This paper proposes that the US and the USSR (and other states with ideologies that have claimed to represent the end of history, to borrow a phrase) have in fact an applied ideology which was designed, in a Gramsciean, to perpetuate the political status quo by convincing the public that it represented the zenith of humanities socio-economic-political evolution. The establishment set out to achive this goal not through the total use of violence and terror (as is often claimed in the case of the USSR) nor through libertarianism and market freedoms (as is often claimed in the case of the US) but rather it was through the subtle and sophisticated manipulation of popular culture. This paper will discuss how cultural producers were employed in both the US and the USSR to create "us" and "them" groupings. These groupings were designed to create a strong sense of Sovietism and Americanism. By this one should not think of intellectual codes or dogmas such as Maoism or Nazism but rather these isms refer to a sense of self and supplied public culture with the language and emotions of inclusiveness and identity: That is, Americanism and Sovietism created a way of acting, thinking and feeling that was uniquely American and Soviet (and a way of acting, thinking and feeling that was Un-Soviet and Un-American. The visual arts (cinema in particular) were the primary tools through which cultural producers set out to achive their objective because unlike literature, sports and ideological institutions the visual arts had an emotional simultaniety and immediacy.

Keywords

• Comparative study
• United States and Soviet Union during the 1930s
• Engineering of Popular Culture

(30 min. Conference Paper, English)