“Soft Power” Of The West In The “Cold War” With Soviet Mythologemes

Abstract

A very significant distinguishing feature of modernity is the formation of a general Western superideology, which claims to establish control over the entire ideosphere of mankind. The beginning of the formation of this global ideology can be considered the end of the Cold War, which allowed the West to defeat the USSR. This victory was won not so much due to some superiority in the level of social organization of Western countries, but due to a more perfect mechanism for applying soft power (using one's ideas through propaganda tools). In fact, the confrontation between the West and the communist bloc led by the USSR was a typical competition between two different "soft forces". The most important success of the West in the ideological struggle against the USSR was a victory in its own "rear", by winning the sympathy of its intelligentsia, which made a turn -began to view the USSR not as a defender of the working masses, but as a totalitarian state encroaching on freedom and democracy. The "soft power" of the West, backed by economic successes and the power of the propaganda machine, ensured a much more effective promotion of Western ideas around the world, starting in the 1960s, compared to the Soviet mechanisms of forming its own global "attractiveness".