3 - Pernicious Propaganda

Summary

Chapter 3 examines how American fears of “pernicious” Soviet propaganda threatened to undermine Soviet–American relations on the eve of Ilf and Petrov’s visit. The long history of American politicians and government officials equating advocacy of revolution and actual revolutionary violence made a Soviet promise to desist from distributing propaganda in the United States a requirement of the 1933 normalization of relations. In the summer of 1935, the participation of American communists in the Comintern (Communist International) congress in Moscow outraged American officials. But their desire for “friendly” relations prevented a diplomatic break. Still, as Ilf and Petrov found when they applied for visas, American officials exercised caution in allowing authors – even funny ones – into the United States.