Disko ja tuumasoda . Disco and Atomic War
Verzio FF Submission From the 1950s onward, Estonia was the battleground for a peculiar information war, where the Soviet regime went head-to-head with Western pop-culture. Even at the height of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain couldn't stop the people from reaching out for the forbidden cultural...
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| Institution: | Open Society Archives at Central European University |
| Language: | Russian English Estonian Finnish |
| Published: |
Eetriüksus, Helsinki Filmi Oy
2009
Estonia |
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10891/osa:b0b74ef9-b32d-4f27-9ffd-17fa96d9eba6 |
| Summary: | Verzio FF Submission
From the 1950s onward, Estonia was the battleground for a peculiar information war, where the Soviet regime went head-to-head with Western pop-culture. Even at the height of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain couldn't stop the people from reaching out for the forbidden cultural fruit on the other side. Despite a ban on western media, many Estonians were able to pick up Finnish radio and television broadcasts from across the border with homemade antennas. They watched Western TV programs like "Dallas," soft porn like "Emmanuelle," science-fiction "Star Wars," and footage of disco dance music that drifted over the Iron Curtain via airwaves from a super-tall Finnish broadcast tower not more than 50 miles away. Jaak Kilmi's father, an electronics engineer, even started up his own secret business inserting decoders into Estonian and Russian TV sets. These broadcasts became windows to a world of dreams that the authorities could not fully close. Disco and Atomic War depicts the incomparable role that the "soft power" of Western popular culture played in shaping the worldview of Soviet children. |
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| Published: | 2009 |