Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Edited by
SIMO MIKKONEN AND PIA KOIVUNEN
berghahn
NEW YORK • OXFORD
www.berghahnbooks.com
Published by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
– vi –
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
Figure 4.1 Figures for the yearly number of cultural and scientific
visas delivered to foreign nationals from the Communist
bloc. 93
Figure 8.1 The number of printed materials sent to each Eastern
European country, 1968–90. Source: FEIE’s archives. 162
Figure 8.2. The number of fellowships for each Eastern European
country, 1966–91. Source: FEIE’s archives. 165
Figure 9.1 Dve kultúry [Two cultures]. 184
Figure 9.2 Translations of French literature into Czech. 187
Figure 9.3 Feature films in Czech cinemas according to country
of origin (selection). 187
Figure 9.4 Screenings of feature films in Czech cinemas by
percentage according to their origin. 188
– vii –
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
W e have both been fascinated about the Cold War, and especially its
cultural side for many years. At the same time, however, we have
felt that the history of the Cold War concentrates too much on superpower
relations. Even if Europe formed the primary battlefield of the Cold War,
it seems to us that the role of European states and people has been over-
looked. Particularly in regards to culture, and cultural relations between
European countries, European viewpoint offers very different perspective
for the Cold War.
This initial idea led Simo to start arrangements for an international con-
ference. He managed to get two great co-organizers for the conference,
Pia, the coeditor of this book, and Pekka Suutari (U. of Eastern Finland).
Conference, entitled “East-West cultural exchanges and the Cold War”,
took place at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, during four exception-
ally beautiful days in June 2012. After rigorous selection process, with sub-
missions from 26 different countries, we ended up having 84 participants.
Conference used pre-circulated research papers in order to pave way for
a possible post-conference publication. In addition to the conference or-
ganizing troika, we received valuable help from Riikka-Mari Muhonen, a
graduate student, who led a team of voluntary history students, success-
fully taking care of practical issues. The conference, the quality of papers,
and the enthusiastic reception encouraged us to go forward with the plan-
ning of a volume after the conference.
After going through different possible combinations of papers, we de-
cided that we should compile two, instead of just one volume. One dis-
cussed cultural Cold War within the Eastern bloc, especially in regards to
the Soviet Union. The other is the one you are currently holding, discuss-
ing connections between Western and Eastern Europe outside the super-
power setting.
Edited volumes are often considered to be great burden for editors and
publishers are often skeptical whether edited volumes are worthwhile.
– viii –
Acknowledgments
– ix –
Introduction
The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Com-
munism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working,
fighting.
—Richard M. Nixon
If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to
your enemies.
—Moshe Dayan
The politicians always told us that the Cold War stand-off could only
change by way of nuclear war. None of them believed that such sys-
temic change was possible.
—Lech Walesa
most vigorously tried to prevent young people from traveling to the third
World Festival of Youth and Students held in Eastern Berlin.2 In the East,
the Soviet Union had set strict limitations on the amount of foreign con-
nections Socialist countries could have, preferring connections within
the Socialist camp over external ones. Yet, these limitations were far from
all-encompassing. As some recent studies have shown, the barrier dividing
the Socialist and Capitalist worlds was not fully impervious. Beneath the
seemingly bipolar structure, there were corporations, organizations, unof-
ficial networks, and individuals interacting, connecting, and communicat-
ing. This makes the division rather elastic or semipermeable.3
The emergence of transnational networks that eventually made the
East-West division softer and penetrable, as opposed to being an “Iron Cur-
tain,” can be traced back to the post-Stalinist era.4 A transnational history
of European Cold War relations enables us to explore questions that are
fundamentally important for our understanding not only of the demise of
one-party Socialism, but also of its persistence, heritage, and influence,
which can still be felt today. Socialist leaders believed they could mod-
ernize their countries and compete with Western democracies by openly
challenging them and learning from them. This seems to have been the
logic behind the opening of official connections after Stalin’s death. Cul-
tural exchanges resulted in growing interaction on lower levels. The pro-
cess, however, took several decades and is still poorly understood. While
several scholars have referred to the role of Western cultural influence in
the Socialist sphere, few have examined interactions or the role of Socialist
countries and societies in this process.
This book departs from this platform and takes the analysis of interac-
tions during the Cold War era to the next level by arguing that despite the
rhetoric of two separate worlds, Eastern and Western European societies
and people were entangled in a number of ways. This volume, then, is not
so much about the Cold War per se, but rather about the attempts to over-
come it, the Cold War mainly providing the chronological context for the
study.
Transnationalism, forming the focal point of this volume, encompasses
the flow of ideas, people, and processes between a number of countries in
the opposite camps. Apart from Socialist and Capitalist countries, there
are examples of countries located between the blocs, such as Switzerland,
Finland, and Yugoslavia, which further complicate the picture of Europe
under the supposed aegis of competing superpowers. Through this volume,
we hope to produce new knowledge about the prerequisites and opportu-
nities of different countries for transnational connections as well as about
the role of different layers of people in transnational networks. We do
not question the existence of travel limitations or political suppression in
–3–
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen
most European countries of the time—the division was quite real for many
people. However, we do argue that the East-West division was far from
comprehensive and has been exaggerated. Without this perspective, the
post–Cold War integration of Europe becomes difficult to understand. So-
cieties in the East and the West during the Cold War were not fundamen-
tally different; neither were they fully separated during the Cold War. The
process of European integration has pointed out that some countries be-
longing to the Cold War East have had difficulties with integration, while
others have had very few problems.5 Comprehensive research on European
mobility and interaction helps us to understand some of the causes that
supported, and in some cases prevented, the emergence of East-West con-
nections, and it also leads to an understanding of their implications.
–4–
Introduction
–5–
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen
mostly with interwar Europe.13 Already in the 1930s, the supposedly intro-
verted and xenophobic Soviet society was harboring several ties to Europe,
and Soviet experts closely followed European ideas on state practices and
modernization, as well as in arts, sciences, and culture.14 While the end of
World War II changed things notably and interaction between the eastern
and western parts of Europe became more difficult, the Soviet example,
after which Socialist Eastern Europe was modeled, proves that interaction
was not impossible.
According to Michael David-Fox, transnational studies seem to offer an
unusual opportunity to theorize geographical and ideological border cross-
ings that would have significant repercussions on our understanding of
international developments.15 The transnational approach is apparent in
several works that do not explicitly name themselves transnational. In her
work about Soviet tourism, Anne Gorsuch pointed out that Soviet tourism
to the West was originally politically motivated, but its realizations showed
that the persons involved had little interest in the political aims of the
Soviet Communist Party. Gorsuch is at the core of transnational connec-
tions when regarding tourism as one of the most important aspects of the
transformation of the image of the West in the minds of Soviet people, as
it gave them a first-hand chance to evaluate the images provided for them
by the Soviet government. It provides insight about the dynamics related
to foreign connections in different layers, ranging from the government
perspective to that of a Soviet individual.16
The opening of the Soviet Union to the world during the Khrushchev
era allowed for increased connections between European countries in the
East and the West. Socialist participation in World’s Fairs (particularly the
Brussels Expo 58), Soviet-sponsored World Festivals of Youth and Students
(especially the one held in Moscow in 1957), bilateral agreements on cul-
tural exchanges between governments, and tourism beyond the Iron Cur-
tain all contributed to the change. While the implications of this change
have never been extensively studied and no theoretical background has
so far been created, there are some works that promise groundbreaking
results for a transnational approach.17 This new research on Socialist coun-
tries and their changing place in the world underlines the need for further
studies with a cultural and transnational perspective on Cold War–era
relations.
Extensive East-West transnational networks had little to do with open
dissent even if they were separate from government aims. When foreign
traveling became possible and East-West cultural exchanges got under way,
people involved were carefully selected. The first groups were often mem-
bers of the scientific and cultural elite, a group that was believed to con-
vey the ideological message of peaceful coexistence better than politicians.
–7–
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen
resulted from the decline of the traditional political emphasis during the
1970s and 1980s in favor of social and cultural history mentioned before.
This has also led to an emphasis on the individual and the local, some-
times resulting in the loss of the big picture. The last two decades have
seen the revival of international history, but with a greater emphasis on
cooperation and shared goals than before, when interstate tensions were
more commonly in focus. We seek to answer to this endeavor. Non-state
actors, individuals, grassroots movements, the complex relationship be-
tween non-state actors, and state involvement in their activities are all
features that have greatly enriched our understanding of these transna-
tional phenomena.23
The transnational approach would seem to help to solve not only prob-
lems of fragmentation but also source-related methodological problems.
For example, actions in the international scene during the Cold War have
quite often been seen as government-motivated and controlled, which is
partly a result of an overreliance on state-produced materials. Certainly,
the governments on both sides were at the helm, but they were hardly con-
trolling everything. Many of our chapters either primarily use or supple-
ment their source base with oral history, reminiscences, unofficial archival
sources, and other materials to provide the extragovernmental perspec-
tive on foreign connections. Previous examples of such an approach have
brought about groundbreaking results.24 It has been pointed out that in-
stead of so-called Cold War internationalism, which was typically geopo-
litical nationalism, there were genuine attempts to implement the real
idea of internationalism. Often these endeavors involved non-state actors,
both individuals and NGOs. This volume underlines that the line between
state actors and NGOs was sometimes fuzzy.
In an attempt to define internationalism, Akira Iriye discusses in Cul-
tural Internationalism and World Order the ways in which globalization has
shaped nations’ behavior. Iriye uses the term “internationalism” when he
refers to attempts to transcend national rivalries that were so characteristic
of twentieth-century Europe. According to Iriye, the important factor in
overcoming parochialism and hatred of “the other” was the development
of an alternative definition of world affairs.25 Such striving has been highly
visible in the European project, but simultaneously, and perhaps even
more importantly, it was a feature of transnational networks that stretched
across the East-West division. Iriye’s approach emphasizes “cultural inter-
nationalism” (as distinguished from the economic internationalism cur-
rently associated with globalism) that consists of cross-national cultural
communication, understanding, and cooperation. This leads to states hav-
ing a more mature understanding of one another and a nurturing of shared
concerns and interests.26
– 10 –
Introduction
Eluding Concepts
Cold War
The Cold War has typically been understood as foreign operations in Eu-
rope within the framework of emphasizing antagonism and juxtaposition
of rival ideological and economic systems. A transnational setting reveals
attempts to overcome Cold War boundaries: a striving for détente and
peaceful solutions. These currents were strong among average people as
well as the cultural intelligentsia on both sides, but they tend to be over-
looked in the traditional Cold War narrative. The study of how certain
images and cultural icons contributed to the efforts to transcend Cold
War boundaries is also one of the promising fields of Soviet transnational
– 12 –
Introduction
Europe
As we focus on Europe, it is necessary to discuss what we understand as Eu-
rope in the postwar period. In the traditional view, postwar Europe is seen
as Communist Eastern Europe and Capitalist Western Europe. Further-
more, when European integration is discussed, primacy is usually given to
the West over the East. The picture is, nonetheless, more nuanced, and we
– 13 –
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen
Transnational Networks
Finally, we need to address the sometimes thin line between diplomatic
action and transnational networks and define what kinds of actions fall
to the latter category. Communication, interaction, and cooperation can
mean different things in different circumstances. The term “diplomacy”
in its different functions seems to be a key element when studying Cold
War interactions. It is typical for culturally oriented Cold War studies that
the focus is on less formal and less official levels of state activities instead
of traditional diplomacy. Nevertheless, the state seems to be involved in
these activities one way or another, and therefore the concept of diplo-
macy is in place. There are more or less state-controlled cultural programs
that can be defined as cultural diplomacy or public diplomacy—a state’s
communication with foreign publics. Thus, it is a branch of diplomacy that
is concerned with developing and sustaining relations with foreign states
and their people through arts, popular culture, and education. However,
– 14 –
Introduction
This volume is divided into four parts, each of which analyses transna-
tional processes in Cold War Europe from different angles. The first part
deals with the interplay of official and unofficial diplomacy. The second
part focuses on academic networks and mobility within the world of sci-
ence. The third section analyses interaction between nongovernmental
and semi-governmental institutions, such as friendship societies of the
Soviet style. The fourth and last part of the volume considers the ways in
which professional and family networks undermined the East-West divi-
sion and encouraged border crossings.
Chronologically, the chapters move from the immediate post−World
War II years to the early 1980s, emphasizing particularly the 1950s and
1960s, when new policies and approaches toward the other part of Europe
– 15 –
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen
Notes
1. For an exception among studies of Cold War Europe, see S. Autio-Sarasmo and K.
Miklóssy, Reassessing Cold War Europe (London: Routledge, 2011).
– 16 –
Introduction
2. N. Rutter, “The Western Wall: The Iron Curtain Recast in Midsummer 1951,” in Cold
War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, ed. P. Babiracki and K.
Zimmer (College Station, TX: A&M UP, 2014), 78–106.
3. G. Péteri, “Nylon Curtain: Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural
Life of State-Socialist Russia and East-Central Europe,” Slavonica 10, no. 2 (2004): 113–23;
S. Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklóssy, “Introduction,” in Reassessing Cold War Europe, ed. S.
Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklóssy (London: Routledge, 2011), 6; M. David-Fox, “The Iron
Curtain as Semi-Permeable Membrane: Origins and Demise of the Stalinist Superiority Com-
plex,” in Cold War Crossings, ed. Babiracki and Zimmer, 14–39.
4. While transnational connections between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world
existed even under Stalin, these were much more limited in scope than after 1953. On Stalin
era transnational connections, see, e.g., M. David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cul-
tural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to Soviet Russia, 1921–1941 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011); K. Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution
of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
5. See, e.g., M. Conway and K. K. Patel, eds., Europeanization in the Twentieth Century:
Historical Approaches (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).
6. W. L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997); Y. Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War:
Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2003); L. Belmonte,
Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 2008).
7. G. Johnston, “Revisiting the Cultural Cold War,” Social History 35, no. 3 (2010): 295.
8. P. Major and R. Mitter, “East is East and West is West? Towards a Comparative Socio-
Cultural History of the Cold War,” in Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History, ed.
R. Mitter and P. Major (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 3.
9. G. Scott-Smith, and J. Segal, “Introduction: Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold
War in East and West,” in Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West, ed.
P. Romijn, G. Scott-Smith, and J. Segal (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2012),
1–9.
10. A. Vowinckel, M. Payk, and T. Lindenberger, “European Cold War Culture(s)? An
Introduction,” in Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies,
ed. A. Vowinckel, M. Payk, and T. Lindenberger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 6, 9,
17.
11. S. E. Reid and D. Crowley, eds., Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture
in Postwar Eastern Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000); D. Crowley and S. E. Reid, eds., Pleasures in
Socialism. Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
2010); D. Koleva, ed., Negotiating Normality: Everyday Lives in Socialist Institutions (New Bruns-
wick: Transaction Publishers, 2012); M. Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from
Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); P. Bren and M. Neuberger, eds.,
Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012).
12. For a thorough overview of the studies on Soviet bloc interactions during the Cold
War and of a paradigm shift in Russian and East European Studies, see P. Babiracki, “Inter-
facing the Soviet Bloc: Recent Literature and New Paradigms,” Ab Imperio 12, no. 4 (2011),
376–407. See also S. Kansikas, Socialist Countries Face the European Community: Soviet Bloc
Controversies over East-West Trade (Bern: Peter Lang, 2014); A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker,
eds., Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2013); Babiracki and Zimmer eds., Cold War Crossings.
13. David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment; M. David-Fox, P. Holquist, and A. Mar-
tin, eds., Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914–1945 (Pitts-
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).
– 17 –
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen
14. D. L. Hoffman, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism,
1917–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome; David-
Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment.
15. M. David-Fox, “The Implications of Transnationalism,” Kritika 12, no. 4 (Fall 2011):
885–904.
16. A. E. Gorsuch, All This is Your World. Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
17. D. Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); S. E. Reid, “Who Will Beat Whom? Soviet Popu-
lar Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,” Kritika 9, no. 4 (Fall
2008), 855–904; P. Koivunen, “Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festival as
a Tool of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, 1947–1957,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Tampere, 2013);
J. Krekola and S. Mikkonen, “Backlash of the Free World: US presence at the World Youth
Festival in Helsinki, 1962,” Scandinavian Journal of History 36, no. 2 (2011), 230–55.
18. See, e.g., S. Mikkonen, “Winning Hearts and Minds? The Soviet Musical Intelligentsia
in the Struggle against the United States during the Early Cold War,” in Twentieth-Century
Music and Politics, ed. P. Fairclough (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); P. Koivunen, “Overcoming
Cold War Boundaries at the World Youth Festivals,”, in Reassessing Cold War Europe, ed.
Autio-Sarasmo and Miklóssy, 175–192.
19. See, e.g., C. A. Bayly et al., “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” American
Historical Review 111, no. 5 (2006), 1140–65. The transnational approach is seen as reaching
beyond a focus that was typically fixed within the confines of a nation-state.
20. Péteri, “Nylon Curtain,” 113–23.
21. David-Fox, “The Implications of Transnationalism,” 885–904.
22. See, e.g., R. Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of
the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 1994); Mitter and Major eds., Across the Blocs.
23. Various roles and positions of non-state actors in cultural diplomacy are well discussed
in J. C. E. Gienow-Hecht and M. Donfried eds., Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2010).
24. M. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); S. B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of
the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2011).
25. A. Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), 15–16.
26. Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order, 17–20.
27. See, e.g., Koivunen, “Performing Peace and Friendship”.
28. F. Kind-Kovacs and J. Labov, eds., Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond: Transnational Media
During and After Socialism (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013).
29. U. Hannerz, “The Withering Away of the Nation?” Ethnos 58, no. 3–4 (1993), 377–91.
30. E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
31. M. Espagne, “Sur les limites du comparatisme en histoire culturelle,” Genèses no. 17
(1994), 112–21.
32. P. Burke, “Translating Knowledge, Translating Cultures,” in Kultureller Austausch in der
Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Michael North (Köln: Böhlau, 2009), 69–77.
33. M. Werner and B. Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: “Histoire croisée and the Chal-
lenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45 (February 2006), 30–50; H. Kaelble, “Between
Comparison and Transfers—and What Now?” in Comparative and Transnational History: Cen-
tral European Approaches and New Perspectives, ed. H.-G. Haupt and J. Kocka (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2009).
– 18 –
Introduction
34. A. Jenks, “Transnational History and Space Flight,” Russian History Blog, 5 October
2011. http://russianhistoryblog.org/2011/10/transnational-history-and-space-flight/.
35. D. Caute, “Foreword,” in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945–1960, ed. G.
Scott-Smith and H. Krabbendam (London: Routledge, 2003), vii.
36. P. Lange and M. Vannicelli, eds., The Communist Parties of Italy, France and Spain:
Postwar Change and Continuity (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981); A. F. Upton, The Communist
Parties of Scandinavia and Finland (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973).
37. A. Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–56 (London: Allen
Lane, 2012), xxvi–xxvii.
38. Gorsuch and Koenker, eds., Socialist Sixties; Babiracki and Zimmermann, eds., Cold
War Crossings.
39. J. C. E. Gienow-Hecht, “What Are We Searching for? Culture, Diplomacy, Agent,
and the State,” in Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy, ed. J. C. E. Gienow-Hecht and M. C.
Donfried (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 3–11; C. Luke and M. Kersel, U.S. Cultural
Diplomacy and Archaeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage (New York: Routledge, 2013), 2–5.
40. Kind-Kovács and Labov, eds., Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond.
– 19 –
P A RT I
Giles Scott-Smith
Introduction
and the Soviet bloc. In doing so, it contrasts the approach of traditional
diplomacy with these four freelancers, and the tensions and suspicions that
this activity caused.
From the late 1960s onward, the Dutch government had sought to posi-
tion itself as a bridge builder between the East and the West, claiming a
role of negotiator/communicator in order to reduce the chance of conflict.
The reality was somewhat different. Fueled by committed anti-Commu-
nism and (significantly) a lack of any real interest in expanding East-West
trade, the official Dutch line was that the Conference on Security and
Cooperation (CSCE) negotiations must not legitimize the Soviet system
– 26 –
Opening Up Political Space
Kees van den Heuvel initially seems to fit the classic Cold Warrior iden-
tity. A member of the Dutch resistance Albrecht Group from 1942 to
1945, he became part of the nascent security service after the war. Im-
mersing himself in the intricacies of Marxist-Leninist ideology, by 1950 he
was head of training for the newly formed Binnenlands Veiligheidsdienst
(BVD) and through the next decade took on the role of the service’s psy-
chological warfare expert. This task led him to question the methods by
which a security service could influence the wider society, and the level of
(or, better, the lack of) coordination among the Western allies in the field
of anti-Communist activism. In 1962, under the tutelage of retired BVD
chief Louis Einthoven, van den Heuvel left the service and took on the
task of Western liaison via the International Documentation and Informa-
tion Center (Interdoc) and its Dutch counterpart, the Oost-West Instituut
– 28 –
Opening Up Political Space
(OWI), both of them based at the same address in The Hague. Funding
for these enterprises came from Dutch multinationals (Shell in particular)
and the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst, the Netherlands being a
useful location through which the Germans could pursue a deniable psy-
chological warfare campaign. For the next two decades, this was the base
for a continuous search for Western cooperation in psychological warfare,
from the “peaceful coexistence” of the Khrushchev era to the détente of
Brezhnev.21
In the early 1970s, van den Heuvel saw that détente could “create a
new battlefield” for the kind of “intelligent anti-Communism” that Inter-
doc had been pursuing for the previous decade.22 The intention had always
been to enter into dialogue with the Soviet bloc to open it up to “Western
values,” these being generally interpreted from the perspective of a lib-
eral open-mindedness that had at its foundation the Universal Declara-
tion of Human Rights (UDHR). The OWI’s journal, Oost-West, had taken
inspiration from the UDHR since the publication’s inception in 1962. In
the words of an Interdoc publication, the signing of the Helsinki Accords
on 1 August 1975 meant that “for the first time a document, signed by
the representatives of the East and the West, lays down principles and
intentions to promote peace, security, cooperation and human rights. This
offers a unique opportunity.”23 Van den Heuvel set out to realize those
goals as a “policy entrepreneur” in his own right by establishing contacts
and exchanging opinions with those from the Central and Eastern Eu-
ropean foreign policy community. That this approach stemmed from his
understanding of East-West dialogue as a form of ideological contest is un-
deniable. On a small scale, his initiatives fit with the later proposals of
the high-profile Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security
(Palme Commission), which aimed to break down East-West antagonism
on the basis of a common security framework for Europe as a whole.
In September 1973, van den Heuvel set up an international conference
entitled “Development of East-West Relations through Freer Movement
of People, Ideas and Information,” with businessman Ernst van Eeghen
being one of the financial supporters.24 The speaker lineup included none
other than the First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in The Hague, Vlad-
imir Kuznetsov. The Russian’s involvement is interesting considering the
conference focused on the central issue in the Helsinki negotiations that
caused a problem for the Soviet Union. While supportive of increased
contacts, Kuznetsov criticized Western proposals for an unrestricted flow
of people and information between the East and the West that would be
“openly and crudely extended to include overt interference in domestic
affairs” and “subversive activities against the system which exists in these
countries.” Nevertheless, Kuznetsov’s view was that “détente in Europe is
– 29 –
Giles Scott-Smith
to the “often distorted views of the West” was in itself progress. Increasing
dialogue and contact, with an awareness of what it was for, should be the
next goal.28
In the early 1970s, van den Heuvel could have become chair of the
newly established Dutch committee of Amnesty International, but instead
he chose his own path.29 Contacts via the World War II veteran networks
were crucial for this. In the context of détente, the common bond of the
anti-Nazi effort was a perfect calling card for van den Heuvel to exploit.30
At the end of the 1960s, particularly via his position as vice president of
the International Union of Resistance and Deportee Movements (UIRD),
these links now came into their own.31 At the World Veterans Federation
(WVF) conference in Belgrade in October 1970, Western and Eastern
veterans and resistance fighters met to discuss European security, and it
was there that van den Heuvel, making his first trip to the Eastern bloc,
established links with SUBNOR (Savez udruzenja boraca Narodno-oslo-
bodilackog rata), the Yugoslav Federation of Associations of Veterans of
the National Liberation War, many of whose 1.2 million members held in-
fluential positions in that country. Following Moscow, in September 1975
he made a trip to Belgrade to visit the Institute for International Politics
and Economics.32 In 1977, he made three more brief visits: to ADIRI, the
international law and international relations research center in Bucharest
(February), the foreign ministry and the Institute for International Rela-
tions and Foreign Policy in Sofia (May), and the foreign ministry and the
Polish Institute of International Relations in Warsaw and a brief trip to
the G.D.R. (September). In the autumn of 1978, it was Czechoslovakia
and Hungary, again taking in the foreign ministries, main foreign policy
think tanks, and Helsinki-related committees for European security and
cooperation. If the OWI could position itself as the principal East-West
meeting point, making use of the Netherlands as a go-between location,
ministerial support could be assured. The WVF opened the door to stron-
ger ties with the Yugoslav and Polish groups (the six hundred thousand–
member ZBOWID [Association of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy])
in a joint CSCE implementation session at the conference in Maastricht
in October 1976, and van den Heuvel became an advisor to the WVF on
disarmament.33
Van den Heuvel’s activities contrast strongly with the negative image
the Netherlands had with Soviet-bloc regimes through the hard-line atti-
tude of its government, particularly the foreign minister Max van der Stoel,
on the human rights issue. By the late 1970s the OWI had become a rec-
ognized discussion partner for Soviet delegations, which were in general
keen to exploit any openings in Western civil society. The first meeting be-
tween the institute and the Soviet Committee for European Security and
– 31 –
Giles Scott-Smith
The OWI was not alone in the Netherlands with its cross-bloc activities.
In 1967, the John F. Kennedy Institute (JFK) was established at the Uni-
versity of Tilburg. With a stronger leaning toward policy-relevant research,
the JFK was the brainchild of Frans A. M. Alting von Geusau, a Leiden
graduate who was made professor of international law at the Catholic Uni-
versity Brabant (later the University of Tilburg) in 1965. Having studied
under Henri Brugmans at the Europa College in Bruges, during 1959–60
he worked closely with Ernst B. Haass at the University of California in
Berkeley. His Ph.D. in 1962, entitled “European Organizations and the
Foreign Relations of States,” criticized how the study of international re-
lations in Europe was largely focused on problems related to European in-
tegration. Brugmans’s influence is clear, but it was Haass who provided
the blueprint for the contribution that international organizations could
make to end the “absurd artificial” division of Europe and create a viable
post–World War II peace system.39 It was time to realize that “the obso-
– 32 –
Opening Up Political Space
Van den Heuvel and Alting von Geusau were soon joined by a new player
in this field, Rudolf Jurrjens, creator of the Foundation for the Promotion
of East-West Contacts at the Free University in Amsterdam. The JFK, the
OWI, and Jurrjens’s foundation would function as a triumvirate through-
out the 1970s, a kind of private conglomerate making use of détente to
further the cause of peace in Europe through East-West contacts, and both
competing and cooperating as they saw fit. While Alting von Geusau and
Jurrjens both served on the advisory board of OWI’s journal, Oost-West,
the closest all three came to a common approach was at the major confer-
ence “East-West Perspectives: Theories and Policies,” set up by Jurrjens in
Amsterdam in September 1975. With the main speakers being Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Gyorgy Arbatov from the Institute for United States Stud-
ies in Moscow, Alting von Geusau and van den Heuvel participated along-
side thirty-six guests from twelve countries (including the G.D.R., Poland,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia) to discuss the Euro-
pean security situation in the immediate wake of the Helsinki Accords.46
Despite plans to do so, the conference proceedings were never published,
although Jurrjens’s contribution has survived. Opening the conference,
he described an East-West predicament that required new scholarly in-
stitutions to bridge the divide in order to develop common responses to
common problems. The emphasis was on a post-ideological, “transnational
conceptualization” of problem solving, involving the expansion of mem-
bership and venues, such as the International Political Science Association
and the European Consortium for Political Research. While this meant
incorporating Eastern Europeans into Western networks, Jurrjens was at
least searching for “what direct role can the international academic com-
munity play in the cooperation among states.”47
Jurrjens initially seems to have been motivated by a Calvinist faith that
viewed Communist ideology as a competitive worldview equally believing
in the superiority of a select community. There is no doubt that his per-
spective rested on convinced anti-Communism. Having studied political
science at the Free University in Amsterdam, Jurrjens spent 1965–67 do-
ing his military service, which included training as an interrogator with
army intelligence from March to December 1967. Having learned Rus-
sian, Jurrjens then added Serbo-Croat by attending a University of Zagreb
– 34 –
Opening Up Political Space
summer school in 1969. Rejoining the Free University that year, Jurrjens
set about pursuing his goals through his newly formed Foundation for the
Promotion of East-West Contacts, which he used to coordinate student
exchanges. According to Peter Volten, one of Jurrjens’s students in the
1970s, it was his experience learning Russian that led to his pursuit of East-
West contacts, raising the question of whether his relationship with mili-
tary intelligence actually ended in 1969.48 As an academic in Amsterdam,
Jurrjens was able to cultivate a good working relationship with Brzezinski,
as demonstrated by his presence at the Amsterdam conference in 1975
and the fact that Jurrjens went on to spend the academic year of 1975–76
with Brzezinski’s Research Institute on International Change at Columbia
University in New York.49 Jurrjens’s Ph.D. in 1978 was a dense analysis
of the foundations of Soviet ideology and the official response (or, better,
resistance) that this generated toward free flow, was ostensibly motivated
by the declaration that “it is only in a world which generally accepts a
free flow of people, ideas, and information as an unchallenged and natural
phenomenon that a stable, firm and lasting relationship of détente can
flourish.” This would correspond wholly with van den Heuvel’s outlook
mentioned above, and it also promoted the cause that human rights were
a cause too valuable to leave to the national interests of nation-states.
Jurrjens, in other words, was making the case for the citizen-diplomat as a
vital aspect of East-West relations.50 While Jurrjens himself may not have
been so successful in pursuing these goals, he did provide support to others
who established close links with the Soviet dissident community through
the 1980s.51
From the early 1970s onward, Ernst van Eeghen had been supportive of
van den Heuvel’s activities, but he soon branched out on his own—on
a higher level. Van Eeghen was heir to one of the oldest trading fami-
lies in the Netherlands, the Van Eeghen Investment and Trade Company,
a diverse banking, trading, and shipping concern with major interests in
the United States and Africa. Van Eeghen’s move into East-West affairs
did have a business dimension (he was attempting to set up a trade in
chemicals at the time), but it was his Mennonite (Anabaptist) belief that
proved crucial, with his attachment to the Anabaptist sect’s belief in con-
flict resolution: his personal motto was “A Christian must work towards
peace.” In the early 1980s he attempted to put his beliefs into practice.
The immediate cause was the targeting of the Netherlands by Soviet SS-
20s. Van Eeghen supported the strengthening of conventional forces, but
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Giles Scott-Smith
his deep concern was that the rising Soviet-American tensions at the end
of the 1970s could escalate out of control. In particular, the NATO deci-
sion to modernize its intermediate nuclear forces (INF) in 1979 was for
van Eeghen a potentially catastrophic move. The Dutch should not sit
back and wait but get directly involved.52 Making use of contacts via the
Conference of European Churches (he sat on the finance committee), van
Eeghen was able to invite members of the Soviet security establishment to
his Berkenrode estate outside Haarlem for what was effectively a Dutch
equivalent to the informal Soviet-American nuclear disarmament confer-
ences at Dartmouth.
Published sources on van Eeghen’s “half-diplomacy” (his own words)
at the Berkenrode meetings are scarce.53 He gave some insight in an inter-
view in 1999 when he explained that his ability to secure the release of the
Russian Baptist dissident Vladimir Khailo from incarceration in a Soviet
mental asylum in March 1987 had given him considerable credit in Ameri-
can circles. This success led to the establishment of the Burcht Foundation
and a series of conferences in Haarlem that searched for solutions to other
long-standing conflicts, including the ones in the Middle East.54 The full-
est account comes from (not entirely reliable) journalist Willem Oltmans,
which provides a taste of the negotiations that took place at that time.55
According to Oltmans, in 1981, largely through his contact with Gyorgy
Arbatov, van Eeghen pursued a bilateral deal that would require the Dutch
government to reject the deployment of INF missiles on its territory, in re-
turn for which the Soviet Union would not target the Netherlands. While
the Kremlin had never dealt with a single NATO member state in this way
and Dutch foreign minister Max van der Stoel regarded these maneuvers
with great suspicion, van Eeghen did lead a delegation of politicians to
Moscow in October 1981 to establish a dialogue. The mission inevitably
became caught up in political intrigue in The Hague, making it difficult for
van Eeghen to make headway. Positive signals from Senators Sam Nunn
and Mark Hatfield indicating that they would attend a Berkenrode tête-
à-tête with a Soviet delegation were torpedoed in mid-1982 by the new
secretary of state, George Schultz, who, like Van der Stoel, regarded such
informal diplomacy as highly suspect. Both the U.S. and Soviet embassies
in The Hague also worked against these plans. Van Eeghen persevered,
participating in a peace conference in Vienna in February 1983, where he
developed a close relation with Arbatov’s number two, KGB general Ra-
domir Bogdanov, who would participate in the first Berkenrode conference
held in November 1984.
Van Eeghen’s personal papers give some insight into his motivation. In a
letter to Senator Sam Nunn, he recounted being asked by Bogdanov why he
was trying to bring Russian and American delegates together. The Dutch-
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Opening Up Political Space
titioner, imbued with the thinking of Ernst Haass, the transformative role
of institutions, and the pursuit of interdependence among nations, but he
never really articulated this fully in his writings.59 Jurrjens and van Eeghen
were both motivated by Christian faith, albeit from different corners, the
Calvinism of Jurrjens being more combative than the more conciliatory
Anabaptism of van Eeghen. Of the four, it was Jurrjens who worked out
his vision of East-West contacts most deeply in his study of “psychological
operations,” methods of political control, and the attitude of the Soviet
Union toward the free flow of people and ideas. Both van den Heuvel and
van Eeghen came under intense suspicion from both the media and the
government for their activities, one report on the OWI asking: “Are they so
dumb at that institute or do they receive convertible rubles in exchange?”60
Alting von Geusau’s reputation as a hard-liner meant that he escaped this
criticism; instead, he was seen, especially after his notorious accusation in
a 1981 speech that the antinuclear movement was funded by Moscow, as
an agent provocateur of the government.61 Yet even Alting von Geusau
did not escape the suspicions of the Dutch security service (the BVD).
Relations with the security world add another layer to interpreting the
activities of these four independent operators. Van den Heuvel may have
been ex-BVD himself, but strict lines were drawn between his “policy en-
trepreneurship” and the service to avoid any unnecessary entanglements.
Van Eeghen’s activities were clearly monitored, as were those of Alting von
Geusau, requiring both of them to act cautiously in both the East and the
West. Jurrjens is the most fascinating figure in this regard because his rapid
move from language training in Russian for military intelligence to a posi-
tion running East-West student exchanges in 1967–69 does leave open for
speculation whether his ties with Dutch military intelligence were actually
broken when he entered academia.
All four were also separated from—in fact, directly opposed to—the
broader peace and antinuclear social movements that gained support
through the 1970s and 1980s. They were elitist in outlook, either by social
standing or intellect, confident in their ability to engage the other side, and
suspicious of the value systems of younger generations and their disruptive,
unguided involvement in international affairs.62 Ultimately, however, all
four were motivated by the wish to escape the bipolar Cold War system
by initiating forms of dialogue that could overcome interstate (and inter-
ideological) rivalry. In the words of Alting von Geusau, they “had in com-
mon that contacts were right and necessary, but don’t give up your prin-
ciples in the process.”63 For Alting von Geusau, the aim was to reduce
policy-related tensions, whereas, for Jurrjens, the accent lay on the human
rights component within the Helsinki process. Judging to what extent they
actually contributed to the reduction of tensions between the East and the
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Opening Up Political Space
West is a bit like following a drop of water into a full bucket: you know it
went in, but you cannot track where it goes.
What is of equal interest, however, is the consistent manner in which
these forms of parallel diplomacy were kept parallel by a diplomatic es-
tablishment that did not appreciate being potentially sidelined. Claims by
van den Heuvel that he was doing what the government should be doing
(the surrogate diplomacy argument) were not welcome either. Suspicion
was rife as to the actual motivations of these entrepreneurs, both from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from the Dutch press. This reflects not only
the ingrained anti-Communism of Dutch society, but also the conserva-
tism of its diplomatic elites accustomed to rejecting Soviet-bloc regimes as
legitimate partners. Both van den Heuvel and van Eeghen were regarded
as probable associates of the KGB.64 Of course, so far the assessment has
been wholly on the Dutch side, and to really address what was going on
will require being able to piece together the view from the East. Even then,
the danger is that each policy entrepreneur will lose their specific iden-
tities and become lost in the bipolar interstate struggle termed the Cold
War. The final word, in this respect, goes to van Eeghen. When asked by a
journalist in early 1985 whether he was being used by Moscow, he replied,
“Maybe it’s me who is using the Russians.”65
Giles Scott-Smith holds the Ernst van der Beugel Chair in the Diplomatic
History of Transatlantic Relations since WWII at Leiden University, the
Netherlands. In 2012, he was appointed Chair of the Transatlantic Studies
Association, and he is currently one of the editors of Bloomsbury Press’s
Key Studies in Diplomacy series. His publications include The Politics of
Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-War
American Hegemony (2002), Networks of Empire: The U.S. State Depart-
ment’s Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain 1950–
1970 (2008), and Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network: Cold
War Internationale (2012).
Notes
1. E. Satow, Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice, ed. P. B. Gore-Booth (London: Longman,
1979), 3.
2. For further discussion on this see G. Scott-Smith, “Private Diplomacy: Making the Cit-
izen Visible,” New Global Studies 8/1 (March 2014): 1–7, and the other articles in this special
issue.
3. See, for instance, G. Niedhart, “The Kissinger-Bahr Back-Channel within US-West
German Relations 1969–74,” in Atlantic, Euratlantic, or Europe-America?, ed. V. Aubourg and
G. Scott-Smith (Paris: Soleb, 2010), 284–305.
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Giles Scott-Smith
4. See I. Richardson, A. Kakabadse, and N. Kakabadse, Bilderberg People: Elite Power and
Consensus in World Affairs (London: Routledge, 2011).
5. M. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); A. Curle, Making Peace (London: Tavistock Publi-
cations, 1971), 16, 231.
6. A. Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 15.
7. R. Keohane and J. Nye, Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1973), xi.
8. M. R. Berman and J. E. Johnson, eds., Unofficial Diplomats (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1977), 4, 6, 7.
9. For the Western-centric view see F. Müller-Rommel and T. Poguntke, eds., New Poli-
tics (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1995); see also G. Wylie, “Social Movements and International
Change: The Case of ‘Détente from Below,’” International Journal of Peace Studies 4 (July
1999); S. B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2011).
10. M. Cotey Morgan, “The Seventies and the Rebirth of Human Rights,” in The Shock
of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, ed. N. Ferguson, C. Maier, E. Manela, and D. Sargent
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010), 237–50; A. Iriye, P. Goedde, and W. Hitchcock,
eds. The Human Rights Revolution: An International History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011); P. Stearns, Human Rights in World History (London: Routledge, 2012).
11. See S. Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklóssy, eds. Reassessing Cold War Europe (London:
Routledge, 2011).
12. W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, and M. Gehler, “Transnational Networks in European Integration
Governance: Historical Perspectives on an Elusive Phenomenon,” in Transnational Networks
in Regional Integration: Governing Europe 1945–83, ed. W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, and M. Gehler
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 2.
13. J. van Willigen, Applied Anthropology: An Introduction (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey,
2002), 130–31. The term originated with E. Wolf, J. Steward, and R. Manners in The People
of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956) and
was further developed by H. Weidman in “Implications of the Culture-Broker Concept for
Health Care” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Soci-
ety, Wrightsville Beach, 1973).
14. J. Voorhees, Dialogue Sustained: The Multilevel Peace Process and the Dartmouth Confer-
ence (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2002), 16.
15. T. Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic
Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994):
186.
16. H. W. Bomert, Nederland en Oost-Europa: meer worden dan daden (Nijmegen: Stud-
iecentrum voor Vredesvraagstukken, 1990); F. Baudet, Het heeft onze aandacht: Nederland
en de rechten van de mens in Oost-Europa en Joegoslavie, 1972–1989 (Alphen aan den Rijn:
Haasbeek, 2001), 253–72.
17. Baudet, Het heeft onze aandacht, 94.
18. H. Burgers, email correspondence with the author, 21 June 2012.
19. P. Kooijmans, interview with the author, Wassenaar, 3 May 2012. In 1979, the govern-
ment issued a policy statement, “De rechten van de mens in het buitenlands beleid,” which
recognized that “if one wants to reduce the confrontational atmosphere between East and
West, it needs not only an improvement in relations at the governmental level, but also an
increase in trust and contacts between individuals and peoples.” Nevertheless, this had to
occur in a way that did not disrupt domestic political stability.
20. Ibid.
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Opening Up Political Space
21. On van den Heuvel and Interdoc, see G. Scott-Smith, Western Anti-Communism and
the Interdoc Network: Cold War Internationale (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012).
22. U. Holl, interview with the author, Cologne, 18 December 2005.
23. C. C. van den Heuvel, R. D. Praaning, and F. Z. R. Wijchers, Implementation of the Con-
ference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Part I (The Hague: East-West Institute, 1976),
3–4.
24. “Overzicht van binnengekomen bedragen voor Interdoc conferentie Noordwijk, 21/22
september 1973,” File: Nederland—Geldschieters conferentie Noordwijk 1973, archive of C.
C. van den Heuvel, National Archives, The Hague (hereafter CC NAH).
25. Van den Heuvel to Ellis, 30 October 1973, File: UK 5, C. H. Ellis 1969, CC NAH; C.
C. van den Heuvel, ed., Development of East-West Relations through Freer Movement of People,
Ideas and Information (The Hague: Interdoc, 1973), 7, 11, 14, 18, 31, 54.
26. Van den Heuvel to Ambassador A. I. Romanov, 6 May 1974, Van den Heuvel to G. J.
van Hattum (Bureau Oost-Europa), 4 October 1974, and Van den Heuvel to Ambassador A.
I. Romanov, 5 November 1974, File: Reis naar Moskau 1974, CC NAH; Van den Heuvel to
Bell, 14 October 1974, File: UK 4b, Walter Bell 1973–74, CC NAH.
27. “Soviet Perceptions of the West and NATO,” 10 November 1974, File: Reis naar
Moskau 1974, CC NAH.
28. Ibid.; Van den Heuvel to Bell, 31 October 1974, File: UK 4b, Walter Bell 1973–74,
CC NAH.
29. Van den Heuvel to Harm van Riel, 4 July 1974, Amnesty International: NL Section,
File: AK-NL 12, CC NAH.
30. R. Praaning, interview with the author, Brussels, 7 November 2005.
31. For instance, the Polish ambassador to the Netherlands in the early 1970s was
Wlodzimierz Lechowicz, a former resistance fighter.
32. In May 1975, van den Heuvel would also link up with a Soviet veterans’ delegation
that visited the Netherlands for the thirtieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Van
den Heuvel to Tarik Ajanovic (Ambassador to the Netherlands), 8 August 1975, File: AK
Oost-Europa 9–10, Yugoslavia 1975–79, CC NAH.
33. Van den Heuvel to Prof. M. Dobrosielski, 30 August 1976, File: AK Oost-Europa 15–
16, Polen 1975–85, CC NAH; Van den Heuvel to Dr. M. Sahovic, 31 August 1976, File: AK
Oost-Europa 9–10, Yugoslavia 1975–79, CC NAH.
34. “Meeting Soviet Committee for European Security and Cooperation with East-West
Institute on 21 November 1974,” File: Soviet Committee for European Security and Coop-
eration, CC NAH; Questionnaire for SCESC visit, November 1974, File: Reis naar Moskau
1974, CC NAH.
35. “Détente, het Oost-West Instituut en enkele Projecten,” n. d. [1975], in the author’s
possession; Van den Heuvel to N. Pankov (Soviet Committee for European Security and Co-
operation), 2 May 1977, File: Soviet Comité voor Europese Veiligheid en Samenwerking, CC
NAH; C. C. van den Heuvel, R. D. Praaning, and F. Z. R. Wijchers, Implementation of the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Part I (The Hague: OWI, 1976); C. C. van
den Heuvel, R. D. Praaning, P. Vaillant, and F. Z. R. Wijchers, Part II (1977); F. Z. R. Wijchers,
Part III (1977). In 1978 the volume The Belgrade Conference: Progress or Regression?, edited by
van den Heuvel and Rio Praaning, was published with contributions from Gerhard Wettig,
the U.S. Congress’s American Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Soviet
researcher Dr. V. Lomeiko, and Dr. L. Acimovic of the Yugoslav Institute for International
Relations.
36. “Meeting with Delegation of Soviet Committee for Security and Cooperation in Eu-
rope, Tuesday June 6 1978,” File: AK NL 28, Bijeenkomsten en Lezingen, CC NAH.
37. J. W. van der Meulen, “Commentaar: Het Oost-West Instituut als spreekbuis van het
Kremlin,” Internationale Spectator 30 (December 1976): 748–50. See the subsequent sharp
– 41 –
Giles Scott-Smith
exchange between van den Heuvel and van der Meulen in “Commentaar: Een merkwaardige
insinuatie,” Internationale Spectator 31 (February 1977): 122–25.
38. “Visit at Polski Instytut Spraw Miedzynarodowyck (Polish Institute of International
Relations),” September 1977, File: AK Oost-Europa 15–16, Polen 1975–85, CC NAH.
39. F. Alting von Geusau, interview with the author, Leiden, 11 March 2009.
40. “Second Report,” 2, File: JFK Circulaires 1966 to 1-9-1967, archive of the JFK Insti-
tute, Tilburg University (hereafter JFK).
41. W. Couwenberg, interview with the author, Rotterdam, 21 October 2004; R. Praaning,
interview with the author, Brussels, 7 November 2005.
42. “Mededelingen,” 10 November 1970, File: Oost-West 1961–71; Oost-West Instituut:
Jaarverslag 1970, 22–23.
43. F. Alting von Geusau, “First Report on Activities,” August 1966, File: Correspondentie
1-4-1967 to 1-7-1967, JFK.
44. F. Alting von Geusau, March 1968, File: JFK Circulaires 1-9-1967 to 1-9-1968, JFK.
45. F. Alting von Geusau, interview with the author, Leiden, 11 March 2009.
46. Jurrjens to R. Aron, 28 January 1975, Box 113: Hollande—Amsterdam, Section: Con-
ferences/colloques (invitations refusées), Aron.
47. R. Jurrjens, “Science and the CSCE,” opening address delivered at the international
interdisciplinary conference entitled “East-West Perspectives: Theories and Policies,” 1 Sep-
tember 1975.
48. P. Volten, telephone interview, 21 January 2013. Volten himself does not believe that
Jurrjens continued as a member of military intelligence. Yet Jurrjens’s academic assistant in
the mid-1970s, J. H. M. de Winter, was also trained in Russian by the military intelligence
school (File 61: Russisch sprekenden in Nederland, CC NAH). He was later head of general
policy planning at the Ministry of Defense from 1994 to 2001.
49. R. Th. Jurrjens, Personeelsdossier 1995–651, archive of the Free University, Amsterdam.
50. R. Th. Jurrjens, “The Free Flow: People, Ideas and Information in Soviet Ideology and
Politics,” (Ph.D. diss., Free University of Amsterdam, 1978), 14.
51. See, for instance, R. van Voren, On Dissidents and Madness: From the Soviet Union of
Leonid Brezhnev to the ‘Soviet Union’ of Vladimir Putin (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), which
refers to Jurrjens’s support for van Voren’s Second World Center.
52. C. Veltman, “Bankier Ernst van Eeghen: Nederland moet zelf met de Russen gaan
praten over kernwapens,” Hervormd Nederland, 18 October 1980.
53. See M. Spencer, The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (Lanham: Lexington,
2010), 95–102; G. Scott-Smith, “A Dutch Dartmouth,” New Global Studies, 8/1 (March 2014).
