Party ideology. At the same time, it would also be inappropriate to read these popular televisual narratives as straightforward vehicles of resistance. The power of historical serial fiction lay rather in the ability to offer a narrative means of engendering “unity in diversity”: while appealing to audiences from all walks of life and allowing for diverse readings of the past, these dramas also provided a common narrative to which everyone could orient themselves.

The History Boom on Late Socialist Television: Transnational in Form, Socialist in Content? As this analysis demonstrates, there are good reasons for treating the rise of televised history in state socialist Eastern Europe as part of a broader, transnational “history boom,” facilitated by the confluence of new forms of cultural expression and the coming of age of the first post-World War II generation. Both east and west of the Iron Curtain, the generations born after 1945 grew up in the shadow of the war, constantly surrounded by the material and symbolic reminders of wartime atrocities, deprivation, and uncertainty experienced by the generation of their parents and grandparents. However, it was only from the late 1960s onward that memories of the war, and of revolutionary history more generally, entered the realm of popular culture proper, and became available in cultural forms expressly designed to appeal to large and diverse audiences. This turn was to an important extent facilitated by public concerns over

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the ability of the general population, and of the young generations in particular, to remain faithful to the heritage of their predecessors, whether conceived in terms of the revolutionary project or in terms of victory over Nazism and fascism. In this context, television became an important conveyor of memory, and serial television fiction assumed a particularly central role in this context. An important part of the appeal of serial fiction was grounded in its ability to offer a way of narrating history that provided multiple points of identification, and hence multiple interpretations of the past, while at the same time containing this diversity in a single narrative familiar to everyone. In this respect, historical television fiction in communist-led countries differed little from its counterpart in the liberal democracies of the West. In both cases, it offered an effective way of merging elite interests with popular appeal, even though the precise political (and, especially in the West, economic) motivations for this merger differed. This is not to say that the popularization of history via television was universally accepted or valued. Both east and west of the Cold War divide, the history boom provoked mixed responses; while some voiced concerns about the historical authenticity of popular history, others applauded the ability of the small screen to make the past appealing to wider audiences. Arguably, one of the factors underlying these diverse responses was the long-running tension between entertainment and education, between “high culture” and “mass culture,” which formed a shared trait of twentieth-century media and cultural history in both Eastern and Western Europe (Mihelj 2012, 20–23). A few caveats are in order at this point. While we have emphasized the transnational nature of the history boom on late socialist television, we also acknowledge that the empirical basis for our generalizations focuses on two countries only. A cursory look at television production in some of the other state socialist countries seems to confirm our points—some of the most widely known Polish, East German, and Romanian television serial dramas, for instance, such as the already mentioned Four Tankmen and a Dog (1966–1970), the GDR series Paths Across the Land (Wege übers Land, 1968), and the Romanian serial drama The Freckled Boy (Pistruiatul, 1973), were set in the past. However, further research is needed to ascertain whether these examples are part of a wider trend. Also left open is the question of interregional variation—while we had too little scope to discuss this fully here, the comparison of quantitative

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data from the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Table 12.1) showed considerable differences in the overall amount of serial historical fiction broadcast as well as in the historical periods that were given greatest prominence. As historical narration plays a central role in nation-building and national memory, such national differences and their specific functions certainly deserve further exploration. Another dimension of variation worth exploring is that of genre. Arguably, “historical serial fiction” is a rather broad category covering rather different modes of representing the past, from literary adaptations and costume dramas to docudramas. Each of these has a distinct history of its own, and a distinct mode of engaging with the past that should be examined in its own right. Our arguments, of course, also raise questions about other, nonfictional modes of representing the past on screen. There is reason to believe that many of the arguments developed here with regard to television fiction can be applied to documentary genres as well, both east and west of the Iron Curtain. For instance, it is clear that the flurry of Yugoslav docudramas and documentary series was in part prompted by the awareness of the imminent death of many of the wartime heroes, including the country’s life-long president Tito. Similar motivations were behind the production of the popular documentary series The World at War (Thames TV, 1973–1974). The producer of the series, Jeremy Isaacs, felt that enough time had elapsed since World War II to provide distance from the traumatic events, and enable the crew to interview people involved in the conflict and incorporate their personal testimonies into the series (Gray and Bell 2013, 67). Finally, our emphasis on transnational commonalities also begs the question of specificity. If the history boom was transnational in its timing, its demographic causes, and its cultural forms, did historical serial dramas produced in the socialist East nonetheless remain socialist in their content? At first sight, this is certainly the case, particularly so in the Soviet Union where the Communist Party features as a prominent actor in serial historical fiction, engaged in a social revolution aimed at the emancipation of the working class. In the Yugoslav case, however, there are grounds for doubt. At least in the two Yugoslav serials examined in depth here—The Bonfires of Kapela and the Outcasts—the nature of the historical struggle appears predominantly national rather than social; the key events depicted in the serials are described as part of a

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“national liberation struggle” rather than seen as part of a social revolution led by the Party. Some of the serial dramas produced in the following years rectified this trend; for instance, the documentary drama serial The Days of ACNLY (Dani AVNOJ-a, RTV Belgrade, 1983) recounted the establishment of the Antifascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia, the direct predecessor of communist Yugoslavia. However, these serial dramas never reached the levels of popularity achieved by their nationally framed predecessors. This is yet another aspect of historical television fiction that awaits further analysis.

Notes 1. A note on terminology is in order at this point. While in the Western literature a number of terms (series, serial, miniseries, telenovela, anthology series, soap opera, etc.) have been developed, many of these are not applicable to the socialist context. To avoid confusion, we use the terms “serial fiction” and “serial drama” as an umbrella term covering all fictional programs broadcast in serial form. We occasionally use the term “serial” when referring to individual dramas characterized by a plot moving toward a clear endpoint, to distinguish them from “series” that are marked by a more open-ended plot structure. The latter were a rarity in the socialist world, except in the case of sitcoms. 2. As part of the Screening Socialism project, a similar analysis was conducted in three other countries: East Germany, Poland and Romania (see Mihelj and Huxtable 2017, 2018). 3.  “Smernice za programsku politiku jugoslovenskih TV stanica za 1981. Godinu” [Guidelines for the program policy of Yugoslav TV stations in 1981], HDA (Croatian State Archives), 1228 SSRNH, 3, d5601, pp. 7–8. 4.  “Zapisnik sa prve sednice komisije CK SKJ za propaganda i informisanje, održane 10. X. 1974” [Minutes of the first session of the CC LYC Committee for Propaganda and Information, held on 10 October 1974], AJ (Archives of Yugoslavia) 507, A-CK SKJ, XXVI-K.4/1 CKSKJ, p. 2. 5.  The data comprised information on the two main channels of Central Television in the Soviet Union, and the two main channels of TV Belgrade and TV Zagreb in Yugoslavia. 6. The results of inter-coder reliability tests indicate a good level agreement for both Yugoslavia (92%, κ = 0.849, α = 0.859) and the Soviet Union (88%, κ = 0.714, α = 0.716). 7.  RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), f.2453, op.4, d.1901, ll.85-209.

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Archival Sources Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archives of Yugoslavia) Hrvatski Državni Arhiv (Croatian State Archives) Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art)

References Balina, M., and E. Dobrenko, eds. 2011. Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style. London: Anthem Press. Bennett, T., S. Boyd-Bowman, C. Mercer, and J. Woollacott, eds. 1981. Popular Television and Film. London: British Film Institute. Borisova, N. 1976. “Pamiat nashego detstva” [Memory of Our Childhood]. Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 6: 33–34. Creeber, G. 2004. Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen. London: British Film Institute. Dillon, R. 2010. History on British Television: Constructing Nation, Nationality and Collective Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Edgerton, G. R. 2001. “Introduction: Television as Historian.” In Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age, edited by G. R. Edgerton and P. Rollins, 1–17. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Gorsuch, A. E., and D. P. Koenker, eds. 2013. The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Gray, A., and E. Bell. 2013. History on Television. London: Routledge. Hérnandez Corchete, S. 2008. La historia contada en televisión. El documental televisivo de divulgación histórica en España [Historical Narratives of Television: Television Documentary and Representations of History in Spain]. Barcelona: Gedisa. Hirsch, M. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Jakiša, M., and N. Gilić. 2015. Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, Film and Visual Culture. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Jambrešić Kirin, R. 2006. “Politika sjećanja na Drugi svjetski rat u doba medijske reprodukcije socijalističke kulture” [The Politics of World War Two Memory in the Era of Media Reproduction of Socialist Culture]. In Devijacije i promašaji [Deviations and Failures], edited by L. Č. Feldman and I. Prica, 149– 178. Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research. Kaes, A. 1989. From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Kaganovsky, L. 2013. “Postmemory, Countermemory: Soviet Cinema of the 1960s.” In The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker, 235–250. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Kansteiner, W. 2006. In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics After Auschwitz. Athens: Ohio University Press. Keightley, E., and M. Pickering. 2012. The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Keilbach, J. 2010. Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen. Zur Darstellung des Nationalsozialismus im bundesdeutschen Fernsehen [Images of History and Witnesses. On the Depiction of National Socialism on West German Television]. Münster, Hamburg, Berlin, and London: Lit Verlag. Kirschenbaum, L. 2006. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. New York: Cambridge University Press. Klumbytė, N., and G. Sharafutdinova. 2013. Introduction to Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–1985, edited by N. Klumbytė and G. Sharafutdinova. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Kommunist. 1975. TsK KPSS prinial postanovlenie ‘O 70-letii revoliutsii 1905– 1907 godov v Rossii’ [The Central Committee of the CPSU has adopted the resolution ‘On the 70th Anniversary of the 1905–1907 revolution in Russia’] 2: 3–6. Lovell, S. 2013. “In Search of an Ending: Seventeen Moments of Spring and the Seventies.” In The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker, 303–321. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Mares’ev, A. 1979. “Malaia Zemlia. Podvig” [Little Land. A Great Feat]. Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 7: 10. McArthur, C. 1978. Television and History. London: British Film Institute Educational Advisory Service. Mihelj, S. 2012. “Television Entertainment in Socialist Eastern Europe: Between Cold War Politics and Global Developments.” In Popular Television in Eastern Europe During and Since Socialism, edited by A. Imre, T. Havens, and K. Lustyk. London: Routledge. ———. 2013. “The Politics of Privatization: Television Entertainment and the Yugoslav Sixties.” In The Socialist Sixties Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker, 251–267. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Mihelj, S., and S. Huxtable. 2017. “Television and the Shaping of Transnational Memories.” Image & Narrative 18, no. 1: 33–44. ———. 2018. From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Mikhailov, V. 1980. “Mech i vesy” [Sword and Scales]. Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 2: 27–31. Postman, N. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. London: Penguin. Prokhorova, E. 2003. “Fragmented Mythologies: Soviet TV Mini-Series of the 1970s.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh. Accessed on 2 July 2015. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/8019/. Raleigh, D. J. 2012. Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. RTZ. 1982. Narodna revolucija u igranim programima Televizije Zagreb: Rezultati istraživanja javnog mnijenja in pregled sadržaja [People’s Revolution in Drama Programs on Television Zagreb: Results of Popular Opinion Research and Content Analysis]. Zagreb: Radio-televizija Zagreb, Centar za studij programa. Shlapentokh V. 1988. Soviet Ideologies in the Period of Glasnost: Responses to Brezhnev’s Stagnation. New York: Praeger. Stanković, P. 2015. “1970s Partisan Epics as Western Films: The Question of Genre and Myth in Yugoslav Partisan Film.” In Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, Film and Visual Culture, edited by M. Jakiša and N. Gilić, 245–264. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Studio. 1975. “Pišite i crtajte kresove” [Write and Draw the Bonfires], no. 611: 7. ———. 1976. “Klinci za klice” [Kids for kids], no. 621: 2–5. Thornham, S., and T. Purvis. 2005. Television Drama: Theories and Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Tumarkin, N. 1994. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books. TV Novosti. 1974. “Petorica za specijalne zadatke” [The Five for Special Tasks], 6 December, 5. ———. 1975a. “Otpisani” [The Outcasts], 3 January, 3. ———. 1975b. “Na kraju serije” [At the End of the Series], 28 March, 2. TV Revija. 1975. “Junaci Gorskog Kotara” [Heroes of Gorski Kotar], 1 October, 2–3. Weiner, A. 1996. “The Making of a Dominant Myth: The Second World War and the Construction of Political Identities Within the Soviet Polity.” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (October): 638–660. Youngblood, D. 2006. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

CHAPTER 13

Power and the Body: Images of the Leaders in Soviet Magazines During the Cold War Ekaterina Vikulina

The human body is the focus of power practices. Pierre Bourdieu writes that the body is implemented political mythology that has been incorporated and become a permanent disposition (Bourdieu 1990, 69–70).1 Posture and gestures are the result of a value system. Materiality of the body can be rethought as power’s most productive effect, as Judith Butler has claimed (1993, 2). Hierarchy and dichotomy of gender, class, race, health, and age find their expression in embodiment. Therefore, the body lies at the center of political struggle. By analyzing body images, it is also possible to understand the preferences of a particular historical period. This study focuses on photos of the Soviet leaders in magazines during the Cold War, addressing their normativity in representations by the mass media. That point helps us to define the ideological priorities of the Soviet culture and the norms of the society from another perspective, to mark the changes that occurred in the USSR during the Cold War.

E. Vikulina (*)  Department of Cultural Practices and Communications, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_13

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The visual rhetoric of these photos, the context of their emergence, and the photographic techniques used to create them are considered as one of the manifestations of power (in the understanding of Foucault). The body of the ruler is not just a physical body, but primarily it is a political body.2 The leader is the embodiment of the nation, he or she is its sign, and that makes these images so important. This essay looks at how a particular physical body was transformed into a political body to become a representation of power. One of the objectives of my research has been to analyze how the leader of the state appeared in the press, how these images changed throughout the Cold War period, and what range of power representations were valid. Although the images were studied through the beginning of the Cold War period until its end, the research focused on the 1960s, noting the changes in the corporeal representation that came about during this period.3 The time of Khrushchev’s rule from 1953 to 1964 is also known as the “Thaw,” a revolutionary time that among other things had changed the practices of the body and the ways of its representation. These details are compared with the practices of photographed leaders from Stalin’s time and after the Thaw, against which background the changes become apparent. Alexei Yurchak in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, a seminal work in the field of Soviet studies, considers late socialism as one period that spanned approximately thirty years, between the mid1950s and the mid-1980s (Yurchak 2005, 4).4 He argues that the performative shift of authoritative discourse occurred after the death of Stalin, who stood outside of it, making editorial comments about it from an external position (Yurchak 2005, 13). In a new model of late socialism, the external position was no longer available and that resulted in the transformation of the structure of all types of Soviet discourse. Subsequently that transformation became the reason for internal normalization: “The normalized and fixed structures of this discourse became increasingly frozen and were replicated from one context to the next practically intact. This process of replication took place at the level of texts, the visual discourse of ideology (posters, films, monuments, architecture), ritualistic discourse (meetings, reports, institutional practice, celebrations), and in many centralized ‘formal structures’ of everyday practice” (Yurchak 2005, 26). Nevertheless in this article, I argue that we have to distinguish Khrushchev’s Thaw and what is referred to as Brezhnev’s “Stagnation” (the time that began with Brezhnev’s rule and continued after it until

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Perestroika) as fundamentally different periods, because they produced dissimilar forms of representations and effects, when speaking about the visual aspect of power’s personification. Yurchak’s arguments are valid in relation to the Brezhnev period, but we cannot speak about such standardization of images, including processes of replication and imitation, during Khrushchev’s era. On the contrary, as we will see later, with the Thaw, there occured a break with the old visual canon, which was replaced with the relative diversity of images of the leader. My research pays attention to the role of the media during the Cold War period. Power, politics, and the media are inseparably linked in the creation of the “true values” for the masses, including a representation of the body. Photography had a special role in representations of Soviet power.5 This medium had to certify a historical fact, to indicate success of socialist construction, to convince people to embrace communism. Nevertheless, the use of photography as a propaganda tool had been changing throughout the Soviet period. Bold experiments of the 1920s—with their emphasis on sharp angles and the technique of photomontage—were replaced with cautious handling of images, out of fear of losing control over information during the Stalin period, which led to the retouching of photos and to the imitation of painting in general. In turn, the democratization of Khrushchev’s image was closely related to new technological advancements in photography, the dissemination of amateurs’ practice, and an extended arsenal of pictorial means. For resources, this essay draws upon popular Soviet magazines such as Sovetskoe Photo (Soviet Photo), Ogoniok (Little Flame), Krestyanka (Countrywoman), Rabotnica (Workwoman), Sovetskaja zhenshina (Soviet Woman), Sovetskij Sojuz (Soviet Union), Fizkultura i sport (Physical Culture and Sports), and Zdorovie (The Health Magazine). These periodicals are not only the most representative for my purposes due to their large distribution and their propaganda function, but also they are important because together they offer a large variety of contexts in which images of politicians appeared. Social norms in photography could be defined through the choice of plot, character, and composition. Representation of body is studied through the depiction of subjects within pictures, in which authorities and heroes of a country appear (character, event, scene, environ). In my study, I took note of the context in which an image was published (e.g., the type of magazine, the accompanying text), the choice of the genre

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(staged photography, reportage, official portrait), the artistic methods (composition, framing decisions), and the sets of photographic codes (camera angle, distance from the subject) that allow us to see how the image was constructed. The presence of certain iconographic schemes and types of poses (formal or candid) are also examined.

