Culture in Causes of the Cold War
Rock and Roll and Communism
Americans and Soviets both viewed popular culture as an important weapon in the struggle to win influence in Europe during the Cold War. Each thought that increasing the vitality of its culture could play a key role in winning support for its side.
In terms of American culture, as a matter of policy, the United States sought to promote its high culture in Europe, believing that Europeans would share the tastes of American elites more than they would respond to popular culture, which politicians viewed as belonging to the lower classes.
So, the American government sponsored highbrow cultural exports like the American opera Porgy and Bess, which toured through western Europe in 1955. The newly created Information Services Branch of the government served to promote American culture and anticommunist sentiments in Europe. In the late 1940s, it created U.S. Information Centers, called "America Houses," which had free lending libraries of American literary classics. But the most frequently checked out books proved not to be great works of literature but contemporary potboilers (a.k.a. guilty pleasure reads that appealed to the masses and made some fast cash, or "boiled the pot," for the writer). On a similar note, Europeans flocked not to the American philharmonic concerts, but to record stores where they could buy American rock and roll albums.
So, American cultural diplomacy didn't quite have its intended effect. Not only did Europeans consume mass popular culture instead of American high culture, but they also didn't translate that enjoyment of culture into overwhelming support for American politics. Just like American parents in the period, European adults were concerned about the effects of rock and roll on their youth, and the youth interpreted and experienced the culture in their own way.
The Soviets, on the other hand, weren't merely concerned, but were downright alarmed by the spread of American popular culture. Trying to promote their own culture in Europe through carefully disseminated propaganda, the Soviets were dismayed to see their own youth sneaking around, listening to American rock and roll. East German teens tuned into broadcasts of Radio Free Europe, a radio station founded and funded by Americans in 1950 to counter communist propaganda with American propaganda. Russian youth secretly obtained records and formed listening clubs.
Soviet rulers first tried to ban jazz and rock music, but when they realized the music kept creeping into nations under their control, they changed strategies. Instead of trying to ban popular music, they sought to compete with Western influences by promoting alternatives under their own control. They developed their own radio programming in the 1960s and promoted homegrown bands, a few with lyrics written by party officials.
If it seems like a stretch, it was. They had limited success with these tactics as Radio Free Europe continued to receive letters from Eastern Europe requesting many of the same bands popular in the West.