54. R. Dulmers, “Als u begrijpt wat ik bedoel,” De Groene Amsterdammer, 11 August 1999;
W. van Eeghen, interview with the author, Amsterdam, 11 June 2012. See also E. H. van Eeg-
hen, “De familie Khailo,” Een Bizar Experiment: De lange schaduw van de Sovjet-Unie (1917–
1991), ed. A. Gerrits (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001).
55. W. Oltmans, Zaken Doen (Baarn: In den Toren, 1986).
56. Van Eeghen to S. Nunn, 10 February and 20 June 1983, private papers of E. H. van
Eeghen, Van Eeghen family estate.
57. J. A. E. Vermaat, “Prive-diplomaten lopen regering voor de voeten,” Nederlands Dag-
blad, 2 April 1985.
58. W. Oltmans, Zaken Doen, 13–52; R. van Diepen, Hollanditis: Nederland en het kern-
wapendebat 1977–1987 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2004), 328.
59. The closest he came to doing so is in the recent publication Cultural Diplomacy: Waging
War by other Means? (Nijmegen: Wolf, 2009), which sets out with hindsight a very combative
interpretation of cultural diplomacy as a form of ideological warfare.
60. J. Heldring, quoted in M. van Weezel, “ALCM, ICBM, MBFR, Ach, ik heb er zelf ook
altijd een zakboekje bij,” Vrij Nederland, 8 December 1979.
– 42 –
Opening Up Political Space
61. F. Alting von Geusau, “Kernwapendebat Nederland: Het woord is aan de regering,”
Atlantisch Nieuws 8–9 (1981).
62. R. van Voren, interview with the author, Amsterdam, 21 March 2013.
63. F. Alting von Geusau, interview with the author, Oisterwijk, 16 February 2011.
64. For a critique of van den Heuvel’s activities, see Max van Weezel, “ALCM, ICBM,
MBFR, Ach, ik heb er zelf ook altijd een zakboekje bij,” Vrij Nederland, 8 December 1979.
65. Henk de Mari, ‘Hoe van Eeghen Kremlintop overtuigde,’ De Telegraaf, 30 March 1985.
– 43 –
Chapter 2
Marianne Rostgaard
I n the late 1950s, Danish foreign office diplomats were faced with a di-
lemma. On the one hand, the only way to sustain contacts with people
from the Eastern bloc was through state-regulated exchange arrangements
that did not allow for normal and free people-to-people contacts. On the
other hand, the diplomats wanted to break the virtual monopoly the Com-
munist parties and friendship societies had on cultural exchange with the
Eastern bloc countries. The Danish diplomats were initially skeptical about
the usefulness of the official East-West cultural exchange agreements. This
skepticism was partly due to the fact that it was the Soviet Union that
originally suggested bilateral agreements on cultural exchange in the late
1950s. Gradually, however, a much more positive view among Danish dip-
lomats developed about the potential of such agreements.
The Danish-Polish cultural exchange between 1965 and 1975 is of
broader interest not only because it is yet another example of East-West
cultural exchange, but because Denmark seems to have pioneered a new
kind of cultural exchange program with Poland in the late 1960s with the
institutionalization of the Danish-Polish youth leader seminars. These
seminars were initiated by the Danish Youth Council (Dansk Ungdoms
Fællesråd, DUF), which was a nongovernmental organization. The actual
Danish-Polish youth exchange organized by the DUF took place within
the framework of the official Danish-Polish cultural exchange program.
Denmark developed thus very early on a model in which NGOs became
an integral part of the official exchange program that sought to further
– 44 –
Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes
people-to-people contact and free exchange of ideas across the blocs. The
experience from the Danish-Polish cultural exchange in the late 1960s came
to determine the Danish policy regarding East-West cultural exchange and
later also came to influence the ideas of the Helsinki Final Act.1
This chapter presents a hitherto unresearched part of the history of East-
West cultural exchange during the Cold War. It is based on records retained
in the Danish State Archives, supplemented with printed sources, and thus
it primarily reflects Danish viewpoints, although letters and other sources
from Polish counterparts, translated or written in English (or German), are
also retained in the Danish State Archives.2 The records retained in the
Danish State Archives have been supplemented with records from AAN
(the archives for Polish parties, organizations, and the central administra-
tion) pertaining to the Polish youth organization OKWOM and records
from AMSZ (the archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs).3
people that all countries in Europe had a common past and perhaps also
one day again a common future.
Independent of the actions of and the policy formulations made in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Danish Youth Council started
to organize joint seminars for youth leaders, and the DUF gradually also de-
veloped other types of youth exchange. The DUF was a nongovernmental
umbrella organization comprising different kinds of youth organizations,
from political to sports organizations, scouting groups, student organiza-
tions, and others. The youth organizations affiliated with Danish political
parties that were members of DUF spanned the ideological spectrum, from
the Danish Young Communists (DKU) to the Young Conservatives (KU),
with the Social Democratic Youth of Denmark (DSU) as one of the more
prominent member organizations. Organizing exchanges with youth or-
ganizations in Eastern bloc countries thus was also part of the Cold War
within the labor movement between Communists and Social Democrats,
which was very prominent in Denmark until the 1960s.
Although the idea for the seminars did not originate in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, these seminars were funded by, and in this sense part of,
the formal cultural exchange agreement between Denmark and Poland,
also because formal state-to-state agreements were the only possible way
to make people-to-people exchanges with an Eastern bloc country at the
time.
Richard Wagner Hansen, head of the Office of Press and Cultural Infor-
mation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, initiated in 1969–70
a new Danish policy regarding cultural exchanges with the Eastern bloc.
Wagner Hansen argued that cultural exchange should aim at creating
changes in the European front system. He urged people in charge of East-
West relations in the Danish ministry, as well as his colleagues in Western
Europe, to ask themselves which circles in Eastern Europe “they want to
reach and create contact with through East-West cultural exchange pro-
grams, in order to further détente and changes in the European ‘front
system.’” At the same time, he pointed at the Danish-Polish seminar for
youth leaders as an example of an alternative and fruitful way to create the
kind of contact he was advocating.7 These statements, formulated in 1970,
were the first cases, at least in a Danish context, where cultural exchange
was assigned a role as an agent of change in East-West relations. Wagner
Hansen argued that, in the future, cultural exchanges with the Eastern
bloc ought to be based on a broad concept of culture favoring everyday
culture. It was also to be governed by the institutions and organizations
directly involved in the actual exchange activities, with the state as a fa-
cilitator, not as a controlling or governing body. This would, according to
the Danish diplomats, widen the official cultural exchange programs and
– 46 –
Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes
In the early 1960s, the DUF wanted to contribute to what they themselves
termed “a break-down of old Cold War stereotypes.” The DUF deliberately
– 47 –
Marianne Rostgaard
aimed to create “a type of meeting totally different from the Youth festivals
that had hitherto constituted the only framework for East-West youth con-
tacts.”9 The DUF stated as its aim the creation of a real East-West dialogue.
They aimed at circumventing propaganda or tedious repetition of official
standpoints, thus contributing to the breakdown of “artificial barriers be-
tween East and West created by the Cold War.”10 With the consent of
Danish authorities, the DUF contacted the Polish Embassy in Copenha-
gen, presented their ideas, and got a green light to arrange the first Dan-
ish-Polish Youth Leader Seminar, which took place at Magleås Højskole in
Denmark in 1965.
Poland originally became DUF’s “favorite partner country” for relatively
pragmatic reasons. In the early 1960s, the DUF took an interest in cul-
tural exchange with Eastern Europe in general. Poland was within rea-
sonable proximity, keeping travel expenses low. Furthermore, the language
barrier was manageable, partly due to the Polish Associations (De Polske
Foreninger), a Danish umbrella association for a number of local Polish
associations of former labor migrants to Denmark who served as interpret-
ers and in the 1960s hosted visitors to Poland in their homes during their
stays. It definitely also made a difference that the DUF’s Polish counter-
parts were eager to have contacts with the DUF, or westerners in general.
According to Per Himmelstrup, who organized the first Danish-Polish sem-
inar for youth leaders in 1965, it all started in the summer of 1962, when
he, completely on his own, decided to spend his summer holiday driving
around in Poland and the G.D.R. During his trip, he got in contact with
Polish youth leaders, and this interaction formed the basis for invitations to
participate in the seminar in 1965. According to Himmelstrup, it was easy
as a westerner to get in contact with the Poles. In 1962, Himmelstrup was
a teacher at the Krogerup Folk High School and annoyed with the ongoing
discussions at Krogerup about the Communist system and what was hap-
pening in the Eastern bloc. None of his colleagues had actually ever been
to one of the Eastern European people’s democracies and based their opin-
ions about the Socialist experiments in Eastern Europe on general ideolog-
ical orientations instead of actual experience. Himmelstrup wanted to see
for himself and invite others to do likewise in order to encourage a debate
based on informed opinions.11 Although contact with the G.D.R. would
have been even easier to realize (the language barrier would have been
lower), political conditions did not allow for this, as an official agreement
on cultural exchanges would have meant the G.D.R.’s formal recognition,
which, in the mid-1960s, from the viewpoint of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Denmark, was out of the question. A formal cultural exchange
agreement with the G.D.R. had to abide with the German-German agree-
ments signed in 1972.
– 48 –
Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes
The DUF’s communication with the Polish Embassy and Polish orga-
nizations in the mid-1960s naturally had to use different wordings and
rhetoric than at home, but part of the phrasing used in communication
with the Polish authorities and youth organizations was close to the formu-
lations used at home. The DUF generally talked about creating a dialogue
among the youth in the East and the West, about furthering European
détente and overcoming Cold War stereotypes, and creating friendship
bonds across the Iron Curtain—such formulations of aims also met the
approval of the Polish authorities.
The Polish-Danish seminars for youth leaders may be characterized
as a kind of elite exchange program. Every year, around thirty to forty
young politicians (half from each country) met for a two-week seminar
or summer course. The conference venue alternated between Denmark
and Poland. The Danish speakers at these seminars typically consisted of
ministers, mayors, academics, and intellectuals of relatively high standing.
Some of the young Danish participants in the youth leader seminars later
rose to prominent positions themselves.12 The DUF’s Polish counterpart
was the OKWOM (the Polish National Council for the Cooperation of
Youth Organizations). As the exchange program was part of an official
cultural exchange program, the participating Poles represented organiza-
tions that were part of the existing party/state apparatus. The Danish of-
ficial from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who summarized the experience
gained from the first youth leader seminar stated in the ministry’s yearly
evaluation report to its NATO counterparts that there was no doubt that
the participating Poles were all “orthodox communists.” Even so, he con-
cluded that the seminar had proved useful as an opportunity to create a
dialogue.13
The records document that the Polish side was eager to continue these
annual seminars.14 Polish authorities saw this as a chance to promote Polish
foreign policy objectives, particularly concerning Germany and the ques-
tion of recognition of the Oder-Neisse borderline. Reports from the Polish
Embassy in Copenhagen repeatedly concluded that DUF was the best part-
ner to cooperate with regarding Danish-Polish youth exchange and argued,
among other things, that DUF had good contacts with prominent mem-
bers of the Danish parliament (the Communist Party of Denmark had no
members of parliament from 1961 to 1973).15 The DUF members, in turn,
wanted to educate their Polish counterparts about the viewpoints of West-
ern Germany, trying to convince them that their conception of German
revanchism was utterly wrong. This part of the DUF’s objective of creating
a dialogue between politically interested young people from Eastern and
Western Europe was based on a mutual interest among the participants in
the youth leader seminars in the future of Europe.16
– 49 –
Marianne Rostgaard
The visits of Poles to Denmark also included showing the Poles elements
of the modern Danish welfare state, such as new housing areas around
Copenhagen, the modern art museum Louisiana, and the like. The young
Poles seem to have appreciated these glimpses of modern Denmark, and
they also appreciated the weekends spent in private homes.17
The visits of young Danes to Poland were similarly eye-opening for them.
As it was articulated by one of the Danish participants who visited Poland
in 1966, “Poland is different.” Various Danish delegates in these exchanges
came to understand that the countries of Eastern Europe were as different
from each other as Western European countries.18 The reciprocal visits
seem to have confirmed, for both parties, the differences among Capitalist
countries as well as Communist countries. In this sense, the visits contrib-
uted, in a very basic manner, to the breakdown of Cold War stereotypes.
The youth leader seminars were deliberately organized as an exchange
of views regarding topical issues of common interest. The topics debated
were typically related to socioeconomic issues, such as modern town plan-
ning, but often also to political issues, such as the German question.19 The
representatives would present how the topic was generally perceived in
their society, followed by a debate. The summer courses were organized
as an exchange of views on an equal basis, not necessarily aiming at con-
vincing each other, but merely learning each other’s point of view. In this
sense, according to the DUF, the dialogue served to create interhuman
understanding and help overcome stereotypes.
The DUF’s original idea about creating a dialogue and forum of debate
seems to have materialized at least partly. One event mentioned both by
the Danish and the Polish side as an example of an open and frank debate
was a discussion that followed a lecture by Robert Pedersen (Social Dem-
ocrat; in 1967, principal of Herning Folk High School; former vice-chair-
man of DSU’s Copenhagen branch; from 1971, member of the Danish
parliament) on “the contribution of European youth to further peace and
security in Europe.” What is interesting about this debate is that although
the heading of the lecture may also have appeared in the program of a
congress organized by Communist parties, the content certainly differed.
Robert Pedersen challenged Polish opinions and stereotypes about West
Germany, quoting a poll showing that 74 percent of the Western German
population was ready to recognize the Oder-Neisse borderline, and stating
that the role of (young) politicians in both Denmark and Poland was to
– 50 –
Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes
support forces in German society that wanted to turn the opinion of the
majority into government policy. On the other hand, the Danes seem to
have learned from the discussion that the border issue was a vital, national
priority to the Poles and not a repetition of standard Soviet viewpoints.20
A Danish diplomat had remarked in his report to NATO’s working com-
mittee on cultural exchange that all young Poles participating in the Dan-
ish-Polish youth exchange were members of the Polish Communist Party
or a state-approved youth organization. However, that did not, as the dip-
lomat seems to have thought, automatically make the young Poles “ortho-
dox communists.”21 Evaluation reports also mention that it was possible to
have informal talks in the evenings and during breaks. The seminars were
partly organized to include group work (although the Polish delegation had
opposed the idea during the first year) in order to avoid what the Danish
organizers called the tendency to have a spokesperson that spoke on behalf
of the whole group. Whether group work was desirable or not seems to
have been an ongoing discussion among the organizers. The Danish evalu-
ation report from 1968 mentioned that the Poles had again argued against
it. However, on the third day of the 1968 seminar, something unexpected
happened: Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, and the seminar
program was suspended. Instead, informal group discussions took place,
providing yet another example of how the seminars succeeded in creating
real dialogue and providing a forum where it was possible to discuss even
controversial issues.22
The youth exchange organized by the DUF was, as already mentioned,
deliberately designed as an alternative to the mass festivals (the World
Festival of Youth and Students) and other types of youth exchange that
took place within the World Communist Movement. I will argue that the
different framework for exchange organized by the DUF was of impor-
tance because what people experience depends on what they are invited
to experience.
The Danish Young Communists (DKU), who of course invited members
of their sister organization to festivals and organized reciprocal visits of
delegations, was very active in youth exchange. Although evaluation re-
ports from these exchanges exist only from the late 1970s and early 1980s,
it is illuminating to compare the exchanges organized by the DUF and the
DKU. The members of the DKU invited their comrades from the East-
ern bloc to look at Danish workplaces, educational institutions, and the
like, where they would be shown around and talk primarily with Danish
Communists who were activists in trade unions and other movements.
The Danish Communist Party was among the most orthodox Communist
parties in the West, and it never questioned the basic ideological assump-
tions of the Communist movement. Based on the supposition of a common
– 51 –
Marianne Rostgaard
The format of the exchange altered in the early 1970s, partly due to one
of the immediate goals of the youth leader seminars being reached. The
youth leader seminars seem to have ceased around 1970, to be succeeded
– 52 –
Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes
The DUF was not the only organization to work hard in the early 1970s to
realize the new policy formulated by the office of press and cultural infor-
mation in the Ministry of Foreign affairs of Denmark.
Following the meeting of NATO’s Council of Ministers in December
1971, the issue of cultural exchange agreements was discussed at meetings
first between the Danish and Polish ministers of foreign affairs and shortly
thereafter at a meeting with the Romanian minister of foreign affairs. The
Danish minister of foreign affairs and Danish diplomats held these meet-
ings to explore possibilities of furthering their own ideas, to strike a com-
promise regarding the freer movement of information, people, and ideas at
the upcoming conference on security and peace in Helsinki, and to sound
out the room for maneuvering among the Warsaw Pact countries, where
the regimes in Poland and Romania were regarded as the most indepen-
dent-minded ones in the Eastern bloc.
This is not the place to probe deeper into the role played by Danish
diplomats in the run-up to and during the negotiations in Helsinki in
1975.32 What I want to highlight in this chapter is the interplay between
the formal and informal diplomacy. At the meeting of the Danish and Pol-
ish ministers of foreign affairs in April 1972 to discuss the upcoming CSCE
– 55 –
Marianne Rostgaard
Final Remarks
that led up to and during the negotiations of the Helsinki Accords in strik-
ing a compromise between the East and the West. By creating room for
agency and the empowerment of people, the Danish cultural exchange
program with the Eastern bloc, although only one small pawn in the game,
contributed, however small that contribution may have been, to the trans-
formation process in Eastern Europe. It ended in 1989, but had a long
history leading up to that decisive moment.
Notes
1. The chapter presents results of ongoing research on Danish cultural exchange with
the Eastern bloc during the Cold War. It was started as part of the collective research project
“An Epoch-Making Decade: ‘The Long 1970s’ and European-Transatlantic Transformation
Processes in Political Culture, Discourse and Power” (University of Copenhagen, with funding
from the Danish Research Council, 2010–13).
2. The chapter is primarily based on the archival records from “NATO’s working commit-
tee on cultural relations with the Eastern bloc,” Udenrigsministeriet (the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Denmark), gruppeordnede sager 1945–72 (referred to as DSA, UM); records from
Dansk Ungdoms Fællesråd (the Danish Youth Council, referred to as DSA, DUF); and re-
cords from Danish-Polish cultural exchanges, the Ministry of Culture (referred to as DSA,
KultM). The mentioned archives are all retained in Rigsarkivet (the Danish State Archives,
DSA) in Copenhagen.
3. The records consulted in AMSZ include documents, mainly reports from the Polish Em-
bassy in Copenhagen, that relate to DUF and youth exchange between Poland and Denmark
from 1969 to 1976. The records consulted at AAN pertaining to OKWOM and Danish-Polish
youth exchange span the years 1956–72 (the period where OKWOM headed the Polish in-
ternational youth exchange).
4. OKWOM file B/III/58 in the AAN (Warsaw) retains reports, minutes from meetings,
newspaper clippings etc. that relates to Polish youth visiting Denmark in 1956 (organized by
DKU), 1960 (organized by DUF), in 1962 (DKU), and the Danish-Polish youth leader semi-
nars organized by DUF (1965–69).
5. The Polish government was eager to enhance and deepen relations with Denmark and
Norway in the late 1950s and early 1960s. H. Andreasen, “Polske arkiver og Danmark,” Ar-
bejderhistorie 1, 2006.
6. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, “Orientering fra Politisk Juridisk Afdeling”
(Circular from the Office of Political and Judicial Affairs), 3 August 1965, UM 41.c.143, DSA.
7. Richard Wagner Hansen’s concluding remarks in his report from the annual meeting in
NATO’s working committee on cultural relations with the Eastern bloc 1970, UM.41.C.143,
DSA. For more information on NATO’s working committee on cultural relations with the
– 59 –
Marianne Rostgaard
Eastern bloc see M. Rostgaard, “NATO’s Working Committee on Cultural Relations with
the Eastern Bloc: Experience Gained That Came into Use in the Helsinki Process?” Working
paper, presented at workshop at Copenhagen University, September 2011. http://epokeskiftet
.saxo.ku.dk/publikationer/Working_paper_MarianneRostgaard_2.pdf/.
8. All-European youth conferences that paralleled the CSCE conferences were held in
Helsinki in 1972, followed by consultative meetings in Hungary in June 1973 and Septem-
ber 1974, and a conference in June 1976 in Warsaw. DUF printed annual reports 1972/73–
1974/75, and DU-bladet.
9. The 8th World Youth Festival in Helsinki in 1962 had caused several rounds of discus-
sions in the DUF about whether the Danish Youth Council should participate or not. The
result of the debate was a clear no. One argument was that the DUF’s Finnish counterparts
did not recommend participation in this altogether Communist festival that had less to do
with real youth exchange than with Communist propaganda. The main argument, however,
was a principled critique and general mistrust of mass meetings (with their reminiscences of
Nazi mass meetings). Instead, the DUF advocated smaller seminars that allowed for a real
exchange of opinions, which they saw as a democratic alternative to the Communist rallies.
Dansk Ungdoms Fællesråd, “Rapport fra Rådsmødet 30. Maj 1965 i Fællessalen på Christi-
ansborg,” Formandens beretning, (Minutes from meeting May 30, 1965, item: Report from
the chairman of DUF) 6–7, DUF, box 130, folder: Helsingfors 1962, DSA. See also J. Krekola
and S. Mikkonen, “Backlash of the Free World,” Scandinavian Journal of History 36, 2 (2011):
230–55.
10. “Rapport om de dansk-polske ungdomslederseminar afholdt på Magleås Højskole 15–
29 august 1965” (Post-seminar report from the Danish-Polish youth leader seminar, 15–29
August 1965, Magleås Højskole), DUF, box 148, DSA.
11. Conversation with Per Himmelstrup, 3 August 2012.
12. Social Democrat K. B. Andersen, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark in 1971–73,
was one of the founding fathers of the DUF. Obituary, DU-bladet, no. 3, 1983. Another prom-
inent Social Democrat, who as a young politician engaged herself in the Danish-Polish youth
exchange in the early 1970s, was Dorte Bennedsen, later Minister of Education in 1979–82.
13. “The Joint Council of the Danish Youth arranged a meeting of Danish and Polish
youth leaders at a Danish folk high school in August 1965. The meeting was, in the main, a
success, but there can be no doubt that the Polish delegation was hand-picked orthodox com-
munists.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, “Annual report on East-West cultural
exchanges to NATO’s working committee on cultural relations with the Eastern bloc, 1966.”
UM, 41.C.143, box 6307, DSA.
14. Letter from Józef Altman, Secretary General of the Polish Youth Council, 16 March
1966: “We are glad that, like ourselves, you think the seminar was valuable. Our organizations
are also of the opinion that it was interesting and useful, and that it is worth repeating … In
our view, the principles of our joint seminar held last year could be observed this year too.”
See also the written statement (by Carl Nissen) on behalf of the Danish organizers in1967
reporting to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark on an oral evaluation of the 1967
seminar: “The Polish participants expressed their interest in continuing the yearly, bilateral
seminars. They had noticed substantial progress in this year’s deliberations about controver-
sial issues and stressed the value of scale of the seminar together with continuity in relations.”
DUF, box 148, DSA.
15. OKWOM file B/III/58, AAN (Warsaw). Lengthy reports from the Polish Embassy in
Copenhagen about DUF in 1962, 1965 and 1969 all end with the conclusion that youth
exchanges should be arranged through DUF. It seems that, more than once, DKU tried to
pull strings in order to become gatekeeper of Danish-Polish youth exchange. The records
document that the Polish authorities preferred to keep DUF as their gateway to Denmark.
16. What was termed the German question was on the agenda at every annual Polish-
Danish youth leader seminar. In 1969, the Polish ambassador to Denmark gave a speech at
– 60 –
Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes
the youth leader seminar (held in Denmark) titled “Selected Problems of Security and Co-
operation in Europe.” The issue raised by the ambassador was the possibility of calling a con-
ference on peace and security in Europe and the reason such a conference was of the utmost
importance seen from a Polish point of view. DUF, box 148, folder: The 1969 youth leader
seminar, DSA.
17. Evaluation report from the Danish-Polish youth leader seminar [in Danish]. DUF, box
148, folder: The 1965 youth leader seminar, DSA.
18. See, among other examples, the interview with Elisabeth Fabricius from the Danish
Girl Scout Union who partook in the youth leader seminar in Poland in 1966 in Førerbladet
(the Girl Scouts’ magazine). One example among a number of newspaper and magazine clip-
pings, DUF, box 148, DSA.
19. The Danish youth leaders tried to convince the Polish youth leaders in 1966 and 1967
that the new democratic Western Germany was different and that the FRG had no revanchist
intentions. They did not, perhaps, succeed in winning over the young Poles, but at least they
managed to create a Danish-Polish dialogue regarding this thorny issue, according to the
DUF’s own evaluations. DUF, Box 148, folders with evaluations of the seminars in 1967 and
1969, DSA.
20. DKU’s Arkiv (Archive of the Communist Youth of Denmark), box 135 ABA (The
Danish labor movements’ archive and library): handwritten notes from participants in the
Danish-Polish youth leader seminar August 1967 at Herning Folk High School. The hand-
written notes seem to be shorthand minutes of the debates that took place at the youth leader
seminar.
21. K. H. Nielsen, “Go West—Ungkommunister fra Sovjetunionen og Østeuropa på besøg
i Danmark” [Go West—Young communists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on a
visit to Denmark], Arbejderhistorie 1, 2011.
22. Sadly enough, the evaluation reports do not contain any information about what was
actually discussed regarding the Warsaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia.
23. K. H. Nielsen, “Go West”. In his article, Knud Holt Nielsen presents findings from his
research on political traveling, namely on young Communists from the Eastern bloc visiting
Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s. According to KHN, young Communists, especially from the
Soviet Union, experienced a kind of cultural shock when visiting a Capitalist country, some
perhaps for the first time.
24. Quote from the official evaluation of the fifth Danish-Polish youth leader seminar
in Holte (Denmark), 1969, which includes a letter with thanks from the Polish minister of
foreign affairs, Stefan Jedrychowski. One of the lecturers at the 1969 seminar was Henry
Sokalski, First Secretary of the Embassy of the Polish People’s Republic. Sokalski opened his
lecture by saying, “You are a special kind of audience, possessing the five-year-long tradition
of the most constructive and lasting elements of relations between our two countries in recent
years. … As a close follower of all your seminars so far, I can only congratulate DUF and OK-
WOM for what they have done—and I am sure will go on doing—to successfully prove that
a sincere will to carry through bilateral contacts, if truly honest, can resist all evils.” DUF, box
148, folder: The Youth Leader seminar 1969, DSA.
25. The term “systemic identity” has been coined in G. Péteri, ed., Imagining the West in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010).
26. DUF, box 269 (covering the years 1971–73) and box 268 (covering the years 1974–79),
DSA.
27. Archive of the Polish Scouting Association (ZHP), Warsaw.
28. “Rapport Øst-Vest møde i Canada, maj 1970” (report from the annual meeting in NA-
TO’s working committee on cultural relations with the Eastern bloc, 1970, held in Ottawa,
Canada), UM, 41.C.143, DSA.
29. KultM, Journalsager: Kulturaftaler/samarbejde med Polen 1973– (Danish Ministry of
Culture, Cultural relations with Poland 1973–1988), boxes 15–17, DSA and UM, Journal-
– 61 –
Marianne Rostgaard
– 62 –
Chapter 3
Nicolas Badalassi
T o explain why the Cold War ended, historians of the 1990s and the
early 2000s always underlined the Eastern bloc’s disastrous economic
situation, Ronald Reagan’s offensive armament policy, Gorbachev’s pere-
stroika and glasnost, or Eastern European peoples’ attraction to Western
culture. However, several years ago, historiography added to this non-
exhaustive list an element that had been underestimated: the Conference
on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE).1
The CSCE, whose Final Act was signed on 1 August 1975 in Helsinki,
was the result of many years of negotiations between all the European
countries (with the exception of Albania, which refused to join it), the
United States, and Canada. Held from 1972 to 1975 in Helsinki and Ge-
neva, the conference sought to make détente’s effects concrete by allowing
East-West negotiations on various issues, such as statute of frontiers, cir-
culation of people and ideas, and economic, scientific, and technical coop-
eration. Because the conference was so lengthy and was aiming to secure
long-term provisions, it was named the “Helsinki process.”2
Yet, when in 1954 the Soviet minister of foreign affairs, Viatcheslav Mo-
lotov, suggested organizing a meeting between all the European states, his
purpose was not to create an instrument allowing the coming together of
people and ideas. On the contrary, his goal was to make the presence of
U.S. forces on the continent illegitimate: the Soviets planned the with-
drawal of foreign troops from both Germanies and the creation of Pan-
– 63 –
Nicolas Badalassi
European permanent organisms that would put paid to the Atlantic Alli-
ance and any Western European attempts to form a common army.3
During the following years, Poland became the main promoter of the
project, desiring the denuclearization of F.R.G. and G.D.R. in order to neu-
tralize the territories of the former Reich once and for all. Nikita Khrush-
chev’s USSR saw the idea of conference as a way to freeze the division of
Europe and its stranglehold on the Eastern part of the continent. By 1965,
Leonid Brezhnev, battling with China, made both objectives a real leitmo-
tif: a Pan-European conference had to bring the Westerners to acknowl-
edge the political and territorial status quo in Europe.4 This would mean
ensuring the continued existence of both the German division and the
Soviet influence over Eastern European countries. He thus campaigned
to make the Western leaders accept the idea of the conference, presenting
it as a way of cementing détente and preventing them from categorically
refusing it at the risk of being accused of rejecting dialogue with the East
and trying to revive the Cold War. This is exactly what France wanted to
avoid.5
Headed by General Charles de Gaulle from 1958 to 1969, France had
been attempting to portray itself as an intermediary between the East and
the West since 1963. Considering the division of Europe in blocs abnormal,
de Gaulle considered it his country’s duty to do everything it could to facil-
itate reunification of the continent.6 That is why he distanced himself from
the United States—while staying in the Atlantic Alliance, which was seen
as essential for France’s security—and came closer to the USSR. Brezhnev
tried to take advantage of French willingness to dialogue in order to pro-
mote the project of the conference.7
Whereas de Gaulle was reluctant to accept any initiative aiming to
freeze the status quo, everything changed after the repression of the Prague
Spring in August 1968. His successor, Georges Pompidou (1969–74), ac-
tually understood the opportunity that a Pan-European conference could
represent: by broadening its agenda with issues reflecting values of freedom
and democracy, the Soviet project could be turned against its instigators
and would become the instrument of the blocs’ suppression. For him, the
most important thing was to use the conference to develop cultural co-
operation between the East and the West, the best way to transmit the
“freedom virus” to Socialist countries.8
Thus, if we look at the Helsinki Final Act, signed in 1975 by the thirty-
five heads of state or governments who took part in the CSCE, Moscow’s
initial objectives seem to be secondary. Although principles of inviolability
of borders, refraining from the threat or use of force, and non-intervention
in internal affairs were proclaimed,9 there were also principles of peaceful
change of frontiers,10 respect for human rights, self-determination of peo-
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Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”
For Charles de Gaulle, the division of Europe during the Cold War was
a “historic anomaly” created in 1945 by Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph
Stalin in Yalta.12 He thought that the European continent was above all a
mosaic of nation-states with centuries-old cultural links:
I myself had always felt, and now more than ever, how much the nations which
peopled [Europe] had in common. Being all of the same white race, with the
same Christian origins and the same way of life, linked to one another since
time immemorial by countless ties of thought, art, science, politics and trade,
it was natural that they should come to form a whole, with its own character
and organization in relation to the rest of the world. It was in pursuance of this
destiny that the Roman emperors reigned over it, that Charlemagne, Charles
V and Napoleon attempted to unite it, that Hitler sought to impose upon it his
crushing domination. But it is a fact of some significance that not one of these
federators succeeded in inducing the subject countries to surrender their indi-
viduality. On the contrary, arbitrary centralization always provoked an upsurge
of violent nationalism.13
The cultural scene shows few signs of life. Other than in the performance of
music, there is little of real merit either being produced or published here. Local
dissident painters have arranged some exhibitions which do not meet the offi-
cial canon of acceptability. However, the artistic merits of such exhibitions are
questionable and they remain more political than genuine artistic events. …
No new poets of real merit are on the horizon. … Many of the best Soviet nov-
elists, even aside from Solzhenitsyn, have emigrated. … Although there have
been some exceptions, Soviet films are generally of dismal quality. … The mood
among the really creative element in this society is bleak.22
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Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”
divided into three “baskets.” While the first one dealt with security issues
and the second one with economic and scientific matters, cultural issues
were inserted into the third one, which also included “human contacts”38
and information. On the eve of the CSCE, the Soviets were still hoping
to move these latter issues to the second basket. Only Pompidou’s art of
persuasion saved the situation: in January 1973 Leonid Brezhnev was per-
suaded to allow the division of cultural and economic issues.39
In return and in order to minimize damage, Brezhnev demanded the in-
sertion of a paragraph guaranteeing principles of respect of sovereign laws,
customs, and non-interference in internal affairs into the preamble of the
third basket’s mandate. This would allow him to avoid implementing the
provisions of this Final Act’s part. Yet, these three ideas already appeared
in the list of ten principles that was at the heart of the first basket and was
named the “Decalogue.” The decalogue’s rules aimed to govern relations
between the states of the CSCE. The Soviets had managed to include the
idea of inviolability of frontiers—intended to confirm the European status
quo—while the Westerners had obtained the insertion of respect for hu-
man rights and self-determination of peoples as compensation. Thus, in
order to prevent the principles dear to the Soviets from being favored and
not to restrain the impact of the third basket, the Western countries—in-
cluding the United States—considered that the preamble of this latter one
had to refer to all principles, and not only to two of them.40 After several
months of negotiation, the Soviets finally accepted this proposal.
The CSCE itself opened in July 1973 with a meeting of the thirty-five
foreign ministers. The negotiations of the Final Act started in Geneva in
September. They lasted nearly two years. Three committees in charge of
discussing the three great issues of the agenda (security, economic coop-
eration, circulation of peoples, ideas, and information) made up the con-
ference. Each committee was divided into various subcommittees. Thus,
the third basket was separated into four subcommittees: human contacts,
information, culture, and education. In the first phase, the delegations
from each country suggested draft texts that were classified by theme, and
then came the moment to discuss all these texts. Given the large number
of subcommittees, several countries did not have enough staff to be rep-
resented everywhere. The nine EC members—just like the Warsaw pact
countries—got round this difficulty by sharing tasks, the French acting
as spokesmen for the West on cultural issues, particularly in the field of
literature and editing.41 Within the French delegation—which was headed
by Jacques Andréani, an expert in East-West issues and a former member
of the French embassy with NATO—the negotiations of the third basket
were led by Jacques Chazelle. Formed at the Ecole Normale Supérieure,
one of the most prestigious establishments of higher education in France
– 69 –
Nicolas Badalassi
and where President Georges Pompidou had also been schooled, Chazelle
was regarded as a real intellectual.
As for the Soviet delegation, it was led by Anatolii Kovalev. He was a
member of the M.I.D College (an advisory council that united the main
officials of the Soviet Ministry for Foreign Affairs) and knew the West very
well, especially France. Having a less ideological vision of international
relations than most of the members of the Politburo had and being in favor
of a real détente, Kovalev had been an unswerving support to the CSCE
since the mid-1960s.42 Concerning the third basket, he was helped by Yuri
Dubinin, who was also a clever negotiator and defender of détente.
Considered a world center for culture, art, and thought, France decided to
use the Helsinki process to increase its cultural influence on the East and
proposed more than forty drafts of texts to cover all fields of culture and
art. Declaring to their Western European partners their long-term aim to
secure the opening up of Communist regimes, the leaders of the French
delegation did not want to limit themselves to restrictive phrases before
checking where further demands could lead them.43 By submitting very de-
tailed texts, France tried to make sure the CSCE would provide solutions
“to several questions which still remained and for which Eastern European
states did not show any will to resolve.”44
However, as soon as the discussions started in Geneva, the French real-
ized the job would be difficult: the Socialist delegations were very hostile
to most of the texts that had been drawn up by the Western states. Thus,
by November 1973, the USSR and its allies rejected France’s main goal for
the third basket, proclaimed by the Foreign Minister Michel Jobert, which
was to create a “European cultural entity.”45 The Polish newspaper Ideolo-
gia i Polityka explained in January 1974 that Western insistence on the free
circulation of people and ideas was a consequence of a “pitiful failure” of
Western policies since the beginning of the Cold War. According to the
Polish official organ, Capitalist ideologists had developed the concepts of
ideological détente and convergence of the systems to pervert the Socialist
world and put an end to the class struggle.46 The newspaper claimed that
the countries of the Warsaw Pact would not fall into such a crude trap.
The main concern of the Soviet bloc was to protect the principles of
sovereignty and non-interference. However, France insisted on the neces-
sity of discussing its principal proposals, which were summarized in two
documents submitted to CSCE participants. The first document was about
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Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”
Conclusion
The cultural part was finally one of the longest sections of the CSCE’s
Final Act and planned improvement of cooperation in most cultural and
artistic fields. It also encouraged research of “new fields and forms of cul-
tural cooperation.” Cooperation needed to include “the implementation
of joint projects” such as “international events in the fields of art, cinema,
theatre, ballet, music, folklore, etc.”; “book fairs and exhibitions, joint per-
formances of operatic and dramatic works”; “the preparation, translation
and publication of articles, studies and monographs”; “the coproduction
and the exchange of films, of radio and television programs,” and so on.
It is important to question how the Soviets could accept such issues,
which were very far from their practices and their ideology. In fact, par-
ticularly at the end of the conference, the Kremlin was in such a hurry
to put an end to the conference that it multiplied concessions. The main
thing was to obtain Western acknowledgment of the European status quo—
which Brezhnev did not get insofar as the Final Act proclaimed the idea of
peaceful change of frontiers as well as their inviolability. Thus, according
to the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, it was necessary to make con-
cessions on paper, not in fact.81 In a speech in June 1975, he said that he
would do everything in his power to limit the consequences of the third
basket on the Socialist system and society.82
However, although Brezhnev seemed satisfied with the results of the
CSCE, several Soviet officials were worried about the effects the cultural
provisions could produce. At the end of the conference, Dubinin confided
to one of his French counterparts, Alain Pierret, “You do not realize what
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Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”
of the 1970s and Moscow’s lack of enthusiasm for the application of the
Helsinki provisions seemed to put an end to the hopes raised in preceding
years. It was not until Gorbachev’s arrival at the Kremlin that the CSCE
regained its credibility and became fruitful. Convergence was, however,
not achieved, and the Soviet system was swept aside to make room for the
return of the nations that had been so dear to de Gaulle.
Notes
1. A. Roberts, “An ‘Incredibly Swift Transition’: Reflections on the End of the Cold War,”
in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 3, Endings, ed. M. P. Leffler and O. A. Westad
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 513–34.
2. The CSCE negotiations and the positions adopted by the participating states had been
well studied. See for example V.-Y. Ghebali, La diplomatie de la détente: La CSCE (Brussels:
Brulant, 1989); D. C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights and the
Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); P. Hakkarainen, A State
of Peace in Europe: West Germany and the CSCE, 1966–1975 (New York: Berghahn Books,
2011); L. Ratti, Britain, Ost- and Deutschlandpolitik, and the CSCE, 1955–1975 (Bern: Peter
Lang, 2008); O. Bange and G. Niedhart, eds. Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of Europe
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2008); A. Romano, From Détente in Europe to European Détente.
How the West Shaped the Helsinki CSCE (Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang, 2009).
3. That was planned by the project of the European Defense Community (EDC), which
failed in 1954 because of Communist and Gaullist opposition in France.
4. M.-P. Rey, “The USSR and the Helsinki process, 1969–1975: Optimism, Doubt, or De-
fiance?” in Origins of the European Security System: The Helsinki Process Revisited. 1965–1975,
ed. A. Wenger, V. Mastny, and C. Nuenlist (London: Routledge, 2008), 65–81.
5. That is why, during his trip to Moscow in June 1966, de Gaulle did not flatly refuse the
Soviet idea. “Conversation between Leonid Brezhnev and Charles de Gaulle, 21 June 1966,
Moscow”, Box 5 AG 1187. URSS. 1966, French National Archives—Paris (FNA).
6. For Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policy, see M. Vaïsse, La Grandeur: Politique étrangère du
général de Gaulle 1958–1969 (Paris: Fayard, 1998); M.-P. Rey, La Tentation du rapprochement:
France et URSS à l’heure de la détente (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne, 1991); T. Gomart, Double
détente: Les relations franco-soviétiques de 1958 à 1964 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne,
2003); F. Bozo, Deux stratégies pour l’Europe: De Gaulle, les Etats-Unis et l’Alliance atlantique
(1958–1969) (Paris: Plon, 1996).
7. I. Dubinin, Moscou-Paris dans un tourbillon diplomatique: Témoignage d’ambassadeur
(Paris: Imaginaria, 2001), 214–16.
8. “Conversation between Georges Pompidou and Edward Heath, 19 March 1972,
Chequers Court”, Box 5 AG 2 108. Grande-Bretagne. 1969–73, FNA.
9. The Kremlin considered that these principles confirmed the European status quo.
– 78 –
Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”
10. This principle meant that borders could be changed without using force and contra-
dicted the idea of status quo because it implied that German reunification would be possible.
11. “Helsinki Final Act”, Box 21, CSCE, Archives of the French Foreign Ministry—La
Courneuve (AFFM).
12. “Conversation between Charles de Gaulle and Władysław Gomułka, 11 September
1967, Warsaw”, Box 5 AG 1 182. Pologne. 1958–69, FNA.
13. C. de Gaulle, Mémoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1971), 171.
14. “Conversation between Charles de Gaulle and Alain Peyrefitte, 4 January 1965”, in
A. Peyrefitte, ed., C’était de Gaulle, vol. 2, La France reprend sa place dans le monde (Paris:
Gallimard, 2002), 910.
15. One of de Gaulle’s goals was to contrive to make France the major Western contact
of the Soviets. In his mind, the Franco-Soviet entente was to replace the Franco-German
partnership, which had been damaged by the partial failure of the “traité de l’Elysée” in 1963
and by the Atlantist policy of Chancellor Erhard. De Gaulle actually considered there to be
two ways to guarantee France’s security toward Germany: either Germany had to be firmly
tied to France, or Pan-European cooperation had to be created. Because the U.S.-German
rapprochement had compromised the first solution, Paris chose the second option and turned
toward the USSR. “Council of ministers, 7 July 1964,” in Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle, 857–58.
16. Institut Charles de Gaulle, De Gaulle en son siècle, vol. 7, De Gaulle et la culture (Paris:
La Documentation française-Plon, 1992); Institut Charles de Gaulle, De Gaulle et Malraux
(Paris: Plon, 1987); C.-L. Foulon, ed., André Malraux et le rayonnement culturel de la France
(Paris: Complexe, 2004).
17. Rey, La Tentation du rapprochement, 181.
18. “Note from Gabriel Robin (French President’s adviser), 24 October 1974”, Box 5 AG
3 1089. URSS. 1974, FNA.
19. Rey, La Tentation du rapprochement, 184–90.
20. Ghebali, La diplomatie de la détente, 347.
21. Ibid., 345–46.
22. “Cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow, 23 July 1975”, folder “USSR. State Depart-
ment Telegrams. To SECSTATE EXDIS (7),” Box 20, National Security Advisor. Presidential
Country Files for Europe and Canada, Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
23. A. Pierret, De la case africaine à la villa romaine. Un demi-siècle au service de l’Etat (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2010), 123.
24. J. Andréani, Le Piège: Helsinki et la chute du communisme (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005), 38.
25. “Conversation between Georges Pompidou and Jean de Lipkowski, 6 January 1970”,
Box 5 AG 2 1041. OTAN, relations Est-Ouest. 1969–74, FNA.
26. S. Pisar, Les armes de la paix (Paris: Denoël, 1970); Transaction entre l’Est et l’Ouest
(Paris: Dunod, 1972).
27. “Speech made at the dinner offered by Brezhnev in the Kremlin during the presidential
trip in the USSR, 6 October 1970”, G. Pompidou, Entretiens et Discours, vol. 2, 1968–1974
(Paris: Plon, 1975), 175–76.
28. Pompidou wondered which one of the two sides “would be corrupted by the other.”
29. “Conversation between Georges Pompidou and Willy Brandt, 10 February 1972, Paris”,
Box 5 AG 2 1011. RFA. 1972, FNA.
30. Andréani, Le Piège, 137.
31. “Conversation between Georges Pompidou and Willy Brandt, 30 January 1970”, Box 5
AG 2 104. RFA. 1969–70, FNA.
32. Joined by Great Britain, Denmark, and Ireland on 1 January 1973, the six EC founder
countries (France, Italy, the F.R.G., Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) created in
1969 the European Political Cooperation (EPC), a mechanism intended to coordinate foreign
policies of the EC members, which allowed them to be heard on the international scene. This
– 79 –
Nicolas Badalassi
cohesion was remarkably expressed during the CSCE: the EC Nine managed to be seen as the
main interlocutors of the Soviets. See D. Möckli, European Foreign Policy during the Cold War:
Heath, Brandt, Pompidou and the Dream of Political Unity, 1969–1974 (London: I. B. Tauris,
2008).
33. “Cable no. 79/EU from the French embassy in Moscow, 15 July 1970”, Box 2694,
URSS, Europe 1966–70, AFFM.
34. “Cable from Maurice Schumann to François de Rose, 10 April 1972”, Box 2923, Orga-
nismes internationaux et grandes questions internationales, Europe 1971–76, AFFM.
35. “Telegram from Maurice Schumann to François de Rose, 10 April 1972”, Box 2923,
Organismes internationaux et grandes questions internationales, Europe 1971–76, AFFM.
36. “Conversation between Georges Pompidou and Willy Brandt, 25 January 1971, Paris”,
Box 5 AG 2 105. RFA. 1971, FNA.
37. “Conversation between Maurice and Schumann and Klaus Schuetz (Mayor of West
Berlin), 10 December 1969”, Box 5 AG 2 103. RFA. 1969–74, FNA.
38. “Human contacts” was the term used during the CSCE.
39. “Conversation between Georges Pompidou and Leonid Brezhnev, 12 January 1973,
Zaslavl”, Box 5 AG 2 1019. URSS. 1973–74, FNA.
40. “Proceedings of the 23rd session of the Political Committee of the EC Nine, 14 May
1973”, Box 27, CSCE, AFFM.
41. “Note from the French delegation at the CSCE (CSCE note), 22 June 1973”, Box 18,
CSCE, AFFM.
42. Rey, “The USSR and the Helsinki process,” 71.
43. “CSCE note no. 379, 30 October 1973”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
44. “CSCE note no. 379, 30 October 1973”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
45. “Telegram no. 2102/22, from Fernand-Laurent (French Ambassador in Bucharest), 30
November 1973”, Box 3537, Roumanie, Europe 1971–76AFFM.
46. “Telegram no.108, from the French Embassy in Poland, 31 January 1974”, Box 3476,
Pologne, Europe 1971–76, AFFM.
47. “Document CSCE/I/24, France, 5 July 1973”, Book 2, Helsinki 1972–75, Archives of
the CSCE—Prague.
48. “Document CSCE/I/25, France, 5 July 1973”, Book 2, Helsinki 1972–75, Archives of
the CSCE—Prague.
49. “Telegram no. 556, 26 September 1973”, Box 18, CSCE, AFFM.
50. “Telegram no. 108, from the French Embassy in Poland, 31 January 1974”, Box 3476,
Pologne, Europe 1971–76, AFFM. According to the Polish newspaper Zycie Literackie, the pro-
pagandists in the pay of the “capitalist, revisionist, Trotskist, and zionist” groups understood
that the third basket could become “the reef where the CSCE would run aground.” Thus, said
the newspaper, they decided to require the right, for the Capitalist countries, to intervene into
the USSR and the Socialist democracies’ internal affairs.
51. “Note no. 801/DP, 18 October 1973”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
52. “Telegram no. 160, from Jacques Vimont (French Ambassador in Moscow), 6 Septem-
ber 1973”, Box 26, CSCE, AFFM.
53. “Document CSCE/II/K/9, France, 21 January 1974”, Book 20, Helsinki 1972–75, Ar-
chives of the CSCE—Prague.
54. The French proposed that the participating states at the CSCE would declare them-
selves resolute to “favor the opening on their territory, by other interested States, individually
or collectively, of libraries and reading rooms or specialized sections in the existing institu-
tions, freely accessible to the public and supervised in conditions negotiated between the
parties involved.”
