US involvement in General Augusto Pinochet’s overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende was among the topics touched upon in an interview with Democratic Party presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in Playboy magazine in November 1976. The issue flew from the newsstands as Carter, known for his strong Christian beliefs, confessed mental infidelity from his wife in the interview. The interview as a whole, however, mainly focused on his foreign political views, such as how to deal with Latin American countries in the Cold War context. Carter also claimed in the interview that he wished he had publicly condemned the Vietnam War much earlier, capturing the critical view of the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate era.
With an extensive focus on international affairs, the volumes of Playboy magazine, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953, offer a remarkable archive of critical reviews of US foreign politics throughout the Cold War decades. While the complex, contradictory, and often progressive messages of Playboy’s sexual politics have been highlighted in a number of books and articles (e.g., Pitzulo 2011; Fraterrigo 2008, 2009; Osgerby 2001; Beggan and Allison 2001; Conekin 2001; Jancovich 2001), the magazine’s critical coverage of international affairs during the Cold War era has not perhaps been fully recognized. This chapter approaches Playboy as one of the spaces for expanding the political understanding of the American public during the global Cold War, by discussing the magazine’s engagement with international figures on issues of US foreign politics published in its innovative question-and-answer interview format 1 during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. 2
The impact of the Cold War on American culture was enormous. Widespread fear of domestic, as well as foreign, enemies stands as a defining characteristic of the era. Playboy interviews were one platform that gave these feared enemies opportunities to explain their views to American audiences and present overt critiques of US foreign policy. The first interviewee in the magazine to comment on foreign political tension was British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was interviewed in its March 1963 issue (41–52), only a few months after the dangerous escalation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Russell, known as an antimilitarism activist, served as a forceful intermediary between the opposing parties at the time of the missile crisis. In the Playboy interview, Russell criticized both the Soviet and US governments and called for neutral third-party countries to solve the conflict and neutralize the East-West opposition. In addition, Russell gave credit to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for showing himself to be “less belligerent” than Kennedy and, thus, responsible for avoiding a war of nuclear devastation (42).
In January 1967, Playboy gave the floor to Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro (59–84). In addition to a lengthy account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro explained the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States from his point of view. He listed a number of motivations for these exiles: some used to be privileged and were concerned for their future under the new regime, and some longed for a better material life. In any case, the ultimate culprit was Fulgencio Batista, the overthrown president and dictator of Cuba. Castro questioned the hypocritical rhetoric of US foreign policy: “Tell me, for what purpose did the United States come to liberate us at the Bay of Pigs [in 1961]? To re-establish the power of the landowners, of thieves, of torturers, of the managers of its monopolistic businesses? In what sense can that be called liberty?” (69) Castro’s criticisms were supported in Playboy by British historian Arnold Toynbee, who, in an April 1967 interview (57–76, 166–169), welcomed the Latin American revolution. According to Toynbee, the region needed the “putting down of the selfish minority that is in power in most Latin American countries” (66). In the interview, Toynbee also joined early critics of the Vietnam War and the conflict-oriented foreign policy of the United States. In his opinion, America wanted to play the role of “Saint George” on a world scale and needed a worldwide “imaginary dragon”—monolithic world communism—to oppose (58).
These kinds of critical claims received inside-circle confirmation in a Playboy interview with former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Philip Agee in August 1975 (49–64, 78, 164–166). According to Agee, “[T]he Marxists [were] right about American economic imperialism” (53). Agee’s cynical account of CIA covert operations, assassinations and attempted coups in Cuba, Uruguay, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Ghana set the standard for discussions of the global Cold War in Playboy interviews during the 1970s and 1980s. The Agee interview was published alongside an excerpt from his book Inside the Company (1975), first published in the United Kingdom due to legal problems in the United States.
In the August 1975 interview, the ex-CIA agent argued that the ongoing Cold War was a genuinely American invention intended to protect the economic interests of American industries operating in global markets: “The Soviets helped to start the Cold War, but militarily they were much weaker than the U.S. public was led to believe.… The scenario of an innocent but defensive America struggling to save the world from Communist dictatorship provided the rationalization for the dominance of foreign economics by American companies. This was the CIA’s main mission, to guarantee a favourable foreign-investment climate for U.S. industry” (52). According to Agee, CIA covert operations began a secret political warfare against those who opposed the Marshall Plan, the American initiative to aid Western European economies after World War II. For example, the CIA broke dock strikes against Marshall Plan aid and got noncommunist labor unions to withdraw from the World Confederation of Trade Unions and establish the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. By the 1950s unions supported by the CIA had become an effective counterweight to those controlled by communists in Western Europe. As Agee described, in the 1960s, the CIA expanded its operations to African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American countries (52).
