Soviet International Propaganda: Its Role, Effectiveness, and Future

The Soviet message to the West is handi capped before it is even dispatched. A closed society has little to offer an open one. The tendency in Moscow is to look at the West through Marxist glasses. The result is poor. In stead of making inroads, the Marxists are mostly ignored. In their messages to the Third World, the Russians run on a double track of respectability and rough, unpleasant intervention in the internal affairs of the target country. The Sino-Soviet schism moved the context of the message from the ideological to the partisan category. Problems within the Communist bloc—the Czechoslovak invasion, as a prime example—put the Soviet Union on the defensive. And once again the ideological base of the message was weakened, if not entirely lost. There is little in the cards suggesting a more effective, more acceptable message from the Soviet Union in the future. Dif ferent directions, a broader scope, more flexibility, and a much deeper understanding of the Western world are needed. Noth ing short of a change of system will make Moscow once again a source of dynamic, new, revolutionary ideas.