The “Warm” Power Changes in the ideological regime during the Thaw had affected essentially different levels of politics, including the representation of power. The changes are evident if we compare the pictures of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Photos from Stalin’s funeral published in Ogoniok open this visual sequence. Two powers were present: the old one, dead and, therefore, even more sacred, and the new one represented within a group of Soviet top officials, respectfully following the coffin. Khrushchev did not stand out here. He was among others and equal to them, positioned in a line situated on the mausoleum. This emphasis on the “horizontal” in the visual representation of power remained during the first years after Stalin’s death, when there was talk about “collective leadership” of the country. However, a hierarchy was visible even in this “linear” representation within the photo of Stalin’s funeral. According to L. A. Openkin (1991, 45–46), the disposition of power was displayed in the photo taken on 6 March 1953,6 where standing next to the deceased was Stalin’s last favorite, Georgy Malenkov, and then Lavrentiy Beria, Kliment Voroshilov, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, and Vyacheslav Molotov lined up next to him. The relation among these figures is reminiscent of the collage of the Stalin era—and the body of the leader in the picture occupies as much space as all the members of the government put together. Paintings and photographs before the Thaw dealt primarily with the ideal body of the leader they depicted, transforming physical features into exemplary traits. For example, Lenin’s peaked cap allied him with the working class, his bald head conveyed brainpower, and his gesture pointed toward the radiant future; his image was identified with granite and steel (Goscilo 2006, 261, 263). Contrariwise, photography during the Thaw did not seek to embellish the image of the leader; it didn’t avoid showing the head of state’s ordinary physical features. Clothes are

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one of the most important aspects in the representation of politicians, and they became more informal during the Thaw. A perfect body, which was characteristic in portrayals of kings, monarchs, revolutionary leaders, and the founding fathers of nations, had left the political scene. The First Secretary of the Communist Party was now represented as an ordinary human, in his usual worldly incarnation. While the images of Lenin and Stalin were timeless (“He is always with us” and “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live”), a figure of Khrushchev was rooted in the present. If Lenin’s expression “was serious, determined, thoughtful, or slightly ironic, but never jovial” (Bonnell 1997, 153), Khrushchev allowed himself to laugh, to smile broadly, and in every way to show his emotions. Compared to the austere, frozen photo-portraits of Stalin, which amounted to only a few (Turovskaya 2006, 250), images of power during the Thaw came across more informally. The image of the power became prosaic and every day. Periodicals did not gloss over the image of the head of the state, did not hide his average physical features. Images of Stalin were glorified due to the angle of the composition and lighting, but portraits of Khrushchev were deprived of such treatment and represented the plain countenance of a Soviet bureaucrat. His clothing emphasized the ordinariness of his look: a jacket and tie replaced the military uniform of the Generalissimo. Corporeal norms of the Stalin period demanded a dignified image: the deified leader ought not to wave his hands or smile broadly. There were not many illustrations in the Soviet press during Stalin’s years due to his order for publishers not to waste newspaper space. In addition, it was an unwritten rule that the photo was clearly inferior to hand-drawn pictures. Preference was given to portraits of the leader that were painted. It was understood that Stalin’s portrait had to be painted even for press usage. Because of the particularity of the painted media, the artist has more control over the final result than when using photography, which allows for a certain amount of unpredictability. It was believed that photography at worst imparts the typical. Therefore, in the Stalin period, a snapshot was auxiliary material for the artist. If it was printed, then it was covered with a layer of retouch that made it similar to the picture. It is significant that the number of paintings and drawings of Stalin published in the journal Soviet Union after his death outweighs that of photographs. Photography had to imitate the fine arts in order to neutralize the danger of transferring

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uncontrolled, candid information. For these purposes soft-focus optics were used, as well as enlargement of the frame, which helped to achieve grain, and offset printing to “soften” a snapshot. Hand-coloring of photographs also was used. By the 1960s, photos of top leaders were distributed widely in the media. This was due to the development of photography itself and to the general turn of culture toward visuality. The sixties rehabilitated the status of the photo; priorities were changed. Images of power in the 1960s were linked to the tools of communication and information. In his pictures, Nikita Khrushchev was reading newspapers, talking on the phone, standing next to cameras. He was at the epicenter of press attention. His image was reproduced by newspapers and magazines countless times. In magazine photographs of Khrushchev congratulating the first cosmonauts, we see the head of state not only hugging them in a “fatherly” way but also, on another occasion, talking to them on the phone. Here, Khrushchev’s telephone handset and wire represented the physical contact with the cosmonauts and also demonstrated the continuity of the connection of Soviet power with the people. Generally speaking, technical equipment, in addition to progressive Soviet science, played an important role in the representation of familial relations between the cosmonauts and the Soviet government and the people (Schwartz 2008, 171–177). Technological developments and space flights became powerful symbols of the success of the socialist system around which the people could rally. The symbolic act of “connecting” and building family relationships could be read in these photos as an effort by Soviet leaders to unite their people and confirm their power. In the 1960s, photography was promoted as a modern technological medium and was used to propagandize the success of Soviet science (Reid 1994, 33).7 The introduction of new technologies also changed bodily representation. The body seemed to become more perfect due to scientific developments. Technical progress gave birth to a new soviet body. Even babies were represented in safety glasses, basking in the rays of the sun quartz. More often, Khrushchev and leadership were portrayed in motion— during discussions with citizens on the street, or in a racing car. Movement became a sign of the Thaw. Static images were now avoided in power representations. Soviet Photo printed a picture by Dmitry Baltermants (1962a, 16) in which Khrushchev was shown as a passerby

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at the Kremlin, lost among ordinary Soviet citizens. Images of power became workaday, every day. The authorities seemed to become invisible as they imitated ordinary people, except when they appeared on the platform of the mausoleum or on the stage at meetings of the Communist Party Congress. Such fluid movement differed greatly from the canonized poses of the Stalin era. Strict poses and an absence of lively gestures had to do with the desire to control the body, which is also a source of information and means of nonverbal communication. Since the second half of the 1950s, however, the camera started to record emotional and seemingly spontaneous gestures of the leader. Khrushchev was often shown shrugging and waving, frequently situated in the midst of lively interaction—an applauding audience, a welcome show of hands. He was spreading his hands, clenching his fists, pointing a finger—the embodiment of power, Khrushchev participated in the constant dynamics. His movements were even reproduced one frame at a time in quick succession—each one capturing any change in facial expression or gesture; any small movement became essential. “Warmth,” “sincerity,” “passion”—such were the epithets journalists used in their captions to characterize what was being communicated in the picture. A great deal of emotion and energy were conveyed in the pages of Soviet Photo, because journalists found more freedom of expression in artistic renderings. Khrushchev was often presented laughing or smiling widely in images produced during the Thaw. Generally, the smile became a corporeal sign of a new era. It brought with it more emotional intensity compared to the staid images of leaders from the early 1950s. Khrushchev and the cosmonauts, who were favorite heroes of the Thaw, smiled most of all. Khrushchev and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin were the central figures. Many similarities can be found in their images: emotion (facial expressions, gestures), openness (expressing itself in smiles and hugs), naturalness, and ease of behavior. One and the other became symbols of the struggle for peace. They were often portrayed with the representatives of the oppressed peoples. But their relationships were hierarchical, lined up in a father-son model. The individuality of each person’s body and the attention to the “expressive” body parts (the head, face, eyes) increased during the Thaw. The image of arms held out to greet people or to shake hands played an important role in the frame of a photo. It became a leitmotif of power in the sixties.

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Such fragmentation of the body, where its parts become self-sufficient, tells about the change of the classical paradigm, a redefinition of the subject-object dichotomy, the birth of new strategies for human representation. Khrushchev’s photos were copiously published in periodicals. He was often surrounded by people—party members, workers. Reportage shots of Khrushchev’s meetings with the people became widespread at that time. Unlike Stalin, who held a very central position in the frame, Khrushchev was often presented laterally in images. Surrounded by workers, he was at about the same level with them, not towering over the group. Photographers often used wide-angle shots to depict the party’s governance, and caught not only the leader but also his entourage. In this way, the image of power also became “democratized.”

Hugs and Kisses: Sensualization of Power Corporeal confirmation of their declared ideas was important for the authorities during the Thaw. A hug and a kiss became a manifestation, which represented fondness for fellow citizens, or compassion toward the downtrodden people of Africa, or, in the case of the cosmonauts and other heroes, gratitude for a fulfilled mission. Thus, in the pictures of the Thaw a kiss and a hug assumed the meaning of a political act. Their significance changed with context, depending on when or where the action took place—during an official meeting or a more casual encounter. “The era of kisses” didn’t begin with Leonid Brezhnev, as many think, but rather during the Thaw. Then the authorities resorted to emotional expression, to a warm gesture or to physical contact, whether it was a handshake or a hug. Expression of power involved contact with bodies, it became sensual and tactile. Hugs were the norm among leaders at official meetings as evidence of a trusting relationship, but they also extended to Khrushchev’s encounters with ordinary people. Orientation toward sincerity at the time demanded confirmation of feelings with appropriate gestures. Khrushchev and his entourage confirmed agreements and cemented their friendship with numerous hugs and kisses. These photographed hugs, together with their expressive captions, became the norm for visual and verbal expression. In the photo titled Fatherly Hug, Khrushchev embraced the first cosmonauts—Yuri Gagarin and German Titov, who in turn are shown in the photo Star Brothers throwing themselves into

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each other’s arms, as well as family and friends (Joy of the Meeting). It is noteworthy that the titles of the pictures refer to family relations.8 They connote personal warmth while at the same time reinforcing the idea of hierarchy. For example, hugs and kisses given by the head of the country were declared as “fatherly.” In the caption to the photo Fatherly Hug, where the leader kisses cosmonaut Titov, there is a statement by Khrushchev: “Let me once again hug and kiss you as a faithful, glorious son of our country, our Leninist Party” (Smetanin 1961, 2–3). A collection of photos depicting the cosmonauts is accompanied by equally expressive words: “Nikita Khrushchev, in a fatherly way, sincerely met Yuri Gagarin at the airport and in a triple Russian kiss expressed all the fullness of love and respect of the people and the Communist Party to a person who had committed an unprecedented act of bravery. Exciting moments from the meeting of Khrushchev and Yuri Gagarin were captured by many photographers” (Ryabchikov 1961, 5). “Parental” discourse was reproduced also in direct speech by Valentina Tereshkova—the first woman ever to fly in space—at a press conference, where she refers to her “space brother” and the “fatherlike” care of Khrushchev: “My flight has shown that the female body bears space conditions not worse than men’s.… I did not have a sense of fear, especially since I worried a lot at first for my space brother Valery Bykovsky.… It’s hard to convey what I felt during the conversation with Nikita Khrushchev. He gave me fatherly and warm wishes for a happy flight and landing” (Tereshkova 1963, 8–9). Later, a photo of Khrushchev with Tereshkova and her new husband, fellow-cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev (taken by Vasily Peskov [1964, front cover] and titled “Good Luck and Happiness to the Discoverers of Stellar Roads!”), also demonstrated “family ties” between the leader and Soviet cosmonauts. While raising his glass to the health of the newlyweds, Khrushchev was standing next to the bride and groom in the place normally occupied by parents on such occasions. In this case, a “parental” relationship was more than a metaphor in that the marriage was actually imposed from above. Situations where love or marriage received blessing through the intervention of higher authorities had long been a familiar trope in Stalinist cinema (Borisova 2008, 42). The photo in this case reproduced for the audience a familiar story. A kiss and a hug in the Soviet photography of the fifties and sixties belonged to public space and often happened in

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front of witnesses. They were framed with people around, ordinary citizens or top party officials. People were referents of an event, verifying and controlling it. A photo by L. Velikzhanin (1961, back cover) from the Moscow Film Festival, where Gina Lollobrigida kissed Gagarin in public, was printed on the cover of Soviet Photo. Assessment of others is important here. The people looking on in the photo respond with approval, admiration, and understanding. The Thaw cultivated a sensual approach to the world. The display of hugs and kisses, together with either the permissibility or forbiddance of these actions depending on their context, created a sexual tension that attracted attention. But mostly, the media used these images to describe social relations in the Soviet Union as closely knit. Hugs also expressed political support for particular nations. Khrushchev with emphatic enthusiasm embraced Fidel Castro in front of cameras, and was shown holding a Burmese girl and a Russian boy in a photo entitled “Good Hands” (Lebedev 1964, 24–25). Good will toward oppressed African people was expressed with a welcoming gesture whereby Khrushchev embraced black students. Khrushchev had been advocating the return to a “peace offensive,” and the Sixth World Youth Festival in 1957, an outgrowth of this policy, had far-reaching domestic consequences (Zubok 2007, 174). Although many nations participated at the Sixth Youth festival, photographers gave special attention to guests from Africa. This was in part a gesture of solidarity toward their countries in the fight against Western colonialism. Corporeal images tell us about the cultural policies of the period. Khrushchev’s emotional gestures—as caught on film—created a code for representing the body. They determined what was permissible. Multiplied in numerous prints, repeated in various publications, they became visual clichés of the era. Photos of Khrushchev and cosmonauts, perhaps the most iconic of the era in that they embodied significant historical episodes, formed the collective memory of the Soviet people. Conceptions of corporeal norm during the Thaw had changed not only as a result of new aesthetic preferences and the impact of foreign art and press, but also due to the expansion of the media—in terms of the amount of news it could report and the number of images it could produce, as well as the emergence of new forms of media. Altogether, this led to the erosion of old standards and formed the canon of the Thaw.

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Power for Export: Extrapolation of the Family Model Stalin’s iconography visually embodied the metaphor “father of the nations.” This was achieved by making him appear larger than life and by showing him with children. One approach to Stalin’s magnification was to show his figure against a background of people and things made to look much smaller in contrast to him. This distorted perspective was widely used in Soviet posters but it also made its way into photos. Only a few people had the honor of being photographed with Stalin. Children were one exception and served the symbolic function of looking up to him as paternal guardian of the nations. Stalin from the very beginning of his rise to cult hero was portrayed only with girls. The presence of girls emphasized the inaccessibility of the leader: the differences of sex and age expressed the distance between him and others (Plamper 2010, 110). Widely known are his pictures with the little Buryat girl Gelya Markizova in his arms. In another variation of this theme, Stalin appeared with the Tajik girl Mamlakat Nahangova. She was a schoolgirl who exceeded the quota for cotton-picking, and for that Stalin, in 1935, personally presented to her an award. Even after the leader’s death, a photo of Mamlakat with Stalin was published, in 1954, in the magazine Soviet Union (Shakhovskoy 1953, 8). In this old photo, he is sitting at a table and writing, and the girl has put her hand on his shoulder (there is another version where he has his arms around her shoulders). The magazine tells about the life of an adult Mamlakat, shown with family in her apartment, in which the memorable photograph from 1935 holds a place of honor and testifies to the importance she placed on meeting Stalin. During the Thaw, other strategies of paternalistic representation of power emerged. From 1955 onward, there were large numbers of photographs in which Soviet leaders were portrayed alongside people of other races and nations during official visits. Reports on Asia and Africa focused on exotic images. Experiencing different cultures and even appearing in local costumes to audiences around the world, the Soviet officials claimed kinship with these people. For an example, a photo essay documenting a Soviet visit to India in 1956 shows the people of Srinagar showering Khrushchev and Bulganin—who were already given colorful garlands to wear—with flowers as the two leaders drove by (Baltermants 1956, 8–9). Another photograph captured Khrushchev with Indian children, where he was holding hands and offering the traditional Indian greeting namaste.