Two years after the Agee interview, Carter, now president, launched a vocal international campaign criticising human-rights violations by the Argentina junta. A year later, he cut off military aid to the dictators of Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Paraguay. Although the US government continued to provide commercial credit to dictatorships, Carter’s principled attempt to penalize human-rights violators in Latin America stood in stark contrast to the actions of both his predecessor and his successor. In 1981 the new Republican president, Ronald Reagan, signalled a clear change in policy. He enlisted Argentina’s military help in Central America, a collaboration that led to more atrocious rights violations (Livingstone 2009, 69–70). The following sections discuss Playboy interviews focused on Cold War issues in Central America during Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s.
Invoking the Misinformed President
In recent historical writing, the Cold War has been characterized as one of the most disturbing periods in the history of US foreign policy toward Latin America. In the name of containing communism, the United States supported dictators, undermined legitimately elected governments, and colluded with authoritarian governments to repress dissent. It has been argued that the United States distorted Latin American political life to such an extent that it changed the course of history in several sovereign nations in the region (Livingstone 2009, 23–24). According to journalist and Latin American scholar Grace Livingstone, this development resulted from the division in the American political establishment after the defeat in Vietnam. Democratic Party liberals thought the war had been a mistake and that, from then on, Third World politics should no longer be viewed through the lens of the Cold War. An alternative view, however, began to gain support within the New Right: the United States had lost Vietnam as it did not use sufficient force early in the conflict. According to this view, the Cold War framework was topical, and the Soviet Union was the greatest threat facing the United States. Consequently, Soviet sponsorship of Third World liberation movements could leave the United States isolated in a hostile world. Military actions in Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Iran, Grenada, and Nicaragua, thus, were all seen by the New Right as examples of Soviet aggression (ibid., 71–72). Jeane Kirkpatrick, one of Reagan’s closest advisers, argued in an influential essay that Carter’s human-rights policy had allowed anti-American forces to come to power. Dictatorships in Latin America were no longer viewed as international pariahs but, instead, were seen as valuable allies against the Soviets in the new Cold War (ibid., 72).
Following this policy, the Reagan administration unleashed unparalleled military and economic aggression against the tiny Central American country of Nicaragua. The Reagan administration claimed that “in the American continent, there is no regime more barbaric and bloody, no regime that violates human rights in a manner more constant and permanent, than the Sandinista regime” (Livingstone 2009, 82). Determined to overthrow the Sandinistas but convinced that the US public would not accept a conventional invasion in the aftermath of Vietnam, the Reagan administration seized upon a new military strategy: low-intensity warfare. Crucially, this strategy did not require large numbers of US troops but relied on special forces and intelligence operatives to train foreign paramilitary forces (ibid., 76). A covert paramilitary war against Nicaragua began in the spring of 1981.
Playboy covered the event with several exclusive interviews presenting covert criticism of the Reagan administration’s Central American policy. Playboy’s editorial policy was by no means exceptional. To the contrary, since the last years of the Vietnam War, the American news media had tended to question the simplistic Cold War narrative, and in coverage of Central America, the Reagan administration often stood on the opposing side from the journalists (Hallin 1984, 22; 1987, 5). Nevertheless, as Daniel Hallin has remarked, information on Third World countries appeared in the news in limited and fragmented form due to the focus on US officials as the premier newsmakers (Hallin 1987, 15). Moreover, Hallin has argued that, as a consequence of a public relations campaign by the US government, significant changes in Central American reporting can be seen, including the tendency of journalists to pull back from reports that challenged official accounts of events, which in turn strengthened the Cold War framing of “Communist interference” (Hallin 1987, 13–14).
