918 ★ CHAPTER 23 The United States and the Cold War
rest of the world. In many ways, the Cold War established the framework for
the discussion of freedom.
The Cultural Cold War
One of the more unusual Cold War battlefields involved American history and
culture. Many scholars read the American Creed of pluralism, tolerance, and
equality back into the past as a timeless definition of Americanism, ignoring
the powerful ethnic and racial strains with which it had always coexisted.
Under the code name “Militant Liberty,” national security agencies encouraged
Hollywood to produce anticommunist movies, such as The Red Menace (1949)
and I Married a Communist (1950), and urged that film scripts be changed to
remove references to less- than- praiseworthy aspects of American history, such
as Indian removal and racial discrimination.
The Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department emerged as
unlikely patrons of the arts. As noted in Chapter 21, the federal government had
openly financed all sorts of artistic works during the 1930s. But Cold War fund-
ing for the arts remained top- secret— in part because Congress proved reluctant
to spend money for this purpose, in part because Americans charged commu-
nist governments with imposing artistic conformity. In an effort to influence
public opinion abroad, the Soviet Union sponsored tours of its world- famous
ballet companies, folk dance troupes, and symphony orchestras. To counteract
the widespread European view of the United States as a cultural backwater, the
CIA secretly funded an array of overseas publications, conferences, publishing
houses, concerts, and art exhibits. And to try to improve the international image
of American race relations, the government sent jazz musicians and other black
performers abroad, especially to Africa and Asia.
Works produced by artists who considered themselves thoroughly non-
political became weapons in the cultural Cold War. The CIA promoted the
so- called New York school of painters, led by Jackson Pollock. For Pollock, the
essence of art lay in the process of creation, not the final product. His “action”
paintings, made by spontaneously dripping and pouring paint over large
canvases, produced works of vivid color and energy but without any recog-
nizable subject matter. Many members of Congress much preferred Norman
Rockwell’s readily understandable illustrations of small- town life to Pollock’s
“abstract expressionism.” Some called Pollock’s works un- American and won-
dered aloud if they were part of a communist plot. In 1946, for example, the
State Department assembled a stylistically diverse exhibition of contemporary
American paintings that it displayed in Europe and Latin America to demon-
strate “the freedom of expression enjoyed by artists in America.” But criticism
emerged in Congress. Representative Fred Busbey of Illinois said the exhibit
gave the impression that “the American people are despondent, broke down