RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: Did the CIA write a rock song? A podcast explores the agency's musical influencers Sat Aug 01, 2020 10:26 pm | |
| When I read Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago a few years ago, I couldn’t understand the fuss. At the time it was published (in 1957), the novel was a huge success, and Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature a year later.
Listening to journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s engrossing podcast Wind of Change, I learnt that the CIA was involved in the novel’s distribution as part of its Cold War propaganda. Both the Soviets and Americans saw the book as being critical of communism; the CIA printed thousands of copies in Russian and smuggled them into the USSR.
It wasn’t the only covert action the CIA took: the agency funded literary magazines and promoted artists and musicians, including Nina Simone, who unwittingly travelled to Nigeria on a trip orchestrated by the spy agency.
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/did-the-cia-write-a-rock-song-a-podcast-explores-the-agency-s-musical-influencers-20200626-p556hj.html
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