55. Rey, La Tentation du rapprochement, 189–90.
56. “Note from Gabriel Robin, 19 March 1975”, Box 5 AG 3 885. CSCE, FNA.
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Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”
57. “Conversation between Pompidou and Brezhnev, 13 March 1974, Pitsunda”, Box 5 AG
2 113. URSS. 1972–74, FNA.
58. “Note from Gabriel Robin, 4 December 1974”, Box 5 AG 3 885. CSCE, FNA.
59. S. Berstein and P. Milza, Histoire de la France au XXe siècle, vol. 5, De 1974 à nos jours
(Paris: Complexe, 1994), 66.
60. “Telegram no. 1572/75, from Fernand-Laurent, 26 April 1975”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
61. “Telegram no. 2210/14, from Fernand-Laurent, 6 June 1975”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
62. “Note CSCE, 31 December 1974”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
63. “Meeting of the French and Soviet delegations, 26 September 1974, Soviet Embassy in
Geneva”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
64. L.-V. Ferraris, Report on a Negotiation: Helsinki-Geneva-Helsinki 1972–1975 (Alphen
aan den Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1979), 333.
65. “Conversation between Jacques Chirac and Alexei Kosygin, 20 March 1975, Moscow”,
Box 3727, URSS, Europe 1971–76, AFFM.
66. “Telegram no. 2210/14, from Fernand-Laurent, 6 June 1975”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
67. “Note, early June 1975”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
68. “Helsinki Final Act”, Box 21, CSCE, AFFM.
69. “Note from the French foreign ministry’s Office for Cultural, Scientific and Technical
Relations, 7 October 1975”, Box 3728, URSS, Europe 1971–76, AFFM.
70. M.-P. Rey, “Le cinéma dans les relations franco-soviétiques. Enjeux et problèmes à
l’heure de la détente, 1964–1974,” in Culture et Guerre froide, ed. J.-F. Sirinelli and G.-H.
Soutou (Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008), 163–67.
71. Ibid., 164.
72. “Conversation between Pompidou and Brezhnev, 13 March 1974, Pitsunda”, Box 5 AG
2 113. URSS. 1972–74, FNA.
73. “Helsinki Final Act”, Box 21, CSCE, AFFM.
74. “Note no. 3894 from the Quai d’Orsay’s office for cultural dissemination, 13 Novem-
ber 1973”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
75. “Conversation between Chazelle and Supagin, 25 September 1974, Geneva”, Box 15,
CSCE, AFFM.
76. “Note from the French foreign ministry’s Office of Cultural, Scientific, and Technical
Relations, without date”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
77. “Telegrams from Rush, 7 May 1975”, folder “France—State Department Telegrams: To
SECSTATE—EXDIS (2),” Box 4, National Security Adviser. Presidential Country Files for
Europe and Canada, Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
78. “Note CSCE, to François Puaux, 11 March 1974”, Box 3819, CPE, Europe 1971–76,
AFFM.
79. “Telegram no. 1382/91, from Carraud, 28 June 1973”, Box 32, CSCE, AFFM.
80. “Meeting of the French, U.S., and Canadian delegations at the CSCE, 18 March
1975”, Box 15, CSCE, AFFM.
81. Rey, “The USSR and the Helsinki Process, 1969–75,” 78.
82. “Telegram from the U.S. embassy in Moscow, 24 July 1975”, folder “USSR. State De-
partment Telegrams. To SECSTATE EXDIS (7),” Box 20, NSA. Presidential Country Files for
Europe and Canada, Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
83. Pierret, De la case africaine à la villa romaine, 254.
84. Conversation with Ambassador Paul Poudade, 16 December 2008.
85. S. Savranskaya, “Unintended Consequences. Soviet Interests, Expectations and Re-
actions to the Helsinki Final Act,” in O. Bange and G. Niedhart, eds., Helsinki 1975 and the
Transformation of Europe, 179.
86. A. Dobrynine, In Confidence (New York: Time Books, 1995), 345–46.
– 81 –
Chapter 4
was successful elsewhere but not within the Soviet sector.3 Furthermore, in
Switzerland, the young Association Switzerland-USSR, established in 1944
under the name Gesellschaft zur Förderung und Pflege normaler Beziehu-
ngen zwischen der Schweiz und der Sowjetunion (Association for the pro-
motion and maintenance of normal relations between Switzerland and the
Soviet Union) and part of the left-wing movements, was quickly marginal-
ized by the Foreign Office.4 Instead, the first post–World War II projects of
Swiss cultural diplomacy were almost completely directed at culturally and
politically similar countries, such as France and the United States.
These projects manifested a trend and followed the general attitude in
Switzerland for the next ten years. After the Czechoslovakian coup d’état
in 1948, official actions toward the East were abandoned completely. Pre-
vious connections were de facto forgotten, as if suggesting that cultural re-
lations with the Eastern bloc were never even attempted. Although Swiss
neutrality was recognized by both superpowers, Switzerland was able to
cultivate goodwill with the United States, which it considered a more in-
teresting partner economically than the USSR.
In spite of this disinterest toward the East, the question of cultural ex-
changes with Eastern countries reappeared after the Hungarian uprising in
1956 and the subsequent flow of Hungarian refugees.5 This event played a
key role in the polarization of how cultural relations with Socialist coun-
tries were represented. On the one hand, certain patriotic groups took this
opportunity to appeal for a boycott of these relations that did not even
exist. On the other hand, however, this episode pointed out that connec-
tions between the two ideological blocs seemed set to remain in place for a
long time and that some form of organization of these connections would
be needed. Both of these attitudes evolved in the late 1950s, resulting in
a confrontation.
This chapter aims at explaining and understanding this confronta-
tion—first, by examining reasons for omitting cultural exchanges with the
Communist bloc. Second, the chapter investigates the conditions for a
change in the attitude of policy makers, as well as the public opinion. The
final part consists of an evaluation of the reinforcement of Swiss cultural
policies behind the Iron Curtain.
The first level was that of the public and semipublic institutions: these
might also be referred to as the institutions of official cultural diplomacy
because their main goal was to export official representations. The most
notable were the Federal Department for Foreign Affairs, the Swiss-minded
foundation Pro Helvetia, and also to some extent the Swiss foreign trade
promotion agency, which openly used culture in pursuit of economic goals.
All of these bodies began to shape cultural policy abroad from the late
1930s and continued their work after World War II.
Two factors were considered important by the Swiss for self-represen-
tation in international relations. The first was the increase of Fascist and
Communist propaganda in the 1930s. Particularly Nazi propaganda led to
a reaction to round off propaganda altogether. However, it also led to a
kind of imitation with the establishment of a cultural policy based on tra-
ditional, particular, and what was considered to be exclusive Swiss values:
the rallying cry was that the old democracy in the middle of the Alps had
to remain intact and that the national cultural production had to be pro-
tected. In 1944, for example, The Federal Council took measures against
“the domination by foreign influences” (Überfremdung), such as forbidding
new establishment of foreign publishers in Switzerland.6
This conception was backed by a large consensus throughout the war.
This cultural as well as patriotic policy and rhetoric was named the “Spiri-
tual National Defense” and led to the creation of Pro Helvetia.7 From 1938
until 1949, Pro Helvetia was a working group of officials, scholars, and
representatives who worked closely with the national artists’ and writers’
associations. By federal decree, Pro Helvetia was converted into a foun-
dation under public law in 1949, with the goal, among others, of “making
the works and activities of Switzerland in the field of thought and culture
known abroad.” The foundation was thus officially independent from the
federal government, but it was allowed to accept only governmental sub-
sidies.8 After the war, the government used this foundation not only to
shield itself from foreign propaganda, but also to regain its position with
the Western Allies, particularly the United States, which was particularly
critical of the Swiss proximity to Nazi Germany during World War II.
The second factor behind the development of cultural diplomacy is
linked to the return to full neutrality in 1938 and a position of isolation in
the period leading up to 1945 and beyond. The Swiss government needed
new instruments to foster understanding for a country that had not di-
rectly experienced the war. The Department of Foreign Affairs guided Pro
Helvetia toward this goal with some success. By the end of the war, the de-
partment also established a section for cultural relations, sending the first
cultural attachés to embassies in Paris, London, and Washington. At least
until the end of the 1950s, Swiss cultural diplomacy concentrated on un-
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Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland
the Swiss government would consider cultural exchanges with the Com-
munist bloc in a positive light and would not interfere. This assurance was
comparable with the government’s export guarantee in the commercial
field: should Pro Helvetia not have success with its cultural events beyond
the Iron Curtain, the Federal Council would not intervene against this
foundation.
In his speech to the parliament, Wahlen recognized the rights of an
individual to be against cultural relations, but reminded that Swiss neu-
trality required maintaining relations with all countries. He added that
culture should not be a state matter, as was the case in the Communist
countries, and gave the semipublic foundation Pro Helvetia a semiofficial
role in improving cultural relations with countries on the other side of the
Iron Curtain.34
As was the case just after the war, the Swiss government’s view in 1962
was that culture supported overseas political and economic policies. Re-
lations with the Communist bloc were no exception: they were to benefit
commercial exchanges and further the cause of Switzerland’s international
relations. In the competition between the East and the West, Switzerland
was unwilling to take sides openly but was still supportive of Western points
of view, particularly in economic affairs.
Above all, the government did not want to be bound by any cultural
agreements, which were frequently requested by the Eastern bloc. Official
argument for the refusal was that culture is a cantonal matter, but the main
reason was to keep the state out of cultural exchanges and have free hands
to increase or interrupt them at any time. Toward such conditions the
semipublic foundation Pro Helvetia was considered an ideal actor.
After Wahlen had announced official support, Pro Helvetia started orga-
nizing art and book exhibitions, as well as Swiss film weeks in the countries
of Eastern Europe. Editors were also present at the book fairs of Leipzig
and Warsaw. The most favored country appears to have been Poland, but
by the end of the 1960s, almost every Communist country had received
Swiss cultural events. The number of these cultural events remained at
a very low level in comparison to the number staged in the neighboring
Capitalist countries or in the United States. However, the cultural fields of
these events were diversified, and the management for them required an
important commitment from the Pro Helvetia staff members.
The contents of the events, however, were very similar to those orga-
nized in the West. The main emphasis was on the self-representation and
– 90 –
Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland
Swiss cultural diplomacy goals were mostly economic and politic. They
were also situated out of the interests of cultural circles. In this way, Swiss
cultural diplomacy lay closer to the concept of “soft power.”35 This explains
why the number of cultural events was very low: the main national inter-
ests remained in the Western bloc.
Yet, a quantitative approach should not prevent us from observing in-
formal cultural relations: though marginal, they manifest individual desires
to know better the countries whose otherness had increased during the
Cold War. Exploring the question of cultural exchanges with Communist
countries sheds light on a genuine change in the cultural life of Switzer-
land. The public debate about these cultural contacts was a part of a larger
one about the Swiss way of life since the war: criticizing the absence of
exchanges with the Communists was like criticizing their country for being
closed in on its own comfort in this period of high economic growth.
At the end of the 1950s and in the 1960s, the cultural scene in some
Communist countries, particularly in Gomułka’s Poland, was attractive to
many Swiss artists and intellectuals because of its novelty and its dose of
exoticism, as well as its subversive nature within this hostile context. It was
quite often the case that particular artists were close to the Swiss Commu-
nist movement, but not exclusively so.36
Some young writers from the Swiss Writers’ Association also called for
increased contacts with their peers inside the Communist bloc. Friedrich
Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch played the role of mentors by making numer-
ous trips to the Communist East, and particularly so as they achieved a
significant degree of success. Dürrenmatt’s play Der Besuch der alten Dame
(The Visit) was, for example, considered a strong critique of Capitalism.
In Poland, Dürrenmatt could celebrate 200 performances of Die Physiker
(The Physicists) in 1964 and already sold 150,000 copies of the novel Die
Panne (A Dangerous Game) in 1968.37
With these successes, Frisch and Dürrenmatt promoted Swiss litera-
ture and, above all, showed that there was demand for cultural exchanges
in the Eastern bloc. They also supported some marginalized writers for
– 91 –
Matthieu Gillabert
Figure 4.1. Figures for the yearly number of cultural and scientific visas delivered
to foreign nationals from the Communist bloc.45
– 93 –
Matthieu Gillabert
Conclusion
which was looking for a different position than simply the fear of foreign
propaganda.
Notes
1. At the Swiss Federal Department for Foreign Affairs in Berne, some cultural relations
are envisaged in the framework of the new diplomatic relations with the USSR. Maurice
Bastian’s note, Berne, 8 March 1947, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland (www.dodis.ch)
DODIS–49.
2. J.-C. Favez, “De la Première Guerre mondiale à la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (1914–
1945),” in Neues Handbuch der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik = Nouveau manuel de la politique
extérieure suisse (Berne: P. Haupt, 1992), 41–59.
3. L. van Dongen, “Entre altruisme et égoïsme, privé et public, idéaux et calculs: l’Aide
suisse par le livre à l’Allemagne, 1945–1949,” in La diplomatie par le livre. Réseaux et circulation
internationale de l’imprimé de 1880 à nos jours, ed. C. Hauser, T. Loué, J.-Y. Mollier, and F.
Vallotton (Paris: Nouveau monde éditions, 2011), 288.
4. In 1944, the Federal Office of Police forbade the association’s poster by the artist Hans
Erni. The members, who were mostly close to the Communist Party of Labor, were also scru-
pulously observed by the Foreign Office. C. Gehrig, “Die Anfänge der ‘Gesellschaft Schweiz-
Sowjetunion,’” in Bild und Begegnung; Kulturelle Wechselseitigkeit zwischen der Schweiz und
Osteuropa im Wandel der Zeit, ed. P. Brang, C. Goehrke, R. Kemball, and H. Riggenbach (Basel:
Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1996), 598–604.
5. As a connection between the outside world and the country, cultural diplomacy is a
historical object that allows better understanding of how such international events like those
of 1956 have impacted political and cultural fields on the national level. For the transnational
shock of 1956, see, among others, G. Mink, M. Lazar, and M. J. Sielski, eds., 1956, une date
européenne (Paris: Noir sur blanc, 2010).
6. J. Zbinden, Sternstunden oder verpasste Chancen. Zur Geschichte des Schweizer Buchhandels
1943–1952 (Zurich: Chronos, 1995), 106.
7. “Message du Conseil fédéral à l’Assemblée fédérale concernant les moyens de maintenir
et de faire connaître le patrimoine spirituel de la Confédération, 9 décembre 1938,” Feuille
fédérale 2, no. 50 (14 December 1938): 1001–1043.
8. Federal decree of 28 September 1949, 3rd article. See P. Milani, “Septante ans d’histoire
institutionnelle,” in Entre culture et politique. Pro Helvetia de 1939 à 1945, ed. C. Hauser, B.
Seger, and J. Tanner (Zurich: NZZ/Slatkine, 2010), 39–44.
9. In the years 1950–52, the chief of the Department for Foreign Affairs, Max Petitpierre,
introduced a new interpretation of Swiss neutrality: it was based on the maintenance of armed
neutrality but also on the acknowledgement of sharing Western values against Communism.
G.-H. Soutou, “Réflexions franco-suisses et modération dans la guerre froide (1945–1955),”
Relations Internationales no. 98 (Summer 1999): 192.
10. Several books were ordered by official authorities to spread the message in Anglo-
Saxon countries: R. de Traz, Switzerland, Land of Peace and Liberty (Lausanne: OSEC, 1944);
E. Bonjour, Swiss Neutrality: Its History and Meaning (London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1946).
– 95 –
Matthieu Gillabert
About the construction of the war’s memory in Switzerland, see L. van Dongen, La Suisse
face à la Seconde Guerre mondiale: 1945–1948. Emergence et construction d’une mémoire publique
(Genève: Société d’histoire et d’archéologie, 1997).
11. The definition of “cultural diplomacy” given by Andrew Falk is particularly useful: “I
use the term ‘cultural diplomacy’ to refer to the collaborative process that creates and sustains
official and informal cultural interaction between nations.” A. J. Falk, Upstaging the Cold War:
American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940–1960 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2010), 7.
12. I. Perrig, Geistige Landesverteidigung im kalten Krieg: der Schweizerische Aufklärungsdienst
(SAD) und Heer und Haus (1945–1963) (Brig: University of Friburg, 1993), 68–69.
13. M. Gillabert, Dans les coulisses de la politique culturelle suisse. Objectifs, réseaux et
réalisations (1938–1984) (Neuchâtel: Alphil, 2013), 329–344.
14. N. Scott, “Jacques Freymond et ‘l’ouverture vers les pays de l’Est,’” Relations Internatio-
nales, no. 98 (Summer 1999): 172.
15. D. de Rougemont, “Lever de rideau culturel,” Bulletin du Centre européen de la culture,
no. 4/1 (October 1955).
16. H. Lüthy, “Guerre froide et dialogue,” Preuves, no. 152 (October 1963): 47–56.
17. The Rencontres internationales started after the war under the impulsion of liber-
al-thinking personalities from Geneva with the aim of consolidating a Western intellectual
elite. B. Ackermann, “Les rencontres internationales de Genève, 1946,” Revue suisse d’histoire
39, no. 1 (1989): 64–78.
18. M. Gillabert, “‘L’Association Suisse-URSS’ dans la Guerre froide: quête de légitimité
dans les relations culturelles,” in Rites, hiérarchies, ed. F. Briegel and S. Farré (Chêne-Bourg:
Georg, 2010), 133–45. This association is actually a continuation of previous networks be-
tween the two countries. See J.-F. Fayet, VOKS. Le laboratoire helvétique. Histoire de la diplo-
matie culturelle soviétique durant l’entre-deux-guerres (Chêne-Bourg: Georg, 2014), 333–341.
19. P. Micheli’s note, Berne, 2 November 1955. Swiss Federal Archive (SFA), E2003(A),
1970/115/88.
20. M. Petitpierre’s note, Berne, 9 February 1960. DODIS-15324. This committee was cre-
ated under the direction of Erich Tillmann, the president of the Liberal Students Association
of Zurich. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (Zurich), IB SAD-Archiv, 2.1.8.
21. A. Janner’s note to F. Wahlen, Berne, 30 January 1962. DODIS-30152.
22. K. Bretscher-Spindler, Vom heissen zum kalten Krieg. Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der
Schweiz im Kalten Krieg 1943 bis 1968 (Zurich: Orell Füssli, 1997), 244–45.
23. F. Jotterand, “La Suisse allemande et nous,” Gazette de Lausanne, 23 March 1957, 10.
24. H. U. Jost, “ De l’anticommunisme chez Gotthelf à l’antisocialisme helvétique du XXe
siècle,” in Histoire(s) de l’anticommunisme en Suisse, ed. M. Caillat, M. Cerutti, J.-F. Fayet, and
S. Roulin (Zurich: Chronos, 2009), 44–45.
25. M. Frisch, “La dignité des écrivains suisses,” Gazette de Lausanne, 4 June 1957, 20.
26. A. Janner’s note to M. Petitpierre, Berne, 3 August 1961. DODIS-30114.
27. Letter of de Salis to H. Huber, Zurich, 7 October 1960. Archives of Contemporary
History (Zurich), SAD-Archiv, 2.1.12.
28. These figures include the Eastern bloc, but exclude Yugoslavia and China. Report of
the Swiss Union of Commerce and Industry, 17 December 1956. DODIS-12320. The export
concerned, above all, the sectors for watchmaking, pharmacy, and machinery. See C. Meyer,
“Wilhelm Tell und der Osthandel. Innenpolitische Aspekte des schweizerischen Osthandels
1950–1971,” in Aufstieg und Niedergand des Bilateralismus, ed. P. Hug and M. Kloter (Zurich:
Chronos, 1999), 423; P. Hug, “Der gebremste Aufbruch. Zur Aussenpolitik der Schweiz in den
60en Jahren,” in Dynamisierung und Umbau. Die Schweiz in den 60er und 70er Jahren, ed. M.
König, G. Kreis, F. Meister, and G. Romano (Zurich: Chronos, 1998), 100–4.
29. C. Altermatt, La politique étrangère de la Suisse pendant la Guerre froide (Lausanne:
Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 2003), 21.
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Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland
30. Letter from the Swiss Embassy in Sofia to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs,
Sofia, 5 May 1960. DODIS-15251. In 1960, Swiss exports to the Eastern countries reached 4
percent of the total export.
31. Report from the Division of International Organizations to Petitpierre, Berne, 9 Octo-
ber 1958. SFA, E2003(A), 1974/52/193.
32. Agreement between both associations, 18 December 1964. SFA, E2200.157, 1985/
132/17.
33. “Survey about the cultural relations between some countries and the Eastern States,”
Berne, 9 October 1958. SFA, E2003(A), 1974/52/193.
34. F. T. Wahlen’s answer to the Reverdin Interpellation, Berne, 22 March 1962. SFA,
E2003(A), 1974/52/193.
35. J. Nye, “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” The Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (March 2008): 94–96.
36. P. Jeanneret, Popistes; histoire du parti ouvrier et populaire vaudois 1943–2001 (Lausanne:
Ed. d’En-bas, 2002), 586–93.
37. M. Gillabert, Dans les coulisses de la politique culturelle suisse. Objectifs, réseaux et
réalisations (1938–1984) (Neuchâtel: Alphil, 2013), 473–82.
38. F. Dürrenmatt, “Tschechoslowakei 1968,” Gesammelte Werke, no. 7 (Zurich: Diogenes,
1996 [1968]): 789.
39. C. Doka’s letter to J. R. de Salis, Zurich, 15 June 1964. Literature Archive Berne,
archive Salis, 142, C-2-a/13.
40. F. Jotterand, “Pologne 57: Comment ils vivent,” Gazette de Lausanne, 11 September
1957, 1.
41. Le Journal de Genève and Życie Warszawy, 12 November 1960.
42. A. Clavien, Grandeurs et misères de la presse politique (Lausanne: Antipodes, 2010),
219–256.
43. These claims were conveyed by the significant increase in funds for the Foundation
Pro Helvetia in 1965.
44. W. Weideli, Diary in Warsaw (1959). Archive Weideli, boîte 84, C-1-f, Literature Ar-
chive, Berne.
45. Reports of the Federal Immigration Authority, 1961–73 (excluding the periods between
March and July 1963, and between June and October 1964). SFA, E2001(E), 1976/17/98,
1978/84/145, 1980/83/112, 1982/58/85, 1987/78/157. The figures concern nationals from
Bulgaria, China, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR.
Gillabert, Dans les coulisses de la politique culturelle suisse, 568.
– 97 –
P A R T II
INTERPLAY IN
THE ACADEMIC CONTEXTS
Chapter 5
Sampsa Kaataja
– 101 –
Sampsa Kaataja
did not apply only to computing, but it was generally visible in the Finnish-
Soviet S&T relations, where joint projects were executed with Estonia
more generally than with other Baltic states, for example.
The decisive factor leading to an official acceptance of the Finnish-
Estonian computing group was the good contacts of the Finns and Esto-
nians to Soviet computing authorities. Especially Jussi Tuori from Finland
and Boris Tamm24 from the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics had close re-
lations with Anatolii Dorodnitsyn, who was willing and able to permit bi-
lateral Finnish-Estonian plans, practically excluding other Soviet nations
from the cooperation. Dorodnitsyn allowed Finnish and Estonian experts to
use up to twenty days of the two hundred annual working days allocated to
the official Finnish-Soviet cybernetics cooperation. The Finnish-Estonian
group could autonomously decide how to use this time and had the right to
choose participants for meetings and researcher exchange. Furthermore,
the Estonians got the right to use their share of the cybernetics working
group’s budget independently, giving them the financial means to develop
cooperation with Finnish colleagues. Thus, in practice, the USSR funded
half of the Finnish-Estonian cooperation.25
between 1988 and 1995, with ten persons present at practically all meet-
ings.29 This was relatively active participation when considering the mod-
est size of the computing communities in both countries in comparison to
larger European countries or to the United States.
Regardless of rather ambitious official objectives set for cooperation
and a relatively high level of researcher mobility, computing collaboration
never really took off. Individual researchers who were brought together did,
for example, publish together, but more substantial projects implemented
across the Iron Curtain never took place. Even though shared research
interests existed and a good scientific and technical communication net-
work developed, they were not enough for permanent working relations.
However, this is not to argue that cooperation was futile. In retrospect, it
is easy to acknowledge that for single researchers, the Finnish-Estonian
computing relations proved useful both professionally and outside the pro-
fessional realm.
The former leader of the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics, Ants Wõrk,
said revealingly that a “component of social interaction” constituted an
important part of the Cold War computing relations.30 The result of this
was that, as in any (trans)national encounter, shared professional and ev-
eryday interests (e.g., jazz music or playing bridge) brought individuals to-
gether, occasionally leading to friendships between computing experts and,
in some cases, even involving their families.
Relationships that surpassed the professional level become evident in
different kinds of favors between Finnish and Estonian experts, but also
with researchers from other parts of the Soviet Union. These included ex-
change of everyday goods like foodstuff, clothes, and entertainment or, for
example, organization of medical services, as was done for a child of a Rus-
sian delegate who needed special care while visiting Helsinki. Participants
were also invited to each other’s homes and thereby given an opportunity
to experience everyday life in the target country.31
Sometimes more serious proposals were made: at least one Estonian
high-ranking computing specialist was offered an option to defect to Swe-
den by his Finnish host. Also in 1991, when there was a threat of the
Soviet Union overtaking Estonia, arrangements were made for a son of an-
other Estonian computer scientist so that he could study at Tampere Uni-
versity of Technology in Finland. These plans never materialized, as the
situation unraveled, but the person in question later actually became a
student in Tampere.32
One important factor that allowed the S&T contacts between comput-
ing specialists to develop into personal relations providing friendship, co-
operation, and mutual assistance was that working group meetings never
became an arena for political debates. Politics were consciously left out of
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Expert Groups Closing the Divide
the cooperation. A good example of this comes from the late 1970s, when
a Finnish computing scientist known for pro-Soviet views spent time in
Moscow as a visiting researcher. The message received afterward from
Anatolii Dorodnitsyn was clear: “We have enough politruks of our own,
let’s stay in pure science in the future.”33
promising R&D (research & development) project that was under way
in Estonia.39 The project also got wider international recognition, and in
the 1980s PRIZ was sold to the USSR, Finland, and Sweden, and, with
the help of a Swedish company, it was brought to markets in the United
States.40
Even today, PRIZ is acknowledged as an advanced piece of technology
and more innovative than many of its contemporaries. However, the fact
that none of the established producers of computer technology were be-
hind PRIZ made it difficult to succeed in Western markets. PRIZ was not
adopted outside the USSR on a larger scale, and it could not break the
hegemony of similar Western software applications that were commonly
used in Finland and elsewhere.41
Another case illustrating the Cold War technology transfer between
Estonia and Finland is related to the introduction of the Internet in Esto-
nia. It is also the first example of the supportive technology transfer that
occurred in the Estonian-Finnish computing relations. Supportive tech-
nology transfer refers to donations or trade of technology (e.g., machines,
equipment, and production methods) or knowledge (e.g., publications and
results of scientific-technical research) and expertise needed in technical
processes in situations where the recipient cannot for economic, political,
social, or other similar reasons purchase the technology in question freely
from the market. A central feature in supportive technology transfer is
that it often occurs without monetary compensation or with costs of the
transfer significantly reduced in order to support the recipient. In Esto-
nian-Finnish computing contacts, this form of technology transfer played
an important role at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Internet was introduced in Finland at the turn of 1988–89, when
the country was linked to the World Wide Web via the Finnish University
and Research Network (Funet). When Estonia followed two years later,
the Joint Committee of Informatics was closely involved in the process.
The connection became technically possible with a modem the Finnish
Committee members provided for the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics.
This modem and the willingness of the University of Helsinki to let Esto-
nians use its Internet services brought the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics
and eventually also the University of Tartu online. Estonians got a mailbox
at the computing center of the University of Helsinki, and, via the univer-
sity’s server, the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics was linked to the Internet,
enabling direct exchange of emails and files with the rest of the world.42
Prior to this arrangement, direct connections to the World Wide Web
from Estonia had been practically nonexistent, and continuous contact
to the Internet via Moscow was impossible. Thanks to good relations be-
tween Estonian and Finnish computing experts, a constant data connec-
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Sampsa Kaataja
colleagues in Paris, and groups of researchers who visited the Tallinn Insti-
tute of Cybernetics brought about a number of other contacts in the West.51
Enn Tõugu poorly fits the stereotype of an Eastern-bloc scientist doing
research in the secluded Soviet Union. Rather, Tõugu was a researcher
working inside the USSR who had contacts with important individuals, re-
search centers, and organizations on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Due to
his research interest in programming and software, Tõugu’s work was not
particularly affected by the lack of up-to-date computer hardware either.
However, in retrospect, the major professional difficulty for him during the
Cold War years was the lack of personal contacts and communication. De-
spite belonging to the inner circle of Soviet computing and his encounters
with the important actors in the field, real contact with colleagues in the
West was limited. In this situation, the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee
of Informatics proved to be useful for Enn Tõugu. Within its limits, the
exchange of information was easy, whether it concerned the latest works
and publications or was about general developments and ongoing projects
in the field in different places.52
Enn Tõugu was not an exception in the Soviet research community.
Soviet researchers visiting American universities during the Cold War
highlighted that information was more easily available there and constant
communication and interaction with domestic and international research
communities existed.53 In this situation, where possibilities for having con-
tacts with the global world of science were limited inside the USSR, the
arenas constituted by transnational cooperative arrangements became rel-
evant by offering a channel for real professional contacts where informa-
tion was exchanged on a regular basis.
Diffusion of Expertise
Due to the fact that the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics was actively
searching for western partners in the early 1990s, it cannot be argued that
business relations between the institute and Finnish companies depended
on the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Informatics. In any case, com-
mercial contacts would have been eventually created. Nonetheless, it is
obvious that contacts created from the 1960s onward played an important
role in the commercial cooperation of the post-Soviet period. Thus, it can
be argued that the benefits of the Cold War computing contacts between
Estonia and Finland to some extent materialized only during the post-
Soviet period.
Conclusion
views have revealed the small science and modest transfers of information
and technology that occurred in reality.
Finally, when considering the gaps in the Cold War history of technol-
ogy, it is evident that more information is needed about the legal high-
tech trade between the two blocs. North American, European, Australian,
and Japanese companies sold technology to Socialist countries, but hardly
enough is known about the scope and importance of these activities. More
research is also needed on the role small countries like Finland had in the
Cold War conflict. Several examples show that Finland functioned as a
transit country in the Cold War’s dubious transfers of technology, but it
remains unknown what the country’s role was more precisely. For the mo-
ment, it seems that, as in the political arena, Finland was also balancing
between the East and the West in the terrain of technology.
Notes
1. K. Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008); G. Trogemann, A. Y. Nitussov, and W. Ernst, eds., Computing in Russia.
The history of Computer Devices and Information Technology Revealed (Braunschweig: Vieweg,
2001); J. Impagliazzo and E. Proydakov, eds., Perspectives on Soviet and Russian Computing (Hei-
delberg: Springer, 2011). Of the few works emphasizing the cooperative elements of Cold War
computing, see K. Tatarchenko, “‘Lions—Marchuk’: The Soviet-French Cooperation in Com-
puting,” in Perspectives on Soviet and Russian Computing, ed. Impagliazzo and Proydakov. See also
F. Cain, “Computers and the Cold war: United States Restrictions on the Export of Computers
to the Soviet Union and China,” Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 1 (2005): 131–47.
2. See, e.g., Cain, “Computers and the Cold war,” 143–44, 147; P. Hanson, Trade and Tech-
nology in Soviet-Western Relations (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1981); Panel on Scien-
tific Communication and National Security, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public
Policy, Scientific Communication and National Security (Washington, D.C.: National Academy
Press, 1982); K. Tatarchenko, “Cold War Origins of the International Federation for Informa-
tion Processing,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 32, no. 2 (2008): 46.
3. Transnational contacts and collaborative networks of the Cold War period have become
relevant research topics in recent years not only in the history of technology but also in Cold
War studies at large. For example, transnational contacts in Cold War Europe have been one
focus area in an extensive European research project entitled “Tensions of Europe” (see http://
www.tensionsofeurope.eu). Also in 2012, Cold War collaborations formed one of the focus
areas at the annual conference of the Society for the History of Technology. For the contem-
porary Cold War research emphasizing transnational contacts, see, e.g., S. Autio-Sarasmo and
K. Miklóssy, eds. Reassessing Cold War Europe (New York: Routledge, 2011).
– 117 –
Sampsa Kaataja
– 118 –
Expert Groups Closing the Divide
– 119 –
Sampsa Kaataja
– 120 –
Chapter 6
Beatrice Scutaru
I n the context of the East-West rivalry during the Cold War, what type
of relationship was able to exist between France and Romania, countries
representing opposite camps, partly subjected to the will of their respective
superpowers? Despite the interests of the superpowers that guided each
camp, individual countries had their own motives for developing cultural,
political, or economical relations. The analysis of academic exchanges, as
part of larger bilateral cultural relations, offers a perfect example of the
complexity of international relations in Europe during the Cold War era.
According to French historians François Chaubet and Laurent Martin,
the relaxation of the Cold War tensions began with cultural exchanges.
Creating cultural relations eased political tensions between countries that
continued to belong to opposite camps.1 Cultural diplomacy has become
an important part of all countries’ foreign policy, particularly after World
War II. It revolves mostly around the ideas of cooperation and confronta-
tion. From the state’s perspective, its real objective is cultural influencing,
hidden under the guise of cooperation. Generally, cultural diplomacy has
been considered to be a part of the “soft power” concept developed by
Joseph Nye. In the case of France, this type of action had existed since the
late nineteenth century.2 During the Cold War, however, exporting cultural
productions (exhibitions, literature, music, science, etc.) and stimulating
academic exchange became “the most powerful tool for the promotion of
ideological goals and strategies.”3 Through intergovernmental agreements,
the French authorities hoped to influence Romanian society, all the while
– 121 –
Beatrice Scutaru
– 122 –
French-Romanian Academic Exchanges
In 1958, when the Soviet army left Romanian territory, cultural exchanges
were at a very low ebb with all Western countries.9 The establishment of
Communism after World War II had ended Romania’s previously active
relations with Western Europe. It was only after Stalin’s death in 1953, as
Romania started to distance itself from the Soviet Union, that relations
with the West started to improve again.10 For Romanian diplomats, France
enjoyed a privileged position among Western countries, due to the exis-
tence of long-term bilateral relations that reached back several centuries.
Although France had held a special place in the hearts of Romanians for
a long time, Romania was unknown to most Western Europeans. Chang-
ing this fact became the primary goal for Bucharest’s cultural diplomacy.
Romanian officials believed that a better knowledge of their country, not
only about ideology or politics, but of language and culture, could improve
its image and change perceptions. Consequently, political and especially
economic exchanges would develop more quickly, with French investors
setting aside their distrust for Communist Romania. For this purpose, dif-
ferent kinds of events believed to promote the country were organized. Ro-
manian officials even tried to establish and reinforce connections to French
organizations and preeminent figures not favorable to Communism. If they
showed a positive attitude toward Romania, this would have a stronger
impact than the measures of French Communists or leftist sympathizers.11
Therefore, in July 1959, the two countries signed their first agreement
on cultural exchange. Following the signing, relations started to develop.
During the 1960s, cultural relations between France and Romania went
through two stages of evolution. Between 1959 and 1964, the exchanges
sought their course, while from 1965 to 1971, cultural relations flour-
ished. Coinciding with the period of ideological liberalization in Romania,
these relations represented an opportunity to step beyond the traditional
confrontation between the East and the West, allowing emergence of
people-to-people ties.12 The most important aspects of bilateral cultural
relations were established during this time frame, following this course
later on.
After the signing of the official agreement, Romanian authorities dis-
patched the first Romanian foreign language assistant to Paris. During this
period, exchanges developed most vigorously in the academic area, but
also involved technical, artistic, and media fields.13 The relative success
of Franco-Romanian cultural relations and their constant improvement
around 1959 and 1960 convinced authorities to sign a new agreement for
the next two-year period. This opened the door to cooperative initiatives
– 123 –
Beatrice Scutaru
sible, not only short-term study programs, but also grants and specialized
scholarships with a longer duration.23 However, exchanges also took place
outside the official bilateral settlement. First, there were special agreements
between French and Romanian institutions, such as the one between the
French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Academy
of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Other institutions in different fields,
such as nuclear energy, computers, radio, and television, as well as indi-
vidual universities, developed bilateral relations for exchanging scholars.24
Private or semipublic institutions, such as the Alliance française, also of-
fered scholarships to Romanian students.25 Unlike Germany or the United
States, the state was the main actor of these exchanges since in France
there were no large private foundations to support scientific and cultural
activities.26 Even so, exchanges also took place based on invitations ad-
dressed by institutions to individuals in universities or institutes of higher
education, writers’ or artists’ unions, and such.27 Most of these grants were
short-term, most likely for ideological reasons. Long-term studies in France
and prolonged contact with French students and Western culture certainly
increased the risk of change in participants’ worldview.
Despite the existence of nongovernmental arrangements, the focus
here is on the more numerous exchanges taking place within the confines
of official agreements. Academics in these exchanges can be divided into
several categories: students, graduates, young researchers, experienced
researchers, and specialists. Different types of grants were offered based
on the status of the scholar in question. For example, the Association for
Technical Internships in France (ASTEF) organized internships mostly for
experienced researchers and specialists, with financial expenses divided
between the two countries. Romania paid for the travel costs between Bu-
charest and Paris, while France was responsible for the actual scholarship
and the costs of internal travel.28
The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in charge of bilateral
cultural and scientific exchanges: the candidates’ applications were sent
to the relevant ministry (education, tourism, and so on) by the institution
they belonged to; the ministry then forwarded the documents to the Min-
istry of Foreign Affairs. The French Embassy in Bucharest then received
all the applications brought together.29 However, the grantees selection
process was very long and complicated. The first selection was made by
Romanian authorities to ensure that candidates met their criteria. Then
files of these people were sent to the French Embassy, which examined and
forwarded them to the French institutions supposed to receive the grant-
ees. Despite repeated requests to establish a joint selection committee,
Romanian authorities resisted the idea, seeing it as a form of interference
in the internal affairs of the country.30 Given the refusal of the Romanian
– 125 –
Beatrice Scutaru
– 126 –
French-Romanian Academic Exchanges
the agreement, it was considered to be lost for the year.39 This was likely
to prevent Romanians from slipping ideologically sound candidates past
French authorities.
Another subject of disagreement between the two countries was the
request made by the French Embassy to verify the French skills of candi-
dates before granting scholarships. The French argued that some scholars
did not have the necessary level required to study in France.40 However,
Romania strongly opposed any preliminary contact between the scholar-
ship holders and the French Embassy staff.41 In order to put pressure on
the Romanian authorities, French authorities decided that candidates who
had been in touch with the French Embassy before leaving Romania would
receive their grants immediately upon their arrival in Paris, while the oth-
ers would have to wait about two weeks.42 Indeed, Romanian scholars were
sent abroad with a very limited amount of cash. The latter thus risked
finding themselves, upon their arrival in France, in a delicate situation and
in need of financial support from the Romanian Embassy in Paris.43 The
French authorities expected that a large number of complaints would force
the Romanian authorities to reconsider their position. Again, this strategy
worked, as Romanians complied with some of the French demands.
During the 1960s, Romanian students wishing to study in France by
their own means followed the same procedure as those in the official ex-
change program with scholarships. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
had to approve their application. From 1972, however, they could directly
apply to French universities without first contacting French authorities.44
Such students were very few in number, and the archives provide very
little and sporadic information on them. Sometimes French schools or
institutions proposed to the Romanian authorities trainee positions for
Romanian students, such as in 1968, when the National School of Admin-
istration offered to accommodate Romanian trainees for a period of one
year. The amount of the scholarship would have been from 750 to 1,000
francs monthly, with students paying for their housing and meals.45
It was also possible for French research institutes to request scholarships
for Romanian students whom they considered particularly able. For exam-
ple, the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (Institute of Higher
Cinematographic Studies, IHEC) in Paris asked the Romanian govern-
ment to give a grant to Nicolae Opritescu, an excellent Romanian student
they had started working with.46 In 1969, after obtaining a degree at the
Institute of Theatre and Cinematography in Romania, Nicolae Opritescu
submitted an application to IHEC in Paris. He was one of those few Ro-
manian students who came to study in France through their own means
and was therefore compelled to work and study at the same time. Pleased
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Beatrice Scutaru
with his work, the Institute’s director wanted him to receive a scholarship
and be able to concentrate only on studying.47 In 1971, Romania offered
Opritescu an eight-month grant of 750 francs per month.48
However, it was very difficult for the average Romanian to go abroad,
since travelling to Western Europe was the privilege of a small group of
citizens. This privilege expanded when the number of Romanians benefit-
ing from French grants increased. The French representatives were nev-
ertheless aware that it was not a desire for liberalization that determined
this development, but the inclination of the Romanian authorities to “take
full advantage of opportunities for specializing offered by the Capitalist
countries,” especially in advanced technologies.49 Indeed, when initiating
relations with Western countries, Romanian officials’ aim was to accelerate
the country’s industrialization process. The best way to achieve this goal
was considered to be gaining access to Western technology. Romanians
feared, however, that the French would only try to develop the fields that
were of interest to France while ignoring issues Romania held important.50
According to a report by the Romanian Embassy in Paris, the French fields
of specialization that presented great interest for Romania were electronic
and electrical studies, physical and macromolecular chemistry, theoreti-
cal and applied physics, agriculture, theoretical mathematics, and biology.
Hence, the Embassy’s objective was enhancing technical and scientific
development of exchanges in these fields.51 However, one should not for-
get language studies. Romanian and French languages are both of Latin
origin, making it easier to learn the other. From the Romanian viewpoint,
French was an essential skill for studying in France. One can conclude
that Romanian authorities encouraged their citizens to study French in
order to facilitate their access to French technology. For the French, lan-
guage was considered an important part of their culture and necessary for
ensuring Romanians’ access to French culture. Thus, cultural exchanges
were for de Gaulle a way of maintaining, and even reinforcing, the French
influence in this part of Europe. Both parties were aware that the other’s
interests hardly coincided with their own, but believed that, with proper
surveillance, these relations could be beneficial. Cultural agreements thus
forced both parties to make concessions. French authorities were willing
to concede because foreign scholars in France were not allowed to work
on sensitive projects. Furthermore, the French Ministry of Internal Affairs
kept an eye on foreign students doing their research in France. For exam-
ple, Petre Roman, the first Romanian prime minister after the fall of Nico-
lae Ceaus, escu in December 1989, had spent three years doing his Ph.D.
in Toulouse. The school and the Direction de la surveillance du territoire
(DST) monitored him throughout but without finding any incriminatory
information.52
– 128 –
French-Romanian Academic Exchanges
Table 6.1. The Evolution of Franco-Romanian Cultural, Scientific, and Technical Exchanges
Cultural Cultural Scientific Scientific Intern- Scholar-
scholarships missions scholarships missions ships ships
1964 65 15 10 5 — —
1966 102 37 45 33 — 20
1968 107 75 218 80 10 54
1970 153 75 184 126 23 64
1972 191 80 304 175 30 70
1974 217 103 338 225 35 100
Source: MAEF, Europe 1971–76, File No. 3530.
Note: Evolution of cultural relations between France and Romania, Bucharest, 17 May 1976, 4.
These figures also include activities that took place outside the offi-
cial bilateral agreement, such as the Alliance française scholarships or the
missions funded by the French National Centre for Scientific Research
(CNRS): cultural (humanities) and scientific (science, medicine, and tech-
nology) scholarships and missions, foreign language assistants in universi-
ties, youth training courses, French activity leaders of teaching practice in
Romania, and scholarships offered by Romania to young French students.55
The table presents the months of scholarships that were actually used by
both the French and the Romanians. It shows there was movement in both
directions, even if fewer French citizens went to Romania than Romanians
to France. Cultural and scientific “missions” refer to research groups of
scholars, scientists who crossed the Iron Curtain and enabled the transfer
of knowledge from one country to the other, and even the establishment of
transnational networks. Exchanges were constantly on the rise. The evo-
lution is even more impressive if these numbers are compared with those
from the late 1950s. In 1959, only three Romanians received scholarships
from the French government.56 The scientific missions and scholarships
saw the most impressive increase, multiplying by thirty or forty in ten years
– 129 –
Beatrice Scutaru
that this was not the reason for his being in France and encouraged him
to behave.71
Conclusion
Despite their control, the Romanian authorities could not select which
parts of French culture their citizens came into contact with. The French
succeeded in the objective of using cultural agreements to get citizens of
Communist countries to make contacts with the West, and with French
culture in particular. To this direction, ASTEF even organized encoun-
ters between scholars and French families in order to provide the visitors
with an opportunity to discover the family life of French engineers. Even
when such encounters were not previously determined, closer relations
could be established between French and Romanian citizens. Some French
continued to follow Romanian developments in the media, others went to
Romania as tourists, and some even created international research net-
works. Although the impact of the exchanges has not been the focus of
this chapter, it is likely that the French-Romanian contacts were not with-
out consequences. Officially, both countries tried to increase knowledge
about each other. This certainly took place within the framework of aca-
demic exchanges as well. Besides the information Romanians gathered and
the research they conducted in France, they also spent time in the West,
outside their own country, gaining experiences of the Western way of life,
even if for a short time period.
Academic exchanges were highly desired by France since they provided
real contacts between the two societies, with all the elements this entailed.
While Romanians sought the scientific and technical contacts and coop-
eration that was possible through academic exchanges, they also dreaded
them for this same reason. The contacts between individuals made the Iron
Curtain permeable, providing an alternative to the anti-Western Commu-
nist propaganda and facilitating interaction with another society. Never-
theless, the Cold War was a reality that cannot be ignored when analyzing
East-West bilateral relations in the 1960s. The world remained divided
into two blocs, and confrontation and conflict were still its main organiz-
ing features. This explains the way cultural relations between France and
Romania evolved during this period. Besides each county’s interests, the
ideological aspect was still very much present and played an important
role. Yet, the two parties managed to influence one another throughout
the 1960s and the early 1970s, trying to find a balance between giving and
taking while keeping in mind that the other party’s goal was never what it
may have seemed at first glance.
– 133 –
Beatrice Scutaru
Notes
1. F. Chaubet and L. Martin, Histoire des relations culturelles dans le monde contemporain
(Paris: Armand Colin, 2011), 98–100.
2. T. Gomart, “La diplomatie culturelle française à l’égard de l’URSS: objectifs, moyens et
obstacles (1956–1966),” in Culture et Guerre froide, ed. J.-F. Sirinelli and G.-H. Soutou (Paris:
Presses de l’Université de la Sorbonne, 2008), 173; J. S. Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing
Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
3. J. C. E. Gienow-Hecht and M. C. Donfried, eds. Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New
York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 13–15; N. J. Cull, “Reading, Viewing, and Tuning in to the
Cold War,” and J. M. Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe, 1962–1975,” in The Cambridge History
of the Cold War, vol. 2, Crises and Détente, ed. M. P. Leffler and O. A. Westad (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 439.
4. G. Péteri, “Fellowships and Grants,” in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History
from the Mid-19th Century to the Present Day, ed. A. Iriye and P.-Y. Saunier (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 387.
5. Catherine Durandin is a well-known French historian who wrote many studies on Ro-
manian history.
6. Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe, 1962–1975,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War,
ed. Leffler and Westad, 198, 199. On Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policy, see M. Vaïsse, La
Grandeur. Politique étrangère du général de Gaulle (Paris: Fayard, 1998); M. Vaïsse, La puissance
ou l’influence? La France dans le monde depuis 1958 (Paris: Fayard, 2009); P. G. Cerny, Une
politique de grandeur (Paris: Flammarion, 1986).
7. A. Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc (Bucures, ti:
Curtea Veche, 2005), 519; R. Ivan, “Între internat,ionalismul proletar s, i nat,ional-comunismul
autarhic. Politica externa sub regimul communist,” in “Transformarea socialista.” Politici ale
regimului comunist intre idéologie si administratie, ed. R. Ivan (Ias, i: Polirom, 2009), 108–28; On
Romania’s foreign Policy, see R. Ivan, La politique étrangère roumaine (1990–2006) (Bruxelles:
Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2009); C. Moraru, Politica externa a Romaniei 1958–1964
(Bucures, ti: Editura Enciclopedica, 2008).
8. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAEF) in Paris, the Diplomatic Archival
Centre from Nantes (CADN), and the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAER) in
Bucharest.
9. “Dispatch No. 154/ACT by Jean Deciry to Christian Pineau,” Bucarest, 5 March 1958,
4, Bucarest-Ambassade fonds, box 343, and Aide-memoire for the first discussion with Chivu
Stoica, the Council’s president, Bucharest, 9 May 1958, 5, box 485, CADN.
– 134 –
French-Romanian Academic Exchanges
10. In view of improving relations between Romania and the Western countries, in De-
cember 1960, a cultural agreement was signed with the United States, providing for the ex-
changes of experts, artists and art groups, books, films, and exhibitions. B. Barbu, Vin amer-
icanii! Prezent, a simbolica a Statelor Unite în Romania Razboiului rece (Bucharest: Humanitas,
2006), 233.
11. “Report by Traian Moraru on the activity of the legation in the cultural field during
the last months,” Paris, 27 February 1960, 12, file 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
12. The “Third Basket” of the Helsinki Final Act promoted the development of contacts
between the East and the West concerning people, information, education, or culture. N. J.
Cull, “Reading, Viewing and Tuning into the Cold War,” 456.
13. “Dispatch No. 10.883 of the RPR legation in France for the Romanian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs,” Paris, 9 December 1959, 6, file 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
14. “Note: Evolution of cultural relations between France and Romania,” Bucharest, 17
May 1976, 4, box 3530, Europe 1971–76 fonds, MAEF.
15. “Note: Cultural relations between France and Romania,” 15 April 1966, 5, file 476,
Bucharest Embassy fonds, CADN.
16. “Dispatch No. 42/EU by Jean-Louis Pons for Maurice Couve de Murville: Romania en
1964,” Bucharest, 21 January 1965, 50, box 294, Europe 1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
17. “Note: Cultural relations with Romania,” July 1964, 4, box 490, Bucarest-Ambassade
fonds, CADN.
18. Ibid.
19. Péteri, “Fellowships and Grants,” in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, ed.
Iriye and Saunier, 387.
20. “Dispatch No. 318/RC from Jean-Louis Pons to Maurice Couve de Murville: The
French-Romanian Mixed Commission’s reunion,” Bucharest, 5 October 1967, 48, box 194,
Europe 1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
21. Ibid.
22. “Dispatch No. 200/DG from Pierre Pelen to Maurice Schumann: Cultural relations
between France and Romania (April 1970),” Bucharest, 4 May 1970, 7, box 196, Europe
1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
23. “Report on the cultural action of France in Romania,” June 1972, 20, file 490, Bucha-
rest Embassy fonds, CADN.
24. The Secretariat for Youth and Sport of the Socialist Republic of Romania; the Atomic
Energy Commission and the Romanian Committee for Nuclear Energy, Gas and Electricity
from France and the Romanian Ministries of Electricity and Petrol; the Commission for Infor-
matics Development and the Romanian Government Commission for Computing Equipment
and Automation of Information Processing; the ORTF and Radio TV-Romanian; twinned
universities.
25. “Dispatch No. 200/DG from Pierre Pelen to Maurice Schumann: Cultural relations
between France and Romania (April 1970),” Bucharest, 4 May 1970, 7, file 196, Europe
1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
26. M.-C. Kessler, La politique étrangère de la France. Acteurs et processus (Paris: Presses de
Sciences Po, 1999). Kessler analyzes the role of the state in France’s cultural policy on pages
372–83.
27. “Dispatch No. 200/DG from Pierre Pelen to Maurice Schumann: Cultural relations
between France and Romania (April 1970),” Bucharest, 4 May 1970, 7, file 196, Europe
1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
28. “A cultural, scientific, and technical exchange program between the French republic
government and the Socialist Republic of Romania’s government for 1968 and 1969,” Paris,
12 April 1968, 18, file 194, Europe 1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
29. “Dispatch No. 823 from the Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers to the Min-
ister of Foreign Affairs,” Bucharest, 10 May 1966, 7, file 217/1966/B, France fonds, MAER;
– 135 –
Beatrice Scutaru
“Dispatch No. 10/00218 from the Directorate of Cultural Relations to the Romanian Embassy
in Paris,” Bucharest, 24 February 1966, 2, file 217/1966/B, France fonds, MAER.
30. “Dispatch No. 593 from Peter Bouffanais to Maurice Couve de Murville: Academic
Scholarships,” Bucharest, 21 August 1963, 2, file 368, Bucharest–Embassy fonds, CADN.
31. “State of scholarships, training courses, and missions completed in France during
1965,” Paris, 22 January 1966, 17, File 217/1966/B, France fonds, MAER.
32. “Dispatch No. 1106 from the RSR Embassy in France for the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Direction III relations,” Paris, 3 April 1967, 7, file 217/1967/A, B, C, D, E, H, N, and
“Activity report of the cultural service of the RSR Embassy–Paris for 1967,” Paris, December
1967, 25, file 217/1967/general, France fonds, MAER.
33. “Telegram No. 30–34,” Bucharest, 8 January 1966, 3, File 193, Europe 1961–70, MAEF.
34. “Note: Franco-Romanian cultural relations,” 15 April 1966, 5, file 476, Bucharest Em-
bassy fonds, CADN; Telegram No. 1136, Bucharest, 27 September 1967, 4, file 194, Europe
1961–70, MAEF.
35. “Franco-Romanian cultural relations,” Paris, 1 June 1976, 8, file 3530, Europe funds
1971–76, MAEF.
36. Jean-Louis Pons was the French ambassador in Bucharest.
37. “Dispatch No. 42 from Jean-Louis Pons to Maurice Couve de Murville: Romania in
1964,” Bucharest, 21 January 1965, 50, file 294, Europe 1961–70 fonds, MAEF.
38. “Situation of scholarships, internships, and missions in France during 1965,” Paris, 22
January 1966, 17, file 217/1966/B, France fonds, MAER.
39. “Dispatch No. 10/12.569 of the Direction of Cultural Relations to the Directorate
General of Statistics,” Bucharest, December 1969, 1, file 217/1969/B vol. 1, France fonds,
MAER.
40. “Telegram No. 30–34,” Bucharest, 8 January 1966, 3, file 193, Europe 1961–70 fonds,
MAEF.
41. “Note: Franco-Romanian cultural relations,” 15 April 1966, 5, file 476, Bucharest
Embassy fonds, CADN.
42. “Telegram No. 142/44,” Bucharest, 13 April 1966, 2, box 193, Europe 1961–70 fonds,
MAEF.
43. “Activity report,” 9 March 1966, 2, file 217/1966/B vol. 1, France fonds, MAER.
44. “Dispatch No. 8102 from the RSR Embassy in France for MAE,” Paris, 24 July 1968, 2,
file 217/1969/B bis, France fonds, MAER.
45. “Note of the proposals No. 03/03626: Sending certain diplomats from MFA for ad-
vanced training courses at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in France,” 28 December
1968, 2, file 217/1969/B bis, France fonds, MAER.
46. “Dispatch No. 51 from the French Embassy in Romania to the RSR Embassy in
France,” Bucharest, 19 February 1970, 1, file 217/1971/B bis, France fonds, MAER.
47. “Dispatch No. 2271 from the State Committee for Culture and Art for MAE,” Bucha-
rest, 9 April 1970, 1, file 217/1971/B bis, France fonds, MAER.
48. “Dispatch No. 34873 from the State Committee for Culture and Art for MAE,” Bu-
charest, 8 October 1970, 2, file 217/1971/B bis, France fonds, MAER.
49. “Dispatch No. 42 from Jean-Louis Pons to Maurice Couve de Murville: Romania in
1964,” Bucharest, 21 January 1965, 50, file 294, Europe fonds 1961–70, MAEF.
50. “Activity report of the Cultural Service for the second semester of 1960,” Paris, 3 Jan-
uary 1961, 25, file 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
51. “Report by the Romanian Embassy in Paris: The state of scholarships, internships, and
missions in France during 1965,” Paris, 28 January 1966, 13, file 217/1966/B, France fonds,
MAER.
52. La Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST) is the former French police service
for general information. (A. Chemin, “Roumanie: Fausses rumeurs,” Le Monde, 16 February
1990; A. Chemin, “Sur les traces de Petre Roman à Toulouse. Celui qui devait devenir le
– 136 –
French-Romanian Academic Exchanges
premier ministre de la Roumanie a laissé dans la ‘ville rose’ où il a passé plusieurs années, le
souvenir d’un marxiste antistalinien,” Le Monde, 16 February 1990.)
53. “Report by Traian Moraru on the activity of the legation in the cultural sector in recent
months,” Paris, 27 February 1960, 12, 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
54. “Activity report of the Cultural Service for the second half of 1960,” Paris, 3 January
1961, 25, 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
55. “Note: Evolution of cultural relations between France and Romania,” Bucharest, 17
May 1976, 4, file 3530, Europe 1971–76, MAEF.
56. “Report by Traian Moraru on the activity of the legation in the cultural sector in recent
months,” Paris, 27 February 1960, 12, file 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
57. “Report on the cultural action of France in Romania, June 1972,” 20, file 490, Bucha-
rest Embassy fonds, CADN.
58. Each application for a scholarship had to include a curriculum vitae and a work pro-
gram draft, both written in French. The CV had to include the following data: full name,
place and date of birth, job, academic degree and title, scientific activity (published research),
and foreign language skills. The draft program in turn had to indicate the duration of stay in
France, project title, field of specialisation, scientist in charge, and host institution(s) and/or
laboratory(ies) (“Dispatch No. 10/00886 from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to
the Vice President of the National Construction, Architecture and Systematization Commit-
tee,” Bucarest, 30 July 1965, 1–2, file 217/1966/B VI, France fonds, MAER).
59. “Activity report,” 11 January 1963, 1, file 217/1963/A, B, C, France fonds, MAER.
60. This analysis is based on the reports written by Romanians who studied in France, from
MAEF, France fonds.
61. “Activity report,” 1967, 3–4, file 217/1967/B III, France fonds, MAER.
62. “Activity report,” 11 January 1963, 1, file 219/1963/A,B,C, France fonds, MAER.
63. “Activity report,” 23 October 1967, 3–4, file 217/1967/B IX, France fonds, MAER.
64. “Activity report,” Bucharest, 1967, 2–3, file 217/1967/B IV, France fonds, MAER.
65. “Activity report,” 19 September 1967, 3, file 217/1967/B IV, France fonds, MAER.
66. Péteri, “Fellowships and grants,” in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, ed.
Iriye and Saunier, 387.
67. “Activity report, 1967,” 3–4, file 217/1967/B III, France fonds, MAER.
68. This analysis is based on reports written by Romanians who studied in France, from
MAEF, France fonds.
69. “Information No. 1065 regarding the closing of the academic year 1970–71 by Roma-
nian students in France,” Paris, 23 July 1971, 3, file 217/1971/B bis, France fonds, MAER.
70. “Report, Paris, 1966, 1–5,” file 217/1966/B vol. 3, France fonds, MAER.
71. “Traian Moraru’s report concerning certain actual problems of work in the cultural
field,” Paris, 24 March 1960, 16, file 217/1960/general, France fonds, MAER.
– 137 –
Chapter 7
Anssi Halmesvirta
Introduction
T his chapter focuses on the question of how it was possible for two coun-
tries on the opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, Socialist Hungary and
Capitalist Finland, to plan and launch rather intensive cooperation in re-
search and development (R&D) from the early 1960s onward. The cooper-
ation became so intensive that, in 1976, the Academy of Finland (AF) and
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) drew up an agreement of coop-
eration in many fields of science and technology and, irrespective of ideolog-
ical juxtaposition and suspicion, began an exceptional project to compare
their science policies. The agreement testified to the flexibility afforded by
the foreign policy of “good neighborliness and peaceful coexistence” even
though Hungary and Finland are geographically relatively far apart. The
agreement with Finland certainly was not as important to Hungary as those,
for instance, with West Germany (1967) and the United States (1977), but
its value rested in research within such fields of science that were destined
to improve not only technical performance and quality of production, but
also social efficiency.1 Furthermore, the so-called kinship cooperation of
the interwar and war years for which there was an agreement of cultural-
scientific cooperation (1937) augmented the reestablishment of contacts
between science authorities, even if the dominant ideological imports were
now quite different: Socialist in Hungary and Progressive in Finland.2
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Hungary Opens toward the West
It was remarkable and surprising for the Finns that it was János Kádár’s
close ally, hard-line Communist Ferenc Münnich,3 who, from Moscow,
monitored the reestablishment of the Finnish-Hungarian Society (FHS) in
Helsinki already in 1950. In the process, the formerly right-wing and anti-
Russian kinship4 society was transformed into a medium for sympathetic
(rokonszenvező in Münnich’s Hungarian wording) progressive and leftist
Finnish politicians, scientists, and scholars to communicate with Hungarian
colleagues both officially and semiofficially; the idea of Hungarian-Finnish
kinship, jettisoned in 1945, was revived on a rhetorical level to serve rap-
prochement between them.5 The president of Finland (1946–56), J. K.
Paasikivi, was at the time labeled as a dangerous reactionary by the Hun-
garians, while his disciple in foreign policy, Urho Kekkonen, a Hungaro-
phile, rising Agrarian politician, and future president, was spotted as the
man of the future in the Finnish-Hungarian rapprochement. As Finland
had established friendly relations with the Soviet Union under the aegis
of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance in 1948,
Finland was for the Hungarians almost “rosy red” (rószaszinű)—Soviet-
oriented, not an imperialist but a democratic Capitalist country that could
become an easy partner and relatively fertile ground for Socialist coopera-
tion and science propaganda.
In view of high politics, it was realized that the two countries with dif-
ferent political systems could promote peace and stability in Europe and,
as a result, benefit politically and economically from it.6 The old connec-
tions between scholars in the fields of ethnography, philology, and liter-
ary studies were also soon reestablished, but what seemed to be wanting
were contacts between junior, progressive-minded researchers who could
initiate cooperation in up-to-date natural, technical, and social sciences.
For instance, medicine and related sciences became early key areas for
researcher exchange and transfer of know-how as it was soon discovered
in comparative studies that Finns and Hungarians actually suffered from
similar kinds of “national diseases,” namely cardiovascular diseases, alco-
holism, and suicidal behavior.7 This progressive attitude among the ex-
perts, which emphasized the significance of holistic social policy and public
health, was accepted and enhanced at the highest political level, and after
Kekkonen and Kádár had taken power in 1956 in their countries, the pros-
pects for expanding R&D cooperation improved remarkably.
One episode from the time of the 1956 Hungarian revolution demon-
strates Kekkonen’s sympathetic attitude toward Hungary quite neatly. He
was so shocked by the Soviet invasion that he contacted the Soviet Embassy
in Helsinki, proposing himself as a mediator in the crisis and even offer-
– 139 –
Anssi Halmesvirta
From the late 1960s onward, the preparations for the European Security
Conference, designed to bring peace and stability to Europe, also demon-
strate how Finnish and Hungarian foreign policy makers found common
ground. The Hungarians were so enthusiastic about the conference that
Finnish Prime Minister Mauno Koivisto had to pacify them during his visit
in October 1968.13 Just before Kekkonen’s first official state visit to Hun-
gary in 1969, one Hungarian foreign policy expert wrote that Finland’s aim
in speeding up the security conference process was to gain worldwide rec-
ognition for its neutrality policy and show that it was not as dependent on
the Soviet Union as Western observers implied. This turn was welcomed
by the Hungarian foreign ministry because the original idea for the confer-
ence had come from the Soviet Union and it would impinge on the unity
of NATO and the West in general. However, during his meeting with Kek-
konen, Kádár did not even mention the conference, but instead focused
his attention on Hungary’s domestic situation, calling the nation “homog-
enous,” which was to say that all social classes were working together to
build Socialism.14 For his part, Kekkonen expressed his compliments on
the achievements of Hungarian Socialism, stating that if Hungary only
had two hundred such farms as the Bábolna model farm, it could have
the most developed agriculture in the world.15 In the shadows, delegations
representing science and technology discussed how cooperation in their
fields could be intensified by raising it to a higher level of official exchange
agreement between the academies.
Without going into details, it can be said that the signing of the Helsinki
Act in 1975 was the climax in Kekkonen’s career, and, for Kádár, it was a
confirmation that the Soviet Union trusted both him and Kekkonen to con-
duct their policies jointly and more independently. For Kekkonen, interna-
tional recognition and neutrality were paramount; for Kádár, appeasement
and economic cooperation with the West were crucial because they could
help him to consolidate his domestic sway. Both of them were pragmatic in
their stance toward the Soviet Union and had no illusions about it. A harm-
less and useful way to live with it was to cooperate—with its silent bless-
ing—in fields of science by exchanging know-how in such a way that would
help them to develop their countries, Hungary toward modernization and
Finland toward a Nordic welfare state. This dualism of mutual interests
paved the way for the 1976 agreement between the national academies.
Cooperation in Practice
stand out from the flow of R&D exchanges. The first examples are rather
general in nature, and the other two are more specific.
Until the end of World War II, it had been representatives of the na-
tional or Finno-Ugric studies in Finland who had cherished scientific or
scholarly relations with Hungary. When these Finns were largely discred-
ited and regarded by the Hungarians as “academic scholastics” (meaning
ideologically reactionary enemies), Finnish leftists and centrists (Agrari-
ans, Progressives, and Liberals), who were generally also more favorable
toward good relations with the Soviet Union, became favored instead.16
Hungarian propaganda work in Finland was directed against the influence
of American cultural infiltration and geared to promote politics of peace
and security with the Soviet Union in the Nordic sphere in general. This
seemed to succeed since Kekkonen expressed his recognition of the Hun-
garians’ proposals for friendly cooperation, now praised as the classic ex-
ample of peaceful coexistence of a Capitalist and a Socialist country.17
After the renewal of the agreement of cultural exchange between Hun-
gary and Finland (1959), the concrete cooperation widened and deepened.
The intergovernmental mixed committee and subcommittees resumed
their work in small but intensive projects and organized exchanges of cul-
tural and scientific delegations, directed the organization of seminars, con-
ferences, and, most notably, developed a new venue, the Science Days, on
a bilateral and quota basis. Hungarian science authorities were enthusias-
tic about how easily the younger, progressive section of the Finnish scien-
tific community accepted their request so that they could, as one of them
put it, “with risk, courageously and flexibly” reach advantageous agree-
ments without roundabout tactics. Kekkonen’s visit in 1963 had boosted
continuous exchange of ideas and plans on the highest level, between Kek-
konen’s trusted man in Hungarian affairs, Kustaa Vilkuna, and his Hungar-
ian colleague, Gyula Ortutay,18 in particular. They featured prominently in
the R&D planning and the occasions of Vilkuna’s decoration in Hungary
were considered good opportunities for propaganda work by Hungarian
authorities. Furthermore, they together managed that the Helsinki Inter-
national Fair (1964) offered a venue to show the achievements of Social-
ism in Hungary and that Kossuth Lajos Tudomány Egyetem (University
of Debrecen) received fifty to sixty Finnish students yearly to study the
Hungarian language.19
New, more aggressive planning of scientific cooperation with Finland
was evidently due to Kádár’s personal intervention: after Kekkonen’s visit
in 1963, it was reported from Hungary that he had personally revised the
rules of science policy. Instead of prevalent party allegiance and working-
class origin as preconditions for researcher recruitment, new essential fea-
tures were to be “expertise, skill and competence.” This new emphasis
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Hungary Opens toward the West
was sufficiently anti-imperialist and could be set in the frame of the policy
of peaceful coexistence and internationalism in Europe. In all, the repu-
tation of Hungarian science was improved on the territory of a potential
ideological enemy.23
After the elections in 1966, the so-called People’s Front, a leftist-pro-
gressive government, took office in Finland. It soon introduced, with
strong pressure from Kekkonen, a full-scale democratization of higher ed-
ucation and researcher training as well as a comprehensive reform of the
Academy of Finland. The former club of gentlemen/women professors was
transformed into a more collective and democratic scientific institution
in the funding of which natural, applied, and social sciences were now
given precedence. This suited Hungarian authorities very well, and they
reported that Kekkonen wanted this reform because the old system did
not fulfill the expectations of the national economy and wider society.
Projects that helped to plan progressive social policy—for instance, in
medicine, sociology, and later in social psychology24—were at the top of
the new agenda.
The partners were ready for a fresh start, and the years 1966–67 saw
further negotiations for concrete agreements in R&D between respective
ministries, with the result, in 1969, that altogether ten different project
agreements in various fields were being planned and launched. Conse-
quently, previously preferred humanities were pushed into the margins and
more resources were allocated to technical and applied sciences, such as
wood processing, engineering, and agricultural sciences. Comparative law
studies also featured on the agenda for the first time. At the time, however,
Hungarians were particularly interested in Finnish agricultural chemistry,
especially in fertilizers, and they were ready to buy both the related know-
how and the laboratory equipment.25
One good example of the soundings Hungarian science authorities took
in Finland in the 1970s in order to prepare ground for the highest level of
cooperation was the visit of a delegation led by Deputy Minister of Culture
Károly Polinszky in late April and early May of 1971. Its purpose was to
get acquainted with Finnish higher education and seek possibilities for sci-
entific-technological cooperation. During the visit, the possible obstacles
to the agreement between the academies were to be discussed. From the
Finnish side, Ministers Jaakko Itälä, Meeri Kalavainen, and Olavi Salonen
all agreed that it was now high time to “deepen relations,” and Itälä ex-
pressly pointed to the Academy of Finland as the suitable organ for the
Hungarians guests to approach. Before negotiations started, the Hungar-
ians toured some of the leading high-tech centers in Finland, Otaniemi
(Valtion Taloudellinen Tutkimuskeskus, VTT), Universities of Helsinki
and Oulu, and the Outokumpu Research Unit, among others. At first
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Hungary Opens toward the West
common problems of public health that were acute at the time. The acad-
emies adopted a common policy, prioritizing medicine under the heading
“better quality of life” for citizens. This was well in line with the Finnish
Progressive and the Hungarian Socialist social policies, and, in both coun-
tries, medicine was, at least in the opinion of the operating partners and
medical experts, on a rather high level. Furthermore, there were long tra-
ditions of exchange of researchers in various branches of medicine dating
from the early 1930s. For example, innovations in surgical techniques had
been transferred in both directions.
In the 1970s, up-to-date methods of electrocardiology had been devel-
oped in Finland, and the Kuopio Central Hospital was the center of inno-
vations to combat cardiovascular diseases prevalent particularly in Eastern
Finland and Karelia. Hungarian experts were called in to participate in
an extensive research project aimed at finding new diagnostic methods as
well as developing cures and a less fatty dietary regimen for the public. The
project was financed from multiple sources, and the research concentrated
on analyzing the bioelectrical functioning of the heart, as well as blood
circulation and its problems. Hungarian participants, who had initially as-
sumed a stance of scientific expertise and competence, even superiority,
were dumbfounded to realize how well-equipped the Finnish laboratories
in Kuopio were. A tangible achievement for them was the transfer of the
technology of the EKG (electrocardiogram) measurement and diagnostics
by a computerized program to Hungary.33
This must have been a successful exception in 1977, since there were
complaints at the time from the Hungarian side to the effect that even if
international research exchange relations had been expanded, they were
still in their infancy—the relations of research institutions in particular.
The culprit was found in the inflexible Hungarian bureaucracy, which of-
ten obstructed the transfer of useful know-how, innovations, and their ap-
plications. It was also difficult to find competent and ideologically reliable
junior researchers who could be trusted to spend a longer period of time
in the West.
Conclusion
efficiently; and how to procure follow-up data about how research results
were actually applied in real life and how they benefited the wider society.36
It became obvious for both Finnish and Hungarian science authorities that
the relation of prescriptions of science policy and scientifically valid and
socially useful end products was still insufficiently controllable. In many
cases, the research produced results that were either inadequately appli-
cable or ideologically unacceptable, meaning too liberal for the Socialist
system. Furthermore, perusal of the records of the academies allows one to
conclude that this state of affairs pretty much continued until a change in
the political and economic system in 1989–90, which suddenly created a
situation more open to reevaluating the value of bilateral relations in gen-
eral. It could also be deduced from this evidence that it was Hungary that
benefited more from the cooperation because the flow of exchange was
greatly in its favor: in 1984 Hungary sent 75 scientists, receiving 58 from
Finland, and in 1987, 113, receiving only 37.37
Notes
1. In 1971, 22 researchers from Hungary went to Finland (65 from Finland to Hungary),
178 to West Germany, and 30 to the United States. In 1979 the numbers stood at 49 (64),
270, and 125, respectively. The numbers have been gleaned from the annual reports deposited
in the Archives of Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA, Budapest).
2. A. Halmesvirta, Rakkaat heimoveljet. Unkari ja Suomi 1945 (Joensuu: Historietti, 2010),
172.
3. Ferenc Münnich (1886–1967) was a hard-line Communist schooled in Moscow. He was
one of the organizers of the Hungarian security police (ÁVO, later ÁVH) in 1946–49, sub-
sequently in diplomatic service. Between 1958 and 1961 he was the chairman of the Council
of Ministers, belonged to Kádár’s closest allies in consolidation (and repression) after 1956,
then, from 1961 to 1965 state minister, and a member of the highest organ of the HSWP
(MSzMP), the Political Committee, from 1956 to 1966.
4. Hungarians and Finns were the only Ugric nations (even if distant both linguistically
and geographically) in the world with their own nation-states during the Cold War period.
Estonians were the third such nation, but were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. A.
Halmesvirta, “Unfortunate Kinship: Finnish-Hungarian Relations during the Second World
– 148 –
Hungary Opens toward the West
War,” in Nations and Their Others: Finland and Hungary in Comparison, ed. H. Nyyssönen and
M. Vares (Helsinki: East-West Books, 2012), 95–113.
5. “Münnich to Budapest,” 1 March and 5 April 1950, Finn-KüM-XIX-J-1-Fin, 12/a-
020217, 019651, 7 d., MOL (Hungarian National Archives). For the revival of the idea of
kinship, see M. Vares, “President Kekkonen’s Visits to Hungary in the 1960s: Satellite Policy
in the Context of Kinship,” in Hungarologische Beiträge 14, ed. A. Halmesvirta (Jyväskylä:
University of Jyväskylä, 2002), 130.
6. Kekkonen’s statement about “peaceful co-existence” in the Agrarian paper Maakansa
in January 1952 was widely appreciated in the Hungarian press as an important opening to
construct a peaceful status quo in Europe. The reports of the Hungarian press were quoted by
Lauri Hjelt, the Finnish charge de affaires in Budapest. See Hjelt to Helsinki (Foreign Minis-
try), 17 March and 28 April 1952, UM 5/27 C, UMA (Foreign Ministry Archives, Helsinki).
7. A. Halmesvirta, Co-operation across the Iron Curtain: Hungarian-Finnish Scientific Rela-
tions of the Academies from the 1960s to the 1990s, Studies in General History vol. 12 (Jyväskylä:
Jyväskylä University Printing House, 2005), ch. 2.
8. Quoted in A. Halmesvirta, “Finlandizálas, a hideg béke és az intő magyar példa,” De-
breceni Disputa VI, no. 9 (September 2008), 6. Cf. J. Pohjonen, “In Kekkonen and Kádár We
Trust,” in Bridge-Building and Political Cultures. Hungarologische Beiträge vol. 18, ed. A. Halmes-
virta and H. Nyyssönen (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2006), 101–5.
9. “Memorandum of Finnish Hungarian Relations,” dated 22 January 1962, UM 5/C27,
UMA; “Akcióterv: A magyar-finn kapcsolatok alakitása 1964–ben,” Finn-KüM, XIV-J-1-
Finn-4/bd. 5d., 524, MOL.
10. Kekkonen’s diary entries from 5 and 8 May 1963. J. Suomi, ed., Urho Kekkosen päiväkir-
jat 1963–1968 (Helsinki: Otava, 2002).
11. “Reino Palas to Helsinki, 20 May 1963.” Discussions with Kádár reported in UM 5/
C27, UMA.
12. E.g., Hajdu-Bihari Napló, 12 May 1963.
13. “Martti Ingman to Helsinki,” 28 October 1968, UM 7B, UMA.
14. “Tájékoztató a központi bizottság tagjai részére idöszerű nemzetközi kerdésekről,” De-
cember 1976, M-KS-288f-4cs.-148öe-1976.12.01, MOL.
15. “Kekkonen to Kádár,” 29 September 1969, Finn-KüM-Finn-44-131-XIX-J-Finn 1,
002242-1969, 37d., MOL.
16. “Dömötör to Budapest,” 29 November 1952, Finn-KüM-XIX-J-1-k-21/a.01155/5, 18
d, MOL.
17. “Rezsö Mikola’s statement” in Finn-KüM-XIX-J-1-k-4/b, 524, 3d, MOL.
18. Kustaa Vilkuna (1902–80), was an ethnologist and academician. In postwar Finland,
he worked in the service of censorship and as the Head of the State Information Office. He
belonged to President Kekkonen’s inner circle of advisors and friends. Gyula Ortutay (1910–
78) was a renegade from the Smallholders Party to the camp of Communists and served as
a minister of culture and denominational affairs in 1947–50. He was a famous ethnologist
and had many friends and colleagues in Finland. He was the chief secretary (1957–64) and
vice-president (1964–78) of the Patriotic Popular Front and played a major role in science
relations by being the chairman of the Society to Promote the Dissemination of Knowledge
(1964–78). He was also a member of the Council of Ministers in 1958–78.
19. “Akcióterv: A magyar-finn kapcsolatok alakitása 1964–ben,” Finn-KüM, XIV-J-1-
Finn-4/bd, 524, 3d., MOL.
20. “Reino Palas from Budapest to Helsinki,” 20 May and 11 June 1963, Reports 1 and 2,
126753, UM5/C27, UMA.
21. In 1965, Austerlitz researched the Hungarian language by invitation of the Institute for
Cultural Relations, located in Budapest, Hungary. He had been a visiting scholar in Helsinki
University in the early 1950s.
– 149 –
Anssi Halmesvirta
22. Paavo Haavikko (1931–2008) was a leading Finnish modernist author, poet, and pub-
lisher, he published over seventy works, and his poems have been translated into twelve lan-
guages. He was nominated Academician of Arts in 1994 and received the Neustadt price in
1984. His relations with President Kekkonen were problematic.
23. “Kurtán to Budapest,” 4 September 1965, Finn-KüM-XIX-J-1-j, 730035592/2, 46d; 13
December 1965, Finn-KüM-XIX-J-1-j-14, 005153/1, 44d, and 26 May 1965, Finn-KüM-XIX-
J-1-j, 73003592, 46d., MOL.
24. For details on the symposium titled “Psychological and Pedagogical Aspects of Youth
Education” held at the University of Jyväskylä from 31 August to 1 September 1981, see A.
Halmesvirta, “Searching for the Social Man: Hungarian and Finnish Psychologists Collabo-
rate,” Hungarologische Beiträge 18 (2006), 261–98.
25. “Összefoglaló a magyar-finn műszaki kapcsolatokról,” Finn-KüM-XIX-J-1-j-1-00697/
12/1969, 36 d., MOL.
26. “Károly Polinszky’s report,” 14 May 1971, KüM XIX-J-1-j-Finn-71-002305, 44 d., MOL.
27. “Minutes of the meeting of the representatives of the Academy of Finland and the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences,” 9 September 1975, Hbb, AAF (Archives of the Academy
of Finland, Helsinki).
28. Halmesvirta, Co-operation across the Iron Curtain, ch. 3.
29. Irk’s interview with the author, 15 October 2003 (Budapest, Criminological Institute).
30. F. Irk, “Unkarin ja Suomen liikenneturvallisuuden vertailututkimus,” manuscript
656.08, IRK, the Library of Liikenneturva; “A Magyar és a finn közlekedésbiztonság összeha-
sonlitó elemzése,” Autóvezető 3 (1984), 33–38; Autóvezető 4 (1984), 32–34.
31. TANDEM was a neo-Marxist study project of Finnish administrative and political
use of power and its economic foundations. Its core result was the following publication: J.
Gronow, P. Klemola, and J. Partanen, Demokratian rajat ja rakenteet (WSOY: Juva, 1977).
32. Halmesvirta, Co-operation across the Iron Curtain, 36–37.
33. “Tökes országokkál folytatott együttműködésének értekélése (1977),” NKO, 6d.,
MTA.
34. K. O. Donner and L. Pál, eds., Science and Technology Policies in Finland and Hungary
(Budapest: Académiai Kiadó, 1985).
35. “Az MSZMP KB tudománypolitikai irányelvei megvalosításanak tapasztalai és időszerű
feladatai” (PB 1977/6/28). Quoted in Magyar Tudomány 9 (1977), 654.
36. “NKO 728, 60.195/1979,” MTAA; E.-O. Seppälä, P. Löppönen, J. Farkas, P. Tamás,
and P. Vás-Zoltan, “Expert Evaluation of the Similarities and Differences between Science
Policy in Hungary and Finland,” Science and Technology Policies in Finland and Hungary, 362.
37. See Halmesvirta, Co-operation across the Iron Curtain, Table 1, 46.
– 150 –
Chapter 8
“Discreet” Intermediaries
Transnational Activities of the Fondation pour
une entraide intellectuelle européenne, 1966–91
Ioana Popa
– 151 –
Ioana Popa
– 152 –
“Discreet” Intermediaries
– 153 –
Ioana Popa
As stated by one of its leaders, the FEIE pursued its work “in the same
vein”14 as before the reorganization of 1966. While the FEIE’s representa-
tives and staff also experienced changes, their main social characteristics
remained almost unchanged. Its board was a group of European intellectu-
als with different national backgrounds and cosmopolitan trajectories. Al-
though born in different European countries (Switzerland, France, Great
Britain, Poland, Germany, or Belgium), few of them continued to live in
their native country. For instance, François Bondy, a longtime member of
the FEIE’s board, then the last president of the FEIE, was born in Berlin
in 1915. His mother was Hungarian and his father was a German the-
atre producer born in Prague, but the family settled down in Switzerland.
Bondy studied in Italian, then in French, and began his professional career
as a journalist in France. His linguistic skills and ability to network with
different national cultural milieus were valuable to the FEIE, despite his
return to Switzerland after the 1966 reorganization of the CCF to work as
a journalist in Zurich. The cosmopolitan and multinational background of
the FEIE is also underlined by Jelenski,15 already a key person for the FEIE’s
predecessor. He was also a multilingual journalist, essayist, and translator,
well-connected with the intellectual and artistic French, British, and Ital-
ian milieus. He graduated from Saint Andrew’s College in Political Science
and Economics after leaving Poland in 1939. After the war, he worked in
Italy as a civil servant employed by international organizations, then set-
tled in France.
Many of the FEIE’s representatives had previously worked under the
CCF. In addition to Jelenski, Bondy, one of its founding members, who
had created and directed the CCF’s French review, Preuves,16 working very
closely with Jelenski. Pierre Emmanuel17 also joined the CCF in 1959, be-
coming director of its literary programs, and later its deputy secretary gen-
eral. He started his work by leading a program that provided assistance
to the intellectual opposition in Spain (he was born in Béarn, bordering
Spain, in 1916), but moved on to join Jelenski and the activities focusing
on Eastern Europe. He continued with them in his capacity as the FEIE’s
secretary general from 1967 to 1971 and then as its board member and
honorary president. Emmanuel was also the president of the IACF from
1974. Starting from 1964, through his path in the CCF, the IACF, and
the FEIE, he was assisted by Roselyne Chenu (born in 1933), who would
succeed him as the FEIE’s secretary general from 1971 to 1975. Some of
the FEIE’s representatives were acquainted with the United States as well
through their personal or professional experience (for instance, Chenu was
a Fulbright fellow at Columbia University,18 and Emmanuel worked for the
French Broadcasting Corporation from 1947 and was the director of its
British and North American services).
– 154 –
“Discreet” Intermediaries
Finally, the FEIE became independent, while the IACF ceased to exist.
This process started in 1975 and was completed by 1978. The founda-
tion had to function henceforth “without the ‘parental’ protection and
the control”26 of the IACF and, moreover, without its financial help, as
Watson commented in a letter. Jelenski favored this evolution and had,
at least from 1972 onward, anticipated the dissolution of the IACF while
doing his best to preserve the FEIE.27 For him, conserving valuable net-
works among Eastern European intellectual circles was more important
than the organization itself. The contacts of the FEIE and the IACF were
deemed “loyal,”28 “irreplaceable,”29 “reliable, and nearly unique”30 by the
FEIE’s board because they worked outside all official exchange programs.
They were presented as the most valuable and distinctive resource of the
organization31 and were emphasized to sponsors.
Sponsorship became a key question. Although the Ford Foundation
continued to sponsor the FEIE, it had its own financial and organizational
conditions, which led to changes in the FEIE’s statutes. One of the Ford
Foundation’s requirements was to seek additional funding, mainly from
Western Europe. While this is a typical financial incentive for obtaining
progressive independence, in this case it can be considered an attempt to
stimulate awareness for Eastern European intellectuals in Western Europe
and to push the FEIE to become a truly European organization.32 These
requirements obliged the FEIE to launch campaigns in Switzerland, West
Germany, and France in order to substantially increase the amount of Eu-
ropean contributions. Board members also used their contacts with vari-
ous foundations in Great Britain, Austria, Luxemburg, the Netherlands,
Belgium, and also in the United States. However, by the late 1970s, the
Ford Foundation had become skeptical about the FEIE’s ability to obtain
European funding. It had doubts even about the viability of the FEIE’s
programs, although it was impressed by how committed the FEIE was to its
– 157 –
Ioana Popa
activities.33 The FEIE continued to benefit from Ford grants in the 1980s
but encountered difficulties that recurrently endangered its programs.
Funding was the reason the FEIE established its German and American
branches in 1982 and 1985, respectively. Yet, it was thanks to George So-
ros’s Open Society Fund that the FEIE was able to maintain and improve
its programs from 1983 to 1991. The main financial sources of the FEIE,
then, remained American: in 1985, for example, nearly its entire budget
came from the United States ($75,000 from the Ford Foundation, $65,000
from the Open Society Fund, and only $10,000 from French and German
private sources). The FEIE’s board underlined at the time that it did not
have “any perspective of European sponsorship.”34
The conditions laid out by the Ford Foundation also included the cre-
ation of an outside advisory group from well-known personalities assisting
the FEIE in gathering greater public and financial support. Other condi-
tions referred to a limited term for membership in the FEIE’s board and a
more diversified representation of its members’ nationalities in order to
counterbalance the “francocentricity” of the organization.35 Relocation of
the FEIE’s headquarters to Germany or Great Britain was considered but it
was never implemented. Criticism noted that most of the correspondence
with Eastern Europe was in French, a large proportion of the books sent to
these countries were also in French, and the beneficiaries of its programs
were French-speaking people who often chose to visit France. Ensuring a
more balanced approach was thus crucial.
Hiring Annette Laborey was a step toward diversification. She took over
correspondence in German and facilitated contacts for Eastern European
fellows in German-speaking countries. She went on to succeed Chenu in
1975 and soon became the FEIE’s driving force, impelling the foundation’s
work until its end. She was a daughter of a scientist, born in West Germany
in 1947.36 She studied Romance and Slavic philology as well as history at
Munich University, spending a year at Stanford University before receiving
a master’s degree in modern literature at the Sorbonne. Thus, she was flu-
ent in German, English, and French and had a working knowledge of Rus-
sian. Her linguistic, but also professional and relational, skills contributed
to building a more “polycentric”37 organization, extending its programs,
maintaining direct contact with Eastern European beneficiaries, and trying
to find new sponsors and partners in Western Europe. The FEIE’s transna-
tional nature was thus considerably extended.
Moreover, the FEIE’s representatives considered prioritizing develop-
ing programs for countries where German was commonly spoken to the
same extent as had been done with French.38 This was related to increasing
sponsorship from Swiss, German, and Austrian funds. Co-opting Marion
von Dönhoff—chief editor, then director, of the leading German newspa-
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“Discreet” Intermediaries
per Die Zeit—to the FEIE’s board was a step in this direction.39 Although
the extents of the programs in French and German would never be equal,
a broader geographical range of the book program and grantee target coun-
tries is discernible from 1977. Books in German were mainly sent from
the Zurich office, while the Paris secretariat sent books in French (76.5
percent of all printed material sent during the period 1977–90), but also
increasingly in German (13 percent) and English (10.5 percent). As for
the grants, they were focused on France (65.4 percent). Though France
remained a central destination, other host countries were on the increase.
While multilingual Switzerland counted for less than 1 percent of grantees,
German-speaking countries (West Germany and Austria) drew 14.5 per-
cent, and Anglophone countries (Great Britain and the United States)
6 percent. Individual cases included Italy, Spain, Holland, Sweden, and
even Greece. The percentage of grantees choosing the United States was
extremely low, but symbolic. While the FEIE’s grant program was mainly
European, this was not because of its policy, but mainly because of finan-
cial, logistic, and geographical constraints leading the FEIE mostly to refuse
extra-European destinations. Yet, the possibility of sending four Eastern Eu-
ropean scholars to Cleveland University in the United States in 1981 was
perceived by the FEIE representatives as an important one-time chance.
A similarly isolated case was a U.S.-based conference with Eastern Euro-
peans. The idea was presented by philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, visiting
professor at the University of Chicago. Such a conference was intended to
bring prestige to the FEIE in the United States.40 In 1987, the FEIE’s board
concluded that it would be important to extend its activities in the United
States through appropriate institutional partners.41
The increasing Western geographical diversity of the FEIE’s programs
was coupled with the aptitude to accurately evaluate different and fluc-
tuating Eastern European contexts and to choose appropriate practices.
However, the FEIE’s challenges were not only about covering several na-
tional fields. Lying outside official exchange programs and being a non-
governmental organization inevitably crosses the sphere of foreign policy.
This was problematic for political, financial, and social reasons. In the
mid-1970s, the FEIE’s president witnessed “a greater recognition by public
opinions in both halves of Europe of the need for private contacts supple-
mentary to the programs established by governments.”42 The FEIE pro-
ceeded to take advantage of this context for improving its relationship
with the Ford Foundation. However, two years later, the FEIE’s president
registered negative attitudes toward nongovernmental activities, which
were perceived to jeopardize the détente and promises raised by the Hel-
sinki Accords. This attitude was exemplified by German foundations: while
showing understanding and sympathy for the FEIE’s actions, they were
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Ioana Popa
Due to the challenging environment, the FEIE had to invent its own
strategies and practices. Primarily, they were different from those of inter-
governmental exchanges, even if, from the Western perspective, official
cultural cooperation was aimed at contributing to the democratization of
Communist regimes by engaging them in a “dialogue.” The FEIE’s prac-
tices also differed from international protest campaigns organized to sup-
port persecuted Eastern European intellectuals through publicity, as well as
refugees from Socialist countries. These actions were considered by Wat-
son to illustrate the “‘rejectionist front’ against Soviet domination,”49 even
if, to some extent, they were close to the CCF and IACF traditions. Fi-
nally, the FEIE’s activities differed from clandestine cultural transfers and
other actions considered illicit in Eastern European legislation, initiated
by Western anti-Communist activists supportive of dissidents. Instead,
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“Discreet” Intermediaries
fig. 8.1). The hierarchy of these flows of Western books is not directly
linked to the order of the best-known foreign languages in the Eastern
European countries. Indeed, this hierarchy mainly depends on the degree
of permissiveness toward the circulation of Western printed materials
and particularly on the progressive but unequal setup of the beneficiaries’
networks according to the target country.53 This discrepancy was already
apparent at the beginnings of the Writers and Publishers Committee for In-
tellectual Cooperation,54 whose activities were already focused on Poland
and Hungary, the most advanced countries on the path to de-Stalinization
in the mid-1950s.
While there were other book-related projects, including travelers smug-
gling books into certain countries, the FEIE’s main method was to use reg-
istered mail, making it legal. This was a key feature of its modus operandi.
For example, a FEIE board member warned against activities of a British
organization supporting Czech dissidents by sending books (and even the
Bible): “the danger for us is that some of their activities are semi-clan-
destine and condemned by the Prague regime.”55 However, he suggested
contacting this organization and considering some form of collaboration.
The FEIE followed its mailings by sending a letter to recipients asking
for a receipt of delivery. The overall rates of successful deliveries based on
receipts were at 75 percent in 1970, over 80 percent in 1974, and 96 per-
cent in 1984. Basically all books sent in 1987 reached their destination.56
Figure 8.1. The number of printed materials sent to each Eastern European country, 1968–90.
Source: FEIE’s archives.
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“Discreet” Intermediaries
In the case of strictly controlled regimes, which varied over time in certain
countries, books could be distributed indirectly. Some of the FEIE’s benefi-
ciaries avoided receiving books and correspondence from the West directly,
preferring to transmit their friends’ addresses, which became a kind of P.O.
Box. Sometimes, they also specified the estimated risk in their demands:
the list of requested books mentioned which ones could be sent by mail.
Moreover, based on the FEIE’s correspondents residing mostly in Bulgaria
or Czechoslovakia, books were sent to them from other Socialist countries.
At the beginning of the 1970s, networking allowed also for books to be
sent to the USSR via Yugoslavia. Another strategy minimizing book losses
at customs was to send them one by one rather than in a single shipment.
Despite these precautions, certain items did not reach their recipients or
were returned to the sender. This was the case with Raymond Aron’s books
(for example, Trois essais sur l’âge industriel, Plaidoyer pour l’Europe déca-
dente, Essai sur les libertés), which were considered “noncompliant to cus-
toms regulations”57 in Poland in 1975. Examples of returned books could
also be found in Hungary (such as a book written by Paul Ignotus, a former
political prisoner and an exile to the UK after 1956) and in Romania (Le
Mythe de l’éternel retour, written by the Romanian exile Mircea Eliade, and
Contre tout espoir, by Nadezhda Mandelstam, alongside works that could
be considered politically neutral, such as L’Histoire de la mise en scène dans
le théâtre français à Paris de 1600 à 1673, by Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer).
In the case of returned books, it was conventional to resend them again
from France or Switzerland. Resending was not pointless. As internal FEIE
documents indicate, sometimes these books happened to bypass the Iron
Curtain, thus pointing out the hazards, vulnerabilities, and flaws of the
control system.
In some ways, interception of books was not necessarily a failure since
books “remain[ed] somewhere inside [the system].”58 Sometimes they
were even sold on the black market.59 According to the correspondence
of Eastern European intellectuals close to the FEIE, books were circu-
lated within the network, contributing to unofficial “moving libraries” and
“common patrimony,” as the Hungarian dissident writer Miklós Haraszti
highlighted.60 Thus, each title potentially had several readers. Letters also
named other means of circulation: for instance, a professor from Prague
translated books sent by the FEIE into Czech for his seminars. Sometimes
these translations ended up as Samizdat editions, like Kwart, overseen by
Jan Vladislav. In some cases, the junction with official publishing channels
was apparent: texts and authors discovered by Eastern European intellec-
tuals through the FEIE’s activities were unostentatiously introduced and
became translated or commented references.61 This was due to the pro-
fessional and political profile of its beneficiaries, who were not necessarily
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Ioana Popa
dissidents. For instance, Polish Marxist philosopher Adam Schaff was able
to read Freud’s works thanks to the FEIE.
In the 1980s, the FEIE activity reports recognized the need to send
books was due more to economic hardships than political obstacles. Cer-
tain recipients, especially from Hungary and Poland, used this argument to
explain and justify their requests for Western literature. The FEIE activity
report from 1988 pointed out the benefits of “transparency” (an allusion
to Gorbachev’s reforms): “there is less censorship, less forbidden or ‘inad-
visable’ reading and less constraints for persons receiving books or period-
icals from West.”62 With access to high-quality local information, the FEIE
was, however, able to appreciate the diversity of the contexts of Eastern
European countries,63 which were all still Socialist. Hence, the FEIE was
permanently adapting its strategies. On the one hand, it intended more
than ever to reach out to the most closed countries, whose citizens were
forbidden to travel. In 1988, the FEIE increased the number of books sent
to Romania and Czechoslovakia when compared to 1987 and was success-
ful in diverting the decrease in Bulgaria, despite the low number of books
being sent there. The FEIE started to focus on the Baltic republics as well
while continuing to pay attention to countries such as Hungary and Po-
land, even if they received a major part of the materials and their citizens
could travel to the West more easily.64
While managed separately, the book and grant programs could not be
completely dissociated. Considered the most important activity of the
foundation by its board, grants relied indirectly on the book program:
to some extent, it inherited the networks that were previously set up by
sending books65, but spread out following its own logic. The grant pro-
gram required more financial resources and encountered more difficulties
and implementation risks than the book program. The main difficulty was
whether Communist authorities accepted or refused the passports of pro-
spective Eastern European travelers to the West. Not all prospective FEIE
grantees were able to make it in the end. Therefore, the implementation of
the grant program depended more on official agreement than in the case
of the book program. It also required more precaution regarding the way
in which grantees were chosen and invited. A total of 2,536 fellowships66
were effectively distributed from 1966 to 1991. Like the diffusion of books,
there was an uneven distribution of the countries to which fellowships
were granted. Yet their order was not the same: grantees were mostly Pol-
ish, Romanian, and Hungarian.
