If you listened to the last episode of Citations Needed, you heard that the CIA funneled money into into cultural institutions like the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Paris Review to win the cultural war against communism. Much of this led to the emphasis on first-person writing and a focus on individual experience.
I don't know about you comrades, but I got Ds throughout secondary (high school) in English. I fucking hated 20th century lit. Are there any pretentious and overly individualistic writers that you blame on the CIA?
I mean, the statues and stuff remained in the socialist realist style, but Soviet propaganda artwork was absolutely not limited to that style. Just look at the Cold War era stuff they were putting out, it's more intriguing than anything I've seen coming out of the west.
Stuff like this that looks like it could be a Pink Floyd album cover.
Or this
An incredibly simple anti-nuke one
Constructivist style
Psychedelic style
Socialist realist style
Same message, different style
Thats fair, I'm probably being at least a bit unfair in this. I assume it also wasnt like a 100% constant pressure to do art in that style, and there definitely is really interesting art that came out of the Soviet Union in the later parts.
I shared a bunch of you want some examples