Beyond the Divide

Beyond the Divide

Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe

Edited by
SIMO MIKKONEN AND PIA KOIVUNEN

berghahn
NEW YORK • OXFORD
www.berghahnbooks.com
 Published by
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© 2015 Simo Mikkonen & Pia Koivunen

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Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beyond the divide : entangled histories of Cold War Europe / edited by Simo Mikkonen
and Pia Koivunen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78238-866-1 (hardback : acid-free paper) —
ISBN 978-1-78238-867-8 (ebook)
1. Europe, Western—Relations—Europe, Eastern. 2. Europe, Eastern—Relations—
Europe, Western. 3. Transnationalism—Social aspects—Europe, Western.
4. Transnationalism—Social aspects—Europe, Eastern. 5. Europe—History—1945–—
Historiography. 6. Cold War—Historiography. 7. Europe, Western—Historiography.
8. Europe, Eastern—Historiography. 9. Historiography—Political aspects—Europe,
Western. 10. Historiography—Political aspects—Europe, Eastern. I. Mikkonen, Simo.
II. Koivunen, Pia.
D1065.E852B49 2015
940.55—dc23
2015003000

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed on acid-free paper

ISBN 978-1-78238-866-1 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-78238-867-8 (ebook)
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments viii
Introduction Beyond the Divide 1
Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen

PART I. POLITICAL PROCESSES AND

TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS
Chapter 1 Opening Up Political Space: Informal Diplomacy,
East-West Exchanges, and the Helsinki Process 23
Giles Scott-Smith
Chapter 2 Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes: The Case
of Danish-Polish Youth Exchange and the European
Détente, 1965–75 44
Marianne Rostgaard
Chapter 3 Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”: France, the USSR,
and Cultural Aspects of European Security Cooperation 63
Nicolas Badalassi
Chapter 4 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland and the Challenge
of Peaceful Coexistence, 1956–75 82
Matthieu Gillabert

PART II. INTERPLAY IN THE ACADEMIC CONTEXTS

Chapter 5 Expert Groups Closing the Divide: Estonian-Finnish
Computing Cooperation since the 1960s 101
Sampsa Kaataja
 Contents

Chapter 6 French-Romanian Academic Exchanges in the 1960s 121

Beatrice Scutaru
Chapter 7 Hungary Opens toward the West: Political Preconditions
for Finnish-Hungarian Cooperation in Research and
Development in the 1960s and 1970s 138
Anssi Halmesvirta
Chapter 8 “Discrete” Intermediaries: Transnational Activities of the
Fondation pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne,
1966–91 151
Ioana Popa

PART III. LIMITATIONS FOR TRANSNATIONAL

NETWORKS
Chapter 9 The Image of “Real France”: Instrumentalization of
French Culture in the Early Communist Czechoslovakia 177
Václav Šmidrkal
Chapter 10 Dealing with “Friends”: Soviet Friendship Societies in
Western Europe as a Challenge for Western Diplomacy 196
Sonja Großmann
Chapter 11 The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia: Britain’s Russian
Magazine as a Medium for Cross-Border Communication 218
Sarah Davies

PART IV. ALONG THE BORDERLINES

Chapter 12 Transnational Television in Europe: Cold War
Competition and Cooperation 237
Lars Lundgren
Chapter 13 Transnational Spaces between Poland and Finland:
Grassroots Efforts to Dismantle the Iron Curtain and
Their Political Entanglements 257
Anna Matyska
Chapter 14 A Filter for Western Cultural Products: The Influence
of Italian Popular Culture on Yugoslavia, 1955–65 277
Francesca Rolandi
Bibliography 295
Index 319

– 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

Table 6.1 The Evolution of Franco-Romanian Cultural, Scientific,

and Technical Exchanges 129

– 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

With this particular volume, even if there is a great number of contribu-

tors, things have proceeded quite smoothly. Contributors have all been
committed to the process, paying attention to deadlines and responding
on time. Therefore, as the editors, we are grateful for all the contributors.
It has truly been a pleasure to work with such wonderful and innovative
group of scholars. Your willingness to share your ideas and knowledge with
others made this volume possible. We have felt privileged to work with
you.
In the path leading to this volume, we received help from several peo-
ple that deserve our gratitude. Ilona Riikonen and Kirsi-Maria Hytönen
from the University of Jyväskylä had a very important role in editing and
processing individual chapters and helping the manuscript to take shape.
With their effort, commitment and very professional touch, the process
took quantum leaps forward. Also, we wish to thank Berghahn Books and
its magnificent staff who did great job with finalizing this volume. We are
also grateful to two anonymous reviewers who gave valuable feedback and
constructive criticism.
Finally, we wish to thank our spouses and children, for whom we wish
to dedicate this volume.

Simo Mikkonen, Muurame

Pia Koivunen, Tampere
15 July 2015

– ix –
 Introduction

BEYOND THE DIVIDE

Simo Mikkonen
Pia Koivunen

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

Cold War is over but Cold War thinking survives.

—Joseph Rotblat

T he Cold War is already history. Still, it has maintained a surprisingly

strong role in defining European historiography to this day. For ex-
ample, widely used concepts such as “post-Socialism” or “countries of the
former Soviet bloc” presuppose that the countries located east of “the Iron
Curtain” were detached from their western neighbors and have only re-
cently started to become like them. In this book, we argue that the Cold
War era saw not only the division of Europe into two warring camps, but
that there were also a plenty of connections over the East-West divide.
Instead of two separate histories of Europe, these connections speak for
entangled histories, urging us to go beyond the binational orientation
–1–
 Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen

and examine simultaneous interaction of several countries, people, and

organizations.
The research on the Cold War and related issues has expanded during
the past twenty years, and today it is completely legitimate to study topics
that were still unthinkable quite recently, like interaction and cooperation
between Capitalist and Socialist worlds, or the cultural and social impli-
cations of the conflict. Furthermore, there have also been an increasing
number of studies investigating how the Cold War affected the everyday
life of ordinary citizens or whether the Cold War even mattered to them
at all. Despite the emergence and current presentability of culturally and
socially flavored Cold War research, much still remains unknown.
This volume seeks to alter the way in which intra-European Cold War–
era connections are perceived. Previous focus on superpower relations in
Cold War research has resulted in the emphasis of East-West division. It is
true that, for much of the twentieth century, both the Soviet Union and
the United States had a major impact on Europe in intellectual, politi-
cal, and cultural terms; their mere existence troubled, excited, outraged,
and inspired people all over Europe. Often one superpower was seen as
completely alien, while the other was considered as the savior of Europe.
However, instead of being merely allies to superpowers, European coun-
tries were independent actors that harbored intentions and objectives be-
yond the superpower axis. These connections deserve more attention. For
many of these countries, the relationships to countries on the other side
of the Iron Curtain were often not so much about the Cold War as they
were about normal dealings between two countries, and a number of these
contacts were not new but originated from the prewar period. This kind
of interaction escapes the traditional conception of the Cold War, and this
has likely been the reason why they have not been examined extensively
outside national scholarship.1
The European perspective is particularly important in the area of trans-
national networks and their implications on the Cold War–era relations.
While the Soviet Union and the United States were far from each other
and, in many respects, far from Europe, the countries in Europe were close
to each other geographically, culturally, and even linguistically.
The research task of this volume is to study an area that has been given
too little attention: we aim to explore various manifestations of transna-
tional connections between European countries on the opposite sides of
the East-West division. While countries in the West were theoretically free
with regard to their foreign policy and international issues, many of them
had committed themselves to NATO or U.S. policies, and there were lim-
itations on travel and the movement of goods and ideas to the East, but
also from the East. For example, it was the Western countries in 1951 that
–2–
 Introduction

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.

Beyond Cold War Studies?

In order to position ourselves within the extensive field of international

studies addressing the post−World War II Europe, we feel it is necessary to
take a brief look at the more than two decades that have passed since the
end of the Cold War. The fall of the Iron Curtain made it possible to rewrite
the history of the Cold War era as previously closed archives of Socialist
countries were opened. This marked the beginning of a new era that has
been particularly beneficial for Russian and East European, or Eurasian,
studies. Yet, the main focus has been on the developments within national
borders; interest in the developments transcending national borders has
been much more modest. Some general developments, particularly in the
English-language literature, are evident, pointing to paths that many of
our chapters have also followed.
One of the significant shifts has been the cultural turn in the study of
international relations and diplomatic history of the Cold War era. The
cultural turn has expanded the focus from diplomats, nation states, and
blocs to non-state actors. Until quite recently, the cultural aspects of the
superpower rivalry, often known as the cultural Cold War, have mainly
been studied from the U.S. perspective.6 The cultural Cold War as an ap-
proach has its roots in diplomatic and international history. It is primarily
focused on activities that are closely related to states’ pursuits but are not
equal to foreign policy or foreign relations. According to Gordon Johnston,
the cultural Cold War can be divided into three areas: (1) the relations be-
tween the bloc leaders (the United States and the USSR); (2) the spheres
of influence of the USSR and the United States (Western and Eastern
Europe); and (3) “individual nation-states.”7

–4–
 Introduction

Scholarship on the Cold War widened and became more multifaceted

after the interest in the impacts and different features of the conflict began
to attract attention beyond the confines of traditional political history and
international relations. The arrival of cultural and social historians, media
and film researchers, anthropologists, and many others has brought about
new approaches, new methodological openings, and new sets of questions.
With studies on arts, media, consumer culture, and grassroots activities,
the understanding of the Cold War as a conflict, and especially its impact
on ordinary people, has become more fragmented and multifaceted, but
also less politically motivated.
There have been a few comparative projects analyzing cultures and the
Cold War in Europe. Patrick Major and Rana Mitter’s volume, Across the
Blocs: Cultural and Social History of the Cold War sought to transcend the
cultural Cold War into the realm of the cultural and social history of the
Cold War.8 Two recent volumes more or less follow this agenda. Divided
Dreamworlds: The Cultural Cold War in Western and Eastern Europe, edited
by Peter Romijn, Giles Scott-Smith, and Joes Segal, focuses primarily on
cultural diplomacy by analyzing the differences and similarities between the
two visions of the future world, Capitalism and Socialism. A great difference
from most studies on the cultural Cold War is that Divided Dreamworlds
does not treat the East only as an object of the cultural Cold War; it also
grants the visionaries of the Socialist utopia, an alternative form of modern
life, the right to their views.9 Cold War Cultures, another recent volume
edited by Annette Vowinckel, Marcus Payk, and Thomas Lindenberger,
focuses on comparing European cultures during the Cold War and evalu-
ating whether a particular European Cold War culture or cultures existed.
The most valuable contribution of the volume is the notion that national,
regional, and local trends, politics, and cultures played their own roles in
shaping the realities in different parts of Europe during the Cold War. As
was concluded by the editors of Cold War Cultures, Europe “was more than
just a buffer area between the superpowers.”10 Dialogue, thus, is needed
between the research areas of international relations and national histories.
Another field that needs to be discussed in relation to transnationalism
is Russian and Eastern European studies. The transnational approach has
reached Eastern European studies, most richly seen in studies of everyday
life, consumer culture, and fashion in Eastern Europe during Socialism
and the Cold War period.11 More recently, studies on mobility, educa-
tional exchanges, and economic integration within the Socialist world,
or “the second world,” have shed new light on the picture of the Socialist
countries so long dominated by the sketches of the scholars of the totali-
tarian school.12

–5–
 Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen

Toward Transnational History of Postwar Europe

We aim at furthering many of the aforementioned developments by tack-

ling Cold War–era cultural connections within Europe. We also address a
few source-related problems. Many of our chapters use either previously
little-exploited source types, such as oral history, or exploit unofficial ar-
chival materials—that is, documents produced by institutes and individu-
als unofficially involved in foreign connections.
Spanning the wide gap between Eastern and Western Europe is a notable
challenge for research related to Cold War–era Europe. Many countries,
even of the former Soviet Union, have now become integral parts of the
European Union and NATO. Yet, European historiographies still remain
separate, with Eastern Europe seen as a lost area during the Cold War, with
only the fall of the Iron Curtain giving them a chance to catch up with the
West. Such an approach greatly distorts the big picture. The Soviet impact
on Europe should not be underestimated, but viewing Eastern and West-
ern Europe as completely detached societies, or East European societies as
passive when compared to Western ones, blurs the picture. It is precisely
European transnational networks during the Cold War, their dynamics,
and their impact that might help us obtain a better understanding of the
significance and heritage of the Cold War in the European context.
We underline the importance of transnational networks and their mean-
ing to average people. On a broad scale, increasing foreign connections
offered Europeans a glimpse of the world on the other side of the Iron Cur-
tain in the form of films and exhibitions, books and arts, foreign visitors,
and even tourism. Reciprocal flow of influences had an energizing impact
on average citizens, and that enabled functioning connections abroad.
While there was certainly a political dimension to the East-West cultural
exchanges at the governmental level, their significance for individuals was
often very different. This volume, thus, shifts the focus from the area of in-
ternational relations toward transnational ones, from a state-to-state level
toward a people-to-people level. Not forgetting traditional diplomacy, the
focus is nevertheless on the unofficial actions of diplomats and cultural
diplomacy, by which we understand a way of interacting with the outside
world by means of various forms of culture, such as educational and sci-
entific exchanges, artistic tours, and exhibitions. In other words, our book
concentrates on the thin line between the efforts of official and nongov-
ernmental organizations.
When considering the East-West division, a transnational approach
seems to offer tools for understanding the viewpoints of both sides. The
last few years have produced a couple of groundbreaking works that under-
line the promise of the transnational approach, even if these works deal
–6–
 Introduction

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

However, particularly in the field of arts, instead of merely choosing tal-

ented individuals, whole performing troupes, often consisting of hundreds
of members, traveled abroad on tours of several weeks.18 At the same time,
cultural exchanges quickly expanded to include broader segments of these
societies. In a few years, it became very hard to control people’s interac-
tions abroad. Several chapters in the book illustrate that few cared about
the political aims set by the Communist parties, youth leagues, or other So-
cialist organizations. Travelers from Socialist countries in some cases might
have reiterated the official propaganda in official meetings and interviews,
but, for most of them, even this was something they cared little for. What
really mattered was that foreign contacts allowed them to travel or to get
access to goods, as well as foreign intellectual products and currents.
Eventually, cultural exchanges developed into very lively interaction.
Even if the Socialist authorities did not like the fact that its citizens had
close dealings with the West, they considered the benefits to outweigh the
drawbacks. The actual creation and major expansion of Socialist cultural
diplomacy were based on the assumed appeal of Socialism. The price, an
influx of Western influences into the Socialist sphere, was at first consid-
ered manageable. However, through exchange programs, scientists, schol-
ars, athletes, and artists, even ordinary people, were able to establish for-
eign ties to an unparalleled extent. This resulted in interaction that had
been unimaginable during the Stalin era. Despite crackdowns in Hungary
(1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) and increased limitations of the Brezh-
nev era, it was too late to shut the channels with the rest of Europe. What
was considered a battle for hearts and minds by the superpower leaders
was for many Soviet individuals primarily just a chance to go abroad and
pursue their personal goals.

Transnational History and Cold War–era Europe

This volume raises some methodological and conceptual challenges that

need to be addressed in order to explain how individual chapters contrib-
ute to the whole. First, transnational history itself is not an established
concept. Rather, it is differently understood among scholarly fields, as sev-
eral of the chapters point out. Second, in the study of Cold War–era Eu-
ropean history, the transnational approach is something that has received
attention but is still very rarely adopted in practice. We provide several
examples of the transnational approach by understanding it as the move-
ment of people, ideas, goods, and practices and the impacts and implica-
tions of these movements. The implications of the transfer of knowledge,
ideas, and practices lie at the heart of the transnational approach, which
–8–
 Introduction

seems to promise a better understanding of the mechanism of exchange as

well as a more balanced approach to the nature of European connections
in the Cold War era than has been typical of other superpower-centered
Cold War studies.
One of the key problems related to transnational history is that its
definition is largely derived from the U.S. context.19 This is problematic
because of the divergence of European counties, many of them with check-
ered national backgrounds. However, if “transnational” is used to refer to
the cross-border movement of ideas, people, and goods, and transnational
history promises to bring together scholars who formerly concentrated on
their respective national areas, then this constraint appears to be an irrele-
vant terminological quibble. The crucial boundary here is the political and
ideological borderline between the East and the West that has been sup-
posed to divide Europe. It has also been called a transsystemic boundary,
marking the point of interaction between two different systems.20 Yet, we
emphasize not interaction between two homogenous systems but interac-
tion between sometimes very different representatives of these systems as
well as attempts to escape the confines of their respective systems. For us,
transnationalism is not only about the movement of people or ideas but
also about the impacts and implications of imported models and practices,
foreign images, and culture, since it is precisely these that make the exis-
tence of transnational networks so important.21
Interest beyond national history has been a general trend among histo-
rians and other scholars used to conducting their studies in the framework
of national units. This change is methodologically very important. In Eu-
ropean historiography, the change has been a visible one, and the expan-
sion of the European Union in particular has contributed to the growth
of a transnational consciousness. Yet, even in Europe, the terms seem to
have been dictated by Western Europe. Former Socialist countries from
Eastern Europe have been seen to return to Europe, rather than Europe
coming together and forming something new. In the case of Cold War Eu-
rope, superpowers spread their own versions of internationalism, which
were essentially geopolitical, encouraging interaction within the respec-
tive camp rather than outside of it. Consequently, transnational processes
within these camps, rather than between them, have been researched.22
Furthermore, while the transnational approach has been discussed in re-
lation to Cold War–era Western Europe, especially in the case of the Eu-
ropean Union, this approach has been less typical in relation to East-West
interaction during the same era.
The transnational approach, then, is not a monolithic structure but
rather a heterogeneous approach that determines methodological choices.
In many ways, it attaches to the endeavor to denationalize history that has
–9–
 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

On the Socialist side, the formation of international organizations seemed

to have similar goals, connecting people beyond national, ethnic, and po-
litical boundaries. The Soviet Union established networks of international
organizations dedicated to peace, including the World Peace Council, the
Women’s International Democratic Federation, the World Federation of
Trade Union, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and the Inter-
national Union of Students. However, quite quickly they came to be as-
sociated with Soviet propaganda efforts rather than genuine attempts to
facilitate transnational mobility. Even if accusations were made by western
politicians and mainstream media that these organizations were nothing
more than subversion and propaganda, not everyone agreed. As recent
studies on the Soviet-dominated World Festivals of Youth and Students,
for example, have shown, instead of the organization and orchestration from
above, these multinational festivals also generated uncontrollable forms of
transnational exchange and interaction at the grassroots level.27 Several of
our chapters address the relationship of such international organizations
with western NGOs and governments, shedding light on the birth of trans-
national networks. Especially during the Brezhnev era, some of these net-
works manifested themselves in dissident-related activities and grassroots
activism, as recent literature suggests.28
The interplay of personal and public as well as official and unofficial
activities is an important feature of a transnational approach and also re-
flected by our chapters. With regard to personal motivation and people’s
experiences of foreign activities, Ulf Hannerz has investigated conditions
in which national identities can weaken, making smaller units in foreign
connections stand out. Hannerz has pointed out that “a great many real
relationships to people and places may cross boundaries. Intimate circles
and small networks can be involved here; the transnational is not always
immense in scale.”29 Furthermore, Eric Hobsbawm, in his Nations and Na-
tionalism since 1780, has been skeptical about the strength of nations in the
era of globalization. He has suggested that the passiveness of nation states
has led to the strengthening of transnational structures.30 We argue that
Cold War Europe manifests these features, with transnational networks
embracing broader segments of society, often people outside the immediate
power structures.
In the European context, the transnational approach has most often
been discussed in connection with comparative history. Indeed, especially
in Germany the last two decades have seen a strong transnational orienta-
tion in the form of comparative history. Classical comparative history was
characterized by a systematic search for differences and similarities, often
lacking interaction, and therefore new approaches have been developed.
Especially the concept of “transfer” has indicated a shift toward more dy-
– 11 –
 Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen

namic comparative history. In Michel Espagne’s definition, transfer is the

process through which the norms and representations of one culture ap-
pear in another. Transfer studies follow the transmission of one culture into
another, analyzing the process of change.31 The theoretical problem in this
approach vis-à-vis this volume is that “transfer” allocates a passive role
to the recipient. Indeed, Peter Burke has stated that the process is rarely
a one-way street and that ideas and practices are more typically adapted
to their new cultural environment—that is, “translated.”32 To take the
transfer approach further, Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann
have introduced the idea of histoire croisée, entangled history, which ac-
knowledges that societies are different and that a successful comparison
requires multiple perspectives. Furthermore, entangled history urges us to
go beyond the binational orientation that has typically prevailed in trans-
national research.33
We do not aim at comparing different societies, but rather set our sights
on a more concise picture of interaction within Cold War Europe. Pro-
cesses and interactions between Eastern and Western Europe during the
Cold War should not be perceived as binational phenomena, which they
never were, but as processes that entailed several countries and different
layers of society, from the grass roots to national governments and supra-
national organizations. With this volume, we offer an empirical example
of entangled history in the context of Cold War Europe. Furthermore,
we show that the definition of Europe, or the West (not speaking of the
East), depends heavily on the observer. We hope to feed further discussion
about the benefits of the transnational approach for recent European his-
tory, nurture discussion about possible differences and similarities between
transnational approaches in Western and Eastern European contexts, and
finally bring them closer to each other.

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

history. Even when it comes to U.S.-Soviet relations, some points of de-

parture have been discovered in the Cold War narrative, such as space
collaboration in the 1970s and early 1980s, which was significant not only
for science but also for East-West transnational relations in Cold War–era
Europe. According to Andrew Jenks, space exploration represented, for
many, a way “to transcend Cold War hostilities and to forge a new kind
of global community.”34 Scientific and scholarly cooperation was truly an
important part of the development of transnational relations, as Sampsa
Kaataja’s chapter on cooperation in the realm of cybernetics points out.
More recent Cold War studies have been essentially multidisciplinary,
which is an important aspect of this volume as well. In many ways, transna-
tionalism provides for this multidisciplinarity but without the constraints
of the Cold War. Fruitful cooperation is taking place between history, art
history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies in an area where re-
search used to be conducted solely by political scientists. This promises
to enhance the big picture of European interaction in the shadow of the
superpower conflict, possibly helping to explain the current outlook of
Europe.
We should be, however, careful when applying “the Cold War” to a
new type of research. David Caute wisely warned us in 2003 about not
attaching the “fashionable” label “Cold War” to topics that have no real
connection to the actual conflict.35 Caute’s warning is still relevant today.
When studying exchanges, mobility, and transfers, it is easy to talk about
“Cold War interactions” and “Cold War exchanges.” The superpower con-
flict limited contacts between people in the East and the West, but quite
often attempts at East-West dialogue aimed at overcoming Cold War lim-
itations. The further we go from the competition and battle between the
superpowers, the less significant the conflict, and thus the concept itself,
seems to become. Moreover, when looking at the postwar period from the
perspective of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Cold War appears
as a Western concept, not much used in the national contexts of Eastern
Europe. The Cold War is viable as a context, particularly in the chronolog-
ical sense, but as a paradigm it becomes a limiting factor, making it difficult
to investigate exchanges, interactions, and culture in the postwar period.

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

may find various groupings among the European countries depending on

the defining factors. In terms of military alliances, there were the NATO
and Warsaw Pact countries, but also the so-called neutrals or the countries
that were not allied with either of the blocs, such as Austria, Switzerland,
Finland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. Moreover, some of the Capitalist coun-
tries on the Western side of the divide, such as France, Italy, and Finland,
all had strong Communist parties and popular friendship societies with the
Soviet Union, as Sonja Großman points out in her chapter.36 It is also im-
portant to note that the new Socialist countries within the Soviet sphere
of influence and defined by one ideology were far from being a culturally,
politically, economically, or religiously coherent area in the pre–World
War II era.37 Examples in this volume of Czechoslovakia (Václav Šmidrkal),
Hungary (Anssi Halmesvirta), and Romania (Beatrice Scutaru) make a
strong case that several of these countries had more natural ties to their
Western neighbors than to Russia.
French demographer Alfred Sauvy famously captured the division of
Europe—and the whole world—by coining the term “third world.” It im-
plied the first world (Capitalist countries), the second world (Socialist
countries), and the third world (colonies and ex-colonies under the rule of
first-world states). This categorization has proved its persistence as recent
studies on transnational relations and interaction between the Socialist
bloc and the rest of the world have made use of the term “second world.”38
Because we confine our focus on Europe and European interaction and
because our focus is not only on states, we prefer to talk about Western
and Eastern Europe.

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

cultural diplomacy sometimes comes close to propaganda, especially in

connection with the Cold War, and it is not always clear were the line
goes.39 At the other end of the spectrum, we may find informal diplomacy,
citizen diplomacy, or private diplomacy, which go yet further from the en-
deavors of a state but are, nonetheless, linked to state aims. In this volume,
Giles Scott-Smith introduces the term “parallel diplomacy,” by which he
refers to individual enterprises that fostered official state aims without be-
ing commanded by a state.
Besides cultural or public diplomacy, a typical form of transnational ac-
tivity during the Cold War was grassroots networking that contradicted or
even consciously battled the official aims of a state. This kind of activity
includes dissident networks, the human rights movement, and also private
people-to-people communication. A common element in grassroots ac-
tivism is that it is born “from below,” from the needs of individuals, and it
is characterized by loose institutional structures.40 All the chapters of this
volume address the sort of issues mentioned above, actions that are partly
diplomacy but partly manifestations of individual aims running contrary to
government aims. Marianne Rostgaard, Nicolas Badalassi, and Matthieu
Gillabert, together with Scott-Smith, all point toward the interplay be-
tween official, semi-official, and unofficial motives in East-West connec-
tions in this volume. However, as Anna Matyska, Sonja Großman, and
Sampsa Kaataja point out, the same interplay can be found from the Soviet
side. Even in Socialist systems, there were contrary aims that complicated
the diplomacy of Socialist countries and suggest that a transnational ap-
proach to foreign connections provides important perspectives that would
otherwise be lost or would emerge as incomprehensible.

The Structure of This Volume

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

seem to have developed on both sides. As Šmidrkal’s chapter suggests, the

Socialist interpretation of the West, combined with strict limitations on
foreign connections, gradually cut the former connections of East Central
Europe with the post−World War II West. Several chapters suggest that
the death of Stalin in 1953 was not only a point of change vis-à-vis inter-
national relations and diplomacy, but also on the lower levels concerning
the movement of people, ideas, processes, and goods. The suppression and
limitations of foreign connections in the Stalin era were partly reversed,
opening up new possibilities for transnational networks. While it was the
area of cultural diplomacy that seemed to reserve the central stage, many
individuals and both professional and personal networks played an import-
ant role very early on, as Francesca Rolandi suggests in her chapter about
Italian-Yugoslav networks.
By choosing a number of European countries, we have aimed at showing
that despite the processes being different in distinct regions and systems,
transnational networks can be found throughout the Cold War–era Eu-
rope. Despite the existence of several case studies on such connections,
what has been lacking is a more complete picture of what happened in
Europe during the Cold War years in this respect. If we are to understand
the rapid changes in Europe since the 1980s, we must examine Cold War
Europe and transnational networks that were built during these decades.
Otherwise we turn a blind-eye to the fact that Europe was seeking common
nominators, mutual language, and lively connections beyond national and
systemic borders even during an era that has been considered to be one of
hostility and strict East-West division.

Simo Mikkonen is an Academy Research Fellow in the Department of

History and Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is the
author of State Composers and the Red Courtiers: Music, Ideology, and Politics
in the Soviet 1930s (2009).

Pia Koivunen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Advanced Social

Research at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her Ph.D. dissertation
Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festival as a Tool of Soviet
Cultural Diplomacy, 1947–1957 (2013) studied the Soviet role in the Cul-
tural Cold War. Koivunen has published widely on the World Youth Festi-
vals and is preparing a monograph on Soviet cultural diplomacy.

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

POLITICAL PROCESSES AND

TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS
 Chapter 1

OPENING UP POLITICAL SPACE

Informal Diplomacy, East-West Exchanges,
and the Helsinki Process

Giles Scott-Smith

Introduction

T his chapter concerns the phenomenon that is variously described as

“informal diplomacy,” “unofficial diplomacy,” “private diplomacy,” or
“citizen diplomacy,” and its importance as a central element of transna-
tional relations during the Cold War. The particular examples used cover
the activities of four Dutch citizens who sought to develop forums for East-
West exchange during the 1970s and 1980s: Kees van den Heuvel (East-
West Institute), Frans Alting von Geusau (JFK Institute), Rudolf Jurrjens
(Foundation for East-West Contacts), and banker/entrepreneur Ernst H.
van Eeghen. Significantly, they were active in this field at a time when the
Dutch government itself neither pursued such contacts nor coordinated
with the private sector to attain such contacts at a distance. The 1970s
witnessed a major increase in significance for non-state actors, giving
rise to the concept of the transnational as a diverse realm of cross-border
interaction not necessarily determined by nation-states. To describe the
Dutch situation, this chapter introduces the concept of “parallel diplo-
macy.” This provokes several key questions: What did these individuals
think they were doing? What were their motivations, and what did they
hope to achieve? Finally, how should we interpret them in the context of
East-West relations during this period? Based on their own personal papers
and several interviews, this chapter aims to position these “informal diplo-
mats” within the context of diplomatic relations between the Netherlands
– 23 –
 Giles Scott-Smith

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.

The Concept of Informal Diplomacy

Diplomacy is traditionally regarded as an interstate activity. To make use of

a classic definition, it involves “the application of intelligence and tact to
the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent
states.”1 The emphasis lies on “official” and “governments,” and the activ-
ity is highly restricted or professionalized. While this definition still largely
holds, approaches to so-called new diplomatic history have expanded its
parameters in significant ways.2 First, the interpretation of diplomatic prac-
tice itself has expanded with the recognition that official diplomats engage
in political communication outside of official relations, and that this de-
serves attention as a legitimate aspect of the diplomatic process. We are
familiar enough now with the use of back channels to ensure a controlled
flow of information during times of tension, most notably during the Cu-
ban missile crisis and the negotiations involved in “Ostpolitik”.3 There are
also plenty of examples where diplomats and government officials circulate
ideas independently from their official position, drawing attention to pri-
vate “elite networks,” such as the Bilderberg meetings, or to prime think
tanks and foreign affairs institutes as sites for informal diplomatic discus-
sion.4 The second involves an expansion of the term “diplomat” to include
unofficial, private actors who contribute to the overall process of diplo-
macy. This is the basis for so-called two-track or multitrack diplomacy
that uses a combination of formal and informal dimensions to achieve par-
ticular goals, particularly peace-making. Informal diplomacy, which relies
on the specific (local) knowledge of the private interlocutor, is useful for
“making changes in relationships so that they may be brought to a point
where development can occur.”5
The problem with these expanded parameters is that they still set the
context for understanding informal diplomacy within a clearly defined of-
ficial diplomatic setting with clearly defined goals. Informal diplomacy is
no more than an extra set of tools with which to achieve the same results.
The controlling element of official diplomacy is always in play because the
suspicion remains that the unprofessional diplomatic actor will either un-
necessarily complicate matters or, worse, become an unsuspecting asset for
the opponent. The approach adopted here is precisely to dislocate the in-
formal from the formal, to make the claim that a transnational perspective
shifts the emphasis toward different actors, motives, and goals that can-
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 Opening Up Political Space

not be collapsed into the standard intergovernmental diplomatic scenario.

In the words of transnational history pioneer Akira Iriye, “Transnational
history … focuses on cross-national connections, whether through indi-
viduals, non-national identities, and non-state actors, or in terms of objec-
tives shared by people and communities regardless of their nationality. …
International and transnational phenomena may sometimes overlap, but
often they come into conflict.”6 The 1970s was the era when the transna-
tional came of age as an object of serious political consideration, marked
clearly by Keohane and Nye’s Transnational Relations and World Politics in
1971 and its focus on “contacts, coalitions, and interactions across state
boundaries that are not controlled by the central foreign policy organs of
governments.”7 Advances in communication and transportation opened
up new possibilities for the citizen diplomat to engage in international af-
fairs, epitomized by the flight of West German teenager Matthias Rust to
Red Square in May 1987. The momentum of the decade was summed up
well by the 1977 publication Unofficial Diplomats: “Beginning after World
War II and burgeoning in the international system of the 1970s, an in-
creasing proportion of international interactions bypasses, complements,
or supplements traditional bilateral procedures.” The emphasis still lay on
the provision of “auxiliary channels of communication,” “intermediaries,”
and “facilitating the conduct of interstate relations,” but there was clearly
more going on.8 The seminal Helsinki Final Act led to a merging of human
rights NGOs within Western (particularly U.S.) foreign policy that pointed
toward the end of the Cold War. The focus on “détente from below” has
broken free of the Western-centric approach to social movements, instead
linking developments in the East and the West on equal terms and not as
part of some liberalism-driven grand narrative.9 As a transnational phe-
nomenon, the cause of human rights not only transcends official diplo-
macy but also escapes the Cold War straitjacket of much historiography on
the second half of the twentieth century.10
The examples given here would seem to occupy an undefined space in
international politics. A negative view would regard them as renegade dip-
lomats of dubious merit, while a more positive approach would note their
contribution to the ever-denser network of East-West contacts that ulti-
mately normalized relations—part of the complex and far-from-organized
multilevel interaction involving interchange on the international, na-
tional, and institutional/individual levels, but not necessarily interchange
between the levels.11 They did not feed into any particular “policy networks
[that] comprise[d] policy fields,” although Alting von Geusau came closest
through his position on the foreign ministry’s advisory committee for arms
control from 1968 onward, becoming its chairman in 1976.12 They could
perhaps be regarded as “cultural brokers,” a term originating from anthro-
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 Giles Scott-Smith

pology referring to a form of mediation whereby the broker “provides the

individual link between sociocultural units” for the sake of developing suc-
cessful communication. Yet, to fulfill this role, the broker remains outside
of the communities concerned, and treats the parties as equals (“parity of
cultures”) to encourage “responsiveness, respect, and support.”13
Next to all of these interpretations remains the relationship with official
state-to-state contacts. The usefulness for transmitting information, clar-
ifying perspectives, and altering perceptions is once again determined by
proximity to government and access to policymakers. According to James
Voorhees, a “multi-level peace process” can only exist if one of the lev-
els involved, be it leading from the front or being pushed from behind, is
the state.14 Instead of searching for a way to bend the informal diplomacy
covered here into a given formal diplomatic structure, it is better to see
these individuals as policy entrepreneurs seeking to overcome prejudices
and build their own coalitions in order to ultimately transform the terrain
within which official diplomacy was being conducted. In their own ways,
they were seeking to overcome the Cold War and chart possible paths to-
ward post–Cold War futures. They did not act coherently enough to be
termed an epistemic community, and the abilities of these “transnational
promoters of foreign policy change” to link with “domestic coalitions” else-
where were limited, if not symbolic.
What is more at issue here is the contrast between the hard-line ap-
proach of Dutch diplomacy and the search for contacts by Dutch informal
diplomats.15 The government made no effort to coordinate activities or
make use of these unofficial channels; on the contrary, they were regarded
with varying degrees of suspicion, if they were taken account of at all.
This is the background to the term “parallel diplomacy”: the existence
of informal diplomatic networks that may ultimately have had no official
connection with their formal counterpart, but which nevertheless contrib-
uted to the overall terrain of East-West contacts as a whole, and thus merit
historical attention in their own right.

The Dutch Diplomatic Position

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
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 Opening Up Political Space

in Eastern Europe. In contrast to most other Western European nations,

particularly its neighbor Belgium, the Netherlands was late in developing
bilateral relations and signing technical or cultural agreements with East-
ern-bloc nations. From the beginning, the Dutch had treated the Soviet
proposal for a European peace conference with suspicion. There was no
wish to trust the USSR as a partner in international diplomacy or to create
a reason why the U.S. military would leave the continent. Above all, there
was no desire to grant Moscow a propaganda victory. The aim was thus not
East-West convergence but that the East had to change along the lines of
self-determination before real stability could be achieved. The risks of en-
couraging such tendencies were, of course, high, which led to The Hague
pushing a line that was both radical (rejecting the existing Communist
regimes as illegitimate) and conservative (avoiding contact with dissident
movements).16
The relationship between formal and informal Dutch diplomacy in this
scenario was obviously problematic. The wish to link peoples from the East
and the West along the lines of the Ostpolitik model was not officially en-
couraged. There was also a wariness of the NGO sector from the foreign
ministry due to the suspicion that particular groups functioned as fronts
for Moscow, such as the Nederlandse Comité voor Europese Veiligheid en
Samenwerking (Netherlands Committee for European Security and Coop-
eration), established in 1973 to promote East-West dialogue.17 The Left of
the Labor Party (Partij van de Arbeid) and the Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad
(IKV, Inter-Church Peace Committee) both developed contacts in East
Germany that were regarded as threatening to Dutch interests, particu-
larly as these merged into the transnational antinuclear movement of the
late 1970s. According to Peter Kooijmans, state secretary in 1973–77 and
himself active in the NGO world (IKV, World Council of Churches), there
was no coordination or even discussion between the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the private sector during the 1970s. Herman Burgers, head
of the Politics and International Security Issues section of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs from 1972 to 1977, also “could not recall any single in-
stance of NGO influence on government policy with regard to East-West
relations.”18 Foreign minister Max van der Stoel held the view that “we de-
termine what goes on with Helsinki, not they,” rejecting any notion of the
democratization of foreign affairs. By the 1980s, however, this traditional
view of diplomatic practice had softened somewhat due to the realization
that NGOs could play a useful role in an East-West international environ-
ment that was opening up following the Helsinki Accords. Whereas before
the private sector was viewed as a potentially “dangerous fifth column,”
after 1979 a close alliance with groups such as Amnesty International led
to “nearly an osmosis” between the two sectors.19
– 27 –
 Giles Scott-Smith

Kooijmans’s viewpoint is interesting because it gives insight into how

the official diplomatic sector interpreted the activities of these policy en-
trepreneurs. Because he operated in both the formal and informal worlds,
it is not surprising that his post facto reflections appear more sympathetic
than the official policy of the time. Yet, even then, two factors come out
that remain important for the following case studies. The first concerns
an appreciation of the activities of the private sector for opening the eyes
of people on East-West relations and facilitating a greater understanding
across the blocs that could feed into a more malleable diplomatic envi-
ronment. This especially applied to the think tank seminars run by Alting
von Geusau, covered below. Having said this, in the 1970s, there was no
appreciation for how this could connect with policy making itself; it was an
ad hoc arrangement where any useful outcomes were seen as side benefits.
There was certainly no desire to incorporate these activities into any strat-
egy. This points to assessing these particular phenomena in a framework
outside of orthodox Cold War state-driven agendas and claiming merit
for them from another source. The second issue concerns the motivations
driving these policy entrepreneurs. Whereas Alting von Geusau was re-
garded as a member of the establishment whose more academic-activist
approach was seen as the way to go, van den Heuvel was viewed by some as
an untrustworthy agent of the CIA.20 The more the individual in question
diverged from the given norms of rational diplomatic practice (based on
national interest) and diplomatic identity (based on class/social networks),
the more circumspect the view would be from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

Parallel Diplomacy in the 1970s and 1980s: The Oost-West Instituut

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
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 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

a common problem of all Europeans.” The Russian’s hard-line contribution

in the subsequent publication was bracketed by those of Cornelis Berk-
houwer of the European parliament (“the efforts for détente, security and
cooperation in Europe will have no lasting success … if we do not succeed
in creating an increasing measure of freedom of movement”) and Boris
Meissner (“To characterize long-term coexistence as ‘peaceful’ is to imply
that the extension of Communism in the world should take place without
international wars and, if possible, through peaceful means, in order to
bring about a painless transition from capitalism to socialism”). And while
the official diplomacy continued, “the object of unofficial activity is to use
ingenuity to satisfy the desire for information existing in the East and to
keep alive hopes that the system will change.”25
Kuznetsov then primed the way for van den Heuvel to visit Moscow,
although the Dutchman emphasized to his foreign ministry that it was his
initiative that was facilitated by the Soviet Embassy. Hosted by the Soviet
Committee for European Security and Cooperation (SCESC), the mix of
academics and foreign policy experts founded to represent Moscow’s views
during the Helsinki process, van den Heuvel’s “leap into the dark” had
the benefit of Kuznetsov as interpreter, guide, and entertainment manager
while in the Soviet Union. The tour took in the Moscow Institute of In-
ternational Relations, Gyorgy Arbatov’s Institute of the United States of
America, the Institute of World Economy, and a meeting with the foreign
editor of Pravda.26 For someone who had studied Soviet perceptions of the
West for more than twenty years, these one-on-one discussions in Mos-
cow itself were unique in value: “To hold a conversation with others, who
regard East-West relations as relations between two opposite systems, is
also a psychological problem. This is the more so if this view includes the
ideological irreconcilability of the two systems and the continuation of the
class struggle at an international level. This shapes a certain attitude to the
West and this attitude is often reinforced by reading the studies of Western
Sovietologists. I have been holding this sort of talks [sic] for a long time
already and I know the limitations all too well. However, I still believe in
the use of these talks.”27
What did he discover? The predictable mistrust of Western motives,
particularly on human rights and the free movement of people and ideas,
but this was accompanied by open admittance that adopting these mea-
sures “would undermine their system considerably.” NATO was an “obso-
lete institution” blocking any breakthrough for peace. Western policy was
dominated by a military-industrial complex (referred to as “certain circles”),
which was the main threat for an outbreak of war. Despite these traditional
ripostes, van den Heuvel saw “signs of improvement.” The very fact that
he was in Moscow able to conduct these talks and provide a counterpoint
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 Opening Up Political Space

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

Cooperation took place in November 1974 following van den Heuvel’s

Moscow trip, and the role of the OWI was appreciated by the Soviets due
to the “stubborn policy” of the Dutch government on the human rights
issue and the lack of any meaningful Dutch CSCE committee as a coun-
terpart.34 Ensuing exchanges led to the Soviet side providing information
for the OWI’s Helsinki Monitor Project, a collaborative venture between
the Dutch and their associates in the U.S., Britain, and West Germany to
track the implementation of the Helsinki Accords.35 By 1978, the Soviet
delegates admitted freely that the OWI “tries hard to improve détente”
and that its step-by-step approach was effective. At the time, the debate
over the deployment of the neutron bomb for U.S. forces in Europe was
raging, and the Soviet participants insisted on linking progress on human
rights with moves toward disarmament.36 Yet the OWI’s role in performing
surrogate diplomacy for the Dutch government also drew criticism within
the Netherlands itself, being described by some as “the mouthpiece of the
Kremlin.”37 Dialogue also had its limits, as demonstrated in a meeting with
the Polish Institute’s deputy director, Janusz Symonides, and scientific sec-
retary, Wojcieck Multar. Noting the “liberal views” of his hosts, van den
Heuvel pointed out that they still used the entire Communist lexicon on
international affairs (peaceful coexistence, class struggle, proletarian inter-
nationalism, etc.). They explained that even though their institute avoided
ideological issues, “after all their basic philosophy is Marxism.”38 Van den
Heuvel had encountered the limits of Eastern European liberalization.