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These photos represented Khrushchev as a “father of the nations,” as a “friend” and a “brother,” thereby claiming family relations between peoples. This was a way to demonstrate the international nature of Soviet power and the positive impact of “parental” tutelage of Soviet leaders on different nations.9 This indulgence in the form of “Helping Hands” placed the friendly image of the Other within a hierarchy topped by the Soviet Union and ensured the cultural hegemony of the socialist society. We can trace the efforts to distance the Soviet Union from the evils of Western colonialism in photos depicting Khrushchev’s official meetings with black leaders. The earliest pictures of Khrushchev with black delegates had a formal look. But increasingly, photojournalists captured a more joyful Khrushchev, who decided to “bury colonialism” and began to greet Africans with greater warmth than he did any other delegations. As an art publication, Soviet Photo allowed itself to focus on capturing more of the emotional elements of political life. Solidarity with the oppressed African people was expressed in Khrushchev’s welcoming gesture caught in a picture by Sergey Smirnov (1961, 2–3). Here, Khrushchev is hugging two black men dressed in white robes. All three are smiling happily. The composition of the frame is based on a comparison of black and white, and Khrushchev occupies the central position here. The Thaw celebrated the friendly Other seen in the faces of people from Africa. Pictures of black fighters and black students appeared regularly in the Soviet press during this time, whereas before such images were published only sporadically. The figure of the black man became shrouded in a romantic aura during Khrushchev’s tenure. In photos, Africans served as evidence of friendship among peoples and of the Soviet regime’s humanity. They mainly occupied the role of a student, as in the picture where a Soviet man in a white shirt teaches an African wearing a Pioneer tie (which was part of a school uniform). Representation of people of the Third World in magazines during the Thaw usually conveyed a patronizing attitude toward them. The contrast of black and white is perhaps most strikingly evident in the work of Dmitry Baltermants’s Near Lenin (1962b, front cover), in which a black boy is looking up at the white statue of the leader. Power occupies a privileged position, towering above the rest, and chooses white as its symbolic color.

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It can’t be said that Brezhnev was often photographed with children, but the pictures published in the seventies in Ogoniok are significant examples of the continuation of the existing paternalistic tradition. In one photo, he is holding a girl in his arms, with his mouth slightly open for a kiss. This image was taken by photographer Ognian Yuskesiliev (1973) in Bulgaria and is one of the few expressive shots of Brezhnev published in the Soviet press. In another case, he is shown wearing a straw hat with Cuban schoolgirls and Fidel Castro on the cover (Musaelyan and Sobolev 1974b). During his trip to America, Brezhnev was also captured with American children in a picture taken in San Clemente, shaking hands with girls (Musaelyan and Sobolev 1973c). All of these pictures focused the viewer’s attention on the emotional gestures of the Soviet leader and demonstrated paternal participation in the destinies of people throughout the world.

The Soviet “Luster” Any leader personifies the masses, lends them his name, his face, and his active will. Power has the capacity for mimicry; it reflects the hopes and aspirations of the masses, recognizing themselves in the leader. The photos taken during the visit of Khrushchev to the United States, in 1959, emphasized the democratic character of the Soviet premier in that he appears as an approachable person who can relate to everyday citizens. Wherever he went, Khrushchev conveyed a casual image of power through which people recognized themselves. The readers of Soviet magazines saw a live person with his own unique features, such as a bald head and bulging belly. Futhermore, these features were often emphasized, as in a photo by Andrei Novikov (1959, 2), where Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower were filmed in such perspective that their bald heads were shown in profile, one above the other. Thus an analogy of two politicians was constructed on a visual level to show the friendly character of the meeting. In addition to these signs of “commonness,” Soviet leaders of the 1960s appeared in “high society” environments during their trips abroad. This is noticeable in the pictures taken during official ceremonies while Nikita Khrushchev was visiting America. Here, Soviet power was portrayed for the first time in the unusual context of the formal state reception. The Soviet delegation usually attended such events in everyday dress, as in

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1955 at a reception honoring Konrad Adenauer in Moscow. The refined clothing required for state receptions, however, seemed to Khrushchev unsuitable for representing the socialist state of workers. Khrushchev was still afraid that he looked funny wearing a tuxedo at these events, once remarking that even penguins look more elegant (Schattenberg 2009). Khrushchev and Eisenhower were photographed together with their spouses during a dinner at the Soviet Embassy. Ceremonial dress code— evening dress for the First Lady of the United States, and bowtie for the president—placed Soviet attendees in a new context of high-society life. Such events also drew attention to the leaders’ spouses: in photos from the embassy dinner, Khrushchev walks hand in hand in pictures with Mrs. Eisenhower, and the American president is accompanied by Nina Khrushcheva. Family ties also emerge as an important theme: a picture of Khrushchev with Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York, in which they are talking to each other in a lively manner, appeared in the Soviet Union. Along with the men were pictured the Soviet leader’s family— his wife Nina Petrovna, daughter Rada, and son Sergei—and the Soviet Ambassador to the United States Mikhail Menshikov. The Thaw had also changed the role of the Soviet Union’s First Lady.10 Nina Khrushcheva, who accompanied her husband on high-ranking foreign trips, occupied a special place in relation to the higher echelons of power. For the first time, a wife of a Soviet leader was presented in pictures of official visits to heads of state. Khrushcheva was captured with her husband in a meeting with the President and Mrs. Eisenhower, and with Charles de Gaulle and Yvonne de Gaulle at the Élysée Palace. In several pictures, Nina Khrushcheva was even shown alone, without her husband. She was giving interviews to American journalists, shaking hands with children, talking with Chairman of the U.N. General Assembly Victor Belaúnde, communicating with young Frenchmen. Through these pictures, power acquired its feminine hypostasis. On the other hand, they emphasized the role of women in the Soviet Union and the importance of family ties. Several photos taken in social settings were also published during Brezhnev’s visit to America. The Soviet leader is standing with Richard Nixon and his wife, who is wearing an evening dress. In another shot, he is talking with pianist Van Cliburn (Smirnov 1973a). In both of these photos, Brezhnev was dressed in a jacket decorated with medals, which emphasized his different status. Here can be seen the legacy of the Stalin era, when the leader was represented in a military uniform. On the other hand, the very appearance of Khrushchev and Brezhnev in an elegant social context was a new step in Soviet power’s representation.

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Mission of Peace: Summit Meetings “The meeting was held in a friendly, warm atmosphere,” “Friendship visit,” “In the name of humanity,” “Mission of peace and friendship”— such were the headlines and captions under the photos of summits during Brezhnev’s tenure. For the most part, these were very static images, not characterized by emotional gestures and lively facial expressions or by interesting compositional techniques. The era of Stagnation spoke about itself in a language of shackled poses. Smiles and gestures rarely enlivened these scant images. However, the picture had to give witness to a dialogue taking place in the frame and that was demonstrated primarily through a handshake but also in the form of a negotiating table, which was a space of peace and mutual understanding. The handshake here acts as a sign testifying to trusted relationship, as the declaration of friendship, confirming the “peaceful course” of the Soviet leadership. This becomes the leitmotif of Soviet photojournalism in the representation of international relations, and was most often used in setting up meetings with the leaders of socialist countries, whether these were the first Secretary of the PUWP (Polish United Workers’ Party) Edward Gierek or the first Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED Central Committee) Erich Honecker, or general secretary of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito.11 Brezhnev, wearing a garland of flowers, is shaking hands with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during his visit to India on the cover of Ogoniok (Musaelyan and Sobolev 1973a). This dynamic picture is accompanied by the title Mission of Peace and a quotation by L. I. Brezhnev: “The friendship of the great peoples of the Soviet Union and India has considerable importance for peace and security in Asia and around the world.” In another photo, this time on the cover of Ogoniok (Musaelyan and Sobolev 1974a), he is firmly shaking hands with Fidel Castro. The fact that this scene was captured within a larger image showing the leaders surrounded by press photographers was likely intended to convey that their meeting constituted a major media event, and to emphasize the popularity of the leaders and their governments. In addition to a handshake, other gestures of solidarity were practiced during Brezhnev’s time in office. For example, during the meeting of the Mongolian-Soviet Friendship in Ulaanbaatar, members of the Soviet government headed by Brezhnev and Mongolian comrades raised their

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hands and pressed them together (Koshevoy 1966). This gesture can be seen in other images of meetings between the Soviet leadership and the heads of friendly countries, as is the case with Gustav Husak or Fidel Castro. Bodily contact designates here support and unity, an attempt to visualize the collective and socialist body. Brezhnev’s welcoming gestures and lively facial expressions often appear in photographs of his meetings with political allies. Photos of the Soviet government sitting at the negotiating table and discussing topical issues with foreign delegations were widespread during this period. This became a conventional form of representation of international relations, a way to show cooperation or readiness for it. In this, the form could be applied to almost all visits of foreign leaders, whether it was the Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Helmut Schmidt, President of the Republic of India Neelam Sanjeev Reddy, President of Czechoslovakia Gustav Husak, President of CPP Nicolae Ceausescu, President of the State Council of the GDR Erich Honecker, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People’s Party, Chairman of the Presidium of the State Great Khural Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, and British Labor Party leader Michael Foot. Pictures of summits were not marked by diversity during the Brezhnev era. The visual canon was finally formed in the late Brezhnev period and fit into the following uncomplicated scheme, which was reproduced each time with slight variations in Ogoniok: Brezhnev at the airport with a group of comrades, posing with a high-ranking guest, seated at the negotiation table, and signing contracts. Photos of foreign visits of the Soviet government had a similar configuration. The photo report on the visit of Brezhnev to the United States included the following scenes: farewell at the Vnukovo airport (more than twenty people along with the Secretary General are standing in a row); the official welcoming ceremony at the White House, where Brezhnev is speaking from the podium; Brezhnev sitting together with Nixon; Brezhnev and Nixon walking past the guard of honor (Musaelyan et al. 1973). On the magazine cover, Brezhnev is shown stretching his hand in salute alongside Richard Nixon on the balcony of the White House (Musaelyan and Sobolev 1973b). In the next issue of Ogoniok were photos of Brezhnev and Nixon signing the Soviet-American agreement on the prevention of nuclear war. Gestures and smiles characterized the American president, while the general secretary showed a minimum

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of expression. Most of the pictures focused on the official chronicle, and the reportage shots were almost missed. A rare exception was a smiling Brezhnev during a meeting with ordinary Americans who were holding out their arms to him (Smirnov 1973b; Musaelyan and Sobolev 1973c). The lack of emotion in these published photos does not signify their absence in the Soviet leader’s reality. There are numerous photos of the visit, where Brezhnev waves his hands or appears in comical poses, sometimes with ridiculous facial expressions, but they were not published in the Soviet press. The choice indicates certain cultural and ideological preferences, in which the era of Stagnation manifested itself. The most expressive pictures were published in Soviet Photo, where several pages had been devoted to visits of Brezhnev to the Federal Republic of Germany, the United States, and France. The magazine commented that these visits had fundamental importance: “They signify a turn from the era of the ‘Cold War’ to an era of cooperation, to détente, to the establishment of mutual trust between states” (Kolesov 1973). According to the author of the text, reporters have successfully coped with the task of documenting these events and that these photos will go down in history, especially the picture of Brezhnev with ordinary Americans.

Kremlin “Iconostasis”: From Stagnation to Perestroika At the beginning of his rule, Brezhnev was portrayed mainly among a number of party comrades. In these pictures, he is standing in the mausoleum or at meetings with foreign delegations alongside with others. In general, the theme of the collective governance for many years determined the way Soviet power was presented. Participatory decision-making was emphasized by shots of a crowded conference hall in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, which was often shown from the top. Applauding delegates denoted unanimity of choice, agreement with senior management decisions. The visual rhetoric of these photographs tried to distance themselves from the images of the leader typical of Stalin’s time, while proclaiming “Leninist principles of collective leadership.” Brezhnev took pride of first place in the list of official portraits of members of the government, but nevertheless he was among others. The first Kremlin “iconostasis” was already published in Khrushchev’s period, but only in Brezhnev’s era did it become a common form

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of representation of power. The infinite number of members of the Politburo was a visual sign of the Stagnation period. These portraits of the Soviet leadership could occupy up to six pages in a magazine. Only portraits of general secretary of the CPSU could compete with this. Brezhnev was everywhere: applauding from the tribune, shaking hands with the workers, signing agreements at the negotiating table, receiving awards, welcoming people at the mausoleum. Party comrades were also in pictures, but no one stood out from this faceless state apparatus. The other members of government formed a backdrop for the leader of the country. Pictures of his speeches at the congresses were mounted with the hall of applauding delegates. At the beginning of his rule, some of Brezhnev’s photos conveyed emotion and had a dynamic composition within the frame, although their expressive intensity had decreased significantly compared to official photos taken during the Thaw. The expressiveness made itself felt only occasionally, making an exception in cases where Brezhnev was portrayed with ordinary people, the workers. Compared with images of Khrushchev, photographs of Brezhnev were more static in composition, less emotional, and often staged. Nevertheless, the tradition of the Thaw was partly present in Brezhnev’s canon. Depiction of physical contact in the photographs remained important. That appeared first of all in the forms of a handshake or applause. Applause for the leader and his hand raised in greeting played an important role in the imagery. Applause could be inferred by images of party members clapping for Brezhnev in the background—like a curtain made up of clapping hands in an infinite pattern. The presence of people representing other races in the photos remained a key element for creating the image of power. However, as we know, Brezhnev liked to hug and kiss party comrades and foreign guests. A widely known example of this is his kiss with general secretary Erich Honecker in East Germany in 1979. The photograph was taken by a Western journalist Régis Bossu and circulated in all the foreign newspapers. Later, this scene was depicted in Berlin Wall by Dmitri Vrubel. If at the beginning of the Stagnation, Brezhnev’s gestures and facial expressions were often emotional, by the 1980s, any expression of the general secretary had been reduced to a minimum. As in photos covering the visit of the general secretary in Bonn in 1981, the static character of

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Brezhnev especially stands out from others in the frame (Musaelyan and Pesov 1981). This difference in representation is partly explained by the fact that at the initial stage, the heritage of the Thaw made itself felt. On the other hand, there was also the factor of Brezhnev’s health; he had been severely ill in recent years. In turn, the decline of the Brezhnev era came amid the completion of the stage in the history of international relations called “détente”. Late in his career, old age and disease affected Brezhnev’s appearance, and then negatively influenced the perception of Soviet leadership. Brezhnev became the object of ridicule already during the Soviet years, and it only intensified after the collapse of the USSR. The petrified face of the Soviet leader, his slow speech and lethargic movements along with the grotesque facial expressions in the background of other elderly leaders of the country, who were hung with medals and congratulating crowds from the mausoleum, became for many people the symbol of Soviet rule, of its irrelevance and incapacity. Thus, the discrediting of Soviet power among citizens was largely due to its corporal image, embodied in the country’s leader. Portraits of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who followed Brezhnev as general secretary of the Communist Party, had impersonal features. Official portraits and ceremonial photos were usually published revealing minimal facial expression. The few photos of Andropov and Chernenko that appeared in the press fit into the same pattern of power representation that had developed late in Brezhnev’s era. There is a long line of official portraits of the government of the USSR and the USSR Council of Ministers, the negotiation table, the head of the state and government officials lined up with high-ranking guests in one row for a photo documentation of the meeting. These pictures do not even show a hint of the Soviet leaders’ emotions, turning them from humans into the base form of a state bureaucrat. Even the magazine Soviet Photo, which was a periodical aimed at artistic statement, published the official portraits of leaders. This occurred with the change of power, when Yuri Andropov died, and Konstantin Chernenko took his place (Soviet Photo 1984), and in turn when he was replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Photo 1985). Standardization of ideological statements in that time, including visual production, is described by Yurchak: “During the late Soviet period, the form of ideological representations—documents, speeches, ritualized practices, slogans, posters, monuments, and urban visual