While the Washington administration’s perspective dominated the agenda in Central American news coverage, Playboy kept publishing question-and-answer format interviews, presenting the views of Central American representatives in lengthy, direct quotations. The interviews provided readers with background information, analysis, opinions, and experiences from “behind the news” through the statements of interviewees often representing the voice of the enemy. These interviews presented covert criticism of the Reagan administration through the comments of prominent international figures, such as Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the “unofficial ambassador for Leftist Latin America” (February 1983, 66). At the time, Marquez was a controversial figure in the United States due to his socialist sympathies and warm friendship with Castro and French president François Mitterrand (France was among the NATO countries selling weapons to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas). In his Playboy interview, Marquez identified the core problem of US Latin and Central American policy: the Reagan administration saw any nonconformity by the people of Latin America not as the end product of the miserable conditions in those countries but as a Soviet operation (71).
Since Reagan’s election, you have Jeane Kirkpatrick running off to Chile and telling Augusto Pinochet that he is the kind of “authoritarian democracy” Latin America needs. Since her visit, it’s impossible to get one prisoner out of Pinochet’s jails! Nor can we get answers from the Argentine government about the 15,000 Argentine citizens who’ve disappeared. Carter took away support from the dictators to the greatest possible extent. Reagan gives them more support than should be possible. (72)
Notwithstanding the difficulty of estimating how exceptional these kinds of critical accounts are, it can be suggested that Playboy’s countercultural status as a nude magazine gave it some advantages in raising issues and presenting contradictory voices. Playboy shared the premises of the liberal political press (Cook 1998, 110) but also challenged the political establishment and its norms of decency. This role could make Playboy a forum for interviewees representing the enemy. Giving an interview to Playboy instead of more established news magazines could be seen as a way of ridiculing the US political establishment and media elite. The often-repeated references to the exceptionality and exclusivity of these interviews were, of course, the magazine’s promotional message to its audience. However, the magazine also drew attention to the actual competition among various media outlets to get interviewees with notorious personalities behind the enemy lines. For instance, an exclusive panel interview of the top leadership of the Sandinista revolutionaries opened with a sassy account of the Playboy journalist misleading competitors hunting for a story in the city of Managua. In response to competitors’ questions about what Playboy was doing in Nicaragua, the writer Claudia Dreifus claimed that she was working on a piece on “the Girls of Managua” (September 1983, 58).
The Sandinista interview itself embodied higher principles than beating the competition. It noted that the United States had financed counterrevolutionary activities against the Nicaraguan government for years, and so the American people deserved to know more about those people “who so obsess the Reagan administration”: “For [the American] people, … they are a group whose views, aims, and personalities are remarkably unreported” (57). Dreifus was also the name behind the Marquez interview published earlier that year. The interviewed panelists were Sergio Ramirez Mercado, Father Ernesto Cardenal, and Comandante Tomás Borge Martínez. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was interviewed separately in the same issue (September 1983, 63, 196–200). The panel interview began with a lengthy introduction of Nicaraguan history and the country’s relations with the United States, and then turned to the interviewees’ personal experiences, family backgrounds, civil professions, life goals, and views of ongoing military activities and rising death rates. They also got an opportunity to comment on the behavior of US leaders, such as Secretary of State George Shultz, who had, according to panelists, ignored concerns raised by the Sandinistas and refused to shake hands with the Sandinista government Foreign Minister Father Miguel d’Escoto. According to panelist Sergio Ramirez Mercado, “That incident shows the mental and ideological problems the Reagan people have. They despise us. As people. As a revolution. From their viewpoint, we deserve only annihilation. Why should they waste their time in speaking with such a small, weak country?” (66). The revolutionaries also wondered about Reagan’s address on Latin America to the joint session of the US Congress. “It all sounds like some Wild West movie he’s acting out. He’s playing a cowboy who is killing all the ‘bad guys’ in Nicaragua” (67).
[Ortega:] We have a proposal; we’ve made it elsewhere, but we’ll make it here in Playboy, too. We propose contacts with the U.S. to establish a dialogue in the presence of a third country—any common friend of the United States and Nicaragua. It could be in Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, France. There could be several countries represented. That would prevent the problem we’ve encountered in the past: everyone leaving the meeting saying what he pleased.
[Dreifus]: So you’re saying here, categorically: we want to negotiate. Name the place!