The FEIE’s grants covered travel for the purpose of study and documen-
tation for a short period (one or two months). These aims covered a very
broad range of activities: reading books; consulting archives; visiting mu-
seums, galleries, and exhibitions; improving linguistic skills; attending con-
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Figure 8.2. The number of fellowships for each Eastern European country, 1966–91.
Source: FEIE’s archives.
individual project plans submitted by the candidates were very formal. The
selection system was based on personal references and records obtained in-
formally from the FEIE’s advisors, providing information about the career
paths of particular candidates, as well as their ethical reputations and even
political commitments. Referees were at times exiles, former grantees, or
other contact persons.
The network grew unofficially and informally, but the selection of its
fellows was always indirectly dependent on the Communist regime’s crite-
ria about who could travel to the West. For the FEIE, the challenge was to
manage both of these perspectives. Due to these official constraints, but
also to the broad and nonexclusive vision about the possible alternative
elite in Socialist countries, not all fellows were political opponents. Never-
theless, political opponents were also represented among the FEIE’s bene-
ficiaries by intellectuals such as Adam Michnik, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and
Bronislaw Geremek from Poland; Romanians Dumitru Tepeneag and Mir-
cea Dinescu; Hungarians Konrad György and Rajk Laszlo; and Czech Jan
Vladislav. The “nonconformist” and “independent” profiles of the grantees
(which were the FEIE’s categories for characterizing them) were fixed in
principle, but were never detailed in the foundation’s documents. Inevita-
bly, the criteria varied over time and depended on the grantees’ country
of origin. Fluctuating constraints had an impact on the profile of those
authorized to travel to the West.68 Intellectuals who occupied important
positions in their professional domain and “in fields that help[ed] to form
public opinion,”69 as pointed out by Watson, were also able to benefit from
the FEIE’s assistance and, in particular, from its grants. This was also a
tactical choice by which the FEIE supposedly avoided being systematically
identified as favorable to anti-Communists, testifying to its “openness.”70
On the other hand, a principle that was strictly followed was the exclusion
of people who were suspected of using grants for defection. Defections
would have compromised FEIE’s program as Communist authorities would
have received an excuse for refusing passports for those involved with the
FEIE.
The FEIE’s practices, as well as those of its grantees, were very careful.
For instance, the FEIE issued invitations through intermediary institutions
in order to maximize its chances of obtaining a passport for an invited
fellow. Invitations were written by the FEIE’s employees, but were signed
and sent by a formally inviting institution that was thought to be neutral
or prestigious by the Communist authorities (such as the Pen club, gal-
leries, theatres, universities, and newspapers). The grant itself, however,
was always provided by the FEIE. Certain fellows preferred to avoid men-
tioning the FEIE’s name, believing this would prevent them from getting
a passport. “The origin of the grant must be kept secret,” wrote a Roma-
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“Discreet” Intermediaries
nian invitee to Laborey in 1986, signifying that the financial support of the
foundation was essential for the intellectuals from his country but could
not be direct.
There were also tricks and stratagems for using or avoiding various ex-
pressions in order to circumvent any possible mix-up with intergovern-
mental exchanges. One had to find “accurate expressions that had to be,
at the same time, sufficiently ambiguous,”71 as Laborey summed up. The
amount of payment and the extent of the grant had to be mentioned, and
the latter could even be overestimated in order to give the grantee room
to maneuver. Finally, the institution that issued the invitation had to men-
tion that its invitee and his or her work were well known and even famous
in Western Europe. The invitation letter was therefore more reliable as it
relied on the professional recognition of the grantee: “nobody, even the
policemen, could have criticized someone for being well known because
of his professional qualities,”72 stated Chenu. Even when the grantee did
not obtain his passport, this approach seemed useful as a proof of respect
and fame in Western Europe, which provided protection, as has been con-
firmed by Eastern European intellectuals’ testimonies.73 Invitation letters
could be posted to private or professional addresses. Some of the grantees
asked to receive letters at both so as to avoid problems, or provided ad-
dresses of parents or friends, which were thought to be safer. The concern
for confidentiality and protection always came first. These methods were
the result of trial and error, and were revaluated if necessary, thanks to the
cooperation between the FEIE and its addressees and advisors.
A cautious approach was also adopted concerning the documents the
FEIE needed from grantees when they arrived in the West. Three docu-
ments were required: a form about their social identity, academic degrees,
and professional career; a signed receipt attesting the amount of the grant
that had been received; and, finally, a report on the activities pursued during
their stay, the professional contacts that were established, and the benefits
of participating in the FEIE’s grant program. The foundation promised its
fellows that these documents remained confidential: they were kept inter-
nally or circulated anonymously in the FEIE’s reports to its own sponsors.
Despite this agreement, the grantees were often reticent and felt uneasy
writing such reports, as illustrated by the repeated reminder messages from
the foundation. In such a situation, the grantee’s referee could be solicited
(or propose himself or herself) to encourage the grantee to reply back to
the foundation.
The lack of feedback dismayed the FEIE’s sponsors and jeopardized its
future fundraising campaigns. The FEIE’s secretary general explained the
reasons to the British director of the Wates Foundation: “I have heard that
you did not appreciate the shortness of the report sent to us by our last
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Ioana Popa
year’s candidate. …We do ask for reports from all our grantees, but quite
often they are afraid to write them. Coming from Eastern Europe, ‘reports’
have … a bad connotation and therefore some of our grantees … prefer
to write rather short thank-you letters instead of reports, with details. …
If you would like to meet one of our grantees once they are in England, it
would be easy to arrange a meeting. Talking freely to someone is certainly
much easier for people from Eastern Europe than writing reports.”74 This
topic was also discussed with the representatives of the Ford Foundation,
who further insisted on disclosing the identities of the grantees. Members
of the FEIE’s board were disturbed by the request, as the FEIE emphasized
confidentiality even in relation to its own main sponsor.75 This disagree-
ment revealed a gap in the evaluation of a particular aspect (in this case,
the confidentiality issue) demonstrating the FEIE’s specific know-how and
deep understanding of Eastern European issues.
The end of Communism brought recognition and legitimization to the
informal national and transnational networks which previously contrib-
uted to unofficial East-West intellectual transfers. However, in this new
context of democratization and normalization of international cultural ex-
changes, the FEIE’s staff considered the organization itself and its activities
less useful, while its networks in Eastern Europe were still estimated as most
valuable. The FEIE disbanded in 1991; henceforth, its contacts among the
grantees and recipients informally seeded other cultural and academic insti-
tutions, such as the Institut für Wissenschaften vom Menschen (created by
a Polish fellow of the FEIE, the philosopher Krysztof Michalski, in Vienna
in 1983), the International Cultural Center in Cracow (which at the be-
ginning of the 1990s was directed by the Polish art historian Jacek Woźnia-
kowski, another former FEIE fellow), as well as George Soros’s network of
foundations in Eastern Europe and the Central European University76 he
founded in 1991. The same year, the FEIE closed its offices and celebrated
its past by organizing a symposium hosted by the Cultural Center in Cracow.
Entitled “Post-totalitarian Mentalities and Culture,”77 it gathered FEIE’s
close Western and Eastern relations: since the end of Communism, some
of the latter became ministers, members of parliament, political leaders, or
key figures in their countries. The symposium also accredited about twenty
journalists affiliated to prestigious newspapers and broadcastings (such as
Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Herald Tribune, Gazeta Wyborcza,
BBC World Service, and Radio France International) who could report on the
event. While it is difficult to document post-1989 individual public use of
the past involvement in the FEIE’s programs and the delayed effects and
symbolic benefits one could gain from them, the main features of the foun-
dation’s past activities could be henceforward publicly revealed.
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“Discreet” Intermediaries
Conclusion
– 169 –
Ioana Popa
Ioana Popa is tenured researcher at the National Center for Scientific Re-
search (France). She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Graduate School
for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris). She is the author of
Traduire sous contraintes. Littérature et communisme, 1947–1989 (2010), a
comprehensive study of the translation channels and intermediaries that
facilitated the importation of Eastern European authors and literary works
into France during the Cold War. Her current projects deal with East-West
scientific transfers and the institutionalization of an area studies program
focusing on the USSR and Eastern Europe in France.
Notes
1. See, for example, G. Gemelli and R. MacLeod, eds., American Foundations in Europe:
Grant-Giving Policies, Cultural Diplomacy and Trans-Atlantic Relations, 1920–1980 (Brussels:
P.I.E., 2003); S. G. Solomon and N. Krementsov, “Giving and Taking across Borders: The
Rockefeller Foundation and Russia, 1919–1928,” Minerva 39 (2001): 265–98; L. Tournès, ed.,
L’Argent de l’influence. Les Fondations américaines et leurs réseaux européens (Paris: Autrement,
2010).
2. As pointed out in the FEIE’s reports.
3. R. Keohane and J. Nye, Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Massachu-
setts: Harvard University Press, 1971); T. Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations
Back in: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995); M. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement
to End the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
4. Jacqueline Pillet-Will to Adam Watson (members of the FEIE’s board), 12 November
1975, box 29/1, FEIE’s archives (hereafter FEIEA).
5. Watson to Hans Oprecht, 27 May 1974, and to Francis X. Sutton, 14 February 1989,
29/1 and 26/4 FEIEA. This term is frequently used by the FEIE’s staff in order to characterize
its practices.
6. This chapter is based on analysis of the archives of the FEIE and the Ford and Rockefel-
ler Foundations (which partly funded the FEIE’s programs) and on interviews with members
of its staff, and intellectuals close to it. I have discussed the methodological issues raised by
this research in I. Popa, “Studying transnational circulations in an undemocratic political
context through the case of the Fondation pour une Entraide Intellectuelle Européenne,” 12th
Congress of the French Political Science Association, Paris, 9–11 July, 2013.
7. On these aspects of the FEIE’s activities, see I. Popa, Traduire sous contraintes. Littérature
et communisme (1947–1979) (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2010), 433–41, 499–500. On the FEIE’s
history, see P. Grémion, Intelligence de l’anticommunisme. Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture
à Paris (1950–1975) (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 474–509; M. Beylin, “A propos de la Fondation
pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne,” L’Autre Europe 34–35 (1996): 212–22 issued
from an unpublished report, Fondation pour une entr’aide intellectuelle européenne; N. Guilhot,
“A Network of Influential Friendships: The Fondation pour une entraide intellectuelle euro-
– 170 –
“Discreet” Intermediaries
péenne and East-West cultural dialogue,” Minerva 44 (2006): 379–409; L. Jílek, “La Fonda-
tion pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne et le soutien aux antécédents de Solidarité,”
in Une Europe malgré tout 1945–1990, ed. A. Fleury and L. Jílek (Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang,
2009), 167–82. One can see also W. Korey, Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes: The Ford
Foundation’s International Human Rights Policies and Practices (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), 119–37, which relies on Beylin’s work.
8. P. Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for
the Mind of Post-War Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1989); Grémion, Intelligence de l’anti-
communisme; M. Warner, “Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” Studies in Intelligence
38, no. 5 (1995): 89–98; F. S. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold
War (London: Granta, 1999); G. Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress
for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002);
M. Hochgeschwender, “A Battle of Ideas: the CCF in Britain, Italy, France and Germany,” in
The Postwar Challenge: Cultural, Social and Political Challenge in Western Europe, 1945–1958,
ed. D. Geppert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
9. “Application for a grant to send books and cultural materials to intellectuals and stu-
dents in Eastern Europe,” Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number 05700097, reel
#526, Rockefeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY (hereafter RAC).
10. Jelenski, “La FEIE et ses origines,” 29/1 FEIEA.
11. Its first president was Shepard Stone, who was previously the chief of the interna-
tional division at the Ford Foundation. On his itinerary, see V. R. Berghahn, America and the
Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy and Diplomacy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
12. The Ford Foundation had previously financed the CCF.
13. Interview with Roselyne Chenu, 18 July 2011.
14. Ibid.
15. Folder “Fiche Individuelle,” 29/4 FEIEA; C. Jelenski, “Kultura, la Pologne en exil,” Le
Débat 9 (1981): 59–71; F. Bondy, “Pour Kot,” Commentaire 39 (1987): 622–24.
16. P. Grémion, Preuves, une revue européenne à Paris (Paris: Julliard, 1989).
17. Folder “Pierre Emmanuel,” 29/3 FEIEA.
18. “Curriculum vitae,” 29/2, FEIEA.
19. P. Emmanuel, L’Ouvrier de la onzième heure (Paris: Seuil, 1953).
20. Interview with Jan Vladislav, 18 February 1999; Dr. Neuwirth to Emmanuel, 21 June
1974, 29/3 FEIEA.
21. Jelenski, “Commentaire concernant le mémorandum de Pierre Emmanuel à Adam
Watson,” 29/1 FEIEA.
22. “Biographical Sketch,” Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number 07300043,
reel #2434, RAC.
23. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, 152, 412; A. Defty, Britain, America and Anti-Communist
Propaganda (London: Routledge, 2004).
24. A. Collowald, “Identités stratégiques,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 73 (1988):
29–40.
25. Interview with Roselyne Chenu, 18 July 2011.
26. Watson to Marion von Dönhoff, 19 January 1978, 29/1 FEIEA.
27. Jelenski, “La FEIE et ses origines,” March 1975, 29/1 FEIEA.
28. Watson to von Dönhoff, 29 April 1976, 29/1 FEIEA.
29. Jelenski, “Rapport de la réunion du Conseil,” 15 September 1979, 27/4 FEIEA.
30. Annette Laborey to H. Martin, 18 March 1977, 20/5 FEIEA.
31. For example, Jelenski to Zbigniew Brzezinski, 6 December 1976, 29/1 FEIEA.
32. Francis Sutton to Emmanuel, 8 February 1979, 26/1 FEIEA; Watson to Dönhoff, 19
January 1978, 29/1, FEIEA.
33. Sutton to Reiniger, 29 September 1978 and 22 December 1978, 26/1 FEIEA.
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Ioana Popa
34. Laborey’s memorandum to the board’s members (emphasis in the original), 19 Decem-
ber 1985, 27/4 FEIEA.
35. David Heaps, “Inter-Office Memorandum to Sutton and Gaer,” 24 December 1977,
Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number 07800125, reel #3542, RAC.
36. “Curriculum vitae,” 29/1, FEIEA.
37. Watson to Oprecht, 27 May 1974, 29/1 FEIEA.
38. Watson to von Dönhoff, 6 February 1975; Watson to Thyssen Foundation, 5 Novem-
ber 1975; Watson to Richard von Weizsäcker, 10 February 1975, 29/1 FEIA.
39. Born in 1909 in Eastern Prussia, she was from an aristocratic family. Her father was a
former diplomat and deputy at the Reichstag. She received a Ph.D. in economy in 1932 and
was linked to the anti-Nazi resistance. M. von Dönhoff, Une Enfance en Prusse orientale, trans.
Colette Kowalski (Paris: Albin Michel, 1990).
40. Laborey to Felice D. Gaer, 21 July 1981, 26/1 FEIEA.
41. Also, one year before, Watson to Andreas Gerwig, 25 June 1986, Ford Foundation
Archives, Grants, grant number 08400228, reel #6373, RAC.
42. Reiniger to Sutton, 30 June 1978 and 1 December 1980, 26/1 FEIEA.
43. Laborey to Gaer, 8 December 1980, 26/1 FEIEA. On the German foundations, see D.
Dakowska, Le Pouvoir des fondations. Des acteurs de la politique étrangère allemande (Rennes:
Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014).
44. Watson to Andreas Gerwig, 25 June 1986, Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant
number 08400228, reel #6373, RAC.
45. Jelenski, “The Intellectuals and Détente,” 23 January 1974, 29/4 FEIEA.
46. Emmanuel to G. Jean, 17 October 1973, 20/3 FEIEA.
47. Jelenski to Stone and Emmanuel, 19 November 1973, box 29/4, C. Jelenski to Emma-
nuel and Errera, 6 December 1974, box 29/1; various FEIE annual activity reports.
48. Watson to Reiniger, 28 September 1976, box 29/1; various FEIE annual activity reports.
49. Watson to von Dönhoff, 19 January 1978, 29/1 FEIEA.
50. Those initiated by the Free Europe Press, for instance. See I. Popa, “La circulation
transnationale du livre: un instrument de la guerre froide culturelle,” Histoire@Politique. Poli-
tique, culture, société 15 (2011), www.histoire-politique.fr. See also the work done on this topic
by insiders of this organization, J. P. C. Matthews, “The West’s Secret Marshall Plan for the
Mind,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 16, no. 3 (2003): 409–27,
and A. A. Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution
Program Behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013).
51. “Rapport d’activité semestriel, août 1968,” 1/1, FEIEA. Interview with Chenu, 18 July
2011. The Writers and Publishers Committee had already adopted this approach in the mid-
1950s, rejecting the idea of a “mass distribution program”. “Application for a Grant to send
books and cultural materials to intellectuals and students in Eastern Europe”, 29 November
1956 and “Request for Grant Action. Congress for Cultural Freedom—Materials for Eastern
Europe,” 9 January 1957, Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number 05700097, reel
#526, RAC.
52. There are about twenty thousand prints. I calculated these values on the basis of the
FEIE’s internal documents. From 1968 to 1989, the FEIE sent 18,294 printed materials. For
some periods, sources did not allow separating books and subscriptions.
53. “FEICE [the acronym of the FEIE’s name in English] Activities 1975–1985,” Ford
Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number 08400228, reel #6373, RAC, and various inter-
nal FEIE documents.
54. “Writers and Publishers Committee for Intellectual Cooperation. Report on Activ-
ities,” March–October 1957, 1 October 1957–1 June 1958, “On reactions in Budapest to
the program of the Writers and Publishers Committee and to the CCF,” Ford Foundation
Archives, Grants, grant number 05700097, reel #526, RAC.
55. Watson to Laborey (undated), 29/1 FEIEA.
– 172 –
“Discreet” Intermediaries
– 173 –
P A R T III
LIMITATIONS FOR
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS
Chapter 9
Václav Šmidrkal
– 177 –
Václav Šmidrkal
vakia. The French cultural output, both contemporary and historical, was
to be reassessed by the Communist ideologues and bureaucrats responsible
for cultural politics in order to separate the newly defined wheat from the
chaff.
A favorable circumstance in this effort was the existence of a distinc-
tive excéption française, represented by a large Communist milieu in France,
which attracted a number of brilliant intellectuals. Despite being on the
other side of the Iron Curtain, they eventually produced cultural works
that ideologically fit into the reformulated Czechoslovak policy on foreign
cultural exchange and were generally favorably appraised in the Commu-
nist East. The traditional Czech Francophilia4 was believed to be diverted
from the bourgeois stratum to the Communist-oriented parts of French
society gathered around the French Communist Party (PCF).
The Czechoslovak Communists were connected to the French Com-
munist “counter-society”5 through numerous spiritual and personal ties.
In his study on French intellectuals from 1944 to 1956, Tony Judt men-
tions surprising similarities between the historical background and mental
setting of French and Czech Communists: “For the ‘Vichy syndrome’ the
Czech can offer the ‘Munich syndrome’; for overblown résistantialisme and
overenthusiastic purges, the Czechs can offer the same thing. And more
than any other nation except the French and the Italians, Czechs of all
classes but intellectuals especially welcomed Russians, the Communists,
and the promise of revolution.”6 Besides these spiritual ties, there were also
numerous personal connections between Communists from both coun-
tries. Czechoslovak volunteers in the international brigades fighting in the
Spanish Civil War fled to France after the defeat of the Republicans and
established contacts to the PCF—some of them even joined the party. Af-
ter World War II, Communists with this valuable international experience
took up high positions in the security apparatus and international depart-
ments of Czechoslovak authorities. Prague also became an important hub
for Communist organizations and for mutual contacts between Western
and Eastern Communists after 1945, which qualified it for the nickname
“Communist Geneva.”7
However, after a period of postwar renewal and a fragile political com-
promise that lasted in Czechoslovakia until 1948, the developing Cold War
and the radicalization of the Communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia
created an atmosphere of anti-Westernism that was extremely unfriendly
to Westward cross-border relations. Czech historian Jiří Knapík metaphor-
ically describes this period in regard to cross-border cultural exchange
between Czechoslovakia and the outer world as an “attempt to create a
quarantine”8 or to build up “an ideological greenhouse selectively perme-
– 178 –
The Image of “Real France”
– 179 –
Václav Šmidrkal
also renewed its activities, but its network consisted of a mere twenty-nine
branches compared with up to seventy-two branches in interwar Czecho-
slovakia.13 The reciprocity in cultural exchange was represented by newly
founded sister societies for cultural exchange—Společnost Českoslov-
ensko-Francie in Czechoslovakia and Société France-Tchécoslovaquie in
France. The significance of these contact societies was underlined by their
executive staff, which consisted of well-known personalities from differ-
ent spheres of public life and of different political affiliations. Louis-Eugèn
Faucher, a retired general who served in Czechoslovakia in the interwar
period, became its chairman on the French side. Romance scholar Václav
Černý, who eventually avoided membership in the society, recalled that the
French literary committee as a part of society was represented by authors
such as Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, Jean Cassou, François Mauriac, André
Chamson, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Pierre Emmanuel, which underscored the
importance of this society.14 The Slovak branch of the society (Spoločnost’
Československo-Francúzko), seated in Bratislava, was chaired by Ladislav
Holdoš, a Communist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and spent most
of World War II in France.
After the Communist takeover in February 1948 and the establish-
ment of a Communist dictatorship, the contacts with the West gradually
worsened, and in 1949–50, the situation was aggravated when the Soviet
influence was strengthened through a contingent of Soviet advisors del-
egated to central Czechoslovak authorities.15 Czechoslovakia wanted to
promote the achievements of the young Communist regime in France and
to support the PCF, but it refused, with growing radicalization, to tolerate
uncontrolled French cultural activities in Czechoslovakia. Moreover, af-
ter 1948, France received Czechoslovak political émigrés who organized
oppositional activities for their homeland against the Communist rule in
Czechoslovakia, such as radio broadcasting in Czech and Slovak. Support
for émigrés and the occasional use of police force against Communist ac-
tivists in France reinforced the negative perception of a French bourgeois
state. On the other hand, Czechoslovakia organized pro-Communist ra-
dio broadcasting in French under the title Ce soir en France (Tonight in
France) and helped to publish the magazine Paris-Prague (later Parallèle
50) in France.16
The parallel attempts to penetrate with one’s own influence into the
other country and to quickly curb these efforts of the other led to a rup-
ture in French-Czechoslovak relations.17 Even though France, which
traditionally perceived cultural diplomacy as a strong pillar of its foreign
policy, was ready for certain compromises, the radicalizing Communist re-
gime in Czechoslovakia persisted on its standpoints. Adolf Hoffmeister,
the Czechoslovak ambassador to France in 1948–50 and rather a “fellow
– 181 –
Václav Šmidrkal
traveler” than a diehard Communist, carefully warned Prague that the lack
of understanding for the French point of view could have serious conse-
quences for bilateral relations.18 Notwithstanding, because of the growing
paranoia nurtured by the American policy of containment and, later, of
the rollback of Communism,19 the regime feared that cultural coopera-
tion with the “official France” could be misused as an enemy “agency”
fulfilling tasks of “political intelligence, industrial and military espionage,
distributing disconcerting news, for propagation of ideologies alien to So-
cialist construction.”20 The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned in
March 1949 that the Western cultural influences in Czechoslovakia and
Poland should be done away with and the Soviet cultural presence should
be strengthened.21
The joint French-Czechoslovak cultural commission met for the last
time in the fall of 1948. At the beginning of the academic year 1948–49,
Czechoslovakia withdrew its students from the Czechoslovak departments
of high schools in Dijon, Nîmes, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and Angoulême,
and, from 1950, no more university lecturers of French and Czech were
exchanged.22 The French high schools in Prague and Brno were also closed
down in 1951 and 1953 respectively. Communists saw in the network of
Alliance Française a useless relic from prewar times that united “reaction-
ary Francophiles,” and thus it was dissolved.23 The “bourgeois” leadership
of the sister contact society Československo-Francie was replaced with a
Communist cadre, also changing its objectives in 1948, but it soon became
redundant since organizing of foreign cultural contacts was concentrated
at the highest party and state levels. On the French side, the Association
France-Tchécoslovaquie was overrun by PCF members in fall 1949 and
appointed a new chairman, composer Roger Désormière. General Faucher
and other non–Communist sympathizers of Czechoslovakia set up their
own Amitié Franco-Tchécoslovaque (French-Czechoslovak Friendship),
supported by both Czechoslovak émigrés and the French government.24
The last isle of French cultural influence that was not yet controlled by
Czechoslovak Communist authorities was the Ernest Denis French Insti-
tute in Prague and its branches in Brno and Bratislava. Míla Soukup, the
inspector for culture and education of the Prague Municipality, visited an
event called “55th gathering of poet Pepa Pánek’s friends” on the Insti-
tute’s premises in late December 1950. Judging by its humorous title, the
whole program was probably meant to be an intellectually entertaining
evening open to free literary creativity. Soukop described what he had seen
in the darkest colors as a deplorable bourgeois gathering: “In the classroom
where it all took place smoking was allowed so that it looked there like in a
pub, only liqueurs and wine served by décolleté dames were missed there.
… This was a modern style poetry of a, I would say, degenerated society
– 182 –
The Image of “Real France”
that indulges in sexuality, drinking and the like.”25 Such reports persuaded
the Communist authorities that the institute had become a center of petty
bourgeois elements and remnants of reactionary Czechoslovaks, and its
further existence was perceived as a potential threat. After continuing pres-
sure, the Communist authorities made the institute close down in April
1951. It caused a diplomatic scandal between Czechoslovakia and France,
but Prague got rid of the uncontrolled “French window” that was not re-
opened until 1990.
During the years 1948–51, Czechoslovak diplomacy weakened rela-
tions with the French state step-by-step and extended its connections to
the PCF, despite warnings that it was no substitute for the official France.
Czechoslovakia was loath to revoke the Declaration, for it feared that do-
ing so could give France a pretext for a harsh reaction. Instead, it stopped
realizing its provisions, and the Declaration became a dead document. Typ-
ically, for the period from 1951 to 1954, the Czechoslovak Embassy in Paris
discussed its plan of cultural contacts between France and Czechoslovakia
with PCF’s leadership, ignoring the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.26
Although Czechoslovakia could count on pro-Communist publishing
houses such as Agence litteraire et artistique or Éditions Seghers and mu-
sical companies such as Chant du Monde, the infrastructure of the French
Communist environment could not match that of the official France, and
mutual cultural exchange was severely decreasing. French Communists
hoping for more intensive relations with Czechoslovakia were often disen-
chanted with the confusing situation there, although they did not speak out
their objections publicly.27 Poet Paul Éluard let loose his irritation when he
stopped in Prague on his way back to France from Budapest in September
1949 and a planned meeting with a Czechoslovak delegation did not take
place. Éluard explained this organizational failure as a result of Czechoslo-
vaks pulling away from everything French, be it progressive or not.28
the traditional eastern edge of the West and argues that the sense of Czech
history is the repeated catching up with the more advanced West.29 The
Communists tried to reverse this tendency and remake Czechoslovakia as
the Western edge of the East—that is, to make its further historical prog-
ress a result of the revolutionary project of Soviet Bolsheviks. The multi-
faceted anti-Westernism aimed to increase the plausibility of this switch
by defamation of Communist Czechoslovakia’s external enemy, which was
unmistakably located in the West.
The growing East-West tension and the ideologically based fear of West-
ern expansionism led the Soviet Union and other people’s democracies to
prepare intensively for a war against the West on the brink of the 1950s.
Notions of West German revanchism and Fascism in Western Europe re-
vived enemy images from World War II. The anti-Westernism of the young
Communist regimes was also brutally manifested in the show trials that
began with László Rajk in Hungary in 1949, where accusations of high
treason, espionage, or sabotage in favor of the West became a standard
model. This covertly anti-Semitic witch hunt did not spare diehard Com-
munists such as the so-called Spaniards or Frenchmen, Party members
who fought in the Spanish Civil War or joined the wartime resistance in
Figure 9.1. Dve kultúry [Two cultures]: the satirical cartoon contrasts peaceable works
by Communist artists from different Western and Eastern countries and preparations
for bacteriological war (the tube in the middle says “Japanese experience with
waging of bacteriological war”; test tubes: “Plague,” “Typhus”).
Source: Roháč , 3/1951, 2.
– 184 –
The Image of “Real France”
France. Those convicted were vilified as the worst criminals by the use of
the ideological cliché of cosmopolitism. For example, one journalist wrote,
“Cosmopolitans enter the services of American imperialism again, these
venal tarts that are unconcerned about their affiliation to motherland, in-
dividuals that are unable of warm human feelings, cynical egoists capable
of everything, monsters like Slánský, Reicin, Frank.”30
The idea of cosmopolitism was derived from zhdanovshchina, the Soviet
cultural policy of the late Stalin era, which was essentially a disguised anti-
Westernism. Under the pretext of the fight against cosmopolitism, posi-
tive relations to Western cultures were gibbeted throughout Czechoslovak
history as a wrong policy of previous presidents T. G. Masaryk, Edvard
Beneš, and Emil Hácha that strengthened the low national self-esteem of
the Czechs and was marked by “kowtowing to the unculture of western
bourgeoisie.”31 The minister of information and leading party ideologue
in this period, Václav Kopecký, explained in his lecture the meaning of
cosmopolitism as an “ideology of American imperialism” at a high-level
conference held at the Military Technical Academy in Brno in 1952, draw-
ing the ideological border across the bipolar world:
Our deep aversion towards cosmopolitism does not mean at all that we would
like to underestimate real values of world culture as long as these were merits
of big personalities of western nations. On the contrary! … It is ridiculous
when our adversaries from the West misinterpret our fight against cosmopolit-
ism as if we would like to underestimate, for example in literature, Shakespeare,
Molière, Goethe, Whitman and the like. And even more ridiculous it is when
they hold themselves up as protectors of these world poets. … Isn’t it an insult
for the motherland of Molière when dollar moguls, like foreign masters, can lay
down the law in today’s France? … Our fight against cosmopolitism is led on
the frontline of ideological and cultural struggle for a new world, on the front-
line that goes across all countries, that makes distinctions in the rows of scien-
tists, artists, scholars in the West, too, and that puts the best ones by our side.32
In reality, most Western intellectuals did not stay on “their side,” and the
audience in Czechoslovakia did not lose its interest in different cultural
products of the West either. In Communist thinking, a work of art and its
role in the new society was understood as a weapon used in an ideological
fight. Such weapons were not lethal, but they “poisoned” one’s mind with
“imperialist opium” and eventually caused a person to abandon the Com-
munist cause. Demonizing broadly understood enemy ideas and severe
punishments for their spreading were typical features of early Communist
dictatorships. The Western culture was not only blocked,33 carefully cen-
sored, and propagandistically instrumentalized; “bourgeois mass culture”
was also publicly disdained as “perverted culture” and interpreted as a
clear symptom of everyday misery of “rotting” Capitalism. For example,
– 185 –
Václav Šmidrkal
After 1948, the Communist Party could impose its leading role in all spheres
of public life. Cultural exchange abroad was centralized at the highest state
and party levels and scrutinized in a long decision-making process. The in-
flexibility of such a system also contributed to a decrease in the number of
works produced or introduced in Czechoslovakia. The statistical overviews
of French cultural presence in Czechoslovakia are available in the form
of literary translations from French into Czech (fig. 9.2) and of screen-
ings of foreign films in the Czech lands (figs. 9.3 and 9.4), embedding the
early Communist period in the longer cultural development of postwar
Czechoslovakia.
The curve showing the number of titles translated from French into
Czech and published in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1975 has two similar
tops. These represent the years 1945–48 preceding the Communist rule
and the years around the Prague Spring in 1968, when Czechoslovakia re-
opened to Western cultures again. The decreasing trend began shortly after
1948 and bottomed out in the mid-1950s. The outputs from the late 1950s
and early 1960s, when the regime tried to tighten the ideological control
after a certain thaw, correspond with the level of the early 1970s, the era
of “normalization” after the defeat of the Prague Spring, when the regime
reinforced some of its ideological claims on cultural transfers from the West.
– 186 –
The Image of “Real France”
127
116
103 100
97
88 91
74 58 77 77 81
74 73 76
63
61 58
57 54 54 56
58 49
38
43
23 32
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
Figure 9.2. Translations of French literature into Czech.
Note: The table includes translations of both fictional and nonfictional French literature
published in the Czech language in the given year.
Source: K. Drsková, České překlady francouzské literatury (1960–1969) (České Budějovice:
Jihočeská univerzita, 2010), 68. Based on Drsková’s own calculations and,
for the years 1945–53, those of Pavel Čech in Čech, Francouzsko-české vztahy, 279.
90
80
70
60
France
50
UK
40
US
30
USSR
20
10
0
Figure 9.3. Feature films in Czech cinemas according to country of origin (selection).
Sources: J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství 1945–1950 (Praha: Český filmový ústav, 1970), 202;
J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství 1951–1955 I (Praha: Československý filmový ústav, 1972), 296;
J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství 1956–1960 (Praha: Československý filmový ústav, 1974), 188.
– 187 –
Václav Šmidrkal
The statistical data available for film screenings in the Czech lands
show again that after a postwar revival and domination of U.S. films, West-
ern productions were eliminated from distribution after 1948. Not only
premieres of French and other Western films hit the bottom in the years
1951–53 but also the production output of Czechoslovak cinematography
got stuck. From 1953 to 1957, the number of films from non-Communist
countries steadily rose; in the years 1958–60, it slightly dropped again, and
a rapid growth continued from 1961. It reached its peak in 1969, when
screenings of films from non-Communist countries made up more than 50
percent of all screening (fig. 9.4). Interestingly, films from non-Communist
countries usually had higher turnouts than films from other Communist
countries than Czechoslovakia.
The Communist Party’s cultural policy aimed to purify repertoires that
the regime had inherited from the past—repertoires based on the cultural
cornucopia of the postwar years—and, concurrently, to strictly impose
Communist ideological criteria on both newly created domestic or trans-
posed foreign works.
The purification campaign strictly eliminated cultural symbols of the
previous era and gave explanations why these works were dangerous for
the new order and therefore must be hidden in depositories or destroyed
right away. The most spectacular case was the purification of public li-
braries, which was carried out mainly on the grounds of two long lists of
“defective” literature. The aim was to purify the public libraries of both
literarily inferior (pulp fiction) and ideologically or politically unacceptable
Figure 9.4. Screenings of feature films in Czech cinemas by percentage according to their origin.
Note: “Other” countries of origin are defined as all other countries outside the Soviet bloc in Europe.
Sources: J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství 1945–1950, 228; J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství
1951–1955 I, 342; J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství 1956–1960, 240; J. Havelka, Čs. filmové
hospodářství 1961–1965, 314; J. Havelka, Čs. filmové hospodářství 1966 –1970, 330.
– 188 –
The Image of “Real France”
domestic plays with historical themes, (2) reevaluated Czech and Slovak
dramatic heritage, (3a) Russian and Soviet plays, (3b) plays from people’s
democracies, (4) reevaluated world classics, and (5) progressive Western
plays. The last category was also given the least priority. As a result, during
the early years of the Communist regime, French drama by classical drama-
tists such as Molière or P.-A. C. de Beaumarchais was scarcely represented
on Czechoslovak theatre stages.
The switch in the relations between Czechoslovakia and France from
the “official France” to the Communist milieu meant also a rupture in
film exchange in both directions. The French film industry could not of-
fer many films like La bataille du rail (The Battle of the Rails, dir. René
Clément, 1946), which was highly acclaimed by Communist film critics
for its “realism.” The dramatized documentary Nous continuons la France
(dir. Louis Daquin, 1946) about the PCF, one of few French films that en-
tered the Czechoslovak cinemas in 1950, did not attract much audience.
Hits such as Fanfan la Tulipe (1952, dir. Christian-Jaque), starring Gérard
Philipe and premiering in 1953 in Czechoslovakia, were scarce examples
of a French box-office success in those years (totaling 4,148,600 viewers in
the Czech lands from 1953 to 1963).
The reverse in the trend of cutting off from the West began slowly af-
ter the death of both J. V. Stalin and his Czechoslovak follower Klement
Gottwald in 1953. During the second half of the year, the policy of a “New
Course,” meant to ease the situation in foreign cultural exchange, was dis-
cussed in the Communist Party.49 Ivo Fleischmann, who a few years earlier
had fiercely propagated the two camps theory toward French literature,
attacking particularly existentialists, warned in December 1953 against
“sectarianism” in the perception of French culture, which had resulted in
throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Not only the Communists but
also other French intellectuals sympathizing with the “idea of peace” were
to be considered allies of the East.50 Similarly, Antonín J. Liehm welcomed
the abandoning of the restrictive course in his 1955 review of three French
comedies that premiered in Czechoslovak cinemas: “Recently, so to speak,
the assortment in our cinemas has been extended. It is a good, beneficial
thing. … We can congratulate ourselves that the time is over when this
interest was artificially canalized to suburban cinemas or even to cinemas
outside of Prague.”51
The détente after the armistice on the Korean Peninsula and negoti-
ations in Geneva in 1954 led the Czechoslovak authorities to rethink its
relations with the West. Ignorance and the guerrilla-like cultural diplo-
macy of the previous years quickly became obsolete, and Czechoslovakia
concluded it would achieve more by cooperating with the official repre-
sentatives of France.52 The tour of the Théâtre national populaire in Czecho-
– 191 –
Václav Šmidrkal
slovakia in 1955 was the first hosting of a French theatre company since
1948 and became a great success not only artistically but also in terms of
propaganda. As an official of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Af-
fairs noted, the press coverage of this tour by French bourgeois journalists
was unexpectedly positive.53 The extension of cultural exchange between
France and Czechoslovakia needed to include commercial subjects as
agents of exchange since state authorities were not capable of administrat-
ing the growing agenda. The relations with the French Communist milieu
remained important in the sense of party-to-party relations, but Czecho-
slovakia understood that the PCF had only limited possibilities and that
it was in Czechoslovakia’s interest to benefit from state-to-state relations
with France. At the same time, this turn in mutual relations did not mean
that Czechoslovakia was ready to resign from a certain degree of ideolog-
ical claims on and political expectations from French culture that was to
be let into Czechoslovakia. The gradual process of de-ideologization in
cultural exchange took place as late as the 1960s.
Conclusion
Notes
1. Julius Fučík (1903–43) was a Czech Communist journalist and resistance fighter who
was executed by the Nazis. The Communist Party transformed him into a notorious propa-
ganda character, a Communist hero prototype. See S. Zwicker, “Der antifaschistische Märtyrer
der Tschechoslowakei Julius Fučík,” in Sozialistische Helden: eine Kulturgeschichte von Propa-
gandafiguren in Osteuropa und der DDR, ed. S. Satjukow and R. Gries (Berlin: Ch. Linsk,
2002), 244–55.
2. A. J. Liehm, “Doslov,” in Držte se, soudruzi!, ed. P. Abraham (Praha: Naše vojsko, 1952),
151f.
3. Ibid., 162.
4. See S. Reznikow, Francophilie et identité tchèque 1848–1914 (Paris: H. Champion, 2002).
5. See A. Kriegel, Les communistes français: essai d’ethnographie politique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Ed.
du Seuil, 1970).
6. T. Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992), 267.
7. A term coined by Annie Kriegel. See K. Bartošek, Zpráva o putování v komunistických
archivech Praha—Paříž (1948–1968) (Prague: Paseka, 2000), 103–17.
8. J. Knapík, “Der Versuch, eine Quarantäne zu errichten. Zu den Beschränkungen und der
Kontrolle kultureller Kontakte der Tschechoslowakei zum westlichen Ausland 1948–1956,”
in Kultur als Vehikel und als Oponent politischer Absichten. Kulturkontakte zwischen Deutschen,
– 193 –
Václav Šmidrkal
Tschechen und Slowaken von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhundertsbis in die 1980er Jahre, ed. M. Marek
et al., (Essen: Klartext, 2010), 95–105.
9. J. Knapík, V zajetí moci. Kulturní politika, její systém a aktéři 1948–1956 (Praha: Libri,
2006), 55–60.
10. R. Krakovsky, “The Representation of the Cold War: The Peace and the War Camps in
Czechoslovakia, 1948–1960,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 6, no. 2 (2008): 160.
11. See P. Janáček, Literární brak: Operace vyloučení, operace nahrazení 1938–1951 (Brno:
Host, 2004).
12. J. Hnilica, Francouzský institut v Praze 1920–1951. Mezi vzděláním a propagandou (Pra-
gue: Karolinum, 2009), 120.
13. L. Motejlková, “Kulturní diplomacie mezi Československem a Francií v letech 1948–
1968,” Slovanský přehled 45, no. 3 (2009): 356.
14. V. Černý, Paměti 1945–1972 (Brno: Atlantis, 1992), 94.
15. K. Kaplan, Sovětští poradci v Československu 1949–1956 (Prague: ÚSD AV ČR, 1993).
16. D. Olšáková, “V krajině za zrcadlem: Političtí emigranti v poúnorovém Českoslov-
ensku a případ Aymonin,” Soudobé dějiny 14, no. 4 (2007): 719–43.
17. See L. Motejlková, “Československo-francouzské vztahy na počátku studené války:
Francouzské diplomatické zastoupení v Československu v letech 1948–1956,” Moderní dějiny
16 (2008): 251–89.
18. Zasedání Smíšené komise kulturní dohody francouzsko-československé v Praze (23
August 1949), 4, k. č. 24, f. TO-O 1945–59 Francie, Archiv ministerstva zahraničních věcí
(hereafter AMZV).
19. See J. Faure, L’ami américain: la Tchéchoslovaquie, enjeu de la diplomatie américaine 1943–
1968 (Paris: Tallandier Éditions, 2004).
20. Čsl. francouzské kulturní styky. Zpráva o obědě s prof. Audubertem (15 March 1950),
1, k. č. 5, f. TO-T 1945–55 Francie, AMZV.
21. “Predlozheniia zaveduiushchego IV Evropeiskim otdelom (EP) MID SSSR S. P. Kirsa-
nova ob usilenii sovetskogo vliianiia na kul’turnuiu zhizn’ Pol’shi, Chekhoslovakii i drugikh
stran Vostochnoi Evropy, 21 marta 1949 r,” in Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh
arkhivov 1944–1953, Tom 2, 1949–1953, ed. G. P. Muraško and T. V. Volokitina (Moskva:
Sibirskii khronograf, 1998), 37–41.
22. Čs.-francouzské kulturní styky a další možnost jejich rozvoje (9 September 1954), 3, k.
č. 24, f. TO-O 1945–59 Francie, AMZV.
23. Z. Raková, Francophonie de la population tchèque 1848–2008 (Brno: Masarykova uni-
verzita, 2011), 66–7; Vývoj kulturních styku° mezi ČSR a Francií, 1945–49, 10, k. č. 189, f.
Ministerstvo informací—dodatky, Národní archiv (hereafter NA).
24. Ibid., 9b.
25. Zpráva osvětového inspektora Míly Soukupa (28 December 1950), k. č. 5, f. TO-T
1945–55 Francie, AMZV.
26. Plán kulturních styku° na rok 1953 (14 November 1952), k. č. 5, f. TO-T 1945–55
Francie, AMZV.
27. F. Noirant, “1949–1950: la naissance d’un malentendu. Les intellectuels communistes
français et les non-dits de la soviétisation tchécoslovaque,” Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre
temps 59 (July–September 2000): 33–42.
28. Paul Eluard—dojmy z Prahy (20 September 1949), k. č. 30, TO-O 1945–59 Francie,
AMZV.
29. See J. Křen, Historické proměny češství (Prague: Karolinum, 1992); P. Drulák, Politika
nezájmu. Česko a Západ v krizi (Prague: Sociologické nakladatelství, 2012), 219–22.
30. The author refers to the show trial against high Communist officials from 1952–53,
the Slánský trial. J. Franěk, “Pravá tvář kosmopolitismu a buržoazního nacionalismu,” Rudé
právo, 4 January 1953, k. č. 1114, f. AMVZ—Výstřižkový archiv 3, NA.
– 194 –
The Image of “Real France”
31. J. O. Fischer, “Do boje proti kosmopolitismu v západní kultuře,” Tvorba, 6 December
1951, 1, 190.
32. V. Kopecký, Proti kosmopolitismu jako ideologii amerického imperialismu (Praha: Orbis,
1952), 24–26.
33. For example Western radio broadcasting was jammed in Czechoslovakia in 1952–88,
with a short break in 1968. See P. Tomek, “Rušení zahraničního rozhlasového vysílání pro
Československo,” Securitas imperii 9 (2002): 334–66.
34. K. Bartošek and K. Pichlík, Hanebná role amerických okupantů v západních Čechách v
roce 1945 (Prague: Svoboda, 1951), 26, 32.
35. The last reference connected to a big propaganda campaign that accused Americans
of infesting Czechoslovakia with potato beetles in order to damage potato fields. M. Kot’át-
ková, “O lidech zru°dneˇ odumírajících,” Lidové noviny, 22 June 1950, k. č. 618, f. AMVZ—
Výstřižkový archiv 2, NA.
36. P. Šámal, Soustružníci lidských duší. Lidové knihovny a jejich cenzura na počátku padesátých
let 20. století (s edicí seznamů zakázaných knih) (Prague: Academia, 2009), 220f.
37. Ibid., 62f.
38. P. Čech, Francouzsko-české vztahy v oblasti překladu (1945–1953) (Brno: Masarykova
univerzita, 2011).
39. J. C. E. Gienow-Hecht, “Culture and the Cold War in Europe,” in The Cambridge His-
tory of the Cold War, vol. 1, Origins, ed. M. P. Leffler and O. A. Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 404.
40. Čech, Francouzsko-české vztahy, 95.
41. I. Skála, “Honoré de Balzac—velký kritik buržoazní společnosti,” Rudé právo, 18 Au-
gust 1950, k. č. 618, f. AMVZ—Výstřižkový archiv 2, NA.
42. Čech, Francouzsko-české vztahy, 87.
43. Ibid., 180.
44. Ivo Fleischmann, “Francouzská kultura v boji o mír,” Lidové noviny, 25 June 1950, k. č.
618, f. AMVZ—Výstřižkový archiv 2, NA.
45. Čech, Francouzsko-české vztahy, 198–201. The Czech translation of Les Amants d’Avi-
gnon did not appear until 1961, but it was published in Slovak already in 1950.
46. Ibid., 118.
47. V. Just, Divadlo v totalitním systému: Příběh českého divadla (1945–1989) nejen v datech a
souvislostech (Prague: Academia, 2010), 61.
48. Ibid., 58–59.
49. J. Knapík, V zajetí moci, 212–33.
50. I. Fleischmann, “Francouzská kultura bojující,” Literární noviny, 24 October 1953, k. č.
3205, f. AMVZ—Výstřižkový archiv 3, NA.
51. A. J. Liehm, “Tři francouzské veselohry,” Kino 1955, č. 22, 358.
52. AMZV, TO-T 1945–55 Francie, k. č. 5, Otázky kulturní spolupráce s Francií (11
March 1954), 1.
53. Poznatky z provádění kulturních a vědeckých styku° Československa s kapitalistickými
státy (16 February 1956), Přehled vývoje kulturních a vědeckých styku° s jednotlivými kapital-
istickými zeměmi, 2, kniha č. 19, f. Porady kolegia 1953–89, AMZV.
