The China Friendship traveller in the 1970s and the dilemma of propaganda: memory, emotional response and narrative
Twentieth Century Communism - ISSN 1758-6437
Volume 2022 Number 22
The China Friendship traveller in the 1970s and the dilemma of propaganda: memory, emotional response and narrative
ANNE HEDḖN pages 117-140
Abstract
During the 1960s and 1970s, radicals from the west trav-elling to socialist countries in the ‘Third World’ tried to create an alternative pool of expertise, often with a utopian agenda. This left-wing tourism later became the subject of academic discussion and analysis. One prominent standpoint is that the travellers involved agreed with the propaganda to which they were subjected, or at least believed in it. Others regard the travellers’ loyalty to the socialist country in question as a way of improving the prospects for hegemony within left organisations at home. Another view is that the travellers contained their criticism amongst themselves, while struggling with their experiences in the country in question. The aim of this text is to examine, through a case study, how travellers not tied up in any party-building struggles back home perceived and explained their experience in China, and how this experience was understood and interpreted – and reinterpreted – in hindsight. The study is focused on the Swedish social worker Elsa Larsson, who went to China in 1977. Her impres-sions and reflections were documented in a short film made with a small hand camera, in letters and notes, and in two speaker texts to her film, one from 1977 and one from 2005. The study shows that Larsson did harbour some scepticism about what was presented during her visit – but also that the expectations of friends and colleagues in Sweden were important in how she came to tell the story of her trip.
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To cite this article
ANNE HEDḖN (2022) The China Friendship traveller in the 1970s and the dilemma of propaganda: memory, emotional response and narrative, Twentieth Century Communism, 2022(22), 117-140