Episode 7: Children of Zorin

In the 1970s, a Soviet journalist…

named Valentin Zorin made a series of documentary films about the United States. At a time when few Russian journalists came to the U.S., Zorin traveled all across the country, and gained access few American journalists had. The Cold War was a battle of ideas, and Zorin saw himself on the frontlines. He was on a quest to unmask the United States by spreading doubt, conspiracy theories, and a strange cocktail of truth and misinformation. 

Photo: SPUTNIK / Alamy Stock Photo

Key Sources:

• Watch and listen to a subtitled excerpt of one of Zorin’s films called America Autumn 1971.

• Read about the history of Soviet television in Ellen Mickiewicz’s Split Signals.

• Learn more about the history of Cold War journalists like Zorin in historian Dina Fainberg’s new book Cold War Correspondents.

• Listen to a 1970 radio interview of oil tycoon and conservative American propagandist, H.L. Hunt.

• You can watch many of Zorin’s films (including The Puzzle of Dallas and Boston Contrasts) online (in Russian, no subtitles).

• Watch the opening of the 1967 Cold War thriller Billion Dollar Brain.

• Listen to Senator Susan Collins querying Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at the Senate Intelligence Hearing on the Russian Influence in the 2016 Presidential Elections.

• Watch and listen to President Reagan's Interview With Soviet Television on May 20, 1988.

• Listen to reporter Charles Maynes’s interview with Russian journalist Lyudmila Savchuk.

• Watch a news report about Valentin Zorin’s visit to Disneyland (at 6:48 in the linked video).

• For more stories about Cold War cultural diplomacy, check out our editor Julia Barton’s podcast Spacebridge, co-hosted with Charles Maynes.