Why did the USSR hate the United States so much? Blogger explains how the Soviets found an overseas enemy

If you take an interest in the life of modern Russia, you will certainly hear theses about the "decaying West," "American influence," and so on. The terrorist country inherited this hatred of the United States from the Soviet Union.

Disgust with everything free and qualitative was built into the ideology of communism. Maxim Mirovich, a Belarusian researcher of the Soviet Union, tells more about why the Soviet government and society decided to demonize the principles of democracy.

The roots of hatred

America has always valued human rights and freedoms. The authorities there performed only the function of security and control over the observance of laws, so this country was a real and effective example of a federal state. In comparison, the USSR looked incredibly poor and caricatured.

Throughout its history, the Soviet Union tried to give the impression of an ideal state, even if in reality it was far from the truth. Therefore, a democratic society built on radically different principles, where many peoples also live, posed a serious threat to Soviet propaganda. This was the main reason for the total hatred of the Soviet authorities for the United States.

In addition, the Americans had a clear position on the world stage and openly stated that they did not like liars, tyrants, and usurpers. The Soviets rightly took this personally and began to actively arm themselves.

Propaganda of hatred for the United States

In the USSR, access to information was limited, so people could not look at the world objectively and were forced to believe in the propaganda that the authorities were feeding them. Hatred of America was instilled in society from childhood and disguised as patriotism. In kindergartens and schools, children were told about how poorly and poorly people lived in the United States and how much they hated black people there.

There were also numerous rhymes and stories that convinced the younger generation that the Soviet Union was the most powerful and happy country, unlike the United States, where slaves could be bought. It was significant that the Gulag concentration camps still existed in the USSR, but the Soviet media, of course, kept silent about this.

Adults had their own propaganda. For example, magazines and newspapers always had a column in the style of "what's in it for them," which told about the insidious plans of the American imperialists to take over the USSR. And in numerous Soviet programs, such as International Panorama, several experts regularly talked about the poor and miserable life in the United States.

However, in all this, the USSR never compared objective criteria of living standards, because they could easily lead society to truthful thoughts. Instead, it was customary to invent pseudo-categories, such as the number of sheets of rolled steel per capita or the amount of grain threshed in a particular collective farm. Given these strange indicators, it was not uncommon for propagandists to conclude that everything was bad in America and that it would soon collapse because of this.

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