Arts
The United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a competition in the arts as well, mainly in ballet. The Americans and the Soviets would send previews of their country's ballets to prove their superiority. In America, this caused a dramatic increase in government funding. In both countries, ballet was turned into powerful political propaganda, and they used dance to reflect life style in the "battle for the hearts and minds of men."
Jazz was also a useful tool for the United States State Department to show off the United States democracy, as jazz was a democratic music form, free flowing and improvised. Jazz tours of the Soviet Union were organized in 1956, and lasted through the 1970s.
Along with ballet, the two countries also competed in such things as theatre, chess, and even who could reach the moon first. As well when it came to sports the two countries both competed in the Olympics during the Cold War period which also created a lot of hostilities. David Caute, author of "The Dancer Defects", goes into detail each nation and how they could have "won" the cultural war. He ends up not nearly as much as declaring a winner, but more so looks into how each nation both had its great strengths. Russia excelled with plays, and was well known for its ballet. Whereas the West (United States in this case) showed a lot of power in technology, and the famous chess player Bobby Fischer.
Stephen J. Whitfield writes in his article titled The Cultural Cold War As History that these two nations were not fighting their cultures against each other, but more onto their own citizens. As well that many things that were going on during the Cold War were purely done as an intent to create fear among African Americans, especially within the United States.
Read more about this topic: Culture During The Cold War
Famous quotes containing the word arts:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852)
“If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world’s inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)