Dissonant Voices: Soviet Youth Mobilization and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Abstract

Although studies of the Cuban missile crisis abound, the story “from below” of those fateful days of October 1962 remains largely to be written. This is particularly true for the Soviet side. Little is known about the way the Soviet population, and particularly youth, the prime category for propaganda, perceived what is widely regarded as the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War. Youth were indeed the target of a massive mobilization campaign, but one that was ridden with many shortcomings, or, using the musical metaphor, dissonances. The propaganda machine (mainly the press but also radio and film) had been cultivating anti-Americanism and solidarity with the Cuban people for quite some time, but when the crisis suddenly arose, many “choir members” were unable to modulate their voice to the right key, if there ever was one. Secrecy and improvisation in the Communist Party’s highest organs, coupled with the trauma of World War II, bore the fruits of inertia, formalism, pacifism, and above all, embarrassed silence, eventually contributing to an extreme and often ambivalent palette of reactions.

Ted Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War, The Early years, 1945‑1958 | Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, The Political economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev | Margaret E. Peacock, Innocent weapons, The Soviet and American politics of childhood in th

“…Le dernier chapitre du livre est consacré à l'impact de la guerre du Vietnam sur les images de l'enfant dans les deux pays : aux États-Unis, l'enfant vietnamien sert d'argument interventionniste, tandis qu'en URSS, ce même enfant vietnamien à la fois victime et un révolutionnaire actif qui n'a pas besoin de l'aide russe pour gagner la guerre. Pour une éventuelle réédition, on pourrait aussi suggérer, d'une part, l'effort de mobilisation des enfants soviétiques pendant la crise de Cuba24 et, d'autre part, la récente synthèse de Marilyn Holt sur les enfants américains dans la Guerre froide 25 .périodisation. L'auteur étudie la guerre du Vietnam, et donc la période brejnévienne, mais passe entièrement sous silence l'effort orienté vers le consensus social pendant cette période, notamment au cinéma.…”