Soviet opinion journalism in the Cold War: “Imperialism. Events. Facts. Documents” book series overview

During the Cold War, the rivalry between the superpowers and between the opposing military-political blocs developed not only in the economic, political or arms sphere, but not least in the sphere of ideas. There, not only periodicals, but also books often were instruments of propaganda. In this article, the author considers the book series “Imperialism. Developments. Facts. Documents”, which was published in the USSR in the last 10-15 years of its existence. This study is the first approach to this vast issue, and the article may provide a basis for further research in this direction. The main source for writing this article were books from the above series - the references are the ninety titles of these books. At the beginning of the article, the author describes the distinctive features of this series: they were published in the largest publishing houses of the USSR, often written by authoritative Soviet scholars, in some cases reprinted; they contain links to documents and foreign monographs, etc. Then the author proceeds to a more detailed examination of the series. First of all, she divided it into two parts: (1) books dedicated to the examination of domestic policies in the states of the capitalist world and (2) books that study the foreign policy of these same countries. The author consistently examines both parts. Within each of them, in turn, she distinguishes books on some particularly narrow topics: for example, among the books on the internal policy of capitalist countries, there are works on unemployment, books about the media and their role in the life of foreign capitalist countries, publications specifically about the domestic policy of the United States, about the crisis of the family, about health care problems, etc. By the same principle, among the books in the series on foreign policy there are cycles of works or individual works on a narrower subject - for example, on the role of foreign radio broadcasting in foreign policy, on US military doctrines, on certain international events of recent decades (the war in Lebanon 1982, the Chilean events of 1973, etc.). The author definitely could not subject each book in the series to a detailed analysis, but she seeks to describe the main directions in which these books are written. The general conclusion is as follows: the “Imperialism. Developments. Facts. Documents” book series is a kind of a monument and “mirror” of the era, a unique printed phenomenon of the last decade of the existence of the Soviet Union.

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