*** war and social upheaval: The Cold War -- cultural aspects








Cold War Cultural Aspects: Creativity and Innovation

Cold War creativity
Figure 1.--One matter which would prove critical in Cold War competition between Communist countries and capitalist countries is which system would most effectively generate creativity and innovation. This affected not only artistic expresion, but also economics and technology. Here we have an art class in Czechisolvakia. The press caption by th Czechoslovak News Agency read, "Nehru Medal to Czechoslovakia: The creative arts department of the Jaroslav Kvapil People's Art School in Brno, southern Moravia, attended by by 500 pupils, has for years been winning recognition at home and abroad. The latestsuccess is the gold Nehru Medal, Gita Smolková, 14, (center) won at the Shankar International Competitionof Children's Drawings in India. Gita Smolková has been attending the creative arts department since 1976. The photograph shows Profssor Věra Procháaková with her pupils."

A major question affecting the outcome of the Cold War was creativity. The Communists argued that that people living in poverty were in capable of being creative no matter how gifted they were. We see comments like "People who would want opportunities to be a, let's say, DJ, or ballet dancer, or artist, but yet they live in a village so poor, they can't afford basic materials to even realize their dreams? How are they supposed to express their creativity if they have not enough to afford the materials or training necessary to pursue their ambitions? For example, how many little girls in Africa want to be ballet dancers, but can't even afford food to eat let alone ballet lessons?" Now this might be a sound argument if Communism countries with socialist ecomonies generated wealth and economies delivering prosperous life style. But now we know just the opposite is true. Communism did not generate economic success. In country aftr nother, bith in industrial countrusand in developing countries, communism not only did not generate wealth, but often bject ecinomic falure. There are all too many exmples of this, inxluding East and West Germany, East and West Europe, America and the Soviet Union, Taiwan and China (before market reforms), North and South Koea, Cuba and the Cubans in the United States. And there are examoles of how Communism cam destroy proosperity, such as what Hugo Chavez and the Communists did to once prosperous Venezuela. Or the damage done to argentina and Brazil by Communism light. Once the issue of poverty is eliminated, the next question is does Comminism or Capitalism generate creativity. And as the one great ability that defines humanity is creativity, this is a vital issue. There are two ways of assessing this issue. First is to compare the creative out put of Communist and Capitalist countries. Here the answer is overwealming. In virtually every area of humanic endevor (art, economics, literature, mathematics, medicine, music, science, technology, and other areas), it is the capitlist West that has proven the great generator of human creativity nd innovtion. Nobel prize awards are a quick way of assessing this, but detailed assssments of spcific fields yield the same results. Second, i to assess the nature of Communism and Capitlism to unlock the mechanism by which creativity is promoted or impeded. Our assessment is that there are aspects of Comminist theology that are inately destructive of creativity an innovation. Thee include among others: Marxist historical determinism, the labor theory of value, the dictatorship of theprolereit, and the elevation of equality has the primary societal goal. Lennin and Stalin added features not part of Marx's vission such as sectet police, the Gulag, and Soviet Realism that further inhibited creativity.






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Created: 6:15 AM 2/27/2016
Last updated: 6:15 AM 2/27/2016