Parallel Diplomacy in the 1970s and 1980s: The JFK Institute

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-
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 Opening Up Political Space

lescence of the sovereign nation state, especially in Europe, is such that

its continued existence increasingly endangers international peace.”40 The
JFK Institute would contribute toward overcoming this situation.
Alting von Geusau possessed excellent relations with the foreign minis-
try in The Hague, something that had been denied to van den Heuvel and
his team, and the JFK pursued an issue-based, policy-relevant approach
(monetarism, energy, nuclear nonproliferation) within a solidly Atlanticist
framework that appealed to government circles. Alting von Geusau was
also “proud of his true academic credentials” and looked down somewhat
on van den Heuvel’s presumptions.41 Van den Heuvel in turn tried to se-
cure a leading role through a partnership, but was not able to produce
the necessary funds. Nevertheless, the opportunities for cooperation were
more than evident. In September 1970, Alting von Geusau proposed join-
ing forces with other Dutch institutes active in the field of East-West re-
lations to stimulate a national debate. He was effectively doing what the
OWI had aspired to but had been unable to realize.42
Grants from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1965
and Jean Monnet’s Institut de la Communauté Européenne pour les Ėtudes
Universitaires in 1966 enabled the institute to hold its first symposium, en-
titled “Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Sharing in NATO as a Problem for
Dutch Foreign Policy.”43 Similar events would follow: “Atlantic Relations
after the Kennedy Round” (December 1967), “The Future of the Atlan-
tic Alliance” (following a request from NATO; July 1968), “The Future
of the International Monetary System” (January 1969) and “NATO and
Security in the 1970s” (October 1969). The aim was always to provide
a space for the mixing of theoretical and practical approaches and aca-
demic and policy-making circles, thereby building “a more policy-attuned
environment.”44
The JFK began to establish forums for Dutch-Soviet bloc contacts in
1970 after Alting von Geusau was approached by the Polish embassy in
The Hague to set up a liaison with the Institute of International Affairs in
Warsaw. The first round table conference took place in Warsaw in January
1971. The Dutch delegation included Labor Party MP and future foreign
minister Max van der Stoel. A similar event took place in Budapest in June
1971 under the auspices of the Hungarian Scientific Council for World
Economy. Contact with the Yugoslav Institute for International Relations
followed a year later. Between 1971 and 1985, a total of seventeen bilateral
East-West round tables were held with Polish, Hungarian, and Yugoslav
delegations representing both government and academic institutions. Alt-
ing von Geusau aimed to establish a ground for dialogue to discuss a wide
range of economic, political, and security issues, but this did not mean
appearing neutral; the goal was to foster, little by little, political pluralism
– 33 –
 Giles Scott-Smith

and an edge toward overcoming the “absurd artificial division” of Europe

in the cause of peace.45

Parallel Diplomacy in the 1970s and 1980s:

The Foundation for East-West Contacts

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
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 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

Parallel Diplomacy in the 1970s and 1980s: Ernst van Eeghen

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

man replied, “I felt it my duty in these apocalyptic days to do whatever

possible to get the two parties together. … I had clearly felt that through
the Conference of European Churches and my intimate contacts with the
Soviet War Veterans Committee God had led me to some top people in the
Soviet administration.” Since there is little record of van Eeghen searching
for personal gain (business interests were present, but were overshadowed
by security concerns), one can take these religious impulses at face value.
His Soviet counterparts undoubtedly played on this: both Arbatov and
Bogdanov expressed sympathy for Christianity in private moments with
van Eeghen, a gesture that looks like a ploy to curry his favor. From the
Soviet side, van Eeghen, whose contacts stretched from the U.S. Senate
to the White House, potentially seemed an ideal middleman to reach the
Americans.56
Such activities obviously attracted the attention of the Dutch media
and Dutch diplomacy. Accusations of his use as a tool of Soviet intrigue
were to be expected in a nation deeply divided by the cruise missile issue,
but what is more interesting is the attention given to his role as an unof-
ficial peacemaker. An article in the Nederlands Dagblad from April 1985
focused explicitly on how van Eeghen’s “New Diplomacy” was crisscross-
ing over the official diplomatic stance of the Dutch government, drawing
severe criticism from NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns in the pro-
cess.57 Van Eeghen’s most notorious (and, to date, least explored) moment
came in late October 1985. With Minister-President Ruud Lubbers due
to decide on 1 November whether or not to accept the deployment of
forty-eight Gryphon cruise missiles, van Eeghen was the middleman for a
last-minute invitation from Nikolai Ryzhkov, then chairman of the Council
of Ministers, for Lubbers to visit Moscow to discuss a way out. Lubbers was
tempted, and the offer received substantial support from the opposition
Labor Party, but with serious opposition from within both the parliament
and cabinet, it was ultimately rejected, and the deployment decision was
taken.58 Obstructed by official diplomacy, van Eeghen shifted his attention
via the Burcht Foundation first to the post-Soviet states and then Israeli-
Palestinian relations.

Conclusion: A Lost Cause or a Surrogate Victory?

All four of these figures approached East-West contacts from a different

perspective. Van den Heuvel was motivated by Cold War psychological
warfare approaches that required understanding the position of one’s op-
ponents and then engaging them through dialogue, avoiding any sense of
superiority in the process. Alting von Geusau was more the academic prac-
– 37 –
 Giles Scott-Smith

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.

– 39 –
 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.

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 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

Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes

The Case of Danish-Polish Youth Exchange
and the European Détente, 1965–75

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
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 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

The Danish Policy regarding East-West Cultural Exchange

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark started to engage itself in cul-

tural exchange with the Eastern bloc around 1965. Danish-Polish youth
exchanges had taken place on an occasional basis, organized by either the
Danish Young Communists (DKU, the youth organization of the Danish
Communist party) or DUF before 1965,4 but without the ministry taking
much interest in the matter. An official exchange agreement with Poland
had been signed in 1960,5 and in 1962 an agreement on cultural exchanges
between Denmark and the Soviet Union was signed. More countries were
knocking on the door, and this compelled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
Denmark to formulate its first policy paper on East-West cultural exchange
in 1965. The policy paper argued that because means for cultural exchange
in general were scarce, and cultural exchange with countries in Western
Europe did not depend on formal agreements, the ministry should target
funds for state-sponsored cultural exchanges at the countries in the East-
ern bloc. The aims were modest in 1965: it was stated that exchange was
to be used for reopening contacts and creating links in order to further in-
terhuman understanding and tolerance and “strengthen the cultural unity
between East and West.”6 The policy formulations in 1965 generally re-
flected a position where the only possible kind of support or help rendered
by Denmark (and Western Europe in general) to people in the Eastern
bloc who did not support the Communist regimes was activities that could
help them weather the storm. There was no idea about cultural exchanges
challenging the Communist regimes. Rather, the links with people in the
Communist bloc were considered important mainly because they reminded
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 Marianne Rostgaard

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
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 Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes

create possibilities for the desired freer movement of information, people,

and ideas. The formulations in 1970 differ significantly from the ministry’s
earlier policy formulations exactly because cultural exchange was assigned
a role as an agent of change.
Wagner Hansen’s core idea of expanding the existing cultural exchange
programs in order to create change in the European bloc system was ad-
opted in December 1971 by NATO’s Council of Ministers as the common
NATO position on issues related to the so-called human dimension, or
Basket III of the Helsinki Final Act, that encompassed the issue of free
or freer movement of information and people as well as other cultural ex-
change issues. The basic idea of the potential of cultural exchanges to lead
to freer exchange of information and ideas, advanced by the Danish diplo-
mats around 1970–71, built on the experience gained particularly through
the Danish-Polish cultural exchange in the late 1960s and the Danish-
Polish seminars for youth leaders.
The official framework of the exchange agreement included scholarly
exchange, exchange of exhibitions, and the like. However, the Danish Min-
istry of Foreign Affairs considered the Danish-Polish youth leader seminars
to be the most successful part of the cultural exchange program. In the early
1970s, the goals of the Danish-Polish program were extended to concern
Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.), Hungary,
and Romania. With Poland, exchange activities reached a peak around
1973–76, where the DUF also engaged itself in activities related to the
ongoing Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE).8 In
the late 1970s and early 1980s, the activities organized by the DUF stalled
or decreased along with other types of Danish-Polish exchanges. They were
resumed from 1983 onward, with a very diverse array of cultural exchange
activities, including exchange of (young) people belonging to several dif-
ferent NGOs, lasting until the beginning of the 1990s.
This chronological sketch of the history of Danish youth exchange with
the Eastern bloc countries points at the period ca. 1965–75 as a period
where new ideas were sounded out and put into practice. Because the
Danish-Polish youth leader seminars seem to have played a seminal role
in Danish cultural and youth exchange with the Eastern bloc, it is worth
probing a little deeper into the workings of these youth leader seminars.

Ideas and Motives behind the Danish-Polish Seminars

for Youth Leaders

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
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 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.
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 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 Danish-Polish Exchange Program

as Face-to-Face Cultural Exchange

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
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 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
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 Marianne Rostgaard

ideology of the Communist movement, the members of the DKU invited

their peers in Communist countries to look at Denmark as an example of
an exploitative Capitalist system. According to research in the field, the
young Communists, especially from the Soviet Union, experienced a kind
of “cultural shock” when confronted with “the real existing capitalism of
Denmark.” Thus, both they and their Danish comrades spent consider-
able time in evaluations rationalizing and explaining that, in the end, the
Socialist system will prevail, although the Capitalist system (Denmark) on
the surface seems to be able to provide a comfortable living for Danish
workers, free education for the Danish youth, free health care, and so on.
Although they might have had a hard time doing so, the delegates from
the Eastern bloc and their Danish comrades would end up explaining why,
in the end, the Socialist system was “the better system.”23
According to the records retained in the Danish archives, the young
Poles valued the exchanges with the DUF for their open atmosphere and,
according to official Polish statements, considered the two-week courses
to be most welcome, useful, and a good basis for “an open and frank ex-
change of ideas and opinions about common interests and problems.”24
The exchange activities organized by DUF were not designed as symbolic
manifestations to strengthen the beliefs of party members and convince
others that the Communists were fighting a just cause with a bright future
for humankind—as the World Festivals of Youth and Students, organized
by the Communist youth organizations, were.
“Systemic identities”25 were deliberately downplayed at the youth leader
seminars. Instead, references to identities such as “Europeans” and “the
young generation” were the common denominator. A common identity as
“Europeans” and “the young generation” enabled the young Poles, as well
as the young Danes, to create a common platform and define themselves
as the young generation in opposition to older national generations. Eval-
uations and post-seminar reports describe Denmark and Poland as neigh-
boring countries with a common European identity, and deliberately seem
to omit mentioning “Capitalist” and “Communist” as struggling Cold War
identities. Participants at youth leader seminars were invited to a common
ground formed by the overcoming of old Cold War stereotypes and a defi-
nition of themselves as the young generation.

The Development of the Danish-Polish Exchanges in the 1970s

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

by reciprocal visits of the presidents of the organizations and meetings at

a number of European or international youth conferences. Both the DUF
and the OKWOM engaged themselves in the Helsinki European Youth
Conference in August 1972, held by European youth organizations parallel
to the diplomats’ and ministries of foreign affairs’ preparatory meetings for
the Helsinki conference, also held in Helsinki in 1972.
New formal exchange agreements between the DUF and the OKWOM
were signed in 1971 and 1975.26 The new agreements stressed the con-
tinuation of contacts between the two organizations, but, as a new fea-
ture, they would support decentralized exchange between their member
organizations. Furthermore, they would support sister-city activities that
would expand contacts between ordinary Polish and Danish youth and
children. The activities in the 1970s seem to have followed this dual track:
on the one hand, political activism related to the CSCE process, and on
the other hand, a broad array of cultural exchange activities ranging from
visits by Polish avant-garde artists to alternative milieus in Copenhagen, to
scouting groups participating in each other’s summer camps, and to joint
meetings of environmental activists.
The exchanges between Danish and Polish scouting organizations may
be a good example of the importance of the more relaxed and informal
atmosphere created by the European détente and the CSCE process (in-
cluding the preparatory talks). The Danish partner was KFUK (Y.W.C.A.),
the Polish partner, ZHP. Records document that ZHP preferred KFUK as
a partner instead of DKU (with their branch for children, the young pio-
neers) for organizing summer camps. The Polish authorities were worried
because KFUK was a Christian organization, but in the mid-1970s, ZHP
was given a green light to formalize exchanges with KFUK. The cause for
worry in the ZHP and among the Polish authorities seems to have been
whether the Soviet Communist Party would approve of exchange activities
with KFUK and whether DKU, if offended, might cause trouble. Letters
from Polish participants in KFUK’s summer camps reflect genuinely warm
feelings and appreciation of the more relaxed atmosphere compared with
traditional Polish scouting, which followed strict military traditions.27
A number of the original ideas from the Danish-Polish youth leader sem-
inars were transplanted into these other Danish-Polish cultural exchange
activities in the 1970s. When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark in
1970–71 pinned down their new strategy regarding cultural exchange with
the Eastern bloc, they argued that exchange in areas such as the environ-
ment, agriculture, and social work were more likely to lead to the desired
dialogue than traditional arts diplomacy. Danish ministry officials engaged
in cultural exchange had noted that engineers and other professionals in
general were more outspoken than “the cultural people,” and that mutual
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 Marianne Rostgaard

contacts between professionals more easily led to fruitful dialogues, whereas

artists and cultural people from Communist countries were relatively or-
thodox in their views. The logical conclusion was to support exchange ac-
tivities in areas where discussions about topics of common interest would
naturally lead to comparisons of the different societal systems.28
Most seminars and exchange activities within the Danish-Polish cultural
exchange program in the 1970s were accordingly organized as meetings of
professionals. Participants consisted of what may be termed people with a
mutual interest in a single subject, for instance, Polish and Danish archi-
tects studying the new high-rise suburbs visited the suburbs of Warsaw and
Copenhagen and arranged seminars. Other examples include members of
rural youth organizations visiting each other and local environmental orga-
nizations visiting and exchanging views on environmental issues. Delega-
tions of Danish and Polish journalists also visited each other.29 According
to the Danish ministerial officials, this approach allowed for circumvention
of political barriers by introducing exchange as reciprocal visits of equal
partners who aimed to learn from each other. The search for possible solu-
tions to common societal problems, such as the movement of people from
rural areas to the cities, was not considered dangerous political activity to
be strictly controlled.
The flowering of activities in the mid-1970s was, among the Danish
activists, carried by the conviction that the Iron Curtain was wearing thin.
The DUF enthusiastically supported the CSCE process, and different
kinds of written materials from the mid-1970s show that the DUF was con-
vinced that contacts and cooperation would expand constantly until the
point was reached where East-West contacts were as normal as between
Western European countries. The mood was particularly optimistic around
1975–78. In the mid-1970s, the DUF engaged itself deeply in disarmament
and in peace and security issues, but also environmental issues. These en-
gagements were reflected at the level of activities as well.
At the level of official politics, when leaders from the Danish and Polish
organizations met annually or biannually to agree on exchange programs
and activities, the common outspoken aim was still to further interhuman
understanding and in this way secure peace. Official agreements between
the DUF and the OKWOM (supplanted after 1975 by FSZLP) describe
the active role played by Danish and Polish youth organizations “in inter-
national campaigns for consolidation of activities of various youth groups
in Europe, for security and détente in Europe, for effective and continu-
ous progress of the European Conference on Security and Cooperation.”30
In 1977, it was stated in the renewed agreement on youth exchange that
“[b]oth parties are of the opinion that the conditions are very much in
favor of increasing the circles of young people involved; we think that
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 Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes

the cooperation should include young people belonging to various politi-

cal groupings, secondary school students, children’s organizations, theatre,
gymnastics and sports clubs, youth clubs, international assistance organiza-
tions or any other association of young people with special interests. DUF
and FSZLP will support tourism exchange between Polish and Danish
youth.”31 This outcome was exactly what Danish officials had envisioned
in 1970–71 when they argued that enhancement of cultural exchange pro-
grams might lead to freer movement of information, people, and ideas.
As long as the DUF and the OKWOM, later the FSZLP, could claim
that they worked to further security and détente in Europe, they sustained
a mutual identity of progressives advocating peace, security, and social
progress. As long as the blocs were in relative agreement about the Hel-
sinki process, the Polish and Danish youth organizations could claim to be
forerunners of a broad movement of European youth organizations. Peace
and security presented a common meeting ground between the East and
the West during the 1970s. The CSCE process enabled a broadening of
contacts among ordinary people across the Iron Curtain and enabled ex-
pansion of East-West exchange activities that had not been possible ten
years earlier.

Danish Diplomacy and the CSCE Process

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
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 Marianne Rostgaard

conference, both ministers referred to the DUF-OKWOM youth leader

seminars as a positive experience with cultural exchange. Both ministers
also suggested that the cultural exchange program between Poland and
Denmark had proved useful and ought to be extended, which, in fact, as
already mentioned, happened after 1972. The Polish minister of foreign
affairs reported that the Polish government was definitely interested in
discussing freer movement of information, people, and ideas. The Polish
government suggested an exchange of residential news correspondents and
also widening the exchange of radio and TV programs. The Polish minister
also consented to the widening of the range of cultural exchanges and to
conducting exchanges in the future on an institution-to-institution basis.33
Judging from documents in the Danish State Archives, it was not only
the DUF and Denmark that chose Poland as a favorite partner, but Po-
land also chose Denmark. The Polish interest in cultural exchange and
extension of contacts with Denmark in the late 1960s and early 1970s
was clearly related to the upcoming CSCE conference. The question of
recognition of the Oder-Neisse borderline was, of course, considered vital
for Poland’s future, together with the recognition of the G.D.R. (which,
seen from a Polish point of view, hopefully would ascertain a permanent
German division). In order to influence the agenda for the upcoming con-
ference on peace and security, Poland started diplomatic overtures inside
the Warsaw Pact as well as the broadening of contacts with neutral Finland
and NATO countries. The extended contacts with Denmark were part of
this diplomatic effort.34
The reason why the two ministries of foreign affairs declared the
Danish-Polish youth exchange program a success seems to be quite similar
on both sides. It was a convenient icebreaker, having paved the way for po-
litical deliberations about European peace and security through informal
diplomacy.
This intertwinement of informal and formal diplomacy—NGOs and
foreign office diplomats sustaining each other in their aspirations—came
to be a distinctive feature of Danish East-West cultural exchange pro-
grams during the remainder of the Cold War. Two examples may serve as
documentation.
The all-European conferences between youth organizations of Western
and Eastern Europe that had started in the late 1970s, paralleling the dip-
lomats’ meetings at Helsinki follow-up conferences, were abandoned in
1982 due to the Polish crisis and the imposition of martial law in 1981–82,
not to be resumed before 1986–87.
However, bilateral contacts between Danish and Polish youth organiza-
tions continued, albeit on a very low level. The DUF argued in the early
1980s, as they had done before, that superpower politics, and political con-
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 Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes

siderations in general, should not be allowed to dismantle people-to-people

contacts. In 1984, contacts with Polish youth organizations were resumed,
this time through the Commission for Joint International Contacts of the
Polish Youth and Students Unions (CIC).35 The DUF also engaged itself in
the Baltic Sea conferences, which were the only surviving forum for youth
organizations from the East and the West to meet in the early 1980s.36
The DUF’s activities, as in the late 1960s, once again spearheaded the
official Danish-Polish cultural exchange program.37 Thematic areas were ba-
sically the same in the mid-1980s as they had been in the 1970s. The Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs of Denmark still considered that human contacts ought
to be expanded whenever possible, regardless of the more specific content.
The Danish ambassador to Poland remarked in 1983 that the Polish system
in general considered contacts with the peaceful Scandinavian countries as
less controversial and less threatening than contacts with people from other
parts of the world. This opportunity to expand people-to-people contacts
between Denmark and Poland thus ought to be utilized. He also remarked
that Polish people from all walks of life were eager to have contacts with
people from the West, irrespective of the country.38
Principles of exchange even in the mid-1980s followed the principles
laid down in the late 1960s. It was still of importance to the DUF to stress
that it was possible to disagree on political issues and still work together.
It was also noted that even if official representatives from Polish youth or-
ganizations were very dogmatic, it was still possible to discuss even thorny
issues and engage in dialogues with them.39
In the mid-1980s, the Danish government as well as the DUF were
on the lookout for possible levers regarding the CSCE’s thorny Basket
III issues, particularly human rights and human contacts, for which there
had been many follow-up meetings in the mid-1980s. In 1985, the Dan-
ish government decided to create a forum for the diplomats that partook
in the CSCE process to meet with representatives from Danish NGOs
involved in people-to-people contacts with Communist countries, includ-
ing the DUF. The aim was to coordinate NGO activities and the Danish
position at the different rounds of CSCE follow-up meetings.40 This forum
existed from 1985 until 1988. One of the ideas developed in this forum
was (again) to strengthen the role of the NGOs in cultural and youth ex-
change and especially people-to-people contacts as a measure well suited
to re-create confidence across the blocs and overcome Cold War mistrust.
A line can thus be drawn from 1965 until 1989 illustrating fruitful coop-
eration between the Danish government and Danish NGOs, including
the DUF, in their attempt to combine informal and official diplomacy in
order to enhance East-West exchanges and overcome Cold War mistrust
and stereotyping.
– 57 –
 Marianne Rostgaard

Final Remarks

The Danish-Polish cultural exchange program differentiated itself from the

typical official cultural exchange program that aims at promoting the cul-
ture of the sending country. The most important aim during the 1960s was
not nation branding, but to create dialogue and room for people-to-people
contacts in order to contribute to the breakdown of Cold War stereotypes.
This was of real importance especially in the 1960s and the early 1970s,
when East-West contacts and even knowledge about the other were still
very scarce.
Nicholas J. Cull has emphasized that the Helsinki Accord presents a
watershed because it enhanced and, to a degree hitherto unseen, enabled
direct as well as mediated contacts across the Iron Curtain. The increase
in contacts across the blocs in the fields of informational, educational, and
cultural exchange opened the way for a greater flow of ideas, and “[in] the
long term, the Helsinki Accords transformed the Soviet state and its satel-
lites.”41 Danish cultural exchange with the Eastern bloc in the 1970s focused
on facilitating experiences with a different lived culture, based preferably
on people-to-people contacts. The ultimate aim with this policy was, much
in line with Willy Brandt’s Wandel durch Annäherung, to create changes in
the bloc system and a regime change in Eastern Europe. To achieve this,
an intermediary aim was to open up the possibility for freer exchange of
people, information, and ideas. At the state level, it was possible to reach
an agreement with the governments of countries in Eastern Europe that,
like Poland, looked for ways to implement more nationally independent
policies. The official framework of the people-to-people contacts, however,
did not hamper contacts of Danish NGOs, even with dissidents in Eastern
Europe. One of the strengths of the Danish cultural exchange with the
Eastern bloc was that the formal and informal diplomacy to a large degree
went hand in hand, and that an organization like the DUF was, on the one
hand, able to coordinate their policies with the diplomats from the Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and, on the other hand, was capable of
facilitating seemingly nonpolitical people-to-people contacts through its
membership organizations.
The Danish East-West exchange program included popular as well as
elitist elements; it aimed at creating maneuvering space for governments
as well as people from Communist countries by facilitating contacts and
supporting networks. The open dialogue that the Danish-Polish youth
leader seminars aimed at was not primarily designed to win people over,
but to give practical lessons in democracy and empower people by creating
room for agency. The pioneering efforts of the DUF in combination with
the actions of Danish diplomacy played an important role in the process
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 Challenging Old Cold War Stereotypes

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.

Marianne Rostgaard is associate professor in the Department of Culture

and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research has fo-
cused on different aspects of the cultural Cold War, especially American,
but also Soviet, cultural diplomacy towards Denmark in the early Cold
War period. She is currently researching how Danish cultural diplomacy
toward the Eastern Bloc from the 1960s onward may have contributed to
the European détente.

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

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 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

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 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-

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 Marianne Rostgaard

sager 1973–1988, 42 Dan–Polen, boxes 284–86, (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark,

Cultural relations with Poland 1973–1988), DSA.
30. “Agreement on Cooperation between FSZLP and DUF for the years 1975/76,” DUF,
box 268, DSA.
31. “Agreement on Cooperation between FSZLP and DUF 1978/79/80,” signed 23 Decem-
ber 1977, DUF, box 268, DSA.
32. P. Villaume, “Pathfinders and perpetuators of Détente. Small States of NATO and the
Long Détente: The Case of Denmark 1965–1989,” paper for the closing conference of “An
Epoch-Making Decade,” Copenhagen, 29–30 November 2012.
33. Minutes from the meeting between Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Stefan Olszowski
and Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs K. B. Andersen, Warsaw, 11 April 1972. Stefan
Olszowski states that Poland wishes to stay in contact with Denmark during the coming
preparations for an All-European Conference on Peace and Security both bilaterally and
during the preconference in Helsinki. The Polish side stresses that questions about economic
issues as well as cultural issues are of importance at the upcoming conference, and Olszowski
states that Poland wants to enhance bilateral youth exchange through seminars, widened
contacts between civic organizations, etc. Minutes [in Danish]. UM 43.C.143, box 6309,
folder: bilagspakke, DSA.
34. See W. Jarzabek, “Hope and reality: Poland and the Conference on Security and Co-
operation in Europe, 1964–1989,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 56
(May 2008). Jarzabek mentions that around 1969–70, Poland initiated diplomatic actions vis-
á-vis Belgium, France, Great Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands “in order to gain support
for the idea of gathering a pan-European conference with a broad agenda” (65). Denmark was
of interest and came to play a role in the negotiations at the Helsinki conference as intermedi-
ary and possible interlocutor because Denmark was the only country that at the same time was
a member of NATO, “Europe Nine” (the EU), and the Nordic Council of Ministers. Apart
from that, Denmark was genuinely interested in a European détente and the furthering of
cross-bloc trading, and thus to some degree shared interests with Poland. This does not mean
that the Polish and Danish governments were necessarily in agreement when it came to the
actual policies, but it provided a solid basis for talks and discussions.
35. Letter on 15 February to CIC and letter to the Polish Embassy in Denmark on 16
February thanking the Polish Ambassador to Denmark for the constructive meeting yesterday
(not clear whether this meeting was held on Danish or Polish initiative) and DU-Bladet, 1986,
no. 6 (the Polish chairman for CIC was Marian Gromadsky).
36. DU-Bladet, 1981, no. 6, report from the Baltic Sea conference in Rønne (Bornholm),
April 1981.
37. The Danish Embassy in Warsaw advised the government to resume the official Dan-
ish-Polish cultural exchange program in 1983–84. Report from the Danish Embassy in War-
saw, 7 April 1983. UM, Journalsager 1973–88. 41.Dan-Pol.2 (pakke 4), DSA.
38. Report from the Danish Embassy in Warsaw, 19 February 1985. UM, Journalsager
1973–88. 41. Dan-Pol.2 (pakke 4), DSA.
39. Evaluation of DUF/CIC seminar held in Gdansk in 1986. DU-bladet, 1986, no. 6.
40. Notes from the meeting, 8 February 1985, UM, 5.B.55/43, DSA. Besides the DUF, the
diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark had included the Danish church
organizations (including Mosaisk Troessamfund, the Jewish community in Denmark), Danish
PEN, Amnesty International, and others in what they termed “a working group in preparation
of the CSCE-meeting of experts on respect for human rights.”
41. N. J. Cull, “Reading, Viewing and Tuning into the Cold War,” in The Cambridge History
of the Cold War, Vol. 2, Crises and Détente, ed. M. Leffler and O. A. Westad (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2010), 456.

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 Chapter 3

TRANSMITTING THE “FREEDOM VIRUS”

France, the USSR, and Cultural Aspects
of European Security Cooperation

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-

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 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”

ples, and some measures regarding economic cooperation. Moreover, an

important part of the Final Act was dedicated to cultural cooperation, hu-
man contacts, and the circulation of information.11 In this way, the CSCE
provided the peoples of the Eastern bloc with a document to lean on when
pursuing freedom.
Drawing on the archives of the French Republic presidency (Paris), the
French Ministry for Foreign Affairs (La Courneuve), the CSCE/OSCE
(Prague), and the Gerald Ford Library (Ann Arbor, Michigan), this chap-
ter examines the role played by France during the negotiations of the cul-
tural part of the Final Act. How did the French manage to persuade the
Eastern leaders to include in the Helsinki document some provisions that
were totally opposed to the standards in effect in Eastern Europe? Which
cultural themes did France favor? In what ways did it see in the CSCE a
means to continue the policy of détente initiated by de Gaulle?
We will first study how the French gradually started to regard the CSCE
as a way to drive a wedge into the bipolar system. Then we will move on
to analyze the strategy they adopted during the conference itself in order
to impose on the Soviets some provisions intended for improving cultural
cooperation between the East and the West.

CSCE and Culture: “Détente à la Française”

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

Thus, de Gaulle did not see the USSR as an ideological regime—he

saw Communism as bound to disappear—but he preferred considering it
a successor of Tsarist Russia, which had harbored close ties to France.14 In
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 Nicolas Badalassi

addition, he often evoked historical ties linking France to Poland, Czecho-

slovakia, and Romania. Consequently, he considered it the mission of
France to knock down the Iron Curtain in order to regain the political and
cultural unity of Europe. Therefore, as de Gaulle inferred after the crisis
of Cuba in 1962 that the United States was the only superpower and the
USSR would never be able to wage a war against the West, he decided to
launch a policy of “détente, entente, cooperation” toward Eastern Europe.
His objective was to strengthen the ties to France’s former Eastern Euro-
pean allies.15 Culture was to play a crucial role in achieving this goal.
Since France’s prestige and cultural influence had weakened following
the rise of the English-language culture after World War II, de Gaulle en-
couraged a cultural policy that aimed at supporting his conception of na-
tion. Henceforth, culture had to serve France’s greatness. This led to the
creation of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in 1959 with André Malraux
nominated as its head.16 This same desire for cultural influencing persisted
under Pompidou from 1969 to 1974.
Cultural cooperation with the USSR and its allies began in earnest
in 1965.17 However, in the early 1970s, French leaders still considered
Franco-Soviet cultural exchanges weak.18 Even though both countries
favored language and literature as cultural vectors,19 cooperation was bu-
reaucratic by nature. The reasons for this were the savage censorship pur-
sued by Soviet authorities over each cultural activity in the USSR and the
difficulty of circulation behind the Iron Curtain.20 And yet, circulation of
ideas during the 1960s and the 1970s depended on the mobility of people.
Representatives of official culture were preferred in cultural exchanges
and more easily allowed to travel to Eastern Europe. “In the USSR, mo-
nopoly of official culture was so important that intellectual creations were
property of the State, not of their authors.”21 This situation explains East-
ern authors’ inability to contact Western editors in order to translate their
work.
Another reason was the lethargic state of culture in the Soviet bloc. In
July 1975, a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow gave an account of
this situation:

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”

According to the Western diplomats in Moscow, only the fields of clas-

sical ballet and music, dominated by the great operas of the Russian rep-
ertoire, and some scarce cultural places such as the Pushkin Museum, the
Tretyakov gallery, and the Kremlin itself managed to surmount the Soviet
artistic lethargy.23 In other words, the French thought that only imperial
Russia’s legacy could allow the USSR to have a cultural life; for them,
a better dissemination of Western European culture in the Eastern bloc
could facilitate the artistic blossoming of the Socialist regimes.
In August 1968, forceful suppression of the Prague Spring by the War-
saw Pact troops seemed to put an end to détente. And yet, most leaders in
the West considered this dramatic event as a simple demonstration of the
Soviet will to confirm the political European status quo.24 Admittedly, the
relations between the USSR and the West stagnated for several months,
but were restored by the beginning of 1969. However, the French realized
that the special relationship between Moscow and Paris instituted by Gen-
eral de Gaulle had been rendered null and void by the Kremlin’s desire
to favor dialogue with Washington and Bonn. Georges Pompidou, who
succeeded de Gaulle in the spring of 1969, decided to seize the Soviet pro-
posal for a security conference firstly to reopen talks with the USSR and
secondly to ease the pressure on Moscow’s Eastern European satellites and
ensure that the events of Prague would not recur.25
Pompidou also hoped the CSCE could put into practice the theory of the
systems’ convergence that had been particularly developed by the lawyer
Samuel Pisar at that time.26 According to this theory, differences between
Socialist and Capitalist main models were condemned to disappear.27 Pom-
pidou thus wondered which one of the two sides “se laissera corrompre par
l’autre,”28 but remained convinced that freedom would win over totalitar-
ianism.29 He imagined a “decline” of the blocs “by slow and continuous
action,” embodied by the process of détente. His successor Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing also thought along the same lines: in Helsinki during the summer
1975 and then in Moscow in the following October, he openly expressed
his support for a political, military, economic, and ideological détente,
making the most dogmatic officials of the Kremlin angry. For them, ideo-
logical détente meant the end of the principle of class struggle.30
Consequently, by 1969, the USSR and France each attributed opposite
objectives for the conference: Moscow aiming at cementing the European
division, Paris wanting to overcome the bipolar system. Pompidou urged his
partners in the European Community (EC) to accept the conference only
if the Soviets would agree to add cultural issues to the agenda.31 The con-
ference that originally was to center on European security instead gradually
became a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Moscow was
also forced to accept American and Canadian presence at the conference.
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 Nicolas Badalassi

Persuaded of their ability to weaken the cultural aspect of the CSCE,

the Soviets accepted the French proposal. Nevertheless, they quickly be-
came worried about EC Nine’s tendency to constantly extend the CSCE
agenda to cultural cooperation and to the circulation of people, ideas, and
information through the Iron Curtain.32 While the USSR considered cul-
ture a field easily controlled by the state, it was opposed to a negotiation
that would include improvement of people-to-people contacts and infor-
mation, seeing both subjects as opportunity for interference in internal
affairs and breaching state sovereignty.33
Contrary to most of its EC partners, France well understood that getting
the USSR to talk about these matters would not be achieved by provo-
cation. That is why, during the first gatherings in 1971–72, Paris only fa-
vored the question of cultural exchanges. The French leaders believed in
the ability of cultural cooperation to bring about great changes, as it would
expose Eastern Europe to influences beyond the Marxist ideology.34 French
diplomacy wanted to improve university exchanges, artistic cooperation,
tourism, youth meetings, diploma equivalency, press dissemination, work
of journalists, visa issues, purchase of foreign books, and circulation of
movies. The French believed that while seemingly harmless, such ex-
changes could soften Soviet authoritarianism.35 Political aims were veiled
behind cultural exchange in order to avoid confrontation with Moscow.
Georges Pompidou prevented the conference from being compromised
before it even started because the CSCE was to provide a real opportu-
nity for direct talks with Eastern European satellite states without permis-
sion from the Kremlin as the conference allowed all participants an equal
footing.36
However, the main Soviet goals of cementing the European division
and the removal of military alliances in Europe were considered threat-
ening. Therefore, NATO countries took precautions. One was to make
preparatory multilateral talks (PMT) depend on the ratification of a quad-
ripartite agreement over Berlin: with the G.D.R. being on the verge of
being acknowledged by the Westerners and, consequently, invited to sit
at the CSCE, Paris, London, and Washington wanted to prevent its ac-
knowledgment from weakening quadripartite rights and withdrawing their
right of inspection over the future of Germany.37 Furthermore, the Nixon
administration was aiming at strategic arms limitation talks. Thus, from
September 1971 to November 1972, the start of the PMT depended on
the Soviet decision regarding disarmament and limitation as well as on the
conclusion of the quadripartite protocol over Berlin.
When these conditions were fulfilled, every European country (except
Albania), the United States, and Canada met in Helsinki from Novem-
ber 1972 to June 1973 to officially draw up the CSCE agenda, which was
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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
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 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.

