Authors

Discussion

Drawing on archival documents of the USSR Ministry of Culture and the Soviet impresario agency Goskontsert, my paper examines the history of Cold War cultural diplomacy in the Global South between 1975 and 1990. It focuses on Soviet exports of pop music that aimed to promote a positive image of the socialist camp among new audiences beyond the political and cultural elites of post-colonial states. Most historians of Soviet cultural diplomacy examine on early post-Stalinist attempts to legitimise Cold War. Exploring a form of cultural production that was particularly responsive to the pressures of profit and cultural globalization, my paper tests how Soviet cultural policies in the Global South evolved in light of major economic shifts of the late twentieth century. By examining correspondence between impresario agencies in the USSR and abroad, the paper reveals that pop professionals responsible for organising international concert tours acquired managerial powers that led them to shift away from the Global South and towards exchanges across the Iron Curtain. The paper documents the USSR’s waning commitment to its ‘cultural empire’. It thus helps explain the trajectory of late Cold War competition in the Global South and the ways in which political changes of late socialism transformed mental geographies in the USSR itself.