13/11/2015 - Cultural Cold War: Eastern European Propaganda in Latin America

Programme

BACKGROUND

In the last twenty years research on the Cold War has been going through an expansion of its thematic area. In fact, although historiography has kept focusing on an in-depth analysis of strategic and military issues reasserting the centrality of the United States and the Soviet Union, scholars also began to reconsider the partnerships between the two superpowers and single regional actors, and to bring up a cultural dimension of the bipolar conflict.

Thanks to new sources available, we are now able to better analyze how the diffusion of each of the competitive models of the way of life was carried out within the Cold War. This is the so-called battle to “win hearts and minds” that the superpowers fought on a domestic, local, regional, and worldwide levels.

AIMS OF THE CONFERENCE

The purpose of the conference Cultural Cold War: Eastern European Propaganda in Latin America was to analyze the ideological-cultural dimensions of the Cold War from the perspective of the Eastern bloc countries propaganda in Latin America. We sought to focus on different channels exploited by the Eastern European countries to promote their political and economic interests, as well as their way of life, in the region.