The Shaping of Popular Consent: A Comparative Study of the Sovie ...

The 1930s was also the decade when certain technological developments, in particular innovations in communications, became fully realised, providing those in power—for the first time—with the ability for genuine mass communication. These innovations included the advent of sound in cinema: The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first sound film. This transformed film from a medium reliant on broad gestures and sight gags derived from the vaudeville tradition, at least in the US (e.g. the work of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd), to a medium with the capacity to tell long, complex narratives with emotive supporting music and subtle character interrelation. This made it a far more powerful form of propaganda, classic silent films such as Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) notwithstanding. In addition to cinema, radio became more widely spread and was particularly exploited by President Roosevelt for his “fireside chats”. In other areas, important innovations in the field of architecture allowed dazzling Art Deco skyscrapers (Empire State Building, Chrysler Building) to be built taller (and erected with greater rapidity) than ever before. All in all, it would be fair to argue that modern concepts of mass production, information and consumerism reached early maturity in the 1930s. Such innovations ensured that those in power were able to spread their message more directly, more often, and to more people than ever before in human history.

1941 marks an appropriate year to end the book because it was then that both the USSR and the United States were drawn into World War II (Hitler invaded the USSR in June; the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in December). Naturally, due to the necessities of mobilising a society for total war, the social, political and economic agenda was altered and would, obviously, never again re-align itself in exactly the same way. This was particularly the case for the Soviet Union, which found large swathes of its territory under Nazi occupation. Thus, for both the USSR and the United States, World War II came to represent a most significant benchmark in time which served to divide the world into two sections: before and after.