Cultural Infiltration: A New Propaganda Strategy for a New Era of Soviet—West Relations

Abstract

The crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the shift in Soviet policy after Khrushchev’s rise to power, and the Soviet hydrogen bomb all led to a revised US foreign policy strategy and a new propaganda policy. These major shifts in the international environment caused the Eisenhower Administration in its second term to focus its efforts on causing evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, changes in the Soviet system. The evolutionary approach sought to encourage changes within the Soviet system that would eventually lead to the abandonment of its expansionist policies. In contrast, a revolutionary approach (liberation) would seek to impose change upon the Soviet Union by force. The Eisenhower Administration understood that the evolutionary approach was a long-term strategy, which would take several decades to succeed.