This book questions the view of the current orthodoxy which argues
that the Soviet Union and the United States were binary opposites
in the 1930s. The Shaping of Popular Consent presents a comparative
analysis of one specific facet of the USSR and the US, namely the
manner in which their ruling elites sought to win popular consent.
A key dimension in the analysis of any political order, this issue
recommends itself precisely because the assumption that, in this
the two were quite dissimilar, is the virtual point of departure
for the current thinking. To sharpen the focus of the comparison,
the book concentrates on the role of the visual arts and the manner
and extent to which those in power employed them to attempt to win
popular consent. Therefore, this book poses two questions. Firstly,
to what extent did the ruling elites in both the USSR and the US
believe they needed the people's faith/trust in the system?
Secondly, different as the two societies were, to what extent might
they have employed similar use of visual cultural media in their
attempts to win "hearts and minds"? The study explores the interwar
years, specifically 1929-1941. This was an era of great upheaval in
both the USSR and the US and marks the beginning of the age of mass
communication. The book examines if, how, and to what extent Soviet
and American cultural producers, during the years 1929-1941,
employed the visual arts, cinema in particular but also painting,
the plastic arts, theatre and architecture, to promote,
essentially, the establishments' rights and wrongs, heroes and
villains. It does so exploring both the domestic and the
international scene. It illustrates that, despite giant differences
between the two countries, in the way the two establishments sought
to win popular consent the binary view is simply inaccurate.
Perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates the need for a plethora
of wide-ranging comparative studies of the Soviet Union and the
United States. Indeed, through recognizing the importance of
comparing and contrasting the USSR and the US, and by attempting to
do just that, we might learn to better understand how, in what ways
and for what purposes these two countries, so central to our
understanding of the modern world, were organized. Thus, this work
is genuinely comparative, inter-disciplinary and cultural. Indeed,
the study is part of a vanguard movement. It is of significant
value to scholars of both the USSR, Stalinism and Soviet art and
the US, the New Deal and Hollywood. Finally, building on work by
Noam Chomsky, Anotonio Gramsci and others such as Benedict
Anderson's book Imagined Communities, the book will be of
tremendous interests to many (both students and interested parties
alike) who have an interest in how identities are constructed, how
propaganda is manufactured and just how the (ostensibly) divergent
philosophies of modern governments are represented in popular
culture.
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