"Enemy Number One" in the Soviet and American Movies Suring the Cold War

Aspect-Press publishing house published a collective monograph "Enemy number One" in the Symbolic Politics of the Cinematographies of the USSR and the USA during the Cold War". In this regard, the authors of the book thinks that Soviet and American cinematic images of "enemy number one" had many similarities, and the book noted parallelism in various aspects of creating these images. There were also significant differences: 1) in the United States, the opposition to the USSR was more rigid; 2) the policy of macropolitical identity pursued by the cinematographers of the USSR and the USA was based on different principles: class and national, respectively (this led to the production of images of "good Americans" as a necessary component of Soviet anti -Americanism); 3) Soviet cinema as a whole was characterized by a more balanced and cautious attitude towards representations of the main geopolitical rival; 4) American cinema created a more one-dimensional image of the enemy, while Soviet cinema created a more one-dimensional image of "Us"; 5) finally, the film images of "enemy number one" had different meanings for the American and Soviet audiences. For American viewers, the USSR, in all likelihood, was not only the main rival and the main threat, but also the embodiment of absolute evil; in this aspect, nothing could compete with the images of the "Reds". As for the Soviet film audience of the Cold War, Nazi Germany was still "enemy number one" for them; in terms of emotional intensity, films dedicated to America are incomparable with the best films about the Great Patriotic War, such as The Fate of a Man, The Cranes Are Flying, The Ballad of a Soldier.