Understanding the World: the Cognitive Grid of Soviet Television News

Abstract

In 1950, Frederick Barghoorn’s book, The Soviet Image of the United States, brought to the American public an understanding of how the Soviet Union portrays the United States.² Since the publication of that seminal work, the issue of mutual perceptions has increased in importance. In the very critical problems of international security and arms control — the strategic theories and the mission capabilities that are associated with them — the question of ‘mirror-imaging’ has been raised with some urgency. Does each superpower project its own security strategies and gaming formulae on the other, resulting in surprised denunciations of deception when the other side is shown to have been following its own independent strategic course? The greater attention to the pitfalls of mirror-imaging have led the strategic communities on both sides to attempt to understand with less parochialism the particularities of how the Soviet Union and the United States perceive each other. In a sense, then, the original questions posed by Barghoorn years ago have returned with even greater urgency.

The author wishes to thank the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation for their support of this research.