The Cold War ultimately ended with a whimper and not a bang as so many had feared for so long. By the late 1970s, Americans, with the exception of a handful of conservative politicians and a few hawkish public intellectuals, had largely come to the realization that the Soviet Union and the US would not go to war and that America was in no danger of becoming a totalitarian Soviet client-state. Although both superpowers continued to possess and to amass large numbers of nuclear weapons, few people outside of Hollywood envisioned either nation actually using them. Children continued to learn in school that Russians did not enjoy the freedoms Americans did and that political dissent resulted in imprisonment, and some communities continued to sound air raid alert signals, but the sirens (at least in my town) were ignored.

The easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States began in the early 1970s with a period of détente marked by the signing of arms limitation treaties and a series of cultural exchanges. During this period, as they had during the depths of the ideological conflict, children played an important role. Throughout the Cold War period American children had been a target of anti-Soviet and pro-US propaganda. They were also the subject matter of much propaganda. Dependent upon the state for protection, children serve as a barometer of both a nation's strength and its ‘morality’. ‘Good’ countries nurture their young.