Abstract:

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of American thematic exhibitions, which were held in the Soviet Union by the United States Information Agency (USIA) from 1959 to 1991 as part of the bilateral agreements on cultural exchanges. Based on American and Soviet sources, the author focuses on the study of the perceptions of the U.S. cultural diplomacy by the Soviet public, especially in the cities of Central Asia.

Exhibition exchanges between the USA and the Soviet Union were the remarkable episodes of the “cultural Cold War”. The American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 was the first (and most famous) in a series of such events; it was subsequent by 18 traveling shows, which covered 25 Soviet cities with the total audience estimated at 20 million visitors. The republics of Soviet Central Asia hosted seven of the eighteen American traveling exhibitions. The first showings began in Alma-Ata (“Graphic Arts USA", 1963), and later in the 1970s were held in other cities of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (“Education USA” in Tashkent, 1970; “Technology for the American Home” in Tashkent, 1975; “Photography USA” in Alma-Ata, 1976; “Agriculture USA” in Tselinograd and Dushanbe, 1978). The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused a long hiatus in cultural exchanges, but during perestroika and before the collapse of the USSR, the USIA brought two more exhibitions: “Information USA” (including showing in Tashkent, 1988) and “Design USA” (in Dushanbe and Alma-Ata, 1989-1990).

The selection of exhibits, their information support (textual - in booklets, and oral - from American guides), engineering and visual design of the shows - all were aimed, ultimately, at the formation of a positive image of America among the Soviet public (and, as a result, a critical perception of Soviet realities). Thus, the exhibitions, even if their themes seem to be far from the ideology (science and technology, culture, lifestyle, industry and agriculture), were considered as an effective tool of the “cultural Cold war”.

The USIA research memoranda reveal the inside practices of the U.S. public diplomacy, enabling Cold War scholars to re-evaluate the Soviet public perceptions of America and the effectiveness of the American information policies towards the USSR. The author has also collected the array of original information materials and artifacts from the exhibitions, which are rarely involved in Cold War studies as a source.