54. See J. Bláhová, “No Place for Peace-Mongers: Charlie Chaplin, Monsieur Verdoux
(1947) and Czechoslovak Communist Propaganda,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Tele-
vision 29, no. 3 (2009): 321–42.
– 195 –
Chapter 10
Sonja Großmann
This short citation illustrates three aspects of the role of friendship societ-
ies2 during the Cold War. First, the Belgo-Soviet Friendship Society is not
a single case, but part of a worldwide network of associations working to
distribute information about and improve relations with the Soviet Union.
As in the case of the Belgian association, founded in 1929,3 their exis-
tence generally dates back to the interwar period when associations called
“Friends of the Soviet Union” were created in several countries, particularly
in the Western hemisphere, uniting intellectuals who were interested in
the different facets of the social experiment going on in the former Russian
empire.4 Coordinated by the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with
Foreign Countries (Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo kul’turnoi sviazi s zagranitsei,
VOKS) and, since 1958, by the Union of Soviet Societies of Friendship and
– 196 –
Dealing with “Friends”
mainly tried to avoid any cooperation and to treat the Soviet friendship so-
cieties with disregard. The French Socialists strictly forbade their members
from collaborating with France-URSS, as the British Labour Party did with
the British-Soviet Friendship Society. As long as the societies restricted
themselves to obvious Soviet propaganda and could not initiate any ex-
change, their impact was mainly limited to Communists. To undermine
their initiatives for cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union, the strategy
of the French, British, and Italian authorities aimed to delay or refuse the
granting of visas for Soviet citizens who were invited by the friendship
societies.22 However, when the Soviet attitude towards cultural exchanges
became less restrictive, Western authorities quickly realized that their boy-
cott strategy was leading toward a monopolization of cultural relations by
the friendship societies, forcing them to amend their strategies.
After Stalin’s death, the cultural thaw and the idea of “peaceful coexis-
tence” also changed cultural relations with Capitalist countries and the
role of friendship societies.23 Already in 1954, internal discussions and
reforms arose which led finally to the transformation of VOKS into the
SSOD in February 1958, an umbrella organization covering thematic
branches as well as the simultaneously created friendship societies in
the Soviet Union with specific countries, such as USSR-Great Britain
(SSSR-Velikobritaniia) or USSR-France or (SSSR-Frantsiia).24 One aim of
these reforms was—at least formally—the integration of larger parts of the
Soviet population into international cultural relations by means of these
friendship societies, with branches in all Soviet republics and main cities.25
Yet, usually presided over by outstanding intellectuals with ample knowl-
edge of the respective languages and countries, such as, for example, Ilya
Ehrenburg in the case of the SSSR-Frantsiia and Aleksei Surkov in the
case of the SSSR-Velikobritaniia, these associations were mainly composed
of collective members and managed by SSOD employees.26 Towards the
partner countries, the new friendship societies in the USSR were meant to
more flexibly and adequately answer the growing demand for cultural ex-
changes and communicate to the partner countries reciprocity of interests
of the Soviet population.
A second main aim of the reforms was the opening of friendship soci-
eties abroad for a broader bourgeois public interested in the Soviet Union
for professional or cultural reasons. Friendship societies were to be a less
political than cultural offer in the bid for a positive attitude towards the
Soviet Union. They were asked to free themselves from a pro-Communist
– 200 –
Dealing with “Friends”
thorities were glad to rely on the old “friends” when the SRC declared the
freezing of all cultural relations.
In 1969, Thomas Churchill, director of the Great Britain-USSR Asso-
ciation, complained that sometimes he arranged visits between his associ-
ation and the SSOD, “only to be told at the last minute that the Russian
visitors would not be coming as guests of the Association but instead as
guests of the BSFS.” Furthermore, sometimes visitors switched between
both associations within one tour.45 The official association was torn be-
tween two risks: making either too many concessions to the Soviets and
becoming a “fellow-traveling organization” itself or losing privileged rela-
tionships and prestigious projects to the friendship societies. The Foreign
Office even used information from the secret services to inform the Asso-
ciation beforehand about Soviet intentions of exchange to forestall plans
of the friendship associations.46
From the mid-1960s onward, one of the major matters of dispute in
the relationship between friendship societies and governments was the So-
viet practice of signing official annual Plans of Cooperation between the
friendship societies, the Soviet partner societies, and the SSOD. These
ceremonial acts of signature and the negotiations at a quasigovernmental
level clearly raised the status of the friendship societies. The foreign policy
departments, in contrast, were annoyed by this interference in intergov-
ernmental cultural exchanges.
The leaders of the European Department of the French Ministry of For-
eign Affairs complained to the General Secretary about the takeover of what
they supposed to be spheres of governmental responsibility. They feared that
the parallel agreements between France-URSS and the SSSR-Frantsiia,
signed from 1963 onward, would undermine the official exchange plans of
the Mixed Commission:
– 204 –
Dealing with “Friends”
Cooperation
In the 1970s, the relationship between friendship societies and official for-
eign policy changed significantly. After a period of ignorance and com-
petition, the Western ministries of foreign affairs had to accept that they
could neither replace the friendship associations nor compete with them,
especially in terms of personal exchanges. In the context of the relaxation
– 205 –
Sonja Großmann
Because … it is not only the politicians who will eventually determine the ori-
entation of global developments and the preservation and survival of humanity,
but certainly, every day, at every stage, the voice of public opinion, of global
public opinion, is growing. … In this sense, I consider Initiative 87 an import-
ant political initiative which deserves to be welcomed, as we see here the desire
to search for pathways that lead to mutual understanding, to cooperation, to a
change of the whole climate. And these changes can afterwards transform in
policies and assure a new character and a new type of international relations.
… The whole tradition of our foreign policy goes back to Lenin. It is the peo-
ple’s diplomacy.84
Conclusion
– 210 –
Dealing with “Friends”
the West German DSF was outlawed, other Western governments tried to
boycott the activities of the Soviet friendship societies in their countries
and observed them suspiciously from afar. The increasing activity of friend-
ship societies in East-West exchanges after Stalin’s death compelled West-
ern governments to allow and to establish more intense cultural relations
with the Soviet Union, both at an official and a private level. As Soviet
cultural diplomacy addressed civil society and governmental institutions
equally, Western governments were never able to replace friendship so-
cieties, even if they tried to create alternative bodies, as in Great Britain.
Finally, in the 1970s, Western governments learned to make use of the
friendship societies for their own purposes, establishing, especially in the
case of West Germany, a sort of private-public partnership that peaked
during the Perestroika.
The broad variety of friendship activities and governmental responses
makes it difficult to determine exactly the influence of friendship societies
on official diplomacy and on the cultural relations between the East and
the West. In any case, their history illustrates how blurred the borders be-
tween the political and socio-cultural spheres were in the context of the
Cold War, to what extent civil society groups were able to influence inter-
governmental relations, and to urge the political authorities of both sides
to act. Soviet friendship societies in the West were, therefore, always oscil-
lating in an intermediate space between the governmental and civil society
levels, between culture and politics, between the East and the West.
Notes
1. “NATO Political Committee, Meeting held on Thursday, 9th of June, 1977,” Politisches
Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PAAA), ZA 133126. The chapter is based on documents
from the following archives: The National Archives, Kew (TNA); Archives Diplomatiques,
Paris (AD); Archives Nationales de France, Paris (ANF); Politisches Archiv des Auswärti-
gen Amtes, Berlin (PAAA); Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch); Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi
Federatsii, Moscow (GARF); and Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii, Moscow
(RGANI).
– 211 –
Sonja Großmann
– 212 –
Dealing with “Friends”
and the British-Soviet Friendship Houses Ltd. National Conference for British-Soviet Friend-
ship: Adopted Resolutions, in: Hull History Centre, U DEV/1/38. In 1950, its name changed
to British-Soviet Friendship Society. For more details on British associations, see the second
chapter in Garrido Caballero, “Las relaciones entre España y la Union Sovietica.”
13. See L. Dralle, Von der Sowjetunion lernen: Zur Geschichte der Gesellschaft für Deutsch-
Sowjetische Freundschaft (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993), 404–8.
14. For the aims of the VOKS after the war, see N. Yegorova, “The All-Union Society for
Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) and the early détente, 1953–1955,” in
Une Europe malgré tout, 1945–1990: contacts et réseaux culturels, intellectuels et scientifiques entre
Européens dans la guerre froide, ed. A. Fleury (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2009), 89–102, here 91–92.
15. For example, “Aufruf des Präsidiums der Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Sowjetische Freund-
schaft,” SAPMO DY 32/10712, BArch; C. Pailleret, “La volonté du peuple français,” France-
URSS, no. 2 (1950): 2; Annual Report of the British Soviet Friendship Society for 1950.
16. For the legal measures in detail, see T. Kössler, Abschied von der Revolution: Kommu-
nisten und Gesellschaft in Westdeutschland 1945–1968 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2005), 280–91; P.
Major, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945–1956
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 277–95.
17. K. J. Becker, Die KPD in Rheinland-Pfalz 1946–1956 (Mainz: von Hase und Koehler,
2001), 297. See also the memories of Gampfer’s advocate in D. Posser, Anwalt im Kalten Krieg:
Deutsche Geschichte in politischen Prozessen, 1951–1968 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 2000), 109–28.
The minutes of the process are conserved in the BArch, SAPMO BY 1/2247–51.
18. Until 1957, the Saarland was a semiautonomous territory under French protection.
West Berlin became an official part of Germany only in 1990.
19. For the DSF in G.D.R. see C. J. Behrends, Die erfundene Freundschaft: Propaganda
für die Sowjetunion in Polen und in der DDR (Köln: Böhlau, 2006); K. Kuhn, “‘Wer mit der
Sowjetunion verbunden ist, gehört zu den Siegern der Geschichte’: Die Gesellschaft für
Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft im Spannungsfeld von Moskau und Ostberlin,” Ph.D.
thesis, University of Mannheim (2002), http://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/madoc/voll
texte/2003/64/pdf/DSF.PDF.
20. The archives of the DSF in the G.D.R. give evidence of the close control and clear
dependency of the Western branches. See, for example, “Über die weiteren Aufgaben auf
propagandistischem Gebiet,” 3 December 1954, SAPMO DY 32/10714, BArch.
21. “Pour une grande association populaire qui contribuera grandement à une meilleure
connaissance mutuelle et au développement de la coopération amicale franco-soviétique,
Rapport au 9ème Congrès National,” 88 AS 16, ANF.
22. Obviously, the British and French authorities also exchanged their experiences with
this practice of the refusal of visas. British Embassy, Paris, R. S. Faber to P. de Menthon,
Section soviétique, MAE, Confidentiel, 19 March 1958, MAE Europe 1940–60 URSS—Re-
lations politiques France-URSS; Associations franco-soviétiques, carton 274, AD.
23. For cultural relations during the thaw see E. Gilburd, “The Revival of Soviet Inter-
nationalism in the Mid to Late 1950s,” in The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the
1950s and 1960s, ed. D. Kozlov and E. Gilburd (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013),
362–401.
24. See the report in “Unionskonferenz sowjetischer Gesellschaften für Freundschaft und
kulturelle Verbindungen mit dem Ausland,” Kultur und Leben, no. 3 (1958): 7; and the min-
utes of the meeting of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CP, which decided to
replace VOKS: “O reorganizatsii VOKSa,” Sekretariat TsK KPSS, 5 September 1957, f. 89,
per. 55, d. 21, 11. 1–3, RGANI. Contrary to VOKS, there is almost no basic research on
the SSOD. For the organization and activities of the SSOD, see Materialy k 60-letiiu Soiuza
Sovetskikh Obshchestv druzhby i kul’turnoi sviazi s zarubezhnymi stranami (Moskva: Mysl’ 1985).
25. See “Otchet o rabote Soiuza sovetskikh obshchestv druzhby i kul’turnoi sviazi s
zarubezhnymi stranami (fevral’ 1958g—aprel’ 1959g.),” GARF, f. 9576, op.18, d.1, l. 198–223.
– 213 –
Sonja Großmann
In this report are mentioned the resolutions of the secretary of the Central Committee of the
CPSU on 5 September 1957, “O perestroike raboty VOKS,” and on 31 July 1958, “O pere-
stroike republikanskikh obshchestv kul’turnoi sviazi s zagranitsei.”
26. On the foundation of the SSSR-Velikobritaniia and SSSR-Frantsiia, see “‘UdSSR-
Grossbritannien,’” Kultur und Leben, no. 5 (1958): 59, and I. Ehrenburg, “Das französische
Volk: unser glorreicher alter Freund,” Kultur und Leben, no. 12 (1958): 49–51.
27. These strategies were communicated to the general secretaries of the Communist Par-
ties and the leaders of the friendship societies in personal meetings. See, as one example,
“Zapis’ besedy s gensekretarem Kompartii Velikobritanii Golanom,” 9 July 1956, f. 5, op. 28,
d. 460, l. 158–60, RGANI.
28. See V. M. Zubok, “Soviet Policy Aims at the Geneva Conference, 1955,” in Cold War
Respite: The Geneva Summit of 1955, ed. G. Bischof and S. Dockrill (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
University Press, 2000), 55–74.
29. For example, see the draft letter from H. Hohler, Northern Department, to the ambas-
sador in Moscow, Sir William Hayter, 1 January 1955, FO 371/116671, TNA.
30. C. Mayhew, A War of Words: A Cold War Witness (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 51–58;
“O rabote posol’stva v 1954 godu po linii VOKS,” f. 5283, op. 22, d. 499, l. 48–63, GARF.
31. William Hayter, Ambassador in Moscow, to A. F. Hohler, Foreign Office, 29 December
1954, FO 371/116671, TNA.
32. “Soviet Relations Committee of the British Council, Report on Activities: April 1955
to December 1956,” BW 2/532, TNA.
33. “British-Soviet Friendship Society,” 18 November 1957, BW 2/532, TNA. For British-
Soviet exchanges in the 1950s, see M. B. Smith, “Peaceful Coexistence at All Costs: Cold
War Exchanges between Britain and the Soviet Union in 1956,” Cold War History 12, no. 3
(2012): 537–58.
34. “Mr. Allan to J. E. S. Simon,” Treasury (May 1959), BW 2/719, TNA.
35. “Comment to Parliamentary Committee,” 20 November 1958, BW 2/719, TNA.
36. See T. B. L. Churchill, “The First Ten Years: An Informal Review and Commentary
on the Work of the Great Britain-USSR Association 1959–1969,” 10 December 1969, FCO
28/1115, TNA.
37. “Note du département Europe centrale pour le Cabinet du Ministre,” July 1958, Cab-
inet du Ministre, Couve de Murville, dossier 314, AD.
38. “Trois journées qui compteront pour la connaissance et l’amitié franco-soviétique,”
France-URSS Magazine, no. 7 (1957): 6–9. In the Résistance, Conservative and Communist
groups of resistance formed an alliance under General de Gaulle’s leadership to coordinate
their fight against the German occupation. H.-C. Giraud, De Gaulle et les communistes (Paris:
Albin Michel, 1989). The so-called gaullistes de gauche wanted to integrate Socialist elements
like worker participation and dirigisme into Capitalism. J. Pozzi, Les Mouvements gaullistes. Par-
tis, associations, réseaux 1958–1976 (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011), 205–24.
39. For French cultural diplomacy, see T. Gomart, “La diplomatie culturelle française à
l’égard de l’URSS: objectifs, moyens et obstacles (1956–1966),” in Culture et Guerre froide:
actes du Colloque ‘Culture et Guerre froide’ 20–21 octobre 2005, ed. J.-F. Sirinelli and G.-H.
Soutou (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008), 173–88.
40. “Conversations franco-soviétiques,” Paris, March 1960, a/s: Relations culturelles entre
la France et l’URSS, MAE Europe, 1944–1960, carton 270, AD.
41. G. Gravina, “Per una storia dell’Associazione Italia-URSS,” Slavia 4, no. 3–4 (1995):
103–41, here 103–12 and 122–26.
42. The director of the SCR and later the Great Britain-USSR Association urged the
SSOD to stop collaboration with friendship societies several times. For example, see “Record
of Mr. Mayhew’s Interview with Mr. Zhukov on August 19,” 19 August 1957, BW 2/532,
TNA; “Mr. Mayhew’s Record of a Meeting with Mr. G. A. Zhukov on March 28, 1959,” BW
2/719, TNA.
– 214 –
Dealing with “Friends”
– 215 –
Sonja Großmann
59. For practical reasons, it is called in this article Gesellschaft Bundesrepublik Deutsch-
land-UdSSR. Yet, this was not an official abbreviation as it resembled too much the title of a
typical friendship society.
60. “Aufzeichung. Betr: Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundes-
republik Deutschland und der Sowjetunion; hier: Festakt im Hessischen Staatstheater am 19.
April 1969,” B 41 No. 68, PAAA.
61. The German Foreign Office finally convinced Heinemann that his presence at the
inauguration event would disproportionately raise the status of the Association. See “Auf-
zeichnung Sahm, Betr. Festvortrag des Herrn Bundesministers der Justiz, Dr. G. Heinemann,
am 27.10.1968 im Kurhaussaal Wiesbaden auf Einladung der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der
Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Sowjetunion,” 29 July 1968,
B 41 No. 68, PAAA.
62. “Ob obshchestvennykh sviaziakh Soiuza sovetskikh obshchestv druzhby s FRG,” (April
1969), f. 9576, op. 6, d. 431, l. 40–46, GARF.
63. A. Urban and I. Wedernikow, Verständigung im Namen des Friedens: 10 Jahre Gesellschaft
“UdSSR-BRD” (Moskau: APN, 1982), 4.
64. See Leiter der Abteilung II VLR Dr. Blumenfeld, LR Lincke: Aufzeichnung. Betr: Ge-
sellschaft zur Förderung der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der
Sowjetunion; hier: Festakt im Hessischen Staatstheater am 19. April 1969, B 41 No. 68,
PAAA.
65. “Aufzeichnung. Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesre-
publik Deutschland und der Sowjetunion,” 24 July 1970, B 41 No. 68, PAAA.
66. See several letters and draft papers on this issue, ZA 112717, PAAA.
67. Meyer-Landrut to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 3 December 1974, ZA 112717,
PAAA.
68. Lippert, Auswärtige Kulturpolitik im Zeichen der Ostpolitik, 320.
69. The exhibition was shown in the following cities: Kiev and Tbilisi (1978), Erevan and
Baku (1979), Tashkent and Alma-Ata (1980), Leningrad and Tallinn (1982), Dushanbe and
Ashkhabad (1986), and Kalinin and Smolensk (1988).
70. For example, see the answer to a minor interpellation in the Bundestag: “DKP-
beinflußte Freundschaftsgesellschaften. Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die kleine Anfrage:
Drucksache 8/4188,” 12 June 1980, http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/08/041/0804188
.pdf.
71. The Soviet Department of the Foreign Office to the German NATO mission regarding
the British proposition for an exchange of experiences in the political committee, 8 August
1980, ZA 133145, PAAA.
72. See “Vermerk: Deutsch-sowjetische Freundschaftsgesellschaften; Hausbesprechung
am 7.12.1976,” 8.12.1976, ZA 112804, PAAA.
73. Philippe Baudet, ambassadeur de France en URSS à son Excellence Monsieur Couve
de Murville, Ministre des Affaires Etrangères; Direction de l’Europe, 5 April 1966, in MAE
Europe 1965–69 URSS—Relations politiques France-URSS; Associations franco-soviétiques
“URSS-France,” AD.
74. For the French Détente see M.-P. Rey, “L’expérience française de la détente: Les re-
lations franco-soviétiques, 1966–1975,” in Ost-West-Beziehungen: Konfrontation und Détente
1945–1989, ed. G. Schmidt (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1993), 81–98.
75. See L. Hamon, “Le voyage en U.R.S.S. du Président de la République,” France-URSS,
no. 6 (1966): 3; G. Martin, France—URSS 1945–1992: histoire d’une grande association de con-
naissance, d’échanges et d’amitié (Saint-Martin-d’Hères: France-Russie-CEI, 2002), 111.
76. For example, see cooperation with La Documentation Française in 1978, MAE Europe
1976–80 URSS—Relations politiques France-URSS; Associations franco-soviétiques, carton
4820, AD.
77. Discours de clôture du Maître Blumel, 6 June 1965, 88 AS 17, ANF.
– 216 –
Dealing with “Friends”
– 217 –
Chapter 11
Sarah Davies
Following the post-war deep-freeze, the thaw in Soviet relations with the
West that occurred after Stalin’s death—“the spirit of Geneva”—opened
up new opportunities for various forms of cultural diplomacy and exchange.
The USSR took the lead in these initiatives: the Bolsheviks had always
viewed culture as a powerful political weapon and had been actively prac-
ticing various forms of cultural diplomacy in the interwar period under the
auspices of VOKS, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with For-
eign Countries.8 From the early 1950s, Moscow embarked upon what was
described in military terms by some Western observers as a new “cultural
offensive” or “cultural campaign abroad,” using cultural diplomacy as a
form of bridge building, as a means of acquiring useful information from the
West, and as a somewhat more palatable way of exporting Soviet values.9
– 219 –
Sarah Davies
The Foreign Office was evidently well aware of this tendency, with one
official commenting that “the Russians wanted a good read.”18
A previous British government periodical, the illustrated weekly Brit-
ish Ally (Britanskii soiuznik), set up on the basis of a reciprocal agreement
during the period of British-Soviet wartime cooperation, had been well
received in the USSR, although it suffered when relations soured in the
late 1940s and was terminated in 1950 (its counterpart in Britain, Soviet
Weekly, was permitted to survive).19 Support for a new version of British Ally
gathered momentum from 1955, particularly after the relaunch of the U.S.
illustrated magazine Amerika.20 Published from 1945 until 1952, Amerika
was resurrected in 1956 following a U.S.-Soviet agreement concerning the
reciprocal distribution of national magazines; its Soviet equivalent in the
United States was USSR, later renamed Soviet Life.
The British were evidently concerned not to be left out of this accel-
erating periodical diplomacy. However, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in
November 1956 created dilemmas. On the one hand, it caused temporary
setbacks in cultural relations, as public revulsion created considerable pres-
sure to ostracize the USSR, while on the other, it persuaded some officials
of the urgency of extending cultural contacts in the interests of fomenting
change, particularly amongst the Soviet intelligentsia and youth, who were
perceived to be potentially rebellious and receptive to Western values. Ce-
cil Parrott, Minister at the British Embassy in Moscow, pressed for a policy
of what he called “injecting … western ideas” to encourage these groups.
This view prevailed, and by 1957 the British government had accepted the
case for a magazine.21 However, because of the vicissitudes of East-West re-
lations and the intractable nature of Anglo-Soviet negotiations, as well as
domestic financial pressures, it was only in January 1961 that an agreement
to set up the magazine was finally concluded with the Soviet authorities.
The wording of this agreement largely followed the model of the 1955
U.S.-Soviet agreement on Amerika. It specified that the magazine should
be “non-political in character” and “devoted to an objective presentation
of various aspects of British life, particularly in the sphere of culture, sci-
ence and technology.” This was the price to be paid for a further clause
maintaining that it would not be subject to censorship by the Soviet au-
thorities. The Soviet agency Soiuzpechat’ was to distribute fifty thousand
copies of the quarterly magazine, with 10 percent of these on subscription,
while a further two thousand complimentary copies were to be distributed
by the British Embassy to Soviet institutions and individuals. If any cop-
ies remained unsold for three months, Soiuzpechat’ had the right to re-
turn them to the Embassy for a refund—an opportunity for the authorities
to restrict the distribution of ideologically suspect editions. In return for
all this—and reciprocity was always important—the British government
– 221 –
Sarah Davies
This protracted discussion about the name of the magazine exemplifies the
problem inherent in any attempt to establish a suitable narrative about
contemporary Britain—it was one thing to propose a magazine about “life
in Great Britain today,” but quite another to agree on precisely how to
project such an amorphous and contested subject. The approach adopted
by the IRD, which bore ultimate responsibility for the magazine’s editorial
line, was informed by the department’s interpretation of Anglia’s objec-
tives: “The magazine aims at presenting an attractive, truthful and con-
vincing picture of all aspects of Britain to serious Soviet readers. Although
– 222 –
The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia
by its readers. Anglia never criticized the USSR directly; on the contrary,
it aimed to project an attitude of friendship and mutual respect between
the two countries. For example, articles about science often mentioned
the connections between British and Soviet scientists, and the magazine
regularly reported on visits between the two countries, the activities of the
G.B.-USSR Association and so on.34 More controversially, an article on
“Lenin in London” was even published in 1967 to mark the fiftieth anni-
versary of the Russian Revolution, despite the initial reservations of some
FO officials who agreed that it should go ahead only if it was used as an op-
portunity to include photographs showing how the parts of London Lenin
had visited had changed for the better: “anything which brings home the
point that Lenin’s ideas are totally unrelated to the world of today, without
of course ever saying that!”35
Rather than engaging in explicitly negative propaganda, the Anglia
team concentrated on telling a positive story about Britain designed both
to interest the serious Soviet reader and to draw an implicit contrast with
life in the USSR. In 1957, the COI had suggested that the magazine fo-
cus on “the common experiences of people in relatively similar circum-
stances, so that the reader may readily identify himself with the subject of
the article.”36 Anglia certainly followed this recommendation, for many of
its articles addressed subjects of common interest and experience, particu-
larly science and technology, industry and agriculture, the arts, sports, and
leisure. However, the view from the embassy in Moscow was that British
political objectives would be better served by dwelling on areas in which
Britain differed substantially from the Soviet Union, such as government,
the legal system, education, trade unions, and so on.37 While this was pre-
cluded to some degree by the “nonpolitical” terms of the Anglia agreement,
later issues did begin to incorporate more explicitly sociopolitical content
designed to underline differences, rather than similarities, between the two
societies. In addition, the magazine regularly featured extracts from con-
temporary British literature, crosswords, material on the regions of Britain,
examples of humor, and items in English. In order to avoid a “rag-bag”
appearance and to engage the serious reader with complex subjects, Anglia
was frequently centered on one major theme, such as chemistry or travel,
although most issues also contained additional material unrelated to the
theme. A representative example from the mid-1960s, Anglia no. 11, in-
cluded articles connected to the main theme of British design, as well as
material on parliamentary elections, cricket, books published in 1963, East
Anglia, fashion, the nervous system, stamps, and English sporting termi-
nology, plus some caricatures, a short story, and a crossword.38
Whether the subject was sport or department stores, education or gar-
dening, the underlying message was always that Britain represented mo-
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The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia
dernity and progress. Great emphasis was placed upon the country’s recent
economic achievements and scientific advances (the latter were accorded
a particularly high priority given the prestige of Soviet science). Britain was
presented as a land of contented workers and consumers reaping the ben-
efits of a buoyant economy and a thriving welfare state, and as the home
to a diverse, innovative, and widely accessible modern culture (in both
its high and popular variants). The British political system was portrayed
as genuinely democratic and as open to modern developments such as
opinion polling. This “branding” of Britain as modern and progressive was
considered essential given that Soviet propaganda constantly painted a
picture of the country as backward looking and in steady decline. In 1961,
as detailed plans for the first editions of the magazine were being drawn up,
the IRD’s Mark Russell argued they “must try to get across the impression
of a progressive society which is moving forward all the time as against the
picture of Capitalist stagnation with which the Soviet public have been
fed.”39 At a time when the USSR seemed to many in the world to represent
the future, Anglia needed to show that a modern Britain offered a viable
alternative to the Soviet Socialist model of modernity (and, implicitly if
not explicitly, to the American version of Capitalist modernity, too).
This image of an unequivocally modern and progressive Britain was
necessarily based on a somewhat selective approach to the “truth.” As
Lord Christopher Mayhew—one of the prime movers behind the creation
of the IRD and an Anglia supporter—subsequently observed, the key to
effective propaganda was the selection of facts: “The policy of IRD was not
to lie or distort facts, but to select the facts that proved our case.”40 Written
in a dispassionate rather than an opinionated style, Anglia’s articles incor-
porated a dazzling array of facts and figures; for example, detailed statistics
were inserted into many of the articles, and the editor went to consider-
able lengths to ensure that these were up-to-date, accurate, and in line
with those used by the BBC Russian Service.41 To enhance credibility, the
personal testimonies of concrete individuals were often incorporated, and,
where possible, their direct speech was used since this was thought to be
more convincing than indirect reporting. Visual images were also employed
as evidence to substantiate the claims of the magazine, as well as to make
it more interesting—while Anglia was never intended to be as lavishly il-
lustrated as Amerika, it was still important that Soviet citizens could see
aspects of British life for themselves. Appealing photographs accompanied
many articles, particularly those devoted to fashion, furniture, and so on.
This attractive vision would have seemed unbalanced and unconvinc-
ing without at least some acknowledgement of the problems Britain faced.
Right at the outset, the magazine’s first editor, Wright Miller, insisted that
they should be “frank sometimes about our deficiencies.”42 However, the
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Sarah Davies
nature and extent of this frankness were never entirely clear. In 1961, the
IRD’s Mavis King asked, “Are we allowed to include criticism, i.e., x houses
have no indoor sanitation, 40 children in the class?” Her opinion was that
“some negative facts must be included, otherwise the Russians are going to
classify everything we say as propaganda.” Mark Russell agreed that prob-
lems should not be hidden, but suggested that the magazine should always
indicate what was being done to tackle issues such as slums. Another FO
official, Bryan Cartledge, also argued for a cautious approach since “the
Soviet press pounces joyfully on admissions of defects in Western society
and one gets no credit for ‘good sportsmanship’ in showing both sides of the
picture”; Pravda would delight in beginning an article by stating that “Ac-
cording to the official British magazine Anglia 15% of British homes have
no inside sanitation.” Cartledge recommended focusing on “past short-
comings which have been or are being remedied.” Presenting as full a pic-
ture of Britain as possible, with the emphasis not on “hiding shortcomings”
but on showing how problems were being tackled, was thus the approach
that was said to inform editorial policy.43
How successful was this effort to explain the British way of life to Soviet
readers? Although it was always difficult to measure its effectiveness, the
magazine, with its “subtle” approach, appeared to be well received by
both the Soviet authorities and the educated public. It was clearly in high
demand, its circulation was not generally obstructed, and the available
evidence suggested it was being read by the desired target groups: profes-
sionals and younger people. Informal conversations indicated that most
readers did not dismiss it as “propaganda,” perceiving it rather as inter-
esting and informative. Some claimed explicitly that they preferred it to
Amerika.44 Significantly, Anglia managed to stimulate a process of two-way
communication: readers were strongly encouraged to correspond with the
editor, not only because their feedback was valuable, but also because the
whole process of dialogue with individual Soviet citizens was considered
intrinsically worthwhile in itself.
The USSR had always had a tradition of encouraging letter writing to
the press, and journals such as Novyi Mir clearly received large quantities
of readers’ mail in this period.45 However, writing to a foreign periodical
was another matter altogether. Censorship of mail continued to be rou-
tine in the post-Stalin USSR, and corresponding with foreigners was still
regarded as a risky activity. The IRD’s Mavis King thus observed that the
thirty letters Anglia received in 1962 might not seem many, but were “more
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The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia
than I dared to hope for.” By way of comparison, it is worth noting that the
much more widely accessible BBC Russian Service only received forty-one
letters in 1956, and somewhat over a hundred in 1963.46 Between 1962
and 1969, a total of 240 letters reached the offices of Anglia.47 Of course,
we cannot know how many never made it at all. The letters were never
published in the magazine, but a small selection from the periods 1963–65
and 1974–75 have been retained in the Foreign Office archives, along with
an even smaller sample of the editors’ responses. Although the numbers
are quite limited, some conclusions can be drawn from them.48
What is quite striking is the geographical spread of the correspondence.
Anglia was supposed to be available in eighty cities, and readers certainly
wrote from as far afield as Magadan, Perm, Vladivostok, and Yalta. In-
deed, it may be surmised that communication with foreigners was valued
particularly highly by those living far from Moscow, Leningrad, and other
cities with greater exposure to foreign influences. It is also clear that most
letters emanated from professionals and young people (many who wrote in
1974–75 described themselves as students or children). While the majority
wrote in Russian, some correspondents enjoyed practicing their English.
They generally supplied their names and addresses, evidently anticipating
that their letters would elicit a response.49
Not surprisingly, the content of their letters was, from a political point
of view, ostensibly quite innocuous. Some wrote simply to express their ap-
preciation of the magazine. Others offered constructive criticisms, or sug-
gested themes Anglia could address, ranging from pop music and the lives
of young people to contemporary visual arts, cinema, cartoons, and even
fireworks. Correspondents also requested further information relating to
specific articles they had read, or asked to be put in touch with British
specialists on topics covered by the magazine. A few readers even made
polite requests for material objects such as records, books, or postcards.50
Regardless of their content, these letters from ordinary Soviet citizens
were highly valued by the FO, and the Anglia editor was expected to han-
dle them in an appropriately responsive manner. The first editor, Wright
Miller, seemed particularly well suited to this task. He was equipped with
a good knowledge of the USSR, having visited the country several times,
including a spell during the war when he worked for British Ally in Moscow
and Kuibyshev. After the war, he had served as a London-based editor of
Ally. In 1960, he published his Russians as People, a book that expressed
much understanding of and sympathy for the Russian people (as opposed
to the Soviet political system). One of the book’s themes was the centrality
of personal relationships in Russian culture: Miller argued that Russians set
great store by personal ties and friendships and observed the importance of
“respect for and expression of genuine personal feeling.”51
– 227 –
Sarah Davies
In his correspondence with Soviet readers, Miller always took the trou-
ble to cultivate a sense of warm friendship and trust between editor and
reader, to avoid an official, bureaucratic approach, and to demonstrate
that he cared about each correspondent on a personal level. He made
sure to answer letters fully and in a sympathetic and personal tone, paying
attention to even the smallest details of the correspondence. For example,
he concluded his reply to one nineteen-year-old Vitalii Reshetov, who
had mentioned in passing that he was taking exams: “Wishing you all
success with your entrance examination for the institute, and thereafter.”
Wright Miller’s successors also followed this practice: when twelve-year-
old Dima Droshnev professed to be a long-time reader of the magazine
and to be studying English with the help of his sister, a later editor, Jean
Penfold, sent cordial greetings to Droshnev and his sister and wished him
well with his studies. This warm, friendly tone was often echoed by the
correspondents themselves, for example, one concluded his missive with
the words “To end this letter, I wish you a lot of success, to you personally
and to ‘Anglia.’”52
The editor and correspondents often exchanged seasonal greetings, a
practice that served to reinforce the impression of personal friendship.
A regular correspondent, Volkov from Magadan, sent Wright Miller his
greetings for Christmas and New Year, expressing his hope that “the New
Year and further numbers of Anglia will enable us to continue our corre-
spondence in the same friendly manner as before.” Else Brucene, a teacher
from Lithuania, wrote to compliment the editors on the magazine, which
she claimed to use in her teaching: “I await the appearance of each new
issue as a feast.” Brucene accompanied her letter with a New Year’s card.
The editor in turn thanked her for the “delightful” card and encouraged
her to continue the correspondence and pass on her suggestions for future
issues. A Margarita Pasekova from Moscow wished the editorial team her
best wishes for the New Year adding: “I would like our friendship to con-
tinue in the New Year.” Pasekova included a New Year’s poem beginning
with the lines: “The good Russian Father Frost / Wishes you to take leave
of the old year without tears / And to greet the New Year and to love it.”53
Another means of cultivating friendship between the editor and the
readers of the magazine involved the giving and receiving of gifts. An-
glia endeavored where possible to satisfy readers’ requests for various small
items: the aforementioned Volkov from Magadan, who had read a report
on razor blades in Anglia (reprinted from the British consumer magazine
Which?), was given a Wilkinson blade, which he clearly appreciated—al-
though he complained that he had only received one blade rather than
the two he was promised! The magazine sometimes sent out books, for ex-
ample, a reader from Gorky, L. Krai, was given a book about British prov-
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The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia
able to travel to Britain in a physical sense, their letters certainly did, and
this must have gone some way to eroding their sense of isolation from the
West (and, quite possibly, their British correspondents’ sense of isolation
from the East).61
Conclusion
The enduring fascination with the actions of the two main protagonists
in the Cold War drama has tended to obscure the roles played by other
supporting actors. This case study of Anglia builds on recent research that
has cast light on Britain’s very significant involvement in the cultural Cold
War.62 Motivated by the desire to maintain global influence and prestige
at a time of decline and aware that it had considerable pre-Cold War ex-
perience on which it could draw, the British government was determined
to make its own distinctive contribution to the process of East-West com-
munication. Although Britain and the United States always cooperated
closely, it was accepted that the two allies could only gain from “shooting
at the same target from different angles.”63
When compared with the lavishly funded initiatives of the United States
or the USSR, or even with Britain’s own activities in the sphere of radio
broadcasting to the Soviet Union, Anglia might justifiably be regarded as
one of the “small phenomena” of the Cold War.64 Produced by one of the
lesser “great powers,” it cost relatively little and was designed to have a
modest reach. In terms of physical appearance, it was, quite literally, small.
Nevertheless, it would be fair to claim that the magazine was remarkably
successful, in part because of its small scale and subtle approach. Anglia
told an appealing and reasonably credible story about Britain to Soviet
citizens who were hungry for any information about zagranitsa (abroad).65
By showing that Britain possessed a distinct ethos and way of life, Anglia
complicated simplistic binary notions about “East” and “West.” In its own
small way, it helped to break down barriers and ease communication be-
tween Britain and the USSR, not only at the level of the state, but, perhaps
equally importantly, at the level of the ordinary individual. By 1992, when
the last issues of the magazine appeared, the Cold War was over, and An-
glia’s work appeared to be done.
Notes
1. S. Autio-Sarasmo and B. Humphreys, eds., Winter Kept Us Warm: Cold War Interactions
Reconsidered (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2010), 14.
2. On the radio see, for example, G. Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda: The BBC
and Voice of America in International Politics, 1956–1964 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996); M.
Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (London:
Brasseys, 1997); A. Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000); A. Ross Johnson,
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2010); A. Ross Johnson and R. E. Parta, eds., Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe (Budapest: Central European Press, 2012).
3. K. Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006), 15; G. Barnhisel and C. Turner, eds., Pressing
the Fight: Print, Propaganda, and the Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
2010), 12.
4. W. L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 118–19; Y. Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War
(University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 2003), 148–51; A. Yarrow, “Selling a New Vi-
sion of America to the World: Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda,”
Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 4 (2009).
5. E.g., Osgood, Total Cold War; Hixson, Parting the Curtain; N. J. Cull, The Cold War and
the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); S. Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American Cru-
sade against the Soviet Union (New York: New York University Press, 1999); F. S. Saunders,
Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999); Rich-
mond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War; J. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible: Ameri-
can Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany, 1945–1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1999); L. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: US Propaganda and the
Cold War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
6. On some Western European initiatives, see G. Scott-Smith, “Interdoc and Western
European Psychological Warfare: The American Connection, 1958,” Intelligence and National
Security 26, no. 2–3 (2011); G. Scott-Smith, Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Net-
work: Cold War Internationale (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012); A. Macher, “Hungarian Cultural
Diplomacy, 1957–1963: Echoes of Western Cultural Activity in a Communist Country,” in
Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy, ed. J. Gienow-Hecht and M. Donfried (New York: Ber-
ghahn Books, 2010). There is now a growing body of literature on British activities: Rawnsley,
Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda; Nelson, War of the Black Heavens; FCO Historians, IRD: Or-
igins and Establishment of the Foreign Office Information Research Department 1946–48 (London:
FCO/LRD, 1995); P. Lashmar and J. Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War (Stroud: Sutton,
1998); R. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (Lon-
don: John Murray, 2001); A. Defty, Britain, America, and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945–
1953: The Information Research Department (London: Routledge, 2004); L. Schwartz, Political
Warfare Against the Kremlin: US and British Propaganda Policy at the Beginning of the Cold War
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009); M. B. Smith, “Peaceful Coexistence at All Costs: Cold War
Exchanges between Britain and the Soviet Union in 1956,” Cold War History 12, no. 3 (2012).
7. P. M. Taylor, The Projection of Britain: Overseas Publicity and Propaganda 1919–1939
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); P. M. Taylor, British Propaganda in the Twenti-
eth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), especially 227–29; Defty, Britain;
Schwartz, Political Warfare, 3; L. Risso, “A Difficult Compromise: British and American Plans
for a Common Anti-Communist Propaganda Response in Western Europe, 1948–1958,” In-
telligence and National Security 26, no. 2–3 (2011).
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The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia
8. J.-F. Fayet, “VOKS: The Third Dimension of Soviet Foreign Policy,” in Gienow-Hecht
and Donfried, Searching, 31–49; M. David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Di-
plomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
9. F. C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive: The Role of Cultural Diplomacy in For-
eign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960); “The Soviet Cultural Campaign
Abroad,” FO 975/77, The National Archives of the UK (henceforth TNA); N. Gould-Davies,
“The Logic of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 2 (2003).
10. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 101.
11. Defty, Britain, 239–41; Schwartz, Political Warfare, 181.
12. Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive.
13. Cmd. 9753, appendix; Smith, “Peaceful Coexistence at All Costs.”
14. On Al Aalam, see J. R. Vaughan, “‘A Certain Idea of Britain’: British Cultural Diplo-
macy in the Middle East, 1945–57,” Contemporary British History 19, no. 2 (2005).
15. S. Lovell, The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
16. K. Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire that Lost
the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 12.
17. E. R. Frankel, Novy Mir: A Case Study in the Politics of Literature, 1952–1958 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
18. Minutes, 27 January 1965, INF 12/1094, TNA.
19. V. Pechatnov, “The Rise and Fall of Britansky Soyuznik: A Case Study in Soviet Re-
sponse to British Propaganda of the Mid-1940s,” The Historical Journal 41, no. 1 (1998).
20. FO 371/111774, TNA.
21. Parrott to Brimelow, 11 January 1957, FO 371/129124, TNA.
22. Cmnd. 1287.
23. M. Grant, “Towards a Central Office of Information: Continuity and Change in British
Government Information Policy 1939–51,” Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 1 (1999).
24. Defty, Britain, 239; Murray to Hopson, 8 February 1961 and Hopson to Murray, 10
February 1961, FCO 95/1232, TNA.
25. I transliterate Англия as Anglia throughout this chapter, as this was the form used by
the FO.
26. Draft FO Brief, August 1958, INF 12/1095; FO to Moscow, 25 January 1960, FO
953/1990, TNA; Hansard HC Debates, 10 April 1957, Series 5, vol. 568, cc. 1133–34.
27. Mason minute, 22 March 1960 and Morgan minute, 23 March 1960, FO 953/1990;
Moscow to FO, 12 May 1960 and FO to Moscow, 13 May 1960, FO 953/1991, TNA.
28. Bayne to Clive, 9 April 1968, memorandum on Anglia, FCO 95/348, TNA.
29. Simpson to Slater, 15 January 1957, INF 12/1347; Embassy to Simpson, 16 October
1957, INF 12/1095, TNA.
30. Schwartz, Political Warfare, 150, 169. For another example, see Defty, Britain, 104.
31. Richmond, Cultural Exchange, 149; Schwartz, Political Warfare, 198.
32. McMillan to Lovell, 27 August 1957 and Draft FO brief, August 1958, INF 12/1095,
TNA.
33. Taylor, Projection, 3; Cmd. 9138, 6.
34. Funded by the British government, the G.B.-USSR Association was set up in 1959 as
an attempt to promote dialogue and contacts between Britain and the USSR in a way that
would circumvent the front organizations such as the British-Soviet Friendship Society.
35. Morgan to King, 18 January 1967 and Fretwell minute, 31 January 1967, FCO 95/343,
TNA.
36. McMillan to Lovell, 27 August 1957, INF 12/1095, TNA.
37. Embassy to Simpson, 16 October 1957, INF 12/1095, TNA.
38. Anglia 11 (1964).
39. King minute 5 May 1961 and Russell minute 15 May 1961, FO 1110/1459, TNA.
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Sarah Davies
40. Lashmar and Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, 36; C. Mayhew, A War of Words
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1998).
41. King to Miller, 23 June 1967, FCO 95/343, TNA.
42. Miller to Bewg, 16 May 1960, INF 12/1347, TNA.
43. King minute, 5 May 1961, Russell minute, 15 May 1961 and Cartledge minute, 15 May
1961, FO 1110/1459; Hopson to Marett, 1 March 1962, FO 1110/1586, TNA.
44. S. Davies, “The Soft Power of Anglia: British Cold War Cultural Diplomacy in the
USSR,” Contemporary British History 27, no. 3 (2013).
45. M. Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); M. Dobson, “Contesting the Paradigms
of De-Stalinisation: Readers’ Responses to ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,’” Slavic
Review 64, no. 3 (2005); D. Kozlov, “‘I Have Not Read, But I Will Say’: Changing Ideas of
Social Membership, 1958–66,” Kritika 7, no. 3 (2006).
46. King minute, 16 January 1963, FO 1110/1586, TNA; Schwartz, Political Warfare, 90–
92. See also G. Mytton, “Audience Research at the BBC External Services during the Cold
War,” Cold War History 11, no. 1 (2011): 55.
47. Hall, “FCO-Sponsored COI/HMSO Services—A Survey,” 12 June 1969, FO 95/677,
TNA.
48. Readers’ letters 1963–64, FO 1110/1845; readers’ letters 1965, FO 1110/1977; readers’
letters 1974–75, FCO 95/1844, TNA.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. W. Miller, Russians as People (New York: Dutton, 1961), 58–59.
52. Anglia to Reshetov, 4 November 1965, FO 1110/1977; Droshnev to Anglia, 11 May
1975 and Penfold to Droshnev (no date), FCO 95/1844; Krai to Anglia, 8 September 1974,
FCO 95/1844, TNA.
53. Volkov to Anglia, 16 December 1963, FO 1110/1845; Brucene to Anglia, 18 December
1974, Anglia to Brucene (no date) and Pasekova to Anglia, December 1974, FCO 95/1844,
TNA.
54. Volkov to Anglia, 16 December 1963, FO 1110/1845; Krai to Anglia, 8 September 1974
and Anglia to Krai (no date), FCO 95/1844; Sankov to Anglia, 22 September 1965, Anglia to
Sankov, November 1965 and Baizontovs to Anglia, 19 September 1965, FO 1110/1977, TNA.
55. Kerimova to Anglia, 24 December 1974, Anglia to Kerimova (no date) and Masham to
Kerimova, 18 March 1975, FCO 95/1844, TNA.
56. S. Mikkonen, “Stealing the Monopoly of Knowledge? Soviet Reactions to U.S. Cold
War Broadcasting,” Kritika 11, no. 4 (2010): 790.
57. Vishnevetskaya to Anglia, 6 February 1964 and Berliand to Anglia, 31 January 1964,
FO 1110/1845; Gurin to Anglia, 1 September 1965 and Anglia to Gurin, November 1965, FO
1110/1977, TNA.
58. Komarova to Anglia, 12 August 1965, FO 1110/1977, TNA.
59. The publication of the obituary was a significant event in itself.
60. Savitskii to Anglia, 18 August 1974, FCO 95/1844, TNA.
61. For a discussion on the importance of direct interpersonal communication in relation
to U.S. exhibitions in the Soviet Union, see T. Tolvaisas, “Cold War ‘Bridge-Building’: U.S.
Exchange Exhibits and Their Reception in the Soviet Union, 1959–1967,” Journal of Cold War
Studies 12, no. 4 (2010).
62. See footnote 6 for some examples.
63. Defty, Britain, 104.
64. Autio-Sarasmo and Humphreys, Winter Kept Us Warm, 14.
65. For a discussion on the concept of zagranitsa, see A. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever,
Until It Was No More (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
– 234 –
P A R T IV
Lars Lundgren
ies with an aim to de-Westernize media theory.4 With the fall of the Iron
Curtain and the liberation of Eastern Europe, this need was even further
accentuated, with repeated calls for a renewed historiography of transna-
tional television.5
Besides this tendency, Cold War dichotomies have also affected media
theory and history quite notably, sometimes in a naïve and direct way, as
in the influential Four Theories of the Press, published at the height of the
Cold War.6 Lately, several studies have been published that provide signifi-
cantly more nuanced and intellectually challenging accounts of the media
during the Cold War.7 However, attention is usually directed toward one
of the two superpowers and their efforts in the field of media and commu-
nication, not least regarding radio broadcasting and propaganda.8 Finally,
it is sometimes argued that scholarly attention to media history is primar-
ily restricted to different aspects of political communication, i.e., media
and democracy, especially regarding the liberalization of media systems in
post-Communist times.9
While television historiography is most often restricted to national per-
spectives or to emphasizing the American dominance of satellite televi-
sion, this chapter suggests that early transnational television during the
Cold War was more diverse and complex than traditional narratives usu-
ally acknowledge. This diversity and complexity is investigated and ana-
lyzed by means of looking at two examples of competition and potential
conflict between the OIRT and the EBU, and one example of cooperation
that eventually led to the linking of their respective television networks,
the Eurovision and Intervision.
