Space Propaganda “For All Mankind”: Soviet and American Responses to the Cold War, 1957-1977

• Author / Creator

  Rockwell, Trevor S

• This study examines narratives about space exploration officially produced by government agencies of the Soviet Union and the United States between 1957 and 1977. It compares how space activities from the first Soviet Sputnik on October 4, 1957, to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in July 1975 were covered in two monthly magazines: the American-made Russian-language Amerika Illiustrirovannoye (America Illustrated, hereafter Amerika) and the Soviet-produced English-language Soviet Life. It seeks to understand how each country conveyed space exploration to each other, as well as why they chose to focus on certain key themes of peace, progress, and cooperation.
  The main primary sources for this comparative analysis are the publications Amerika and Soviet Life. This study also considers the motivating context that shaped each publication. To assess the underlying motivations behind Amerika magazine’s content, this study has relied upon the records of the United States Information Agency (USIA) held at the National Archives and Records Administration II in College Park, Maryland, as well as various volumes of documents from the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. On the Soviet side, it analyzes various publications of the speeches and writings of the Soviet leadership to examine how Soviet officials’ discourse treated the main themes of Soviet Life’s space propaganda.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Space Exploration
  • Soviet Union
  • Propaganda
  • Cold War
  • United States

• Graduation date

  Fall 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R39079

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.