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propaganda—became increasingly normalized, ubiquitous, and predictable. This standardization of the form of discourse developed gradually, as a result of the disappearance, in the 1950s, of the external editorial voice that commented on that discourse. With that shift, the form of the ideological representations became fixed and replicated—unchanged from one context to the next” (2005, 14). This “hegemony of form” can be seen in official and static poses, in ceremonial scenes, in limited repertoire of photographic plots. The absence of authoritative leaders (whom Yurchak calls “external figures”) like Stalin resulted in the representation of Soviet power as collective rule, with its extreme expression as Kremlin “iconostasis.” This was the shackled and formal language of Stagnation, distant from the monumentality of Stalin’s canon and from emancipated gestures, which were allowed in the Khrushchev era. These patterns began to change with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, but it happened gradually. The situation with his birthmark is rather indicative: at first he appeared in these formal pictures without a birthmark, and then later with it. In many ways this inconsistency reflected ambivalent state policy, in which a tendency toward “glasnost” alternated with adherence to the strict rules of presentation inherited from previous years. In the end, due to the fact that video footage was not subjected to retouching and therefore people saw the birthmark on Gorbachev’s forehead on TV, a decree was issued not to airbrush out the birthmark in photos (Lenta.ru 2011). The first publications of photos depicting Gorbachev and the leaders of foreign countries followed the old Brezhnev scheme, but at the same time, there were also dynamic reportage photos of Gorbachev with workers. For example, Gorbachev was captured gesticulating animatedly among the workers of Stavropol, standing on the same level with them (TASS 1985a). Such animation gradually started to appear in more “official” settings. The camera captures Gorbachev’s lively gestures during a press conference with François Mitterrand in France, and at the factory, in Puassi, in October 1985 (TASS 1985b). More daring angles appeared in this publication. The Soviet leader was shot from the top down, when he made an entry in the guestbook upon visiting the museum-apartment of Lenin. There were more smiles, gestures, and handshakes with each passing year in the photo frame. Meetings with leaders of other countries were also highlighted with increased emotionality. During his stay in

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Washington, Gorbachev was portrayed in motion, smiling broadly, as in a picture with Ronald Reagan before the signing of the agreement between the USSR and the United States on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (Baltermants 1987). Photos from the meeting of Reagan and Gorbachev in Moscow were also given dynamic treatment (Baltermants 1988a). Emotionality also emerges in pictures of Gorbachev and Bush. Although the compositional scheme partly remained the same, these photos are less static and we can see living interaction and communication taking place in the frame (Lizunov and Chumichev 1990). Movement and emotionality became attributes of internal policy as well. Widely smiling Gorbachev was shown at the Nineteenth All-Union Conference of the CPSU. Next to him was published reportage footage of delegates (Baltermants 1988b). The camera seemed to grope for new language to describe the changes taking place in the country. Gradually, the image of lively discussions during the party’s meetings transformed into a show of heated debates and opposition between powers (Baltermants and Gostev 1989). Gestures and emotional expressions became again an important component of the Soviet leader’s image. There were even publications focused on his hand gestures alone. They expressed freedom of opinion and lively discussion. Photographers tried to capture the emotions of the country’s leader and deputies, while not always positive. It now became possible for photos to show a preoccupied or gloomy look from the leader. All this foretold the rise of “glasnost.” Emotional intensity increased with the coming of the 1990s. Already in the late eighties, other leaders were emerging in the media: Boris Yeltsin, Anatoly Sobchak, and Andrei Sakharov. Judging by the reportage style of photojournalistic coverage, which presented a more dynamic image of Yeltsin, he became a symbol of a new politic. In one frame, Yeltsin even leaned over Gorbachev as if he were calling him to answer (Korobeinikov et al. 1990). At the turn of the nineties, Yeltsin and Gorbachev frequently appeared in opposition within the frame, but at the same time, there were pictures where they were smiling together, demonstrating solidarity. Boris Yeltsin was portrayed as a thoughtful person who speculated about the fate of the country. For example, he could be captured in the store looking dreamily at sausage links, as if lost in thought (Feklistov 1992a, 2–3). He came across as a “man of the people,” proclaimed as

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the upholder of democratic values, and can be seen in a crowd in a 1991 photo. At the same time, he was given an air of authority in photos where technology again figured prominently. For example, we see him in one photo surrounded by dozens of microphones, all pointing toward him and serving to enhance his image as an important communicator (Feklistov 1992b, 2). Pictures of heads of the state for a long time had not been published in Soviet Photo, but at the beginning of the 1990s, images of politicians that were shot in an expressive manner appeared here. A portrait of a pensive Gorbachev, the newly created President of Soviet Union, as well as worried faces of deputies, the expressive gestures of Anatoly Sobchak, a surly Eduard Shevardnadze and Dmitry Yazov, the bald heads of delegates in a conference room—such images of power were created in this magazine on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Already, in 1992, Shevardnadze covering his face with his hands (Pesov 1992), as well as Secretary of the CPSU G. Yanaev captured in an unsightly moment wiping his nose (Chumichev 1992), formed the final chord in the visual chronicle of this magazine, which was renamed Photograph after the collapse of the USSR and continued publication until 1995, when it folded due to a lack of funding. Meanwhile, photos ridiculing the old-order Soviet leaders were appearing in the press by the end of the 1980s, which underlines the sufficient freedom enjoyed by the press at that time. Much of the ridicule was based on physical appearance, with a focus on unattractive features and silly poses or facial expressions that the camera picked up. The main object of derision was Brezhnev, but other Soviet leaders were targeted as well. A “competition of body parts” was once presented on the last page of Ogoniok (1992a, 32). The reader had to guess to which member of the former Politburo a particular forehead or chin belonged. Another dimension of the role played by the body in Soviet perceptions of power can be seen in media coverage of disease—in this case, efforts to make aging leaders of the old order appear weak. Detailed information was often published about their respective diseases, often as an attempt to explain the policies they advocated. The fact that bodily components played an important role in the representation of the change in power is also confirmed by shots taken in places where Soviet high officials, such as Boris Pugo, Nikolay Kruchina, and Sergej Akhromeev, committed suicide. The bloodied head of Pugo appeared in close-up on the pages of Ogoniok (1992b, 13), proclaiming

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the death of an enemy and a regime change. Such images contrasted greatly with pictures of government leaders’ deaths in the old days, when lavish funeral were given and one would see the dead body surrounded by flowers and a group of mourners glorifying the deceased. However, death, in all its stark reality, was the usual image seen during this political transition. A photo of a dead man on the pavement taken on 21 August 1991 in Moscow, on the Garden Ring, was published on the front cover of the next issue of Ogoniok (Hamelyanin 1992, front cover). Pictures of bloodied carcasses of meat and images of dead children displayed on the pages of magazines were symptoms of painful changes occurring in the country.

Conclusion Representation of the body of the Soviet leaders changed depending on the value system of society. Bodily practices in the Soviet period were not a homogeneous phenomenon. Strictness and stillness of poses during Stalin’s era were replaced with emancipation of the body during Khrushchev’s tenure. Changes had occured even at the level of the leaders’ choice of clothes. Technology extended the body of the leaders, linking them to the people. An important component in the representation of power was the absence or the presence of women in the political life of the state. Symbolic generalizations of the policy occurred also on the level of the body. For example, political support of African peoples expressed itself by hugging. Bodily metaphors were also important for conveying Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War.12 Capturing on film, Khrushchev’s gestures and facial expressions made plain the state’s attitude toward certain political events, sending a message to the general reader. In magazines such photos were understood in the context of captions or an article placed next to the photo. Through these images, a wide spectrum of emotions could be observed. Anger or threat could be read in the face of a leader reacting to world imperialism, peacefulness could be seen in gestures toward ordinary Americans, fraternal love was apparent in enthusiastic hugs with the leaders of the Cuban Revolution. The time of Brezhnev’s Stagnation offered its own bodily codes, which were not so open as before. Images of crowds applauding Brezhnev served as proof that the country was moving in the right direction. Numerous medals on his clothing not only indicated the merits of

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the general secretary but also connoted the power of the Soviet state. Photos with representatives of Third World countries continued to demonstrate a friendly but patronizing attitude toward them. Later, in the early nineties, the body of the Soviet power in the press was destroyed—dismembered and killed. The new ideology established itself through a ridicule of disabilities and the portrayal of death of former leaders. New bodily codes would be developed and applied to new heroes.

Notes







1. “Bodily hexis is political mythology realized, embodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking” (Bourdieu 1990, 69–70). 2. The following quotation by Ernst Kantorowicz has not lost its relevance today in the early twenty-first century: “Not only is the body politic ‘more ample and large’ than the body natural, but there dwell in the former certain truly mysterious forces which reduce, or even remove, the imperfections of the fragile human nature” (Kantorowicz 1957, 9). 3. The research of images of the Thaw is partly based on the author’s dissertation “The Representation of the Body in the Soviet photography of the Thaw,” defended in 2012 at Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. 4. In his book Yurchak tries to avoid the use of binary categories to describe Soviet reality such as oppression and resistance, repression and freedom, the state and the people, official culture and counterculture, truth and lie, and so on, because he sees “the roots of these binary categories” originating in the broad “regimes of knowledge” formed under the conditions of the Cold War, when the entity of “the Soviet bloc” had been articulated in opposition to “the West” and as distinct from “the Third World” (Yurchak 2005, 5). 5. Find more about Soviet media in Günther and Hänsgen (2006), Salnikova (2014), and Vikulina (2015a). 6. The photo (author unknown) was published in Pravda (1953) and the magazine Soviet Union (1953). 7. The Soviet space program included not just space exploration but rocketry in general. 8. Parental discourse was very important in representation of the Soviet cosmonauts. This was pointed out by several researchers (Kohonen 2009, 123; Schwartz 2008, 171–177).

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9. In the material on the visits of Khrushchev to France and America were published photographs of the Soviet premier with children. Journalists described the meetings in the text: “Nikita willingly talked with the children, took kids in his hands, and paternally caressed them” (Ivanov 1959, 7). 10. Find out more about the role of First Ladies during the Soviet period in the article “Paternalistic Images of Power in Soviet Photography” (Vikulina 2015b). 11.  On the cover of the issue devoted to Brezhnev’s visit to France he is shown smiling and shaking hands with French President Georges Pompidou (Musaelyan and Egorov 1973). See also General Secretary of CPSU L. I. Brezhnev and French President Georges Pompidou, telephoto, Ogoniok 28: front cover. Handshake of Brezhnev and Pompidou was published for the second time during this year. In January, Ogoniok published the article “USSR - France: Growing Cooperation” about the meeting of the two leaders in Zaslavl (Musaelyan et al. 1973) 12. For example, this confirms the following brutal joke made by Khrushchev: “We will never accept Adenauer as the representative of Germany. If to take off his pants and look at his ass, we can see that Germany is divided. And if you look at it from the front, you can be sure that Germany will never rise” (Taubman 2004, 750).

References Baltermants, D. 1956. Bulganin and Khrushchev in India. Photo. Ogoniok 8: colored plates, pp. 8–9. ———. 1962a. V Kremle [In the Kremlin]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 9: 16. ———. 1962b. U Lenina [Near Lenin]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 4: front cover. ———. 1987. Photo. Ogoniok 51: inside front cover, p. 2. ———. 1988a. Photo. Ogoniok 23: inside front cover, p. 1. ———. 1988b. Photo. Ogoniok 28: inside front cover, p. 2. Baltermants, D., and A. Gostev. 1989. Photo. Ogoniok 23: inside front cover, p. 1. Bonnell, Viktoria. 1997. Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin. Berkeley: University of California Press. Borisova, Natalya. 2008. “‘Liubliu — i nichego bolshe’: sovetskaia liubov’ 1960–1980-x godov” [I Love and Nothing Else: Soviet Love in the 1960s–1980s]. In SSSR: Territoriia liubvi [USSR: Territory of Love], edited by Natalia Borisova, Konsantin Bogdanov, and Iuri Murashov. Moscow: Novoe izdatelstvo. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press.

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Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge. Chumichev, A. 1992. Posledniaia konferentsiia G. Ianaeva [The Last Conference of G. Yanaev]. Photo. Photography 11–12: 7. Feklistov, Yury. 1992a. I dumal on [And He Was Thinking]. Photo. Ogoniok 5: 2–3. ———. 1992b. Photo. Ogoniok 24–26: 2. Goscilo, Helena. 2006. “Posting the Soviet Body as Tabula Phrasa and Spectacle.” In Lotman and Cultural Studies: Encounters and Extensions, edited by Andreas Schönle. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Günther, Hans, and Sabine Hänsgen, eds. 2006. Sovietskaia vlast i media [Soviet Power and Media]. Saint Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt. Hamelyanin, Gennady. 1992. Moskva. Sadovoe kol’tso. 21 avgusta 1991 goda [Moscow, Garden Ring, 21 August 1991]. Photo. Ogoniok 40–41: front cover. Ivanov, B. 1959. “Barometr idet na iasno” [Barometer Goes on Clear]. Ogoniok 41. Kantorowicz, Ernst. 1957. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kohonen, Iina. 2009. “The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking.” Sociological Review 57: 114–131. Kolesov, N. 1973. “Masterstvo politicheskogo reportazha” [Mastery of Political Reportage]. Soviet Photo 9: 6. Korobeinikov, D., A. Natruskin, and V. Filonov. 1990. Photo. Ogoniok 25: 1. Koshevoy, V. 1966. Photo. Ogoniok 4: 1. Lebedev, V. 1964. Dobryie ruki [Good Hands]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 6: colored plates between pp. 24 and 25. Lenta.ru. 2011. “Aleksandr Chumichev, byvshii lichnyi fotograf Gorbacheva, El’tsina i Putina” [Alexander Chumichev, a Former Personal Photographer of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin]. 27 July. Accessed 3 November 2014. http://lenta.ru/conf/chumichev. Lizunov, Yu., and A. Chumichev. 1990. Telephoto. Ogoniok 24: inside front cover, p. 1. Musaelyan, V., and V. Egorov. 1973. General’nyi sekretar’ TsK KPSS L.I. Brezhnev i frantsuzskii prezident Zhorzh Pompidu [General Secretary of CPSU L. I. Brezhnev and French President Georges Pompidou]. Telephoto. Ogoniok 28: front cover. Musaelyan, V., and E. Pesov. 1981. Telephoto. Ogoniok 48: front cover. Musaelyan, V., and V. Sobolev. 1973a. Photo. Ogoniok 49: front cover. ———. 1973b. Photo. Ogoniok 26: front cover. ———. 1973c. Photo. Ogoniok 27: back cover. ———. 1974a. Photo. Ogoniok 6: front cover. ———. 1974b. Photo. Ogoniok 7: front cover. Musaelyan, V., V. Sobolev, and A. Pakhomov. 1973a. Photo. Ogoniok 4: 2–3.

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Musaelyan, V., V. Sobolev, A. Kanashevich, and A. Stolyarenko. 1973b. Photo. Ogoniok 26: 1–5. Novikov, Andrei. 1959. Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Photo. Ogoniok 39: 2. Ogoniok. 1992a. Konkurs lbov i podborodkov [Competition of Foreheads and Chins]. Photo. 3: 32. ———. 1992b. Photo. 38–39: 13. Openkin, Leonid A. 1991. Ottepel: Kak eto byilo (1953–1955) [The Thaw: How Was It (1953–1955)]. Moscow: Znanie. Peskov, Vasily. 1964. Uspeha i schastya pervootkryivatelyam zvezdnyih dorog! [Good Luck and Happiness to the Discoverers of Stellar Roads!]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 1: front cover. Pesov, E. 1992. Portret Shevardnadze [Portrait of Shevardnadze]. Photo. Photography 11–12: 8. Plamper, Jan. 2010. Alhimiya vlasti: kult Stalina v izobrazitelnom iskusstve [Alchemy of Power: The Stalin Cult in the Visual Arts]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. Pravda. 1953. Photo. 7 March, p. 2. Reid, Susan E. 1994. “Photography in the Thaw.” Art Journal 53, no. 2: 33. Ryabchikov, E. 1961. Obraz geroya [The Image of the Hero]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 7: 5. Salnikova, E. V. 2014. Sovetskaia kul’tura v dvizhenii: ot serediny 1930-kh k seredine 1980-kh: Vizual’nye obrazy, geroi, siuzhety [Soviet Culture in Motion: From the Mid-1930s to Mid-1980s: Visual Images, Characters, Plots]. 3rd ed. Moscow: LKI. Schattenberg, Susanne. 2009. “‘Razgovor gluhonemyih’? Kultura hruschevskoy vneshney politiki i vizit kantslera Adenauera v Moskvu v 1955 godu” [A Conversation Between Two Deaf-Mutes? The Culture of Khrushchev’s Foreign Policy and Adenauer’s Visit to MOSCOW in 1955]. Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 6: 702–722. Schwartz, Matthias. 2008. “Posledniy ryivok: intimnaya zhizn kosmonavtov v sovetskoy populyarnoy kulture i nauchnoy fantastike” [Last Jerk: Intimate Life of Cosmonauts in Soviet Popular Culture and Science Fiction]. In SSSR: Territoriia liubvi [USSR: Territory of Love], edited by Natalia Borisova, Konsantin Bogdanov, and Iuri Murashov, 171–177. Moscow: Novoe izdatelstvo. Shakhovskoy, V. 1953. Osuschestvlennyie mechty [Implementation of Dreams]. Photo of the author. Soviet Union 5: 8. Smetanin, V. 1961. Otecheskie ob’yatiya [Fatherly Hug]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 9: 2–3. Smirnov, Sergey. 1961. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 10: 2–3. ———. 1973a. Photo. Ogoniok 27: 2. ———. 1973b. Photo. Ogoniok 27: 27.