The end of the Cold War meant that things previously kept separate
could once again come together. That was true in the case of East and West
Germany, and it was true for the major broadcasting organizations in Eu-
rope. The EBU and the OIRT merged in January 1993 and their respective
records are today kept at the EBU headquarters in Geneva, collecting cor-
respondence, photographs, and minutes from meetings, as well as official
documents such as the EBU Review and the OIRT Information. The files
provide details regarding first and foremost the relations between the EBU
and the OIRT, both in terms of their rivalry but also the emerging frame-
work for cooperation. The organizations primarily cooperated in the field
of cross-border broadcasting and information exchange, and such issues
are further analyzed by examining records from the BBC written archives,
since the BBC was, besides the EBU and the OIRT, instrumental in early
transnational broadcasts in Europe.
The records help us paint a broad picture of a rather complex situation
regarding broadcasting in Europe during the Cold War. The ambition of
the chapter is twofold. I will initially study how the two organizations com-
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Transnational Television in Europe
pete for a leading position in the global broadcasting system. First, I look at
the OIRT initiative called Science in the Service of Peace, which was a pro-
gram series offered to broadcasters around the world. Second, I look at the
internal discussions of the EBU concerning the name of the union and the
question of whether to drop the adjective “European” or not. Shortening
the name was thought to open up the union to members outside the Euro-
pean broadcasting zone, particularly to countries suspicious about Europe’s
colonial past. In the final section of the chapter, I analyze the organization
and cooperation behind the first transnational broadcast to penetrate the
Iron Curtain. This analysis draws upon one particular broadcast, which
spanned the entire European continent, in April 1961, when Yuri Gagarin
returned to Moscow after completing the first manned spaceflight during
which he had orbited Earth.10
The division of Europe’s broadcasting organizations into the OIRT and the
EBU was the result of Cold War tensions and political controversies be-
tween broadcasters in Western and Eastern Europe. The skirmishes within
their predecessor, the International Broadcasting Union (IBU), established
in 1925, eventually led to its dissolution in 1950 and the formation of the
two new broadcast organizations. It is crucial to be aware of these changes
in order to understand the conditions of conflict and cooperation in the
field of broadcasting during the Cold War.11 Despite the splits, new orga-
nizations inherited much of the IBU’s purpose, organizational structure,
and working routines. To a large extent, the IBU was created in response
to what was perceived as “American chaos” regarding the development of
broadcasting on the other side of the Atlantic. Even though the dichotomy
of “American chaos” and “British quality” was exaggerated, the establish-
ment of an international body to deal with international broadcasting is-
sues was considered necessary.12
The IBU had three main fields of operation. The most urgent one con-
centrated on technical issues, such as frequency allocation and monitoring
of the spectrum, something very much needed in the densely populated
Europe with an abundance of competing broadcasters.13 Additionally, a
number of legal issues had to be dealt with—for instance, questions of
copyright and the concerns regarding the use of broadcasting for propa-
ganda purposes. Finally, the IBU provided a framework for program ex-
changes between member organizations, which was mainly evident in the
production of musical program series such as National Nights and European
Concerts.14 This tripartite division into technical, legal, and program activ-
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Lars Lundgren
ities was inherited by both the EBU and the OIR (The T for “television”
was added in 1960 and the organization was thus originally named the
OIR).15
The IBU was essentially a regional broadcasting union of Europe, but
one with a number of associate members all over the world.16 However,
one important player was missing from the IBU: the Soviet Union, despite
engaging in international radio broadcasting at the time.17 When it was
clear that the IBU would have difficulties in maintaining operations after
World War II, the Soviet Union came to play a key role in the founding of
the OIR.
The IBU’s most flourishing years took place from the beginning of 1925
until the breakout of World War II, when many of the activities such as
concerts and program exchange were abandoned. After World War II, the
IBU was accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany, mainly due to issues
having to do with the location of the technical center in Brussels, allowing
for German influence. This resulted in a number of members cancelling
their membership, providing the Soviet Union with a favorable position
from which to suggest a new union.
After the war, there was an attempt to rebuild the IBU, but the strong
and influential broadcasting organizations had quite a few difficulties agree-
ing upon the structure of the organization. According to Ernest Eugster,
the French wanted to turn the IBU into a truly international organization,
parallel to international collaborations such as the International Telecom-
munication Union (ITU) and the United Nations (UN).18 The Soviet au-
thorities were still skeptical toward the IBU because of the Nazi links, while
the British wanted to keep the old and experienced organization rather
than try to create something completely new. Even more importantly, the
BBC was strongly against allowing membership to broadcasters from the
Soviet republics since that would seriously affect the voting procedure and
power balance of the union in a similar way as in the UN, where the Soviet
republics had voting rights. The question of voting rights soon became
even more problematic as other Western broadcasters shared the BBC’s
criticism. As a consequence, a complicated process started during which
the OIR was founded and the IBU remained alive but seriously weakened
since a number of broadcasting organizations had resigned, most notably
the BBC. The IBU was dissolved in May 1950 after the foundation of the
EBU at a conference in Torquay in February the same year, by the initiative
of the BBC. This meant that Western and Eastern European broadcasters
now had their respective broadcasting organizations and that the ambition
to create an international organization similar to, for example, the ITU or
UN fell short. Instead, the dualism of the Cold War was reproduced on the
European broadcasting arena.
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Transnational Television in Europe
vided only a very brief response informing Wallenborn that they had, so far,
broadcast Professor J. D. Bernal’s talk. The short announcement may be
interpreted as unwillingness to yield to Wallenborn’s suggestions.32 In or-
der to mark their independence toward the EBU, perhaps, Pearl Ondaatje
from Ceylon Radio restrained from making any references to or showing
any interest in the programs offered by the EBU via their competing URI
project.
Two broadcasters that were not members of either the EBU or OIRT
also replied to Wallenborn’s letter: the South African Broadcasting Corpo-
ration (SABC) and Radio Pakistan.33 The SABC clearly stated that they
had no intention of broadcasting the series, presumably not willing to risk
being subjected to propaganda. Mr. Hameed Naseem, director of program
planning at Radio Pakistan, wrote that they had not yet decided to broad-
cast any of the series but that they had “invited scripts of some of the talks
produced by them, which we expect would be useful to us as background
material.”34 He further noted that they had so far received no information
regarding the URI from the EBU and would be glad to receive it if there
were no obligations attached, and concluded the letter by noting that Ra-
dio Pakistan was not a member of the OIRT. The intermediate position of
belonging to neither organization appears to have been handy. In contrast
to YLE in Finland, which belonged to both organizations and refused the
OIRT’s offer, Radio Pakistan seized the opportunity to use programming
from both organizations.
The responses from broadcasters around the world seem to have been in
line with the geopolitical and cultural proximity of the broadcasters. The
broadcasters based in Ceylon and Pakistan, arguably the organizations with
the least developed relations with the EBU, were also the most inclined to
keep the door open to both the EBU and the OIRT. The predictable re-
sponses to both the offer and the letter from Wallenborn should not lead us
to think that the entire issue was a superficial matter. The OIR’s intentions
were not restricted to attracting new members or creating possibilities for
cooperation. Rather, it also included demonstrating that they were active
in the field of transnational broadcasting rather than being merely a re-
gional broadcasting organization. Already in the late 1950s, the EBU was
significantly larger than the OIRT, with a large number of associate mem-
bers around the world. However, changes in the geopolitical environment
opened up the field of broadcasting, and the OIRT initiative may be seen
as a way to challenge the EBU in the international scene.
While the Dutch response noting a different conception of peace was
likely meant as a straightforward dismissal of the OIRT initiative, it also
made an illustrative point. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, broadcasting
was considered a means of creating intercultural understanding, albeit in
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Lars Lundgren
soon realized that the question regarding the change of the name was too
complex to be settled during the meeting in Madrid, and the matter was
postponed to the next General Assembly. Meanwhile, an inquiry regarding
members’ standpoints on the matter was made.38 The inquiry showed that
the majority of EBU members were in favor of changing, and it was decided
that the principles of the name issue would be discussed, as well as possible
alternative names should the name changing become reality.39
The correspondence in the time between the Madrid meeting and the
next meeting in Copenhagen in June 1961 illustrates the diversity of opin-
ions but also the difficulties in reaching a decision about the name issue.
In February, Hugh Carleton Greene declared to Olof Rydbeck that the
BBC had made a thorough examination that “fortifies us in our view that
the present name should be retained.”40 Referring to their intimate con-
tacts with African and Asian broadcasters, Greene also argued that the
BBC “fully understand[s] their special sensitivities” but that he “personally
do[es] not think that this tendency is likely to be a permanent one or has
any deep-rooted significance.”41 The letter thus exposed some colonial un-
dertones, expecting the former colonies to eventually come to their senses,
and maintaining that, in this process, Europe “need[s] to protect its status
in the present scheme of things and should not appear to be abdicating
from the traditions and achievements it enjoys.”42
In his reply, Rydbeck fully agreed with Greene in keeping the name un-
changed. The letter also outlined a strategy in reasoning why the name
not be changed. Rydbeck identified two dilemmas that needed careful con-
sideration: first, he argued that it was important not to stir unnecessary
emotions among members, and, second, he wanted to make sure that asso-
ciate members and nonmembers did not feel excluded by this decision. His
considerations on these points were carefully elaborated:
Nevertheless, I still think it was wise to postpone the final decision in Madrid
and I think the way in which we deal with the matter in Copenhagen is not
without importance. Two facts remain unchanged, the sensitiveness of the new
states, and our interest in making them turn to us and not elsewhere in seeking
professional contacts and advice. I do not think we should underestimate the
OIRT. … It would certainly be to the great disadvantage of our members if we
were to be surrounded by organisations wholly committed to the OIRT and it
would also do serious harm to the international position of the EBU.
I am therefore personally of the opinion that our future decision to keep our old
name ought to be combined with some positive gestures towards our non-Eu-
ropean associate members and towards other states who might wish to join the
EBU. We ought to try to convince them that our decision does not mean that
we are not actively interested in developing our relationship with them and
that on the contrary we are willing to assist them in various ways if they wish
us to do so.43
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Lars Lundgren
Since the core members of the EBU, such as the BBC, argued in favor of
keeping the name, Rydbeck concluded that changing the name was not
an option. However, he also argued for the need to proceed carefully in
the matter and not force the decision, which could worsen the relations
between the EBU and its members as well as nonmembers. Rydbeck feared
that deciding to keep the name might weaken the EBU’s position in the
field of international broadcasting if Asian and African broadcasters then
turned to the OIRT, which would consequently undermine the EBU’s
position in the international field. At a first glance, the issue of keeping
“European” in the name of the organization may seem artificial. But the
discussion shows that tensions over Cold War broadcasting by no means
were restricted to the European continent. Instead, the anxiety over not
being able to attract broadcasters in Africa and Asia shows how broadcast-
ing was already entangled in worldwide Cold War tensions.
When addressing Hanoch Givton, the head of the Israel Broadcasting
Service, Rydbeck used his diplomatic skills in order to present this de-
cision. Givton had been the main protagonist for the name change to-
gether with the director-general of Radiodiffusion-Television Tunisiene,
Chadli Klibi. In a letter dated 20 March 1961, after corresponding with
Greene, Rydbeck carefully explained to Givton the administrative require-
ments for a possible name change, concluding, “To decide for or against a
concrete proposal for change in Copenhagen is … not possible.”44 After
having established that the Copenhagen meeting could not decide on the
name change, Rydbeck assured Givton that the question would still be
carefully considered and stressed the importance of further collaboration
with associate and nonmembers in Asia and Africa alike, ending the letter
with a promise to “personally do everything in my power to promote such
development.”45
The name of the union and its statutes were thoroughly intertwined: if
the union was to drop the adjective “European” from its name, it would
lead to demands to change the statutes that prioritized membership of Eu-
ropean organizations. At the Copenhagen meeting, this issue was discussed
under the rubric “Possible Revision of the Statutes.”46 However, during
the meeting of the administrative council in Geneva one month prior to
Copenhagen, it was decided that the statutes were not to be changed, just
as Rydbeck had pointed out in his letter to Givton. So, even though the
rubric stated otherwise, the Copenhagen meeting did not discuss possible
revision of the statutes since such a change had to be submitted at least
two months prior to an extraordinary session of the General Assembly.
In several aspects, the Copenhagen meeting followed the same lines of
argument as the Madrid meeting six months earlier, with representatives
falling into opposing camps, with a small majority supporting changing the
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Transnational Television in Europe
Neither Science in the Service of Peace nor the name issue came anywhere
close to an open conflict. The situation is better described as competition.
With its science program series, the OIRT wanted to catch the attention
of broadcasting organizations in different parts of the world and to point
out the superiority of their services over the EBU. The EBU had a similar
objective for changing its name: it did not want to be seen as a regional
organization. The EBU wanted to be seen as an attractive alternative to
non-European broadcasters. Furthermore, both initiatives were directed
away from the European continent and addressed Third World organi-
zations, although both organizations were essentially European. A closer
look at their activities on the European continent paints a slightly different
picture in which the EBU and the OIRT are engaged in joint projects and
cooperation in the field of television.52
In some instances cooperation was necessary, as with information ex-
change regarding frequency allocation and ionospheric propagation, in
order to avoid interference and other technical problems. However, in the
late 1950s, the two organizations started to discuss program exchanges and
the possibility of live transmission across the Iron Curtain. The first tenta-
tive discussions mainly concerned technical obstacles, but, as the negotia-
tions progressed, they turned toward program exchanges as well as cultural
and legal matters connected to such exchanges.
The political division of Europe that took place after the end of World
War II kept the organizations at arm’s length for a number of years. How-
ever, in the mid-1950s, the contacts were reestablished and, in February
1957, the technical committees of the organizations met unofficially in
Helsinki. The invitation was wishful that this informal meeting “can point
out the path leading to a successful co-operation between the OIRT and
UER.”53 Parties were first brought together by the questions of frequency
use and ionospheric propagation, which could be dealt with only if the two
organizations worked together. The initial meeting could thus be under-
stood in terms of necessary cooperation, but the Helsinki meeting went
further by discussing the possibility of developing the relations between the
two organizations further. Concrete measures included regular visits to the
meetings of the other organization. This suggestion by the OIRT was met
with skepticism by the EBU. A later document of the EBU’s technical com-
mittee makes it clear that the EBU saw the consolidation of cooperation
as “not desirable” and “premature,” not least because the OIRT had often
failed to follow previous agreements concerning information exchange.54
Yet, even if mutual visits did not materialize following the Helsinki
meeting, it did break an important barrier. The idea of joint problem solv-
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Transnational Television in Europe
ing was now imaginable, and the field of television could be considered a
transnational arena where Cold War tensions might be put aside. Later, the
meeting was referred to as the important first step after which representa-
tives from the two organizations started to share information and knowl-
edge. This meeting, then, could be regarded as an icebreaker that allowed
for the sharing of viewpoints and the building of social relations that made
future cooperation possible.
Almost exactly three years later, in February 1960, the organizations
met again, now in Geneva.55 This time it was an official meeting with full
representation from both organizations. This Geneva meeting was more
directly concerned with cross-border broadcasting, dealing with legal and
programming issues as well as the already established cooperation in the
technical field. The expanded agenda included three separate working
committees that worked in different ways and with varied success. Legal
issues were difficult to solve cooperatively due to different national legisla-
tions and their often residing outside the organizations’ jurisdiction. Issues
of program exchange were less dependent on national frameworks. Thus
the EBU and OIRT were able to act as catalysts for these exchanges, even
if bilateral solutions were recommended in some cases.
At the time of the meeting, there was no physical junction between Inter-
vision and Eurovision, the broadcasting networks of these organizations, that
would have made it possible to produce live transmission over the Iron Cur-
tain. One of the last points on the agenda was the OIRT proposal about five
junction points strategically distributed along the East-West border, connect-
ing networks hitherto separated by the Cold War.56 The EBU immediately
rejected this suggestion by referring it back to the national postal, telegraph,
and telephone services (PTTs) that had jurisdiction over these matters. The
Tallinn-Helsinki link was not included in the OIRT’s suggestion, but it be-
came reality fourteen months later, being the first such link. One explana-
tion why this link was not included in the OIRT’s proposal could be that
the Soviet Union was not part of the Intervision network at the time. This
left the OIRT little power to include this link in its proposal. Furthermore,
Finland was a special case, with its membership in both organizations.
The meetings between the OIRT and the EBU had a dual focus, and
the entire process of establishing a link between Intervision and Eurovi-
sion was complex, with a number of different stakeholders. The main goal
was to set up a general framework for program exchange and cross-border
broadcasting, issues that had to be dealt with from legal, technical, and
cultural points of view. Still, the EBU and the OIRT had separate agen-
das and had to try to reach a common understanding about the future of
television. Negotiations were also constrained by obstacles and difficulties
linked to Cold War politics.
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Lars Lundgren
to take into consideration the larger frameworks since both Intervision and
Eurovision were to rebroadcast the event. Soviet authorities were eager to
use the chance to get the signal through to the Intervision network, and
having the broadcast sent through the Eurovision network was considered
a clear propaganda victory. Once the technical problems were solved, it
soon became a matter of negotiating the terms of broadcast. Additionally,
it was evident that the transnational character of the broadcast made it
a rather complicated agreement. Since the Eurovision network was used,
the EBU had to be involved, as well as national broadcasters in each of the
relaying countries. Most issues were solved between the BBC, the Finn-
ish Broadcasting Company, and the Soviet authorities, but the broadcast
would not have been possible had it not been for the general framework
worked out between the EBU and the OIRT.
Conclusion
This chapter began by suggesting that television history has adopted some
perspectives from Cold War history rather blindly. Historians of television
have almost exclusively been interested in national histories, and, in a sim-
ilar way, the two superpowers have had a privileged position in Cold War
history. The three cases presented here have displayed a more complex
and multifaceted picture, with national and transnational stakeholders in-
volved in a fierce competition but also trying hard to find common ground
for developing a Europe-wide television network.
Based on these cases, one may discern a geopolitical dimension. In their
relations with non-European countries and broadcasters, the EBU and the
OIRT were engaged in competition, trying to win over new members and
develop program exchanges. Both the program series Science in the Service
of Peace and the question of whether the EBU should drop “European”
from its name aimed at making organizations more attractive to broadcast-
ers in the developing world. In relations with non-European organizations,
Europe (as a name and as an origin) served as a symbolic site of power,
requiring a balancing act when trying to attract new members to the orga-
nization. This balancing act was difficult for both, but for different reasons.
The EBU had a stronger European, and thereby regional, identity, while
the OIRT was perceived as inherently political. Although both organi-
zations were limited by regional or political identities, their efforts show
that each was engaged in trying to present itself as an attractive option to
non-European broadcasters.
The traditional narratives of broadcasting in Cold War Europe usually
concern propaganda and conflict, depicting a divided continent where
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Lars Lundgren
contacts between the East and the West were restricted to broadcast spill-
over and propaganda. However, in addition to the regular exchanges of
program material there were also rather intense efforts to establish formal
cooperation between the OIRT and the EBU, efforts that eventually re-
sulted in a live transmission link binding the entire European continent
together. This effort depended on cooperation between a large number of
broadcasters across Europe, and not least the EBU and the OIRT.
The activities of the EBU and the OIRT have been overlooked or even
neglected in histories of cultural exchange during the Cold War. This is
perhaps explained by their unfortunate positions as falling outside both the
national bias of television history and the superpower rivalry of the Cold
War. Being relatively close to national broadcasters, both the EBU and
the OIRT consisted of national organizations, and their close affiliations
with the superpowers probably also contributed to their relative invisibility.
The activities of the EBU and the OIRT may easily be incorporated into
national narratives of superpower rivalry. However, the present chapter
has countered this tendency to some extent and shown that cultural ex-
changes during the Cold War evoke questions far beyond Cold War di-
chotomies and national broadcast histories.
Notes
1. Sabina Mihelj and Marsha Siefert have addressed this issue in studies of journalism in
the northwestern part of Yugoslavia and East-West coproduction of films. S. Mihelj, “The
Dreamworld of New Yugoslav Culture and the Logic of Cold War Binaries,” in Divided Dream-
worlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West, ed. P. Romijn, G. Scott-Smith, and J. Segal
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); M. Siefert, “Co-Producing Cold War Cul-
ture: East-West Film Making and Cultural Diplomacy,” in Divided Dreamworlds? ed. Romijn,
Scott-Smith and Segal.
2. M. Hilmes, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting
(London: Routledge, 2012), 3. There are, of course, early works on transnational broadcast-
ing, most notably the account provided by Nordenstreng and Varis, which delineates the
broad structures regarding program exchange across the world. K. Nordenstreng and T. Va-
ris, “Television Traffic: A One-Way Street? A Survey and Analysis of the International Flow
– 252 –
Transnational Television in Europe
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Lars Lundgren
ties and cooperation between the OIRT and the EBU, see C. Heinrich-Franke and R. Immel,
“Piercing the Iron Curtain? The Television Programme Exchange across the Iron Curtain
in the 1960s and 1970s,” in Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold
War, ed. A. Badenoch, A. Fickers, and C. Heinrich-Franke (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag,
2013).
19. For a contemporary portrait of the respective organizations and Soviet broadcast-
ing, see R. B. Barber, “The European Broadcasting Union,” Journal of Broadcasting 6 (1962):
111–24; K. Harwood, “The International Radio and Television Organisation,” Journal of
Broadcasting 5 (1961): 61–72; F. Williams, “The Soviet Philosophy of Broadcasting,” Journal
of Broadcasting 6 (1962): 3–10.
20. L. Parks, Cultures in Orbit. Satellites and the Televisual (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005); J. D. Peters, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1999); Schwoch, Global TV.
21. Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime. Additionally, in his analysis of Intersputnik, the Soviet sat-
ellite system, John Downing describes a later phase in transnational Soviet broadcasting. J.
Downing, “The Intersputnik System and Soviet Television,” Soviet Studies 37, no. 4 (1985):
465–83.
22. Undated letter from the OIR to broadcasters, appendix to Wallenborn’s letter, 15 No-
vember 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, Archive of the European Broad-
casting Union (hereafter the EBU), Geneva.
23. Undated letter from the OIR to broadcasters, appendix to Wallenborn’s letter, 15 No-
vember 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva. In a later document
from the OIRT, the topics for the broadcast year 1961/62 are listed in detail, with topics such
as “Seltene Tiere Mongoliens” (Mongolosiche VR) and “Das Leben im Kosmos” (UdSSR).
EBU Registry File “OIRT Sammelband der Dokument eder Programmkommision der OIRT
VI, Tagung Budapest, Juli 1961; Beilage Nr. 1 zu Dok. PK-1/61, “Kalenderplan des Internatio-
nalen Rundfunkzyklus ‘Die Wissenschaft im Dienstes des Friedens.’”.
24. Letter from the OIR to broadcasters, appendix to Wallenborn’s letter, 15 November
1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU. In the early 1960s there was yet an-
other international initiative from the OIRT, the “‘Peace and Friendship’ literary-dramatic
competition.” “OIR: Address to International and National Radio and Television Organisa-
tions of the World,” 2, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva; L from J.
Hrebik, General Secretary of the OIRT, received by the EBU on 8 March 1962, O6 – “OIRT
Documents and Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva.
25. The letter refers to the World Federation of Scientists, but the correct name of the
organization is the World Federation of Scientific Workers, a Socialist initiative for the inter-
national organization of scientists.
26. Letter from Leo Wallenborn to EBU members, 15 November 1957, O6 – “OIRT Doc-
uments Correspondence”. “The International University of the Air” was initiated by Radio-
diffusion Télévision Française and organized by the EBU.
27. Ibid.
28. Reply to Wallenborn from Nils-Olof Franzén, Program Director at Radiotjänst, Swe-
den, 22 November 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva.
29. Reply to Wallenborn from Harry Zinder, Director at Israel Broadcasting Service, 20
December 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva.
30. Reply to Wallenborn from Nederlandsche Radio-Unie, 6 December 1957, O6 – “OIRT
Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva.
31. Reply to Wallenborn from Jussi Koskiluoma, Program Director at the Finnish Broad-
casting Company (YLE), Finland, 22 November 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspon-
dence”, EBU, Geneva.
32. Reply to Wallenborn from Pearl Ondaatje, English Programs Organizer for Director
General of Broadcasting, Radio Ceylon, 16 December 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Cor-
– 254 –
Transnational Television in Europe
respondence”, EBU, Geneva. John Desmond Bernal was a British professor in physics with a
strong engagement in politics and Marxism, which, along with many other things, got him
engaged in the World Federation of Scientific Workers.
33. Reply to Wallenborn from Hameed Naseem, Director of Program Planning, Radio
Pakistan, 4 December 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva; Reply
to Wallenborn from G. Dickson, Head of English Service, South African Broadcasting Cor-
poration, 4 December 1957, O6 – OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva. Both
the SABC in South Africa and Pakistan Radio would join the EBU as associate members at
a later stage.
34. Reply to Wallenborn from Hameed Naseem, Director of Program Planning, Radio
Pakistan, 4 December 1957, O6 – “OIRT Documents Correspondence”, EBU, Geneva.
35. See Schwoch, Global TV.
36. See H. Gumbert, “Exploring Transnational Media Exchange in the 1960s,” VIEW Jour-
nal of European Television History and Culture 3, no. 5 (2014), 50–59; T. Beutelschmidt and R.
Oehmig “Connected Enemies? Program Transfer between East and West during the Cold War
and the Example of East German Television,” VIEW Journal of European Television History and
Culture 3, no. 5 (2014), 60–67.
37. The European Broadcasting Zone (now “Area”) is extended outside the European con-
tinent and includes countries bordering the Mediterranean.
38. “Fifth Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly,” Madrid, 25 November 1960,
O.A./1567-A.G./208, EBU, Geneva; “Eleventh Ordinary Session of the General Assembly,”
Madrid, 25–26 and 28 November 1960, O.A./1568-A.G./209, EBU, Geneva.
39. “Twelfth Ordinary Session of the General Assembly,” Copenhagen, 2 to 5 June 1961,
35, O.A./1644-A.G./221, EBU, Geneva.
40. Letter from Hugh Carleton Greene to Olof Rydbeck, 10 February 1961, O15 – “Stat-
ures 1960-65”, EBU, Geneva.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Letter from Olof Rydbeck to Hugh Carleton Greene, undated (reply to above), O15 –
“Statutes 1960-65”, EBU, Geneva.
44. Letter from Olof Rydbeck to Hannoch Givton, 20 March 1961, O15 – “Statutes 1960-
65”, EBU, Geneva.
45. Ibid.
46. “Twelfth Ordinary Session of the General Assembly,” Copenhagen, 2 to 5 June 1961,
34ff, O.A./1644-A.G./221, EBU, Geneva.
47. Not all countries participated in the debate, and it was a discussion rather than a refer-
endum with two clear options. In the discussion, Hanoch Givton of Israeli Broadcasting noted
that in the working documents, a majority of the members were for a change in name, but
that during the Administrative Council’s meeting in Geneva in May 1961, this had changed.
During the Copenhagen meeting, the representatives of broadcasters from the Netherlands,
Finland, Tunisia, Norway, Israel, Switzerland, and Germany all expressed a wish to change
the name of the union. Representatives from broadcasters in Belgium, Italy, Ireland, and the
United Kingdom (both the BBC and the ITA/ITCA) argued to keep “European” in the name.
“Twelfth Ordinary Session of the General Assembly,” Copenhagen, 2 to 5 June 1961, 34–45,
O.A./1644-A.G./221, EBU, Geneva.
48. Ibid., 38.
49. Ibid., 36.
50. Ibid., 41.
51. Ibid., 39. Marcel Bezençon was an important figure in the field of international pro-
gram exchange and the originator of the so-called Bezençon plan, which would facilitate
program exchange within the EBU. C. Heinrich-Franke, “Creating Transnationality through
an International Organization?” Media History 16, no. 1 (2010): 67–81.
– 255 –
Lars Lundgren
– 256 –
Chapter 13
TRANSNATIONAL SPACES
BETWEEN POLAND AND FINLAND
Grassroots Efforts to Dismantle the Iron Curtain
and Their Political Entanglements
Anna Matyska
Introduction
ows” (to use Churchill’s phrasing) until the late 1980s. The post-1989 “re-
turn to Europe” draws on the Iron Curtain metaphor and simultaneously
revalidates it as a historical truth. It suggests that Eastern European coun-
tries left Europe along with the Iron Curtain’s raising, and only its collapse
could enable the return. The “Iron Curtain” and “return to Europe” met-
aphors read in conjunction produce a linear vision of Cold War and post–
Cold War history. From mere figures of speech they evolved into social and
political facts, shaping the popular and political understanding of history.
They suggest a linear progress from dichotomous and antagonistic bipolar
relations between the Eastern and Western bloc to their integration and
merging, epitomized by the gradual inclusion of former Soviet-bloc coun-
tries into the European Union, ergo Europe. The Cold War boundaries are
projected as having iron-like qualities—they were enduring, unbreakable,
and impermeable.
Speaking from the perspective of transnational anthropology and his-
tory, this chapter indicates ruptures in the above linear narrative. It ap-
plies transnationalism as a theoretical tool for delinearizing the Cold War
history, stressing the mutual making of “East” and “West” through trans-
national cross-border practices. I indicate that Cold War relations were
based not only on confrontation and isolation, but also on corroboration
and integration, the constant multipolar “interplay” and “interlinkedness”2
between particular Eastern and Western countries and their individual ac-
tors. As a consequence, the curtain emerges as penetrable and negotiable
and the dichotomy between the East and the West becomes blurred.
In this chapter, I ask what the grassroots practices were—that is, what
people said and did—that allowed for the everyday dismantling of the cur-
tain between Poland and Finland, and how these practices were entangled
in state policies and politics of ruling elites. I will focus on two types of
practices: those explicitly aimed at supporting or challenging the Commu-
nist regime and its ideology transnationally, and the more intimate prac-
tices related to the transnational maintenance of family ties.
In my analysis, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork encompassing inter-
views and participant observation that I conducted among Polish people
living in Poland and Finland from 2006 through 2009. My fieldwork was
part of the research project on transnational families living between Poland
and Finland in the changing Cold War and post–Cold War political condi-
tions. For this chapter, I draw on the accounts of nineteen Polish persons
who have lived in Finland since the Cold War and six of their extended
family members in Poland. My interlocutors originate from various cities
and towns in Poland and upon coming to Finland were in their twenties
and thirties. Men came to Finland as musicians or engineers or to work in
academia. Women usually came to join their Finnish spouses. Most of my
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Transnational Spaces
project, but I also suggest that, to achieve it, one has to dismantle the idea
of the Iron Curtain itself. The Soviet area studies Chari and Verdery refer
to were a direct product, not the side effect of the bipolar Cold War para-
digm, providing a test case for area studies that promoted thinking within
bounded territories rather than across them.7 Thus, to effectively counter
the present divisions, the past East-West divisions have to be dismantled—
something that many historians, sociologists, and anthropologist still fail to
do. The recently burgeoning field of the anthropology of Eastern Europe
has produced multiple monographs that, to various extents, deal with the
economic and sociocultural aspects of living under the Communist regime
in Eastern Europe. However, their perspective is rather nationally bounded
and local as opposed to transnational and multilocal.
Similar mental mapping is shared by many Western scholars whose
studies have an explicit transnational angle and, hence, whose perspec-
tive should be the one that “de-ironizes” the Cold War world divisions
the most. Nevertheless, transnationalism that appears in their accounts is
often surprisingly narrow, encompassing only countries explicitly affected
by the Capitalist project and the unequal global Capitalist division of labor.
This includes Eastern Europe, but only in its post-Communist period. As
the well-known transnational anthropologist Ulf Hannerz authoritatively
argues,
in the last half-century or so, the Second World, that of state socialism for as
long as it lasted mostly had its own globalization: the media could to some
degree slip in from the outside, but mostly not the material goods, and people
could seldom get either in or out. … It has been the First World industrial and
capitalist, that has been most intensely involved, within itself, in all kinds of
interconnectedness, and sharing some of it with the Third World. …8
Thus, in the world divided into the First World, Second World, and Third
World (the categories themselves being a product of the Cold War scien-
tific labor and area studies), only the First World and Third World were
imagined as interlinked. The Second World was disconnected. This ar-
gumentation obscures the fact that Eastern European countries did not
only have their own globalization, but they were also “embedded in the
global system,” having global aspirations and aiming at a global impact.9
By bringing transnationalism into Cold War analysis, we can conceptual-
ize the world “behind the Iron Curtain” as a part of the global world and
the larger theoretical project of rethinking all national divisions, including
those of the Cold War.
Interrelated with the above, the destabilization of the Iron Curtain is
needed to challenge the cultural hierarchy such reading implies—a task
on par with the anthropological aim to deconstruct power relations lying
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Transnational Spaces
behind the knowledge production and imaginary of the world. One can
easily suggest that the metaphors of the “Iron Curtain” and “return to Eu-
rope,” particularly when read together, project not merely a misleading
linearity but also the hierarchical relations between the East and the West.
Eastern Europe’s “return to Europe” implies that it was Eastern Europe
that was excluded from Europe and now returns to it, not vice versa. This
imaginary goes beyond Churchill’s invention. As Larry Wolff suggests, the
Iron Curtain quickly became a widely accepted “geopolitical fact” because
it reflected the ideas of Eastern Europe invented long before Churchill’s
speech, reaching back to the Enlightenment period when Eastern Europe
started to be imagined as the “shadowed lands of backwardness,” culturally
and economically inferior to the Europe “proper.”10 Churchill’s “Iron Cur-
tain” rhetoric only reified these divisions. In this context, I regard transna-
tionalism as an emancipatory theoretical paradigm. It allows showing that
the West11 was constructed by influences from the East as much as vice
versa, and that Poland, or any other Eastern European country, did not
return to Europe after 1989, but was part of Europe and the global world all
along. Transnationalism of the Cold War helps to dismantle the powerful
image of the Iron Curtain as the absolute and hierarchical divide.
war tradition of international mobility laid the basis for its relatively liberal
(for a Communist state) migration policies since the 1960s and stimulated
Polish authorities’ active attempts to build a deterritorialized state that
followed its citizens wherever they went.13 A passport was owned by the
state and was granted very selectively for particular trips as a temporary
document, but, with a proper reason and social connections, it could be
obtained. International mobility from Poland reached its peak in the 1970s
and the 1980s. In the 1980s, over one million people left Poland perma-
nently and over one million people left Poland temporarily. In emigration
terms, Poland not only exceeded other Soviet bloc countries but also West-
ern European countries. 14
Finland, on the other hand, had exceptionally close economic and po-
litical relationships—for a Western state—with the Soviet Union until the
end of the Cold War. Close ties were formally grounded on the “Agreement
of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance” that Finland and the
Soviet Union signed in 1948. Due to this agreement, Finland faced heavy
limitations with regard to independent foreign policy, and until the Soviet
Union collapsed, the Finnish foreign policy had to be carefully weighted
not to appear as anti-Soviet.15
Finland’s particular status had an important bearing on Finland-Poland
relations and mobility between the countries. Finland and Poland officially
maintained the relations of “friendship,” unfolding in the economic, po-
litical, and cultural sphere. In order to “further and strengthen the rela-
tionships between the two countries,” the agreement on the cultural and
scientific exchange was signed in 1973. In 1974, in order to enhance the
“closeness and tourist exchange,” Polish and Finnish governments signed
an agreement on visa-free mobility of up to three months.16 A year ear-
lier, a ferry connection between Helsinki and Gdańsk had been launched.
There were numerous student and scientific exchanges between various
Polish and Finnish universities. Twenty to forty Polish persons were com-
ing to Finland for permanent residence annually. In the 1970s, the Pol-
ish community in Finland reached approximately one thousand people
permanently residing in Finland and approximately eight hundred people
residing temporarily.17 Poles worked as musicians, engineers, architects,
researchers, doctors, and skilled workers. Many Poles came to Finland
to reunify with their Finnish spouses. However, due to Finland’s reluc-
tance to accept Polish asylum seekers, Polish immigration to Finland did
not reach rates as high as in other Western countries. Accordingly, only
two persons were granted a refugee passport in my study. “It was some-
thing extraordinary in Finland,” one of my interlocutors told me. In these
terms, they constituted an exception in the global map of Cold War Polish
migration.
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Transnational Spaces
– 263 –
Anna Matyska
member well a group of Finnish students who received us at the railway station
in Helsinki. They were very leftist and thought that they would meet students
who, coming from the Communist country, would share with them their world-
views. And when we got off the train, we told them enthusiastically, “It’s such a
relief we’re finally here! The Soviet Union was terrible!” So they were shocked
at our comments. They thought that they would welcome young people from
a Communist country who would have a particular outlook and moral funda-
mentals, and here we are coming and complaining on the Soviet Union and the
mess there. So this was very interesting for us, we did not expect it.
For both Jarek and Adam, their meeting with the Finnish students offered
the first clear glimpse and realization of the multifaceted position of Fin-
land in the geopolitical Cold War structures and the power of the Soviet
political establishment to undermine the curtain in its ideological favor.
Upon their arrival in Finland, both Jarek and Adam had ambivalent atti-
tudes toward the Communist system and both saw the student exchange as
a privileged opportunity to explore the world outside of the Eastern bloc.
Hence their surprise when young Finnish people they met were more eager
supporters of their homeland’s official ideology than they had ever been.
The cultural wind from the West that they looked forward to turned out to
be the wind from their own backyard, stirred by the political regime they
did not support and who made their travels beyond the curtain so compli-
cated. The kind of Finland they encountered was of course particular, and
not all of my interlocutors shared the above experiences. The quotes above
show, however, the fragmented political and cultural landscape of Finland,
in which cultural and political ties to the Eastern bloc were parallel to the
ties to the Western bloc.
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Transnational Spaces
The Finnish Communist youth whom Adam and Jarek met constituted
a minority in Finland—most Finnish students were either moderately left-
ist or right-wing. Yet, Communists, despite their small numbers, managed
to achieve a dominant position in the Finnish political youth and student
scene at the turn of the 1960s and during the 1970s.19 They were politi-
cally allied with the Finnish Communist Party, which after the invasion
of Czechoslovakia was split into the moderate Communist majority and
a radical minority (known as the Taistolaiset) that uncritically supported
the Soviet Union. Although the radical student left was present also in
other Western countries, its position in Finland was unique. “What served
to distinguish the Finnish situation from that of other Western Europe
countries after 1968 was the predominant leftist politics of the new student
generation. While elsewhere these activists embraced EuroCommunism,
Maoism, anarchism, or new-left pacifism, most young Communist Finns
remained loyal supporters of Brezhnev’s Soviet Union,” Kotila argues.20
Thus when the Czechoslovakia events happened, many students opposed
it, but under the slogan “Socialism yes, tanks no.”21 A minority supported
the invasion, which is reflected in my interlocutors’ recollections.22
Soviet involvement in Finnish state affairs created a fertile ground for the
above attitudes to thrive. The Finnish Communist Party had considerable
political influence in Cold War Finland, four times constituting the Finn-
ish government throughout the 1960s and the 1970s. Communists were
financially supported by the Soviet Union, and the party’s political moves
and programs were agreed upon with Soviet politicians.23 The party’s par-
ticipation in the government was supported by President Kekkonen, who
promoted Lenin as the father of Finland’s independence and the driving
force behind Finland’s good relations with the Soviet Union.24 Kekkonen
himself was widely considered the key political builder and guarantor of
the Finnish position of neutrality. His frequent travels to the Soviet Union
and close relationship with the Soviet politicians are well known, albeit
evaluated differently by his supporters and detractors.25
For Jarek and Adam, their coming to Finland seemed to clarify their
political views of opposition. Each time they paid visits to Poland or inter-
acted with Polish consuls in Finland, they reaffirmed to themselves that
Finnish enthusiasts of the Soviet system were “simply naïve,” not noticing
its gross social and economic failures. One can argue that different types of
transnational grassroots practices and national experiences were set against
each other in claims for authenticity. From the perspective of my interlocu-
tors, Finnish supporters of Communism were engaged in the transnational
space across the curtain intermittently and superficially through travels,
interaction with members of other Communist organizations, and an in-
tellectual outlook to the East. They thought they knew what was going on
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Anna Matyska
behind the curtain, but as my interlocutors suggest, they did not. “We in
the Eastern Bloc, we knew,” as Jarek said. My interlocutors legitimized their
claims by the fact of living in Poland and maintaining intimate ties to Po-
land also after coming to Finland. In their transnational lives, they were de-
pendent on unpredictable and coercive Communist policies, which, in their
desire to protect the regime, kept the doors to the West only partially open.
A different type of transnational engagement affected mutual skepticism
and disagreement. It also undermined the clear-cut division into East and
West, understood as geographical spaces dominated by particular political
ideologies. Jarek and Adam seemed more Western-minded than Finnish
students whose mindsets were directed toward the East. If from Poland’s
perspective there was the Imaginary West, from Finland’s perspective there
was also the Imaginary East, but it was fragmented and heterogeneous.
The uneven destabilization of the curtain, underpinned by the contra-
dictory practices and political mindsets of Finnish Communists and Poles
living in Finland, was also manifested saliently during the emergence and
subsequent disbanding of the Solidarity movement in 1980–81. The dis-
banding of the Solidarity movement by the introduction of martial law in
Poland in December 1981 created fervent protests throughout the West-
ern world.26 Many of these protests gained an institutionalized character
through the grassroots organizations established to support the Solidarity
movement from afar. They usually included Polish people living abroad
and their host society members. The organizations were established in,
among others, Finland’s neighboring Nordic countries: Sweden, Nor-
way, and Denmark.27 In Finland, the organization was established by left-
minded Finns, and then several Polish persons (among them, two of my
interlocutors) joined in. The Solidarity movement was considered by its
Finnish supporters the authentic voice of the Polish working class that the
Polish authorities wanted to suppress.28 In these terms, the situation re-
sembled the Finnish youth protests against the invasion of Czechoslovakia
in 1968, when the main slogan was “Socialism yes, tanks no.” Similarly, at
the turn of the 1980s, the Finnish support for Solidarity was not essentially
“anti-Communist” but antiauthoritarian: directed toward the Polish state,
not the ideology itself. My interlocutors, on the other hand, tended to
resist both the Polish state and the Communist ideology the state claimed
to represent. Before joining the Finnish Solidarity they did not formally op-
pose the Communist regime. This came only with the Finnish initiative. In
the Finnish Solidarity, they used their cultural and practical ties to Poland
to help with translation, smuggle Solidarity materials to and from Poland,
mediate meetings with Solidarity members from Poland and neighboring
Sweden, and write articles and speeches. Their transnational practices
served what they saw as the Polish national interest (understood differ-
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Transnational Spaces
ently than the Polish national interest envisioned by the Polish state) of
freedom and independence;29 for the Finns, the practices were to help the
global interests of the working class, indicating that similar types of prac-
tices may be spurred by different ideas stemming from a different position
in a transnational space. Nevertheless, the possibility of support for Soli-
darity in Finland was considerably curtailed, for unlike in other Western
countries, the organization had limited top-down support.
During the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia a decade earlier,
the Finnish government had taken the official position of neutrality (Suomi
calls it “cynical realism”30), neither condemning nor supporting. The Finn-
ish Communist Party officially condemned the invasion. During Solidarity
events, the reaction was more decisive. Laakia, the leader of the Finnish
Solidarity, writes: “In between 1980–1989 there was nearly one hundred
civic activists working to support Polish Solidarity in Finland. … We re-
ceived plenty of support from the ordinary people and the media. Unfortu-
nately, the same cannot be said about the elites and authorities.”31 Among
others, many of the Finnish elites refused to sign the public list protesting
against the imposition of martial law. A piece in Kansan Uutiset, the Com-
munist Party newspaper, said that the protests against the martial law were
“not today the best expression of solidarity toward real interests of Polish
people,” and, in support of the radical minority who wholeheartedly sup-
ported the Solidarity suppression, said “the aim of Solidarity was the mass
murder of the Communists and the liquidation of those sympathetic to So-
cialist power ‘in some way or another.’”32 Finland also abstained from vot-
ing in the United Nations on the human rights situation in Poland,33 and
the supporters of the Polish Solidarity movement in Finland were actively
suppressed. One example of the above was the creation, in 1980, of an un-
official black list including members of the Finnish Solidarity organization.
The origins and the exact purpose of the list are still unexplained. It was
probably created by the Finnish Security Police, with or without the KGB’s
involvement, and it was meant to register members who were potentially
threatening to the Finnish status of neutrality and whose activities should
be observed.34 When the existence of the black list became public, the
number of Finns publicly supporting Solidarity decreased significantly.35
For the Finns who actively supported Solidarity, their presence on the
black list did not seem to affect their intimate relationship to Poland. For
my interlocutors, it contributed to the deterioration of their relationships
with Polish authorities and, as a consequence, to difficulties in traveling to
Poland and contacting their families. Krzysztof recalled that because the
black list was not official, there was also no official information when one
was taken off it. Therefore he once tried to cross the Polish border, testing
the border guards. “But they stopped me. They let in my [Finnish] wife but
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Anna Matyska
they did not let me in.” As a consequence, he met with his family in East
Germany, where all of the family could come without problems. Support
for Solidarity also resulted in conflicts with the Polish Embassy, including
difficulty getting a passport extension and a strained relationship with the
Polish consul. The political activism and transnational solidarities going
against the Communist (and Finnish) government’s wishes had thus more
tangible consequences for the Poles, for whom dismantling of the curtain
was not only a matter of the political vision of liberating workers but a
practical matter of keeping ties with their homeland and family, to which
the collapse of the Communist state was indispensable. Thus, people differ-
ently positioned in a transnational space had different motives for bringing
the curtain down and the process of bringing it down affected their lives
differently. My interlocutors also intimately experienced the discrepancy
between their and Finnish political elites’ relationship with Poland, even in
the informal version. In a Yearbook of Finnish Foreign Policy (1982), a brief
note states that, on 18–21 October 1982, “Speaker Johannes Virolainen
paid an unofficial visit to Poland at the invitation of the Polish Speaker of
Parliament Stanislaw Gucwa. He met Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski.”
The visit seemed like any other. The note did not comment that the visit
took place during martial law when other Western countries boycotted the
Polish government, and that Wojciech Jaruzelski had a leading role in im-
posing martial law. In contrast, this is how the aforementioned Krzysztof,
for whom the visit has a significant emotional resonance, talks about it: “At
the moment when there was a complete boycott of Polish government in
the West, when nobody wanted to talk to Jaruzelski, a Finnish MC went to
Poland to meet with Polish MCs and the chief of the parliament. Jaruzelski
made a big fuss out of his visit: he organized a welcoming at the airport and
with orchestra, as if it was an official visit. Later on [Finnish politicians]
maintained direct contact with Jaruzelski.” Krzysztof personally felt the
power imbalance and different aims he and the Finnish officials had in the
transnational space they both created.36
The above section discussed more classic political attitudes and practices
that created ties cutting across the curtain. As I mentioned, in my inter-
locutors’ lives, those attitudes and practices were always in parallel with
transnational family engagement. For the purpose of this chapter, trans-
national families are defined as families stretched across national borders,
maintaining the sense of familyhood despite separation.37 Transnational
– 268 –
Transnational Spaces
families, although not explicitly political in nature, had their own impact
upon destabilization of the Iron Curtain.
Buchowski argues that Polish families can be regarded as a part of the
civic society in Communist Poland.38 They connected individuals with the
wider society and were built in the ideational opposition to the state. In
the transnational context, transnational family relations functioned under
the purview and disciplining of the Polish state. I would argue that families
of my interlocutors destabilized the Iron Curtain through the desire to stay
together realized through communication, visits, and material exchanges.
