Propaganda and Persuasion: The Cold War and the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society by Jennifer Anderson (review)

According to Anderson, Taylor was "whitewashing the Soviet reality for Canadian readers. Soviet historiography is massive and so no fair criticism can be made for necessary selectivity, but given the comparatively tiny literature dealing with Canadian-Soviet relations, curious absences from Anderson's references are Graham Carr's "'No Political Significance of Any Kind': Glenn Gould's Tour of the Soviet Union and the Culture of the Cold War," (Canadian Historical Review, 95, 1 [March 2014]) placing Gould's 1957 concert tour of the Soviet Union in the context of Canadian cultural diplomacy and Josh Cole's "Alpha Children Wear Grey: Postwar Ontario and Soviet Education Reform," (Historical Studies in Education, 25, 1 [Spring, 2013]) on the influence a tour of the Soviet Union had on the authors of the 1968 Hall-Dennis report on education in Ontario. Ascending from scholarly pedantry to return to the overall achievement of this book, Anderson's extraordinary primary research offers a wealth of evidence on the range and degree to which the idea of the Soviet Union influenced Canadian progressives in the early years of the Cold War. [...]readers gain biographical insights into key activists in the CSFS including Nielsen and, particularly, Carter.