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Soviet Union. 1953. Photo. 3: 2. ———. 1984. Photo. 3: inside front cover, p. 4. ———. 1985. Photo. 4: 2. TASS (Photo Agency). 1985a. Telephoto. Ogoniok 39: 2–3. ———. 1985b. Telephoto. Ogoniok 42: inside front cover – p. 2. Taubman, William. 2004. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Simon and Schuster. Tereshkova, Valentina. 1963. “Kosmos ne delaet galantnogo snishozhdeniya zhenschine” [Space Does Not Make a Gallant Indulgence to a Woman]. Sovetskaia Zhenshina 8: 8–9. Turovskaya, Maya. 2006. “Legko na serdtse, ili Kraft Durch Freude” [Easy for the Heart or Kraft Durch Freude]. In Sovetskaya vlast i media [Soviet Power and Media], edited by Hans Günther and Sabine Hänsgen. Saint Petersburg: Akademicheskiy proekt. Velikzhanin, L. 1961. Na Moscovskom kinofestivale [At the Moscow Film Festival]. Photo. Sovetskoe Foto 12: back cover. Vikulina, Ekaterina. 2015a. “Power and the Media: The Visual Revolution of the 1960s.” Cahiers du Monde Russe (EHESS, Paris) 56, nos. 2–3: 429–465. ———. 2015b. “Paternalistic Images of Power in Soviet Photography.” Baltic Worlds (special issue) 1–2: 48–56. Yurchak, Alexei. 2005. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yuskesiliev, Ognian. 1973. Photo. Ogoniok 7: 5. Zubok, Vladislav M. 2007. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

CHAPTER 14

The Iconic Photograph and Its Political Space: The Case of Tiananmen Square, 1989 Stuart Franklin

This essay explores the process by which images from the student protest and Beijing massacre of 1989 became labeled “iconic.” Ultimately, it shows how this categorization fueled a political agenda vehemently opposed to established rule in China, a process that raises questions concerning the unexamined meaning of the words “democracy” and “freedom” in political discourse. And this discourse, arising as it did at the end of the Cold War, obviously stretched far beyond China and onto the world stage, where there were many Western political actors eager for images to appropriate. The term “iconic” derives from the Greek word eikōn, originally meaning a portrait or representation with no particular religious or secular connotation. It has been suggested that secular icons “inspire some degree of awe … mixed with dread, compassion, or aspiration—and stand for an epoch or a system of beliefs” (Goldberg 1991, 135). The notion of icons standing for a system of beliefs lies at the heart of this enquiry. S. Franklin (*)  Volda University College, Volda, Norway © The Author(s) 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_14

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Here I will focus on two images: the Goddess of Democracy (Fig. 14.1), first seen in Tiananmen Square on 30 May 1989, and the Tank Man (Fig. 14.2), recorded by five photographers and several film crews, most from the balconies of the Beijing Hotel on 4 June 1989. For the sake of clarity, when I am referring to an image by its title or generic name I will use italics. When I refer to a subject or object that is not a photograph, I won’t. Much has already been written on the nature of iconic photographs (e.g., Goldberg 1991; Koetzle 1996; Permutter 1998; Hariman and Lucaites 2007), including at least two Ph.D. theses (Permutter 1996; Cannon 2001). However, there is more to be said on this topic. Before 1989 iconic photographs were normally seen as unique: attributed to one photograph by one photographer. Tiananmen changed all that. The Goddess of Democracy, taken by an unknown photographer, has been described as iconic (Hariman and Lucaites 2007, 211). All four versions of the Tank Man image captured from a similar vantage point have also been described, at one time or another, as iconic, inviting the question: is it the photograph that should be described as iconic or the subject—or, as in the case of the Goddess of Democracy, the pictured object? I happen to be one of the photographers whose image of the tank man first gained attention. Had a hundred photographers captured the tank man in front of the Beijing Hotel would all the images be iconic? Probably. The particular qualities of each version would be subsumed under the greater meaning connoted by the fetishized subject, echoing—I think it is reasonable to say—the various versions of Christ on the Cross, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Chairman Mao wearing his forage cap, or Babe Ruth at his last game. Further, the assumption is that iconic photographs rise to prominence on the basis of the natural excellence of visual reporting (Cannon 2001, viii). I suggest that the quality of the photograph per se is less important than the messages that such images convey. Broadly, the existing canon comprises iconic photographs whose frames of reference share links with the United States1: the wars that it has fought, the political battles it has waged (e.g., with China), the extraplanetary missions it has accomplished, and the joy, trouble, and strife experienced in its own backyard (e.g., the Kent State “massacre”).2

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Fig. 14.1  Goddess of Democracy, 30 May 1989. Photo © Stuart Franklin 1989

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Fig. 14.2  Tank Man, 4 June 1989. © Stuart Franklin 1989

However, it must be stated that every culture has its iconography, linked more to heritage than history (Lowenthal 1998). As David Lowenthal argues, “[W]hile it borrows from and enlivens historical study, heritage is not an enquiry into the past but a celebration of it, not an effort to know what actually happened but a profession of faith in a past tailored to present-day purposes” (ibid., xi). This essay argues that a number of iconic photographs are accelerated into prominence due less to their formal excellence as photographs than to their fit with political expediency. Putting to one side Tiananmen Square, there are two other photographs that fall into the “heritage” category: (1) Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima: Old Glory Goes Up on Mt. Suribachi (1945). Its political purpose was to raise the hopes of a nation struggling at war, a photograph that became “an icon of American patriotism” (Goldberg 1991, 147).3 (2) Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936). The photograph is an anguished portrait of Florence Thompson, a thirty-two-year-old mother cradling three infants at a pea picker’s camp

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in Nipomo, California. In the photograph, which became the “canonical image of the Depression” (Goldberg 1991, 136), a class issue is “framed and subordinated in its allusion to religious imagery”—specifically, the Madonna and Child (Hariman and Lucaites 2007; Trachtenberg 1988; Wright 2000, 2008). The scope of the essay will be as follows. In the first section, I will set out briefly the historical and political background to the Tiananmen Square protests, and subsequent massacre in Beijing. Following that, I will focus on the Goddess of Democracy and its impact, as an image, on the political landscape of Tiananmen Square. Continuing, I will attend to the Tank Man image and consider its impact (or lack of it4) in China and abroad. I will argue that as an image it was rather slow to materialize, and when it did so it was because dramatic television footage of the incident drew commentary from the US president, thereby raising its status. I will conclude by assessing the role of the iconic image in furthering a political agenda. What I will not include is a general overview of the iconic image. Certainly, there are a number of images that have been described as iconic and seem to have emerged rapidly because of the inherent drama of the picture itself. Nick Ut’s photograph Children Fleeing a Napalm Strike, June 8, 1972 is such an example; another is John Paul Filo’s Kent State—Girl Screaming over Dead Body, May 4, 1970.5 Both were shown as stills on the same day that the pictures were taken, on NBC news. They dominated the front pages of the national newspapers the following morning (Goldberg 1991; Hariman and Lucaites 2007, 173). I will include neither a detailed account of the student protest movement nor a fresh examination of the 1989 Beijing massacre. A considerable number of authors, with better access than I could ever achieve, have probably come as close to estimating the casualty figures as is possible at this time (Brook 1992; Chang 2005; Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press 1992; Kristof and WuDunn 1994). From existing data, however, three points become clear: (1) most of those killed in Beijing during June 1989 were not slaughtered in Tiananmen Square but in other areas of the city6; (2) the total casualty figure is likely to be greater than 400 but less than 15007; (3) it should also be noted that there were significant casualties within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) inflicted both by civilians and, reportedly, by soldiers.8

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Background Between April and June 1989 the world turned its spotlight on the gradual build-up of tension in China. The focus was on a student-led protest movement in Tiananmen Square. Protests began after the death of Hu Yaobang, the purged ex-general secretary of the Communist Party (CCP), who collapsed at age 73 after a heart attack on 15 April. The CCP was simplistically divided into factions favoring either conservatism or reform (Scobell and Wortzel 2005, 56). Hu Yaobang was a reformist and “his death was to rock China to its foundations” (Suettinger 2003, 28). On 16 April students marched from two leading Beijing universities to place a wreath at the Monument to the People’s Heroes—a 37.4 meter high obelisk in Tiananmen Square. Three days later Hu Yaobang’s portrait, painted at China’s top art school, joined the wreath (Wu 2005, 42). Beginning with this early act of iconoclasm, disrupting the careful iconography of Tiananmen Square, still dominated by the all-seeing celestial eye of the Great Helmsman, the détournement began.9 Part satire, part revolt, the student protest took many forms over the spring months of 1989. The students wanted Hu Yaobang’s objectives realized and his reputation restored by the Party leadership, which was perceived by the student protesters to be a corrupt gerontocracy. Hu Yaobang had wanted better treatment for intellectuals and more money for education (ibid.). But the Communist Party’s Central Committee was unwilling to single out for special treatment the elite 1% of the population who were able to attend university. From a policy perspective, the leadership’s views, although split, had not evolved since 1979 or 1986, when similar grievance movements unfolded, culminating in demands for a greater role for the intelligentsia (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1994, 35; He 1996, 139). The protest in Beijing concentrated around Tiananmen Square and the Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters.10 The reaction of the Chinese leadership to the protesters darkened by degrees. On 26 April a front-page editorial in the People’s Daily, taking its tone from Deng Xiaoping, used pejorative language to describe the protest, accusing a small group of rabble-rousers of seeking to undermine the regime. At 10 a.m. on 30 May—the very morning that the Goddess of Democracy statue was erected—martial law was declared, and a week later three protesters, who had traveled by train from Hunan, hurled red and black inkfilled eggs at Mao’s giant portrait (Wong 1996, 243; Wu 2005, 43).

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Demonstrations were banned (Suettinger 2003, 50). The press, including the foreign media, was proscribed and prevented from using satellite uplinks in China. A very short window of time, just before the declaration of martial law, was the only moment that Chinese journalists working for the national media overtly supported the protest movement (He 1996). On 2 June troops descended on Greater Beijing where the People’s Liberation Army troop strength reached more than 180,000 (Suettinger 2003, 51). After the massacre to the west of the Tiananmen Square, 10,000 troops surrounded about three thousand demonstrators who had not yet left the square (Richelson and Evans 1999). In the final assault the PLA established control over the square more by intimidation than mass slaughter, although there were many casualties during advances in the early hours of 4 June (Gittings 2005, 243). Most of the killing had already taken place in other parts of Beijing by 4 a.m., the time the lights in the square were switched off, and the protestors, who had gathered around the Monument to the People’s Heroes, took a “confused voice vote,” interpreted as a decision to leave the square (ibid.). Before the massacre the mood during the occupation of Tiananmen Square ranged from heady optimism to desperation. Political street theater, in situationist style, led the approach to challenging the state (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1994, 43). This took several forms, including a solemn presentation of a petition on the steps of the Great Hall of the People, to a partially observed hunger strike (Pomfret 2006; Wong 1996). The placement of the Goddess of Democracy statue in Tiananmen Square—“directly between two sacred symbols of the Communist regime, a giant portrait of Mao and the Monument to the People’s Heroes was another powerful piece of theatre” (Esherick and Wasserstrom 1994, 38). Concerned that scholars have ignored the stage while focusing solely on the “theatre,” Linda Hershkovitz, drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s writing on the production of space (Lefebvre 1974), emphasizes that [i]n China there is one universally recognized monument which overshadows all others in signifying both the hegemonic power of the state and the history of struggle against it, and that is Tiananmen Square, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Tiananmen Square is the product of over 500 years of social practice. Official functions changed after the revolutions in 1911 and 1949 [and] the orthodoxy inscribed in its monuments remain to influence its contemporary meaning. (Hershkovitz 1993, 399)

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The importance of Tiananmen Square, as a site of nationalist ritual and the reinforcement of state power, cannot be overlooked. “Tiananmen [Square] is a gargantuan, the biggest square in the world. A hundred sprawling acres in all. If you put a mountain in the middle you could hold a Winter Olympics there” (Wong 1996, 226). The very size of the place is designed to inspire awe. Add to that a soundscape of terse announcements from loudspeakers affixed to lamp posts, and overlay a national pageant, such as occurs each year on National Day, 1 October, and it becomes clear how significant this unshaded concrete expanse has become as the epicenter of Chinese state nationalism.

Goddess of Democracy In the courtyard below the dormitories of China’s leading art school, where peasants once learned to copy approved portraits of Chairman Mao, a noisy new venture kept any light sleepers awake: the roundthe-clock building of the Goddess of Democracy. Construction began on 27 May. The design was based on a renowned Soviet sculpture by Vera Mukhina: A Worker and Collective Farm Woman.11 The “goddess” brandishes a torch in lieu of a sickle. Fifteen students built the ten-meterhigh Styrofoam statue in just three days (Tsing-yuan 1992).12 Unveiled to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, the “Internationale” and cries of “Long Live Democracy,” a graduate student at the art school, Tsao Tsing-yuan, was asked to read this address over loud speakers: We need a powerful cementing force to strengthen our resolve: that is the Goddess of Democracy.… You are the hope for which we thirst, we Chinese who have suffered decades of repression under the feudal autocracy!… You are the soul of the 1989 democracy Movement! You are the Chinese nation’s hope for salvation! (Tsing-yuan 1992, 145)

As dawn broke on the clear morning of 30 May the Goddess of Democracy, reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty, became “a direct challenge to the state’s monopoly over the iconography of the Square” (Hershkovitz 1993, 395). Facing the 6 × 4.6 meter portrait of Mao hanging on Tiananmen Gate, the “goddess” became both “an explicit challenge to the state’s power to define and control political space” (ibid., 410) and a challenge to the inherent sacredness of China’s national emblem13 adding a sixth monument to the Square.14

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The statue galvanized support for the protest movement at a time when it was flagging. To no one’s surprise, “[T]he official media exploded in an orgy of condemnation” (Suettinger 2003, 57), especially when the student leadership decided to set up a Democracy University at its base (Lu 1990, 181). “Tragically”, wrote Robert Suettinger, a seasoned analyst, “the symbol of students’ hopes was probably the last straw for the government. Any chance of averting a violent showdown was now gone” (ibid.). A Newsweek correspondent concurred: “But we journalists loved the Goddess. She was the perfect symbol for China’s pro-democracy protestors. She was also the movement’s angel of death” (Liu 1999). Four days later the Goddess of Democracy was gone, demolished by an armored personnel carrier (APC) or a tank (accounts vary), just after dawn on 4 June (Lim 2014; Wong 1996), its life a little shorter than that of the average butterfly, its impact as devastating as a plague. Democracy was neither a new nor an entirely Western-imposed idea in China.15 Support, in the form of faxes and funding from Hong Kong, was of significant value throughout the protest.16 As the grand idea of the 1989 uprising, democracy had little traction—certainly at the outset17—yet with the aid of countless Voice of America broadcasts,18 media reporting, and backstage “advisers” handling the student leadership, the idea caught on. As Melinda Liu confessed, “The Goddess [of democracy] was a much more dramatic, media-friendly reminder that America inspired many of the exuberant street demonstrations that paralyzed Beijing in 1989” (Liu 1999). In a later survey of US media coverage conducted by Harvard University, it is quite clear how the student protest quickly became a labeled “pro-democracy” uprising, as exemplified in the following two extracts: A number of journalists, sinologists, and American government officials we interviewed criticized United States media for giving viewers and readers the false impression that protesters in Beijing desired an Americanstyle democratic system. “I believe we tried to put a ‘made in the U.S.A.’ democracy stamp on it,” said Jackie Judd of ABC…. Despite the wide-ranging changes that students and others demanded, all eight media organizations in our sample tended to define the entire movement by just one of its goals—generally as a “democracy” or “pro-democracy” movement. All three dailies extensively used terms like “pro-democracy,” “demonstrations for democracy,” “democracy campaign” and “demands for democracy.” Evening news lead-ins (the spoken introductions that precede a taped segment from a correspondent) on