Simultaneously, many of these activities were enabled and co-opted by the
Polish state, which looked to keep the door beyond the curtain partially
open rather than totally closed. Polish Communist authorities already in
the 1960s realized that the best way to capitalize on Polish human capital
residing abroad in symbolic and economic terms was to allow for contact
with family members who stayed in Poland.39
Throughout the Communist era in Poland, millions of Polish people
living abroad maintained steady contact with their families in Poland.40
The agreement on visa-free movement between Poland and Finland
smoothed these types of relations for my interlocutors from 1974 onward.
My interlocutors met with their families either in Poland or in Finland at
least once every few years. Some family members came to Finland from
Poland for stays of several months. Steady letter circulation and intermit-
tent phone calls also took place. Nevertheless, transnational contact was
never smooth enough to allow family members to forget that they lived
in a transnational space ridden by ideological antagonism and that their
families were forged beyond the bloc, not within it. The international tele-
communications infrastructure was poorly developed, and connections
within the Eastern bloc had the investment priority. People had to wait
for hours to get connected. Obtaining a passport for a visit to Finland de-
manded several months of bureaucratic hassle, and one was never certain
whether the passport would be granted. Like other foreigners, Poles with
Finnish citizenship had to make obligatory currency exchange before they
visited Poland, although they could be released from it if they were in good
standing with the consul. Poles who stayed in Finland permanently on the
consular passport had to be in good standing with the consul to have their
passport regularly prolonged. Family reunifications were particularly diffi-
cult for people who left Poland illegally by overstaying the legal length of
travel abroad. Such people usually could not return to Poland, and their
family members in Poland were denied the possibility of visiting. In the case
of my study, only three persons had legal difficulties visiting Poland since,
as I mentioned, Finland tended to send back people who broke the Polish
emigration rules.
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Anna Matyska
state’s power. Family members usually managed to find some way to con-
tact each other, working around strict regulations, negotiating the border
entry or using somebody else’s help. The abovementioned Janek managed
to contact his parents by giving a letter to his friend, who was able to go to
Poland at some point. Several months after the introduction of martial law,
Bronislaw managed to sneak into Poland as a translator with the Finnish
basketball team. Similarly, those of my interlocutors who had, outside of
the martial law period, difficulty entering Poland because of problems with
Polish authorities, managed to meet their family members, for instance
in the Polish harbor, or as Krzysztof mentioned, at a camping site in East
Germany. The top-down power of the Polish authorities to shape the scope
of transnational engagement stretching from its territory had its limits. It
was also fragmented, as sometimes Polish state representatives turned out
to be more supportive than the official policies implied. For instance, Bro-
nislaw, going to his father’s funeral, decided to skip the obligatory currency
exchange, hoping he would manage to get through at the border:
In Poland, people are buried very quickly after their deaths. So after I got a
telegram that my dad had died, I quickly bought a ticket to Warsaw with all my
savings. It was 1973. … There was still an obligatory currency exchange, but
because I spent all my money on the ticket I had no money left to exchange.
I thought to myself, “Maybe the immigration control will let me through any-
how.” But once I arrived at the Warsaw airport they didn’t want to let me out.
I didn’t exchange currency; I had no money. They told me, “Well, in that case
you’ll have to return to Helsinki on the next plane.” But I knew my cousin was
waiting for me in the arrivals hall, so I told the guard, “Please sir, I can’t return.
I came for my father’s funeral. If you let me out for a second, I’ll get legal dollars
from my cousin, who’s waiting for me in the arrivals hall.” The guard said, “No,
you can’t go through.” Finally, though, my begging moved one of the guards. I
showed him the telegram and managed to convince him that I was telling the
truth. They have me an escort of two soldiers, who I went out to the arrivals
hall with. I got the dollars and we went back.
that when her parents visited her in the 1980s, her Finnish friends always
organized a collection of cloths and other needed items that her parents
would subsequently take to Poland and distribute among family networks.
Similar support was particularly true for Finnish spouses and extended
family members of my interlocutors.
The way intimate Finnish support for certain transnational practices
could saliently contradict with official attitudes can also be seen in the case
of elites. Professor J. P. Roos is quoted by Laakia as one of the high-profile
Finns who did not want to sign the list officially condemning the imposition
of martial law in 1981. As Laakia writes, Professor Roos told the Ydin news-
paper that “he cannot sign the list, because the company is so bad.”44 Exactly
at the same time, though, Roos was a leader of a Polish-Finnish comparative
research project that was interrupted by the introduction of martial law.
In the introduction to the monograph on the project results published in
1987, Roos, along with the Polish project leader, Andrzej Siciński, pointed
out that some of the Polish project participants were actively involved in
Solidarity and imprisoned, and thus, for the Finnish project participants,
the martial law events “had a very different significance” since “they knew
intimately some of the participants and could either observe by themselves
or get first-hand report of everything that was taking place.”45 Furthermore,
in 1995, Siciński published an article regarding the project results in Polish
Sociological Review in which he thanked his Finnish project colleagues in
a footnote for “unexpected and beyond-academic” support: “Our engage-
ment in a Polish Finnish project brought also benefit when after the intro-
duction of the Martial Law we received packages with food and detergents
from our Finnish colleagues (with whom we became friends during the proj-
ect). It was for us a considerable material and mental support.”46 Thus, one
can conclude that, in Finland, the public attitudes toward the events in
Poland were more neutral than the actual private feelings of support. They
resulted in contradictory top-down and bottom-up practices of supporting,
or at least not protesting against the martial law and alleviating its conse-
quences through intimate practices at the informal level.
West categories stemming from the “iron” qualities of the curtain, and
shows the curtain as permeable and transparent, allowing for the circula-
tion of people and ideas. The activities of political establishments at the
top combined with the grassroots involvement had a mutually reinforcing
yet contradictory effect on the destabilization of the curtain between Po-
land and Finland. Different actors had different visions of the shape of the
transnational space between Poland and Finland, and some were engaged
in it much more intensively and regularly than others. However, even those
who remained seemingly uninvolved in the Finnish-Polish affairs impacted
transnational activities of others by maintaining their neutral stance.
By elaborating on the transnational practices between Poland and Fin-
land, this chapter indicated the analytical failures of the “Iron Curtain”
metaphor, but it did not abandon the term “curtain” altogether. Péteri
proposed the term “nylon curtain” to indicate that the curtain was trans-
parent and penetrable. However, I find the “nylon curtain” to trivialize
certain legal and ideological aspects of Cold War realities. The curtain
might not have been made of iron, but it was a curtain nevertheless, and
it was not only about unequal access to consumer goods. It was not solid
and impenetrable, but one cannot dismiss the political ambitions of the
Western and Eastern states and their desire to discipline their citizens.
Poland might have been fairly liberal in terms of mobility and relations
with the West, and Finland fairly open to relations with the Soviet bloc,
but both of them discouraged particular forms of transnationalism, or its
more intensive enactment, that would allow for the curtain’s total disap-
pearance. If one wishes to look for a more appropriate metaphor, perhaps
“carbon curtain” would be a better alternative. Carbon emerges in differ-
ent forms and has the unique ability to form a variety of compounds with
other elements found in nature, some of them being hard and others soft.
Therefore carbon would manifest the temporally and situationally fluctu-
ating “osmotic”48 characteristics of the curtain, which changed depending
on the element it reacted and combined with, starting at the very level of
an individual person. The destabilization of the curtain depended heavily
on the intersection of legal policies and personal interactions with people
who were supposed to enforce them, fragmenting the power of the state at
the grassroots level in shaping the transnational space. At the same time,
carbon has high thermal conductivity, and as a metaphorical part of the
“carbon curtain,” it always radiates political and ideological heat. Thus it
indicates loopholes, contradictions, and the negotiated character of trans-
national relations between Poland and Finland, but, at the same time, it
does not negate that the curtain—legal, political, and economic—existed.
Finally, one of the constitutive elements of carbon is that it is everywhere.
It is the basis of life.
– 273 –
Anna Matyska
Notes
1. L. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlighten-
ment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1.
2. S. Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklóssy, “Introduction,” in Reassessing Cold War Europe, ed.
S. Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklóssy (London: Routledge, 2011), 3.
3. P. Levitt and S. Khagram, “Constructing Transnational Studies,” in The Transnational
Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations, ed. P. Levitt and S. Khagram (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2007), 5.
4. A. Portes, L. E. Guarnizo, and P. Landolt, “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and
Promise of an Emergent Research,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 217–37.
5. M. P. Smith and L. E. Guarnizo, eds., Transnationalism from Below (New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers, 1998), 10. See also P. Ladolt, “The Transnational Geographies of Im-
migrant Politics: Insights from a Comparative Study of Migrant Grassroots Organizing,” The
Sociological Quarterly 49 (2008): 53–77.
6. S. Chari and K. Verdery, “Thinking between the Posts: Postcolonialism, Postsocialism,
and Ethnography after the Cold War,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no. 1
(2009): 6–34.
7. D. C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009).
– 274 –
Transnational Spaces
– 275 –
Anna Matyska
It? Workers, Intellectuals, or Someone Else? Controversy over Solidarity’s Origin and Social
Composition,” Theory and Society 23, no. 3 (1994): 441–66.
30. J. Suomi, Urho Kekkonen, 1968–1972. Taistelu puolueettomuudesta (Helsinki: Otava,
1996).
31. Laakia, Solidarnoscin nousu tuhosi, 5.
32. Cited in Paastela, The Finnish Communist Party, 223.
33. A. Rosas, ”Finnish Human Rights Policies,” Yearbook of Finnish Foreign Policy (1986):
9–8.
34. Laakia, Solidarnoscin nousu tuhosi.
35. Ibid.
36. The visit was also criticized by the Finnish Solidarity, which suggested that Virolainen
made the visit to improve his personal relationship with Moscow, thus engaging in a triple
power play. Ibid.
37. D. Bryceson, and U. Vuorela, eds., The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers
and Global Networks (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 7.
38. M. Buchowski, “The Shifting Meanings of Civil and Civic Society in Poland,” in Civil
Society: Challenging Western Models, ed. E. Dunn and C. Hann (London: Routledge, 1996),
79–98.
39. J. Lenczarowicz, “Polska Ludowa Wobec Diaspory,” in Polska Diaspora, ed. A. Walaszek
(Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2001), 529–52.
40. See, e.g., M. Okólski and E. Jaźwińska, eds. Ludzie na Huśtawce. Migracje Między Pery-
feriami Polski i Zachodu (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2001); R. Kantor, Między
Zaborowem a Chicago: Kulturowe Konsekwencje Istnienia Zbiorowości Imigrantow z Parafii Zabo-
rowskiej w Chicago i Jej Kontaktow z Rodzinnymi Wsiami (Wrocław: Zakł. Nar. im. Ossolinskich,
1990).
41. K. Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1996).
42. J. Kubasik, “Regulation without a Regulator: The Tariff Policy in Poland,” Seminar on
telecommunication market analysis for the CEE countries and Baltic States, Vilnius, Lith-
uania, 5–7 October 2004. Retrieved October 2008 from http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/finance/
work-cost-tariffs/events/tariff-seminars/lithuania-04/kubasik-summary.pdf.
43. A. Jajszczyk and J. Kubasik, “Telecommunication Tariffs in Central Europe,” IEEE
Communications Magazine (1993).
44. Laakia, Solidarnoscin nousu tuhosi. Quote in Finnish: “koska seura on niin huonoa.”
45. J. P. Roos and A. Siciński, eds. Ways of Life in Finland and Poland (Aldershot: Avebury,
1987).
46. A. Siciński, “Polsko-Fińskie porównania stylów życia: interesujące doświadczenia, mi-
zerne wyniki,” Studia Socjologiczne 3–4 (1995): 87–96.
47. Autio-Sarasmo and Miklóssy, “Introduction”.
48. Péteri, “Nylon Curtain.”
– 276 –
Chapter 14
A FILTER FOR
WESTERN CULTURAL PRODUCTS
The Influence of Italian Popular Culture
on Yugoslavia, 1955–65
Francesca Rolandi
After World War II, Yugoslavia was one of the most orthodox countries of
the Socialist bloc. This loyalty allowed the Yugoslav leadership to criticize
other Socialist leaders of being too soft and pliable at a meeting in Poland
in 1947. Within a year, however, the international position of Yugoslavia
changed. As a consequence of its 1948 split with the Soviet Union, Yugo-
slavia found itself completely isolated in the international scene,5 and it
started to move gradually closer to the Western bloc, which lavishly sup-
ported the country through economic aid in order to keep Tito afloat.6
After the first years of hard-line Communism, when Western cultural
products were rejected, Yugoslavia started opening up and undertaking a
process of liberalization in the cultural and economic spheres, and also
partially in the political sphere. The Yugoslav leadership was not inspired
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A Filter for Western Cultural Products
by an already existing model, but rather shaped a new and original system,
adjusted to the international situation.
For a couple of years, Yugoslavia was regarded as an odd ally of the
Western bloc, but from 1955 it started to draw closer to the Soviet Union,
a process symbolized by Khrushchev’s visit to Belgrade, which represented
a bright political and economic victory for Yugoslavs.7 Already in 1956,
Soviet-Yugoslav relations chilled again due to the Hungarian crisis, and
later other crises affected relations with both the United States and the So-
viet Union. However, in the mid-1950s, Yugoslavia discovered how to po-
sition itself in the international scene. It set three principles for its foreign
politics: continuous collaboration with the Western bloc, normalization
of its relations with the Soviet bloc, and a role as the leader of the Non-
Aligned Movement.8 The Yugoslav Federation greatly benefited from this
intermediary position, which enabled contacts with both blocs, especially
in the field of culture.9 Although Yugoslavia had a Socialist one-party sys-
tem, with government controlling cultural production, the cultural sphere
experienced a degree of freedom that was much broader than in most other
Socialist countries. This openness was tolerated and often even endorsed
by the Yugoslav leadership, thus fostering its image as a modern country.
Nevertheless, this balance was always precarious and often leaned to-
ward the Western countries. The Ideological Commission of the League of
the Yugoslav Communists—the organ in charge of ideological issues—de-
voted many sessions to discussing foreign influences, usually brought up by
remarking the dominance of influences from Capitalist countries within
the Yugoslav society. In 1960, Petar Stambolić—at that time President of
the Federal Parliament—complained that one could not find any specific
position on this topic from the press. Moreover, according to him, maga-
zines presented the situation with a bias. Everything was too well disposed
toward the West, and everything connected with the Soviet Union was
rejected by the younger generations.10
The orientation of Yugoslav youth toward foreign influences was a re-
curring matter in discussions of the Ideological Commission. In 1962, an
entire session was devoted to this topic. Youngsters were regarded as con-
scious of the position Yugoslavia had attained at the international level,
but disoriented by the large number of foreign influences in the country
and unable to approach them in a critical way: according to a widespread
view in the Ideological Commission “In a situation in which our society
is completely opening up towards the world, including political, cultural,
artistic, scientific and other currents, political criteria of our youth are not
strong enough to handle different ideological influences, to choose and
acquire positive and progressive elements and to reject the ideologically
alien ones. This creates worsening conditions of cosmopolitism, inade-
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Francesca Rolandi
The liberalization drive in Yugoslavia had not removed the fear of foreign
propaganda from a consistent part of its leadership. The influence of for-
eign propaganda was regarded as asymmetric not because the Eastern bloc
was not active in using culture in propaganda but because the Western
culture was much more successful. According to Yugoslav authorities, this
relation should have been balanced with an effort to limit the Western in-
fluence and to support the Eastern one, focusing on a wide range of issues:
how to overcome ignorance of cultural and scientific achievements of the
USSR and other socialist countries; how to secure an improvement of the qual-
ity of our press and liberalize it from the foreign propaganda; to analyze from
this point of view television broadcasts, and to consider the situation with per-
sonnel at the television, in order to relieve in the best possible way TV broad-
casts from imitating Western TV stations and from our distinctly provincial
taste; it is necessary to analyze the structure of foreign correspondents of our
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A Filter for Western Cultural Products
newspapers who are often used to paraphrasing the positions of the Western
press on certain events.14
– 281 –
Francesca Rolandi
Starting from the mid-1950s, the growth of these relations became possi-
ble with the détente in relations between the two Adriatic neighbors. A
turning point in Italian-Yugoslav relations took place when the settling of
border disputes began in autumn 1954, following long negotiations that
would still span two decades.20 With the first series of agreements signed,
the formerly tense frontier started to quickly turn into one of the most po-
rous borders of the Cold War. The harsh tensions that had characterized
the long negotiation process faded after the territorial settlement and the
authorities on both sides grasped the importance of reconstructing the
transborder relations. In fact, both border areas had been heavily affected
by the artificial division of formerly complementary territories—especially
the Slovenian and Croatian countryside and the cities of Trieste and Go-
rizia, allocated to Italy. A sign of the changing circumstances was Tito’s
interview on the signing of the agreement in October 1954, which was
quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA: “It is possible to establish an
economic, cultural and political cooperation between Italy and Yugosla-
via. The agreement over Trieste erased elements that were preventing
it.”21
The stabilization of the Italian-Yugoslav border was the premise for the
reconstruction of different kinds of relations between the two countries.
Soon Italy turned into a gate for cultural influences and goods into Yugo-
slavia from the West. The geographical proximity, as it turned out, allowed
for TV sets and radios on the Yugoslav coast to receive Italian signals. The
proximity also allowed for different goods and cultural products to enter
the country, both in legal and illegal ways. This was particularly thanks to
border areas such as Trieste, which had traditionally served as a market
place for the Yugoslav area.22
In 1955, when the border agreement was signed, inhabitants remaining
on the Yugoslav side of the border areas received a permit allowing them
to cross the border into Italy four times a month. From the early 1960s, the
procedure for getting a passport became easier for other Yugoslav citizens,
too. For instance, according to the Slovenian data, 46,766 passports were
issued there in 1961. In 1962, the number was already 70,251, and 77,302
the next year. In 1964, it reached 107,776. In 1961, only 3 percent of the
applications were rejected; 2 percent in 1962; 4.9 percent in 1963, and 1.8
percent in 1964.23
Trieste’s meaning for Yugoslavs, even if strongly emotional, leaned on
a utilitarian base. On the one hand, there was a tradition of Yugoslavian
tourists going to this Adriatic city just to buy goods. Shopping was such a
totalizing experience for them that they usually did not pay attention to
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A Filter for Western Cultural Products
the city around them, instead devoting all of their time to shopping. The
Cold War only seemed to emphasize this trend. On the other hand, peo-
ple in Trieste had mixed feelings about Yugoslavian shoppers. They looked
at the poorly dressed tourists with a mixture of racism and compassion,
even if more and more triestini were becoming conscious that the city lived
through them. Therefore, Trieste was simultaneously perceived by the Yu-
goslavs through a sense of belonging and a sense of otherness, fostering its
role as a gate. It was also a gate to a different economic system, through
which it was possible to enter the fascinating Capitalist zone with its bright
colors and well-furnished shop windows.
The possibility of going shopping abroad was criticized in the Yugoslav
press and limited by border controls and the lack of currency. It was, how-
ever, never seriously obstructed by the authorities. In this way, shopping in
Trieste, caused by the lack or the high price of goods on the local market,
instead of becoming a matter of discontent, turned out to be a safety valve
or even a matter of pride for Socialist Yugoslavia, as it proved that its cit-
izens were allowed to travel freely. Some of the goods bought in Trieste,
such as blue jeans, had to be smuggled into the country and sometimes out
of the country into other people’s republics.24 This allowed some people
with a poor economic status, particularly women, to earn some extra in-
come. At the same time, they spread goods with a strong symbolic meaning
into countries that were more hostile to the Western consumer culture,
particularly Bulgaria and Romania.
During the decade that followed the beginning of the border dispute settle-
ment, the Italian-Yugoslav border was crossed not only by goods, but also
influences and trends from the West.
Music well illustrates how influences traveled. Popular music in Yugo-
slavia developed after World War II and became deeply influenced by Ital-
ian music, entering the country mainly through two channels: through
reception of televised Italian music festivals and through smuggling re-
cords across the border. The main bordering towns (Trieste, as well as the
Austrian cities) were smuggling hubs for the music records that inspired
the first generation of Yugoslav pop composers. Coastal Rijeka was not a
border town, but its inhabitants were the first ones in Yugoslavia to be able
to listen to the Sanremo Festival broadcast by the Italian radio stations.
Rijekan music fans also played the role of a filter by translating and arrang-
ing these songs that were then broadcast by Radio Rijeka, spreading them
throughout Yugoslavia. According to the contemporaries:
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Francesca Rolandi
A small group of musicians, together with Mario Kinel and the singers, was
used to carefully listening to Sanremo radio broadcast and waiting for the nom-
ination of the winner. They recorded the broadcast (they got their first tape-
recorder in 1952) and, immediately after the end of the festival, the very same
night, chose the winning compositions—Petrović took music, Kinel the lyr-
ics, immediately translating or, to say it better, reworking and accommodating
them. Usually they were doing it in Crimea, in a radio employee’s flat, because
there you had better audibility than downtown. When they accomplished it,
they rushed to the studio and rehearsed till dawn. In that way the next morning
the impatient listeners could listen to the rearrangements from Sanremo of the
previous night. In the following days, all Yugoslavia—for which there was no
other way to listen to Sanremo music apart from Rijeka radio station’s rear-
rangements—had listened to them and in this way people from Rijeka became
very popular.25
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A Filter for Western Cultural Products
Along with zabavna muzika, early Italian experiments with rock ’n’ roll
music, which had already adapted the Anglo-Saxon classics to a different
audience and deprived them of their original subversive meaning,29 also
spread in the country. For instance, in 1959 Little Tony—an Italian singer
who not only performed rearrangements of the first American rock ’n’ roll
singers but also imitated the look, sound, and stage act of Elvis Presley,
Ricky Nelson, and Gene Vincent—achieved huge success in Yugoslavia.
His first EP was released by the Yugoslav label Jugoton thanks to the col-
laboration with the Italian label Durium.30
Soon, Yugoslav versions of Western music spread from Yugoslavia to
other Eastern European countries, especially in the bordering areas where
people were already familiar with Yugoslav popular culture, accustomed
to listening to Yugoslav radio and TV broadcasts. Another meaningful ex-
ample of this chain of influences is the artistic parabola of those Yugoslav
music stars who attained huge popularity in the Eastern bloc performing
rearrangements of American, British, French, or Italian songs. Even if
Western performers were not a priori banned in the Eastern bloc, they were
still perceived as a suspicious and external element and often turned out
to be a target for criticism for their supposed Western qualities. Instead,
Yugoslav performers were regarded as a less controversial, ideologically di-
luted version that would satisfy the audience by providing them with new
trends in music.31 One of the first performers able to exploit Yugoslavia’s
international position was Ðorđe Marjanović, who had his first tour in the
Soviet Union in 1963. At that time, Marjanović was one of the first idols
for the Yugoslav audience, but, as soon as his popularity faded away back
home, he built a career in the Soviet and Eastern European markets.32 The
first Yugoslav rock bands were already used to having tours in the Eastern
bloc and, according to the accounts of some of the protagonists, they were
warmly welcomed by the local teenagers, who strove to show that they
knew foreign bands, too.33
Another sector in which the Italian model played an important role
was cinema, partly due to the worldwide popularity of Italian directors,
but also due to the contacts established through co-productions.34 Italian
cinematography was regarded as a model in Yugoslavia for many reasons:
it was politically acceptable, but at the same time appealed to the masses,
particularly left-leaning. Cooperation included study exchanges. Veljko
Bulajić was the first one to go study in Italy. In 1955, he was accepted as
an observer to Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome and managed
to get financial support from Yugoslavia.35 In his application letter to the
Yugoslav Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, Bu-
lajić stressed that his experience from Centro sperimentale di cinematografia
would have an impact on Yugoslav cinematography. During his stay in It-
– 285 –
Francesca Rolandi
aly, he wrote articles from Cinecittà for Vjesnik u srijedu36 and collaborated
as a member of the crew for the comedy movies Gli ultimi cinque minuti
(The Last Five Minutes), by Giuseppe Amato, and Ragazze d’oggi (Girls
of Today), by Luigi Zampa. The impact of the genre of Neorealismo on his
work turned out to be explicit, especially in his films Vlak bez voznog reda
(Train without a Timetable, 1959), Uzavreli grad (City in Ferment, 1961),
and Rat (War, 1961), based on a screenplay of Cesare Zavattini, the major
theorist of Neorealismo. He reached the top of his success in 1969 with
Bitka na Neretvi (The Battle of Neretva), based on a screenplay of Ugo
Pirro—another leading Italian screenwriter—and dealing with one of the
most epic episodes of the Yugoslav liberation struggle. Following the first
exchanges, an official bilateral agreement between Italy and Yugoslavia of-
fered several scholarships per year for Yugoslav students at Italian cultural
institutions, included Centro sperimentale di cinematografia.37
Nevertheless, the main contacts were established not with the genre
of Neorealismo or with acclaimed Italian directors, but with the popular
genres, especially peplum movies, that were often shot as co-productions
with foreign partners in Yugoslavia. This turned out to be very good busi-
ness. From the late 1950s, Italian movie enterprises were the biggest foreign
investors in the Yugoslav film industry. At that time, the Italian Cinecittà
found it convenient to rent out its own studios to Americans and rent
considerably cheaper Yugoslav studios for its own productions. The first
outstanding coproduction was La strada lunga un anno (The Year Long
Road, 1958) by Giuseppe De Santis, who, in 1949, had directed Riso am-
aro (Bitter Rice), one of the last masterpieces of neorealist cinema. De
Sanctis was emotionally connected to Yugoslavia for both political—he
was a leftist—and private reasons—he had married a Yugoslav woman.
The same happened with Gillo Pontecorvo, who, in 1959, directed the
Italo-French-Yugoslav co-production Kapò, characterized by neorealistic
elements and dealing with the Holocaust. However, another Italian co-
production paved the way for the profitable world of historical movies: in
1958 Alberto Lattuada shot La tempesta (The Blizzard), based on Pushkin’s
short story, in Yugoslavia, thanks to a coproduction agreement between
Bosna Film and De Laurentiis movie enterprise, with the collaboration of
Paramount Pictures. Yugoslav film studios specialized in historical movies,
offering a large number of horses and walk-on actors at a very competitive
price. This flow of money also supported local projects with strong cultural
values that otherwise would hardly have been financed, such as the movies
belonging to the Novi jugoslovenski (New Yugoslav) film movement, which
criticized the contradictions of contemporary Yugoslavia, exploring social
issues, including the topic of humanity’s alienation in a Socialist society.38
However, co-productions with foreign partners also raised an issue about
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A Filter for Western Cultural Products
Just as with music and cinema, suspicious authorities followed the first
steps of Yugoslav television, which was often blamed for spreading petty
alien bourgeois influences around the country, especially through enter-
tainment. As a member of the Ideological Commission stated:
“Because of the absence of its own traditions, low competence of its per-
sonnel, underdeveloped technical base, scarcity of funds at its disposal, as
well as poor scene of entertainment—our television tends to massively use
foreign sources, to broadcast foreign programs and movies. In addition to
the fact that watching foreign programs can be useful in expanding knowl-
edge and the views of a limited number of our citizens, at the same time it
can also represent a quite intensive, and often negative, influence on their
insights, images and taste.”46
In the early years, the first television technicians were sent to Italy to
visit RAI studios to learn from their expertise.47 In 1957, a team of Radio
Televizija Beograd—which at that time was experimenting on program-
ming, starting its broadcasts in less than a year—visited RAI studios in
Rome and Milan. One of the participants recalled that they were especially
interested in the newscast and in quiz shows such as Lascia e raddoppia and
Telematch.48
Even if shaped as a state monopoly and controlled by the ruling Chris-
tian Democratic Party, RAI established itself in a midway between the
U.S. commercial model and the more informative BBC model aiming at
informing, educating, and entertaining.49 Watching RAI broadcasts, Yu-
goslavs came into contact with American programs thanks to their Italian
imitations. One such example is provided by the Italian program Lascia o
raddoppia, inspired by the American quiz show The $64,000 Question. It
was broadcast on Tuesdays when the Yugoslav TV station had a break in
its schedule. This program was hosted by Mike Bongiorno, who had sev-
eral connections to the United States: he was born in New York to Italian
parents, and he had worked for The Italian-American Progress and Voice of
America.50
As with other cultural influences, the Italian-Yugoslav connection had
its influence further east. Yugoslav television had many followers in the
neighboring Communist countries. The most significant case study can
be found from the Banat region of Romania, where inhabitants became
accustomed to listening to Yugoslav radio stations, later watching Yugoslav
TV broadcasts. Ordinary people grew up with Yugoslav television broad-
casts, recalling them as their “only source of information.” They even
learned the Serbian language, contributing to the softening of the Roma-
nians’ sense of isolation not just from the Western countries but also from
the more liberal Socialist regimes.51
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A Filter for Western Cultural Products
– 289 –
Francesca Rolandi
Notes
1. A. Vowinckel, M. M. Payk, and T. Lindenberger, eds., Cold War Cultures: Perspective on
Eastern and Western European Societies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012).
– 291 –
Francesca Rolandi
– 292 –
A Filter for Western Cultural Products
22. B. Luthar, “Shame, Desire and Longing for the West: A Case Study of Consumption,”
in Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Washington, DC:
New Academia Publishing, 2010), 341–77; A. Švab, “Consuming Western Image of Well-
Being: Shopping Tourism in Socialist Slovenia,” Cultural Studies, special issue Consumption,
Shopping, Tourism and Informal Trade in the Socialist Countries of Eastern Europe 16, no. 1 (Jan-
uary 2001): 63–79; M. Mikula, “Highways of Desire: Cross-Border Shopping in Former Yugo-
slavia 1960s–1980s,” in Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side, ed. Grandits and Taylor, 211–37.
23. Poročilo državnega sekretariata za notranje zadeve za leto 1961 (zap. št. 14), 16;
Poročilo državnega sekretariata za notranje zadeve za leto 1962 (zap. št. 15), 11; Poročilo
državnega sekretariata za notranje zadeve za leto 1963 (zap. št. 16), 12; Poročilo državnega
sekretariata za notranje zadeve za leto 1964 (zap. št. 17), 23, šk. 1440, 1931, Republiški sek-
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24. G. Battisti, Una regione per Trieste. Studio di geografia politica ed economica (Udine: Del
Bianco—Industrie grafiche, 1970), 201. For instance, Timisoara was a large market for prod-
ucts from Yugoslavia.
25. E. Dubrović, Čarobna igla. Zbirka gramofona i riječka diskografija (Rijeka: Muzej grada
Rijeke, 2004), 69.
26. L. Kuntarić, “Moja sjećanja na festival Zagreb ’53,” in Pedeset zlatnih godina. U povodu
50 godina Zagreb festa, ed. N. Marjanović-Zulim (Zagreb: Hrvatsko društvo skladatelja—Can-
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27. Zabavna muzika literally means “entertainment music,” a definition that implies an
explicit comparison with serious (ozbiljna) music, which, according to some critics, especially
in the earlier years of the rise of Yugoslav pop music, was the only kind regarded as a form
of art. Irena Miholić, in her Ph.D. dissertation, tried to answer the same question and, com-
paring categorizations from different periods published in essays and encyclopedias, stresses
that the dichotomy between the ideas of “music as a form of escapism” and “music as a form
of art” faded throughout the decades. I. Miholić, “Zabavna glazba u Hrvatskoj: etnomuzi-
kološki i kulturno-antropološki pristup,” Ph.D. diss., Sveučilište u Zagrebu (2009), 17–23.
Moreover, the category of zabavna muzika is often connected with mass media. In the period
we are dealing with, zabavna muzika can be regarded as a big umbrella covering different
genres, such as šlager and the earliest rock ’n’ roll, whose categorization was often blurred.
On the one hand, zabavna muzika can be regarded as a synonym for pop music; on the other,
as a precursor.
28. A. Sidran, “24mila baci da Sarajevo,” Il Sole 24 Ore, 7 June 2009, 37.
29. Portelli, “L’orsacchiotto e la tigre di carta,” 135–47.
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45–47.
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32. P. Luković, Bolja prošlost. Prizori iz muzičkog života Jugoslavije 1940–1989, Vol. 1 Estrada
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33. Ibid., 225.
34. D. Kosanović and D. Tucaković, Stranci u raju. Koprodukcije i filmske usluge, stranci u
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36. See these articles, all by V. Bulajić: “‘Rat i mir’ snima se u Jugoslaviji,” Vjesnik u sri-
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Francesca Rolandi
govori Giuseppe De Santis,” VUS 176, 14 September 1955, 8; “Udruženi scenaristi,” VUS
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37. Materijali o stipendistima 1955–56, fasc. 68, fond 559, AJ.
38. D. J. Goulding, Liberated Cinema: The Yugoslav Experience (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
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39. II/2-b. 103, k. 6, fond 507, AJ; V. Dobrinić, “Koproducija: da-ne?” VUS 341, 12 No-
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40. On Yugoslav television, see S. Mihelj, “Television Entertainment in Socialist Eastern
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41. At that time, Yugoslav Radio Television had three broadcast centers in Zagreb (created
in 1956), Belgrade, and Ljubljana (both created in 1958). Later on, every Republic or auton-
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42. I. Pustišek, “Međunarodna saradnja Televizije Beograd u okviru sistema Jugoslovenske
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43. Ibid., 195.
44. B. Paulu, Radio and Television Broadcasting on the European Continent (Minneapolis:
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– Katalog 1, fond 1220 (Centralni komitet Saveza Komunista Hrvatske), Hrvatski Državni
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Bibliography
– 317 –
Bibliography
– 318 –
INDEX
– 319 –
Index
broadcasting, 168, 181, 218, 231, 237–44, competition, 71, 75, 86, 90, 200, 205, 237–38,
246–52, 287 244, 248, 251
Bucharest, 31, 123–26, 129, 132, 156 computer
Bulganin, Nikolai, 203, 220 science, 101–3, 105, 107, 109–12, 114–15
visit to Britain, 220 technology, 103, 107–8, 113, 115, 117,
Bulgaria, 161, 163–64, 283 125, 145
computing
cooperation, 101–2, 105–7, 113, 116
C Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE), 26, 31–32, 47, 53–57, 63–81,
Canada, 63, 68 141
Capitalism, 5, 30, 52, 91, 185, 189 First basket, 69
Capitant, René, 202, 205 Second basket, 69
Cartledge, Bryan, 226 Third basket (basket III), 69, 70, 73,
CCF. See Congress of Cultural Freedom 75–77, 208
Chantre, Marc-Edmond, 87 Helsinki Accords, 23–43, 45, 47, 55,
Cheliabinsk, 229 58–59, 63–64, 70, 75, 94, 159, 208–9
Čech, Pavel, 187, 189–90 Helsinki Final Act, 25, 45, 47, 64, 94, 208
censorship, 66, 75, 164, 192, 221, 226 Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), 85–86,
Centre de recherché macromoléculaire in 153–56, 160
Strasbourg, 130 consumer culture, 5, 281–83
Chenu, Roselyne, 154–55, 158, 167 Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export
China, 64 Controls (CoCom), 88, 102
Chirac, Jacques, 72–73, 210 Copenhagen, 48–50, 53–54, 59, 245–46
Churchill, Thomas, 204 cosmopolitan, 154, 183, 185, 189
Churchill, Winston cosmopolitism, 185, 279
Speech in Missouri (1946), 257–58 CSCE. See Conference on Security and
CIA, 28, 153, 156 Cooperation in Europe
circulation Cuban missile crisis, 24, 122
of people and ideas, people and knowledge, cultural agreements, 27, 90–91, 128, 135, 205
151, 160 cultural Cold War, 4–5, 16, 59, 219, 231
of printed materials, 153, 162–63, 169 (see cultural internationalism, 10
also books) Czechoslovakia, 156, 161, 163–4, 177–195
civil society, 31, 197, 202, 205, 209–11
CoCom. See Coordinating Committee for
Multilateral Export Controls D
Cold War
discussion on the concept, 12–13 Danish Young Communists (DKU), 45–46, 51
the end of, 63, 238, 257–58 Danish Youth Council (DUF), 44, 46
historiography, 1–4, 219 decolonization, 244, 247
as a paradigm, 1–4, 257–61, 263, 289 democracy, 31, 58, 64, 84, 146, 186, 238, 261
studies: cultural turn in, 4, 14, 197, 277 democratization, 27, 144, 160, 168
technology race, 104 Denmark, 44–62
Communism, 1, 30, 65, 87, 123, 152, 161, 168, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 27–28, 33,
182, 206, 264–65, 278 44–49, 53, 55–58
Communist movement, 51, 52, 86, 91, 264, 289 Désormière, Roger, 182
Communist Party of de-Stalinization, 162
Czechoslovakia (KSC), 177–195 détente, 12, 25, 29, 30–32, 34–35, 46, 49, 53–55,
Denmark (DKP), 45, 49, 51 63–67, 70, 72–73, 77, 109, 122, 153, 159, 191,
Finland (SKP), 14, 264–65, 267 208, 229, 282
France (PCF), 14, 178, 181–83, 190–92, Diggelmann, Walter, 92
199, 202 Dinescu, Mircea, 166
Germany (Kommunistische Partei diplomacy
Deutschlands, KPD), 199 cultural, 5–6, 8, 14–16, 82–85, 87, 89, 91,
Germany (Deutsche Kommunistische 121–23, 152, 169, 181, 191–93, 197–98,
Partei, DKP), 206 205, 207, 209, 211, 218–20, 289
Italy (PCI), 14, 203, 278, 289 informal, 15, 23–24, 26, 36, 55–56, 58
Poland (KPP), 51 parallel, 15, 23, 26, 28, 32, 34–35, 39
Soviet Union (KPSS), 7, 53 people-to-people, 197
comparative history, 11–12 periodical, 221
– 320 –
Index
– 321 –
Index
– 322 –
Index
Liehm, Antonín J., 177, 191 non-state actor, 4, 10, 23, 25, 85–86, 92, 152
Lisa and Lisa II (computers), 110 Norway, 247, 266
Little Tony, 284–85 Novosibirsk, 103
London, 68, 82, 84, 131, 189, 224, 227, 229, 250 Novyi Mir, 220, 226
Lüthy, Herbert, 85
O
M
Obraztsov, Sergei, 201
Madrid, 244–46 OIRT. See International Organization of Radio
Magadan, 227–28 and Television
Makhachkala, 229 Oistrakh, David, 87, 201
Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 163 OKWOM. See Polish National Council for the
Masaryk, T. G., 185, 193 Cooperation of Youth Organizations
Maurer, Ion Gheorghe, 130 Oost-West Instituut, 28
Mayhew, Sir Christopher, 201–2, 225 Oprecht, Hans, 153, 155
Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 166, 257 Ortutay, Gyula, 127–28
McCarthy, John, 113
media, 5, 11, 37–38, 88, 123, 131, 133, 218–19,
260, 267, 278, 281 P
media history, 237–38
Meier, Herbert, 92 Paasikivi, J. K., 139
Michalski, Krysztof, 168 Paris, 65, 67–68, 71, 75, 77, 84, 95, 114, 123,
Michnik, Adam, 166 125, 127–28, 130, 132, 153, 159, 161, 163,
migrant(s), 48, 259, 274, 290 165, 170, 183, 186, 190, 198, 210
migration, 262 peaceful coexistence, 7, 29, 32, 82, 138, 142,
Ministry of foreign affairs. See respective country 144, 200, 204, 220
Miller, Wright, 225, 227–30 Perestroika, 63, 209, 211
Mitterrand, François, 210 Perm, 227
mobility, 4–5, 11,13, 15, 66, 108, 113, 169, Petitpierre, Max, 82, 86, 88
262–63, 273 Poland, 34, 44–62, 64, 66, 90–92, 154–55, 161,
Mochalski, Herbert, 206 163–64, 166, 182, 206, 257–76, 278
modernity, 225, 277–78, 290 Martial law (1981), 56, 266–68, 270–72
Moiseev Dance Company, 203 Polish National Council for the Cooperation
Moscow, 7, 27, 30–32, 34, 36–39, 64, 66–68, of Youth Organizations (OKWOM), 45, 49,
71–75, 77–78, 86, 89, 103, 105–6, 109, 111, 53–56
113, 139, 156, 205, 207–10, 219, 221, 224, Pompidou, Georges, 64, 66–74, 77
227–28, 230, 239, 250 popular culture, 14, 277–78, 281, 285, 289–90
Moscow State Circus, 203 post-Communism, 238, 260
Münnich, Ferenc, 139 post-Socialism, 1
music, 66–67, 76, 108, 121, 183, 227, 277–78, Prague, 64–65, 67, 94, 154, 162–63, 178, 180,
183–85, 288–89 182–83, 186, 190–91, 241–42
Prague Spring, 64, 67, 94, 186
Preuves, 86, 154
N PRIZ (MicroPRIZ software tool), 110–11
Pro Helvetia, 84–85, 88–90, 94
national history(ies), 5, 9, 251 proletarian internationalism, 32, 177
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), propaganda, 15, 77, 84–88, 156, 179, 210, 218–
2, 6, 14, 30, 33, 36–37, 47, 49, 51, 55–56, 64, 20, 222–26, 238–39, 241, 280–81, 287, 289
68–69, 77, 122, 141, 196, 198, 205, 208, 278 psychological warfare, 28–29, 37, 156, 218, 220
Council of Ministers, 37, 47, 55
neutrality, 82–86, 88, 90, 94, 140–41, 265, 267
Finland, 140–41, 265, 267 R
Switzerland, 82–86, 88, 94–95
Netherlands, 23–44, 157, 247 radio broadcasting. See broadcasting
New diplomatic history, 24 Radiotjänst (Sweden), 242
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 87 RAI. See Italian public television
Nixon, Richard, 1 Rajewsky, Boris, 206
administration of, 68 Rajk, Laszlo, 166, 184
Non-Aligned Movement, 279 Reader’s Digest, 218, 223
– 323 –
Index
R&D. See research & development cooperation Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 70, 182
Rencontres Internationales de Geneve, 86, 88, Soviet Weekly, 218, 221–22
96 spaceflights, 239, 250
research & development cooperation, 111, 114, Spain, 154, 159
138–44, 147 civil war, 178, 181, 184
“return to Europe” (metaphor), 257–58, 261, 274 Sperling, Dietrich, 207
Rijeka, 283–84 Spiritual National Defense, 84–85
Roman, Petre, 128 SSOD. See Union of Soviet Societies of
Romania, 14, 34, 47, 55, 66, 121–37, 156, 161, Friendship and Cultural Relations with
163–64, 166, 283, 288 Foreign Countries
Academy of the Socialist Republic of Stalin, Joseph, 3, 8, 16, 65, 87, 123, 191, 200,
Romania, 125 211, 219
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 125–26, 129 Stavropol, 230
National School of Administration, 127 students, 35, 55, 122, 124–25, 127–29, 131–32,
Roosevelt, Franklin, 65 142, 182, 227, 263–66, 286
Rougemont, Denis, 85 supportive technology transfer, 111–12, 116
Russell, Mark, 225–26 Surkov, Alexei, 200
Russia. See Soviet Union Sweden, 14, 108, 111–12, 115, 159, 242, 266
Russian and East European Studies, 5 Switzerland, 3, 14, 82–97, 151, 153–55, 157, 159,
transnationalism in, 3, 5, 9, 13, 258–61, 163, 247, 290
271–73 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 82–83
neutrality, 82–86, 88, 94–95
Swiss Enlightment Service
S (Schweizerischer Aufklärungsdienst),
85, 87–88
Sager, Peter, 85
Salis, Jean Rodolphe de, 86, 88–89
SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), 68 T
Sanremo festival, 283–84
influence on Yugoslavia, 284–85 Tallinn, 103, 109, 249–50
Sartre, J.–P., 181, 189–90 Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics, 102–3, 107–13,
Schaff, Adam, 164 115–16
Schmittlein, Raymond, 202 Tampere, 108, 117
science and technology (S&T), 102–8, 112–13, Tbilisi, 229
115, 117, 124, 138, 141, 221, 224 technology transfer, 101–20, 128–30, 147
Science in the Service of Peace, 239, 241–42, television, 71, 74–76, 125, 237–41, 247–52, 278,
244, 248, 251 280, 284, 287–88, 290
Second World, 5, 14, 260 satellite, 58, 67–68, 112, 145, 220
SITRA (The Finnish Innovation Fund), 145 Tepeneag, Dumitru, 166
small actors, 102, 219 Tito, Joseph Broz, 140, 278, 282
Socialism, 3, 5, 8, 30, 141–42, 145–46, 260, 263, totalitarianism, (post–)totalitarian, 5, 67, 152,
265–66 155, 168, 219
social psychology, 144 Tõugu, Enn, 110
social sciences, 139, 144, 161, 165 translations, 71, 113, 163, 186–87, 189–90, 192,
sociology, 13, 144, 161 280
Solidarity, 266–68, 272 transnational approach, 5–12, 15
Polish Solidarity in Finland, 267 transnational family, 268–71
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 66, 71 transnational history, 3, 6, 8–9, 25
Soros Foundation, 112 transnational television, 237–38
Soros, George, 158, 168 Tunisia, 244, 247
Soviet Union, 1–7, 11, 13–14, 29–30, 34–39, Tuori, Jussi, 105–7
44–45, 52, 61, 63–81, 82–83, 86–89, 92–93,
102–15, 117, 122–23, 139, 141–43, 148,
158, 161, 163, 178, 180, 184, 187–88, 191, U
196–217, 218–34, 240, 249–50, 261–65,
278–80, 285 Ul’ianovsk, 230
Academy of Sciences, 105–6, 113 Union of Soviet Societies of Friendship and
computer piracy, 105 Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries
Institute for Relations with the Public of (SSOD), 197, 200, 203, 206–10. See also All-
the Federal Republic of Germany, 207 Union Society for Cultural Relations
– 324 –
Index
United Kingdom, 32, 154, 157–59, 163, 187, Warsaw Pact, 264, 267
198, 201–3, 208, 211, 218–35, 239–40, 185, Washington, 67–68, 75, 84, 156
291 Wates foundation, 167
Foreign office (UK), 156, 201–4, 209, Watson, Adam, 155, 157, 160, 166
218–31, 223, 227 Weideli, Walter, 92
United Nations (UN), 75, 140, 143, 240, 262 West Germany. See Federal Republic of Germany
UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Wõrk, Ants, 108
Cultural Organization), 75–76, 112 World Festival of Youth and Students, 7, 11,
United States of America (USA), 2, 4, 30, 151, 51–52
152–59, 202, 219–21, 223, 231, 278–79, 288, Berlin 1951, 3
290 Moscow 1957, 7
University World Peace Council, 11, 199
Free University (Amsterdam), 34 World War II, 4, 7, 14–16, 25, 31–32, 66, 82–86,
of California, Berkeley, 32 92, 94, 104, 121, 123, 142–43, 155–56, 178,
of Chicago, 159 180–81, 184, 192, 198, 240, 247–48, 257, 261,
of Columbia, 35, 143, 154 278, 283–84
of Debrecen, 140 World Wide Web. See internet
of Helsinki, 111, 143–145 Woźniakowski, Jacek, 168
of Tartu, 111–12 Writers and Publishers Committee for
of Technology of Helsinki, 102 Intellectual Cooperation, 153, 162
of Technology of Tallinn, 103, 112
of Technology of Tampere, 108
of Tilburg, 32 Y
of Turku, 113, 115
USSR. See Soviet Union Yalta, 65, 227
YLE. See Finnish Broadcasting company
youth, 8, 44–58, 68, 129, 186, 221, 264–66,
V 279–81
Youth leader seminars (Danish-Polish), 44,
Van den Heuvel, Kees, 23, 28–35, 37–39 46–51, 52–53, 56, 58
Van Eeghen, Ernst H., 23, 29, 35–39 Yugoslav Radio Television,
Vilkuna, Kustaa, 142 broadcast of Italian programs, 287–88
Virolainen, Johannes, 143, 268 signal reception, 287
visas, 93, 200, 205 Yugoslavia, 3, 14, 34, 140, 161, 163, 277–94
Vladislav, Jan, 155, 163, 166 split with the Soviet Union, 278
Vladivostok, 227 liberalization, 278–280
VOKS. See All-Union Society for Cultural Ideological Commission, 279–80, 288
Relations idea of a “third way”, 281
YYA. See Finland, Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948
W
Z
Wagner Hansen, Richard, 46–47
Wahlen, Friedrich, 88–90, 94 Zagreb, 34, 277, 284, 290
Wallenborn, Leo, 242–43 Życie Warszawy, 92
– 325 –