The Negotiations of the Final Act’s Cultural Part:

France in the Firing Line

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”

“cooperation in the field of cultural dissemination” and included proposals

such as trade and noncommercial exchanges of books, circulation of films,
and exchanges of radio and television programs.47 The second document
concerned “cooperation in the field of artistic exchanges” and planned
the free circulation of artists and works, the organization of architecture
competitions, and a European legislation for the protection of works and
intellectual property.48
Simultaneously, France opposed proposals that Moscow could perceive
as provocative, such as the Dutch proposal regarding direct relations be-
tween publishers and authors from different countries. For the French,
this proposal clearly alluded to the “Solzhenitsyn affair”—Alexander Solz-
henitsyn was banished from the USSR in February 1974 after the pub-
lication of The Gulag Archipelago—and it was clear that Moscow would
vehemently emphasize sovereignty and non-interference.49 Soviets made
this even more topical by accusing the West of Cold War nostalgia since
they published The Gulag Archipelago while the CSCE was taking place.50
Repeatedly, the Eastern European states insisted that cultural coop-
eration would go through government agreements and denounced the
principle of a “cultural supermarket” dominated by the law of supply
and demand.51 They also wanted to institute the principle balances and
checks as well as reciprocity in cultural exchanges.52 For example, since the
French were not attracted to Soviet literature, the Soviets did not see why
they should encourage the importation of French literature into the USSR.
One concrete French proposal, linked to Paris’s willingness to see to it that
the participants of the conference could commit to “facilitating access to
works produced by their respective countries,”53 crystallized the East-West
tension: the French proposed in the fall of 1973 that every CSCE country
would authorize the opening of reading rooms or libraries where foreign lit-
erature would be freely accessible to everybody.54 This heralded the French
idea that cultural dissemination was essential for improving East-West re-
lations. The Soviets imported very few works of literature or books on art
they considered promoting anti-Communist ideas, preferring scientific,
technical, and professional books instead.55 The French were also aware
of problems related to foreign book translations in the USSR: Moscow ac-
cepted the diffusion of translated books but only if translations were done
by Soviet firms. Of course, this seriously limited imports, allowing Moscow
to adapt texts as it pleased.
All Western countries supported and promoted the French project for
reading rooms. According to Gabriel Robin, an advisor to Georges Pom-
pidou and his successor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, “because of its specific
and concrete nature, which makes it acceptable by the general public, [this
proposal] is one of those by which public opinion will judge the CSCE.
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 Nicolas Badalassi

More generally it may appear as one of the touchstones of the usefulness

of good Franco-Soviet relations.”56 However, it was out of the question
for the Soviet bloc to accept a proposal that would undermine state sov-
ereignty and, above all, facilitate distribution of Western culture within
the bloc. Brezhnev made a personal complaint about this to Pompidou in
March 1974.57
The issue of reading rooms poisoned both the Franco-Soviet relations
and discussions in the CSCE cultural committee until the spring of 1975,
despite the French attempts to make the Russians understand that the
text in question would not force the countries to accept, on request, the
opening of reading rooms on their territory: “it would only state that the
creation of such an institution is possible by mutual agreement whenever
it is deemed useful to the development of intercultural knowledge.”58 It
came as a surprise for France’s allies to hear in April 1975 that the French
had suddenly given up their proposal of reading rooms, following Prime
Minister Jacques Chirac’s trip to Moscow in March. We can see in this
abandonment an expression of the French desire to be attractive to the
Soviets and Chirac’s willingness to distance himself from President Gis-
card d’Estaing, who came to power after Pompidou’s death in spring 1974.
Chirac—a Gaullist, unlike Giscard—was clearly aware that Soviets in-
sisted on eliminating the French proposal. By promising that France would
abandon the reading rooms, the prime minister consolidated his interna-
tional stature and appeared to the Soviets as a trustworthy spokesperson.
Thus, his gesture was not insignificant, particularly since his relationship
with Giscard was deteriorating, following Chirac’s opposition to Giscard’s
economic policy.59 Consequently, Chirac tried to appear as the defender
of Gaullist orthodoxy, playing up to the political struggles of the future.
From this perspective, it was in his best interest to show his attachment
to the Gaullist policy of “détente, entente, coopération” toward the East.
Yet, in return for the abandonment of the reading room proposal, Soviets
made many significant concessions on various cultural issues.60 For exam-
ple, Chirac managed to make the USSR accept, after several amendments,
the declaration about general objectives for cultural cooperation proposed
by Michel Jobert in July 1973 and put forth by the French delegation in
May 1974.61
This declaration was another crucial point of East-West disagreement.
For the French, it was of great significance as it affected all areas of cul-
ture and fixed general and permanent goals.62 It addressed planning in-
formation on certain works, improving material conditions in circulating
cultural objects and messages, ensuring free access to circulated works of
culture, increasing contacts and encouraging cooperation between artists
and cultural leaders, and seeking new areas and new forms of cultural co-
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 Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”

operation. Unsurprisingly, Dubinin sought to criticize the text sentence by

sentence, claiming it was too “down to earth,”63 that is to say, too precise
for a Soviet diplomacy attached to abstract and thundering declarations.
Objectives related to “free access to cultural works for all” and contacts
“between artists and cultural leaders” caused very negative reaction from
the Soviets, who were allergic to any idea of contact outside the usual
government institutions. For Eastern European countries, “access to cul-
tural works” of other countries was to be replaced by “knowledge” of these
works: it would allow authorities to select the works in question, “accord-
ing to their quality.”64
Chirac’s trip to Moscow in March 1975 played a central role in open-
ing the deadlock. Supported by the president of the Council of Ministers,
Alexei Kosygin, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko told the French premier
that the document that planned free movement of artists and their works
amounted to “burying all laws, all regulations.” The USSR did not want to
“open the door to information directed against [its] regime, to pornogra-
phy and to military-fascist writings.” Chirac, always keen on strengthening
his Gaullist basis by relying on the legacy of de Gaulle and Pompidou re-
garding relations with the East, decided to play the card of understanding:
“France is all the more sensitive to your arguments since it has recently
closed its borders to Scandinavian pornography and since it is currently
experiencing a horrible attempt of subversion within its armed forces. On
this point too, we will certainly find a compromise. In any case, cultural ex-
changes will have to be promoted within the framework of existing laws.”65
Chirac and Kosygin agreed to instruct their delegations to compromise.
Thus, after several months of discussions, the two delegations attained a
secret agreement on 5 June 1975 with the formulation “free access for all to
cultural works” becoming “universal access to cultural works.” The USSR
failed to replace the term “access” with the term “knowledge” but man-
aged to change the first goal of cultural exchanges into “develop mutual
information for a better knowledge of respective cultural works.” Finally,
the original “multiply contacts and encourage cooperation between artists
and cultural leaders” was replaced by “develop contacts and cooperation
between people involved in cultural activities.”66
These were submitted to CSCE participants and accepted by everyone
in less than two hours. However, one sentence was problematic: other
Western participants refused to link improvement of cultural relations to
improvement of political relations. The deterioration of the détente in
1974–75 explained the reaction of the Atlantic allies: subordinating cul-
tural relations to political relations would mean the cessation of any coop-
eration in times of tension and provide the USSR with a good reason not to
implement the decisions of the third basket. Facing such a general outcry,
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 Nicolas Badalassi

France agreed to renegotiate the formula in question,67 which was replaced

by a less dangerous paraphrase: “[The participating States intend] with
the development of mutual trust and the gradual improvement of relations
between the participating States, to continue and increase their efforts to
progress in this field.”68
France also turned its attention to television, radio, and cinema. In No-
vember 1973, it proposed opening of cinemas showing western movies in
Eastern Europe, and vice versa. This aimed at remedying the “continuing
mediocrity” of movie distribution on both sides of the Iron Curtain.69 Ac-
cording to Marie-Pierre Rey,70 France sold only ten movies to the USSR
in 1972, seven both in 1973 and 1974, and there were only three movies
coproduced by France and the USSR, despite signing an agreement to
exchange and coproduce movies in 1967. The director of the National
Center for Cinematography, Pierre Viot, explained this failure by pointing
to the fact that it was very difficult to choose a scenario to satisfy Mos-
cow. The Soviets did not tolerate any movie in which “violence, racism,
and sexual pathology were the driving force behind the action.” There
were also considerable differences in budgets granted to French and So-
viet film directors, with Soviet ones relatively better off. Furthermore,
Soviet authorities favored the importation of light comedies. Yet there
were “French cinema weeks in the USSR” and “Soviet cinema weeks in
France” that gently compensated for this situation and allowed the most
important movies of the period to be shown. For example, Army of Shad-
ows by Jean-Pierre Melville premiered in Moscow in 1972. If French mov-
ies were a success in the USSR—between 4 and 10 percent of the global
takings of French movies—this was not reciprocal: most famous Soviet
movies such as Once Upon a Time There was a Singing Blackbird by Otar
Iosseliani or Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky, attracted less than 0.2 percent
of the French audience.71
However that may be, the Soviets did not appreciate the idea of aiming
to open foreign theaters; Brezhnev made another complaint about this to
Pompidou in March 1974 when he received him in Pitsunda in Georgia. To
reassure Brezhnev, Pompidou claimed he would ask the French delegation
in Geneva to lighten its proposal.72 In reality, the president let the diplo-
mats at the CSCE do what they wanted. He died three weeks after Pit-
sunda. Perhaps he had not had enough time, force, or willpower to block
the text and so accused the Soviets of fraternizing with the Americans to
the detriment of France. Therefore, despite the pressure from Brezhnev,
the CSCE approved a text acknowledging a common desire to “encourage
competent bodies and enterprises to make a wider selection and aim at
wider distribution of full-length and documentary films from the other par-
ticipating states, and to promote more frequent non-commercial showings,
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 Transmitting the “Freedom Virus”

such as premières, film weeks and festivals, giving due consideration to

films from countries whose cinematographic works are less well-known.”73
The French were also considering a European competition for television
producers and a European center for television programs to which national
television stations would give a copy of their best programs so that they
could be freely viewed and other countries could receive them.74 However,
French commitment to cinema and television remained limited, and Paris
was willing to sacrifice them if necessary. Thus, Jacques Chazelle, the head
of the French delegation for the third basket, told one of his Russian coun-
terparts in September 1974 that France was ready to give up its proposals
on foreign cinemas in exchange for Soviet agreement on reading rooms.75
Even though the Soviets rejected this offer, France did not really insist.
Television was not as widespread as it is today. In addition, the French
government practiced its own internal censorship, as in the case of Marcel
Ophuls’s movie about Vichy France, Le chagrin et la pitié, from its inception
in 1969, premiering on TV only in 1981.
One final yet crucial issue was present throughout the negotiations
of the Final Act’s cultural part, affecting further developments. Socialist
countries were sympathetic toward the creation of a Pan-European cul-
tural institution that would have been managed by the participating states
and would have allowed Moscow and its allies to keep an eye on the vol-
ume and content of the cultural exchanges between the East and the West.
Believing that such an organization would narrow Western room for ma-
neuver, the French rejected the idea. Instead, they considered the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as
the best guarantee against the creation of bureaucratic organizations of
control and insisted on it being in charge of the execution of multilateral
programs.76 This support for UNESCO resulted from the French desire to
use the CSCE as a way to fight against American cultural hegemony in the
West: Paris was aware of the deplorable relations between Washington and
this institution.77
In 1974–75, many U.S. politicians and intellectuals criticized UNESCO
for being too much influenced by Arab and Communist countries. With
the oil crisis at its height, some of these states contested Israel’s right to
take part in UNESCO conferences about the Mediterranean and Europe.
In consequence, in the spring of 1975, the U.S. government required that a
resolution be passed reaffirming the right of every member of UNESCO to
take part in the activities it thought useful. The United States threatened
to leave the institution if nothing was done to weaken its pro-Arab nature.
The CSCE’s debate regarding UNESCO shows French insistence on
making sure that the Helsinki process would favor dissemination of Euro-
pean culture. France told its EC partners that, after all, they were taking
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 Nicolas Badalassi

part in a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and that the

Community had to support this concept.78 U.S and Canadian delegations
bemoaned that French drafts limited cooperation with Europe,79 and ne-
gotiated directly with France in order to have the qualifier “in Europe”
deleted from cultural texts. Finally, the term was kept only in the three
paragraphs concerning the creation of a cultural data bank, the creation
of a documentary film repertoire, and organization of book exhibitions.80
This position once more demonstrated the French willingness to shake off
the cultural influence of the United States and to use European culture to
overcome the Cold War division. In this way, French foreign policy demon-
strated continuity with the Gaullist scheme aiming at maintaining France
“in the middle of the world.” In the end, the CSCE assigned UNESCO the
task of looking after the implementation of many cultural provisions of the
Final Act.

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”

you have won!”83 Valerian Zorin, a former Soviet ambassador in France

who took part in the Helsinki talks in 1972–73, told his colleagues that
“the evil would come from there.”84 Even Anatolii Kovalev was aware of
the unexpected consequences the CSCE could have on the Eastern bloc.85
Beyond the declared cohesion and propaganda that glorified the Helsinki
summit, the Soviet leaders were divided about the Final Act’s content.
This situation shows that, during the discussions in Geneva, the Polit-
buro’s members, with the exception of Gromyko, did not pay attention to a
phraseology they judged complex and typically diplomatic. But, when the
negotiations stopped and the result was revealed, they were so amazed that
they wondered if the USSR should sign the documents. Gromyko finally
managed to persuade his comrades that the Soviet government was the
master in its country and, consequently, the only one to decide on internal
affairs.86 Such reactions prove that the provisions of the third basket were
not only words, but could really threaten the Eastern bloc’s cohesion. The
French were fully aware of that.
France actually played an important role in drafting the Final Act’s cul-
tural part. Early on, it had appeared as the main interlocutor for the So-
viet Union in the discussion on cultural exchanges. In Geneva, the French
managed to impose their ideas about cultural cooperation and exchanges.
Given that Communist regimes tried to stay impervious to Western influ-
ence and culture, an agreement can be considered a great accomplishment,
partly due to the ten years of Franco-Soviet rapprochement. Without de
Gaulle’s effort during the 1960s to create a real entente between Paris and
Moscow, such stretching of Marxist-Leninist limitations would hardly have
been possible. From the moment the Final Act was signed, dissidents in
Eastern Europe appropriated the third basket’s content and used it to their
own ends.
In this sense, the CSCE appeared to be a multilateral extension of the
Gaullist policy of détente. The negotiations of the cultural part of the Final
Act showed that, despite de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969, France main-
tained his lead in terms of East-West relations: without rejecting the role
of the Atlantic Alliance as the main guarantee of Western European secu-
rity, Paris sought to struggle against the U.S.-Soviet hegemony in Europe
and to restitute the European capacity to be heard. Because the CSCE
put together all the countries of the continent around the same table and
because cultural exchanges were seen by the French leaders as the best
way to bring people together, Paris considered the Helsinki third basket
an indispensable instrument in overcoming the Cold War. Once the Final
Act was adopted, the convergence of Socialist and Capitalist systems that
Pompidou had dreamed of was made possible. Nevertheless, the result was
disappointing in the short term: the return of tension in the second half
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 Nicolas Badalassi

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.

Nicolas Badalassi is associate professor of contemporary history at the Uni-

versity of South Brittany, France. He is the author of En finir avec la guerre
froide: La France, l’Europe et le processus d’Helsinki, 1965–1975 (2014). He
has published various articles concerning French foreign policy in the Cold
War era. He has also co-edited the publication Les pays d’Europe orientale
et la Méditerranée, 1967–1989 (2013) with H. Ben Hamouda.

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.

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 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.

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 Chapter 4

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY OF SWITZERLAND

AND THE CHALLENGE OF
PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE, 1956–75
Matthieu Gillabert

T he history of Swiss cultural diplomacy toward Communist countries

during the Cold War is a story that, at first glance, seemed to have a
dynamic beginning. Soon after the end of World War II, the Swiss Con-
federation reinforced and institutionalized its cultural policy abroad, and
some of the first actions were directed in what became the Communist
bloc. The Switzerland: Planning and Building Exhibition was a notable archi-
tectural occasion that was first displayed in London in 1946, and brought
to Warsaw the following year. On a purely diplomatic level, the resump-
tion of official relations with the USSR gave hope of new possibilities for
cultural exchanges with this superpower.1 It was finally possible to consider
the doctrine of “neutrality and solidarity” espoused by the Swiss Federal
Department for Foreign Affairs and its chief since 1944, Max Petitpierre,
as an invitation for interbloc dialogue. During the course of the war, Swit-
zerland had already played a go-between role by accepting 270 mandates
for the diplomatic representations of forty-three different countries during
the course of the war.2 The leitmotif of a land considered a synthesis of the
German and Latin cultures, the Helvetia Mediatrix, was often used in the
foreign national advertising of the time, and this role of a mediator should
have served as an invitation for promoting cultural relations between the
future blocs.
A careful observer, however, might have noticed a fly in the ointment.
For example, the cultural and humanitarian program for sending Swiss
books to Germany after the war—the Buchhilfe—was an initiative that
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 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland

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 Structure and Ideology of Swiss Cultural Diplomacy in 1956

A short passage through the structure of Swiss cultural diplomacy helps us

to understand the course it took during the 1950s in terms of ideology and
geopolitics. Simply put, there were two levels constituting this diplomacy
and each developed a particular attitude.
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 Matthieu Gillabert

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

derlining the following themes relating to Swiss neutrality: the historical,

cultural, and geographical factors that made this neutrality necessary; the
positive impact of neutrality on the Western bloc; and the compatibility of
neutrality with western economic integration and a clear anti-Communist
position.9 These themes were introduced through lecture tours, movies,
books, and similar means. At the time, neutrality appeared to be a national
and perpetual value in Switzerland, one that would always be respected
and that would allow Switzerland to first survive World War II and then
the Cold War.10 The Swiss solution was to use cultural means for political
and economic goals, manifested in the work of institutions responsible for
cultural diplomacy.
The second level of Swiss cultural diplomacy was more informal. This
form of cultural diplomacy is strongly bound to informal cultural exchanges
and non-state actors.11 It would be difficult and not very pertinent to list
all the organizations involved in cultural relations. However, they can be
divided into three categories following their varying approaches to Swiss
operations toward the Communist bloc.
The first category of non-state actors concerns the patriotic associations
that were quite fundamentally against all cultural, and even economic and
athletic, contacts with Communist countries. During the war, some associ-
ations, like Heer und Haus (Army and Home), worked within the army to
counter foreign propaganda in the aforementioned context of the Spiritual
National Defense. Under other names, like Schweizerischer Aufklärungs-
dienst (Swiss Enlightenment Service) or Rencontres suisses (Swiss Meet-
ings), they continued to be partially funded by the government, especially
by the Federal Department of Defense, after World War II.12 In contrast to
the official diplomacy, these organizations considered that the war did not
end in 1945, but rather called for increased mobilization against foreign
propaganda, particularly Communist propaganda. The Swiss Enlighten-
ment Service came into closer contact with a few scholars—for example
the director of the Ost-Institut in Bern, Peter Sager, and the economist
at the University of Bern, Fritz Marbach—as well as a number of student
associations. Contacts with Communist states, in turn, were seen as synon-
ymous with propaganda that reinforced the Soviet position.13
The second category of non-state actors includes those who considered
cultural relations a way to weaken the Communist regimes and inspire
the populations behind the Iron Curtain for liberal thinking. Such ideas
were supported, for example, by strongly anti-Communist Jacques Frey-
mond, the director of the Graduate Institute for International Relations
in Geneva and active in the U.S.-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom
(CCF), as well as in the management committee of Pro Helvetia.14 Philoso-
pher Denis de Rougemont15 and historian Herbert Lüthy also shared these
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 Matthieu Gillabert

views. Lüthy wrote an article in 1963 entitled “Guerre froide et dialogue”

in Preuves, the French-language magazine of CCF, in which he expressed
almost the same arguments as Freymond: that the Communist East should
have more to fear from cultural exchanges than the West.16 CCF and the
Geneva Rencontres internationales17 gathered a number of Swiss individ-
uals who shared the views about cultural competition between the blocs.
They also had a certain influence on the policymakers: Max Petitpierre,
the chief of the Department for Foreign Affairs was a regular reader of
Preuves, and the president of Pro Helvetia, Jean Rodolphe de Salis, was also
a member of the committee of the Geneva Rencontres internationales.
The third category is less important considering the size, but with regard
to East-West contacts it was the most active: it includes the friendship as-
sociations with the Communist bloc, such as the Association Switzerland-
USSR, which was established after World War II.18 It was largely margin-
alized within the Swiss political establishment in the 1950s, close to the
Communist movements as it was. Yet, it enjoyed a kind of monopoly in the
cultural relations between Switzerland and the Soviet Union. This way, it
became problematic for the Swiss Embassy in Moscow: the association was
the one and only interlocutor for cultural questions and the sole represen-
tative of Swiss culture in the USSR. Nonetheless, since it was considered
only to serve Soviet propaganda, it remained a pariah.19 After 1956, how-
ever, changes regarding the goals of these different official and non-state
actors took place, blurring previously clearer lines.

“Ostkontakte”: Revival of the 1930s,

or Openness to the World?

After the Hungarian uprising in 1956, a string of public demonstrations

against Soviet action took place in Switzerland. In accordance with the
neutrality doctrine, the government considered that individuals were free
to express their opinions. However, such conspicuous manifestations had
an impact on the national image: while other Western countries had begun
to develop some cultural relations with Communist countries, Switzerland
had resorted to the same kind of “hedgehog attitude” as during World
War II. During the period from 1956 to 1961, however, the official Swiss
attitude toward cultural relations with the Communist bloc was called into
question.
The arrival of fourteen thousand Hungarian refugees in 1956 incited
anti-Communist organizations to attempt the mobilization of Swiss public
opinion. Among numerous demonstrations, there were some student pro-
cessions and boycotts of Soviet films, drawing help from the main cinema
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 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland

owners’ association, the Schweizerischer Lichtspieltheater-Verband (Swiss

Movie Theater Association), to constitute a “Committee to fight com-
munist films.”20 There were also acts of violence against members of the
Association Switzerland-USSR and generally those close to Communist
ideology. Several patriotic associations were energized, such as the Swiss
Enlightenment Service as well as action groups Niemals Vergessen (Never
Forget) and Pro Libertate, which were particularly active against cultural
and economic contacts with Communists.21 One such case of violence was
that of Konrad Farner, a member of the Association Switzerland-USSR,
attacked in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The attack went so far that his private
address was revealed, leading to demonstrations by his home.22
Another interesting case is that of Hellenist André Bonnard. He was
accused of espionage for the USSR in 1952 and was awarded the Stalin
Peace Prize in 1954. In 1956, he was forced to resign from the Swiss Writ-
ers’ Society on the grounds of his ideological conviction. This controversy
stretched to internal politics. Convinced of the importance of cultural ex-
changes with the Eastern bloc, Franck Jotterand, director of the Gazette
littéraire—the main French-language cultural magazine in Switzerland—
curtly protested against the leadership of the Writers’ Society in an article
“La Suisse allemande et nous” (German Switzerland and us). While he crit-
icized the reaction of the society’s leadership as exaggerated, comparing it
to Communist methods, he also highlighted different attitudes of French-
and German-speaking parts of the country.23 In the German-speaking part,
anti-Communism was even more vehement because any foreign propa-
ganda brought to mind the strong Nazi propaganda in the thirties and,
at the same time, some nationalist concepts from Germany reinforced an
anti-Communist climate in Switzerland24. However, the division was not
so clear-cut. German-speaking writer Max Frisch, for example, defended
André Bonnard,25 while French-speaking Marc-Edmond Chantre, former
member of the Fascist political party Union nationale (National Union)
before the war and linchpin of the Comité suisse d’action civique (Swiss
Committee for Civic Action) since 1948, was strongly against any contact
with the Communist countries.
The high point of protests against contacts with Communist countries
was reached around 1960–61. During these years, there were a few occa-
sions that turned into focal points illustrating the controversy particularly
eloquently. One such case was the banishing of Russian violinist David
Oistrakh from performing at the Zurich Tonhalle, one of the most famous
concert halls in Switzerland. Oistrakh was denied a visa by the immigra-
tion authority of the Canton of Zurich in 1961, with authorities appealing
to the events of 1956 and thus making Oistrakh an official representative
of Communism and the Soviet Union.26
– 87 –
 Matthieu Gillabert

Another such case concerned the presence of writer Ilya Ehrenburg at

the Geneva Rencontres internationales in 1960. This incident received
less media coverage, but it was still a notable controversy between differ-
ent factions. Jean Rodolphe de Salis, president of Pro Helvetia, and the
organization committee of the Rencontres internationales had issued an
invitation to Ehrenburg to take part in the discussions in Geneva. The aim
of this invitation was to open this discussion circle to intellectuals from
the Communist bloc. As the president of Pro Helvetia, a foundation on a
national level, de Salis was accused by the president of the Swiss Enlight-
enment Service, Hans Huber, of making the Geneva Rencontres interna-
tionales a forum for Communist propaganda. De Salis replied in a virulent
way by comparing the intolerance of the Swiss Enlightenment Service to
Nazi methods.27 De Salis was an intellectual with connections to the gov-
ernment. Thus, he asked Friedrich Wahlen, the successor of Max Petit-
pierre as the head of the Department for Foreign Affairs, to take a stand
against such aggressive and intolerant attitudes.
These cases illustrate that reactions against cultural relations after 1956
did not squelch their support; instead, the reactions mobilized people such
as Jotterand and de Salis. Furthermore, they were not alone, but were fol-
lowed by individuals who shared their worldviews and were not completely
distanced from connections with the Eastern bloc. However, these individ-
uals did not represent the official Swiss attitude, which was not without
controversies either.

The Department for Foreign Affairs

between Stimulation and Arbitration

The Department for Foreign Affairs was hardly anti-Communist. Among

its main goals was to keep Switzerland in the Western bloc while continu-
ing to defend neutrality. However, diplomats saw that virulent anti-Com-
munism was damaging the national image. The country appeared out of
phase with other Western countries. Indeed, there were several signs that
showed that something within international relations was now changing.
First, trade relations with the Eastern bloc were on the rise: in 1955,
the proportion of the Eastern bloc of Swiss exports was certainly low at
just 3.1 percent of the total.28 At the turn of the 1960s, however, the situ-
ation changed. On the one hand, the Coordinating Committee for Multi-
lateral Export Controls, which controlled the export of strategic goods to
the countries of Eastern Europe, relaxed its embargo.29 Furthermore, Swiss
economic actors were afraid that the Swiss membership of the European
Free Trade Association would restrict trade with the European Economic
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 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland

Community: Eastern Europe as well as the Third World appeared to be

fresh markets. The Communist countries were, however, safer for busi-
ness. Their share of Swiss exports grew,30 and, as trade increased, it became
clear that a cultural presence was considered to improve Swiss chances
in those countries. As had been the case since the beginning of the Swiss
cultural diplomacy, culture was considered support for commerce by the
Confederation.
Second, several reports from Swiss embassies in the Communist bloc
revealed the gap between increasing cultural activities of the Capitalist
countries and the complete lack of Swiss activity.31 For many diplomats,
there was much more to lose than to gain by abstaining from cultural rela-
tions that Communist countries now seemed ready for. The Swiss Embassy
in Moscow lamented that only Swiss Communists and people from the As-
sociation Switzerland-USSR were active in the realm of cultural contacts.
However, there were problems beyond ideological ones. Problems related
to practices were also problematic: the Communist countries sought bi-
lateral agreements of cultural exchange between governments. The Swiss
government, however, had always refused such agreements, arguing that
the cultural field was mostly dependent on individual cantons rather than
the confederation, and that the cultural domain should not be part of any
state settlement. Following the Soviet policies, the Association Switzer-
land-USSR and its Soviet counterpart signed yearly agreements on cul-
tural exchanges from 1964.32 Such agreement with the Swiss government
was what Soviet authorities were seeking.
Faced with radical opposition from a section of the population, but with
an international context in which conditions seemed quite positive for de-
veloping cultural exchanges with the Communist bloc, the Department
of Foreign Affairs seemed ready for a half-open door policy. Many reports
and surveys on the subject were produced by the diplomats in Bern, which
together reflect the importance of the issue. It has generally been observed
that while the internal political climate did not allow for the state level
to actively develop such relations, it was also considered that Switzerland
should not be more uncompromising than the United States on this ques-
tion. As a result, it was decided that the Swiss state should support those
who wanted to improve cultural exchanges with the Communist bloc.33
This change of attitude was also fueled more by the position of Switzerland
toward the Western countries than by interest in these cultural exchanges
themselves.
It was the chief of the Department for Foreign Affairs, Friedrich Wahlen,
who formulated this new approach. After a consultation with the president
of Pro Helvetia, Jean Rodolphe de Salis, who supported expanding these
exchanges, Wahlen did not give outright support, but gave assurance that
– 89 –
 Matthieu Gillabert

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

After the Cultural Opening

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
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 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland

idealization of national know-how. In this way, these official cultural rela-

tions have been gradually normalized in spite of the constant refusal of any
cultural agreements. While promotion of national brands worked in the
Capitalist world, Communist countries were different in this respect, and
whether such an approach was beneficial in developing cultural exchanges
between people remains questionable.

The Culture in Cultural Diplomacy

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
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 Matthieu Gillabert

ideological reasons: in 1968, for example, Dürrenmatt drew attention to

the fact that as a member of the Association Switzerland-USSR, Konrad
Farner had been considered a traitor in 1956, at a time when the country
was unwilling to call its policies into question.38 The dominant position
of Dürrenmatt and Frisch in the Swiss literary field urged some writers to
follow them, and, in 1964, young writers Walter Diggelmann and Herbert
Meier called on the Swiss Writers’ Association to come into contact with
similar associations in the countries of the Communist bloc.39
Calls for increased connections with Communists did not only come
from the Swiss Left. Some journalists from liberal and right-wing daily pa-
pers like Le Journal de Genève and La Gazette de Lausanne expressed real
desire to learn more about artistic and literary production behind the Iron
Curtain. For example, Franck Jotterand and Walter Weideli, editors of these
French-language daily papers’ cultural supplements, gave plenty of room
for articles about the Communist countries. In 1957, Jotterand published a
few articles about Poland with a lot of information about its cultural life.40
An even more remarkable example is provided by the cultural supple-
ment of Le Journal de Genève from 1960, when it was published in Polish
as part of the daily paper of Warsaw, Życie Warszawy. At the same time,
the Polish paper’s cultural supplement was published in French in Le Jour-
nal de Genève.41 Both supplements contained some texts by ambassadors
from both Switzerland and Poland, emphasizing the semiofficial role of this
exchange. More importantly, there were articles from writers and artists
about different cultural fields. Originally issued from a non-state actor, and
particularly from Walter Weideli, a journalist from Le Journal de Genève,
this joint action illustrates the link between official diplomacy—which was
helpful and necessary in terms of facilitation—and the informal side of
cultural relations.
These publishing projects contributed to fuel tensions between the jour-
nalists and their direction.42 However, these initiatives by artists and writers
testify more generally to relative autonomy in the cultural sphere as there
was an existing level of cultural relations outside official relations. They
also demonstrate that a large share of artists did not accept the closed-off
attitude that Switzerland had inherited and hung onto after World War II.
This trend coincided with calls for a cultural policy that would be more ben-
eficial for artists and artistic objectives than for political goals.43 To break
the taboo of contacts with Communist countries was to break a kind of a
cycle of political and cultural self-satisfaction. How else can we understand
the sentence written by Walter Weideli in the diary that he kept during
his journey in Poland: “This is the freest people I know. … At last a coun-
try where some questions are asked, a country unsatisfied.”44 Opposition to
official Switzerland depicted it as a satisfied country that needed changes.
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 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland

The Measure of Cultural Circulation

An analysis of cultural relations with the Communist bloc is difficult when

their impact and consequences are the focus. This applies both to official
and more informal ones. Analysis of individual trajectories is much easier
to come by, and it can provide us with information about the possibili-
ties and difficulties in cultural exchanges more generally. It is also possi-
ble to count the number of exhibitions organized after 1962 or estimate
how many films were shown. Some kind of balance could be best reached
by combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. One way of rec-
ognizing the change is to look at the visas that were absolutely necessary
for traveling from Switzerland to any Communist country and vice versa.
Visas can also point out the general and geographical tendencies of cul-
tural relations, but also the strong dependence of cultural relations on the
international situation.
From the 1950s until the middle of the 1970s, the Federal Immigration
Authority collaborated with the Federal Department for Foreign Affairs
counting the number of visas delivered to artists and scientists from the
Communist bloc. There were some significant differences by countries:
while the number of visas given to artists from the USSR remained on a
very low level, East Germany and Czechoslovakia obtained the majority of
the Swiss visas. This did not correspond to any strategy of the Confedera-
tion, but rather to other cultural as well as economic relations.

Figure 4.1. Figures for the yearly number of cultural and scientific visas delivered
to foreign nationals from the Communist bloc.45

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 Matthieu Gillabert

First, these figures attest to the importance of cultural relations during

this period. The table also shows that cultural relations were considered
to be a question of diplomacy and of security: these relations had to be
under surveillance and controlled by Swiss authorities. Finally, the graphic
demonstrates how these cultural contacts experienced a relative take-off
following Wahlen’s speech in 1962. The turning point of the 1960s is in-
deed observable with an initial increase visible until 1968, even if the artists
from Communist countries were still considered to be suspicious. Cultural
exchanges also seemed to depend very strongly on political progress. After
the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, similar suppression of con-
tacts is observable, even if it was certainly less strict in 1968 than in 1956.
In the years before the Helsinki Final Act, stabilization can be observed on
quite a low level. This means that these cultural relations are less politi-
cally problematic for Switzerland, while their importance remains minimal
compared to the relations with the Capitalist countries.

Conclusion

Cultural relations between Switzerland and the Communist bloc began in

earnest after 1956, and although political events affected the amount of
cultural relations, they were never quite suppressed completely. Further-
more, instead of having been inevitable and widely accepted facts, cul-
tural relations became a target of political and even violent controversy in
the public space. From the official Swiss point of view, to undertake some
degree of cultural relations with Communist countries was an important
way of adapting to the changing international context. Furthermore, it
was considered important for escaping the cultural isolation that had pre-
vailed since World War II. This approach was also shared by many indi-
viduals. While neutrality had been considered important by most since
World War II, the meaning of neutrality seemed to be changing. The deci-
sion to increase cultural relations with Communist countries in the 1960s
broadened the concept of neutrality. It did not, however, manage to make
Switzerland a real mediator between the blocs. Switzerland was considered
a solid part of the West by the Communist bloc.
Real cultural exchanges were not initiated by the Swiss government,
but by those individuals who decided to reach over the Iron Curtain. In
some cases, such as Le Journal de Genève, Pro Helvetia and the more offi-
cial institutions took over these individual exchanges. Through their in-
formal actions, they tried to get to know the other part of Europe better
and simultaneously separate culture from politics. In this way, the question
of cultural relations found the sensitive spot of Swiss national identity,
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 Cultural Diplomacy of Switzerland

which was looking for a different position than simply the fear of foreign
propaganda.

Matthieu Gillabert is postdoctoral researcher in contemporary history

at the Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique (Paris Ouest/Nanterre,
France, Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow). His doctoral thesis was
published in 2013 under the title Dans les coulisses de la diplomatie culturelle
suisse: objectifs, réseaux et realisations, 1938–1984.

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.

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 P A R T II

INTERPLAY IN
THE ACADEMIC CONTEXTS
 Chapter 5

EXPERT GROUPS CLOSING THE DIVIDE

Estonian-Finnish Computing Cooperation
since the 1960s

Sampsa Kaataja

T he Cold War and the rapid development of computer technology are

phenomena that define the latter part of the twentieth century. The
former was the most important political occurrence that shaped and di-
vided the world during that period. The latter can be regarded as the main
technological development that has revolutionized the human experience
during the last fifty years.
Due to its importance in the twentieth-century history of technology,
it is understandable that Cold War computing has attracted scholarly at-
tention. What is common for works covering the topic is the separateness
of the East-West computing communities, and the Eastern bloc countries’
illegal technology purchases from the West are often emphasized.1 None-
theless, at the same time it is easy to find evidence that computing coop-
eration and legal technology transfer between the East and the West took
place at different stages of the Cold War. For example, Western firms sold
computer technology directly to Eastern bloc countries with, and some-
times without, permission. Researchers from both sides of the Iron Curtain
were often willing and able to visit and work with each other via scientific
and technical exchange programs and within the limits set by international
scientific organizations.2
This chapter focuses on the cooperative elements of Cold War comput-
ing.3 It analyzes computing contacts between Finland and Estonia from
the 1960s onward: how did existing political conditions influence the sci-

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 Sampsa Kaataja

entific-technical relations between experts who were on different sides of

the Iron Curtain, and what were the long-term effects of the contacts that
developed during the Cold War? At the same time, the chapter examines
computing-related technology transfer between the two countries, includ-
ing transfer of computer technology and diffusion of scientific-technical
information and expertise.
The following pages illustrate researchers’ transnational interactions
in a world divided by a political conflict and provide information on the
mechanisms of acquiring technology, information, and expertise across the
Iron Curtain. The source materials used in the chapter include oral his-
tories and archive materials. The oral history data that forms the primary
source material was collected from seven Finnish and five Estonian experts
who all have been prominent figures in national computing spheres and
who participated in computing cooperation between Finland and Estonia
from the 1960s onward.4 The key archival sources have been gathered
from the archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Finnish
Security Intelligence Service, Helsinki University of Technology, and the
Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics.

