Culture, Power, and Mission to
Moscow: Film and Soviet-American Relations during World War II

Todd Bennett

For suggestions on how to use this article in the United States history survey course, see our "Teaching the JAH" Web site supplement at http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/teaching/.	1
Following a sumptuous feast (and copious amounts of vodka), the guests, gathered around a banquet table deep within the Kremlin's walls in May 1943, toasted Soviet-American friendship. Premier Joseph V. Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov praised the Grand Alliance. Anastas I. Mikoyan, the Soviet commissar for foreign trade, Lavrenty P. Beria, the head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Del, NKVD), and Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, offered toasts, and the Anglo-Americans present—including the British ambassador to Moscow, Adm. William H. Standley, the reigning United States representative, and Joseph E. Davies, Washington's former ambassador—reciprocated. The American emissary from 1936 to 1938, Davies was there because President Franklin D. Roosevelt had sent him to arrange an introductory summit with Stalin, a meeting at which Roosevelt was sure all outstanding Soviet-American differences could be ironed out. Although Davies' presence was unusual, thus far the evening had been little different from similar receptions held by Soviet leaders for their Allied comrades during World War II. On this occasion, however, the former ambassador had brought with him a movie that both he and Roosevelt hoped would convince the Soviet dictator to eschew separate peace negotiations with Adolf Hitler and to remain within the tenuous Big Three partnership. After the toasts were complete, Stalin, a great enthusiast for Hollywood film, asked his guests to repair to his private Kremlin theater where they were to watch Mission to Moscow, an American-made pro-Soviet picture based upon Davies' diplomatic career. As the lights dimmed and the projector rolled, all waited for the marshal's reaction.1	2
Among the most infamous movies in American history, Mission to Moscow has drawn attention—and fire—from contemporaries and scholars alike. Since its release critics, investigators for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and some scholars have charged that Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) members, abetted by the sympathetic Roosevelt administration, infiltrated the project, producing a piece of Communist propaganda. With more detachment, other historians have detailed the picture's production history, arguing that it was a well-intentioned, if overzealous and unsuccessful, attempt by FDR, Davies, Warner Bros. Studios, and the official United States wartime propaganda agency, the Office of War Information (OWI), to counter Americans' distrust of their socialist and allegedly totalitarian Soviet ally.2	. . .