[Ortega]: Yes! Yes! (200)
Analyzing Hostile Media Images
What is stressed most to the North American people is that we have a revolution tied to the Soviet Union, and the danger is that, little by little, that view will become accepted by the U.S. public. Conversely, Nicaraguans may begin to think of the United States as synonymous with aggression, invasion, dictatorships, and threats. Both images are equally superficial. (195)
Most human-rights organizations say that the period in which you were president of the junta was the bloodiest in recent El Salvadoran history. Between 15,000 and 20,000 innocent people were massacred by the army and the security forces. How do you reconcile your demands on the military with what they did? (71)
It was brought up that Duarte’s opponents considered him no more than a frontman for the right-wing oligarchy and military, charging that his promises to end the death squads had led to no firmer actions than the transfer of a handful of officers. Duarte defended himself, blaming the media for focusing on the death rates and romanticizing the guerrillas: “You have to sell your news, and news about El Salvador is death, violence, abuse, the ‘bad army,’ the destruction. That is what you have to sell to America, because that is what America wants to buy.… What we [the El Salvadoran government] are doing is not glamorous enough for you to sell. That’s why the media doubts us. It is easier for a reporter to believe the guerrillas” (64).
Reagan can order an invasion, such as the one against Grenada, or a dirty war such as the one against Nicaragua. He can even use the codes in that briefcase he always carries around with him to unleash a thermonuclear war that could mean the end of the human race.… Not even the Roman emperors had that kind of power. (62)
This interview shows that relations between the countries had deteriorated dramatically since Reagan took office. US economic sanctions, embargoes, and travel bans impoverished the Cuban people during the 1980s. Even the export of medicines to Cuba was banned. The US government also accused Cuba of cooperating with Colombia in drug trafficking. Castro rejected that allegation, claiming that, instead, drug traffickers avoided Cuba due to strict narcotics laws. In Playboy, he accused America of fomenting violence instead of looking for diplomatic resolutions: “It is as if the Reagan Administration wants to teach an unforgettable lesson so that no one else in Central America or Latin America will ever think of rebelling against the tyrannies serving U.S. interests” (68). And Castro raised this penetrating question: “You have made allies [with the] worst tyrants in Argentina and Chile, you have used the worst murderers in the world to organize the contra revolution—and yours is the country of freedom?” (64).
In addition to his views on Reagan’s foreign policy, Castro was asked about his opinion on what would be the best US policy toward the region. In addition to resuming economic relations with Cuba, Castro suggested that the massive debts incurred for armed conflicts in the Third World countries should be cancelled. This could be done by cutting defense spending to compensate for the losses to US banks (181). Similar proposals were later presented by politicians and economists around the world, but when introduced by Castro in Playboy in August 1985, the idea hardly awakened further reactions—perhaps it was not even supposed to. It was noted in the Castro interview that, despite available media coverage, average Americans were badly informed about the Third World realities in Asian, Latin American, and African countries. However, this ignorance did not mean that information about Third World problems and their intimate links with US foreign policy was not available, even in Playboy. The following section discusses examples from Cold War–related conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Exiles and Enemies
Playboy interviews covered issues in Cold War hotspots in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, as well as Central America. Readers of the magazine received a wide range of analyses concerning the direct or indirect role of the United States in various world conflicts. Through the interviews, the issues in the farthest corners of the world became closer, and the US role as the world policeman more evident. An early example is a November 1977 Playboy interview with Henry Kyemba (77–109), an exiled Ugandan minister and cabinet officer who discussed the atrocities of Idi Amin, the feared military dictator who came to power in 1971 and ruled Uganda until 1979. Kyemba gave a detailed account of the bloody genocide executed by Amin, describing a horrid mass of dead bodies that floated in a river, too many for the crocodiles to eat. Kyemba also directly criticized the United States and United Kingdom for maintaining an undisrupted coffee trade with Uganda despite the ongoing genocide in the country.
Another genocide reconstructed in the pages of Playboy was that in Kampuchea, presented as a consequence of the Vietnam War. Interviewed in Playboy in May 1987 (61–80), Norodom Sihanouk, the exiled prince and former president of Kampuchea, justified his changed stance toward US troops in Kampuchea: “In the seventies, I supported the Viet Kong and the North Vietnamese because I believed they were defending a just cause, leading a just struggle for the freedom of Vietnam. And I fought the Americans because I could not accept their illegal intervention in the internal affairs of my country.… And now I am fighting Vietnam” (74). In addition to pointing out the crucial role of America in the destruction of Kampuchea during the Vietnam War, it was recalled in the interview that, despite the massacre that the extremist communist Khmer Rouge executed at the command of its feared leader Pol Pot, the United States kept supporting the Khmer Regime: “The U.S.A. wants Cambodia to be independent, not a slave of Vietnam. That is why the U.S.A. votes for the Coalition of Democratic Kampuchea even though the Khmer Rouge are still there” (74).