In the Shadow of Superpower Computing

Despite internationally recognized results in computer science and tech-

nology, Estonia and Finland were small actors in the global computing
arena and reliant on hardware and software imports during the latter
part of the twentieth century.5 Due to political developments, computing
communities in both countries experienced the Cold War differently. At
the same time, the science and technology (S&T) relations between the
United States and the USSR affected both countries directly, and thus
the Finnish-Estonian cooperation cannot be analyzed separately from the
superpower computing relations.
After the Soviet occupation in 1944, Estonia was forced to adjust to
the Soviet system in all sectors of life. For research and engineering com-
munities, this meant that contacts with Western countries became lim-
ited. Due to the high-technology embargo system CoCom (Coordinating
Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), introduced by the United
States and its allies in 1949, machines, devices, and instruments needed
in everyday work were not freely available, either. Although the strictness
of the CoCom rules varied in different periods of the Cold War, it formed
an obstacle to the USSR, which could not respond to the U.S. technology
output, which was more effective and more innovative in most high-tech
fields, including computing.
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

In a rapidly developing field like computing, the lack of personal con-

tacts, limited access to the latest results, and inadequate availability of
top-quality computers and components hampered development in Estonia
from the 1960s onward. Nonetheless, the case of Estonia shows that the
severity of the situation varied significantly depending on a person’s field
of interest. For those who were working on practical questions or computer
building, poor access to information and technology hindered work con-
siderably. More theoretically oriented individuals were in a better position:
“machinery did not matter in software or theory of computing,” as one of
the interviewees tellingly described the working conditions of the period.6
The first Estonian computing generation was educated in Moscow and
Leningrad from the 1950s onward, and, until the collapse of the USSR,
constant contacts existed to important Soviet computer centers (e.g., No-
vosibirsk and Moscow) with whom joint projects were executed. The lead-
ing Estonian computer center, the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics, was
founded in connection with the Tallinn University of Technology in 1960.
From the mid-1970s onward, there was an active push for independent
innovation in computer building in Estonia, and in the 1980s, software
products were also produced for foreign markets.7 By that time the Tallinn
Institute of Cybernetics had reached a prominent position in the Soviet
computing system. Its researchers were in the frontline of software engi-
neering research in the USSR, and although there was no large-scale in-
volvement with military projects, the institute also contributed to Soviet
military computing. By 1989, the institute employed six hundred research-
ers and other staff, which made it the most important computer center in
the Soviet Baltic region.8
Within the Soviet S&T system, the position of computing was good
in many aspects. Due to its importance in military technology, resources
were allocated to computer science and technology, and it developed faster
than many other fields. For example, the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics
grew by 10 percent annually from the 1960s.9 Therefore, when looking at
the matter purely from the computing perspective, it can be argued that
Estonia benefited from the Cold War period. Even though the second part
of the twentieth century was a precarious period for the Estonian society
at large, the U.S.-USSR conflict was the single most important reason for
the notably fast growth of the country’s computing sector.
The Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics is an example of a Soviet research
center that remained relatively open to the outside world. It chose not to
participate in fully classified projects, and, in the Soviet system, it belonged
to the category B institutions, where the focus was on civil computing. Al-
though the resources at hand were more limited than in military-oriented
category A institutes, the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics also had a more
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 Sampsa Kaataja

open working environment. Even visits of foreign researchers were not

exceptional: in the 1970s and 1980s, Finnish experts visited on a yearly ba-
sis, joint projects were executed with French and Swedish colleagues, and
other globally renowned researchers also visited the institute. At the same
time, practically all important Soviet researchers spent periods of varying
duration at the institute.10
In Finland a new line of sensitive foreign policy was adopted toward the
USSR after being defeated by its eastern neighbor in World War II. The
Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 (YYA) aimed at ensuring friendship, coopera-
tion, and mutual assistance between the two countries located on the op-
posite sides of the Iron Curtain. While being a Capitalist country, Finland
was politically inclined toward the Soviet Union, having active contacts
with both superpowers throughout the Cold War decades. Thus, Finland
became a potential knowledge and technology intermediary in the Cold
War technology race that could benefit both the United States and the
USSR. This in-between status Finland had gained makes it an interesting
node in the Cold War history of technology.11
Post–World War II Finland industrialized quickly, with S&T sectors de-
veloping rapidly since the 1960s. In 1955, Finland was the first Capitalist
country to sign an official scientific-technical cooperation agreement with
the Soviet Union, and it became one of the USSR’s main partners in S&T
collaboration. In 1980, the United States and West Germany were the only
non-Socialist countries that had more researcher exchange with the USSR
than Finland.12
The Cold War did not produce a similar boost in Finnish computing as
in Estonia, although the post–World War II situation brought important
changes for the whole national S&T system. Finnish researchers and en-
gineers had traditionally focused on Western Europe, especially Germany,
but after World War II, contacts to the United Stated increased through-
out the S&T sector. According to a recent estimation, one third of Finnish
professors and senior researchers active in the early 1980s had developed
their professional skills in the United States at some point of their career.
In proportion to the size of the population, Finland had more active aca-
demic contacts with the United States than any other European country.13
Nonetheless, there were important differences in Finland’s S&T rela-
tions with the East and the West. Even though an academic exchange
program (ASLA-Fulbright) had existed between Finland and the United
States since 1949, the researchers themselves were the ones who created
and maintained contacts across the Atlantic. Cooperation with the USSR
was based on official state-level contracts, and by 1970, cooperation agree-
ments between Finland and its eastern neighbor existed in twenty different
fields of science and technology.14 Annual exchange of appointed delegates
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

in each field was carefully planned by the Finnish-Soviet Commission on

Scientific and Technical Cooperation, whereas bilateral contacts between
individual researchers were somewhat rare.
Materials on the S&T cooperation between Finland and the USSR in
the archive of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland create an impres-
sion that cooperation was based on rigid forms and careful planning. None-
theless, interviews of Finnish and Estonian computing experts reveal that
there was also room for individuals to create cooperative networks. For ex-
ample, the beginning of computing cooperation, first between Finland and
the USSR and later between Finland and Estonia, illustrates that unofficial
contacts among expert groups on different sides of the Iron Curtain could,
in some cases, materialize as official S&T contracts at the national level.

Establishment of Official Computing Contacts

The roots of Finnish-Estonian computing relations can be traced to the

formation of official computing contacts between Finland and the Soviet
Union. According to the minutes of the Finnish S&T Committee, the
USSR proposed in 1969 that the countries should commence cooperation
in computing, and in spring 1970, a working group on cybernetics was
founded under the Finnish-Soviet Commission on Scientific and Techni-
cal Cooperation.15
There is an interesting temporal link between the formation of the
Finnish-Soviet cybernetics group and the reorientation of Soviet comput-
ing, which makes one question the official motivations behind the initial
steps of collaboration. Already in the 1950s, the USSR was falling behind
the United States in computer technology, and efforts to close the gap
proved unsuccessful. In this situation, a new strategy, criticized by the So-
viet computing community, was adopted: independent innovation was cut
down, especially in civil computing, and attention turned to copying and
purchasing western computer technology.16 Thus, the role of computer im-
ports and computing piracy started to play a bigger role from the late 1960s
onward.
Despite the convenient timing, founding of the cybernetics working
group seems to have had little to do with the new Soviet computing strat-
egy. It was based on the personal contacts of three individuals: Hans An-
dersin and Jussi Tuori from the Finnish Information Processing Association
and Academician Anatolii A. Dorodnitsyn from the Computing Center of
the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow.17 The three men had
met at the conferences of the International Federation for Information
Processing (IFIP) that Andersin and Dorodnitsyn had participated in as
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 Sampsa Kaataja

official representatives of their national computing organizations.18 IFIP

meetings provided an arena for Andersin, Tuori, and Dorodnitsyn to plan
Finnish-Soviet collaboration. An official initiative for cooperation was
jointly proposed in 1969 in the name of the Finnish Information Process-
ing Association and Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences
(Moscow). Interestingly, Finnish-Soviet cooperation never took off in the
IFIP, but it provided the platform for establishing Finnish-Soviet comput-
ing relations.19
When the Finnish-Soviet working group on cybernetics was created in
1970, it was one of the twenty working groups responsible for S&T co-
operation between the two countries. Nonetheless, government officials
played a minimal role in the initial steps of the cybernetics working group:
they merely approved the plans born through scientific contacts between
the three specialists.
The possibilities for experts to develop transnational cooperative plans
among themselves also played an important role when bilateral Finnish-
Estonian computing relations were established. Since the 1960s, the Finn-
ish-Soviet cybernetics working group had been the main forum for the de-
velopment of Finnish-Estonian computing relations.20 However, in the late
1980s, an idea of a separate Finnish-Estonian computing working group
that could make autonomous decisions about the content of cooperation
and exchange of researchers emerged. This was seen as an answer to the
problems that had become evident in the computing cooperation between
Finland and the Soviet Union.
According to Jussi Tuori, a long-time Finnish leader of the cybernet-
ics group, administration of computing relations with the Soviet Union
was rather uncomplicated. Due to Anatolii Dorodnitsyn’s high position
in Soviet computing and his good command of English, maintenance of
contacts was easy.21 Nonetheless, at the lower level of cooperation, the sit-
uation was different. A typical problem in Finnish-Soviet S&T relations
was related to communication. Maintenance of day-to-day contacts across
the border was difficult, and during the visits in the USSR, even scheduled
appointments were regularly cancelled. In some cases, the language barrier
hindered collaboration, but in computing, for example, a more common
problem was the difficulty of meeting the right individuals. Despite careful
planning and official invitations, persons who actually came to Finland
and participated in meetings were not those who were initially invited.22
Nevertheless, it is clear that the intensification of Estonian-Finnish co-
operation was not purely based on professional reasons. A shared linguistic
background and a feeling of kinship were additional motivating factors
behind the efforts to deepen the contacts. Helping of a kindred nation
under Soviet rule clearly motivated some Finnish experts.23 This tendency
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

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

The Nature of Computing Cooperation

When the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Informatics was founded

in November 1988, cooperation was planned in several fields of computing,
including artificial intelligence, database management, speech technology,
algorithms, data structures, and computers in education. The purpose was
also to exchange new products developed in Finland and Estonia, distrib-
ute knowledge, and launch joint projects.26 The execution of cooperation
followed the customary lines of the Finnish-Soviet S&T collaboration.
Meetings where researchers introduced their work were organized annu-
ally either in Finland or Estonia. Future cooperation was planned in these
meetings as well, and reports of past events were presented. Communi-
cation between the participants was not limited to annual seminars, and
study trips and research visits, for example, were organized within the lim-
its of the committee, lasting from a few days to some months.27
What was common for the Finnish computing contacts both with the
USSR and with Estonia was that the cooperation was active. In some years,
the number of exchanges was equivalent to four hundred person-hours,
which meant that the working group on cybernetics accounted for almost
50 percent of all researcher exchange executed under Finnish-Soviet S&T
cooperation.28 When Estonia and Finland got the separate informatics work-
ing group, altogether forty computing experts participated in its meetings
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 Sampsa Kaataja

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

Diffusion of Technology in Finnish-Estonian Computing Networks

The limitations in East-West technology trade varied considerably during

the different periods of the Cold War. Intrabloc trade was encouraged from
the late 1960s onward (e.g., the Export Administration Act of 1969), and
this meant that bigger quantities of more effective computers could be sold
to the East. For example, at the height of détente in 1972–77, $120 million
worth of computers were sold from the United States to the USSR. At
the same time, companies benefited from CoCom’s exceptions provisions,
which allowed them to sell computer technology under embargo to Social-
ist countries.34
When the political climate became colder again in the late 1970s, a
stricter control of the East-West technology trade became reality. New lim-
itations were planned and implemented at the political level, complicating
technology transfer to Eastern-bloc countries. However, the limitations
were not enough to prevent the circulation of CoCom-listed technology.
Purchase channels remained open to the West, if not as much to Europe
or the United States as previously, but to other countries located further
away, such as Australia and Japan.
The case of Estonia illustrates how the transfer of computer technol-
ogy occurred despite the tightened conditions of the early 1980s. At that
point, computers in the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics were outdated
when compared to the hardware generally available for example in Finn-
ish universities, and, according to one Estonian researcher, “the situation
was very, very difficult” at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless,
even during this period, connections to Western companies existed, and
they were also used. For the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics, Australia was
an important source of new technology, and especially a company called
Labtam. In the early 1980s, the institute purchased computers from Lab-
tam, with the shipment including machines under embargo. In this case,
the method for circumventing CoCom regulations was simple: the official
consignment note simply stated that the shipment included computers
that could be legally sold without any special permission. No closer inspec-
tion was made at any point, and the machines arrived in Tallinn without
problems.35
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 Sampsa Kaataja

Another example illustrating the purchase channels of the Tallinn In-

stitute of Cybernetics in the early 1980s is related to Lisa, a computer pro-
duced by Apple Computers, Inc. Lisa was released in January 1983, and
it was the first commercial personal computer with a graphical user inter-
face—a computer controlled with a mouse by pointing and clicking icons
on the screen. An updated version of the computer, Lisa II, was released
in January 1984, and already next August, Lisa was in use at the institute.
Thus, sometimes the latest technology became available very rapidly.36
Geographically close Finnish companies also got occasionally involved
in the computer trade to Estonia, perhaps sometimes not fully realizing what
was taking place. A new system of air conditioning was ordered to the
Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics from a Helsinki-based company in the late
1970s, and two Apple II computers were included in the order. The in-
stitute informed the company representatives that these machines were
needed to control the air conditioning system. When Apple II computers
came with the rest of the order, they were used for research purposes, not
for tasks related to air conditioning.37
The examples above show how CoCom regulations were bypassed rel-
atively easily and western technology was available for a Soviet research
institution. Up to a point, purchase channels existed when something was
needed. Some of the means used were slightly dubious, but typically they
were not illegal. This notion is consistent with the descriptions from the
1980s on the transfer of high technology between the East and the West.
Already at that time, it was admitted in the United States that the majority
of the technology flow to the USSR was not based on illegal technology
transfer.38
Although the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Informatics set as
its original task the introduction and exchange of new products developed
in both countries, it never became an arena for active technology transfer.
Partly this was caused by the other purchase channels the Estonians had,
and partly by the global political situation, which prevented the Finnish
side from supporting the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics’ need for up-to-
date technology more than they did. Nonetheless, the main reason why
the exchange of computer technology between the two countries was lim-
ited was that, during the Cold War years, Finnish and Estonian computing
communities did not produce technology that was truly needed in the col-
laborative country across the border.
The trajectory of the software tool PRIZ (later known as MicroPRIZ)
supports this argument. PRIZ was a program synthesizer developed by Enn
Tõugu and his research group in the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics from
the 1970s until the late 1980s. PRIZ was designed for the development
of software applications, and Finnish visitors regularly brought it up as a
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

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

tion existed from December 1990 onward, which significantly improved

the possibilities of the Estonian research community to be part of interna-
tional information networks. After 1990, it took a couple of years before
the Internet era truly began in Estonia, first via a satellite connection to
Sweden and a little later via a microwave link to Helsinki.43
Computer donations from Finland to Estonia in the early 1990s pro-
vide another example of supportive technology transfers in which the Joint
Committee played an important role. In some cases, it was a single com-
puter that was donated to an Estonian research center, but sometimes ma-
terial assistance was more extensive. In spring 1992, Hannu Jaakkola, the
Finnish leader of the Joint Committee, organized a campaign to support
computing in newly independent Estonia. As a result, a group of Finnish
companies and universities donated their extra computers to Estonia. Ac-
cording to the official extradition documents, the shipment included, for
example, fourteen SUN computers and twenty-seven IBM PCs. All ma-
chines were distributed between the three important centers of research
in Estonia: the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, and
the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics.44 Donated machinery patched up the
institutes’ lack of equipment for a few years after independence. After that,
the financial support from the European Union, the Soros Foundation,
UNESCO, and private companies (e.g., Sun Microsystems) enabled the
purchase of up-to-date technology, and supportive technology transfer be-
came meaningless in Estonian-Finnish computing relations.45

Important Knowledge Exchange

Flows of scientific-technical information and expertise occupy a central

place when East-West technology relations of the Cold War period are ex-
amined. In the computing contacts Finland had with Estonia, exchange
of people and knowledge was more important than the transfer of actual
machines and instruments.
The period under examination mostly predates the birth of electronic
publication systems. Prior to them, access to published materials or paper
copies of books, journals, and technical reports was crucial for the world
of research. Both Finnish and Estonian experts interviewed for the study
brought up the importance of publications in S&T relations. Practically all
Finnish experts comment that visitors from the East were very interested
in the materials available at the Western libraries and often returned home
carrying copied books and articles.46
In general, Estonian computing experts do not feel that the availability
of publications was exceptionally limited during the Soviet period. The
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

Estonian Academy of Sciences was able to purchase relevant international

publications, and a relatively effective system for distribution of publica-
tions existed inside the Soviet Union. Copies of articles, technical reports,
and even conference presentations could be purchased from the Viniti In-
stitute in Moscow, which provided publication services throughout the So-
viet Union. Because the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics had a recognized
position in Soviet computing, this arrangement worked quite effectively:
materials ordered from Moscow usually arrived in two weeks, whereas for
research centers and universities not working in the strategic fields of sci-
ence and technology, these orders could take up to two months.47
In the case of Finnish-Soviet computing relations, the flow of publica-
tions was not always from the West to the East. As a rule, Finnish comput-
ing experts did not build up their work on Soviet computer science, instead
relying on North American research.48 However, in some cases, materials
published in the USSR became very useful at the local level. At the turn
of the 1960s and 1970s, the Department of Applied Mathematics in the
University of Turku had few resources to purchase up-to-date research
literature. In this situation, Russian translations became valuable. For the
price of an original textbook ordered from a Western publishing house,
several Russian translations of American or European research could be
purchased. As a result, the department’s library had a significant collection
of Russian translations of American research on, for example, optimization
and statistics. For instance, translated works on search theory, one of the
main research areas of the department, were used regularly.49
Apart from publications, researchers’ mobility and contacts to important
academic centers are key elements behind the success in science and tech-
nology. During the pre-Internet era, active and continuous contacts with
overseas colleagues were especially significant in rapidly developing fields
of research such as computing during the closing decades of the twentieth
century. It is already clear that Estonian computer science did not develop
in a Soviet vacuum with no contacts with the West. Nonetheless, the for-
mation of more regular transnational contacts was limited due to political
realities, as the case of academician Enn Tõugu (1935–) indicates.
Just like the whole first generation of Estonian computer scientists,
Tõugu specialized in computing in Leningrad. He started working at the
Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics in 1976, having cooperative contacts with
important Soviet computing centers and researchers like Andrei Ershov
and Grigori Mints until the end of the Cold War. In the mid-1970s, Tõugu
participated in his first IFIP conference,50 and networks with western col-
leagues also developed inside the USSR. There Tõugu got acquainted with
famous computer scientists like John McCarthy and Donald Knuth. In-
volvement in French-Soviet computing cooperation introduced him to
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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

Technical tools, such as instruments and machines, and scientific-techni-

cal information are important prerequisites for the development of new
technology. Another crucial component is expertise—implicit, wordless,
and pictureless knowledge, as Walter Vincenti has described it, which is
not inferior to other forms of knowledge.54 Expertise is a type of ability that
develops in actual hands-on work where one gets acquainted with the prac-
tices, routines, and processes that are experienced in everyday operations.
In the Cold War context, the importance of expertise is evident in the
reverse engineering projects, where typically Western technology was dupli-
cated in Eastern-bloc countries. Especially in R&D-intensive fields of tech-
nology like computing, expertise played an important role; while simple
machinery could be reconstructed merely by using the blueprints, develop-
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

ment of computers required a more sophisticated approach, which meant

that besides scientific-technical information and components, knowledge
on how to build a machine was also sought from the West.
The significant role of expertise in technological innovation was rec-
ognized in the West. In 1982, a panel set by the U.S. government consid-
ered it the most important form of unwanted technology transfer that was
threatening North American universities.55 Actions were also taken at the
governmental level. The diffusion of expertise was limited with legislation
in strategically important fields of science and technology.56 Thus the tech-
nology embargo did not apply only to products, but also the export of ex-
pertise was controlled.
Diffusion of expertise is also evident in the computing relations that
developed between Estonia and Finland during the closing decades of the
twentieth century. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, Finnish universities
faced a shortage of teachers in computer science. In this situation, teachers
were recruited from Estonia. One of them was Merik Meriste from the Tal-
linn Institute of Cybernetics, who came to the University of Turku, where
he taught programming languages for some years.57 Finnish expertise, on
the other hand, became useful in Estonia when computing education was
reformed in the newly independent country in the early 1990s. At that
point, Finnish members of the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Infor-
matics went to Estonia with the purpose of participating in the develop-
ment of the new computer science curriculum for local universities.58
After Estonia regained its independence in 1991, the diffusion of exper-
tise also became more visible in the commercial sector. The end of the Cold
War had a drastic effect on Estonian computing because the resources pre-
viously available from the USSR were no longer at hand. In this situation,
the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics had to cut its operations significantly,
and in 1988–92 the number of employees was reduced from six hundred to
less than two hundred.59
When national companies could not place enough orders for the Tallinn
Institute of Cybernetics, the focus was turned outside Estonia, especially
to Finland and Sweden. During the 1990s, a number of projects related to
telecommunications were executed in the institute with Nordic partners.
In retrospect, it is only natural that projects crossing the national bor-
ders started to emerge in this particular field because both in Finland and
Sweden, ICT companies like Nokia and Ericsson were growing fast at the
end of the millennium. One of the intermediaries through which Estonian
expertise came into use in Finland was Elvior, a firm that did a number of
software projects for Nokia. Elvior had direct contacts with the Tallinn
Institute of Cybernetics, where the firm had its premises and its employees
were ex-workers of the institute.60
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 Sampsa Kaataja

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

The last official meeting of the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of In-

formatics was held in October 1995. By that time, the group was no longer
needed because in the changed political climate it was more reasonable to
continue the cooperation without an official framework.
Interaction between Finnish and Estonian (and other Soviet) experts
supports the view that bilateral personal links sometimes played a crucial
role in the formation of transnational networks overcoming the bloc divi-
sion. In addition, one has to be careful not to overemphasize the seclusion
of the Soviet research community from the Western world. The political
conflict placed restrictions, but information and technology were avail-
able for institutes such as the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics, which in
many ways benefited from the vast Soviet resources. Nonetheless, in some
cases, limited possibilities for communication with colleagues became an
obstacle for one’s work. In such situations, transnational groups like the
Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Informatics could become a relevant
knowledge intermediary.
Even if transnational computing cooperation did not lead to major sci-
entific-technical results, it would be a mistake to belittle its importance.
Cold War interaction and exchange of favors may be the key factor in more
substantial support, as in the case of supportive technology transfer that,
for a short period, eased Estonia’s way into the Western computing system.
Interactions of the Cold War era also created a basis for cooperation taking
place after Estonia’s newly gained independence, when Estonian scientific
and technical expertise benefited Finland and vice versa.
Methodologically, oral history has proved to be a useful tool when trans-
national Cold War contacts and technology transfer are examined. This
applies especially to the information related to unofficial decision making
and person-to-person interaction. In contrast to official documents, inter-
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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

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.

Sampsa Kaataja (Ph.D.) is a historian of science and technology working

at the University of Tampere, Finland. In the Cold War context, his work
has dealt with the transnational interaction and cooperation in computer
science. Kaataja’s focus has been on the exchange of information, exper-
tise, and technology across the division lines of the Cold War, especially
between Estonia and Finland.

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).

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 Sampsa Kaataja

4. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were organized in Finland and Estonia in 2010

and 2011. These meetings resulted in almost eighteen hours of interview material about com-
puting history that, to a large extent, had not been available before.
5. For an introduction to the computing histories of both countries, see E. Tõugu, “Com-
puting and Computer Science in the Soviet Baltic Region,” in History of Nordic Computing 2,
ed. J. Impagliazzo, T. Järvi, and P. Paju (New York: Springer, 2009); P. Paju and H. Durnová,
“Computing Close to the Iron Curtain: Inter/national Computing Practices in Czechoslovakia
and Finland,” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 7, no. 3 (2009): 303–22; P. Paju,
“A Failure Revisited: The First Finnish Computer Construction Project,” in History of Nordic
Computing, ed. J. Bubenko Jr., J. Impagliazzo, and A. Solvberg (New York: Springer, 2005).
6. Küberneetika Instituud muutuvas ajas (Tallinn: TTÜ Küberneetika Instituut, 2000), 45;
Enn Tõugu, 10 March 2011.
7. The first electronic computer (M-3) was built in Estonia in 1960, but computer building
started to intensify in 1976 when a section for hardware development (Küberneetika Institu-
udi programmeerimisbüroo Arvutustehnika Erikonstrueerimisbüroo / EKTA) was founded at
the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics.
8. Tõugu, “Computing and Computer Science in the Soviet Baltic Region,” 30–34; Küber-
neetika Instituud muutuvas ajas, 14; Interview with Merik Meriste, 18 November 2011; Inter-
view with Enn Tõugu, 10 March 2011; Interview with Ants Wõrk, 19 November 2011.
9. Küberneetika Instituud muutuvas ajas, 21; Tõugu, “Computing and Computer Science in
the Soviet Baltic Region,” 36.
10. Meriste, 18 November 2011; Tõugu, 10 March 2011; Wõrk, 19 November 2011;
Küberneetika Instituud muutuvas ajas, 40; Tõugu, “Computing and Computer Science in the
Soviet Baltic Region,” 34–35; E. Tõugu, “Grigori Mints and Computer Science,” paper pre-
sented at the Estonian Theory Days, Kääriku, 30 January to 1 February 2009. http://www
.cs.ut.ee/~varmo/tday-kaariku/GMe.pdf.
11. This, of course, did not apply only to computing but to science and technology in
general. On the Soviet knowledge and technology acquirement via Finland, see S. Autio-
Sarasmo, “Knowledge through the Iron Curtain. Soviet Scientific-Technical Cooperation with
Finland and West Germany,” in Reassessing Cold War Europe, ed. Autio-Sarasmo and Miklóssy,
66–82.
12. Pääkonsulinviraston kirje UM:lle 23.10.1980, TT-yhteistyö 1978–, The Archives of
the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (UMA); Autio-Sarasmo, “Knowledge through the
Iron Curtain,” 70.
13. Paju and Durnová, “Computing Close to the Iron Curtain,” 313.
14. 46 Z Neuvostoliitto, Tiet.-tekn. yhteistoimintakomitea pöytäkirjat 1968–73, UMA.
15. Minutes of the meeting of the Finnish Science and Technology Committee, 10 April
1970 and 8 May 1970, UMA. See also S. Kaataja, “Approaching the Cold War Technology
Transfer via Oral History: A Case of Finnish-Estonian Computing Cooperation,” in Chal-
lenging the Shadows of the Cold War: A Special Issue of the LimesPlus Journal, ed. H. H. Dajc
(Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences, 2013); Autio-Sarasmo, “Knowledge through the
Iron Curtain,” 72.
16. S. Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 157; A. Nitussov and B. Malinovskiy, “Economic Changes in
the Sixties and Internationalization of the Soviet Computing,” in Computing in Russia. The
History of Computer Devices and Information Technology Revealed, ed. G. Trogemann, A. Nitus-
sov, and W. Ernst (Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 2001), 164–65; Tõugu, 10 March 2011; Meriste, 18
November 2011.
17. Finnish computing pioneer Hans Andersin (1930–2010) was the first professor of in-
formation processing at the Helsinki University of Technology. Jussi Tuori (1940–) is, among
other things, one of the early developers of computing in the Finnish banking sector. For
decades, he was also the leader on the Finnish side in Finnish-Soviet computing cooperation.

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 Expert Groups Closing the Divide

Academician Anatolii A. Dorodnitsyn (1910–94) was a long-time director of the Computing

Center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow. He was also one of the founding
members of the IFIP. Until 1994, he was the representative of the USSR/Russia in the IFIP and
he was also the president of the organization from 1968 to 1971.
18. For decades, the IFIP was the most important international parent organization in
computing. It was founded in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO, and one of its original
aims was to bring together computing specialists from the East and the West. See Tatarchenko,
“Cold War Origins,” and IFIP histories at http://www.ifip.or.at/index.php?option=com_conte
nt&task=view&id=156&Itemid=470.
19. Interview with Jussi Tuori, 1 March 2011. On the beginning of Finnish-Soviet comput-
ing collaboration, see also Kaataja, “Approaching the Cold War.”
20. TT-komitean suomalaisen osapuolen kokousten pk:t 24.1.1967–25.5.1970, Pk. 28.8.1967;
TT-komitean suom. osapuolen kokousten pk:t 24.1.1967–25.5.1970, Pk. 16.12.1968; and also
46 Z NL luennoitsijavaihto, UMA; Interview with Reino Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010.
21. Tuori, 1 March 2011.
22. Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010; Interview with Hannu Jaakkola, 15 December 2010.
23. Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010; Jaakkola, 15 December 2010.
24. Boris Tamm (1930–2002) was educated among the first generation of Soviet com-
puter scientists. From 1960 onward, Tamm worked at the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics for
more than three decades, and, until the end of the Cold War, the institute benefited from his
contacts to Soviet computing centers. Tamm was also an active member of the International
Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and was even its president in the 1980s. Tõugu, 10
March 2011; Tuori, 1 March 2011.
25. Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010; Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Meriste, 18 November
2011; Wõrk, 19 November 2011.
26. As in the Finnish-Soviet cybernetics group, the official language of Finnish-Estonian
cooperation was English. Minutes of the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Informatics.
21–22 November 1988, UMA.
27. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Wõrk, 19 November 2011.
28. Tuori, 1 March 2011.
29. List of participants in the meetings of the Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Infor-
matics 1988–95, Hannu Jaakkola’s personal archive.
30. Wõrk, 19 November 2011.
31. Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010; Interview with Ulla Pursiheimo, 1 August 2011; Tu-
ori, 1 March 2011.
32. Wõrk, 19 November 2011; Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010.
33. Tuori, 1 March 2011 and 22 March 2012; Interview with Markku Syrjänen, 19 No-
vember 2010. Kaataja, “Approaching the Cold War.”
34. Nonetheless, many companies were careful not to be too public about their activities
in the Socialist camp because of political and public relations reasons and in order to maintain
good relations with the U.S. Commerce Department and Customs Service. R. S. Metcalfe,
The New Wizard War. How the Soviets Steal U.S. High Technology—and How We Give It Away
(Redmond: Tempus, 1988), 57, 86, 145; Scientific Communication and National Security, 101;
Cain, “Computers and the Cold War,” 143; “U.S. policy on the export of computers to com-
munist countries.” National security decision memorandum 22. 14 March 1974, 1. http://
www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdm-nixon/nsdm_247.pdf.
35. Interview with Ahto Kalja, 11 March 2011; Tõugu, 10 March 2011; Wõrk, 19 No-
vember 2011. A similar simple method to circumvent the embargo was also used in high-tech
trade between East Germany and West Germany. Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets, 127–28.
36. Kalja, 11 March 2011; Tõugu, 10 March 2011. Unfortunately, the exact purchase
channels of Lisa II remain unknown.
37. Kalja, 11 March 2011.

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 Sampsa Kaataja

38. Metcalfe, The New Wizard War, 143, 150.

39. Pentti Hietala, Hannu Jaakkola, and Vesa Savolainen, Matkakertomus matkasta Tal-
linnaan 5–9.5.1980; Hannu Jaakkola, Matkakertomus Eestin tiedeakatemian Kybernetiikan
instituuttiin 19–23.4.1988. Hannu Jaakkola’s personal archive.
40. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Tõugu, 10 March 2011; Tõugu, “Computing and Com-
puter Science in the Soviet Baltic Region,” 33.
41. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Tõugu, 10 March 2011.
42. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Kalja, 11 March 2011; Syrjänen, 19 November 2010;
Wõrk, 19 November 2011. See also P. Högselius, The Dynamics of Innovation in Eastern Eu-
rope: Lesson from Estonia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005), 104–5.
43. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Kalja, 11 March 2011; Syrjänen, 19 November 2010;
Wõrk, 19 November 2011. Högselius, The Dynamics of Innovation, 104–5.
44. Meriste, 18 November 2011; Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Eesti TA ja korgkoolidele
Soome Vabariigi firmade ja korgkoolide poolt kingitud arvutustehnika jaotus. Juuni 1992.
Hannu Jaakkola’s personal archive.
45. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Kalja, 11 March 2011; VI meeting of the Estonian-Finnish
Joint Committee of Informatics, Minutes of the meeting, UMA.
46. Jaakkola, 15 December 2010; Kurki-Suonio, 22 October 2010; Interview with Timo
Järvi, 5 November 2010.
47. Kalja, 11 March 2011; Wõrk, 19 November 2011; Tõugu, 10 March 2011. Today the
Viniti Institute is an all-Russian institute for scientific and technical information. http://www2
.viniti.ru/.
48. For example, none of the Finnish experts interviewed for this study felt that Soviet
computer science had a crucial role in their personal research, but practically all had active
contacts with the United States.
49. It also became customary that new assistants took the elementary course in Russian
once they started to work at the department. Pursiheimo, 1 August 2011; Järvi, 5 November
2010.
50. Once the Gorbachev period started, Tõugu’s international visits became more fre-
quent, and he visited colleagues in Glasgow, Scotland, for example, quite regularly.
51. John McCarthy (1927–2011) is known for his work on artificial intelligence and his
invention of the Lisp programming language. Donald Knuth (1938–) is a pioneer of the anal-
ysis of algorithms. Tõugu, 10 March 2011; Meriste, 18 November 2011. For Enn Tõugu’s CV,
please visit http://www.akadeemia.ee/_repository/file/LIIKMESKOND/LIIKMESKOND2013/
Tougu_2013.pdf.
52. After the collapse of the USSR, Tõugu was offered a professorship in the United
States, which he turned down due to family reasons. A little later, he was appointed a profes-
sor at Kunglika tekniska högskolan (KTH) in Stockholm, where he worked from 1992 to 2000
before returning to Estonia and the Tallinn Institute of Cybernetics. Tõugu, 10 March 2011.
53. Y. Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War. Raising the Iron Curtain (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 73.
54. W. G. Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from
Aeronautical History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 198.
55. Scientific Communication and National Security, 3, 42, 50, 52, 59.
56. Metcalfe, The New Wizard War, 212.
57. Meriste, 18 November 2011; Jaakkola, 15 December 2010.
58. Kybernetiikan suomalaisen työryhmän kokouspöytäkirja 30.1.1991, UMA.
59. Küberneetika Instituud muutuvas ajas, 14.
60. Wõrk, 19 November 2011; Högselius, The Dynamics of Innovation in Eastern Europe,
117–19.

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 Chapter 6

FRENCH-ROMANIAN ACADEMIC EXCHANGES

IN THE 1960S

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

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 Beatrice Scutaru

protecting their own citizens from Communist influence. Inducing changes

in the Romanian regime through cultural diplomacy eventually became
France’s ultimate purpose.
But how did these cultural exchanges unfold? And for what reasons
did the Romanian authorities agree to allow some citizens to benefit from
scholarships in France? This chapter takes a special interest in the practical
aspects of the way these relations were conducted and the part they played
in the strategies of the two countries. It will focus on Romanians who went
to France. Exchange was mostly one-way, as few French students were will-
ing to go to Romania during the 1960s, even though the Romanian gov-
ernment offered such chance as part of the cultural agreement. This is no
surprise, as the geography of grant giving and grant receiving reflects the
global hierarchy of “economic power, socioeconomic dynamism, scientific-
technological capabilities, and cultural influence and hegemony.” Thus,
the most influential countries attract the majority of grant applications.4
Those French who did go to Romania were mostly researchers. Some even
decided to continue to study topics related to Romania, as was the case
with French historian Catherine Durandin.5
During the early 1960s, the world faced some of the worst crises of the
Cold War with the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile cri-
sis. While this confrontation took place essentially between the United
States and the Soviet Union, European countries understood that, should
an armed conflict break out, Europe would face the severest consequences.
Both Eastern and Western Europeans resented being treated as pawns by
the two superpowers, giving way to détente as a European project. Excess
bipolarity began to be challenged. For some leaders, like Charles de Gaulle,
this reason was based on the need to elevate France’s international sta-
tus—for example, by distancing itself from NATO.6 However, the Western
bloc was not the only one active. Romania adopted a somewhat indepen-
dent foreign policy in order to limit its dependence on the Soviet Union.7
In this particular context, relations between France and Romania started
to regain impetus. Belonging to rivaling camps and without a leading posi-
tion, France and Romania nevertheless managed to surmount these obsta-
cles and develop further bilateral cooperation. While traditional Cold War
narratives emphasize superpower rivalry, this example shows that foreign
relations during the period were much more diverse and that the Iron Cur-
tain was not impassable. Based on the archives of the ministries of foreign
affairs in both countries,8 this chapter will consider the general evolution
of French-Romanian cultural relations, the different types of scholarships
available, the problems encountered during negotiations, and how the re-
lations functioned in practice.

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 French-Romanian Academic Exchanges

French-Romanian Cultural Diplomacy

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

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 Beatrice Scutaru

of greater importance and led to the signing of several other agreements

between French and Romanian institutions. An important example was the
reopening of the French library in Bucharest in 1970.14 This gave the French
a cultural institution to establish direct contacts with Romanian people.
In spite of these positive developments, things were considered com-
plicated: “cultural relations between the two countries contain … more
shadows than those with other people’s democracies.”15 As French dip-
lomats noticed, “[t]he mental Iron Curtain is definitely still on.”16 The
attractiveness of France, perceived by the Romanians as the country of
free opinions and the Declaration of Human Rights, made it dangerous
for the Romanian authorities.17 Romania tried to keep its intellectuals and
students as unaffected as possible by Western influences. This ideological
vigilance of Romanian authorities manifested itself, for example, in their
attempts to discourage Romanians from visiting the French Embassy or
the French library in Bucharest and in the refusal to issue passports to
Romanian scientists who were invited to participate in events in France.18
Romanian authorities apparently wanted to have exchange of academics,
but on their own terms, deciding who would be suitable to go abroad.
French authorities were aware that mere French presence in Romania
would not be enough to change the regime. Nevertheless, they thought
that they could, at a minimum, restrict the impact of the official ideology on
Romanians. By giving Eastern Europeans access to a different way of living
and thinking, de Gaulle aimed at making them question their own reality
(political, social, and economic). These exchange programs also supported
the creation of “informal empires,” of “networks of social bonds.” The new
transnational elites thus tended to be more receptive to foreign agendas,
ideas and norms.19
The Romanian government was very cautious regarding cultural ex-
changes, wishing that “the level of Western influence to which cultural,
scientific and artistic elites might be subjected would be carefully mea-
sured.”20 This is why bilateral cultural relations, even if moving in a positive
direction, failed to reach expected levels.21 While Romania led a some-
what independent foreign policy within the Communist bloc, the state
persistently maintained control over its citizens. It is obvious that the evo-
lution in Romanian foreign policy did not lead to domestic liberalization.22

Academic Exchanges and Their Contents

In the 1960s, most scholarships, internships, or training programs between

France and Romania were carried out through the official exchange agree-
ment. In this particular framework, several types of exchanges were pos-
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 French-Romanian Academic Exchanges

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
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 Beatrice Scutaru

representatives, France decided to use a very effective means of pressure.

Aware of the Romanian desire to increase the number of scholarships in
the fields of science and technology (which was of the greatest interest
for Romanian authorities), France refused the increase negotiated earlier
in the year by the joint committee in the cultural agreement.31 The aim
was to create pressure on the Romanians and force them to compromise.32
The French strategy proved somewhat successful. In the new procedure,
Romanian authorities preselected applications to be sent to the French
Embassy, which carried out a preliminary study. After a few weeks, a joint
meeting devoted to specific issues raised by certain applications was to
take place between French and Romanian representatives.33 The subcom-
mittee included an official from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
one from both sending and receiving institutions, and the cultural and
commercial counselors of the French Embassy. France wanted to ensure
that the selection was not based on political and ideological criteria, while
Romanians wanted to maintain their share of control in the bilateral co-
operation.34 However, as the French report from 1978 states, “Contrary
to the provisions of our agreements and despite our insistence, selections
continue to be made by Bucharest, without us being consulted.”35 Roma-
nian authorities were ready to avoid respecting its agreements if it enabled
them to control the citizens.
Aware that too much pressure on this matter could lead Romanian au-
thorities to cease exchanges altogether, French diplomats were ready for
concessions. France’s main purpose was to keep the number of arriving
Romanians high. Thus, not giving up the issue completely, French diplo-
mats chose to delay the controversy, knowing they would be able to bring
the issue up at a later point. According to the French diplomat Jean-Louis
Pons,36 despite the fact that it was very difficult for average Romanians to
go abroad, “the increasing number of Romanian grantees sent to France
increase[d] the number of [those allowed to travel].”37
However, due to the failure to comply with the deadlines for completing
applications or with some grantees not appearing in France, Romanians
periodically lost months of scholarships. Because the scholarships were
obtained for an academic year, the lost months could not be deferred to
the following year. The scholars who arrived in France too late saw their
scholarship taken from the following year’s quota. For example, during
the academic year 1964–65, fifty-five months of scholarship were lost this
way. The next year, 1965–66, another forty-nine months were lost, rep-
resenting some 25,000 francs.38 Furthermore, a new candidate, based on
a last-minute decision of Romanian officials, could not replace the one
already accepted. If the student awarded the scholarship could not honor

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 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
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 French-Romanian Academic Exchanges

The Permeable Iron Curtain

From the signing of the first Franco-Romanian cultural agreement in 1959,

exchanges developed, but for the first students, the situation was somewhat
complicated.53 The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to intervene
in order to convince French institutions to receive Romanian scholars. At
times, direct contact with the leaders of the institutions was necessary.54 It
seems that French institutions were, at first, reluctant to accept scholars
from Communist countries. The Cold War attitudes were reality, and they
were still influential even though East-West cooperation had started to de-
velop and bilateral cultural relations flourished starting in the mid-1960s.

