Winning Women's Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR

During the Cold War, the US Information Agency (USIA) produced Amerika, a Russian-language magazine, to influence Soviet citizens and promote an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms. Winning Womens Hearts and Minds uses USIA archives, Amerika issues, and American womens magazines to show how USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers to appeal to Soviet women. The propaganda campaign relied heavily on postwar conservative gender norms and images of domestic contentment to undermine the Soviet regime.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 31 January 2023
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

During the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to American life and culture. However, Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), Amerika was the first peacetime propaganda organization aimed at influencing the Soviet public and convincing women, in particular, that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could improve their lives.

Winning Womens Hearts and Minds, a study based on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American womens magazines like the Ladies Home Journal, explores how USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers during the postwar period. The magazine aimed to appeal to Soviet women, who were often portrayed in the US media as babushkas, considered unfeminine, overworked, and deprived of consumer goods and services by a repressive regime.

Diana Cucuz provides a gendered analysis of the USIA and Amerika, highlighting the propaganda campaign's reliance on postwar conservative gender norms and images of domestic contentment to convey positive messages about the American way of life. The study sheds light on the significance of women, gender, and consumption to international politics during the Cold War.

Weight: 620g
Dimension: 235 x 159 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781487503772