The consequences of American intervention in world conflicts was also commented on in the case of the Lebanese civil war between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Lebanese government that broke out in 1973, followed by Syrian occupation and Israeli involvement. In July 1984, Playboy interviewed Walid Jumblatt (51–60), the leader of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party and head of the Islamic Druse sect, which allied with the Syrian army to crush the PLO in Lebanon. Jumblatt’s troops were responsible for bombing a US Marines base on the Lebanese shore in 1983, after which the US Congress pressed Reagan to pull out the Marines from Lebanon. In response to a question about why the base was shelled, Jumblatt insisted on blaming the United States and claimed that the US battleship New Jersey attacked civilian targets in Lebanon: “The Marines destroyed so many villages, they killed so many people! Ask Reagan: Why did he send the Marines to Lebanon? What for?” (55). Jumblatt explained the spread of anti-Americanism in the region and the inflamed relations between Syria and the United States, illustrating the importance of the Cold War dynamics of the conflict: “America is a superpower; it’s just protecting its own interests. It doesn’t really care about other people and nations. Other people sense that” (60). These accounts of complicated ethnic and religious groupings, hostilities, and alliances seem ominous when read from a historical distance, especially after the wars and conflicts in the region during the late 1980s and the 1990s, which planted the seeds for the rise of the extremist Islamic State in Syria in the 2010s.
Yet another Playboy interviewee who stressed the responsibility of the United States in the peace process in Middle East was PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who was interviewed in the September 1988 issue of the magazine (51–66). Arafat urged that the Reagan administration stop “hiding the sun with its little finger” and deal with the rights of five million Palestinians to find the right road to peace: “If not, it is the United States who will be responsible for the misery and bloodshed in the region” (56). As in the case of Central American conflicts, a Playboy interview was used to directly address the Reagan administration: “We repeat our offer here, through this interview, in your magazine: Let’s work for peace, a just peace, a balanced peace, so that we can achieve security for all in the region.” In return, the Palestinians would recognize Israel “within international legalities” (59). Arafat’s criticism focused on Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza, despite United Nations resolution 242 requiring withdrawal. The interview also shed light on the private life of this controversial leader and what it was like to live under constant life threats and to dedicate one’s life solely to work.
Feared Middle East military leaders, such as Jumblatt and Arafat, were interesting to US audiences due not only to their rivalry with Israel but also to broader Cold War tensions and US interests in the region during the 1980s. For the interviewees, published dialogues with Playboy could be considered a beneficial form of populist cultural diplomacy for their cause (e.g., Chamberlin 2012). After all, it is likely that giving an interview to a magazine with such a particular image and international reputation was done with certain expectations.
Voices Behind the Iron Curtain
While the Cold War in Third World countries was marked by wars and conflicts, the European Cold War was characterized most of all by an economic boom in Western Europe, made possible by the durable peace on the continent. In Eastern Europe, however, growth slowed as the problems inherent in top-down planning models became evident, and the Cold War military and foreign policy consensus began to erode (McMahon 2003, 111–112). In December 1981, the Soviet-backed government of Poland cracked down on the noncommunist labor union Solidarity and arrested the officers of the movement, among them the admired leader Lech Walesa. Walesa had become globally famous for his rise from shipyard worker to massive political celebrity, inspiring his entire country to stand up to Soviet domination. Time magazine, which selected Walesa as “Man of the Year” for 1981, described him as “one of the communist world’s most charismatic figures” (Time, January 1981, 40).
