The «Photography USA» Exhibition in Alma-Ata (1976): the US Public Diplomacy in Soviet Kazakhstan

Abstract

The short détente period brought remarkably vivid scientific and cultural exchanges between the USSR and USA. Technology and culture exhibitions played important role in these exchanges, representing the best achievements of both superpowers. In autumn of 1976 Alma-Ata, then capital of the Kazakh SSR, hosted the moving exhibition “Photography USA” organized by the United State Information Agency (USIA). The article analyzes the exhibition as a part of the US public diplomacy toolkit, and its perceptions by people of Soviet Kazakhstan reflected both in the USIA documents and in public memory. Despitethe Cold war ideological confrontation, live contact with Americans attracted crowds of people in Kazakhstan, and the exhibition gained great popularity in Alma-Ata and beyond. The US public diplomacy was quite effective in reaching its focus groups by manifestation of technological supremacy and visible difference in standards of living and consumption between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the point of view of modern theories of public diplomacy, the effectiveness of American traveling exhibitions of the era of detente in the USSR seems extremely high. The history of the cultural diplomacy of the Cold War period in Central Asia is a subject field that has hardly covered by researchers, which creates prospects for future joint projects.
Key words: public diplomacy, Cold war, USA, cultural exchanges.