SUMMARY:

The article compares the response of Soviet cultural diplomacy to the crises in the Eastern bloc in 1956 and 1968. The instruments employed to deescalate the conflict were similar: corrections of the Soviet Union’s international image, institutional reforms of the mechanism of cultural diplomacy, and the finding of new channels and mediums of cultural influence. It is unclear, how efficient these efforts were by themselves in satellite socialist countries, not counting the influence of political interventions and lavish economic aid. Their effect on the domestic Soviet audience was much more solid and evident. Many initiatives of Soviet cultural diplomacy took place on the Soviet territory, and they helped to establish in the domestic public opinion a strong belief in the common history of the Soviet Union and East European countries, the beneficial role of Soviet military interventions, and the generosity of brotherly economic aid. Formed in the 1950s and 1960s, these popular beliefs persist in post-Soviet Russia.