The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!: Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America

by Richard M. Fried

Overview

This book explores a widely lived yet little remembered facet of America's cultural and political history: the Cord War as experienced at the grassroots level. Here, Fried traces the cresting of modern patriotic observance during World War II, and then shows how patriotic and civic activists afterwards labored to recreate that remembered unity and commitment in the tension-filled Cord War era. A variety of national and local entities mounted campaigns "to sell America to the Americans" through "rededication" celebrations like Know Your America Week and Freedom Week. The American Heritage Foundation wheeled out the Freedom Train, which carried seminal documents of the nation's past to railroad depots across the US. Fried revisits the 1950 "Communist invasion" of Mosinee, Wisconsin, when ersatz Stalinists harassed and bullied citizens and the town's eateries served only potato soup and black bread. He also depicts the invention of new patriotic events like loyalty Day and Armed Forces Day.

Meticulously researched, this book recreates a colorful, sometimes comical, and always revealing dimension of our history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198023487
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/03/1998
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	1330L (what's this?)
File size:	613 KB

About the Author

Richard M. Fried is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Nightmare in Red (OUP, 1990).

Table of Contents

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Patriotic Pageantry in America1. Wake Up, America: Origins of Modern Patriotism2. Precious Freight: The Freedom Train3. Capturing the Streets for Loyalty4. Springtime for Stalin in Mosinee5. "The Cold War Belongs to Us All": Patriotizing the American Calendar6. The Cornwallises Send Regrets: Historical Commemoration in the 1950s7. Patriotic Gore8. "Shame on Them": The Decline on Cold War PageantryConclusionNotesManuscript SourcesIndex

What People are Saying About This

William E. Leuchtenburg

Richard Fried's lively, perceptive, brilliantly written account of two decades of pageantry offers sometimes chilling, and often comical insights into the political culture of Cold War America.
— University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Robert D. Schulzinger

A significant new approach to our understanding of domestic aspects of the Cold War. Drawing from a rich array of original sources, Fried shows how a government-private partnership created public pageants to generate popular support for the conflict with the Soviet Union. No other work explains so well how prominent officials and business leaders tried to persuade ordinary people to see connections between their daily lives and the global competition with the Soviet Union.
— University of Colorado, Boulder

David M. Oshinsky

A wonderful account of civil pageantry in the McCarthy era, when true patriots observed 'Loyalty Day,' rode the 'Freedom Train,' and marched in 'Wake Up, America' parades. In the crowded field of Cold War scholarship, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! stands out for its originality, its elegant writing, and its often-hilarious recreation of the grassroots struggle against communism in the ominous days of Alger Hiss, atomic air raid drills, and the Korean War. A must-read for anyone interested in modern American history, and a fun read as well.
— Rutgers University

Editorial Reviews

With the end of the Cold War, scholars can examine that era from a broader and deeper perspective than previously possible. This book reveals the concerted governmental effort to overcome American cultural complacency through staged patriotism as a national strategy against the Communist challenge. Traditional holidays, for example, became serious, legislated pageants. Fried (history, Univ. of Illinois; Nightmare in Red, Oxford Univ., 1991) covers the sanctification of the American flag, the implementation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and other media campaigns to sell Americanism. Many of these new stories confirm Alexis de Tocqueville's prescient insight from the early 19th century that warned about the tyranny of the majority. Readers may be comforted, however, that post-Cold War political correctness fads likely will be no more enduring than those adopted during the Cold War. Recommended for public and academic libraries.William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Library Journal

Richard M. Fried's new book The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! illuminates the public spectacles and pageantry which underlie the most colourful notions of the epoch between the end of the Second World War and the rise of a counter-culture....Without surrendering a sense of the comedy of Cold War pageantry, Fried brings historical rigour to a piece of social history that is too often exploited as camp. A fine picture emerges of the 'soft', everyday propaganda that existed alongside the more widely documented, malign culture of McCarthyism.'

Times Literary Supplement

"A wonderful account of civil pagenatry in the McCarthy era, when true patriots observed 'Loyalty Day,' rode the 'Freedom Train,' and marched in 'Wake Up, America' parades. In the crowded field of Cold War scholarship, The Russians are Coming stands out for its originality, its elegant writing, and its often hilarious recreation of the grass-roots struggle against communism in the ominous days of Alger Hiss, atomic air raid drills, and the Korean War. A must read for anyone interested in modern American history, and a fun read as well."—David Oshinsky, Rutgers University

"Richard Fried's The Russians are Coming is a significant new approach to our understanding of domestic aspects of the cold war. Drawing on a rich array of original sources, Fried shows how a government-private partnership created public pageants to generate popular support for the conflict with the Soviet Union. No other work explains so well how prominent officials and business leaders tried to persuade ordinary people to see connections between their daily lives and the global competition with the Soviet Union."—Robert D. Schulziner, University of Colorado, Boulder

"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! illuminates the public spectacles and pageantry which underlie the most colorful notions of the epoch between the end of the Second World War and the rise of a counter-culture. Fried...uncovers the surprising partnership between national ideology and private civic associations that fuelled the era's patriotism. He skillfully traces the quasi-professional networks of concerned citizens who engineered many star-spangled extravaganzas. Without surrendering a sense of the comedy of Cold War pageantry, Fried brings historical rigor to a piece of social history that is too often exploited as camp. A fine picture emerges of the 'soft', everyday propaganda that existed alongside the more widely documented, malign culture of McCarthyism."—Times Literary Supplement

"Lively, perceptive, brilliantly written....Offers sometimes chilling and often comical insights."—William E. Leuchtenburg, UNC-Chapel Hill

"Steering clear of present-day debates over who should have named whom, Richard Fried gives us a different view of the home front during the Cold War by focusing not on the leaders of the national security state but on its foot soldiers."—Wisconsin Magazine of History

"The author of two fine books on the McCarthy era, Fried examines with verve and insight ways in which citizens affirmed anticommunism...Fried [shows] that Cold War patriotism on federal, state, and local levels had much in common with elite mobilization of patriotic fervor during the hot war (similar themes and similar players) and that it also borrowed heavily from previous nativist crusades in American history."—The Journal of American History

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