When Hollywood was already pumping out Soviet propaganda

After dinner, Stalin led the guests to his private movie theater. Joseph E. sat down. Davis, former US ambassador to the Soviet Union and advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, next to Stalin. Then the lights went out and the “Mission to Moscow” began.

The film was pure Stalinist propaganda. It portrayed the dictator as a benevolent leader and the Soviet Union as a fraternal society freed from oppression. The show trials in Moscow, during which Stalin’s rivals were framed, were presented as fair hearings. She accused Leon Trotsky – a Jewish Bolshevik who was murdered on Stalin’s orders in 1940 – of being a Nazi agent.

But “Mission to Moscow” was neither produced by Kremlin-controlled studios nor vetted by Stalin’s censors. It came from the Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, and was approved by the censors of the United States government.

Today, conservatives accuse Hollywood of pumping out left-wing propaganda. During World War II, Hollywood actually did that. It received full support from the US government.

“Mission to Moscow” was part of a wave of films made between 1942 and 1945 that praised the Soviet regime. Among these films are RKO’s “North Star,” about Ukrainians fending off Nazi invaders; United Arts’ “Three Russian Girls,” about the love story between a Russian nurse and an American soldier; and Columbia’s “Counteroffensive,” which revolves around Red Army soldiers fighting against the Wehrmacht.

“Mission to Moscow” was directed by Michael Curtiz, who was directing “Casablanca,” but it was Davis’ brainchild. Based on his memoirs, the film depicted his pre-war period at the American Embassy in Moscow. Walter Huston played Davis. In the film’s introduction, the real Davies assures viewers that they are about to get an “honest” primer on the Soviet Union.

Stalin agreed. He was “very generous” in his “praise of the picture,” Davies wrote in a letter the next day. Soon after, the “Mission to Moscow” was opened through the Soviet Union

She came out to the United States to great fanfare in April 1943, according to historians Ronald and Alice Radosh. The marketing budget was $500,000, roughly $9 million in today’s money. There was an attractive premiere in Washington, attended by political insiders and journalists.

New York times He called it “the most frank picture on a political subject ever made by an American studio.” The “Mission to Moscow” certainly made no secret of its agenda: to make Americans appreciate the Soviet Union and rally support for the Soviet-American alliance.

This directive came directly from the White House. Davies later revealed that the filmmakers had “government blessing,” and that he had consulted with Franklin Roosevelt several times during production. According to producer Robert Buckner, the president said that the “mission to Moscow” should be undertaken “to show American mothers and fathers that if their sons are killed fighting alongside the Russians in our common cause, it is a good cause, and the Russians are worthy allies.”

“Mission to Moscow” and other pro-Soviet films of the era were produced under the auspices of the Office of War Information, which Roosevelt launched in 1942 to “promote understanding of the position and progress of Russia in the United States and abroad.” The war effort, policies, activities, and war objectives of the U.S. government. In other words, it oversaw American wartime propaganda.

But MGM’s “Russia Song,” a 1944 romantic drama, was also produced in cooperation with the Soviet government. The director consulted with the Soviet ambassador before filming, and the film showed footage from Soviet newsreels.

It follows an American bandleader, played by Robert Taylor, who is on tour in the Soviet Union. In one scene, he eats dinner in a crowded Moscow restaurant and shouts, “I can’t get over this!” Well, everyone seems to be having a good time.” Then he turns to his companion, a beautiful Russian pianist, and says, “If I didn’t know I met you in Moscow, you might be an American girl.” (Actress, Susan Peters, born Spokane, Washington.)

In the middle of “Russia Song,” the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, and Stalin gives a rousing speech to the nation. “Our fight for the freedom of our country will merge with the struggles of the peoples of America for their independence, for democratic freedoms and against the enslavement of Hitler’s fascist armies,” he declares. (The real Stalin never spoke of American democratic freedoms.)

Pro-Soviet films sparked a culture war on the home front – none more so than “Mission to Moscow.” Given Davis’s close ties with Roosevelt, it became a lightning rod in political debate.

The New York Times praised her “boldness” and said she “should have a valuable influence on clearer and more researched thinking.” Several branches of the American Legion, a veterans’ organization, have publicly supported her.

But there was huge backlash. Philosopher John Dewey denounced the “Mission to Moscow” as “the first example in our country of the totalitarian propaganda of mass consumption.” Novelist James Agee described it as “a mash-up: Stalinism with the New Deal with Hollywood… all mixed up into a brilliant portrait of what the filmmakers thought American audiences must think the Soviet Union was like — two million very happy million” — a dollar bowl of canned borscht .

The Republicans were up in arms. The Republican National Committee rejected the film as “New Deal propaganda.” Rep. Marion Bennett (R-Mo.) said Hollywood had “lost its mind and gone to extremes in trying to make communism look good,” and insisted that the Soviet-American alliance was supposed to be “temporary” anyway.

But Roosevelt hoped that the alliance would continue after the end of the war against the Nazis. He wanted a partnership with the Soviets, not a cold war.

Roosevelt wrote to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in September: “I believe we are all agreed…as to the necessity of making the Soviet Union a fully and equal member of any union of the great powers which may be formed for the purpose of preventing international war.” 1944. “It should be possible to achieve this by settling our differences through compromise by all parties concerned,” adding that “this should set things right for a few years until the child learns how to walk.”

Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s closest aide, said after the Yalta Conference in February 1945: “The Russians had proven that they could be rational and far-sighted, and neither the President nor any of us had any doubt that we could get along with them and continue to do so.” Peacefully with them in the distant future.

In this regard, films such as “The Song of Russia” and “Mission to Moscow” served Roosevelt’s foreign policy. They made the Soviet-American alliance acceptable to Americans, many of whom hated communism, and paved the way for the continuation of the alliance after the war.

American observers were clear about this. “The mission to Moscow will encourage confidence in the viability of post-war cooperation,” the OWI said in a report. In another report, the OWI praised the film as “an outstanding contribution to the government’s motion picture program.”

Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 was a major blow to the long-standing US-Soviet alliance, and “impaired, perhaps fatally, the prospects for avoiding the Cold War or at least mitigating its effects,” as Frank Costigliola wrote in his book Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances.

Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, did not believe that Stalin could be trusted. In the face of Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe, he declared the Truman Doctrine. He pledged that the United States “will support free peoples who resist attempts at oppression by armed minorities or external pressures.”

The Cold War was underway. Hollywood films supporting the Soviet Union were thrown into the dustbin of history.

But they didn’t stay there long. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hollywood, aiming to root out “Communist infiltration.” Committee members considered the films “The Song of Russia” and “Mission to Moscow” evidence that Hollywood was inundated with communist agents and Soviet sympathizers.

The committee called Ayn Rand – the anti-communist novelist who fled the Soviet Union in the 1920s – to testify. She explained how “The Song of Russia” vindicated Stalin’s regime. “I don’t think it was necessary to deceive the American people about the nature of Russia,” she said.

The panel also asked Jack Warner, president of Warner Bros., why he was on a “mission to Moscow.”

“The photo was taken when our country was fighting for its existence, with Russia as one of our allies,” Warner said.

Then, with an air of defiance, the Mongols continued: “If the ‘Mission to Moscow’ in 1942 was a subversive activity, the American Liberty ships carrying food and weapons to Russia’s allies and the American naval vessels accompanying them were likewise engaged in subversive activities. “