Rockets, Politics and Public
perceptions
HI269
Week 12
The uses of space
• Control (power)
• Exploration (science)
• Propaganda (prestige/hegemony)
• Technocracy?
• Spin-offs?
• National cohesion?
For whom did the propaganda
machine whir?
• Soviets:
– Western Europe (in an attempt to weaken or
dissolve NATO)
– Non-Aligned nations
– US public
• US:
– The US public
– Non-Aligned nations
– Western Europe
Did the propaganda work?
Year
1955 (pre Sputniks):
6 % Of Western Europeans though the West was weaker
than the Soviets militarily
1957 (post Sputnik 1)
21% in UK, 20% in France, 12% in Italy, 10% in Germany
felt that West as a whole was militarily weaker than
USSR. 50% of British and 25% of French though US alone
was weaker than USSR alone.
1960
Soviets ranked above US in military strength by 59 (to
15)% of British, 37 (to 16)% of French, 45 (to 15_%
Norwegians and 47 (to 22%) of West Germans. Only 25%
of French and British thought US would prevail over the
course of the next 20 years.
1961 (post Gagarin’s
manned orbit)
Western Europeans believed the USSR to lead in both
military strength (41 to 19%) and scientific innovation (39
to 31 %).
USIA Office of Research Analysis
IMPACT OF US AND SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS ON
WORLD OPINION
A Summary Assessment
July 7, 1959
“The Changed Soviet Image: The most significant and enduring
result, for world public opinion, of the launching of the first earth
satellite by the USSR was a revolutionary revision of estimates of
Soviet power and standing. Prior to the launching of Sputnik I there
was very general belief that the Soviet Union was a long way from
offering a serious challenge to the US lead in science, technology,
and productive power. … Sputnik worked a major modification in the
world image of the USSR; at one stride it appeared to close the gap
between the US and the USSR, in terms of relative power, and gave
new dimensions and new formidableness to that power, a fact which
the USSR has vigorously exploited in its propaganda and diplomacy,
with greatly enhanced credibility.”
Latin American Responses to Soviet Space Advances
• Santiago's El Siglo, 1957: Soviet success in launching the first man-made
moon constitutes: "a triumph of the Marxist philosophy: the dialectic
materialism which has now only permitted the workers to triumph over their
oppressors, but now also brings them a growing domination over the forces of
nature."
• Santiago’s El Siglo, 1961: “The Soviet space feats, especially the last two,
that of Gagarin and that of Titov, are only possible thanks to the vast
development of the industrial and educational capacity of the Soviet Union
and the political, economic and cultural system in effect over there. They are
the result of man, confronted by a scientific fact . . . and working with it, free
from the agonizing obstacles of economic poverty, and free from the antisocial
desire for wealth.”
• Havana’s Radio CQM, 1962: "the military importance of the two Soviet
spaceships has not escaped anyone. The importance consists in the brilliant
demonstration of precision given by Soviet rocketry … This precision is more
than the Soviets need to drop an international rocket with a nuclear head on
any point of the earth.”
Latin American Responses to Soviet Space Advances
• Medellin’s El Colombiano , 1962: “The sensationalistic zeal will
soon produce adverse results for the government of the Soviet
Union, and certainly the loss of the space race, because the
American scientists have approached the problem . .. through a
series of successive experiments, with numerous failures but
with more convincing results…they have in orbit more than fifty
satellites of the most varied types, supplying in a continuous
stream…data of the greatest importance for the better
knowledge of outer space. We think that the space race has
clearly been defined in favor of the scientists of the great country
of the North.”
• La Esfera of Caracas, 1962: "What would we think of a
workman who stopped eating, dressing decently, taking anyone
out, going to the movies, and living in a decent house in order to
live in a broken-down one, all so he could buy himself a Cadillac?
This is the case of Russia."
Latin American Responses to US Space Advances
• Mexico’s El Universal, 1957: banner headlines announced
Sputnik as "THE HERALD OF THE PENETRATION OF MAN IN
OUTER SPACE”
• Mexico’s Tiempo, 1957: Sputnik "has given the U.S.S.R.
greater prestige among the countries of a neutralist
tendancy in the struggle between Communism and
democracy”
• Mexico’s government-run Nacional, 1957: "science should be
above political systems, because one of the greatest
possibilities for the common understanding of men and true
friendship among nations is rooted in its universality.”
• Mexico’s El Popular (left-leaning), 1957 :"Perhaps the warlike
neurosis and the exacerbation of racial conflict are
subconsciously linked by a defective educational orientation,
…[and US space lag signals] a grave national collapse.”
Latin American Responses to US Space Advances
• Mexico’s El Popular, 1961: "What point would there be in using these space
ships, manned by human crews, for nuclear and thermonuclear bombings? If
that were done ... it would simply negate forty-three years of socialistic
progress."
• Mexico’s El Universal Graffico, 1961: “May God grant that this Russian
triumph should not serve to let Khrushchev keep his accustomed ways of
hurling threats. The conquest, achieved by the Soviet, should be used for the
good of humanity, forgetting war, leaving aside the military applications of
the feat.”
• Rio de Janeiro's Jornal do Comerci 1962 [After John Gelnn’s delayed flight to
orbit] "All this [delay and confusion] is human, all too human. It is convincing.
Moscow dramatizes. It gives notice of the fait accompli. It leaves a fog of
unanswered questions in the exhaust of its own rockets.”
• Mexico’s El Universal 1962: “. . . at the edge of the mighty struggle in which
the world is divided by ideological and economic questions, outside of the
passions and blind partisanships which have made a banner out of enmity
and hate, are the hundreds of millions of men, women and children, who
want and have a right to a better life ... These enormous multitudes cannot
understand the reason for which men who have reached the pinnacles of
knowledge have not been able to scale the heights of genuine human feeling,
with the purpose of leading people along the roads of concord and peace,
towards that eternal dream which started with the birth of the human being:
the brotherhood of man.”
Making
the
World’s
future
(in the
USSR)
The American Response
‘The great battlefield for the defence and expansion of freedom today is the whole
Southern half of the globe – Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East – the
lands of the rising people.’ Kennedy, ‘Special Message to Congress on Urgent National
Needs’, 1961
Kennedy, ‘Special Message to Congress on Urgent
National Needs’, 1961
‘No single
space project
…will be more
impressive to
mankind’: the
race to the
moon
Failure and Success
Man in Space, Fragile Earth
American Moon