Cultural Superpower Outline

I'm not sure how long this will be but I'll get straight to the point - what does it take for a great power to become a superpower in a mostly cultural standpoint. Today, the United States of America has culture that is quite widespread throughout the world, even in countries that it has went to war with! Consider that even the Soviet Union, arguable the only country that has achieve very rough parity has never been quite able to to achieve the same influence, even with in it's sphere of influence outside Eastern Europe. Many communist or former communist countries today lack anything remotely Soviet or Russian to them besides military equipment and the odd petrochemical or so. With the rise of China and India, we look at one of the many fronts in which is a criteria to become a superpower - Chinese influence is limited to mainly foods (brought by immigrants and told to me totally different from real Chinese food), some movies (many of which are from Hong Kong or Taiwan actually), and sorts of that limited extent. India has a greater problem as it is quite ethnically diverse with different cultures and only Bollywood and Yoga coming to mind as a cultural overseas export.

The only possible explanation today Japanese culture is quite widespread in parts of the Western world and East Asia. Although Japan is not an absolute superpower in terms of military sense, it certain has much of it's culture spread through out the world. The fact that it's language is quite commonly taught in universities despite not nearly being on the scale of English, Spanish, French, or even Russian, it's sushi eaten in cookeries, it's anime books and shows as well as movies, music, and other forms of media being sold quite commonly, it's electronics being industry standards with names like Sony and Toshiba being extremely common in American living rooms at least and dominating media in general. I wish to 1up this phenomenon with another country.

The United Kingdom might fit the bill also but I have decided to leave it to the residents and other people living in many other nations within this board to decide.

Although the PoD would probably require one before 1900, I have decide to place it in this to examine the effects of a rival that can reach cultural parity with the United States. A few alpha stage candidates include:

1. Germany with it's cars.
2. France and Italy with it's food and fashion.
3. The "superpowers" listed above doing much better somehow.
4. Not a whole lot more I can think of.

Now of course I am simplifying this but please keep in mind that this is not a "FRANCE WINS 1940 AND RETAINS ITS EMPIRE FOREVER" or "NEUTRAL ITALY WW2" thread or a Japan-wank - those kinds of threads are fun and all but quite common but rather too straightforward and not always efficient. In France's example, its two most important colonies - Algeria and Vietnam retain comparatively little of France considering their central importance with their mother country's empire. Japan has definitely had more influence after losing it's colonial empire anyways and has done very well for it's scale so I see no reason why larger, more assimilated empires are the only path. In fact, I firmly believe that smaller colonial empires have a much better chance, as the density in which cultural assimilation over a few key colonies would be much more efficient that over trying to conform a third of a continent to your beliefs. Angola still contains Black Portuguese speakers right?

Obviously, the many paths will have a progressive snowball effect. Great movies will lead to foreigners interested in the language which will lead to the food which will lead to another thing. The only difficult part is how to get the ball really rolling.

TL DR? By today, what is the actual definition of being a cultural superpower and how can we have any nation reach that on the scale of the United States without reaching the other criteria of a superpower.
 
I believe the main reason the United States has become a cultural superpower is because of the free, liberal and permissive nature of its society, which leads directly to a more advanced, complex, diverse and therefore; more interesting and appealing culture. That combined with its military, economic and geopolitical strength results in the successful proliferation of American culture throughout the world. Whereas the repressed, censored USSR which strangled, stepped on and executed its pool of artistic and cultural talent, while nearly rivaling the US in military superpower status, had no meaningful culture to export to its fellow Communist and satellite countries.

If the USSR is to achieve anything near cultural parity with the United States, its has to have some kind of change in its political development, especially in the state's relationship to and regulation of culture, which would have had to happen sometime between the late 1910's-late 1920's, before the coming of Stalinism and the imposition of "socialist realism". The state body responsible for the regulation of culture before the Stalinist era, the Prolekult, which was a very liberal and open-minded institution that had supported "bourgeois" artistic movements like impressionism, cubism, futurism, etc., has to avoid falling out with Lenin and the Party, and retain its power and influence as the USSR's prime artistic authority, especially in connection with Lunacharchy's (a notable patron of Futurism) Education Commissariat. A more powerful Prolekult which becomes more and more tolerant and inclusive in its artistic tastes (in conjunction with a more liberal, less totalitarian & Stalin-less USSR in general) would allow the unique and remarkable artistic development of Russia from the late 19th Century to the 1920's to not only continue but expand and evolve into something infinately more "interesting and appealing" than Stalinist socialist realism and what we know as Soviet culture IOTL.

Couple this with the same historical developments from OTL (i.e. the Soviets eventually establish dominion over Eastern Europe and spread of Communist influence throughout East Asia and the Third World), and you will have a "culture" attached to the expansion of Soviet military, political and economic influence throughout the world. The same goes for China whose massive economic influence is unmatched by its culture.
 
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