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
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 Beatrice Scutaru

from 1964. This positive evolution in cultural relations between France

and Romania was sustained by the improvement in political relations: only
after Romanian Prime Minister Ion Gheorghe Maurer’s visit to France in
1964 were negotiations for a cultural agreement between the two coun-
tries concluded. The signing took place in Paris on 11 January 1965. This
agreement included the establishment of a Cultural, Scientific and Tech-
nical Exchange Program that was to be renewed every two years, making
it more permanent by nature. The program was supposed to be built on
the principle of reciprocity.57 Following Charles de Gaulle’s official visit
to Romania in May 1968, the progress was most significant, an indication
that French authorities yielded to Romanian demands for more scientific
exchanges.
During their internships abroad, the beneficiaries had to write an ac-
tivity report outlining their stay. These reports were sent to the Romanian
authorities. All reports follow the same template. These documents pro-
vide valuable information on various fields of specialization, institutions,
the personal contacts scholars established, the practical use of the data
collected abroad, and even on the way they spent their free time. Before
leaving Romania, each candidate proposed a research topic and work pro-
gram.58 Once the application was accepted, the grantee could request an
exit visa. Upon their arrival in France, scholars made contact with the
host institution and met with the supervisor in charge. Those doing their
internship in Paris had to go to the Romanian Embassy first and then to the
host institution. After getting settled in their new home, scholars decided
on their final work program in agreement with the scientist in charge.59
Most scholarship recipients were usually free to establish their own pro-
gram according to the goals they were pursuing. However, on some occa-
sions, and especially for short-term stays, their free time was organized by
the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs: visits to museums and institutes in
Paris and surrounding areas.60 With respect to the internships organized
by ASTEF, participants had a very well-prepared program for both their
work and their free time. Internships in certain specializations began with
a period during which the beneficiaries had to take French classes in order
to ensure that their level suited the demands of the program, especially in
technical fields.61
During their stay in France, scholars became acquainted with French
technology or research, took part in conferences and symposia, did re-
search work in libraries and labs, and published papers in French and Ro-
manian specialized journals. For example, chemistry researcher Agata A.
did her research at the École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie (ESPCI)
in Paris but also had the opportunity to visit, during her stay in France, the
Centre de recherché macromoléculaire in Strasbourg, where she was able
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 French-Romanian Academic Exchanges

to become acquainted with “some very interesting discoveries” in her area

of expertise.62 Along with conferences and symposia in France, some Ro-
manian researchers, like Florin S., were able to disseminate their research
results abroad (London, Bonn, Berlin, Zürich, etc.). This also allowed them
to come into contact with some very well-known academics and conse-
quently the newest trends in research.63
The newest trends, but this time in teaching, were the reason eleven
Romanian French-language teachers carried out a short-term internship
in France (November–December 1966). They were introduced to the lat-
est methods of teaching foreign languages and making use of audio-visual
aids. According to the grantees, this was “a great knowledge exchange,” al-
lowing them to discuss new teaching methods with other French-language
teachers from France or abroad. They also had the opportunity to visit some
high school classes participating in an international language-teaching pi-
lot program and observe the practical use of these teaching methods and
material (books, audiovisual equipment, videos, etc.).64 Upon their return
to Romania, they served as intermediaries, allowing their colleagues as well
as their students to gain access to new techniques and information. This is
precisely what Alexandra E. did when she decided to produce a textbook
for Romanian stylistics students using the knowledge and teaching meth-
odology acquired while attending lectures and tutorial classes in France.65
As the historian György Péteri noted, fellowships and grants “secure …
access to the appropriation of knowledge, new technologies, and new ideas
not readily available where the need seems to be the greatest.” These ex-
changes allowed the dissemination of knowledge and best practices across
borders, across the Iron Curtain, connecting researchers and knowledge
users who might not otherwise have an opportunity to interact.66
In their reports, the trainees regularly mentioned the discussions they
had with French citizens, most with poor knowledge about Romania, on
life and research in their country of origin. Several grantees emphasized
the absence of information on Romania, both on general and on technical
aspects. They often made suggestions on ways to develop propaganda, to
promote Romania’s technical and scientific achievements.67 These inter-
actions facilitated the flow of information, increasing the knowledge of
the other country. The French would ask them about Romania’s economy
and its internal or foreign policies. Most scholars attested to not having
encountered hostility from the people they came into contact with. Some
even found that the improvement of official relations between the two
countries and the increasing amount of media coverage for Romania had
enhanced French citizens’ awareness. Nevertheless, the lack of freedom of
Romanian citizens was another topic addressed by French and Romanians.
Reports show that Romanian grantees praised the achievements of Com-
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 Beatrice Scutaru

munist Romania as a way to counter negative information.68 No records

could be found of Romanian citizens talking about the difficulties encoun-
tered in their home country, as this would certainly create problems with
the authorities. However, one can ask if Romanian citizens might have
used these reports and French citizens’ criticism as a means to present their
own opinion concerning Romania’s domestic policy, while still showing
their loyalty to the regime.
The Romanian Embassy was responsible for keeping close contact with
the grantees in France to ensure that they respected the program guide-
lines. The embassy maintained continuous contact with most of them,
both by correspondence and by visits of some diplomats to meet students
in Grenoble, Strasbourg, and Lyon. Students in Paris were, due to their
geographical location, contacted more often by the embassy and were
sometimes supposed to participate in monthly information sessions.69 This
is why the embassy was the first to draw attention to the financial problems
some of the grantees were facing. Paul M. and Vasile C. “are living in one
of the cheapest hotels in Paris.” Even so, rent for their poor quality rooms
(“small [1.5 x 2.5 m], located at the end of the hall, right next to the com-
mon toilets; shabby rooms … with no heating”) represented a third of their
income (140 out of 480 francs per month). Due to this, the grantees had
often been bedridden with the flu. They had to skip breakfast for financial
reasons and had almost every lunch and dinner at a student restaurant,
even though Vasile C. stated that “two hours after eating, I am already
starving!” This is why Vasile and Paul lost three and five kilos respectively
in only a month and a half. Furthermore, they couldn’t even afford to buy
books and scientific magazines, or even use public transportation. The am-
bassador used this dramatic example to raise awareness of the hard liv-
ing and studying conditions imposed upon scholars who were supposed to
provide Romania access to Western knowledge. He even urged Bucharest
to provide additional funding and decent living conditions to Romanian
grantees staying in France and especially in Paris.70
As expected, the scholars’ actions were closely monitored by the em-
bassy. They were even quickly disciplined if their extracurricular activities
took up too much of their time. Although most of the scholars behaved
accordingly to the regime’s expectations, in some occasions the Romanian
Embassy paid special attention to certain students. For example, the stu-
dent Alexandru A. was said to maintain very irregular contact with the
embassy, spending most of his time in theatres or visiting museums and
exhibitions. He obviously wanted to take advantage of this opportunity
and visit Western Europe: besides France, he travelled to Germany and
Italy. He even suggested to Romanian Embassy officials that his mother
could come to see him in Paris. The embassy staff firmly explained to him
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 French-Romanian Academic Exchanges

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

Beatrice Scutaru is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the

Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies of the
University of Padua, Italy. She specializes in transnational interpersonal
relations during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with an emphasis
on exchanges and interactions between French and Romanian citizens.
In September 2013, she received her Ph.D., with first class honors, from
the University of Angers (France) and Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of
Iasi (Romania). Her thesis, Relations between French and Romanian Societies
from the 1960s to 1995: An Asset Linking Romania to Europe? argues that en-
during relationships between French and Romanian peoples played a key
role in facilitating Romania’s integration into the European community.

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

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 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

HUNGARY OPENS TOWARD THE WEST

Political Preconditions for Finnish-Hungarian
Cooperation in Research and Development
in the 1960s and 1970s

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

Preparing the Ground

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-
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 Anssi Halmesvirta

ing to travel to Budapest to prevent the bloodshed. However, Khrushchev

would not listen to his plea, and the crusade misfired, leaving Kekkonen
suspicious about Soviet friendship. Hungary became a warning example
of challenging the Soviet power. In the United Nations, Finland did not
directly condemn the Soviet intervention but exhorted Hungarians and
Soviets to agree on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary in a way
that would “respect the age-old traditions of freedom of Hungary.”8 After
Kádár stabilized the Hungarian system with a strong hand, the relations
between Finland and Hungary improved at the end of the 1950s, so much
so that the ambassador of Finland in Budapest called them “miraculously
good and unproblematic” despite the Cold War propaganda warfare be-
tween Eastern and Western blocs. After lengthy negotiations, a bilateral
agreement of cultural and scientific exchange was signed in 1959—reviv-
ing the ideologically opposite 1937 agreement—and ambassadors were
accredited in Helsinki and Budapest in 1960. Exchange of delegations of
politicians in charge of science policy and leading scientists and scholars
began to be conducted on a regular basis.9
Mutual understanding of opportunities for wider cooperation deepened
in 1963. Kekkonen made an official state visit to Yugoslavia and stopped
unofficially in Hungary on his way home in mid-May. This was the first
post-1956 presidential visit to Socialist Hungary from the West, and Tito
prepared Kekkonen by saying “Kádár is a very good and a wise man.”10 In
Hungary, the visit assumed certain importance because Kádár had found
Kekkonen’s arguments concerning international politics and the position
of smaller countries in Europe very congruent with his own: both Hungary
and Finland were seeking stability and peace in Europe as well as good re-
lations with each other. It was foreseeable that new, more ambitious goals
for R&D cooperation could be outlined.11
Kekkonen and Kádár met in the Hungarian university town of De-
brecen, and, although their discussions were not overtly political, the
meeting clearly implied “better times and relations” for both countries.
Hungarian newspapers interpreted Kekkonen’s visit to be a further rec-
ognition of Hungary as a welcome member of the international com-
munity.12 In December 1963, the official Socialist paper Népszabadság
labeled Kekkonen’s policy as “positive neutrality,” meaning that Finland
maintained good relations with every country, be it Socialist, Capitalist,
or neutral. Most importantly, Finland was not a member of any military
alliance and advanced the idea of nuclear-free zones, a policy line Hun-
gary could accept. At the time, both Kekkonen and Kádár had consoli-
dated their positions as unchallenged leaders of their countries and had
also gained more room to maneuver in international politics within their
blocs.
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 Hungary Opens toward the West

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

How Hungarian-Finnish pragmatism facilitated the development of R&D

cooperation in practice can be illustrated by looking at a few examples that
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 Anssi Halmesvirta

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 meant to clear obstacles to more extensive international cooperation.

In this connection, Kádár had appreciated the Finnish realism in foreign
policy, especially toward the Soviets, and more to the point, in showing
“correctness” in the United Nations. From this perspective, the goals of
Hungary and Finland appeared strikingly similar: Kádár and Kekkonen had
agreed that cooperation in R&D also improved conditions for promoting
peace and security, so badly threatened by the “imperialist forces.”20 It was
in 1963–64 that Finland was spotted by the Hungarian foreign ministry
as a particularly inviting target in the West, a bridgehead for constructive
rapprochement to be achieved in close contact with the Soviet represen-
tatives stationed in Finland.
A suitable forum for a Hungarian propaganda offensive was provided
by the first postwar academic Finno-Ugric Congress in Helsinki in 1965.
In keeping with Kádár’s new policy line, the number of Hungarian partic-
ipants from the younger generation was increased, and, out of the total
number of 150 lecturers, fifty-five were Hungarian. No wonder that Hun-
garian authorities entered the Congress in their records as a propaganda
victory. The Finns had again shown tact by electing President Kekkonen
the Honorary President of the Congress as, for Hungarians, he personi-
fied the guarantee of trust toward the Soviets. Kekkonen personally en-
sured that no provocation would be tried against the Socialist camp by
the emigrant and dissident Hungarians or critical speakers from the West.
However, in spite of all precautions, one Professor Robert Austerlitz21 from
Columbia University spoke disturbingly about the decrease of population
and increase of unemployment in Hungary. The mayor of Helsinki, Mr.
Lauri Aho, also spoiled the otherwise friendly atmosphere by declaring
that Helsinki University cultivated free and unbiased science, insinuating
that in Socialist countries this may not have been the case. And yet, the
Hungarian report from the Congress deemed it fortunate that these inci-
dents were isolated, individual aberrations, not really effective ideological
attacks. Prime Minister Johannes Virolainen and Ortutay had won the day
with the “correct” political interpretation of the import of the congress:
Finno-Ugric studies helped the small Finno-Ugric nations regain their
common ancestry and history in a new, modern context. What was espe-
cially proper was that they rebuffed all illusory, nationalistically romantic
ideas of political (re)union between Finno-Ugric nations that had been
floated especially during World War II. Such views would have insulted
the Soviets and meant a diplomatic crisis, since many of the Ugric tribes
lived within the Soviet Union. The Hungarians were also satisfied with
the fact that such modernist Finnish writers as Paavo Haavikko,22 whom
they called “Nazis,” had been excluded from the Congress. In this way,
Finnish science had become “positively neutral” for Hungarians in that it
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 Anssi Halmesvirta

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

they dropped by the brand-new laboratories of the Faculty of Medicine

in Helsinki University and observed its top-quality facilities; the electron
microscope made a particularly great impression on them. Their report
to the authorities at home recommended that one researcher should be
immediately sent to this facility. At Helsinki Technical High School, the
satellite antennas bought from an American company flabbergasted the
Hungarians—the bugbear, “imperialism,” appeared to bring great benefits
to the Finns. The delegation was also quite astonished by the research
conditions, which were healthy, aesthetic, and “puritanically clean and
comfortable”—highly appreciated qualities in Socialism.
The visit to VTT was especially rewarding to the Hungarians since its
director, Pekka Jauho, was apparently so impressionable that they recom-
mended he be officially invited to Hungary as soon as possible. The de-
partment of physics at Helsinki University and its research in computer
communication networks, as well as SITRA’s 271 research programs, made
the visitors thoughtful: it dawned on them that a very careful plan for
near-future cooperation should be drafted since Finland evidently offered
excellent opportunities that could also be soon utilized. The model was
already set: it was agreed that Outokumpu, the state-owned mining com-
pany, would employ Hungarian engineer apprentices as trainees. It was in
this connection that a proposal to lay Finnish-Hungarian scientific-tech-
nological cooperation on a permanent foundation was made; it was sug-
gested by Professor Olavi Granö from the Academy of Finland that the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences should establish direct relations with it.26
The initiatives of the Hungarians for cooperation were becoming so press-
ing that they had to be channeled to an institution that had the authority
and means to coordinate the ensuing negotiation process.
After complicated negotiations over the agreement of cooperation be-
tween the academies, the agreement was finalized in autumn 1975—quite
fittingly just after the Helsinki Pact of CSCE—and signed in 1976. For
Hungary, it was the fifth bilateral agreement with a Capitalist country
preceding the agreements with the United States (1977) and with West
Germany (1978), the latter being its most important scientific partner in
the West. Having emphasized that research cooperation concretized and
strengthened the already good relations between Hungary and Finland,
the clauses of the agreement enumerated common projects, working meet-
ings, symposia, conferences, and exchange of scientists and scholars. Joint
planning was highlighted as an exceptional opportunity for experts from
opposite systems to define common goals for research. By way of a fol-
low-up process, it was also agreed that a joint committee should assess the
successes and possible failures of cooperation every third year.27 Soon, a
great number of research projects were being planned and launched. Let us
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 Anssi Halmesvirta

now finally turn to examining two achievements of the cooperation under

the agreement of 1976.
The projects of the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Traffic in im-
proving traffic safety had attracted Hungarian attention already at the be-
ginning of the 1970s—it had been realized that the Hungarians behaved
recklessly and with risk in traffic, and many innovations were, according
to special agreements, introduced to Hungary via Liikenneturva (Finnish
Traffic Safety Committee) and OKBT (Országos Közlekedés Biztonsági
Tanács, its Hungarian counterpart)—for example, drivers’ educational
curricula, traffic lights, zebras, and reflectors.28 It had been realized during
exchange visits that the researchers of Liikenneturva had conducted rather
interesting experiments and made useful inventions to prevent traffic ac-
cidents, lowering the high rate of deaths in traffic in Finland. Under the
project headings of the agreement of the academies, one junior Hungarian
researcher, Ferenc Irk, who later became the head of the Hungarian Crim-
inological Institute, worked as the key person in opening wide the doors to
Liikenneturva. While writing his thesis, which compared traffic accidents
and their causes in Hungary and in Finland, he saw how outdated the
Hungarian research methods and literature on the subject were. In the
process he culled data from the newest Western studies available in what
he described as the “excellent” library of Liikenneturva. Irk also noted that
the Finnish traffic safety experts regarded him as an outstanding researcher
in the field who was genuinely devoted to traffic safety in Socialist sys-
tems.29 The conclusion of his studies in Finland was that the psychosocial
disposition to fatal or irresponsible behavior in traffic was so similar among
Finns and Hungarians that a reform of traffic safety legislation could be
carried through along the same lines.30
In spite of such minor but successful breakthroughs, the 1976 agreement
aroused serious criticism in Finland from the political right as it seemed to
finance projects that were more ideological than scientific and supported
Socialism with results that were meant only for Western use. While the
Hungarians wrestled with their reform of the Academy of Sciences toward
efficiency and cost-effectiveness, the Finns were in a position to allocate
fresh resources in order to launch projects on wholly new fields, some of
them manifestly based on theories of revisionist Marxism. One example is
the notorious TANDEM project,31 aimed at studying the power relations
and status of democracy in Finland. The project was heavily criticized by
right-wing representatives of the Academy as an infiltration of vulgarly
leftist science policy in Finnish science.32
However, one successful area of science in which one hardly can detect
any ideological implications was medicine, which attained a central role in
cooperation in 1977. As already indicated, both Hungary and Finland had
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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

A joint project to comparatively study the science policies of Hungary and

Finland34 showed that, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the same types of
problems in both countries caused a hiatus in R&D cooperation: how to
implement science policy priorities into research—for example, in social
science—that seemed to lack the impetus of ideological struggle, at least
in Hungary35; how to utilize the R&D connections and exchange more
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 Anssi Halmesvirta

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

Anssi Halmesvirta (D.Phil.) is senior researcher in the department of his-

tory and ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä. His main research fields
are European intellectual history and the relations between former Social-
ist and Capitalist countries (ca. 1945–89). His published monographs in-
clude the following: The British Conception of the Finnish “Race,” Nation and
Culture 1760–1918 (1990), Co-operation across the Iron Curtain: Hungarian-
Finnish Scientific Relations of the Academies from the 1960s to the 1990s (2005),
and Ideology and Argument: Studies in British, Finnish and Hungarian Thought
(2006).

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.

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 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.

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 Chapter 8

“Discreet” Intermediaries
Transnational Activities of the Fondation pour
une entraide intellectuelle européenne, 1966–91

Ioana Popa

T he Fondation pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne (the Foun-

dation for European Intellectual Cooperation, hereafter FEIE) was a
nongovernmental actor in the cultural and scientific East-West exchanges
during the Cold War. It played a key role that was due not only to the
intensity of the cultural transfers it initiated and sponsored, but also to its
ability to connect institutional and individual actors belonging to different
intellectual fields and countries. The FEIE was established in 1966 in Swit-
zerland and France, with the aim of “facilitating and intensifying … the
intellectual mutual support” between Eastern and Western intellectuals
(as mentioned in its statutes), fostering the circulation of people and ideas
across Europe, and thus limiting the effects of the geopolitical division of
the continent. For the members of its board, as well as for the Eastern Eu-
ropean beneficiaries of its programs, the FEIE’s objective was both cultural
and political. They also repeatedly claimed that the FEIE’s mission was to
create a sense of European unity. Its leaders were intellectuals from the
western as well as from the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. Their project
challenged the existence of common cultural affinities and encouraged the
intellectual European heritage to be preserved, despite the political con-
straints. At the same time, the project was rooted in the early Cold War
initiatives of the United States. Moreover, the FEIE was funded mainly by
American philanthropic foundations and reflected certain features, pur-
poses, and ways of networking originally embodied by these organizations.1

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 Ioana Popa

Notwithstanding these ambivalent characteristics, the FEIE expanded

its own identity, know-how, networks, and, although much more tim-
idly, its continental sponsors, establishing itself as a European platform
for unofficial exchanges. Relying on private contributions until 1991 was
meant “to avoid all political commitment.”2 Thus, the FEIE’s activities
emphasized the relevance of non-state actors and the transnational East-
West networks that escaped state control3 in the Cold War setting. These
networks survived despite the international situation in which states and
intergovernmental relations played a major role in framing and controlling
cultural and scientific exchanges. The FEIE’s example highlights prac-
tices and strategies of actors that circumvented and fought against the
official cultural diplomacy of undemocratic regimes by creating a private
“diplomacy ‘step by step.’”4 Moreover, the FEIE’s modus operandi aimed
to avoid all publicity, polemics, and overtly provocative actions toward
Communist authorities, and followed “discreet”5 and unofficial paths that
were neither governmental nor off limits for people of Eastern European
countries. The study of these actions puts into question the supposed ho-
mogeneity of Western Cold War strategies and East-West interactions.
Focusing mainly on non-Soviet Communist countries, the FEIE’s activi-
ties had a contrasted national and chronological impact, allowing a view-
point that goes beyond a monolithic perspective of the Socialist “bloc” as
well.
Emphasis on these features of the FEIE, an actor that played a long-
lasting role in East-West exchanges, challenges particularly the so-called
realist perspective on the international relations and the totalitarian view
in the historiography of Communism. Through a combination of archival
materials and interviews,6 this chapter focuses on the social and political
conditions that allowed such an actor to come into being and to operate.
It pays attention to the practices and know-how these unofficial transfers
required. It also takes into consideration personal backgrounds and itiner-
aries of the main protagonists and beneficiaries of FEIE’s programs, going
beyond an institutional history of the organization. The social, political,
professional, and linguistic characteristics of the Western representatives
of the FEIE help to explain their practices and, more specifically, their abil-
ity to act at a transnational level. These issues are paramount particularly
in the case of small organizations like the FEIE, formed by a few individuals
and achieving action through personal contacts and informal networking,
notwithstanding political and material constraints. Finally, the chapter
considers the FEIE’s particular ways of operating in relation to other Cold
War strategies, suggesting the usefulness of a differentiated analysis of flows
and actors that aimed to permeate the Iron Curtain.

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 “Discreet” Intermediaries

An Internationalized European Staff Redefining a Former Structure

The FEIE promoted transnational circulation of printed materials and in-

dividuals across the Iron Curtain by sending books to Eastern Europe, fa-
cilitating the translation7 of works written by Eastern European authors,
granting fellowships to Eastern European intellectuals, and organizing in-
ternational seminars. Although created in 1966, the foundation inherited
know-how and networks of the Comité d’écrivains et d’éditeurs pour une
entraide intellectuelle (the Writers and Publishers Committee for Intellec-
tual Cooperation). The latter was founded in 1957 during the East-West
détente. It aimed to initiate and develop the diffusion of ideas and infor-
mation across the Iron Curtain by sending books to Socialist countries. The
committee operated under the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)8 and
was launched thanks to a Ford Foundation grant.9 The committee answered
an existing need. It was supposed to meet the demand coming from Eastern
Europe for Western books and scholarly journals. The committee’s informal
and supple organization was more useful for this purpose than the CCF
itself, as considered by the Polish exile intellectual Constantin Jelenski, who
was one of the committee’s main initiators and became its secretary. Jel-
enski also belonged to the CCF secretariat since 1952 and had been the di-
rector of its seminar program. The new organization was supposed to appear
as more neutral and “less politically committed”10 than the CCF.
This committee was not sufficiently autonomous since, in 1966, when
the financial links between the CCF and the CIA were revealed, restruc-
turing was considered a necessity. The CCF morphed into the International
Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF).11 The Writers and Publishers
Committee was replaced by the FEIE. The foundation was henceforth
a distinct but financially dependent affiliate of the IACF, with the Ford
Foundation as the main sponsor.12 The FEIE was incorporated in Swit-
zerland, but operated mainly from its secretariat office in Paris. This was
partly due to French legislation that prohibited foreign citizens from sitting
on associations’ boards at the time.13 Neutral Switzerland was also sup-
posed to be more reliable in the eyes of Communist authorities and even
those of Western partners. Moreover, the existence of a Swiss network of
leading collaborators was an important factor. The FEIE had a second of-
fice in Zurich, mainly in charge of sending books in the German language
to Eastern Europe, underlining its transnational character. The president
of the Writers and Publishers Committee, the Swiss Hans Oprecht, re-
mained the FEIE’s president until his retirement in 1975. He was supposed
to enhance the foundation’s credibility in Eastern Europe, as he had also
been the president of the Swiss Socialist Party for seventeen years.

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 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).
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 “Discreet” Intermediaries

Most of the representatives had been politically opposed to Fascism

during World War II, such as Oprecht, Bondy (close to German anti-Nazi
refugees in Switzerland and to anti-Fascist Italian intellectuals), Pierre
Emmanuel (one of the youngest French writers in the Resistance), and
some even militarily, such as Jelenski (who was a soldier in the Free Pol-
ish army, participating in several Allied campaigns). This commitment
shaped their later activities towards Communist countries, conceived as
a fight against totalitarianism. Moreover, together they had a direct and
profound knowledge of Eastern European cultures and politics. The FEIE
benefited particularly from Jelenski’s networks and skills, and above all
from his cultural and political vision regarding Eastern Europe, and Poland
in particular. Born in 1922 in Warsaw to a family of Lithuanian nobility,
he was a diplomat’s son and the nephew of a Marxist anthropologist who
taught Polish Communist intellectuals during the interwar period. This
can partly explain why Jelenski continued to be contacted by many old
family friends belonging to the Communist establishment, despite being
an exile. Moreover, since its creation, he had been close to Kultura, one of
the foremost cultural reviews of Polish exiles. Thus, he held contacts in the
official Polish reformist circles and in the oppositional ones as well, being
able to connect them with the FEIE.
Armed with his literary recognition and the prestige he gathered in the
Resistance, Emmanuel could travel to Eastern Europe, unlike Jelenski,
who had refugee status. The former made his first trip in 1947, by lecturing
at the request of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although a leftist
Catholic at that time, he became critical of the implementation of Com-
munist regimes.19 On his trip, Emmanuel made useful contacts that later
served the FEIE’s networking in Eastern Europe. For example, he made
friends with young Czech poet and translator Jan Vladislav,20 who later
became a prominent figure in the dissident movement and Samizdat and
was supported by the FEIE. Later Jelenski would remember Emmanuel as
invaluable for the CCF’s and FEIE’s programs due to the prestige he en-
joyed in these countries.21
As the FEIE’s secretary general, Chenu was yet another member of the
FEIE’s board who traveled in Eastern Europe, being in regular contact with
the beneficiaries of the FEIE’s programs. This allowed her to inform the
foundation about the cultural and political situation in these countries as
well as expand its networks. However, only some of the FEIE’s leading fig-
ures could maintain a direct contact with Eastern European intellectuals,
while many worked behind the scenes either for personal, professional or
political reasons. This was the case with Adam Watson,22 a former British
diplomat and ambassador, the IACF’s director general and a member of
the FEIE’s board since 1975. Born in England in 1914, he grew up in Bue-
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 Ioana Popa

nos Aires and graduated from Cambridge University in history. He joined

the British diplomatic service in 1937 after traveling in Eastern Europe
and working as a junior correspondent for various newspapers in Romania,
Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In 1939, he was posted in the British Lega-
tion in Bucharest. Speaking fluent French and German, he liaised with
the Free French forces in Northern Africa during World War II, and was
then posted in Moscow from 1944 to 1947. During the early years of the
Cold War, he dealt with Soviet and Eastern European matters at the For-
eign Office. It has been assumed that he joined the Information Research
Department, specializing in psychological warfare and recruiting left-wing
intellectuals for the setting up of “grey” anti-Communist propaganda, and
was finally posted in Washington as a liaison officer with the CIA.23 After
concluding his diplomatic career in 1968, he became a visiting professor
of international studies at the University of Virginia (the United States).
Thanks to his connections, he played an important role in expanding the
FEIE’s actions and finding sponsors in Western Europe and the United
States.
The diversity of national origins and of professional backgrounds of the
board members ensured the FEIE’s ability to connect institutional and
individual actors belonging to different countries and intellectual fields.
Some of them held a go-between professional position and together cumu-
lated notoriety and a penchant to discretion and even secrecy. Their direct
experience of World War II favored these attitudes and types of action,
also accounting for the collusions with the secret services. These proximi-
ties and connivances could easily occur through patriotic and anti-Fascist
commitments, then pursued against new undemocratic political enemies.
Moreover, the knowledge of, or at least the familiarity with, Eastern Euro-
pean countries and the attention paid to this region even before the Com-
munist regimes came to power resulted in a pragmatic and nonideological
comprehension of this area. This approach and the networks they held
in these countries allowed them to constantly adjust their methods while
staying true to their anti-Communist commitment.
These common features and the relative continuity of the FEIE’s com-
position and practices beyond the 1966 organization did not rule out a
diversity of strategic choices, even regarding the maintenance of Eastern
European programs within the IACF from 1966 to 1977. Another debated
question was whether the FEIE should act in its own name, after the CCF’s
connections with the CIA were revealed, so as not to jeopardize their con-
tacts in Eastern Europe. Juxtaposing intermediary organizations and multi-
plying institutional links were techniques that allowed the CCF’s discreet
connections with the U.S. administration. Since this cover was blown,
the FEIE’s challenge was to inherit the CCF’s networks and activities, but
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 “Discreet” Intermediaries

with a new institutional identity. However, the strategy remained mainly

unchanged; for example, a number of partners with loose connections to
the FEIE were used as before. Certain actions leaned on the IACF (such
as protesting openly against abuses of Communist regimes), while others
were the FEIE’s own actions (such as sending books and invitations to
Eastern European fellows). A subtle forecast of each situation as well as an
intricate knowledge of the political and cultural national contexts led the
members of the FEIE’s board to endorse “strategic identities”24 in order to
preserve their contacts’ security and the efficiency of the programs.25

A Turning Point in Defining a Polycentric Action

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
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 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

nevertheless reluctant to financially participate in activities that could be

perceived as political, i.e., interfering with the affairs of the Communist
countries.43 Thus, finding financial resources in Europe turned out to be
more difficult than was anticipated, not only due to the specificities of Eu-
ropean philanthropy,44 but also for political reasons.
Moreover, Western cultural and academic institutions already partici-
pating in official bilateral exchanges with Socialist countries might have
feared that their projects were jeopardized, and were consequently hesi-
tant to collaborate overtly with the FEIE. Therefore, proving the necessity
of unofficial cultural exchanges professed by the FEIE was considered a
key issue by its representatives,45 particularly in a transforming interna-
tional situation where the idea of free circulation of people and knowledge
seemed to take root. “The misuse of this topic contributes to the propa-
ganda of certain milieus,”46 wrote Pierre Emmanuel, who deplored that the
idea of free circulation was led astray in official cultural exchanges by the
Communist governments, which inevitably controlled contents of these
exchanges. Consequently, the FEIE tried to fill this gap by identifying and
supporting intellectuals who could be considered “nonconformist”47 and
“independent,”48 meaning people who could not integrate into intergov-
ernmental exchanges but who were still willing to live and work in Socialist
countries. Recognizing such people required know-how and appropriate
practices. For strategic reasons, this involved procedures that were not
contravening Socialist legislation and were acceptable or tolerated by the
governments of Eastern Europe.

Intermediating Unofficial International Exchanges:

A Subtle Know-How

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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transnational support for Eastern European intellectuals given by the FEIE

was discreet, cautious, and often confidential. This was a distinctive char-
acteristic emphasized to sponsors, beneficiaries, and partners. The FEIE’s
programs were not publicized outside their immediate networks. In Eastern
Europe, personal networks were the basis of the system, working on indi-
vidual references.
Unlike other Western institutions fighting Communism by circulating
printed materials,50 the FEIE chose an exclusively personalized approach
despite political obstacles. It consisted of sending books and subscriptions
to Western magazines only upon the request of its potential beneficiaries.
This was done to avoid allegations of propaganda.51 On the other hand,
this allowed emergence of personal ties and even friendship with Eastern
European recipients. The beneficiaries were often individuals and rarely
institutions such as libraries. The FEIE did not choose which types of
books would be sent, but left this to be decided by the beneficiaries. Most
of the time, its correspondents submitted lists of specific titles or asked for
books on very general topics that were considered useful for their research,
teaching, or even entertainment. The academic fields of books requested
emphasized humanities and social sciences: literature, linguistics, history,
ethnology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, economics, and even theol-
ogy. The subscriptions favored weekly and monthly periodicals (such as
Times Literary Supplement, La Quinzaine littéraire, Le Débat, Lire, Newsweek,
The Economist, Die Zeit, and Kunstforum). Given their frequent issuance,
periodicals were more costly than books and were riskier since they drew
the attention of customs easily.
Demand for subscriptions considerably increased during the second
half of the 1980s. Periodicals were apparently important to those who or-
dered them, since requests for subscription renewals were usually made
long before they expired. These periodicals were a source of valuable in-
formation about various intellectual fields and national areas, also feeding
a demand for books. Sometimes the requested books were out of print.
This underlined delays in information relay to Eastern Europe, resulting
in additional work for the Paris secretariat that tried to find alternative
suggestions. According to the annual report for 1983, the situation had
improved. For example, Memoirs by Raymond Aron was requested by in-
tellectuals from three Eastern European countries even while the book had
just been released in France. Yet, differences between Eastern European
countries were obvious in regards to speed in requesting recent publica-
tions. Moreover, gaps were noticeable in the FEIE’s overall distribution
figures between 1968 and 1990.52 In a decreasing order, the biggest recip-
ients were Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Less signifi-
cant flows were to East Germany, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and the USSR (see
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 Ioana Popa

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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 “Discreet” Intermediaries

Figure 8.2. The number of fellowships for each Eastern European country, 1966–91.
Source: FEIE’s archives.

gresses, seminars, concerts, and plays; setting up professional networks; and

so on. Following the professional categories defined by the foundation, fel-
lowships benefited writers, artists, and academics (only those who special-
ized in humanities and social sciences). In fact, the diversity of professions
was much greater: there were translators, editors, journalists, librarians,
archivists, curators of museums, and even some scientists and specialists
in medicine. The setup of the grant policy highlighted the question of the
FEIE’s “main objective”67 and the key issue of defining the profile of grant-
ees. The core of the FEIE’s program was to give grants to intellectuals cho-
sen by the foundation. However, smaller grants were also attributed upon
request, submitted directly to the FEIE secretariat in Paris, so as to extend
the stay of intellectuals who had temporarily left their country by other
institutional or personal means. Finally, the FEIE also issued a so-called
equipment fellowship grant, allowing professional materials (books, films,
canvasses, oil paintings, typewriters, etc.) to be bought. The proportion
of the two main grant categories had been examined by the FEIE’s staff
numerous times since the beginning of the 1970s, when the foundation
intended to shift its policy by reducing the number of extension grants
and increasing invitations. This choice called for more investigation and
networking, but in the end it resulted in an increased number of potential
grantees. However, neither the selection criteria and procedures nor the
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 Ioana Popa

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

Notwithstanding its early controversial institutional affiliation and its

main sponsorship from American philanthropic sources, the FEIE’s case
indicates the transformation of an increasingly transnational and Euro-
pean organization, taking off from a previously transatlantic initiative. It
helps us avoid replicating a more conventional history of the Cold War as
a superpower rivalry, introducing instead intermediary geographic spaces
and hybrid actors. Originating from the “state-private networks”78 of the
early Cold War period, the organization became a transnational actor ea-
ger to hang on to its independence from governments, thus heralding an
increased role for private cultural diplomacy. The FEIE built on previous
achievements while devising a new form of organization when it shifted
from a committee affiliated to other institutions to become a philanthropic
foundation. It was also armed with an awareness that the financial aspects
of its activities were not sufficient to ensure the success of the cultural
and scientific transfers and were not self-evident either, considering the
financial difficulties encountered by the foundation. Moreover, the FEIE
embodied a particular approach to generic Western anti-Communism and
implemented specific ways in permeating the Iron Curtain.79 They asso-
ciated two distinct forms of transnational circulation—flow of books and
mobility of people—that dealt with different constraints but were both
legally implemented in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, in resorting to an
approach commonly associated with philanthropic organizations and op-
erating cultural and scientific transfers by request instead of implementing
an explicit political message and an ideological agenda from top to bottom,
the association contributed to euphemizing an anti-Communist undertak-
ing. The international movement of individuals and ideas was thus con-
templated not only as a cause to be defended, but also as a practical means
of political action.
This case study also gives insight into confrontational strategies that
were not frontal, but gradual and surreptitious. It thus challenges the sup-
posedly homogenous view of the Cold War80 that would be shared by the
pro-American West. Moreover, these strategies relied on individual East-
West contacts and personal cooperation. They allowed for distinct na-
tional distributions of printed materials and individuals, also pointing out
the internal heterogeneity of the Socialist camp.81 If the Iron Curtain failed
to prevent East-West contacts, the circulations subverting it were neither
symmetrical nor undifferentiated. Finally, the analysis of these strategies
is neither self-sufficient nor self-explanatory. Focusing on the social char-
acteristics of the actors and beneficiaries of the cultural and scientific ex-

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 Ioana Popa

changes, in addition to describing their know-how and practices, allows us

to go beyond an institutional outlook and achieve a more subtle under-
standing of cultural warfare, thus contributing to a historical and political
sociology of the Cold War.

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-

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 “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.