Walesa was also interviewed in Playboy magazine. In the interview published in February 1982 (61–70, 162), he was asked about the aims and objectives of Solidarity and his personal political views. However, the interview made no direct reference to the banning of Solidarity or martial law (in effect from December 1981 to July 1983). It was mentioned that Solidarity faced “tough confrontations with the Polish leaders” and “has also watched the Soviet Union mass thousands of troops and artillery along the Polish border in a not-so-subtle reminder of what happens to Russian satellites when they stray too far from the socialist orbit” (61). General Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of the Communist Party and prime minister of Poland, was also mentioned but only to speculate about his possible upcoming presidency. Thus, there is a slight discrepancy between the historical timeline and the time of the interview’s publication. The piece seems to have been written sometime before martial law took effect. It is noted in the introduction of the interview that Polish-speaking journalists Ania and Krusia Bittenek were sent to Warsaw in October 1981, but their meeting with Walesa was postponed for several weeks. Presumably, the interview was done some time in November 1981, immediately before martial law took effect and Walesa was arrested in December 1981. Even so, it is puzzling that the introduction was not updated to reflect the changed circumstances in Poland and Walesa’s imprisonment before publication in the February 1982 issue. The reasons can be only speculated on here. It is hard to believe that it can be explained by editorial flaws or information gaps in the magazine. Perhaps there were difficulties confirming up-to-date information about the latest situation, and it was seen as better to publish the piece with its historical context focused solely on the rise and achievements of the Solidarity movement and the international media celebrity of its charismatic leader, without any references to his imprisonment. The article celebrates inevitable, ongoing change: “Poland has freedom in its blood; no one can hold us captive” (61); “This revolt is not a challenge to the Soviets but to ourselves. We are responsible for this mess” (162).
From the perspective of transforming Poland, this Playboy interview attests to the importance of attention and visibility in international, namely Western, media to achieving change in Eastern Europe. Moreover, this interview attests to the particular status of Playboy magazine as an iconic example of American commercial popular culture, especially repulsive to communist authorities, and a high-profile showcase opportunity for nonconformist political thinking (Saarenmaa 2014, 2017).
Poland and Walesa’s Solidarity movement were also important to Americans. The Reagan administration reacted to the crackdown on the movement with broad-based sanctions against Moscow. However, as has been argued, rather than making an ideological commentary, the Reagan administration used Poland as a pretext for subverting a planned natural gas pipeline deal between the Soviet Union and several Western European countries, infuriating European leaders and precipitating a serious European-American clash of interests (McMahon 2003, 150–151). Apparently, European defense planners no longer saw the Soviet threat in the same apocalyptic terms as their colleagues across the Atlantic (ibid., 152–153). At the same time, there were mass demonstrations against American and Soviet missile deployments across Europe, and an antinuclear consciousness was growing among the American populace. In response to these political realities, Reagan had to back off and soften his rhetoric (ibid., 154).
Soviet–American relations transformed radically after the 1985 election of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev’s foreign policy aimed at halting the arms race with the United States and was intimately linked with his domestic push for perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Gorbachev’s attempts to restructure the social and economic base of the Soviet Union were broadly commented on in a Playboy interview with chess player Garry Kasparov. The interview came out in November 1989 issue (61–73), just as the Berlin Wall was collapsing and during the last days of the Soviet empire. It was recalled in the interview that, despite the ongoing liberalization in Soviet politics, Playboy was still banned in the Soviet Union. Playboy had become a symbolic landmark of the liberalization of the state, and the posing of Russian model Natalia Negoda in Playboy in the May 1989 issue had been a massive event. As Kasparov noted, “[Soviet women] have been liberated for seventy-two years, and all they want is to become sex objects. It’s almost hundred per cent the opposite of the West. That’s why Natalya’s appearance in Playboy was such an event” (72).
Kasparov was somewhat pessimistic about the future prospects of the Soviet Union, despite the ongoing reforms and negotiations with the West: “Our country isn’t ready to become a real partner in world cooperation. It’s too old fashioned and slow, too sleepy and too jealous of the West. It’s been more than seventy years of the wrong direction, you know. You can’t just change your identity like jumping off the wall” (73). Other problems were that the country’s economy was in ruins and that the mentality of people used to the communist system could not be changed overnight: “The new mentality called by Gorbachev hasn’t come to the minds of our leadership yet. As for the people, the system that they have had for more than seventy years has killed their ability to think in a normal way and work to improve their lives” (72). As we know today, Gorbachev’s government was indeed a short-lived enterprise. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries in 1991, less than two years after the Kasparov interview. Playboy’s interview with Kasparov captured this very specific moment on the historical timeline, when the future of the Soviet Union was still full of questions, concerns, and hopes for the future.