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both CBS and ABC also identified the movement, its participants and its demands with such terms. [On ABC, the term “democracy” appeared on approximately 66 percent of all evening news broadcasts featuring China between April 18 and June 4. On CBS, it appeared on 41 percent of broadcasts that included stories on China. CNN Prime News tapes from April 17 until May 17 reveal that 68 percent of all broadcasts on China used the word “democracy,” though it should be noted that corresponding percentages for ABC and CBS were also higher for those four weeks— 72 percent and 65 percent respectively.] The same was true of all but one of the news organizations in the study. The partial exception was Time magazine, which used this shorthand label sparingly. (Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press 1992)

The emphasis on “pro-democracy” was criticized (in hindsight) in Britain (Kynge 2009), by pro-Chinese analysts (Chua 2014), and (at the time) by the People’s Daily who reported that the main objective of the “small group of plotters” was to “negate the socialist system.”19 In fact, reviewing recent experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine,20 the term “democracy,” in political rhetoric used by the West, is concerned less with describing specific political systems it might support, and more with criticizing ones it vehemently opposes: those that are opposed to the West, and those that erect barriers to free trade and the pursuit of laissez-faire market practices, as I shall discuss later. In a rare glimpse backstage into the wings of political intrigue, New York Times reporting duo Nicholas Kristof and Shirley WuDunn, both of whom had written enthusiastically on the “pro-democracy” movement from their first report on the uprising on 18 April 1989 to the last (Kristof 1989), allowed the curtain to lift briefly in their 1994 book China Wakes: Deng Xiaoping later charged that the democracy movement was a conspiracy by a small number of counter-revolutionaries who used the students for their own purposes. In a sense, he was right. From the beginning, students like Wang Dan were advised, guided—and, yes, used—by various graduate students, professors, businessmen, and officials.… In addition these “advisers” gave tens of thousands of dollars to the students, as well as access to printing presses, cars, and meeting rooms. (Kristof and WuDunn 1994, 78)

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The democracy idea, attractive as it might have been to outside supporters, failed to describe the issues that were central to the unrest: bribery, corruption (especially involving senior Party figures), guandao (“official profiteering”), poor student living conditions, and a lack of free speech or a voice for the student elite after Hu Yaobang’s death (Suettinger 2003, 16; He 1996, 139). The Goddess of Democracy, shortlived as it was, became a playful but ultimately dangerous intervention on the sacred playing field of China. Following the massacre, Tiananmen Square was rapidly restored to order, and the recriminations began. Eleven days on, those accused of hurling ink-filled eggs at Mao’s portrait were given jail terms from sixteen years to life (Lim 2014). The word for “egg” sounds like “bomb” in Chinese, but this fails to account for the harshness of the sentences. In addition, a more severe militaristic form of nationalism went on display in the square: During the 1980s just three soldiers hoisted the Chinese flag at dawn on Tiananmen Square. Since 1991, two hundred million people have witnessed the revamped ceremony involving thirty-six goose-stepping flag guards (Lim 2014, 5). Yet the Goddess of Democracy as an iconic image persists. Photographs are reproduced worldwide to coincide with each anniversary, and replica statues have been erected from Hong Kong to Vancouver. In Washington, D.C., one such statue, in pink granite, is branded the “Victims of Communism Memorial.” In the same city miniature Goddess of Democracy replicas are gifted by the well-funded National Endowment for Democracy for its award recipients: those who have fought against various forms of repression, socialism, or barriers to free trade in Nicaragua, Russia, China, Burma, Cuba, and Mexico.

Tank Man Following the downfall of the Goddess of Democracy early on 4 June 1989, Tiananmen Square was cleared of civilians and debris by the PLA. However, a group of civilians, some relatives of the students, lined up to face a double row of soldiers who stood or knelt in firing positions with a column of tanks and the debris of Tiananmen Square behind them. According to a wide range of accounts, including this author’s, these civilians were shot at repeatedly, leaving at least twenty casualties.21

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A BBC sound recordist at the time recalls, “From the balcony [in the Beijing Hotel] it was clear that many of the shots were aimed well over the heads of the crowd as the bullets whistled past us at our elevation, but others were intended to kill.”22 As the bodies were carried away on trishaws, the standoff died down and a column of tanks broke through, moving slowly east along Chang’an Avenue (see Fig. 14.3). Waiting for them, a few hundred meters down the road, and directly opposite the Beijing Hotel, stood a man in a white shirt and dark trousers, holding two shopping bags. Alone he blocked the path of the tanks, watched by groups of nervous bystanders, and perhaps fifty journalists, camera crews, and photographers occupying balconies on almost every floor of the Beijing Hotel. The press members were prevented from leaving the premises by the PSB (Public Security Bureau). I was lying prone on a balcony on the sixth floor with Newsweek photographer Charlie Cole photographing the event around noon on that day, which I remember was 4 June (a date whose importance will

Fig. 14.3  4 June 1989. Tanks push through the standoff between the PLA and civilians on the morning after the massacre. Several civilians were shot and killed. Photograph © Stuart Franklin

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become clear shortly).23 On the balcony after the event, which lasted less than three minutes, a conversation ensued with a writer for Vanity Fair, T. D. Allman. Allman insisted (correctly as it turned out) on the significance of the spectacle. I recalled images from 1968 in Prague and Bratislava where protesters stood up bare-chested against Russian tanks. Tank Man felt very distant by comparison. The photographs I had taken, as seen through the lens, appeared to lack the impact of, for example, Josef Koudelka’s images from Prague. My photographs were smuggled out of China the following day,24 and the transparencies were later processed, duplicated, and distributed from Magnum’s offices in Paris.25 Images and reporting of the tank man incident emerged slowly. Although pictures from the earlier standoff were published on 5 June,26 I traced only one reference to a man confronting a tank that was published on that day (and therefore referring to an event on 4 June). This was in the British Daily Mail, attributed to their Beijing correspondent: Standing with my husband at our apartment window high over Changan Avenue early yesterday I watched a tank speeding towards the heart of Peking. As it rumbled on, surrounded by a tangled mass of bicycles, that brave man moved out to bar its progress, a lone symbol of the people power that had gripped China. The war machine never slowed, even for a moment. Its tracks enveloped the man as it rushed onwards to complete its mission. That tank was the first of many that came rumbling down the Avenue of Eternal Tranquility and into Tiananmen Square to slaughter unarmed teenagers, that one death the beginning of an orgy of violence. (Roberts 1989)

In the report “that brave man” was either another less fortunate person defying a tank or, more likely, the same person misdescribed.27 Apart from this lone report, the first the world saw of tank man was on television on 5 June. Television coverage spurred interest in the incident. George Bush referenced it after watching CNN.28 “I was very moved today,” Bush intoned at a news conference on the morning of 5 June, “by the bravery of that one young individual that stood alone in front of the tanks, rolling down, rolling down the avenue there” (Permutter 1998). The television images were shot by, among others, Jonathan Shaer (CNN) and a cameraman for French Antenne 2 (now TV2), whose film was reportedly later seized.29

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The CNN footage, smuggled out of China on 4 June, was first downlinked from Hong Kong’s Media Centre late on 4 June or early 5 June local time.30 Reportedly, other US and European networks recorded and broadcast the CNN satellite feed.31 CNN’s Tom Mintier narrated the story of the tank man’s ballade from a landline in Beijing: “[T]he world witnessed a daring act by one man against insurmountable odds. Armed with only courage, standing in the middle of the street facing more than a dozen tanks bearing down on him, he refused to move. He demonstrated the will to resist beyond any words that could ever be spoken” (Permutter 1998). NBC began its report with George Bush’s statement. Suddenly, a photograph that had held virtually no interest the previous day, became iconic—yet only where television had broadcast the incident.32 Tank Man became a symbol of courage and also a symbol of freedom in the face of a totalitarian state, and ultimately an icon reinforcing its neoliberal connotations, as will be discussed later. Given the impact of the television footage, it was no accident, then, that the only newspapers that featured the Tank Man photograph prominently on the front page on 6 June were those published in countries with widespread television coverage of the event featuring their national on-thespot reporters: for example, in France (Figaro and Libération), Italy (Corriere della Sera), the United States (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, St Louis Post-Dispatch), and Britain (Daily Mirror, Daily Express, The Times, and Daily Telegraph).33 It should also be noted that in those countries as many newspapers chose not to publish the Tank Man at all, but instead used images of the earlier standoff, described above, for the front page.34 As Andrew Higgins, a reporter for the British newspaper The Independent based at the Beijing Hotel, commented, “I did not see tank man so did not report his effort to stop the tanks. [I] heard about him later—and he seemed far less significant than all the people getting shot.”35 Outside the United States, France, Italy, and Britain the Tank Man image barely featured on the world’s front pages during 1989. Leading national newspapers in Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Spain, and South Africa ignored it. The photographs that appeared initially were by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press and Arthur Tsang of Reuters, linked to subscription arrangements.36 Internationally, two entirely different photographs featured more prominently. On 5 June a photograph by an anonymous Chinese photographer came to light. It depicted a scene where eleven people were

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crushed to death by a single army APC in the Liubukou district (Gittings 2005, 247). On 6 June, pictures appeared globally of the 4 June standoff between the PLA and civilians on Chang’an Avenue (based on a survey of twenty-five international newspapers). Both these photographs described and expressed the massacre of Chinese civilians. In China the news focused on the slaughter of soldiers, and especially Liu Guogeng, the soldier who shot four protesters and was later beaten to death and set on fire.37 During 1989 the Tank Man photograph became more iconic in the West, but almost unrecognizable in China. The Franklin photograph was printed double-page in Time magazine on 19 June. Cole’s image was published in Newsweek at the same time (Permutter 1998, 70). Both images featured prominently in the year-end editions.38 Here was a modern-day version of David and Goliath, or of Horatius saving Rome, a symbol of courage—a super-icon, or “the icon of the revolution” as The Guardian described it on 4 June 1992. Time magazine named the “unknown rebel” Man of the Year (Iyer 1998): a man, and an image, “like a monument in a vast public square created by television” (Gordon 1999, 82). In one study of the Franklin image the authors considered that the Tank Man photograph diverted the rhetoric on Tiananmen: “As the image of the man and the tank achieved iconic status it has acquired the ability to structure collective memory, advance an ideology, and organize or direct resources for political action” (Hariman and Lucaites 2007, 214). The photograph has gradually become metonymic for Tiananmen, overwriting the images that were so compelling at the time and that spoke to the massacre that had occurred. Why would this be so? Or, as one commentator has asked, “Why are Westerners so fascinated by this image? Is it because it fits so nicely with the story we expect to see—good against evil, young against old, freedom against totalitarianism?” (Gordon 1999). Great news images emerge immediately, without delay, it has been suggested (Permutter 1998, 63). The peculiar aspect of the Tank Man photograph is that it didn’t surface very quickly at all, at least not until the sequence was seen on television. In 1972, despite arguments over showing nudity on the front page, Nick Ut’s photograph of the children running from a napalm attack made the next day’s papers. Tank Man didn’t. One answer as to why this might be so is that while the Beijing crackdown held the front pages between 4 and 6 June, the Tank Man photograph might have seemed less urgent than the very real and murderous behavior of soldiers shooting to kill unarmed civilians.

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Another explanation is that the news agenda had moved on. In Poland, Solidarity had just won a landslide victory. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini passed away on 4 June, the same day that tank man appeared (Wakeman 1999). By 6 June the world had turned its attention, briefly, to the capsizing of the Ayatollah’s shroud-wrapped body during raucous scenes at the funeral, with The Sun announcing remorselessly, the previous day, “I’m Glad He’s Dead.”39 That might explain a moment of distraction, slowing tank man’s rise to celebrity status, but not the reason why the image itself remained iconic once the television footage faded from memory. Amnesia and memory have constantly resurfaced in accounts told and retold over the twenty-five years since 4 June 1989 (e.g., Lim 2014). First, there is China’s own amnesia over the massacre itself, the failure to name the dead, the failure to apologize to its own people (ibid.; Béja 2010). Second, there is amnesia in the West over the sequence of events in the Square, as writer Elizabeth Pisani (2009) noted. Third, there is disagreement over the timing of the tank man incident. The art of memory, as the story of Simonides instructs us,40 begins with an understanding of place—the place where something happened, followed by image—an image of what happened in a particular place. Despite both being fixed in this way to memory: the shooting at the corner of Tiananmen Square, then the tanks rumbling through on the morning of the 4 June, there remains confusion over the date, as I have suggested, and this has served to separate, both temporally and spatially, the tank man incident from the Beijing massacre, particularly the massacre on Chang’an Avenue. It also disconnects us from a possible rationale—outrage—behind tank man’s actions after the killing of innocent civilians, a few minutes earlier, up the street.41 Perhaps a friend or relative had just died, or been injured. These are unvoiced views of a possible motive. We now have an image of everyman—an anonymous, ethnically unidentifiable man, unremarkably dressed, in a space that bears no place identity, defying a row of tanks that appear ready to envelop him, but in fact (as both George Bush and the Chinese government were quick to point out) showed restraint. Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites suggest that such iconic images serve the political agenda of liberal democracy, arguing that “[a]s the image of the man and the tank achieved iconic status it has acquired the ability to structure collective memory, advance an ideology, and organize or direct resources for political action” (2007, 214).

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The authors consider that the photograph connects with “the first principle of modern liberalism,” whereby “individual autonomy is the supreme good” (ibid., 15). However, I argue that there is nothing inherently democratic about the message the image conveys, apart from the act of intervention itself. The people, other actors, are obscured from view, and the state—in the form of the army—is presented as an enemy of the people. The Tank Man image developed as an icon of the Tiananmen Square uprising because of the complex messages of courage and freedom it conveyed. But what species of freedom is imagined here in this depiction of the individual against the state? The freedom of expression, or the freedom, unfettered by regulation, to exploit one’s fellow citizens: both roll into an unexamined and unified pursuit of freedom as ideology (Harvey 2005, 36). Karl Polyani examined precisely this problem, the imbalance of freedoms, when writing on societal transformation on the road to neoliberalism. He wrote of a freedom “not only for the few”: Freedom not as an appurtenance of privilege, tainted at the source, but as a prescriptive right extending far beyond the narrow confines of the political sphere into the intimate organization of society itself. Thus will old freedoms and civic rights be added to the fund of new freedom generated by the leisure and security that industrial society offers to all. Such a society can afford to be both just and free. (Polyani 1957, 265)

Wendy Brown (2005, 44) explores this issue further within her deliberations on democracy: “Neoliberalism shifts ‘the regulatory competence of the state onto “responsible,” “rational” individuals [with the aim of] encourag[ing] individuals to give their lives a specific entrepreneurial form.’”42 It is not strange, then, to see the same Tank Man image, this time drawn by the cartoonist Inge Grødum, in the leading Norwegian daily, Aftenposten (Fig. 14.4), used to signify the struggles of students in Hong Kong against Chinese rule. Hong Kong is where the issue of freedom “not for the few” is being widely debated, as Martin Jaques (2014) recently set out:

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Fig. 14.4  Tank Man as cartoon. © Inge Grødum 2014. Reproduced with kind permission of the artist Herein lies a fundamental reason for the present unrest: the growing sense of dislocation among a section of Hong Kong’s population. During the 20 years or so prior to the handover, the territory enjoyed its golden era—not because of the British but because of the Chinese. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping embarked on his reform programme, and China began to grow rapidly. It was still, however, a relatively closed society. Hong Kong was the beneficiary—it became the entry point to China, and as a result attracted scores of multinational companies and banks that wanted to gain access to the Chinese market. Hong Kong got rich because of China. It also fed an attitude of hubris and arrogance. The Hong Kong Chinese came to enjoy a much higher standard of living than the mainlanders. They looked down on the latter as poor, ignorant and uncouth peasants, as greatly their inferior. They preferred—up to a point—to identify with westerners rather than mainlanders, not because of democracy (the British had never allowed them any) but primarily because of money and the status that went with it.

