Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Non-uniform propaganda
Noticed this ad in a 1969 British electronics mag.
A pocket-size transistor radio with MW/LW bands. Note the description: "Made to the highest Russian space-age standard." True or not, the description tells us that British consumers saw Russian electronics in a positive light.
Brits weren't following the official American line at that time. Our propaganda "informed" us constantly that Russian technology was hopelessly primitive, and we constantly heard about exploding TVs, useless cars, and so on.
Was an American transistor radio made to the highest American space-age standard? Nope. We had abandoned solid-state electronics to the Japs by 1960.
As I've found through buying and examining old Soviet stuff on Ebay, the Brit narrative was right. Soviet radios were made in Russia by Russians, and their engineering and manufacturing standards were excellent.
[Though the scanned picture above is hard to compare, this current Ebay listing may be the same radio. The knobs are different but the name is the same, the year is the same, and it has a rechargeable battery.]
A pocket-size transistor radio with MW/LW bands. Note the description: "Made to the highest Russian space-age standard." True or not, the description tells us that British consumers saw Russian electronics in a positive light.
Brits weren't following the official American line at that time. Our propaganda "informed" us constantly that Russian technology was hopelessly primitive, and we constantly heard about exploding TVs, useless cars, and so on.
Was an American transistor radio made to the highest American space-age standard? Nope. We had abandoned solid-state electronics to the Japs by 1960.
As I've found through buying and examining old Soviet stuff on Ebay, the Brit narrative was right. Soviet radios were made in Russia by Russians, and their engineering and manufacturing standards were excellent.
[Though the scanned picture above is hard to compare, this current Ebay listing may be the same radio. The knobs are different but the name is the same, the year is the same, and it has a rechargeable battery.]Labels: Гром победы
¶ 2:03 AM