Conclusion
After the passing away of Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Enterprises, in September 2017 at the age of 91, the legacy of Playboy magazine has been, once again, discussed worldwide. As it has been argued, Playboy, throughout its history, has contributed to covering many controversial topics other than estheticized female nudity, not the least US foreign politics. The examples discussed here are a small share of the amazingly rich, varied content of Playboy in the late 1970s and 1980s. Again, the largest share of Playboy interviews during this time focused on personalities in the aggressively expanding American entertainment industry. Nevertheless, as pointed out here, foreign politics was a regularly covered subject in the format, and it was discussed in detailed, in-depth interviews focusing on the political ideas, ideologies, and opinions of world-famous political leaders. Perhaps the most notable feature of the interviews was that they did not avoid views unfavorable to the United States but, rather, tended to challenge the contemporary foreign political discourses and official authorities of the US government. This characteristic situates the Playboy interview format within the liberal tradition of American news journalism, part of the long legacy of the American press that can be associated with anti-authoritarian views, liberal stances, and support for Democratic Party candidates (Cook 1998, 110).
Playboy magazine shared the premises of the liberal political press, and also challenged the political establishment and its norms of decency. As has been suggested here, it was perhaps precisely this function that made Playboy a forum for non-American interviewees representing the enemy in the political context of the Cold War. In some cases, giving an interview to Playboy, globally famous for its nude girl pictures and liberal stances toward pre- and extramarital sexuality, was considered a means of ridiculing the US political and media elite.
Without doing comparative research on content from other (liberal) US news media, it is not possible to make claims about the exceptionality of the Playboy interviews. Instead, this analysis shows that Playboy should be counted among those forums that covered global Cold War conflicts and US foreign politics from the liberal point of view. As attested here, Playboy approached the subject of world politics with specific expertise in various geopolitical contexts. This approach was due to the magazine’s bright editorial policy and high-quality network of freelancers willing to contribute in-depth interviews in their specific areas of expertise.
In earlier accounts, Playboy has been associated with the American popular culture that reinforced and maintained Cold War myths, fears, and juxtapositions (e.g., Osgerby 2001). Playboy has also been considered part of the vibrant counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s and the fight against restrictive moral codes and hostile social institutions (Osgerby 2001; Miller 1984). As well, Playboy has been connected to the contradictory American modernism and male rebellion against the nuclear family ideology (Pitzulo 2011; Ehrenreich 1984). The examples discussed here further complicate both the political significance of Playboy magazine in American culture and the understanding of the role of popular media culture and sexually explicit material in the global Cold War.
Notes
- 1.
The Playboy question-and-answer interview format was introduced in 1962 with a one-on-one with jazz musician Miles Davis by Alex Haley. The interview format has remained the same ever since: the title, “A Candid Conversation,” an introduction printed in italics and the opening page including three black-and-white upclose photos of the interviewee, shown deep in conversation with the interviewer. According to Playboy historian Russel Miller, Murray Fisher, the first editor in charge of the interview feature, pressed the interviewers to “probe deeper and ask questions that no one had dared to ask before” (Miller 1984, 130). Playboy interviewers were often well-known professionals and experts in their field of journalism. They knew their subjects well, even personally at times, but would offer the disclaimer that for the purpose of the story, they were representatives of the magazine, not of themselves. Their identity and background were often mentioned in the introduction, but the interview itself was always a dialogue between the interviewee and Playboy. Thus, the various voices and fields of expertise were united into one, undifferentiated voice of Playboy magazine, emphasizing the variety of fields of expertise and sophistication as characteristic of the brand. For more on Playboy interviews, see Saarenmaa (2017).
- 2.
The material for this chapter was collected by utilizing the “Playboy Cover to Cover—The Complete Playboy magazine” online archive provided by Playboy Inc. http://www.iplayboy.com/covertocover/. To locate the interviews with politicians and other political actors, the study benefited from online database cataloguing of the Playboy interview subjects and interviews: http://daggy.name/cop/bkofdead/pboyintv.htm. Link read January 11, 2016. On the analysis of this material, see also Saarenmaa (2017).
- 3.
The civil war in El Salvador, which lasted from 1979 to 1980, was fought between the Junta government and the leftist guerilla groups. The United States supported and financed the creation of a second junta to stop the spread of a leftist insurrection in the country (Livingstone 2009, 85–96).
Archival Source
“Playboy Cover to Cover—The Complete Playboy Magazine,” Playboy, Inc., http://www.iplayboy.com/covertocover/.