In Hong Kong today, as in Beijing 1989, concerns over the meaning of “democracy” and “freedom” are unraveling, issues that have more to do with creating a balance of freedoms within society, as Polyani suggested, rather than replacing one impure political system with another.

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Discussion In this essay, I have drawn attention to four concerns relating to the two iconic photographs that emerged from Tiananmen Square in 1989: the Goddess of Democracy and Tank Man. First, unlike all pre-1989 images described as iconic, neither image is unique nor singular. I argue that, in practice, there is no distinction made between the various photographs taken of the Goddess of Democracy or the tank man regarding their relative iconicity. Some versions have been published more frequently, some have attracted more accolades, yet each is regarded, in commentary, as iconic. I conducted a thought experiment. I imagined that photography had been invented 2500 years ago. I imagined the scene of the Crucifixion, and a viewing platform that the Romans might have erected allowing for filming and photography. If we could look at those pictures today (imagining the account of the Crucifixion to be true), would one or all of them be iconic? Perhaps one or two might have captured a particular moment of agony, but in essence it would have been the subject (the Crucifixion itself) that would have been iconic (as it is today in countless two- and three-dimensional representations), rather than the photograph per se. I sense that the same applies to the Tiananmen Square photographs: the subject is supreme, the various photographs act both as testimony and symbolic reminders of the struggles that were waged for the unexamined pursuit of “democracy” and/or “freedom.” “OUR FREEDOM CANNOT DIE” screamed the front page of the British Daily Mirror on 6 June 1989, the words embracing a full-page image of Tank Man by Jeff Widener. “Photographs in the press,” argued John Taylor (echoing John Tagg), “rarely stand alone” (Tagg 1988; Taylor 1998, 19). They are always modified by text, headlines, captions, and context. Indeed, the use of banner headlines around the Tiananmen Square images served, mostly, to embed meaning, further serving to stamp rhetorical force upon the iconic status of the subject rather than on any individual photograph. Second, there is the issue of television. The conceit that “the whole world is watching” was at first the chant of antiwar demonstrators outside the Chicago Hilton Hotel during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The presence of journalists appeared to offer both protection and opportunity. Tiananmen Square was, as one journalist put it, “a television producer’s dream” (Wong 1996, 236) and television certainly proved a valuable ally to the demonstrators (Allemang 1989, A14).

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In late May, until martial law was declared, CNN was able to broadcast live from Tiananmen Square using a microwave transmitter.43 Both the images of the Goddess of Democracy and Tank Man were inherently telegenic, especially the Tank Man, whose rise to notoriety came only as a result of television coverage. As I have argued throughout this paper, the Tank Man photographs, before they were seen on television, were uninteresting and difficult to understand. Television made the image, but probably more the subject, iconic. Third, there exists with photographs, and especially iconic photographs, the concern over memory and amnesia. As Roland Barthes (1993, 91) argues, “[N]ot only is the Photograph never, in essence, a memory… but it actually blocks memory.” Certain images, such as Joe Rosenthal’s (1945) photograph of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, Old Glory Goes Up on Mt. Suribachi, supplant memories of the battle, such as the deaths of one-tenth of the seventy thousand US fighting force (quite apart from the eighteen thousand-plus Japanese who died there), reducing the month-long campaign into a simplified iconic image of victory—an orchestrated “regime of truth.” Nick Ut’s photograph Children Fleeing a Napalm Strike, June 8, 1972 has become one of the defining iconic images of the Vietnam War. Because the napalm strike was labeled as “accidental,”44 its shocking presence on the stage of the image-world is less threatening to US self-esteem than the more gruesome and damaging picture-story of the 1968 My Lai massacre,45 which, over time, the napalm photograph has almost buried. Continued reference to the Tank Man photograph has had the effect of obscuring the harsher realities of the Beijing massacre that the Chinese government would want us to forget: the crushing of students and bicycles, the morgues piled high with bodies, the victims of various moments of cold-blooded killing, and so forth. Isn’t the whole idea of the iconic photograph rather a redundant modernist conceit in a postmodern age? Every culture clings onto its collective history, but any attempt at generalization seems elusive. Perhaps why so few Chinese students recalled the tank man is because their minds were filled with harsher stuff: or perhaps people learn to forget: “Memory is a dangerous thing,” Louisa Lim (2014, 105) remarked, “in a country that was built to function on national amnesia”. Memories of atrocities are also cultivated and selected by different interest groups and state actors. Few recall the South Korean Kwangju massacre in 1980 where several hundred student “pro-democracy”

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protesters died after soldiers fired repeatedly into the crowd.46 South Korea wasn’t a political target for the West, where the massacre was given relatively little airtime: South Korea’s trade barriers had already fallen. Fourth, and finally, we have seen that iconic images are powerful and effective rhetorical devices. Barthes, in writing on the rhetoric of the image (1980, 275), considered language to be “a kind of vice which holds the connoted meanings from proliferating and limits the projective power of the image.” By connecting the Tiananmen Square images discussed in the essay to linguistic formulae, meaning is kept in its vice. The messages told through the accompanying text become subservient to the images themselves. Yet the terms “democracy” and “freedom” remain largely unexamined. In the eighteenth century, democracy was thought to be inapplicable to the large-scale nation-state. “It was appropriate for city-states and small republics” (Fishkin 1991, 14).47 Subsequently, representative democracy has struggled to keep itself from becoming an oxymoron. At the same time globalization has undermined democracy’s ability to enfranchize, in any meaningful way, a given society.48 Materially, democracy can be viewed as a form of intervention, curbing the free rein of oligarchic states, where democracy’s critical function is as “the wrench of equality jammed (objectively and subjectively) into the gears of domination, it’s what keeps politics from simply turning into law enforcement” (Rancière 2012, 2014, 79). And it is probably in this mode of operation that China’s protesting students found themselves engaged when setting out to build the Goddess of Democracy. Yet it is a very different kind of democracy message, or species of freedom, that the two iconic Tiananmen Square images seem to convey: both appear to be rooting to undermine, radically, the political autonomy of the Chinese state. All of which might explain China’s despair and official amnesia on the matter. Acknowledgements   The author would like to thank the many eyewitnesses and fellow travelers who have come forward with their views and memories of the tragic events of June 1989. Special thanks go to Charlie Cole and John Gittings for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Any errors remain my own.

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Notes









1.  An exception being the iconic images linked to the personality cults of Chairman Mao and Che Guevara discussed by Vicki Goldberg as locally specific in Chapter 6, “Icons,” of her 1991 book The Power of Photography. 2. Four students died at Kent State University while protesting against the Vietnam War in 1968. 3. Before 1989 it may have been the most widely reproduced photograph in history (Goldberg 1991). As Joe Rosenthal said in 1955, “It has been done in oils, watercolours, pastels, chalk and matchsticks.… It has been sculpted in ice and in a hamburger.” Cited in Goldberg (1991, 143). In 1990 it was re-created as an advertisement for h.i.s. jeans (ibid.). 4. The journalist Louisa Lim recently showed the Tank Man photograph to 100 Beijing university students. Only fifteen recognized the picture (Lim 2014, 86). In China the image has been wilfully airbrushed from history. 5. For a detailed commentary on both of these photographs as icons, I suggest seeing Chapter 9 about the television era in Goldberg (1991), or see Hariman and Lucaites (2007). 6. As has been widely reported, the bulk of the killing occurred in other parts of Beijing. Muxidi, an area about three miles west of Tiananmen Square is “where most of the deaths occurred” (Nathan et al. 2002). 7. Based on estimates by Brook (1992) and qualified by Chang (2005) and a survey by a group of Western military attachés (Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press 1992). 8. There is evidence that the 27th Group Army (led by Yang Shangkun, the son-in-law of the Chinese president) in a rush to reach the square, inflicted casualties on members of the 38th Group Army (He 1996, 139; Brook 1992, 187). Such reports remain unconfirmed. Further evidence suggests that it was the 38th Group Army who were reticent about their role in quelling the uprising; see http://www.nytimes. com/2014/06/03/world/asia/tiananmen-square-25-years-later-detailsemerge-of-armys-chaos.html?_r=0. 9. The term détournement derives in substance from the situationist political happenings led by Guy Debord during the student uprising in Paris in 1968 (see Debord 1983). It should also be noted that the protest movement began before Hu Yaobang’s death (Scobell and Wortzel 2005, 70). 10. It should be noted that protests and reprisals occurred all over China at this time, from Shanghai across to Chengdu. The Beijing massacre was probably the most ferocious. 11. Photographs of the sculpture appeared on Soviet postage stamps and were included in the Soviet Calendar 1917–1947, a compilation of Soviet

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propaganda published to mark the revolution’s fortieth anniversary. The sculpture was originally placed atop the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair. The head of the farm worker was the principal inspiration for the face and head of the Goddess (Han Minzhu 1990). 12. Wu Hung and the journalist John Gittings reported that the Goddess of Democracy was seven meters high (Wu 1991; Gittings 1989). 13.  Tiananmen Square appears on all government seals and other official materials: “The gate became an emblem, its image replicated in isolation on banknotes and coins, on the front page of all government documents, and in the nation’s insignia” (Hung 1991, 88). 14. “The war of monuments in the square began in 1949 when Mao ascended Tiananmen [the gate] and declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China” (Wu 2005, 18). The date 18 August 1966 marked the moment the new enlarged portrait of Mao first hung on the fifteenth-century Gate of Heavenly Peace, signaling the full force of the Cultural Revolution (Goldberg 1991, 153). 15.  For example in 1978/1979 a “Democracy Wall” protest movement evolved where news and ideas, often in the form of big-character posters (dazibao), were posted in Xicheng District, Beijing. 16. John Gittings, personal communication, 2014. 17. Bai Meng, a member of the student core leadership recalled that “few of us thought about democracy when we first started… I didn’t see any collective awareness at that time” (He 1996). 18. Bai Meng: “from April 15–27th the VOA [Voice of America] was our primary source of information. The term ‘pro-democracy’ obviously gave many of us a clue as to what this movement would be. My own idea of a democracy movement was made clearer and reinforced by the VOAs coverage” (He 1996, 140). “VOA began to broadcast in China in 1944. The mission was to counteract communism” (ibid., 77). 19. See South China Morning Post, 4 June 1989, 25. 20. For more on the promotion and funding of pro-democracy movements in Ukraine to gain political leverage, see Mearsheimer (2014). 21. See, for example, Andrew Higgins (1989), Catherine Sampson (1989), Jan Wong (1996), and South China Morning Post (5 June 1989, 1 and 3). In this unattributed account thirty people were reported to have died. Confirmed in Document 32 declassified SITREP from the US Embassy’s chronology: “4th June 10.25-12.10 -four separate incidents of indiscriminate fire on crowds in front of Beijing Hotel. At least 56 civilian casualties” (NSA Archive, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB16/docs/doc32.pdf). 22. Fred Scott, email to author, 25 October 2014.

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23. There is still controversy over the date of this event. I made my position on the date clear in Kristen Lubben’s (2011) Magnum Contacts Sheets while writing on Tiananmen Square. Of about eleven eyewitnesses and fellow travelers who were in Beijing on that day, nine agree that the image was taken on 4 June (listed here with their affiliations in June 1989): Andrew Higgins, The Independent; Guy Dinmore, Reuters Beijing Bureau Chief; Arthur Tsang, Reuters; Catherine Sampson, Times (London); Brian Robbins, CNN; Jonathan Shaer, CNN; Fred Scott, BBC; Eric Thirer, BBC; and Charlie Cole, Newsweek. Chinese academic Wu Hung also confirms the date of 4 June (2005, 14), as does Mike Chinoy’s 2014 film On Assignment: China. 24. The rolls of film were packed into a small box of tea and taken to Paris by a French student. 25. Magnum Photos was founded in 1947 and today has offices in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo. 26. For example, see New Straits Times (Singapore) 5 June 1989, 3. The same paper reported on page 1 that ten tanks and sixteen APCs left Tiananmen Square to travel east along Chang’an Avenue, 3 km toward the embassy district and then returned. 27. At a press conference on 4 June 1990 student leader Chai Ling claimed she knew of a young woman who, on the evening of 3 June, stood in front of a tank and was crushed to death (Permutter 1998, 62). 28.  http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/mediaplay.php?id=17103&admin=41. Presidential News Conference on 5 June 1989. The word “democracy” in relation to China is mentioned countless times, for example, “People are heroic when it comes to their commitment to democratic change.” 29. Charles Cole, email to author, 18 October 2014. 30. Jonathan Shaer, email to author, October 2014. 31. Jonathan Shaer, the CNN cameraman who filmed the tank man sequence, claims to be alone in recording with a video camera on a tripod, and therefore to have footage of high quality. Shaer claims that the other US networks were monitoring the satellite feeds, dialed in the correct frequency, and recorded the sequence. There is no encryption. Generally ownership is respected (Shaer, personal communication to author, 2014). 32. Reuters photographer Arthur Tsang filed an image of tank man climbing onto the tank on 4 June, but it garnered little interest from his superiors (Tsang, personal communication via Charlie Cole, 2014). At the same time CNN transmitted two still images from the video footage from Beijing, but they were not broadcast (ibid.). 33. It should also be noted that in at least four British national newspapers the Tank Man photograph did not run at all during June 1989: The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, and the Evening Standard.

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34. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Sydney Morning Herald, Süddeutche Zeitung, El Pais, and The Independent were some of the national newspapers who chose to run the stand-off between the PLA and civilians rather than the tank man on their front pages on 6 June 1989. 35. Andrew Higgins, email to the author, 15 October 2014. 36. Wire services uniquely at that time had subscription arrangements with newspapers that allowed them to use any image that was transmitted without additional cost. Images from photo agencies carry a licensing fee that few newspapers are willing to pay. 37. See South China Morning Post, 4 June 1989, 23: CCTV reported on soldiers being attacked. See also Wong (1996, 246). 38. Franklin’s picture appeared as the first image in Time magazine’s “Year in Pictures.” “Though distant and grainy, this photograph of a Chinese man standing down a tyrannical regime is the most extraordinary image of the year. It is flesh against steel, mortality against the onrush of terror, the very real stuff of courage” (Strobe Talbott of Time magazine, quoted in Permutter [1998, 71]). 39.  The Sun, 5 June 1989, 7. 40. Simonides was a poet and guest speaker at a banquet held by a nobleman of Thessaly. The poet left the hall briefly. Returning, he found the ceiling collapsed; all the guests had perished. Reportedly, Simonides helped identify the bodies by remembering where the guests were seated. For a fuller explanation, see Yates (1966, 17). 41. I am grateful to Charlie Cole for raising this point. 42.  Brown references Thomas Lemke’s transcription of Michel Foucault: see Lemke, “‘The Birth of Bio-Politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality,” Economy and Society 30, no. 2 (May 2001): 190–207. Quotation found on page 202. 43. You can view Mike Chinoy’s “Assignment China” (2014) at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho8vAFlCeFQ. 44. See New York Times, 8 June 1972, and Hariman and Lucaites (2007). 45. The massacre at My Lai occurred on 16 March 1968 and involved the cold-blooded killing of between 347 and 504 elderly men, women, and children in South Vietnam. It has been referred to as the “most shocking incident of the Vietnam War.” Cited in Greiner (2009). 46. The official figure is that two hundred died, but the calculation is that the figure is much higher. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/752055.stm. 47. Rousseau thought conditions favorable in Geneva, which had a population of twenty-two thousand; a similar view is shared by Montesquieu (Fishkin 1991, 14). 48. See Held (1999).

