Soviet Response to the Civil Rights Movement 1963

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKNSF/295/JFKNSF-295-016 

This article produces a document that looks at the response of America towards Soviet coverage of the Civil Right Movement in America in 1963. This is quite interesting because the Civil Rights Movement is not usually associated with the Cold War and the Soviet Union. The document includes four points that the Soviet Media are making of American Society and its reaction to the Civil Rights Movement but according to America the points are nothing but pure propaganda. The first point is basically communist ideology and therefore can be seen as Propaganda. It states American Capitalism leads to Racism and that ‘Racism can only disappear when capitalism disappears’[1]. But the next three points do question America and its policies to minority groups. The second point states that the inaction of the US Government is leading to the support of the Racists in the south of America[2]. The third point questions how America can be seen in the Free World as the leader when its claim to democracy are ridiculous ‘when 20 million Negroes are denied fundamental human rights’[3]. The fourth and final point that is made asks how other continents like Asia and Africa can ask for support from America when it is denying basic rights to its own people. It also asks ‘“if America’s rulers can act like slaveholders towards millions of their own people what can the nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America expect of them’[4].

This document therefore makes two good points. Firstly, as David Skrentny states ‘American racist practices therefore proved ample evidence that Americans did not respect the rights of People of colour’[5]. This turns to the second point to be made about this document. It shows how much of a major role the Civil Rights had in the Cold War. As Mary Dudziak states ‘Soviet manipulation of America racial problems would be an important cold war narrative’[6]. Robert McMahon supports this by saying that the administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy recognised that ‘the south’s system of racial subordination and the denial of essential rights to African-Americans tarnished America’s Global image’[7]. The questions the Soviets poised about race in America were question that any nation would raise in a country that was allowing racial discrimination to take place but telling everyone that they were the land of the free and that they were leaders of the free world. It is no wonder there was a social revolution in America with Women asking for equal rights, African Americans asking for civil rights and students asking for the end of the Vietnam War.

But America’s racial crisis was one of a few inequalities and if you compare it to the Soviet Union, America still looked positive even though it had these few major issues. The Soviet Union was a dictatorship that supressed freedom and new ideas. As is stated on the website the Soviet broadcasts were trying to turn ‘global public opinion against the United States’[8]. Therefore, the two Civil Rights Bill’s that were passed in 1963 and 1964 showed America were now allowing freedom to people in America. This, therefore, turned the world attention back to the Soviet Union who were suppressing Eastern Europe into a socialist state that it did not want to be a part of. This would come to light in Czechoslovakia in 1968.   

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[1] American Government, ‘Soviet Media Coverage of Current US Racial Crisis’, https://www.jfklibrary.org/, (1963), https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKNSF/295/JFKNSF-295-016, (Last Accessed 15/03/2021).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] John David Skrentny, ‘The Effect of the Cold War on African-American Civil Rights: America and the World Audience, 1945-1968’, Theory and Society, Vol.27, No.2 (1998), pp.237-285 (p.245).

[6] Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p.250.

[7]  Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War: A very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.117.

[8] Rebecca Onion, ‘How the Soviet Union used Our Civil Rights Conflict Against Us’, https://slate.com/, (2013), https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/07/civil-rights-coverage-how-the-soviets-used-evidence-of-racial-strife-against-us-in-the-world-press.html (Last Accessed 15/03/2021).