What aspects of American culture did the soviets perceive as subversive?

Answer 1

There wasn't much in American culture the Soviets didn't find subversive - they pretty much felt our entire society was just one big mess, just as much as we felt about Communism (and still do).

However, if you look at the basic principles of Communism and Marxist ideology, and what itself feels as subversive in their own culture, you can apply that to what they thought about us. Knowing that, you can look at what would be a threat to a society in which everything is about the State and not the people.

Our Political System - A Republic is based on the foundation that government is accountable to the people. In Communism, everything is the State - period. The problem with that is that those in power always want to do whatever it takes to keep it - not much different than our system, but the biggest difference is that if we don't like our politicians we can get rid of them by voting. Not so in a Communist State.

Religion - Freedom of Religion in America is one of the biggest rights we as Americans have. In the Soviet Union, religion was outlawed - the USSR was an atheist state. Religious groups were viewed by the Soviets as a threat to state power, and any threat to state power was not allowed at all.

Labor Unions - Same thing - organized groups are threat to state power, as the Solidarity movement in Poland showed. It was that labor union that was the beginning of the end of the USSR and its eastern-bloc allies.

American Press/Media (radio, tv, etc.) - In America, Freedom of the Press and the right to Free Speech are at the top of the Constitutional Amendments, and for good reason - it's much harder for people to get away with anything in an open society. All media in the Soviet Union was state controlled, modeled much the same way as the Nazis controlled their press / media for Propaganda purposes. Nikita Kruschev named the Soviet state-controlled media as one of the USSR's greatest weapons. In such a society, any freedom of speech, once again, would be a threat to the State. The Soviet gulags (prisons) were full of writers and journalists who had the guts to say what they wanted, against State policy.

Capitalism - The biggest threat to the Soviet Union (and the biggest difference between our 2 societies) was our market system, based on individual profit. Communism is about everyone working to provide for everyone else. Sounds good, except the problem with that is that not everyone works as hard as the next guy. Would YOU like to work your a$$ off at a job, only to have the fruits of your labor given to others that didn't work as hard (or not at all?). In the end, it was our market system that helped force the collapse of the Soviet Union - Communism could not produce goods with the type of quality and technology that we took for granted back then. No one wants to buy junk, and about the only things the Soviets ever made that were any good were military in nature.

Pretty much anything having to do with individual freedoms and expression of free thinking and free will was subversive in the Soviet mindset, because Communism is about the entire State, and what the State thinks and tells its people to think. Thinking anything other than what you were told to think was subversive.

Answer 2

The Soviets perceived American values such as individualism, capitalism, freedom of expression, and consumerism as subversive. They saw these aspects as a threat to their communist ideology and believed they undermined their control over society. Additionally, the influence of American mass media, music, and fashion was seen as a challenge to Soviet cultural norms.