Then again, this is pretty much coming from just one source. I’d like to see some other testimony.
But I think the 60s protest movements and youth culture in general had an influence on the youth behind the Iron Curtain that decades later manifested itself in a softening of attitudes at the higher levels. That as well as inspiring the the street demonstrations to some degree.
Western culture in general was infectious behind the Iron Curtain. Even the brief glimpses and access that Soviets and East Bloc citizens had of the West were just as appealing as any appeals to freedom of expression and movement. High echelon members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union reveled in shopping trips to Paris and London (Raisa Gorbachyova was well known for her penchant for fashionable dress even before husband Mikhail ascended as Secretary General), and bootleg tapes of popular Western music acts were ubiquitous. The logic that trying to deny something makes it more appealing was magnified by the general oppression under Soviet rule.
Frankly, the Beatles and other Western pop culture influences were ultimately more responsible for the fall of Soviet Communism from within than anything done by Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, or Thatcher. You can hold back the tanks, but how do you stop a generation of teenagers from humming a catchy tune.
On the Western front, the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (particularly The Gulag Archipelago), backed by extensive research and documentation, undermined any validity of the Soviet regime in the eyes of all but the most obtuse supporters. The lawless and arbitrary abuse of power, extensively documented, demonstrated the utterly criminal nature of the Stalinist and Khrushchev eras.
What killed Soviet Communism was its complete fiscal inviability; Russia was dependent, from the very start, on the agricultural yield of the “lesser” republics, and later on the industrial capabilities of the Warsaw Pact “client states”. However, once economic controls were relaxed (perestroika), social liberties followed as a matter of consequence. The same thing is currently occurring in the Peoples Republic of China, and will likely occur in Cuba once the current cult of personality falls apart. Democratic capitalism (with varying degrees of regulation and socialization) has significant deficiencies in many ways, but still comes out as being vastly superior to any attempt at dogmatic communism.
A much clearer, on point, case is put in the BBC’s ‘How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin’.
Lots of interviews with Russians, East Germans, etc, plus fascinating technical stuff about how fans reproduced Beatles records . . … really interesting.
I have to agree, and was pondering this just the other day as I ran across a video on youtube of the Red Army Choir singing in a performance of “Sweet Home Alabama”. Even in the most fantastic alternate reality fiction of 50 years ago, a video like this would be discarded as ludicrous. The rise of global communications and media has taken the concept of soft power and turned it into an unstoppable juggernaut. How do you alienate your enemies as Different and Other when your people KNOW the enemies? It’s no wonder that ultraconservative societies always have the quashing of any Western influence, no matter how mundane, as one of their central goals.
There seems to be alot of credit given to the Beatles for “thawing” the Cold War. However, it was more than just the 1960s pop culture that did it. Stalin thought John Wayne was the most dangerous man in the USA. There’s rumors that an assassination order was given to kill John Wayne by Stalin, but they were lifted by Krushchev along with the ban on John Wayne movies since Wayne was Krushchev’s favorite actor. So you could equally say that John Wayne helped win the Cold War.
