Glossy Communism : Polite Propaganda from the Eastern Bloc Main Menu

Introduction

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This SACLAR book features student essays on English-language magazines published by the formerly socialist Eastern European countries at the height of the Cold War and distributed in the United States as a form of "polite propaganda." They include Soviet Life, Bulgaria Today, Czechoslovak Life, and Yugoslav Life. Modeled on LIFE magazine and other "glossy" periodicals, the magazines feature high quality photographic illustrations and dynamic articles on various aspects of life in one-party state socialism, especially its cultural, scientific, and social achievements. The student essays collected here are not meant to serve as a comprehensive historical overview of the various magazines covered on the website; rather, each page engages a different facet of the magazines, providing the reader with a brief snapshot into the magazine's ideology, historical context, and rhetorical performance. The content for this book was created by the M.A. students in the Graduate Seminar in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Civilizations and Cultures at the University of Texas at Austin. The project was supervised by Vladislav Beronja, Assistant Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, with the help of Ian Goodale, the European Studies Librarian. 

This page has paths:

  1. Glossy Communism: Polite Propaganda from the Eastern Bloc Vlad Beronja

Contents of this path:

  1. Children of the Revolution: Selling Socialism in Soviet Life
  2. Free Healthcare with a Price
  3. Not a New Bloc but Unity of Action in the Interest of Peace: Yugoslavia and the Third World
  4. Presenting Socialism's Human Face to the West: Czechoslovak Life and the Prague Spring
  5. Puppet Theatre and Stop Motion Animation in Czechoslovakia
  6. Your Questions on Communism: An Americanized Communism in Soviet Life
  7. Though the Eyes of a Local Pinsk Priest: A Snapshot of Religion in the Soviet Union in the 1980’s