American toys for American boys and girls Image courtesy of X-Ray Delta One via Flickr
The persuasive powers of Cold War PR, until now little recognised or discussed, was the subject of a three-day conference at Cambridge University. This conference spurred a vital conversation about the channels and means by which governments 'sold' the Cold War to their own people - and how journalists, movie-makers, academics, researchers and the general public took up the ideological battle of their own volition." - —Hannah Higgin - Public Relations of the Cold War, organised by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) sough to examine the 'selling' of ideologically motivated policies to domestic audiences during the Cold War - outside of the more commonly studied area of public diplomacy, which concerns a government reaching out to foreign audiences. The conference, which drew experts from the UK, Europe, and North America and featured keynote addresses from Professor Christopher Andrew, Official Historian of the Security Service, and Professor Odd Arne Westad, a leading expert in Cold War history, aimed to demonstrate how pervasive the battle to influence domestic public opinion became - on both sides of the Cold War divide. The scope of influence was massive, whether it was Executive Branch infighting about how to best present casualty reports to the public during the Vietnam War to models of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) on sale in children's toyshops. The conference also examined the under-recognized and -examined nuance in various means of disseminating PR.
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