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 “Discreet” Intermediaries

56. FEIE annual activities reports, 27/1 FEIEA.

57. “Rapport d’activité 1976,” 27/1 FEIEA.
58. Interview with W. Vazsonyi (an exiled Hungarian intellectual), 15 September 2008.
59. Jelenski to Laborey and Goldstein, 3 February 1976, 29/1 FEIEA.
60. Harazsti Miklos to Laborey, 22 July 1979, 2/4, FEIEA.
61. “FEICE Activities 1975–1985,” Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number
08400228, reel #6373, RAC; and various grantees’ activities reports, FEIEA.
62. “Rapport d’activité 1988,” 27/1 FEIEA.
63. For example, Watson to Andreas Gerwig, 25 June 1986, Ford Foundation Archives,
Grants, grant number 08400228, reel #6373, RAC.
64. These observations are formulated on the basis of internal documents of the FEIE, es-
pecially its annual activity reports and correspondence with its Eastern European beneficiaries.
65. “The Writers and Publishers Committee for European Cooperation Report on Activi-
ties. 1 October 1957–1 June 1958” had already indicated that, as a consequence of contacts by
letters with Eastern European intellectuals concerning the book program, some scholarships
in the West were also obtained for some of them. Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant
number 05700097, reel #526, RAC.
66. I calculated these values based on the FEIE’s reports and on the grantees’ individual
files. Depending on the kind of fellowship considered, this number can be higher.
67. “Procès verbal de la réunion du Conseil de la FEIE, 1976,” 27/4 FEIEA.
68. “FEICE Activities 1975–1985,” Ford Foundation Archives, Grants, grant number
08400228, reel #6373, RAC. I am working on a statistical analysis of the grantees’ social
characteristics on the basis of their files.
69. Watson to Christopher Falkus, 20 June 1986, “Boursiers 1984,” FEIA.
70. Interview with Chenu, 18 July 2011.
71. Laborey to Zdenek Strmska, 18 March 1986, 6/1 FEIEA.
72. Interview with Chenu, 18 July 2011.
73. Watson to Jelenski, 28 September 1976, 29/1 FEIEA.
74. Laborey to Sir John Moreton, 4 September 1984, box “Bourses 1984,” FEIEA.
75. Jelenski to Laborey and Watson, 14 March 1977, 29/1 FEIEA; Gaer to Watson, 7
March 1977, and Gaer to F. Sutton, B. Bushley, D. Heaps, Inter-Office Memorandum, “Dis-
cussion with Paul Doty concerning IACF,” 8 March 1977, Ford Foundation Archives, Grants,
grant number 07800125, reel #3542, RAC.
76. See N. Guilhot, “Une vocation philanthropique: George Soros, les sciences sociales
et la régulation du marché mondial,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 151–52 (2004):
36–48.
77. Box 19/2, “Colloque final de Cracovie 1991,” FEIEA.
78. S. Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union, 1945–1956 (New
York: New York University Press, 1999); Scott-Smith, Politics of Apolitical Culture.
79. G. Péteri, “Nylon Curtain: Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cul-
tural Life of State-Socialist Russia and East-Central Europe,” Slavonica 10, 2 (2004): 113–23;
P. Villaume and O. A. Westad, eds., Perforating the Iron Curtain: European Détente, Transatlan-
tic Relations and the Cold War, 1965–1985 (Copenhagen: Museum Tysculanum Press, 2010);
Popa, Traduire sous contraintes; S. Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklossy, Reassessing Cold War Europe
(London: Routledge, 2011).
80. M. Leffler, “New Approaches, Old Interpretations and Prospective Interrogations,”
in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941, ed. M.
Hogan (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990); S. Docrill and G. Hughes, Palgrave
Advances in Cold War History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
81. Popa, Traduire sous contraintes; for other case studies, see also Vingtième siècle. Revue
d’histoire, Special Issue “Le bloc de l’Est en question,” 109 (2011).

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 P A R T III

LIMITATIONS FOR
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS
 Chapter 9

THE IMAGE OF “REAL FRANCE”

Instrumentalization of French Culture
in the Early Communist Czechoslovakia

Václav Šmidrkal

I n 1952, during the culmination of Czechoslovak Stalinism, the Czech

translation of the novel Tiens bon la rampe! (Hold On!) by French Com-
munist writer Pierre Abraham (1892–1974) was published. The thin novel
was followed by a lengthy afterword in which young Czech literary critic
Antonín J. Liehm explained the ideological background of the Communist
cultural policy concerning distribution of French literature in Czechoslo-
vakia. According to Liehm, works like Abraham’s novel would show “real
France, France of working people, of miners from the North, of dockers
from Atlantic and Mediterranean ports, of Parisian metalworkers, of Bur-
gundy peasants, of Brittany fishermen, France that is so familiar to us, one
beloved by our Jula Fučík,1 one which stands side by side with us in the
great world fight for peace.”2
Following such class-oriented logic, France had not been perceived as
one entity anymore but was cumbersomely described as two societies, one
of which was “condemned to downfall” while “the other [was] walking and
fighting towards happiness and glory.”3 In this view, the previous fallacious
perception of France as a source of inspiration, a point of reference, and
an object of desire by the Czech elites since modern nation building in the
nineteenth century and state building in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury was replaced by the seemingly “real” image of France based on tenets
of Marxism-Leninism, such as proletarian internationalism, and on the
current needs of the domestic political discourse in Communist Czechoslo-

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 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-

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 The Image of “Real France”

able eastwards only.”9 These generally correct observations may neverthe-

less require rethinking of conventional territorialization of the East and the
West alongside the Iron Curtain. After 1948, the regime intended to block
all unwanted cultural influences through curtailment of possible channels
of exchange, rigorous decision-making processes, and close surveillance
of society, but, on the other hand, it did not want to be perceived as the
culprit of the Cold War—in this very case, on the Czechoslovak-French
front. Even though the Communist propaganda machinery promoted the
image of division into two adversary camps, these were not only under-
stood geographically in terms of groups of states that evidently belonged to
one or the other, but also rather idealistically as cross-border class societies
rivaling each other inside of these camps.10 Besides the Iron Curtain that
divided Europe as an unchangeable physical border materialized in elec-
trified fences of barbed wire, there was also a powerful mental image of di-
vided societies and their cultures. On the one hand, Communists doggedly
fought against any culture that might be stamped as bourgeois or Western,
rooted out its domestic sources, and successively stopped flows of such cul-
ture from the West after 1948, but, on the other, they did not want to cut
themselves off from the Communist parties and intellectuals that made up
tactically valuable Eastern enclaves amidst Western political adversaries.
Such demarcation of the political-cultural border between these two
camps was an ambiguous process that did not lack—metaphorically ex-
pressed—numerous border disputes and corrections. This process included
not only the contemporary situation but it also reevaluated the rich French
cultural heritage and rearranged the canon of masterworks. Therefore I ar-
gue that although direct cultural contacts and exchange between Czecho-
slovakia and France dropped to a minimum in the early Communist period,
French culture was not mechanically denied access to the Czechoslovak
quarantine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but it was instrumentalized
in order to serve the current Communist politics of cultural demarcation
of the two camps.
Focusing on the impact of the radicalized political development upon
the presence of French culture in Czechoslovakia, this essay makes use,
apart from secondary literature, of archival sources kept by the Czechoslo-
vak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It also substantiates the changing nature of
cultural import from France to Czechoslovakia by the use of statistics that
contextualize the period of early Communist rule into a broader historical
context. Finally, it should be noted that Czechoslovakia was in fact divided
into two cultural circuits, the Czech lands with Czech as their main lan-
guage and Slovakia with Slovak as its dominant language. However, this
essay mainly reflects the situation in the Czech lands.

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 Václav Šmidrkal

From Post-War Renewal to Cold War Impasse

The geopolitical position of the post–World War II Czechoslovakia as a

bridge between the Soviet-dominated East and the democratic West, envis-
aged by Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, was an unstable construc-
tion that eventually collapsed after the Communist takeover in February
1948. The compromise, recorded in the Košice Government’s Program in
1945, combined policies of five political parties that were allowed within
the National Front. It enabled the introduction of various statist regula-
tions for cultural production during the Third Republic (1945–48), with
the aim of forestalling the prewar market economy failures. The newly for-
mulated public interest in cultural production was motivated by eliminat-
ing kitsch or vulgarity and by promoting artistic and educative values.11
This was especially noticeable in the film industry, which was national-
ized already in 1945 by a presidential decree, when the state became the
only entitled professional film producer and distributor. In other cultural
branches, the changes were more subtle, but all of them had to count on
tighter regulations and the bigger role exercised by the state.
In spite of the explosive mixture of East and West in foreign politics and
of Communist and democratic influences in domestic politics, cultural life
blossomed and so did the foreign cultural exchange. After years of Ger-
man occupation oppressing the Czech culture and also limiting circulation
of foreign cultural products, the cultural life revived quickly. France, too,
planned to reestablish its cultural presence in Czechoslovakia, which had
been interrupted since 1939. However, France had lost some of the at-
tractiveness and prestige it had enjoyed in the interwar period with the
Czechoslovak population due to its appeasement policy and signing of the
Munich Agreement in 1938. Furthermore, it became overshadowed by the
victorious Soviet Union, the idea of Slavic togetherness, and revolutionary
desires. French diplomat Louis Keller summarized this change on grounds
of his observations from liberated Prague in June 1945 in the letter to the
French minister of foreign affairs, Georges Bidault: “The words ‘reaction-
ary’ and ‘Francophil’ have become close relatives in Prague.”12
Despite this unfavorable tendency, both France and Czechoslovakia
were interested in the renewal of their cultural exchange, although Czecho-
slovakia stressed that, in contrast to the prewar praxis, the relations should
be more reciprocal and balanced. The Declaration on Scientific, Literary,
and Educational Contacts from 1924, amended by a Supplementary Proto-
col in 1945, became its legal base, although Czechoslovakia perceived this
document as obsolete and interim. The French government reopened the
Ernest Denis French Institute in Prague in 1945 and its regional branches
(Maison de France) in Brno and Bratislava in 1947. The Alliance Française
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 The Image of “Real France”

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
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 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 Communist Anti-Westernism

Éluard’s observation reflected upon the radicalization of Czechoslovakia,

which carefully distinguished between progressive and reactionary Western
cultures on the rhetorical level, but became generally anti-Western in its
practices. Even though anti-Western attitudes in culture could be remotely
connected with historical cultural cleavages, represented by disputes such
as the one between cosmopolitan writers (lumírovci) and patriotic writers
(ruchovci) that took place in the 1870s and 1880s, the strict anti-Wester-
nism that developed shortly after 1948 became grotesquely tragic. Czech
historian Jan Křen considers the Bohemian lands throughout its history as
– 183 –
 Václav Šmidrkal

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

the presence of U.S. troops on the westernmost part of the Czechoslovak

territory from April to November 1945 was retrospectively reinterpreted as
a dangerous direct contact with this “barbaric” culture: “The population
of West Bohemia got a good lesson about the American occupants who
wanted, under the elevated words of ‘American democracy’ and ‘culture
and civilization,’ to impose a rule of gangsters, of pornographic unculture
and nightclubs, a rule of violent Americanization and colonization of our
country. … By gory stories and pornography, they strived for closing the
way of our people to real culture, to real art that helps and gives strength
in the fight for a better tomorrow.”34
In the French context, a similar dishonoring campaign was waged
against existentialism, which was seen as a prominent product of degener-
ated Western culture. Journalist Marie Kot’átková reported from Paris in
1950 that she identified a youth subculture of existentialists there whom
she called “people monstrously dying” because their worldview seemed
“poisoned” by American ideas scattered around like potato beetles in
Czechoslovakia.35

The Culture of “Real France” in a Communist Dictatorship

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

Czechoslovakia USSR 'People's Democracies' 'Other'

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
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

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”

works propagating racism, fascism, formalism, naturalism, pornography, or

colonialism.36 Among these works, there were also numerous translations
from French: J.-P. Sartre’s Les Chemins de la liberté (The Roads to Free-
dom) was blacklisted for existentialism, Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s books
were branded as “perverted unmoral literature,” and André Gide’s books
as “cosmopolitan formalist reactionary literature.” It is estimated that,
altogether, about twenty-seven million removed volumes were meant to
be recycled and the paper used for printing Czech classics, such as Alois
Jirásek.37
Pavel Čech, who systematically analyzed literary translations from French
into Czech from 1945 to 1953, distinguishes two main lines of French lit-
erature that were published in Czechoslovakia after 1948: the “realist pro-
gressive tradition” included the reinterpreted French literary heritage of the
early modern and modern era, and the “topical progressive themes,” which
presented current literary works of the French Communist milieu.38
The Communist regimes proudly displayed their careful attention to
classical culture of the West as a source of incontestable artistic values that
had been neglected by Capitalism and its deplorable mass culture. Yet they
did not simply acclaim aesthetic mastery; such classics were ideologically
reassessed on grounds of current political needs.39 The fictional literature,
such as Honoré de Balzac’s novels, was interpreted as a valuable artistic
source of social analysis showing the growing class conflicts in early Cap-
italist society. Its value was increased by positive assessments of French
critical realism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.40 Even though the sit-
uation had changed since Balzac’s times, the literary critic contextualized
the seemingly remote historical stories into the current political discourse
in Czechoslovakia by explaining these links in the preface or afterword to
the literary text. Thus, the descendants of the Grandets, Rastignacs, and
Gobsecks of Honoré de Balzac’s novels were to be located in present day
Wall Street and London.41 Similarly, the anti-Church satirical criticism in
Molière’s Tartuffe was topically liaised with “intrigues” of Hungarian Cardi-
nal József Midszenty and Czechoslovak Cardinal Josef Beran, both victims
of the respective Communist regimes.42
Although French classics were not always unanimously accepted, defi-
nitely more conflicting was the decision-making in the case of “contem-
porary progressive literature,” where both the author and his work were
scrutinized for their political and literary qualities and, even more impor-
tantly, for the appropriateness of their works in the current political dis-
course in Czechoslovakia. Therefore, many booklets concerning topical
political issues published by French Communist militants were already
outdated when they were considered for translation and publication in
Czechoslovakia. Further, whereas dead authors did not interfere with cur-
– 189 –
 Václav Šmidrkal

rent politics anymore, living authors could be banned because of their

political engagement. A group of French writers protesting against Záviš
Kalandra’s death penalty in 1950 and asking him to be pardoned by Presi-
dent Klement Gottwald were to be blacklisted and their works eliminated
from distribution in Czechoslovakia. Should this suggestion have mate-
rialized, it would have affected dozens of prominent French authors who
signed the letter.43
On the other hand, correct political opinions did not guarantee a smooth
entrance: the dictatorship was full of contradictions, and its bureaucracy
was not error-free. Thus, the Czech literary critique highly appraised the
autobiography of Maurice Thorez Fils du peuple (Son of the People). It was
not certainly on grounds of its literary values but simply because it was
written by the secretary general of the PCF.44 In other cases, the bureau-
cratic approval process, which followed different selection criteria, could
also result in surprising decisions, such as the withdrawal of prominent
Communist author Louis Aragon’s novel Les Voyageurs de l’impériale. The
novel was translated into Czech and printed in 1948 by the Máj Publish-
ing House, but this company, which specialized in Western literature, was
to be liquidated and replaced by the state-run Československý spisovatel.
Under unclear circumstances, Aragon’s novel also ended up on a blacklist.
A similar hot case was the refusal to publish Elsa Triolet’s novels L’Inspec-
teur des ruines and Les Amants d’Avignon, which were turned down during
the multilevel decision making process. In all these cases, a combination of
ideological, aesthetic, and managerial criteria led to the negative decisions
that irritated both Aragon and his wife Triolet. Although Czechoslovakia
officially highly esteemed their political and artistic achievements, it was
not willing to translate these works, which differed somewhat from the
newly created canon.45 As Pavel Čech concludes, the far-reaching elim-
ination of most modern French literature could hardly be compensated
by “contemporary progressive” authors and by translations of authors and
literary streams that were previously unknown in Czech, such as the works
of Paul-Louis Courier (1773–1825) or of writers connected with the Paris
Commune of 1871.46
Apart from literature, the offerings of the “progressive” France were quite
limited compared to what France produced as a whole. Shortly after Febru-
ary 1948, French “bourgeois” dramatic plays that were being rehearsed, such
as J.-P. Sartre’s Les Mouches (The Flies) in the National Theatre in Prague
or Jean Giraudoux’s La Folle de Chaillot (The Madwoman of Chaillot) in
the Municipal Theatre in Prague-Vinohrady, had to be withdrawn from the
programs.47 The chair of the Theatre and Dramatic Council, Ota Ornest,
formulated the priorities for theatrical repertoires in Bratislava in Janu-
ary 1949:48 (1a) new domestic plays with contemporary themes, (1b) new
– 190 –
 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

The early Communist period of Czechoslovak history was marked by a de-

nial of the previous cultural orientation of Czechoslovakia toward France
and other Western countries, which happened as a part of the delimitation
of the Eastern bloc against the West. Unlike Nazis during World War II and
their general bans on the enemy country’s culture, the Communists un-
derstood culture in class terms in which geographical borders collided with
borders across societies. Traditional cultural ties between Czechoslovakia
and France that were torn after 1948 were believed to be substituted by re-
focusing on relations with the French Communist Party and its intellectual
milieu, which, apart from the militants included numerous “fellow travel-
ers” and “card-carrying” Communists. However intellectually strong the
Communist milieu in France was, it could replace state-to-state cultural
diplomacy and commercial cultural exchange only to a limited extent. Af-
ter the cultural cornucopia of the Czechoslovak Third Republic in 1945–
48, the French cultural presence became strictly limited and could offer
only a handful of literary translations that had made their way through rig-
orous, protracted, and occasionally erratic censorship. Especially the works
of contemporary authors were not presented as pure works of art but rather
deliberately used for political purposes of the Communist dictatorship and
its legitimization.54
The anti-Westernism of Communist Czechoslovakia as a part of the bi-
polar world’s dichotomies found it difficult to effectively distinguish be-
– 192 –
 The Image of “Real France”

tween progressive and bourgeois French cultures. This distinction became

rather a popular rhetorical instrument than an applied daily practice. By
more or less disguised appeals on nationalism, Russophilia, anti-Semitism,
and anti-Germanism, the West was shown in the worst possible light. Both
international and domestic politics slowly changed after 1953 with the re-
alization that the rupture in relations with official France, based on distrust
and a frenetic blockade of French bourgeois culture in Czechoslovakia,
had slowly turned out to be disadvantageous for Czechoslovak cultural
diplomacy and for the development of the Czech culture itself. The West
remained its main political adversary, but Communist Czechoslovakia felt
forced to look for a new modus operandi in foreign cultural exchange that
would still follow an ideological line but would not hamper Czechoslova-
kia’s own interests.

Václav Šmidrkal earned his Ph.D. in modern history at Charles University

in Prague in 2014. In his dissertation, he dealt with comparative history of
artistic institutions in Central European Socialist militaries. He is currently
working at the Masaryk Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in a
research project on cultural history of violence during World War I and
its aftermath in Austrian and Bohemian lands. He is the author of a book
on the history of the Czechoslovak Army Film Studio (2009), as well as
numerous articles and book chapters in Czech, and also in English and
German.

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

DEALING WITH “FRIENDS”

Soviet Friendship Societies in Western Europe
as a Challenge for Western Diplomacy

Sonja Großmann

O n 9 June 1977, the NATO Political Committee had the following

apparently marginal item on its agenda:
Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the October Revolution by the Belgo-
Soviet Friendship Society
THE COMMITTEE: was informed by the Belgian Representative that the
Belgo-Soviet Friendship Society had invited the Governor of the Province of
Brabant to become a patron of this commemorative ceremony; the Belgian Au-
thorities would like to know if similar invitations had been extended by Soviet
friendship societies to senior officials in other member countries and, if so, what
answer had been given.1

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
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 Dealing with “Friends”

Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (Soiuz Sovetskikh Obshchestv

druzhby i kul’turnoi sviazi s zarubezhnymi stranami, SSOD), the friend-
ship societies corresponded to the Soviet idea of narodnaia diplomatiia or
“people-to-people diplomacy,” aiming to gain sympathizers for its policies
among the working class and progressive intellectuals abroad in order to
supplement or complement the “bourgeois secret diplomacy.”5 In the con-
text of the Cold War, the network of associations was organizationally and
ideologically more streamlined and became part of a giant image campaign,
promoting Soviet ideology and Soviet policies abroad. The friendship soci-
eties became agents of cultural exchange during the Cold War, depending
on the international diplomatic constellation, the vicissitudes of the rela-
tionship between the superpowers, and the bilateral relationship between
the home country and the Soviet Union.
Second, it was certainly not accidental that the Belgian association
wanted to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution. This was
one of the annual obligatory events for all friendship societies, listed by
SSOD for every year and country.6 However, friendship societies were not
just marionettes obediently playing out Soviet propagandistic instructions.
Since they were part of a pluralist civil society, their activities, their mem-
bership, and their political orientation were strongly influenced by the po-
litical constellations in their home countries. One important parameter
was the impact of the Communist Party and the Communist milieu on
the political landscape of the respective country, the Party’s ability and
opportunity to collaborate with other political actors, and its anchoring in
the society.
Third, in the context of the Cold War, friendship societies were not only
private associations, but interfered with the governmental and intergov-
ernmental spheres. By organizing cultural events, town twinning, and tour-
ism with the Soviet Union in collaboration with Soviet state-controlled
bodies like the SSOD and by negotiating directly with the governmental
level, this type of activity affected the official bilateral exchange and was a
continuous challenge for Western governments and their foreign policies.
Contemporary judgments, and for a long time historiography, perceived
friendship societies as one-sided propagandistic instruments of the Soviet
government and the local Communist parties, infiltrated by the secret
services.7 With the cultural turn of Cold War research, historians have
become more interested in the reciprocity of cultural exchanges beyond
the Iron Curtain at the civil society level.8 The Soviet perspective on cul-
tural diplomacy toward the West has, however, remained a marginal field
of research to this day.9 Friendship societies in the West have been, if at all,
examined in the context of bilateral relations, a perception that risks set-
ting aside their global network character as part of Soviet foreign policy.10
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 Sonja Großmann

Focusing on the third of the three aspects cited above—the interdepen-

dence of friendship societies and governmental cultural diplomacy—this
chapter aims to give insight into the multifaceted and entangled history of
Soviet friendship societies in the West, taking examples from Great Brit-
ain, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany. First, these largest Eu-
ropean NATO member states were political and ideological antagonists of
the Soviet Union, in which movements for friendship with the “Commu-
nist enemy” were political provocations per se. Second, the Soviet Union
and these countries had strong reciprocal political and economic interests
that might be supported by good cultural relations. Third, the examples
will illustrate the great variety of friendship societies according to the re-
spective role of the Communist parties and the national political situation.
Based mainly on sources from Western ministries of foreign affairs as well
as Russian archives, this chapter attempts to trace the changing role of
friendship societies from disruptive elements to partners of the official cul-
tural diplomacy from the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet
Union.

Proscription and Ignorance

In the immediate post-war years, friendship societies were able to benefit

from certain pro-Soviet euphoria in the aftermath of the victory against
National Socialist Germany. The Association France-URSS was estab-
lished in December 1943 in Algiers in the context of the Résistance, before
being officially refounded after the Liberation of Paris in October 1944.11
In Great Britain, there were two parallel friendship societies: the Society
for Cultural Relations with the USSR (SCR), founded in 1924 and based
on a more intellectual membership, and the more proletarian and trade
union-oriented British-Soviet Friendship Society (BSFS), which was re-
founded in 1946 uniting several associations of the interwar period.12 In
Germany, following the creation of the F.R.G. and the G.D.R. in 1949,
the Association for German-Soviet Friendship (Gesellschaft für Deutsch-
Sowjetische Freundschaft, DSF) of the Soviet occupation zone created a
formally independent Western department in September 1950.13
In light of the growing differences between the former Allies, the mere
existence of Soviet friendship societies was already an important challenge
for the foreign and domestic policies of Capitalist countries. Organization-
ally and politically controlled by VOKS, the main function of friendship
societies was to lobby for Soviet foreign policy campaigns and to fight anti-
Sovietism.14 Until 1953, direct contact and exchange between the Sovi-
ets and the Western associations was close to impossible; their activities
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 Dealing with “Friends”

resembled a one-way transfer of information via talks, exhibitions, jour-

nals, and pamphlets. Personally and politically involved in the “struggle
for peace”, the friendship societies spread, for example, the Stockholm
Appeal of 1950 and combated the creation of a European Defense Com-
munity.15 The president of the World Peace Council, French nuclear physi-
cist and Communist Frédéric Joliot-Curie, was, for instance, also president
of France-URSS. Despite their claim of political independence and non-
interference with national politics, friendship societies tried to influence
domestic politics and were closely entangled with their respective Com-
munist parties, which provided key positions, such as the societies’ general
secretaries, and the large majority of the members.
Thus, it does not seem surprising that Western governments perceived
friendship societies as political adversaries and treated them as part of a
large-scale Communist conspiracy. The most rigid position against Com-
munist influence was taken up by the West German government. In the
1950s, several laws severely restricted Communist activities and prohibited
state employees from membership in Communist organizations.16 The ac-
tivities of the DSF were, therefore, successively hampered. In the context
of the ban of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei
Deutschlands, KPD) by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956, all re-
gional branches of the DSF were prohibited. By summer 1955, its general
secretary Georg Gampfer had been sentenced to a three-year imprison-
ment for high treason, subversion of the state, and the organization of ille-
gal secret associations.17 Only the Saar-Soviet Society and the DSF in West
Berlin remained untouched, as these territories were not integral parts of
the Federal Republic at this time.18 Indeed, the DSF in West Germany
was not as much linked to the Soviet authorities, but was a financially,
organizationally, and politically dependent branch of the Eastern DSF,
which served as a “transmission belt” of the Communist government in the
G.D.R.19 Its main function was not German-Soviet friendship or even the
propagation of Soviet foreign policy, but the political mobilization of the
West German population in favor of German unification under Socialist
conditions.20 Therefore, this particularly harsh reaction toward friendship
societies was mainly due to the unique German situation.
Other Western governments did not react in such an intransigent way.
Thanks to the popularity of the French Communist Party (Parti commu-
niste français, PCF) in post-war France, achieving between 25 and 30 per-
cent of the votes in national elections and being part of the governmental
coalition by May 1947, the Association France-URSS was able to develop
into a rather large nationwide association with more than fifty-nine thou-
sand members in 1954.21 Official measures against its activities, therefore,
seemed inconceivable. The French authorities—as well as the British—
– 199 –
 Sonja Großmann

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.

Competition in Cultural Exchanges

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
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 Dealing with “Friends”

image by integrating non-Communists in leading positions, organizing new

activities to mobilize a broader public as well as events for the promulga-
tion of their culture in the Soviet Union to prove reciprocity.27
The new Soviet attitude to cultural relations with the West asked and
enabled friendship societies to diversify their activities and to become more
attractive to a larger public that was less interested in the political achieve-
ments of the Soviet Union than in the Russian cultural heritage. After
1953, VOKS helped to improve the image as well as the finances of the
friendship societies by sending outstanding Soviet cultural personalities
and famous ensembles like the Bolshoi ballet, David Oistrakh, Dmitry Ka-
balevsky, or Sergei Obraztsov. Apart from these popular tours, friendship
societies started to organize Russian language courses, establish specialized
libraries, and offer affordable trips to the Soviet Union for certain profes-
sional groups. By 1955, when the Soviet Union manifested its willingness
to foster East-West contacts at the Geneva Conference,28 most Western
governments were unsettled by the friendship societies’ monopolization of
cultural exchange. They were faced with the question of whether they re-
ally wanted to leave it to these fellow-traveling organizations to represent
their countries vis-à-vis the Soviet authorities and to host and guide Soviet
citizens coming as guests.
The British representatives of the Foreign Office felt more and more
that they could no longer boycott the cultural events organized by the
friendship organizations in cooperation with the Soviet embassy, giving
the impression that the government sought to prevent any cultural ex-
change.29 After returning from a trip to the Soviet Union with a parliamen-
tary delegation in 1954 and under the impression of the falsified image of
Britain the Soviet people had through the filter of the friendship societies,
Christopher Mayhew, former Labour Member of Parliament and one of
the initiators of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (to
counter Soviet propaganda), proposed, in a newspaper article, to found a
special body for cultural exchanges, which was carefully noted by the So-
viet embassy.30 Not being satisfied with the efforts of the British societies,
BSFS and SCR, to mobilize non-Communist circles and adapt to the new
circumstances, Yakovlev, deputy chairman of VOKS, signalized to the Brit-
ish ambassador that the Soviet side would be prepared to put the cultural
exchanges on a “broader basis.”31 Consequently, in April 1955, the Soviet
Relations Committee (SRC) was launched within the British Council with
the following aims: “(i) to bring influential Russians to this country, (ii) to
send reliable representatives of this country to the Soviet Union, and (iii)
to facilitate the exchange of cultural manifestations. … to endeavour to
squeeze out the fellow-traveling societies and to persuade British organi-
zations to channel their exchanges through the Committee.”32 The SRC
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 Sonja Großmann

quite successfully organized several visits, artistic tours, and meetings up

until the Soviet intervention in Hungary in November 1956, when they
froze relations for political reasons with the “balance going right over in
favour of the BSFS.”33 Its obvious financial and political dependency on
the British government as well as its nature as a closed expert body without
any contact with civil society prevented the SRC from being a real alterna-
tive to the friendship societies.34
This is why Mayhew, also chairman of the SRC, finally convinced the
British Council and the Foreign Office to found a larger association com-
prised primarily of politicians and representatives of institutions interested
in exchanges with the Soviet Union.35 In 1959, the same year that Britain
signed an official cultural agreement with the Soviet Union, the officially
independent but still government-controlled Great Britain-USSR Associa-
tion was launched, mainly financed by the Foreign Office. This association
tried to overtake all types of activities realized so far by the British-Soviet
Friendship Society and the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR:
colloquia, the Russian library, language courses, cultural events, and sci-
entific lectures.36
Within the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were comparable
considerations for establishing an alternative association for cultural rela-
tions with the USSR to weaken the Association France-URSS.37 In spite
of a certain decline in membership numbers following the Soviet inter-
vention in Hungary in 1956 and in contrast to their British colleagues,
the PCF encouraged France-URSS to enlarge the political spectrum of
its membership at its 8th National Congress in 1957 to non-Communist
personalities. Several well-known leftist Gaullists and former protagonists
of the Résistance, such as Raymond Schmittlein, René Capitant and Léo
Hamon, joined its collective presidency. In remembrance of the common
fight of Gaullists and Communists in the Résistance on the Soviet side
against National Socialist Germany, they favored relations with the Soviet
Union to counterbalance dependency on the United States.38 However,
the French authorities also fostered cultural exchanges at the governmen-
tal level: in 1957, the French and Soviet governments signed a cultural
agreement, and France was the second country after Belgium to establish a
permanent Mixed Commission of high functionaries from both countries,
which, in the following years, negotiated plans for cultural, academic, sci-
entific, and technological exchange.39 This policy was not only motivated
by the aim to gain more independence from the United States via a special
relationship with the Soviet Union, but also by a general reluctance to
leave such an important issue to a politically unreliable friendship soci-
ety. For example, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs assessed the de-
velopment of French-Soviet cultural relations in a preparatory paper for
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 Dealing with “Friends”

Khrushchev’s visit in France in 1960 with the following words: “However,

it was in the French interest to place the cultural exchanges at an official
level in order to take them from the political exploitation of the parties and
organizations that dominated them in that moment, especially the ‘Asso-
ciation France-URSS,’ and to establish precise conditions and a reciprocal
foundation. Therefore, in 1957, the government agreed on the creation
of a mixed commission.”40 Similarly, the Associazione Italia-URSS pushed
the Italian government with a large campaign and a broad variety of cul-
tural exchange activities to sign a comparable cultural agreement and to
establish a Mixed Commission in 1959.41
Even though the activities of the friendship societies urged Western
governments themselves to establish and foster cultural exchanges with
the Soviet Union, their success in replacing friendship societies with offi-
cial exchange programs was rather limited. The hybrid status of SSOD and
the friendship societies in the Soviet Union enabled them to negotiate, on
the one hand, as civil organizations with the Soviet friendship societies in
Western countries and, on the other hand, as governmental organizations
with the cultural departments of the Western ministries of foreign affairs.
For example, neither VOKS nor the SSOD ever gave in to the British
demands to renounce their privileged relations with the friendship soci-
eties in favor of an exclusive collaboration with the Great Britain-USSR
Association.42 The Soviets preferred rather a two-fold strategy, negotiat-
ing simultaneously with all interested parties and playing them off against
each other—often advantageously for the friendship societies. In 1955,
for example, the SRC lost a rather prestigious tour of the Moiseev Dance
Company to BSFS to the annoyance of George Jellicoe of the Northern
Department in the Foreign Office: “We must admit that the Russians and
their British sympathisers have won a minor engagement in the cold war
by their success in presenting Moiseev Company under the auspices of the
B.S.F.S. at the Empress Hall, and by seeing that they were represented at
the Royal Variety Performance. Indeed, as long as the Russians refuse to
withdraw their support from those ‘front’ organisations, it is difficult to see
how we can torpedo them although this must clearly remain our objec-
tive.”43 In the context of Khrushchev’s and Bulganin’s visit to Britain in
April 1956, when cultural relations were one of the discussion points, the
Soviet Relations Committee, for their part, won an engagement: Only four
weeks before the start of the tour of the Moscow State Circus in Britain,
the Soviet Ministry of Culture decided to take the tour out of the hands of
the BSFS and place it at the governmental level.44 Obviously, for the So-
viet side, it was now more important to show good will towards the Foreign
Office than to support Communist aims and loyal friends. Nevertheless,
after the Soviet intervention in Hungary in October 1956, the Soviet au-
– 203 –
 Sonja Großmann

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:

Indeed, if we limited ourselves to demonstrating our disapproval [regarding

the plans of co-operation] by silence and abstention, we would risk soon find-
ing ourselves in a situation where the official protocol seems to be aimed at
organizing cultural relations “state-to-state,” whereas France-URSS will have
taken care of the “people-to-people” exchanges; this would be like a trans-
fer to the cultural area of the Marxist-Leninist theories on the distinction
to be made between “state-to-state” relations and “party to party” relations
when it is a question of Peaceful coexistence with liberal countries. … The
existence of this agreement remains, indeed, extremely shocking, because its
annual conclusion signifies that a French private association and dependent
on the Communist Party assumes the right to negotiate with a Soviet associ-
ation, which is, in fact, only an emanation of the government of the USSR.
This approach contains the seed of dissidence and of division of governmental
prerogatives.47

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 Dealing with “Friends”

As the French ministry did not dispose of a comparable organization

anchored in civil society, it was unable to compete with or prevent the
friendship society’s activities in the area of people-to-people exchanges.
When, in October 1963, France-URSS invited the first “mass delegation”
of over fifty Soviet personalities of various professions (journalists, profes-
sors, kolkhoz leaders, etc.) to come to France,48 the visibly annoyed local
prefects could only report to the ministry about groups of Soviets coming
to their Départements and being received by local—often Communist—au-
thorities.49 The French embassy was not in the position to refuse the visas,
on the one hand, because the delegation members were officially coming
as tourists, and, on the other hand, because, given the high social and po-
litical status of the guests and the personal intervention of René Capitant
in favor of the exchange, the refusal of visas would have caused major
diplomatic disturbances.50 In the following year, when, in accordance with
the reciprocity always requested, 150 French personalities—among them
several politicians, academics, and trade unionists—were invited by the
SSSR-Frantsiia to the Soviet Union, the French authorities were even less
able to intervene or to influence the composition of the delegation.51 After
the visit, the French ambassador in Moscow had to admit that the trip
had been a successful endeavor with regard to the intents and purposes
of France-URSS: “[The visit] also regarded the number, the quality, and
the diversity of the participants in such a way that it increased the credit
of the Association France-URSS. We have to recognize that, for low costs,
the organizers were able to compose a very interesting program and to
restrain themselves at the political level, so that it was appropriate to reas-
sure and to win over those who had not been seduced until now—that is,
the non-Communist elements of the group. And this was the principal aim
of the operation.”52 The growing governmental uncertainty about how to
deal with Soviet cultural diplomacy, as well as its strategy to bypass formal
cultural agreements, contributed in 1960 to the creation of the NATO
Working Group on East-West Cultural Contacts, which repeatedly put the
issue of the friendship societies on its agenda.53

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

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 Sonja Großmann

of the international climate, it seemed, therefore, more expedient for them

to turn to decent cooperation and to make use of the friendship societies
for their own purposes.
The German example illustrates this development. Since the ban of the
DSF had deprived them of their potential partner organization, VOKS
and later SSOD got in touch directly with West German institutions and,
at the same time, were themselves contacted by individuals, cultural or-
ganizations, and universities requesting information on the Soviet Union
and asking for cooperation and personal exchange. The Soviet position
was strengthened by the opening of the Soviet Embassy in Bonn in 1955,
the cultural attaché establishing contacts with personalities and cultural
institutions all over West Germany.54 From that time onward, the flow of
information was even more difficult for the authorities to control. The
cultural agreement between the Soviet Union and the German Federal
Republic, signed in May 1959 for two years, was never really implemented
and never renewed because of the open Berlin question.55
By the mid-1960s, with the formation of the Grand Coalition and Willy
Brandt becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1965, the political climate
regarding Communism and the Soviet Union in West Germany began to
change considerably. Brandt’s “Ostpolitik” aimed at the normalization of
relations with the Eastern countries and silently accepted the existence of
the G.D.R. The negotiations culminated in treaties with the Soviet Union
in 1970, with Poland in 1972, and with the G.D.R. in 1974, which fixed the
renunciation of any force between the states and the respect for territo-
rial integrity and the existing borders.56 Among other reasons to facilitate
these negotiations, the Federal Government consented to the formation of
a new German Communist Party (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, DKP)
in 1968, despite the fact that it was a marionette of the Communist party
of the G.D.R.57 Discretely pushed by the DKP and SSOD, several regional
German-Soviet societies emerged at the instigation of private personalities
who were interested for one reason or another in the Soviet Union and es-
tablished contact with the SSOD.58 In 1968, both the Soviet and German
sides took an active interest in the foundation of the largest of those asso-
ciations, the Society for the Stimulation of Relations between the Federal
Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union (Gesellschaft zur Förderung
der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Sow-
jetunion),59 comprising several regional branches. Most of its protagonists
were close to the leftist Christian peace movement, such as its general
secretary, the pastor Herbert Mochalski; journalist Eugen Kogon; and its
president, nuclear physicist Boris Rajewsky.
The first public event in April 1969 was attended by the Soviet ambas-
sador but also by high representatives of the Federal Foreign Office, social
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 Dealing with “Friends”

democratic and liberal politicians, and other renowned personalities.60 Ini-

tially, even the Federal Minister of Justice and, in 1969, President of the
Federal Republic Gustav Heinemann had accepted the invitation.61 The
SSOD used the establishment of this association as an opportunity to initi-
ate a Soviet partner society for the F.R.G. as well.62 In 1970, along with the
Treaty of Moscow between the F.R.G. and the USSR, the Soviet Institute
for Relations with the Public of the Federal Republic of Germany (Sovetskii
institut po razvitiiu otnoshenii s obshchestvennost’iu FRG) was founded,
developing into the society SSSR-F.R.G. in 1972.63 The strategy of the po-
litical department of the Federal Foreign Office went far beyond merely
tolerating the Gesellschaft Bundesrepublik Deutschland-UdSSR; rather it
stayed in close contact, making sure that its members were acting in the
“right” direction, and using it wherever possible “to scarify the grounds”
for further political actions.64 To this end, representatives of the association
were regularly invited to the ministry to discuss their activities and to stress
the necessity of reciprocity in the exchanges. The West German diplomats
also encouraged them to act, especially in areas where official institutions
were not very successful, such as the publication of a journal on West Ger-
many in Russian in the Soviet Union or a book exposition. In return, the
collaborators of the Federal Foreign Office promised financial support for
activities within the Soviet Union bolstering its own cultural diplomacy.65
When it became obvious that the Gesellschaft Bundesrepublik Deutsch-
land-UdSSR failed to live up to the ministry’s expectations, as its political
base was not representative enough, the foundation of an alternative insti-
tution was discussed within the Federal Foreign Office. However, instead of
a competing association, the officials finally opted to create an open discus-
sion group following the example set by the Anglo-German Königswinter
Conference. The editor, and later publisher, of the German weekly Die Zeit
and fervent supporter of the Ostpolitik, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, was des-
ignated for presidency. The project failed, apparently because neither the
SSOD nor German politicians took further interest in it.66
However, also the Gesellschaft Bundesrepublik Deutschland-UdSSR
was disbanded in 1974, which preposterously, neither the Soviet nor the
German side seemed to regret; the former were discontented because the
society’s leaders wanted to enlarge its activities to the territory of West
Berlin, the latter because they did not stick strictly to the principle of rec-
iprocity.67 In April 1975, the regional associations founded a new umbrella
organization, the Consortium of the Associations of the Federal Republic
of Germany-the Soviet Union (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gesellschaften
Bundesrepublik Deutschland-Sowjetunion, ARGE). Under the successive
presidency of three former social-democratic members of the Bundestag,
Harald Koch, Walter Behrendt and Dietrich Sperling, the ARGE and the
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 Sonja Großmann