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Index

A ABM Treaty (1972), 26 Abrahamson, James A., 33–36 Adameck, Heinz, 93 Adams, Eddie, 130, 133n ADN-Zentralbild, 116–118, 120– 121, 127, 129–130. See also Photojournalism Aftenposten, glasnost and 1987; breakthrough in openness, 247–252; glasnost becomes retrospective, 252–254; recoil, 254–256 Chernobyl disaster; effect on Soviet openness, 240–246; reporting on, 238–239 overview, 235–237 treatment of Soviet Union in reporting, 238 Allende, Salvador, 43 Allman, T. D., 323 Alternative culture Hungary Can Be Yours (Galántai); exhibition and banning,

166–169; reactions and impact, 169–170 American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA), 35–37 Amin, Idi, 53 Andropov, Yuri, 235, 245, 301 Apartheid, 200 Arafat, Yasser, 55 B Baló, György, 169 Bastiansen, Henrik G., ix, 1–12, 198, 235–259 Batista, Fulgencio, 44 Bendetsen, Karl R., 22 Bergemann, Sibylle, 122–123, 125, 128. See also Photojournalism Berlin Wall, xix, 1–2, 9, 11, 57, 80, 116, 127, 190, 255–256, 259, 260n Aftenposten and, 255–256, 259 fall of, xix, 1–2, 9, 11, 57, 80, 190, 260n

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 H. G. Bastiansen et al. (eds.), Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0

339

340  Index photojournalism and, 116, 127 Berlin Wall (Vrubel), 300 Billhardt, Thomas, 121–122, 127, 130. See also Photojournalism Bittenk, Krusia, 56 Bokros, Péter, 171. See also Inconnu group Brandt, Willy, 102 Brezhnev, Leonid, 2, 11, 235, 247–248, 252, 258–259, 266, 284–285, 290, 295–302, 304–305 Brown, Wendy, 327, 335n Bush, George H. W., 38, 303, 323–324, 326 C Carlucci, Frank C., 36 Carter, Jimmy, 43, 46–48 Castro, Fidel, 44–45, 48, 52–53, 64, 102, 292, 295, 297–298 Chapman, James, 65 Chernenko, Konstantin, 52, 235, 252, 301 Chernobyl, 10–11, 238–246, 257 China, 200, 225. See also Tiananmen Square protests Christmas Manifesto, 169 Cicconi, Jim, 23 CNN, 320, 323–324, 330, 334n Colebrook, Claire, 139 Committee for a Strong and Peaceful America, 30–32 Controversial art exhibitions, Hungary appearance through information channels, 176–180 diversity of artistic practices, 161–162 The Fighting City; international announcements, 170–173; reactions to censorship, 173–175

Hungary Can Be Yours; banning of, 166–169; overview, 164–166; reactions and impact, 166–169 Inconnu group, 163, 168–169, 171–175, 177, 179, 181 making art visible through ­information, 161–164 media and, 164 reporting on exhibitions after 1989, 180–181 SZETA and, 173, 175 See also Hungary Cuban Missile Crisis, 44 Cull, Nicholas, 3 D Day After, The (film), 23 Debeusscher, Juliane, ix, 8–9, 161–181 Dittmar, Claudia, 91–93 Dodds, Klaus, ix–x, 7, 63–83 Duarte, Jose Napoleon, 51–52 Dzedzej, Walek, 144 E East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), 2, 8, 92, 94, 297 Eastfoto/Sovfoto, 119, 121, 130 Eco, Umberto, 65 Ehrman, Riccardo, 2 Eisenhower, Dwight, 295–296 Eriksson, Erik, 121, 127 F Fighting City, The international announcements, 170–173 reactions to censorship, 173–175 Filo, John Paul, 315

Index

Fleming, Ian, 64–65. See also James Bond films Franklin, Stuart, x, 11, 311–331 Freedom of expression, 50, 164, 242, 289, 303, 327 Funnell, Lisa, x, 7, 63–83 G Gaddafi, Muammar, 50 Gaddis, John Lewis, 88 Galántai, György, 163–166, 169–171, 176, 180 García Márquez, Gabriel, 48–49 Garwin, Richard L., 26 Glasnost Aftenposten reporting on, 10, 236–237, 243–259 changing views of, 252–256 end of Cold War and, 236–237 foreign policy, 57 Hungary and, 179 international politics and, 3 media and, 10, 12 Orions belte and, 233 Treffpunkt Flughafen and, 101. See also Gorbachev, Mikhail; Norway, foreign-news system Goddess of Democracy, 318–321. See also Tiananmen Square protests Góralski, Maciej, 144 Gorbachev, Mikhail Chernobyl disaster, 240–244 Communist Party, 255–256 comparison to Lenin, 253 disarmament plans, 34, 259 East Germany and, 94, 100 election, 232, 235, 301 images of, 232, 235, 301–304 media and, 11, 240–252 perestroika, 100 Poland and, 255 reforms, 235–236, 245–254

  341

SDI and, 34 Soviet-American relations, 34, 57–58 Glasnost; Perestroika Graham, Daniel, 7, 20–26, 31–33, 36 A Defense that Defends, 22–23 High Frontier, 22 Shall America Be Defended?, 21 We Must Defend America and Put an End to MADness, 21 Greene, Lorne, 23–25 Gregor, Wolfgang, 123 Grigoryev, Yevgeny, 251 Grødum, Inge, 327–328 Gross, Peter, 192 Gwynne, Jessica, 174–175, 184n H Haig, Alexander, 22 Hallin, Daniel, 47 Hariman, Robert, 326 Hauswald, Harald, 122–126, 128, 130, 132n. See also Photojournalism Hefner, Hugh, 43, 58 Heritage Foundation, 22 Hershkovitz, Linda, 317 Hess, Stephen, 192 High Frontier, 6, 20, 22–30, 33, 35–38, 40 History, socialist TV and authenticity and popular appeal, 270–273 form and content, 276–279 narrative structures of serial fiction, 274–276 overview, 263–265 rise of historical television fiction, 268–270 television as history teacher, 265–268 Hochscherf, Tobias, x, 7–8, 87–109

342  Index Höpker, Thomas, 127, 129 Hovden, Jan Fredrik, x, 9, 12, 189–216 Hu Yaobang, 316, 321, 332n, 333n Hufenreiter, Günter, 105 Hungary, 3, 8–10, 131n. See also Controversial art exhibitions, Hungary Hungary Can Be Yours (Galántai), 164–170 Huxtable, Simon, x–xi, 10, 263–279 I Images of Soviet leaders extrapolation of the family model, 293–295 overview, 283–286 sensualization of power, 290–291 Soviet “luster”, 295–297 from stagnation to perestroika, 299–305 summit meetings, 297–299 during the Thaw, 286–290 Inconnu group, 163, 168–169, 171–175, 177, 179, 181. See also Controversial art exhibitions, Hungary Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), 26 Iran-Contra affair, 50–51, 53, 59 J James Bond films atmospheres, bodies, and elements, 66–71 Casino Royale, 64 Cold War geopolitics and, 63–66, 82–83 Connery’s portrayal, 65, 71 Diamonds Are Forever, 63 Dr. No, 63–64, 67–69, 74

Goldeneye, 64 Goldfinger, 63 License to Kill, 76–77, 80–82, 84n The Living Daylights, 76–78, 80–81 The Man with the Golden Gun, 63 Moonraker, 65, 66, 69–70, 73–76 Roger Moore’s portrayal, 71–76 The Spy Who Loved Me, 63, 65–66, 69–77, 79–80 Timothy Dalton’s portrayal, 76–82 A View to a Kill, 73–76 You Only Live Twice, 72 Jaws, 65, 71 Johnson, Lyndon B., 29 Jones, James Earl, 26–28, 31 K Kádár, János, 167, 171, 175, 177–178 Kasparov, Garry, 57–58 Kendall, Henry, 19, 26, 31 Kennedy, John F., 44 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 47–48 Klaniczay, Júlia, 165, 180, 182n, 183n Klimke, Martin, xi, 1–12 Knoblauch, William, xi, 6, 19–38 Konnak, Paweł Koñjo, 143, 150–151 Kopper, Gerd G., 192 Korean Airlines flight 007, 11 Korean War, 3, 64, 199 Koudelka, Josef, 129, 323 Kristof, Nicholas, 320 Kulturbund, 116–118, 123, 128–129. See also Photojournalism Kwangju massacre (South Korea), 330–331 Kyemba, Henry, 53 L Lamberz, Werner, 92 Lange, Dorothea, 314 Lange, Halvard, 204

Index

Laucht, Christoph, 87 Lebanon, 54 Lefebvre, Henri, 317 Lénard, Pál, 179 Limited Test Ban Treaty, 69 Linenthal, Edward, 20, 28, 29, 37 Lippman, Walter, 190 Liu Guogeng, 325 Liu, Melinda, 319 Livingstone, Grace, 46, 47 Lowenthal, David, 314 Lucaites, John Louis, 326 Lucas, George, 3, 65–66, 71 M Mahler, Ute, 122–123, 127– 128, 132n, 133n. See also Photojournalism Mao Zedong, 200, 312, 316–318, 321, 332n, 333n Maoism, 224–226 McCarthy era, 6 McFarlane, Robert, 22 Migrant Mother (Lange), 314–315 Mihelj, Sabina, xi, 10, 263–279 Miller, Russel, 60n Mitterand, François, 48 Molnár, Tamás, 170–171, 175, 179. See also Inconnu group Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), 21, 23. See also Star Wars program N Nakken, Maria, 192 Nicaragua, 46–52, 98, 104–105, 201, 321. See also Sandinistas Nixon, Richard, 26, 80, 296, 298

  343

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 9, 12, 36, 48, 50, 122, 190, 192, 204, 223, 251 Norway, foreign-news system 1945–1995, 197–201 Cold War’s impact, 212–215 data and method of study, 193–195 establishment of, 202–205 major publications, 194 Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK), 192–201, 211, 213–215, 236, 245 overview, 189–191 prosopographies, 193–194 research in the field; correspondent literature, 191; international news flow, 192; lack of information on, 192–193; media coverage as a phenomenon, 192; scholarly content analysis of media coverage, 192; US studies of foreign correspondents, 192 transformation of, 205–212 typology of correspondents; changes to, 197; freelancers, 195; permanent journalists sent abroad, 196; stringer correspondents, 196–197; stringers, 195 O Old Glory Goes Up on Mt. Suribachi (Rosenthal), 314, 330 Orions Belte background of the novel, 224–228 high-concept, 230–232 impact on Norwegian filmmaking, 228–230 overview, 223–224 and thawing of Cold War, 232–233

344  Index Ortega, Daniel, 49–51 Outer Space Treaty, 68 P Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 54–55 Pálinkás, Róbert, 171, 175, 178. See also Inconnu group Perestroika, 3, 57, 100–101, 233, 235–236, 249–251, 257, 270, 285. See also Glasnost; Gorbachev, Mikhail Philipp, Tibor, 171, 175, 177–178. See also Inconnu group Photojournalism ADN-Zentralbild, 116–118, 120–121, 127, 129–130 Eastern work in Western publications, 119–127 Eastfoto/Sovfoto, 119, 121, 130 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 120–123 in German Democratic Republic, 117–119 Kulturbund and, 116–118, 123, 128–129 overview, 115–117 personal contacts between East/ West, 127–130 Pike, John, 36 Pinochet, Augusto, 43, 48 Piotrowska, Anna G., xii, 8, 137–156 Pisani, Elizabeth, 326 Playboy magazine interviews analyzing hostile media images, 50–53 Arafat, Yasser, 55 Castro, Fidel, 44–45, 52–53 exiles and enemies, 53–55 García Márquez, Gabriel, 48–49 Jumblatt, Walid, 54–55 Kasparov, Garry, 57–58 Kyemba, Henry, 53

overview, 43–46 Reagan and, 46–50 voices behind the Iron Curtain, 55–58 Walesa, Lech, 55–56 Plowman, Andrew, 87 Poland, 55–57, 137–138 art scene, 162 Communist party, 56, 141–143 fall of Communism, 256 martial law, 162, 182n Round Table Talks, 144 Polish punk music bands, 144–146 censorship, 154–155 concerts, 150–151 context, 155–156 irony and resistance, 139–141 lyrics, 146–149 names of bands, 145–146 overview, 137–139 political situation and, 141–143 press attacks, 151–154 where irony originated, 143–145 See also Solidarity party Pope John Paul II, 138, 142. See also Poland Prosopographies, 193–194 Proxmire, William, 34 Q Quayle, Dan, 36 R Radio Free Europe, 4, 164, 167–169, 178 Radnóti, Sándor, 175 Rauch, Lugwig, 118, 122. See also Photojournalism Reagan, Ronald. See also Star Wars program

Index

“Crayola Ad”, 28–29, 31 Argentina and, 46 Central American policy, 47, 50–52 criticism of, 48–50 Cuba and, 52–53 Gorbachev and, 243, 251, 254, 259, 303 Graham and, 22–23, 33 Middle East policy, 54–55 Poland and, 57 SDI program; announcement, 3, 6, 19–22; creation, 3, 6, 19–20; SDIO, 33–38 UCS and, 26, 31 Richter, Evelyn, 123, 127–128, 132n, 133n. See also Photojournalism Rosenthal, Joe, 314, 330, 332n Russell, Bertrand, 44 S Saarenmaa, Laura, xii, 7, 43–59 Sagan, Carl, 19, 26, 28, 40 Samizdat press, 163–165, 167–168, 171–172, 175, 178–179 Sandinistas, 47–51, 97–98, 105 Satellites, 5, 11, 26, 33, 34, 56, 63, 72, 256, 317, 324, 334n Schabowsky, Guenter, 1–2 Seidowsky, Manfred, 91, 94–95, 99–101, 104. See also Treffpunkt Flughafen Selbmann, Erich, 107 Self, Charles C., 192 Serfozö, Magdolna, 171. See also Inconnu group Sloterdijk, Peter, 66 Solidarity party, 2, 55–57, 142, 174, 294, 326. See also Poland Solt, Ottilia, 175 Sørenssen, Bjørn, xii, 9, 12, 223–233 Spielberg, Steven, 65, 71

  345

Spy Who Came In from the Cold, The (film), 231 Stalin, Joseph, 10–11, 235, 245, 252– 253, 255, 284–287, 290–291, 293, 296, 299, 302, 305 Stalinism, 162, 171, 179 Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back, 3, 229 A New Hope, 3, 65–66, 71 Return of the Jedi, 3 Star Wars program High Frontier’s media campaign, 22–26 overview, 19–20 Reagan’s announcement of, 20–22 Strategic Defense Intitiative Organization (SDIO), 33–37 TV commercials for, 28–33 Union of Concerned Scientists’ campaign against, 26–28 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), 21 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). See Star Wars program Strauss, Helfried, 123 Suettinger, Robert, 319 Svalbard Treaty of 1920, 9, 12, 223 Syria, 45, 54 T Teller, Edward, 19, 21, 33 Third World countries, 47–48, 53, 55, 191, 200, 215, 294, 306 Tiananmen Square protests background, 316–318 banning of press, 317 discussion of images, 329–331 Goddess of Democracy, 318–321 importance of Tiananmen Square, 317–318 overview, 311–315

346  Index People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 315, 317, 321–322, 325, 335n pro-democracy movement, 319–321 Tank Man, 321–328 Zhongnanhai, 316 Treaties ABM Treaty (1972), 26 Limited Test Ban Treaty, 69 Outer Space Treaty, 68 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), 21 Svalbard Treaty of 1920, 9, 12, 223 Treffpunkt Flughafen. See also Seidowsky, Manfred aspirational East German television, 89–90 cast, 96–97 competing with West German TV programming, 93–96 Interflug and, 95–98, 102–105, 108 as means of State propaganda, 92 multicultural locations and socialist citizenship, 96–101 overview, 87–88 popular appeal and political impact, 90–93 production, 90–91, 101–103 storylines, 97–99 success of, 106–109 transnational dimension of, 104–106 Zur See miniseries and, 96, 99 Trudeau, Gary, 29 Turner, Katherine, 139–141, 149 U UNICEF, 127 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 19–20, 25–28, 30–31, 33–38

United Nations (UN) Gorbachev and, 256 Israel and, 55 Norway and, 190, 192, 202 outer space and, 68 UNICEF, 127 Út, Nick, 122, 130, 133n. See also Photojournalism Children Fleeing a Napalm Strike, June 8, 1972, 315, 325, 330 V Vikulina, Ekaterina, xii–xiii, 10, 283–306 Vowinckel, Annette, xiii, 8, 115–131 W Walesa, Lech, 56–57. See also Solidarity party Wallop, Malcolm, 21 Warsaw Pact, 1–2, 184n Watt, Justin, 9 Weinberger, Caspar, 21–22, 36 Weisskopf, Victor, 31 Werenskjold, Rolf, x, 9, 12, 189–216 Wolff, Franca, 94, 107 Woollacott, Janet, 65 WuDunn, Shirley, 320 Wyatt, Justin, 224, 230–231 Y Yeltsin, Boris, 303–304