Global Icon of the Cold War?
The Mushroom Cloud and Soviet Nuclear Culture
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
No Cold War symbol is more famous than the mushroom cloud. But for a long time, it was a taboo in the Soviet media. That changed only in the late 1950s. In the USSR, the peaceful use of nuclear power stood at the heart of science, politics, and propaganda. Soviet citizens were not to fear the future or the atomic bomb. The world’s destruction was not foreseen in Marxism. The mushroom cloud entered Soviet media by means of the international youth movement. It was first used in the Soviet campaign for a nuclear weapons test ban.
(Osteuropa 6-7/2016, pp. 215–236)