Ministry of Foreign Affairs developed a very constructive and efficient

“private-public partnership”; with the negotiations for official cultural
exchange plans being encumbered with the Berlin question, the Foreign
Office was very satisfied with the ARGE, which served as a loyal partner
advancing the issue of cultural exchange in the sense of the “third bas-
ket” of the Helsinki Final Act.68 They organized, for example, colloquia
with important personalities of the political, scientific, and socioeconomic
world, as well as the very successful exhibition Blick in die Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (A Look into the Federal Republic of Germany), displayed in
several capitals of the Soviet republics between 1978 and 1988.69 All these
projects, including the wording of the plans of cooperation with the SSOD,
were carefully discussed in advance with representatives of the Foreign Of-
fice. Publicly, however, when the Berlin issue was raised or when the public
comments of a member were not in line with official policy, the Federal
Foreign Office could always insist on the independent, private character of
the ARGE and deny any political influence.70 When, in 1980, the British
delegation asked for statements regarding the respective friendship soci-
eties in order to discuss this issue in the NATO political committee, the
Soviet department within the Federal Foreign Office wrote,
In contrast to Great Britain, there is no dualism between friendship societies
controlled by the Soviets on the one hand and German-Soviet associations
cooperating with the Federal Government on the other hand. The existing
German-Soviet Association cannot be called uncritical or pro-Soviet; rather,
they are quite suitable for cooperation with official German institutions, espe-
cially in the academic and cultural areas and in self-presentation. … The asso-
ciations should not be vehicles for Soviet propaganda here, but they are useful
mediators and agencies for various projects. Furthermore, they provide us with
additional channels of communication.71

By “additional channels of communication,” the diplomats were especially

referring to the ARGE’s close relations with the branches of the SSOD in
the Soviet republics, where the embassies had almost no opportunity to
establish direct contacts or to present their countries.72
The privileged relationship between the friendship societies and the re-
gions far from Moscow was also important and useful for the French Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs by 1966. The French ambassador in Moscow stressed
the necessity of cooperation with the SSOD branches in the Soviet repub-
lics that seemed to be more culturally than politically oriented, less depen-
dent on Moscow, and very interested in the partner country.73 In contrast
to Ostpolitik, détente in French-Soviet relations had already reached the
first climax in the mid-1960s. After several agreements on cultural, tech-
nical, and economic exchanges, de Gaulle’s visit to Moscow in June 1966
institutionalized regular exchanges in a Permanent Mixed Commission.74
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 Dealing with “Friends”

The Association France-URSS claimed this French-Soviet rapprochement

for its own merits when, symbolically, a delegation welcomed de Gaulle at
the airport as he returned from Moscow.75 In general, after the signature of
the Helsinki Final Act, with the multiplication of direct contact with civil
society such as town twinning and student exchanges, it seems that the
French government came to a more flexible and relaxed attitude regarding
France-URSS, including tactical cooperation when it was useful to their
own self-representation.76 By 1965, the Socialist Party’s ban on France-
URSS had been lifted; in the following years, several Socialists became
members of its presidency.77
Analogous, the British Labor Party’s ban on the BSFS was lifted in
1973.78 The British authorities still seemed to stick quite unsuccessfully to
the policy of competing activities of the Great Britain-USSR Association.
On the one hand, the Association became a very expensive endeavor for
the Foreign Office without the possibility of decisively influencing its activ-
ities and personnel in order to avoid any impression of governmental pres-
sure.79 On the other hand, the results remained minor as the Association
had to protest and cease cooperation with every diplomatic incident, as,
for example, the intervention in Afghanistan.80
The attempts of the French and West German governments to exploit
the friendship societies for their own cultural diplomacy also prevailed
during Perestroika when people-to-people exchanges were needed to an-
swer to the exploding demand for information about and contacts with the
Soviet Union. In the Federal Republic, the ARGE could hardly answer to
the increasing demands for town twinning, information trips, and tours of
professional and nonprofessional artists to the Soviet Union.81
During Gorbachev’s visit to France in October 1985, the French au-
thorities officially recognized the Association France-URSS’s role in
Soviet-French relations when its representatives were invited to all offi-
cial receptions and when Raisa Gorbacheva visited the premises of the
association.82 Even if it lost its monopoly on personal cultural relations,
France-URSS could benefit from its strong contacts to organize outstand-
ing exchanges. In September 1987, returning to the idea of the mass dele-
gation of 1963, France-URSS set up the so-called “Initiative ‘87.” About
370 personalities, including former ministers, politicians, journalists, intel-
lectuals, academics, and church members, took the opportunity to inform
themselves about current developments in the Soviet Union through indi-
vidual meetings with peers in their fields, official visits, and discussions.83
The highlight of the journey was the reception of the whole delegation
by Mikhail Gorbachev, who answered the questions of the delegates and
presented his conception of cultural diplomacy as a pioneer of diplomatic
relations:
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 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

During a corresponding follow-up event called “Dialogue 89,” a large del-

egation of 350 Soviet personalities was invited by the Association France-
URSS to come to France in October 1989. The delegation was received by
both the then mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, and President François Mit-
terrand—a strong political statement equivalent to an official recognition
of the association’s contribution to French-Soviet cultural exchanges.85

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to return to the 60th anniversary of the October

Revolution. At the end of September 1977, the SSOD invited representa-
tives of friendship societies from eighty-six countries to a three-day meet-
ing in Moscow. The participants in the meeting officially extended their
thanks to Brezhnev for his “tireless acting for peace” and appealed to all
friendship societies to “spread the truth about the Soviet Union” and “un-
mask the enemies of peace and the propagandists of the Cold War.”86 Yet,
the German delegation preferred to go for a walk instead of listening to the
long “boring” speeches.87 Of course, the SSOD would have preferred that
the friendship societies functioned as propaganda tools transmitting this
message to the publics of their countries. However, the Soviets showed a
high level of flexibility and responsiveness to different national realities by
accepting a diversity of friendship societies. As they were confronted with
actors of a pluralistic civil society, the Soviet side had to accept certain
room for maneuvering. Unlike the Communist-dominated Belgo-Soviet
Friendship Society, the ARGE told the representatives of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs that it did not envisage any special celebration of the anni-
versary of the October Revolution.88
Despite all the differences between the friendship societies, there were
some obvious similarities concerning the development of their relation-
ships with the respective Western governments and their adaption to the
changes in the international political landscape. In the 1950s, even if only

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 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.

Sonja Großmann studied at Saarland University (Saarbrücken), Univer-

sity of Lorraine (Metz), and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
She holds master’s degrees in German-French studies (2005) and East Eu-
ropean studies (2007). From 2007 to 2012 she worked as a scientific coor-
dinator at Centre Marc Bloch Berlin and Berlin Graduate School of Social
Sciences. Financed by Gerda Henkel Foundation, she is currently writing
her Ph.D. thesis at the Universities of Tübingen and Munich on Soviet
friendship societies in Western Europe during the Cold War.

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).

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 Sonja Großmann

2. The term “friendship society” is, as a working definition, to be understood here as an

association aiming to inform others about the Soviet Union and to foster cultural exchanges
with the Soviet Union, in order to improve relations between their country and the Soviet
Union. However, during the Cold War, anti-Communists often used the term in a pejorative
sense. That is why several Western societies themselves avoided the term “friendship” in their
names, as did their partner societies in the Soviet Union, who reserved the term for associa-
tions with Socialist countries. See also J. Van Oudenaren, Détente in Europe: The Soviet Union
and the West since 1953 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 288.
3. For the history of Les amitiés belgo-soviétiques, see M. Singer, “Belgien-Sowjetunion,”
Kultur und Leben, no. 4 (1980): 27.
4. For Friends of the Soviet Union, see S. Estienne, Les Amis de l’Union soviétique 1928–
1939 (Abbeville: Soc. d’Émulation d’Abbeville, 2004).
5. For VOKS in the interwar time, see M. David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment:
Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011); J.-F. Fayet, VOKS. Le laboratoire hélvétique. Histoire de la diplo-
matie culturelle soviétique durant l’entre-deux-guerres (Chêne-Bourg: Georg, 2014); Golubev,
A. V., “… vzgliad ha zemliu obetovannuiu”. Iz istorii sovetskoi kul’turnoi diplomatii 1920-1930-ch
godov (Moskva: Institut Rossiiskoi Istorii RAN, 2004).
6. See, for example, the lists in GARF, f. 9518, op. 1, d. 48; and the discussion on the
celebration of the anniversary in the plans for cooperation with the German Association:
“Vermerk: Deutsch-sowjetische Gesellschaften,” 11 February 1977, ZA 133126, PAAA.
7. Some examples: C. Rose, The Soviet Propaganda Network: A Directory of Organizations
Serving Soviet Foreign Policy (London: Pinter, 1988), 9–24; M. K. Leighton, Soviet Propaganda
as a Foreign Policy Tool (New York: Freedom House, 1991).
8. To cite some recent collective works: P. Romijn, G. Scott-Smith, and J. Segal, eds.,
Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni-
versity Press, 2012); S. Autio-Sarasmo and B. Humphreys, eds., Winter Kept Us Warm: Cold
War Interactions Reconsidered (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2010); J.-F. Sirinelli and G.-H.
Soutou, eds., Culture et guerre froide (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008).
9. See N. Gould-Davies, “The Logic of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History
27 (2003): 193–214; G. Péteri, ed., Nylon Curtain: Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies
in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russia and East-Central Europe (Trondheim: Program on
East European Cultures and Societies, 2006); Van Oudenaren, Détente in Europe; and the still
valuable contemporary approach: F. C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive: The Role of
Cultural Diplomacy in Soviet Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).
10. For France, see T. Gomart, Double détente: Les relations franco-soviétiques de 1958 à
1964 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003), 103–21. For the Spanish case with an out-
look on Great Britain, see M. M. Caballero Garrido, “Las relaciones entre España y la Unión
Soviética a través de las Asociaciones de Amistad en el siglo XX,” http://www.tesisenred
.net/TDR-1215106-121642/index.html (accessed 12 July 2010); for Italy, see G. Gravina,
“Per una storia dell’Associazione Italia-URSS,” Slavia, no. 2 (1993): 70–108; no. 1 (1995):
40–100; no. 3–4 (1995): 103–41; no. 3 (1997): 135–59; for Finland, see S. Mikkonen, “The
Finnish-Soviet Society. From Political to Cultural Connections,” in Nordic Cold War Cultures.
Ideological Promotion, Public Reception and East-West Interactions, ed. R. Magnúsdóttir and V.
Ingimundarson, (Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2015), 109–131.
11. “Notre raison d’être,” France-URSS, no. 1 (1943): 2; France-URSS, no. 10 (1944): 2.
Since 1943, Algiers was the headquarters of the Conseil National de la Résistance, body of
coordination of the different movements of the Résistance. See O. Wieviorka, Histoire de la
Résistance: 1940–1945 (Paris: Perrin, 2013); M. Cobb, The Resistance: The French Fight against
the Nazis (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009).
12. In March 1946, the British-Soviet Society was founded by uniting the Russia Today
Society, der Anglo-Soviet Youth Friendship Alliance, des British-Soviet Women’s Committee,

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 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.

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 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.

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 Dealing with “Friends”

43. Jellicoe to J. O. Rennie, UK Delegation to Foreign Ministers Conference, 11 November

1955, FO 371/116672, TNA.
44. See letter from Ambassador Malik to Minister of Culture Mikhailov, 5 May 1956, f.
5283, op. 22, d. 538, l. 4–5, GARF; and Mayhew, A War of Words, 63.
45. Churchill, “The First Ten Years.”
46. R. L. Speight, “Anglo-Soviet Friendship Organizations,” 22 June 1964, FO 1110/1820,
TNA.
47. “Échanges Est-Ouest: Note pour le Secrétaire Général, s/a Activité de l’Association
France-URSS” (1965), MAE Europe 1961–65 URSS—Relations politiques France-URSS;
Associations franco-soviétiques, carton 1934, AD.
48. See the list of Soviet members of the delegation in France, 14–27 October 1963,
MAE Europe 1961–65 URSS—Relations politiques France-URSS; Associations franco-
soviétiques, carton 1934, AD.
49. See several letters in MAE Europe 1961–65 URSS—Relations politiques France-
URSS; Associations franco-soviétiques, carton 1934, AD.
50. See the letter from R. Capitant to C. de Murville, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
MAE Europe 1961–65 URSS—Relations politiques France-URSS; Associations franco-
soviétiques, carton 1934, AD.
51. See “Note pour le Ministre, a/s: Attitude à l’égard de l’association France-URSS,” 24
March 1964, MAE Europe 1961–65 URSS—Relations politiques France-URSS; Associations
franco-soviétiques, carton 1934, AD.
52. P. Baudet, French Ambassador in the USSR, to C. de Murville, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, a/s Visite en URSS d’un important groupe de Français sous l’égide de l’Association
France-URSS, Direction Europe, MAE Europe 1961–65 URSS—Relations politiques France-
URSS; Associations franco-soviétiques, carton 1934, AD.
53. On the committee see M. Rostgaard in this book; M. M. Caballero Garrido, “Las rel-
aciones entre España y la Unión Soviética”; A. Macher, “Le Groupe de travail des échanges
Est-Ouest: Acteur ou simple observatoire occidental des relations culturelles entre les deux
Europes (1960–1966)?” in Les deux Europes: Actes du IIIe colloque international de RICHIE, ed.
M. Affinito (Bruxelles: Lang, 2009), 31–46.
54. See N. Donig, “Kulturaustausch oder Propaganda? Westdeutsche Reaktionen auf die
sowjetische auswärtige Kulturpolitik in den 50er Jahren,” in Dem Raum eine Grenze geben, ed.
V. Krüger and A. Olshevska (Bochum, 2006), 179–207.
55. For the conflict about the cultural agreement, see B. Lippert, Auswärtige Kulturpolitik
im Zeichen der Ostpolitik: Verhandlungen mit Moskau 1969–1990 (Münster: LIT, 1996), 200–
10.
56. For an overview on Ostpolitik see G. Niedhart and O. Bange, “Die ‘Relikte der
Nachkriegszeit’ beseitigen: Ostpolitik in der zweiten außenpolitischen Formationsphase der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Übergang von den Sechziger- zu den Siebzigerjahren,” Archiv
für Sozialgeschichte 44 (2004): 415–48.
57. For the foundation of the DKP see H.-P. Müller, “Gründung und Frühgeschichte der
DKP im Lichte der SED-Akten,” in Geschichte und Transformation des SED-Staates: Beiträge
und Analysen, ed. K. Schröder (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1994), 251–85; and Kössler, Ab-
schied von der Revolution, 415f.
58. The cultural department of the KPD discussed several times the refoundation of a West
German-Soviet Association: Überlegungen zur Entwicklung einer Gesellschaft Bundesrepub-
lik-Sowjetunion, 21. February 1964, SAMPO BY 1/4048, BArch. See a list of the associations
in Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz an Bundesministerium des Innern Betr. Deutsch-Sow-
jetische Freundschaftsgesellschaften in der Bundesrepublik, 29 July 1968, B 41 No. 68, PAAA.
For example, see “Zapis’ besedy s 1-ym predsedatelem ‘Nemecko-sovetskogo Obshchestva’
Vil’gel’m’ Rotterom 17 sentiabria 1964g,” 30 September 1964, f. 9576, op. 6, d. 280, l. 142–43,
GARF.

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 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.

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 Dealing with “Friends”

78. “Labour lifting ban on BSFS,” British-Soviet Friendship, no. 5 (1973): 3.

79. For an example of internal discussions on the growing financial needs, see the confi-
dential letter from the Information Administration Department to the Financial Department
regarding GB/USSR Association, FCO 34–296, TNA.
80. Interesting insights are given by J. Roberts, director of the Great Britain-USSR Asso-
ciation 1973–93: J. C. Q. Roberts, Speak Clearly in to the Chandelier. Cultural Politics between
Britain and Russia 1973–2000 (Richmond: Curzon 2000).
81. See Lippert, Auswärtige Kulturpolitik, 496–97.
82. See M. Guilbert, “Vers des initiatives communes? ,” France-URSS Magazine, no. 11
(1985): 9; “In einer Atmosphäre der Freundschaft,” Kultur und Leben, no. 12 (1985): 2.
83. See the list of members and the program in 88 AS 47, ANF.
84. “Discours de Gorbatchev,” 88 AS 47, ANF.
85. See “L’échange à mille voix,” France-URSS Magazine, no. 11 (1989): 4–7; “‘Initiative’
führt zum ‘Dialog,’” Kultur und Leben, no. 3 (1990): 2–5; and the talks of Chirac and Mitter-
rand, 88 AS 49, ANF.
86. “Für Frieden, Freundschaft und Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Völkern,” Kultur und
Leben, no. 11 (1977): 2–5.
87. See their report to the Federal Foreign Office: “Reise einer Delegation der Arbeit-
sgemeinschaft der deutsch-sowjetischen Gesellschaften in die Sowjetunion,” 10.10.1977,
Neues Amt 10390, PAAA.
88. “An die Ständige Vertretung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bei der Nordatlantikpakt-
Organisation,” 30 June 1977, ZA 133126, PAAA.

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 Chapter 11

THE SOVIET UNION ENCOUNTERS ANGLIA

Britain’s Russian Magazine as a Medium
for Cross-Border Communication

Sarah Davies

A s Cold War historians begin to gravitate away from “phenomena of

the great” to “phenomena of the small,” attention has turned to the
ostensibly minor actors, processes, and initiatives that were significant de-
spite or even because of their size.1 This chapter explores one such small
undertaking: Anglia, the Russian-language quarterly magazine about life in
Britain, produced by the Foreign Office (FO) and distributed in the Soviet
Union between 1962 and 1992.
Influencing and engaging with publics from the opposite camp was a
high priority for both the East and the West throughout the Cold War.
What was labeled variously as “psychological warfare,” “international pro-
paganda,” “publicity,” “cultural diplomacy,” “cultural exchange,” or “public
diplomacy” assumed multiple forms. While international broadcasting has
attracted most attention, slower, smaller-scale media such as magazines
also had an important, if less prominent, role to play in this process.2 Mass
circulation periodicals were enormously popular by the mid-twentieth cen-
tury, with illustrated magazines of the Reader’s Digest, Life, and Paris-Match
variety enjoying a particular boom.3 As East-West communication began
to accelerate from the mid-1950s, both camps came to regard national
magazines such as Amerika, Anglia, and Soviet Weekly as an effective means
of “perforating” the Iron Curtain and advertising the merits of their respec-
tive systems to the other side.
Unlike Amerika, which is relatively well-known and has been discussed
by several scholars, Anglia appears to have been overlooked.4 In part, this
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 The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia

neglect reflects the familiar tendency of Cold War historiography to priv-

ilege the role of the superpowers at the expense of that of smaller actors.
The burgeoning literature on the cultural Cold War includes multiple
studies of American efforts to influence opinion behind the Iron Curtain,5
but it is only relatively recently that attention has turned to the parallel
initiatives undertaken by Western European states, including those of Brit-
ain.6 Notwithstanding ambiguous feelings in Britain about the concept of
“overseas propaganda,” with its connotations of totalitarian media manip-
ulation, the British government, in contrast to that of the United States,
had the advantage of extensive and diverse pre-Cold War experience in
these matters, which afforded it a strong position to build upon. Despite,
or perhaps because of, its waning global power, Britain was determined to
offer an alternative, British contribution to a sphere that would otherwise
have been dominated by the United States.7
Drawing on Foreign Office archival material as well as the magazine
itself, this chapter first considers how and why Anglia was established and
investigates its fundamental ethos. Deliberately differentiated from Amer-
ika, Anglia aimed to tell a subtle and credible story about Britain as a mod-
ern and progressive nation with a distinct set of values and way of life. The
chapter then shifts focus to some apparently very minor actors: ordinary
Soviet readers of Anglia who wrote letters to the magazine. Since it was
considered important that Anglia serve as a catalyst for dialogue between
Britain and the USSR, the exchange of letters between the editor and the
readers was strongly encouraged. Although necessarily limited, this corre-
spondence represents a small but intriguing example of how borders could
be crossed, symbolically and physically, during the Cold War.

Magazine Diplomacy in the Cold War

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
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 Sarah Davies

Although initially suspicious of Soviet overtures, governments in the

West soon joined in this new Cold War game. Even before 1956, the
Americans had begun to question their strategy aimed at the “liberation”
of the “captive peoples” behind the Iron Curtain through the use of co-
vert operations and psychological warfare.10 Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret
Speech” and the crushing of the Hungarian Uprising simply confirmed
these doubts, and the United States came to share the view prevailing in
the Foreign Office that any change in the Soviet bloc would only come
about as a result of a process of internal evolution. Assuming that exposure
to Western values and ways of life would, in the long run, contribute to this
evolution,11 the United States, Britain, and other states began to invest in
cultural diplomacy and exchange with the Soviet Union and its satellites.
By the late 1950s, for example, official exchange agreements had been con-
cluded between the USSR and France (1957), the United States (1958),
and Great Britain (1959).12
It was in this relatively benign climate that Britain’s initial ideas for a
new Russian magazine emerged. The Soviet authorities had always gone to
great lengths to obstruct the circulation of what it dubbed “Capitalist pro-
paganda,” including non-Communist publications and radio broadcasts. In
the 1950s, for example, the only British newspaper in general circulation
in the Soviet Union was the Communist Daily Worker, while the BBC’s
Russian Service was routinely, if ineffectively, jammed. Gradually, small
and not entirely symbolic steps were taken to ease the barriers to commu-
nication. Something of a breakthrough occurred at the high-level meeting
in Britain between Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, and the Prime Minister,
Sir Anthony Eden, in April 1956. Demonstrating that the Soviet Union
was serious about “peaceful coexistence” and that Britain could play a key
role in East-West relations, the talks resulted in a number of constructive
agreements, including a joint declaration on the desirability of furthering
cultural exchange and of taking “practical steps directed towards ensuring
a freer exchange of information by the spoken and written word.”13
A magazine seemed an obvious medium through which Britain could
disseminate information by the written word. FO-sponsored “general pro-
jection” magazines such as Commonwealth Today and the Arabic-language
Al Aalam had played a prominent role in British cultural diplomacy from
the early 1950s.14 The magazine format was deemed particularly suitable
for the USSR with its highly developed culture of reading.15 Periodicals
were especially favored by Soviet readers, and their circulation increased
hugely in this period, reaching 2.6 billion by 1970, 14 times the 1950
level.16 The serious “thick journal,” such as Novyi mir, a blend of literature
and broader sociopolitical articles, enjoyed phenomenal success among the
burgeoning intelligentsia, particularly during the Khrushchev-era thaw.17
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 The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia

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
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 Sarah Davies

agreed to facilitate the distribution of Soviet Weekly in the event of any

difficulties.22
Following the agreement, various practical arrangements were put in
place. Responsibility for the production of the magazine was assigned to
the Central Office of Information (COI), a service department established
in 1946 to produce publicity material for government departments.23 The
magazine’s editor was officially attached to the COI. However, it was the
FO’s Information Research Department (IRD) that took charge of the
magazine’s editorial policy. Formed in 1948 with the explicit remit of coun-
tering Communist propaganda, this clandestine department had originally
concentrated on anti-Communist propaganda in Britain and areas of Brit-
ish influence, but from the mid-1950s it turned its attention to the Soviet
bloc. It was thought that the IRD’s expertise in both Communist states and
propaganda made it especially qualified to take on the project.24
The title of the new magazine was the subject of some discussion at this
stage. Since Britain was (and is) generally known as Англия (Anglia—
England) in Russia and the Soviet Union, Anglia seemed a natural choice
by analogy with the two other national projection magazines then circulat-
ing in the USSR, Amerika and Jugoslaviia.25 It was acknowledged that this
might provoke a vociferous reaction from the “Scottish lobby” in particu-
lar,26 yet it proved difficult to find a suitably inclusive alternative. One sug-
gestion, British Life, was vetoed in the USSR on the grounds that the word
“life” had acquired a hint of “foreign propaganda penetration.” Velikobri-
taniia (Great Britain) was also rejected by FO officials who argued that it
sounded too pompous and carried colonialist overtones in the USSR. A
compromise suggestion, Britannia, was deemed to be poor Russian. Finally,
it was agreed that the title Anglia should be accompanied by a subtitle: “a
magazine about life in Great Britain today.”27

Projecting “Life in Great Britain Today”:

the Subtle Philosophy of Anglia

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
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 The Soviet Union Encounters Anglia

‘Anglia’ cannot deal directly with political subjects, this presentation of an

honest and accurate picture of Britain can both counteract the misleading
account given in the Soviet press, and reveal how unfavourably many as-
pects of life in the Soviet Union compare with Britain.”28
To ensure that Britain was portrayed in a way that was both “attractive”
as well as “truthful and convincing” required some subtlety. As Embassy
officials had emphasized in 1957, they would have to be “careful not to
risk accusations of propaganda (and to avoid this we shall have to be very
subtle indeed!).”29 The British approach was distinguished from that of
the Unites States in this respect, with the COI’s director of publications
proposing a “rather subtler approach” than the “blatantly lavish efforts
of the Americans.” It had always been envisaged that Britain’s magazine
would be more modest than Amerika, partly for financial reasons and so
as not to duplicate American efforts, but also because of differing notions
about the whole matter of “publicity.” While Britain and the United States
cooperated closely in this field, there was an assumption within the Foreign
Office that American practices were inferior; for example, one FO offi-
cial observed very little difference between British and American policies
toward Eastern Europe, apart from in the area of “publicity” where “the
Americans are more adventurous than we are.” This strategy had “not
always proven more effective than our quieter methods.”30
“Quiet” Amerika certainly was not. A large-format, sixty-page monthly
magazine with a print run of fifty thousand copies, it was full of glossy color
photographs and designed for a mass readership. It promoted the American
way of life in a quite unashamed fashion: the first issue included a five-page
spread on American cars, accompanied by a glaringly obvious price chart.31
By contrast, it was proposed in 1957 that Britain’s magazine should appear
quarterly, initially in a run of about ten thousand copies (although this figure
was later increased), and that it would have an unusual pocket-sized format
(similar to that of the Reader’s Digest), which was considered to be more
subtle than that of Amerika. It was thought that the small size would allow
readers to hide it in their pockets, and mean that it was likely to be lon-
ger-lasting—passed around and kept on bookshelves. While it was intended
that the magazine should be illustrated, the main emphasis was to be upon
text oriented toward a particular readership, “the intelligent, non-techni-
cal, layman, particularly of the emergent middle class and the administrative
class.”32 This was in line with the elite-oriented tradition of British overseas
propaganda, which aimed to target the “influential few and through them
[at] the many.”33 All these proposals were ultimately adopted, thus ensuring
that Anglia’s identity remained quite distinct from that of Amerika.
Once the magazine was up and running, various strategies were em-
ployed to minimize any risk that it might be rejected as blatant propaganda
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 Sarah Davies

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

Exchanging Letters: Readers’ Correspondence with Anglia

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
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 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

erbs, a subject on which he had expressed an interest. Cards and pictures

were common gifts, especially postcards of London or pictures of British
pop groups. In some cases, the principle of reciprocity seems to have been
observed. A regular correspondent from Uzhgorod, Pavel Sankov (an en-
gineer), who had requested information about various matters, including
British architecture and landscape gardening, gave Wright Miller a guide
to his region, the Transcarpathian oblast, “for our better acquaintance.”
In his reply, Miller expressed his delight at having received the volume. L.
Krai, the recipient of the book about British proverbs, reciprocated with
some postcards about Russian proverbs, while one couple, the Baizantovs
from Cheliabinsk, sent Miller a set of postcards of Tbilisi in exchange for
the postcards of London he had sent them. Their letter provides an in-
teresting indication of the depth of emotion the relationship with the ed-
itor could evoke, for they claimed to be “unspeakably glad” to receive his
“wonderful letter,” continuing, “We are extremely grateful for your sensi-
tiveness, for your warm words, for your invaluable help in realising our old
dream—correspondence with your country … and at last for your brilliant
gift—wonderful postcards with the sights of London. We earnestly ask you
in token of our deep gratitude to take our modest present—series of post-
cards with the sights of our beautiful city—Tbilisi.”54
The Baizantovs’ mention of “correspondence with your country” was a
reference to Miller’s success in putting them in touch with a pen-friend.
The business of cultivating British-Soviet friendship required not only the
exchange of warm words and small gifts, but also the provision of various
types of practical assistance to the magazine’s readers. Particularly in the
mid-1970s, when détente was flourishing, many Soviet citizens asked An-
glia to help them find pen-friends. Their requests were usually satisfied,
frequently with the help of the G.B.-USSR Association. In this way, the
initial correspondence with Anglia often acted as the catalyst for a further
process of East-West communication. One notable example was Anglia’s
facilitation of correspondence between a bedridden reader, Dzhaminat
Kerimova from Makhachkala, and Lady Susan Masham, a campaigner for
the rights of people with disabilities who had been the subject of a fea-
ture in the magazine. When Kerimova wrote to Anglia to ask if they could
pass on her letter to Lady Masham, they did so, as well as offering to pass
on and translate further correspondence. Masham herself duly responded
with a full letter, in which she discussed her own disability and expressed
an interest in Kerimova’s life, and that of disabled people in the USSR
more generally. She volunteered to continue the correspondence and send
Kerimova magazines about the disabled in Britain.55
The editors and FO officials went to considerable lengths to satisfy cor-
respondents’ requests for information on all manner of subjects. The strict
– 229 –
 Sarah Davies

rationing of information within the USSR created a tremendous “thirst for

knowledge” and many readers appeared to value Anglia as a source of useful
and credible information.56 Following the publication in the magazine of a
profile of Diana Barnes, a postgraduate medical researcher, a professor at a
Moscow children’s hospital wrote to enquire whether Barnes could supply
some specific information about breast cancer treatment. Anglia arranged
for Dr. Barnes to contact her directly. Similarly, a professor of biological
sciences from Ul’ianovsk who had read articles about British agriculture
in the magazine went on to ask for further material on wheat selection in
Britain, and this was arranged through the G.B.-USSR Association. Stan-
islav Gurin wrote to Wright Miller from Kharkov to communicate his feel-
ings about the death of a British specialist on the poet Alexander Blok—“I
was extremely sorry to hear from you of the death of Sir Cecil Kisch; the
death even of someone with whom one is not acquainted can produce a
sad impression”—and to ask if there were any other Blok specialists in
Britain. Miller spent some time tracking down and putting him in touch
with the relevant experts.57
As well as assisting Anglia readers with their requests for pen-friends
and information, the editors helped out in other ways, from correcting the
English of correspondents who were learning the language, to attempting
to resolve the problems of those having difficulty subscribing to the mag-
azine.58 This practical help, in conjunction with the personal approach,
seems to have been greatly appreciated. The editor was regarded by some
not so much as a British government official but rather as a trusted friend.
Certainly this is the impression conveyed by one of Wright Miller’s regu-
lar correspondents, Savitskii from Stavropol, who wrote to the magazine
to express his grief at the death of Miller, whose obituary was published
in Anglia in 1974.59 Savitskii had conducted an extensive correspondence
with Miller that he clearly treasured. He recalled how the editor “did not
leave a single of our letters unanswered and always patiently replied to all
our queries. We awaited his replies eagerly and read them with the greatest
interest. His letters, as his articles, were full of his gentle sense of humour,
showing that he was a good and out of the common person.” Savitskii en-
closed a card for Wright Miller’s wife and daughters, which read: “My wife,
my son and I deeply mourn and share your grief on losing your husband
and father, Mr. Wright Miller.”60
By promoting the exchange of letters between the editor and the readers
in this way, Anglia facilitated grassroots communication between Britain
and the USSR during the Cold War. Ordinary individuals from all over the
USSR felt inspired to enter into friendly correspondence, not only with the
editors themselves, but also with others whom they encountered thanks to
Anglia’s interventions. Although these Soviet citizens may not have been
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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.

Sarah Davies is senior lecturer in history at Durham University, UK. She

is the author of Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia (1997), the coeditor of
Stalin: A New History (2005), and the coauthor of Stalin’s World: Dictating
the Soviet Order (2015). She is currently working on a study of British and
Soviet cultural diplomacy in the Cold War.
– 231 –
 Sarah Davies

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).

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 P A R T IV

ALONG THE BORDERLINES

 Chapter 12

TRANSNATIONAL TELEVISION IN EUROPE

Cold War Competition and Cooperation

Lars Lundgren

T his chapter aims to broaden the perspective on the history of tele-

vision by exploring the relations between Europe’s two main broad-
casting organizations during the Cold War: the European Broadcasting
Union (EBU) and the International Organization of Radio and Television
(OIRT). In particular, the chapter demonstrates how the EBU and the
OIRT were involved in fierce competition during the 1950s and 1960s, try-
ing to present themselves as the leading broadcasting organizations in the
global arena. At the same time, they established a common framework for
the production and transmission of live transnational television in Europe,
resulting in the linking of their respective networks and the inauguration
of a live cross-border television network covering the entire continent in
spring 1961. The analysis of these relations demonstrates two things. First,
early television history had a transnational dimension that is often ne-
glected in the predominantly national narratives of television history. Sec-
ond, the relations between broadcasting organizations counter the image
of a divided Cold War Europe with a rigid East-West binary.1
The dominance of the national perspectives has been pointed out be-
fore, and I share Michele Hilmes’s understanding of media history, arguing
that “media historians frequently adopt a national perspective blindly.”2 To
this I would add that the field is overwhelmingly dominated by research
carried out in the Anglo-American context, with a deficit of histories stem-
ming from other world regions.3 The national and Western bias of media
research in general, and media histories in particular, have not gone unno-
ticed, and, since the mid-1990s, there has been a growing number of stud-
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 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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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

Organizing Broadcasting in Europe: From IBU to EBU and OIRT

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

Thus, from 1950 onward, Europe hosted two broadcasting organizations

acting as competitors on the international arena.19 Still, the organizations
continued some of their cooperation concerning broadcasting on the Eu-
ropean continent. The linking of the Intervision and Eurovision television
networks in 1961 was, as we will see below, the result of cooperation and
negotiation during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the light of the severe
conflicts only a decade earlier, this accomplishment is even more remark-
able. However, as we will see, the relation between the two organizations
was utterly complex, marked by tensions and conflicts as well as a strong
will to cooperate and collaborate.

Science in the Service of Peace

There is an implicit promise in communication, and most notably so in

broadcasting: the capacity to build bridges by connecting people separated
by vast distances has spurred a view of broadcasting as a means to overcome
differences and to act as a catalyst for mutual understanding.20 This line
of thought is perhaps mostly elaborated in the American context, where
broadcasting has been linked both to hopes of mutual understanding and
world citizenship, and fears of alienation and propaganda. However, as
demonstrated by Kristin Roth-Ey, the ambition of the Soviet broadcasting
program was also to reach out on a global scale and to provide a platform
for Socialist internationalism.21
The plans for an international program series called Science for Peace
were first proposed by the OIR in a letter sent out to members as well as
to other broadcasting organizations in 1956.22 The letter addressed the
members of the OIR while at the same time trying to win over members
from competing organizations. In effect, this meant that the letter needed
to vacillate carefully between direct address to members, such as refer-
ences to decisions by the OIR Program Commission, and more universal
values on offer in the series. The opening paragraph stated that the series
was “devoted to topical scientific problems interesting the broad masses
of world public” such as “Radioactive radiation” and “Interplanetary jour-
neys,” supposedly universal topics of the Cold War era.23 The proposal con-
tinued by asserting that the organization wished not only to give the series
an international character in terms of production and the participating
scientists, but also in respect to its audiences and thereby to “contribute to
strengthening international co-operation.” 24
One apparent source of conflict was the organizational nexus of the se-
ries, both the location of the production and how it was to be organized in
terms of decisions over contents. To the OIRT, Prague was the natural site
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 Lars Lundgren

of production, arguing that synergy would be provided as the World Feder-

ation of Scientific Workers (WFSW) and OIRT headquarters were both in
Prague.25 The WFSW was a Socialist initiative and, for the EBU, this pro-
posal was about opening up the airwaves to Socialist scientific propaganda.
Still, it took more than a year for the OIR’s proposal to evoke any re-
action from the EBU. In the OIR’s original proposal, the series was set
to be launched in September 1957, and only by mid-November did the
EBU address its members regarding the issue. Leo Wallenborn, the direc-
tor of the EBU’s administrative office, circulated a letter pointing out that
the OIR’s proposal was “merely a sort of imitation of the activities carried
out since 1949 by the International University of the Air (URI).”26 Even
though this formulation was pretty straightforward, advising the recipients
of the letter to turn to the EBU initiative rather than the OIR’s Science in
the Service of Peace, the letter in its entirety balanced on the same edge as
the OIR did. Wallenborn clearly wanted to advise EBU members to abstain
from transmitting the series, but since one imperative of the EBU was not
to force any decisions upon its members, he also had to acknowledge that
the “policy of … the EBU towards members of the Union has always been
to leave them the entire responsibility for their relations with broadcasting
organisations which are not members of the EBU.”27
The records show that Wallenborn managed to get his message through.
The majority of replies from members, actual or associate, briefly declared
that they had no intention to broadcast any of the programs suggested by
the OIRT, or that they had not received the offer in the first place (for
instance, the Norwegian and Austrian broadcasters). Some broadcast or-
ganizations elaborated a bit further on the reasons for rejecting the offer.
Radiotjänst in Sweden, for instance, explained that they were careful re-
garding international broadcasts given the difficulties in coordination, and
that if they were to engage in such a broadcast it would be with the EBU
rather than the OIRT.28 Most EBU members were thus willing to distance
themselves from the OIRT. This included Israeli Broadcasting Service, the
only non-European member of the EBU.29 While political reasons for de-
clining the offer were obvious, they went unmentioned apart from a single
occasion in which the Dutch broadcaster, Nederlandsche Radio Unie, as-
serted that its definition of peace was different from the countries behind
the Iron Curtain.30 The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) had an in-
teresting and sensitive position as a member of both the EBU and OIRT,
but nevertheless replied that they did “not intend to avail itself of ‘Science
in the Service of Peace’, the programme series offered by the OIR.”31
That active members of the EBU would reject the OIRT offer is perhaps
not so surprising, especially since they were likely already aware of the URI
initiative. Radio Ceylon, an associate member of the EBU, in turn pro-
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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

two different versions. In this sense, the competition for non-European

broadcasters was linked to the Cold War, even though it was not necessar-
ily the two superpowers competing in order to present and promote their
view to the world. In particular, what was being presented through the
program series was the Socialist alternative both in the field of science and
in the field of broadcasting. Both science and broadcasting were part of a
particular kind of universalism and world citizenship, forward-looking and
with a promise of mutual understanding in a world so thoroughly deprived
of understanding.35

A European Broadcasting Union?

