Media and the Cold War in the 1980s

Between Star Wars and Glasnost

Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke, Rolf Werenskjold, Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke, Rolf Werenskjold

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319983813
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319983820
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

The Cold War was a media phenomenon. It was a daily cultural political struggle for the hearts and minds of ordinary people—and for government leaders, a struggle to undermine their enemies' ability to control the domestic public sphere. This collection examines how this struggle played out on screen, radio, and in print from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, a time when breaking news stories such as Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program and Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost captured the world's attention. Ranging from the United States to the Soviet Union and China, these essays cover photojournalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Polish punk, Norwegian film, Soviet magazines, and more, concluding with a contribution from Stuart Franklin, one of the creators of the iconic "Tank Man" image during the Tiananmen Square protests. By investigating an array of media actors and networks, as well as narrative and visual frames on a local and transnational level, this volume laysthe groundwork for writing media into the history of the late Cold War.

© The Author(s) 2019

Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke and Rolf Werenskjold (eds.)Media and the Cold War in the 1980sPalgrave Studies in the History of the Mediahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Mapping the Role of the Media in the Late Cold War

Methodological and Transnational Perspectives

Henrik G. Bastiansen¹ , Martin Klimke² and Rolf Werenskjold³

(1)

Volda University College, Volda, Norway

(2)

New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE

(3)

Faculty of Media and Journalism, Volda University College, Volda, Norway

Henrik G. Bastiansen (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Martin Klimke

Email: [email protected]

Rolf Werenskjold

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

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 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 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). 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 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 Dav...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Mapping the Role of the Media in the Late Cold War
• 2. Selling “Star Wars” in American Mass Media
• 3. Interviewing the Enemy and Other Cold War Players: US Foreign Policy as Seen Through Playboy During the Reagan Years
• 4. Going Atmospheric and Elemental: Roger Moore’s and Timothy Dalton’s James Bond and Cold War Geo-Politics
• 5. Civil Cold War Aviation as Television Drama: The Popular Miniseries Treffpunkt Flughafen (GDR 1986)
• 6. Photojournalism East/West: The Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and the Trade of Photographs
• 7. Irony in Polish Punk of the 1980s as a Form of Contestation
• 8. Mediating Alternative Culture: Two Controversial Exhibitions in Hungary During the 1980s
• 9. The Cold War Reporters: The Norwegian Foreign-News Journalists and Foreign-News Correspondents, 1945–1995
• 10. Orions Belte: The Birth of the Norwegian “High-Concept” Movie in the Shadow of the Second Cold War
• 11. Reporting Glasnost: The Changing Soviet News in a Norwegian Daily, 1985–1988
• 12. Revolution as Memory: The “History Boom” on Late Socialist Television
• 13. Power and the Body: Images of the Leaders in Soviet Magazines During the Cold War
• 14. The Iconic Photograph and Its Political Space: The Case of Tiananmen Square, 1989
• Back Matter