As it has been discussed above, exporting program series such as Science

in the Service of Peace built upon an idea of strengthening international
relations through program exchange, as did the similar EBU initiative
University of the Air. Program exchange was an effective means of creat-
ing transnational relations, both by providing content but also by creat-
ing structural and organizational links between broadcasters.36 The early
1960s was a turbulent period with decolonization and a growing number
of broadcasting organizations—for instance, in Africa. The OIRT and the
EBU entered into competition over these new organizations, offering mem-
bership and promises of support regarding development—for instance, of
technical infrastructures. This new situation also meant that the regional
emphasis of the EBU became somewhat superfluous, resulting in a discus-
sion within the organization on how to reduce the risk of being perceived
as representing regional interests rather than universal broadcasting.
The division of membership into passive and active members became
a key issue in this discussion of whether the EBU would be regarded as a
regional or truly global organization. The membership issue reflects the
hierarchical structure of the EBU, in which the active membership was
stipulated by broadcasters’ geographical location within the European
Broadcasting Zone.37 As broadcasting became an increasingly transna-
tional field, this proved even more problematic. In a number of meetings
and in correspondence between member organizations, the question of
changing the union’s name was therefore discussed intensively. The sug-
gestion was to leave “European” out since it was thought to disregard
non-European broadcasting organizations. At a meeting of the General
Assembly in Madrid in November 1960, representatives of the Israeli and
Tunisian broadcasters addressed this as a potential problem for the EBU.
They argued that it would be difficult to attract new members from Africa
and Asia if the adjective “European” was kept in the union’s name. It was
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 Transnational Television in Europe

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

name.47 In addition to Israel and Tunisia, representatives from Norway,

Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria all argued
in favor of a different name. Their main argument was the exclusion of
Asian and African organizations and increased leverage of the OIRT. Tu-
nisian Klibi noted that with “International” in its name, the OIRT had
an advantage in the decolonizing world. One alternative was put forward
particularly strongly. Norwegian representative Fostervoll reminded the
assembly that, in the founding meeting of the EBU in Torquay in 1950,
“the aim had been to create an international Union and not merely a
European one.”48
Those in opposition were a little less articulate, but with strong advo-
cates from the BBC and the RAI in Italy. Their main argument was that
changing the name was mere cosmetics and that the relations with Asian
and African broadcasters could be maintained without too much difficulty.
A couple of delegates, Stephenson of the BBC and Zaffrani of the RAI in
Italy, argued that the EBU was essentially European and should remain
such but also develop relations with other regional organizations. Belgian
representative Kuypers thought that the EBU should be proud of its work
during the last decade and argued that there was no point in risking the
cooperation “for the sake of superficial universalization.”49 Toward the end
of the meeting, it became clear that the two camps would find it difficult
to agree on the matter, and French representative Bonami suggested that
a “written consultation of all the member organisations should be carried
out” for the next meeting in Rome.50
Finally, then, the discussion led nowhere. Consultation was also unable
to further the issue. Thus, the agreement between Rydbeck and Greene
persisted, possibly due to the strong position of the BBC as the initiator
of the union back in 1950. While the exact reason for keeping Europe in
the name may remain secret, correspondence and discussions at the meet-
ings displayed two main concerns. The threat of internal conflicts was an
important factor, bearing in mind the difficult history of European broad-
casting both before and after World War II. However, it was not merely the
return of old conflicts that caused anxiety. Swiss representative Bezençon
noted that the delegates from Tunisia and Israel “were trying to tell us as
nicely as possible that they were subjected to intensive propaganda on the
part of other organisations.”51 The threat of the OIRT’s expansion was
ever-present, and fears reached far beyond the name question. A future in
which the EBU would be isolated to Europe as a regional organization was
unacceptable, especially as transnational and worldwide television were
becoming reality. If the EBU was to avoid succumbing to the expanding
American and Soviet networks, good relations with Asian and African
broadcasters were a necessity.
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 Lars Lundgren

Cooperation and Program Exchange

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

Plans for a more immediate future paralleled the discussions of long-

term cooperation between the transnational organizations. The BBC had
been involved in bilateral negotiations with Soviet authorities regarding
a live transmission of the May Day parade in 1961. However, during the
preparation for the May Day broadcast, the Soviet Union launched the
first manned spaceflight on 12 April 1961. At the time, the BBC already
had personnel in Moscow preparing the planned May Day broadcast. As
soon as news of the spaceflight spread, the BBC tried to speed up the pro-
cess in order to be able to provide a live broadcast to London and the rest
of Europe.57 At first, these efforts were in vain, and Western Europe had to
settle for recorded and edited images of the spaceflight and of the Soviet
reactions.
However, during the following days, the work intensified in order to
overcome the obstacles of the link. The plan was to let the signal pass
through nine countries before reaching London. Since the Eurovision
network had been in service since 1954, there was a formalized protocol
regarding cross-border broadcasting, and, from a technical point of view,
the transmission would have been easy.58 Thus, once the signal was inside
the Eurovision network, difficulties were over. The key problem was to
get the signal across the Gulf of Finland with a reasonable quality. The
Soviet authorities had promised to erect a stronger transmitter in Tallinn
in order to secure reception in Helsinki. This was not possible with such
a short notice. Instead, a complicated three-part negotiation was initiated
between the BBC, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), and the So-
viet authorities.
Bridging the Gulf of Finland was not merely a technical challenge, but
a political one, as the correspondence between the BBC and the Soviet
broadcasters points out. Konstantin Kuzakov, the director of Soviet Cen-
tral Television, had two strong demands that needed to be met before the
BBC could use the signal.59 First, he requested that Danish broadcasters
provide East Germany with a feed of the broadcast, in this way securing the
signal to the countries of Intervision. Indeed, at the time, the Soviet Union
did not have a direct link to the rest of the Communist countries. Sec-
ond, he wanted all rebroadcasts to use the well-known announcer Richard
Dimbleby’s commentary. In a telegram that was sent late in the evening of
13 April from Paul Fox, editor of the BBC program Panorama, and Noble
Wilson, outside broadcast producer at the BBC, to a number of people in
leading positions at the BBC, it was stated, “All relaying countries to take
Dimbleby commentary as guide line or rebroadcast since Kuzakov happy
our commentary but concerned other national approaches.”60
Even though the live broadcast was planned and executed via bilateral
agreements, the cooperation between the BBC and Soviet television had
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 Transnational Television in Europe

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.

Lars Lundgren is assistant professor of media and communication studies

at Södertörn University, Sweden. His current research focuses on early
transnational television in Europe and specifically on program exchange
across the Iron Curtain during the 1960s. He is heading the research proj-
ects “Through the Iron Curtain: Early Transnational Broadcasting and
Television Discourses,” funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foun-
dation and “Via Satellite: Transnational Infrastructures in European Tele-
vision History,” funded by The Foundation for Baltic and East European
Studies.

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

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 Transnational Television in Europe

of Television Programme Material,” Reports and Papers on Mass Communication (Geneva:

UNESCO, 1974). Radio broadcasting is traditionally a field with greater interest in cross-
border communication, especially regarding radio stations active during the Cold War. For
a descriptive account by an insider, see M. Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of
Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (London: Brassey’s, 1997).
3. J. D. Pooley and D. W. Park, “Communication Research,” in The Handbook of Commu-
nication History, ed. P. Simonson, J. Peck, R. T. Craig, and J. Jackson (New York: Routledge,
2013), 76–90.
4. J. Curran and M.-J. Park, eds., De-Westernizing Media Studies (London: Routledge, 2000);
J. Downing, Internationalizing Media Theory. Transition, Power, Culture (London: Sage, 1996);
C. Sparks and A. Reading, Communism, Capitalism and the Mass Media (London: Sage, 1998).
5. This interest can be noted in a number of publications with a particular focus on trans-
national television in Europe: J. Bignell and A. Fickers, A European Television History (Malden:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2008); C. Johnson and A. Fickers, eds., “Transnational Television History: A
Comparative Approach,” Media History 16, no. 1 (2010); and the recently launched journal
VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture.
6. F. S. Siebert, T. Peterson, and W. Schramm, Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian,
Libertarian, Social Responsibility and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and
Do (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956). For an extended critique of Four Theories of
the Press, see Downing, Internationalizing Media; Sparks, Communism, Capitalism; and A. Imre,
T. Havens, and K. Lustyik, eds., Popular Television in Eastern Europe During and Since Socialism
(New York: Routledge, 2013).
7. Prime examples being James Schwoch’s Global TV, which addresses television as a new
medium during the early stages of the Cold War, and Kristin Roth-Ey’s Moscow Prime Time on
the development of a Soviet media empire, which eventually tumbled down by the end of the
Cold War. J. Schwoch, Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1946–69 (Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 2009); 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).
8. W. L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945–1961
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997).
9. Imre, Havens, and Lustyik, eds., Popular Television.
10. See L. Lundgren, “Live from Moscow: The Celebration of Yuri Gagarin and Transna-
tional Television in Europe,” VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 1, no. 2
(2012): 45–55; L. Lundgren, “‘Forerunners of a New Era’: Television History and Ruins of the
Future,” Media History, 21, no. 2 (2015): 178–191.
11. For an exhaustive account of the organization and activities of the IBU, see S. Lom-
mers, Europe—on Air: Interwar Projects for Radio Broadcasting (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni-
versity Press, 2012).
12. For a more nuanced picture, see Hilmes, Network Nations.
13. See N. Wormbs, “Technology-Dependent Commons: The Example of Frequency Spec-
trum for Broadcasting in Europe in the 1920s,” International Journal of the Commons 5, no. 1
(2011): 92–109.
14. Lommers, Europe—on Air, 256ff.
15. The program committee of the EBU was not established until 1953 (then called Radio
Program Committee). E. Eugster, Television Programming across National Boundaries: The EBU
and OIRT Experience (Dedham: Artech House, 1983), 73. For the sake of simplicity the ini-
tialism OIRT is used throughout the text.
16. Lommers, Europe—on Air, 69.
17. See S. Mikkonen, “Mass Communication as a Vehicle to Lure Russian Émigrés Home-
ward,” Journal of International and Global Studies 2, no. 2 (2011): 45–61.
18. Eugster, Television Programming, 39–46. This book is still today the most comprehensive
account of the activities of the OIRT and the EBU. For a more recent work on organizational

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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-

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 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.

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 Lars Lundgren

52. Heinrich-Franke, “Creating Transnationality”; Heinrich-Franke and Immel, “Piercing

the Iron”; Lundgren, “Live From Moscow: The Celebration of Yuri Gagarin and Transnational
Television in Europe.”
53. “Final Report of an Unofficial Meeting of Representatives of the O.I.R. and E.B.U.
Technical Committees, Helsinki, [6 to 9] February 1957,” 9 February 1957, 6, CA PV 2 An-
glais 1957/1960, EBU, Geneva, App. 8, p. 6. The invitation was sent out by the Finnish Broad-
casting Company (YLE), which held a favorable position as a member of both organizations.
UER is the French initialism for Union européenne de radio-television.
54. “Report of the Bureau of the Technical Committee,” 18 C.T./127-Com.T./16-C.A./464,
appendix to “Sixteenth Meeting of the Administrative Council,” 5 July 1957, O.A./1103-
C.A./483, EBU, Geneva.
55. “EBU-OIRT Meeting Geneva 3rd to 6th Feb 1960, Final Resolution.”, O.A./1446-
Com.T./25-Com.Pro./377-Com.J./295, EBU, Geneva.
56. “EBU-OIRT Meeting, Geneva 3rd to 6th February 1960, Final Resolution,” 6 February
1960, Appendix 3, “Report of the Group of Programme Experts,” 1, O.A./1446-Com.T./25-
Com.Pro./377-Com.J./295, EBU, Geneva.
57. “Peter Dimmock, head of television outside broadcast, tells the story of how television
history was made in April 1961”, T11/70/2, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham.
58. W. Degenhardt and E. Strautz, Auf Der Suche Nach Dem Europäischen Programm. Die
Eurovision 1954–1970 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 1999).
59. Telegram from Paul Fox and Noble Wilson to Baverstock, Dimmock, Peacock, et al.,
marked “LO/BU63 LO/TC50 13APL 2155,” 13 April 1961, T11/70/2, BBC Written Archives
Centre, Caversham. The document refers to “Soviet Television” but the production was in
cooperation with Moscow Television, the regional television service at the time.
60. Telegram from Paul Fox and Noble Wilson to Baverstock, Dimmock, Peacock, et al.,
marked “LO/BU63 LO/TC50 13APL 2155,” 13 April 1961, T11/70/2, BBC Written Archives
Centre, Caversham.

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 Chapter 13

TRANSNATIONAL SPACES
BETWEEN POLAND AND FINLAND
Grassroots Efforts to Dismantle the Iron Curtain
and Their Political Entanglements

Anna Matyska

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in Adriatic, an iron curtain has

descended across the Continent.
—Winston Churchill, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 1946

Europe is experiencing an unusual time. Here you have half a conti-

nent, cut off from its roots nearly half a century ago, that now wishes
to return.
—Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Polish Prime Minister, the forum of
the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, 1990

Introduction

T wo mutually constitutive metaphors can be considered to mark the

beginning and the end of the Cold War in Europe: the “Iron Curtain”
metaphor coined by Churchill in his famous “Sinews of Peace” speech (bet-
ter known as the “Iron Curtain” speech) in 1946, and the “return to Eu-
rope” metaphor ubiquitously used by politicians, scholars, and journalists
in reference to Eastern European countries after 1989. The Iron Curtain
entails a definite division between the Eastern and Western bloc, a “crucial
structural boundary, in the mind and on the map,”1 that emerged in the
aftermath of World War II and left “Eastern States of Europe” in the “shad-
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 Anna Matyska

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

interlocutors in Finland were already divorced or remarried when we met,

having either a Polish or Finnish partner in Finland. My research includes
only one nuclear family that lived separated during the Cold War period:
the husband worked in Finland and his wife and children stayed in Poland.
I call my research participants interlocutors, considering our relation-
ship of rapport and the conversational and unstructured character of our
meetings typical for ethnographic fieldwork. My starting point is the ex-
periences of my interlocutors and their interactions with Finns and other
Poles, which marked transnational ties across the curtain. My analysis
regards the post-Stalinist period from the 1960s, when my interlocutors
first came to Finland, to 1989. I complete my interlocutors’ accounts with
existing documents, particularly in relation to the Finnish engagement.

Transnationalism and Destabilization of the Iron Curtain

I define transnationalism broadly as a multistranded process that unbinds

nation state containers through material and immaterial cross-border ac-
tivities, leading to the emergence of transnational social spaces that link
different localities and people across borders and “shape seemingly bor-
dered and bounded structures, actors, and processes.”3 People think and
act transnationally when their activities entail movement of bodies and/
or ideas that create links across borders. Transnationalism is produced by
activities of various types and scale conducted by grassroots actors (such
as migrants and members of nongovernmental organizations) “from be-
low” as well as more powerful institutional actors (political establishments
and economic elites) “from above.” I concede that the same conceptual
umbrella for different types of activities enables studying their power dy-
namics and mutual constitution,4 whereby from-below and from-above
transnationalism are not disjoined but are entangled with one another.
As Smith and Guarnizo argue, “the political elites ruling nation-states do
not merely react to, but actually act to constitute the scope and meaning
of ‘transnationalism’ within their territories,” resisting, reinforcing, or co-
opting the activities of ordinary people.5
My aim at delinearizing Cold War relations through the concept of trans-
nationalism is guided by two interrelated reasons. First, it helps take Cold
War Eastern Europe from behind the Iron Curtain and show its global be-
longing despite systemic differences. Chari and Verdery argue that it is time
to “liberate the Cold War from the ghetto of Soviet area studies,” which
for Chari and Verdery entails studying post-Socialist states “emerging from
behind the Iron Curtain” in the global context of different countries (also
post-colonial ones) with their intertwined histories.6 I support the above
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 Anna Matyska

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.

Transnational Space between Cold-War Poland and Finland

My investigation focuses on Poland and Finland, countries that further-

more disrupt binary East-West divisions. Both countries are good examples
of the ways individual countries and their citizens worked their own ways
across the curtain, in relation to, but also independently from, two major
superpowers. As Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy suggest, recog-
nizing individual Western and Eastern states as more independent actors
is a necessary step in dismantling the image of the bipolar juxtaposition
between two homogenous blocs.12
Finland and Poland are located in a relative geographical proximity to
each other, on opposite sides of the Baltic Sea. However, their geographical
closeness has been complicated by neighboring Russia, which has always
cast a shadow over the histories of both countries. During the nineteenth
and the beginning of the twentieth century, Poland and Finland were part
of Russia, and they gained independence when the Russian Empire col-
lapsed. After World War II, Poland became a part of the Soviet bloc and
its Communist system, while Finland retained Capitalist democracy. As
a consequence, Cold-War Poland is regarded as being located behind the
Iron Curtain, whereas Finland was located outside of it. Yet the position
of both countries was more complicated. On the one hand, Poland’s pre-
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 Anna Matyska

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

“But this is such a beautiful idea!”

Politics of the Communist (Non-)Endorsement

The friendly relationship between Poland and Finland at the governmental

level contributed to various tangible and intangible exchanges, of which
the most significant grassroots force for the destabilization of the curtain
was human mobility. It entailed the circulation of people across borders
and produced transnational encounters. People on the move always carry
with themselves life experiences, ideas, and ties to the places of origin as
well as expectations of what new places would look like. In encounters
with the locals, they compare and evaluate and bring their old ideas and
ties to work in a new context. For my Polish interlocutors, coming to Fin-
land meant, among other things, the concretization of their imaginary of
the Capitalist West, which challenged the very meaning of the West in the
process.
The West always penetrated the Eastern bloc through material com-
modities and cultural trends that the Socialist system appropriated or even
enabled, thus suggesting the transnational constitution of the seemingly
bounded bloc already at the cultural level. Western Capitalism and East-
ern Socialism were not antithetical, but mutually constitutive and com-
plementary, as Alexei Yurchak suggests.18 At the same time, the idea of
the Imaginary West says more about Western influences behind the cur-
tain than about the reverse process. Accordingly, the key component of
the Imaginary West for my interlocutors, as well as arguably for many other
citizens of the Eastern bloc, was the unidirectionality of impact, a process in
which the West affected and was appropriated by the East while the latter
did not make much of a cultural impact outside its borders. In my study,
the most significant sign of the opposite process was the appropriation of
the Communist ideology by a small but very vocal and politically significant
number of Finns. For two of my interlocutors, whom I quote below, noticing
the above seemed like the Cold War paradigm turned upside down.
Adam, an engineering student, came to Finland at the beginning of the
1970s for a student exchange with other Poles. It was his first trip outside
of the Eastern bloc. He considered himself very lucky. To reach Finland,
they traveled through the Soviet Union. Finnish students were supposed
to pick them up from the railways station in Helsinki. As Adam recalled,
the change in the landscape and the surprise that followed were remark-
ably contradictory:
When we crossed the border with Finland, it was a shock. We travelled two
days through the Soviet Union and in Leningrad we had to change trains and
get seating places and it was very difficult. It was a real mess. And suddenly
we cross the border and we see that everything is clean and in order. And I re-

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 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.

A similar example was recalled by Jarek, a student of architecture who came

to Finland at the end of the 1960s, also under a student exchange program:
In the 1960s and the 1970s the Finnish youth was very leftist. They were join-
ing the Communist Party and traveling to the Soviet Union for the organized
trips. When we came to Finland, my friend told them: “Come on! Don’t you see
that whole Communism is a one big nonsense and a hoax.” They opposed: “But
this is such a beautiful idea!” … For instance, when we complained about the
situation in Poland, the assistant at the university told us that quite the con-
trary, “You have such a beautiful system.” What is more, when the Warsaw Pact
army entered Czechoslovakia she told us, “It had to happen.” So that’s the way
they thought. Also many Finns who are currently well known belonged to rad-
ical Communist movement and Russians supported them more or less openly.
The Finnish Communist Party was also very strong. But they were simply naïve.
When I talked to them about the Soviet Union, they would tell me, “We went
there for a trip, Komsomol welcomed us very warmly, there was so much food,
everybody was happy, we were singing. Nobody is hungry and people live well
in the Soviet Union.” But we [living] in the Eastern Bloc, we knew.

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

Political Life of Intimate Family Relations:

Keeping in Touch with Poland

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
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 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

Along with communication and visits, transnational families were en-

gaged in the exchange of material support. Tangible goods and dollars flew
mainly from Finland to Poland—a clear sign of living in different and eco-
nomically unequal systems. On the one hand, one could argue that the
need of family members in Poland for material support proved the mal-
functions of the Communist Polish state and its loss in the global race for
the satisfaction of citizens’ needs. It was one of the signs that a centrally
planned economy was not so centrally planned after all,41 as transnational
material support was spontaneous grassroots support rather than a product
of the deliberate state involvement. On the other hand, particularly from
the 1970s onward, the Polish state needed the foreign currency to pay off
the loans from the West. As family members residing abroad were one of
the valuable sources of hard currency for the Polish state, the tacit goal
was to appropriate this type of transnational practice rather than let it go
unbridled or cease completely. Starting from the 1970s, the appropriation
took place through creating spaces in which the currency could be legally
spent or saved in Poland: Pewex shops and foreign currency saving bank
accounts. The obligatory currency exchange for foreign citizens also served
this purpose. The state could also economically capitalize on telecommuni-
cations, as the prices for international phone calls from Poland were among
the highest in the world, while for local phone calls among the cheapest.42
The strategy was to let callers from abroad pay for the infrastructure and
provide Poland with the necessary foreign currency.43
In the experience of my interlocutors, the initial months of martial law
were the only period when Polish authorities aimed to prevent all transna-
tional family contact. Along with the introduction of martial law, the tele-
communication infrastructure and Polish borders were shut down. When
the lines of communication were finally opened, communication was sub-
jected to official monitoring. When people called, they heard a message
in the background: “This conversation is monitored.” Some of the letters
were received with “censored” stamped on the envelope. Janek, who upon
the introduction of martial law was granted refugee status in Finland, re-
called the impeded contact in the following way: “At some point due to all
this stress some nerve in my face got damaged and I got facial paralysis.
Everything from the face down was fine just my face was like cut in half.
On one side nothing moved, one eye was constantly open, the tongue was
in half. When I drank a beer, I had two tastes. … So I think it was because
of what was happening in Poland. I am sure of that. All the nerves, when
one did not know what was going on. One could not go. Well, nothing was
known.”
At the same time, even the martial law borders were not impenetrable.
The difficulty did not mean that people did not manage to circumvent the
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 Transnational Spaces

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.

The intimate family transnationalism of my interlocutors was also the

space where Finns could show support for Poles leaving under the Com-
munist regime, without the necessity of official declarations of doing so. As
my interlocutors told me, Finns helped them in gaining access to Poland,
provided legal advice, and contributed to their material support by donat-
ing cloths or food. The aforementioned Bronislaw, for instance, would not
have been able to go to Poland during martial law if it had not been for
his friends in the Finnish sports world who helped him go there with the
basketball team. Janek, visiting the Poland of the 1980s for the first time
since he had come to Finland illegally, went with his Finnish friend who
was a lawyer. Janek hoped that the presence of a Finnish friend would
provide legal insurance that he would not be imprisoned. Alina told me
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 Anna Matyska

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.

Toward the Carbon Curtain

Transnational practices discussed in this chapter indicate the emergence

of a multilevel and multipolar47 space across the Iron Curtain, in which
grassroots transnationalism was firmly entangled in a contradictory or har-
monious way with the practices and policies of Polish, Finnish, and Soviet
establishments. Investigation of the links between individual countries
such as Poland and Finland disrupts thinking in the dichotomous East-
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 Transnational Spaces

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

In this chapter, I empirically addressed Finland and Poland, but I treat

these countries as a part of Europe and the world at large. In the world
divided by the permeable curtain, Poland was not excluded from Europe.
It was in Europe all along. This also has implications today as Poland’s met-
aphorical return to Europe is still not fully ascertained—despite Poland’s
accession to the EU. In the crisis-ridden “new” Europe, old divisions die
hard, reemerging under the figure of the Eastern European migrant who
abuses the welfare of the Western states and invades their civilized space
from within. The building of the Iron Curtain shows the continuous ten-
dency to build political and legal walls of exclusion and inclusion around
particular populations and to perpetuate the world hierarchically divided
into separate nation-states and blocs of states. These, as I indicate, are
often undermined in practice by people, even the same people who build
political and legal systems that erect boundaries in the first place.

Anna Matyska is a postdoctoral researcher in social anthropology at

the University of Tampere, Finland. Her Ph.D. dissertation investigated
transnational families living between Poland and Finland in the chang-
ing political circumstances of the Cold War and post−Cold War period:
“Transnational Families in the Making: The Polish Experience of Living
between Poland and Finland throughout and after the Cold War” (2014).
She is currently working on a study of the transnational class practices and
identifications of Polish posted workers in Scandinavia and their families
in Poland.

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

8. U. Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (London: Routledge,

1996), 18.
9. 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.
10. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 4.
11. I use the terms West/Western Europe and East/Eastern Europe as political-cultural
constructs and always in “mental quotation marks.”
12. Autio-Sarasmo and Miklóssy, “Introduction”.
13. L. Basch, N. Glick Schiller, and C. Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational
Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States, 2nd ed. (Luxembourg:
Gordon and Breach, 1995).
14. People who left Poland permanently often left on a temporary passport that they sub-
sequently failed to prolong or return to the Polish authorities, applying for asylum in the des-
tination countries. Thus, they were illegal emigrants from the Polish perspective. People who
left permanently but legally were given a so-called consular passport that legitimized their
stay abroad from the Polish perspective. They should already have been issued a visa from the
destination country. See, e.g., T. Frejka, M. Okolski, and K. Sword, eds., In-Depth Studies on
Migration in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland, United Nations, Economic studies
No. 11 (Geneva: United Nations, 1998), xx.
15. J. Lavery, The History of Finland (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006); F. Singleton, A
Short History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
16. The Polish government signed a similar agreement with only two other Western coun-
tries: Austria and Sweden.
17. E. Later-Chodyłowa, Polacy i Polonia w Finlandii/ Puolalaiset ja Polonia Suomessa (Toruń:
Oficyna Wydawnicza Kucharski, 2004).
18. See A. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Genera-
tion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
19. J. Relander, “From Flowers to Steel: Development of the Leninist Mind in Finland
1968–1972,” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 4 (2008): 464–77; L. Kolbe, “From Mem-
ory to History: Year 1968 in Finland,” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 4 (2008): 366–
81.
20. P. Kotila, “Hertta Kuusinen—The ‘Red Lady of Finland,’” Science & Society 70, no. 1
(2006): 46–73.
21. Kolbe, “From Memory”.
22. Relander, “From Flowers”.
23. J. Paastela, The Finnish Communist Party in the Finnish Political System 1963–1982 (Tam-
pere: Tampereen Yliopisto, 1991).
24. J. Krekola, “Lenin Lives in Finland,” in The Cold War and the Politics of History, ed.
J. Aunesluoma and P. Kettunen (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2008), http://hdl.handle
.net/10224/4029.
25. K. Rentola, “Kekkonen and Kádár in the Soviet Sphere of Influence,” Hungarologische
Beiträge 14, (2002): 99–118, http://epa.oszk.hu/01300/01368/00001/pdf/06rento.pdf.
26. Martial law lasted until 1983. It was introduced by the Polish government led by Gen-
eral Wojciech Jaruzelski. Its aim was to disband Solidarity and prevent a possible Soviet inva-
sion, although it is still arguable whether the latter would have happened.
27. A. Chodubski, “Formation of Polish Colony in Finland,” in Poles in Scandinavia, ed. E.
Olszewski (Lublin: PANTA, 1997), 307–21.
28. R. Laakia, ed., Solidarnoscin nousu tuhosi imperiumin—suomalaisen tukiliikkeen pieni his-
toria (Jyväskylä: Gummerus Kirjapaino Oy, 2005).
29. Similarly, Kubik indicates that the Solidarity movement in Poland emerged as the
movement of people sharing common cultural and political values of Catholicism, freedom,
and independence, rather than as the working class movement. See J. Kubik, “Who Done

– 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.”

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 Chapter 14

A FILTER FOR
WESTERN CULTURAL PRODUCTS
The Influence of Italian Popular Culture
on Yugoslavia, 1955–65

Francesca Rolandi

T his chapter aims to analyze the influence of Italian popular culture on

Yugoslavia in the decade between 1955 and 1965. My hypothesis is
that, during this period, Italy played the role of a filter for cultural products
coming from Western Europe that could not find any other way to enter
the country. Moreover, some light will be shed on the similar role that Yu-
goslavia played toward neighboring people’s republics. Here I will refer to
a broad definition of popular culture, including both artifacts (pop music,
light films, TV programs, etc.) and everyday practices (e.g., the habit of
going shopping in Trieste and of listening to Italian radio broadcasts) able
to reach a wide audience and intimately connected with an idea of mo-
dernity and industrialization. This research is based on archival and press
sources from the former Yugoslavia, with a specific focus on its two main
cities, Belgrade and Zagreb. In the last two decades, the focus of Cold War
studies has moved toward cultural relations and transnational connections
between European states, shedding light on the differences among the
countries within the same bloc.1 In this setting, popular culture has turned
out to be an increasingly meaningful perspective for investigating wider
dynamics affecting societies. This focus has also extended outside the two
superpowers. This chapter draws on a number of recent research projects
concerning the role of popular culture in Socialist Yugoslavia.2 Far from
being a subversive agent, popular culture is shown to have been a tool of
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 Francesca Rolandi

legitimization for Socialist Yugoslavia and a good medium for delivering an

image of openness and modernity abroad.
In the aftermath of World War II, Italy, as part of the Western bloc,
was strongly influenced by trends coming from the Anglo-American world,
mainly through the new media of the time: first cinema, and then mu-
sic and television. Moreover, Italians had direct contact with the United
States thanks to U.S. soldiers during World War II. As a result, Italians
became fascinated by new trends and items these soldiers brought into the
country, from music records to chewing gum and manufactured cigarettes.
These encounters increased the interest in cultural phenomena such as
jazz and fashion trends, and in artifacts coming from what was perceived
as the New World. The United States became a synonym for modernity,
change, and a fascinating way of life. The phenomenon of Americaniza-
tion affecting the younger generations was mocked in popular culture, for
instance in the movie Un americano a Roma (An American in Rome) and
the song Tu vuo’ fa’ l’americano (You Are an American Wannabe). The
American influence continued to be strong after World War II, drawing
on ideological affinities stressed by the Italian ruling Christian Democratic
Party, and it was strengthened by direct contact with the United States
through Italian immigrants and American soldiers based at the Allied Joint
Forces NATO Command in Naples. It has been observed that the Italian
popular culture accepted and accommodated some phenomena coming
from the United States, depriving them of their original subversive or con-
troversial meanings, as happened with some rock ’n’ roll classics.3 More-
over, Italy had an important position as a border country of the Western
bloc, hosting the strongest Communist party in Western Europe.4

Yugoslavia’s Exceptionalism and Popular Culture

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-
– 279 –
 Francesca Rolandi

quate critical sensibility and resistance against diverse influences among

the youth.”11
A few members of the Ideological Commission stressed that counter-
measures undertaken by the Yugoslav authorities against cultural influences
were unsuccessful. In particular, the popular press was blamed for accept-
ing a large number of articles devoted to foreign countries, and without
serious scrutiny:
It is very negative that that material is chosen and presented in an uncritical
way. They are often just translations, entire or summarized, of articles from
the Western press, usually without any commentary or stance, or seldom with
formalistic limitations. Unordinary topics from the “upper class” or from the
silver screen or the sport world are often dominant. The approach to the topics
mentioned gives a onesided and distorted image of Western countries, errone-
ous representations about achieving an easy life and about freedom in those
countries. The flood of similar writings affects without any doubt the gaze
and the way of thinking, and especially the taste, sensibility and habits of our
audience.12

The Yugoslav leadership had two different conceptions of this question:

(a) according to many opinions the foreign influence is regarded as the main
source of our several failings; (b) according to some other opinions, the prob-
lem is connected with our objective and subjective frailties on which nega-
tive influences from other countries just stick and graft upon. It is true that
both conditions and elements in our society are susceptible to negative and
alien influences of different kinds, and therefore we should not underestimate
the proportions and meaning of organized ideological-political and propagan-
dist-psychological pressure from the two blocs, especially since we live in a
quite tense Cold War environment.13

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

The opening up of Yugoslavia was regarded as inevitable but also prob-

lematic. It is not a coincidence that, in 1960, the Yugoslav authorities felt
an urge to control and to some extent even limit both foreign propaganda
and the development of popular culture. The “law on press,” which entered
into force in October 1960, stated under which conditions foreign infor-
mative centers were allowed to work in Yugoslavia.15 The same law aimed
at controlling local media by banning the “publication and diffusion” of
cultural products that “seriously offended and prejudiced the education of
children and the youth,”16 a concept which, in its broader interpretation,
could have a restrictive impact on every sector of the cultural sphere.
Popular culture is a field that was potentially very important in the Cold
War setting due to its ability to get through to so many people. The Yugo-
slav authorities seemed to understand this strategic potential. Both models
were considered problematic: the Western model that separated popular
culture from the state, linking it with the market, as well as the Socialist
one that mainly opposed or strictly controlled popular culture. Western
mass culture was said to “reduce cultural needs of people into a pastime,”
while “socialist realism reduced it into upbringing in the spirit of strictly
dictated State rules. There the leader is the market, here the State.”17
The idea that the Yugoslav popular culture should adopt a “third way”
became popular among cultural workers. The third way included being
aware of the role of culture in the state-building process but without
completely disregarding its commercial value or broader popular appeal.
This approach was based on the persistence of the Yugoslav leadership in
pushing forward the idea of Yugoslav exceptionalism, a specific identity in
which elements from both opposite Cold War blocs coexisted. It was in the
1950s that this hybrid identity—Maja Kolanović defined it as “a Yugoslav
bastardity in which filo-Western tendencies on one hand and grounded
aspirations to a dominant ideology from the East on the other mixed to-
gether on several levels”—came into being.18 This exceptionalism was also
visible in the Yugoslav consumer culture, which was a hybrid sharing char-
acteristics from both the Capitalist and the Socialist systems.19
Perhaps also for this reason, the Yugoslav authorities paid special atten-
tion to influences from both blocs, anxious to keep the balance. However,
certain influences were less associated with the blocs than others. This
applied to Italian popular culture, which was able to spread more freely in
the country, being perceived as less consciously propagandist and danger-
ous than American popular culture.

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 Francesca Rolandi

The Porous Italian-Yugoslav Border

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.

Consuming Italian Pop Culture in Yugoslavia

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

Rijeka was a home to several people who contributed to the improve-

ment of music relations between Italy and Yugoslavia. These included Ma-
rio Kinel, a composer who rearranged foreign compositions for the popular
singer Ivo Robić and later became an editor of the main Yugoslav label
Jugoton.26 At the time when gramophones were not affordable yet for the
majority, rearrangements of Italian songs broadcast on Yugoslav radio were
able to reach wider audiences than mere recordings.
The Sanremo Festival achieved huge popularity in Yugoslavia, inspiring
the rise of the genre of zabavna (entertainment) muzika,27 instead of the
majority of the artists merely performing foreign (mostly Italian) songs.
The Sanremo music contest established itself as a model for the music con-
tests that flourished all over the country, starting from the foundation of
the Zagreb Festival in 1953. Yugoslavia became a destination for interna-
tional musicians, Italian included. From the mid-1950s, Italian stars rang-
ing from Mina and Little Tony to Domenico Modugno and Rita Pavone
and many others occasionally performed in Yugoslavia.
The importance of Italian music in post–World War II Yugoslavia was
stressed by the Bosnian poet and screenwriter Abdulah Sidran in a recent
interview, in which he recalled how the first editions of the Sanremo Festi-
val was regarded as a collective ritual:
At that time there were no private television sets in people’s houses and one
could watch Sanremo just in “Kultura dom” [sic], the Houses of culture. The
television set was kept in closet with heavy wooden doors locked by a latch
chain. Turning on the television was the outcome of a slow and solemn cere-
mony: the keeper of the club arrived like a Napoleon, unlocked the latch chain
with a key and said: “Now you can watch Sanremo.” We talk about the decade
from 1955 to 1965. It is no coincidence that later when I wrote the screenplay
for Dolly Bell—which was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 1981—the
soundtrack had two [famous Italian singer] Celentano’s songs, 24.000 baci and
Sei rimasta sola. The first one being the leitmotif of the movie.28

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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-
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 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

what they perceived as an inferiority complex affecting the Yugoslavs.39

While films were formally co-productions, foreign partners controlled the
products, providing directors and actors, while Yugoslavs usually provided
lower technicians, supporting people, and animals for historical movies.
The Italian model, or rather the Western model mediated through Italy,
penetrated Yugoslavia not just through the cinema screen but also through
television.40 Early on, Yugoslavia was unable to provide its own program-
ming throughout the day, and opted for foreign programming that was
mostly Italian—itself influenced by American television—and to a lesser
extent Austrian. The Italian government, understanding the propaganda
potentiality of the situation, seized this opportunity by signing an agree-
ment allowing an increase of Italian programs without any fees. Broad-
casting was made possible by a network of conveniently placed antennas.
As one of the pioneers of the Yugoslav television industry has recalled,
“we seldom broadcast Austrian television programs. The editors of our
three television centres41 agreed about which RAI [Italian public televi-
sion] programs were going to be broadcast in the common program. This
co-operation with RAI was invaluable, especially in the first two years of
the common programming, 1959 and 1961.”42
In the following years, Yugoslavia signed an agreement with both Euro-
vision and Intervision radio and television networks, which paralleled the
Cold War lines of division. Yet the dominance of Western programming
was obvious not only regarding audience preferences, but also in the num-
ber of screened programs. In 1963, the Yugoslav television broadcast 131
hours of Eurovision programming, including 37 from RAI, and just 2 from
Intervision. In 1965, RAI broadcasts reached 60 hours.43 It was clear from
the beginning that the Yugoslav radio-television industry was shaped on a
Western model. Yugoslavia was a founding member (1950) of the Western
EBU (European Broadcasting Union) and was never part of the Soviet-led
OIRT (International Organization for Radio and Television).44
In addition to official program exchange, people in the coastal areas
were able to receive Italian broadcasts directly, having access to newscasts
and other programs outside the exchange, and this raised an issue about
foreign propaganda. Furthermore, these people were usually able to un-
derstand Italian, having been former Italian citizens and due to additional
historical circumstances. They were therefore able to overcome linguistic
barriers and gain direct access to an external source of information. A few
years after the beginning of Yugoslav TV broadcasting, the coastal areas
(such as Istria, Dalmatia, and Montenegro) were beyond Yugoslav signal
reach (in 1962, radio signals were received by 70 percent of inhabitants
and the TV signal by a mere 29 percent). Instead, Italian signals were re-
ceived loud and clear, a matter of concern for Yugoslav authorities.45
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 Francesca Rolandi

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

Italy as a Place of Passage to the “Real West”

In Yugoslav popular culture, references to Italy are usually positive; Italy

symbolizes good-quality, charming products and a fascinating way of life.
It is worth stressing that Italy’s engagement in cultural propaganda was
mainly devoted to spreading classical culture, ignoring the potential of
popular culture. Insisting on this approach, they proved not to be able to
exploit the influence of popular culture as a potentially effective weapon
to be used in the Cold War. In the documents regarding Italian cultural
diplomacy, there is no reference to music, popular movies, or fashion.
The elements that characterized the image of Italy in Yugoslavia were
mostly omitted. In general, Italian official cultural exchanges promoted
exhibitions, lectures, and publications, mostly what was considered “high
culture,” corresponding to classical ideas of Italian culture. Moreover,
the Italian Communist Party helped spreading leftist cultural products
in the neighboring Socialist country. This approach also went the other
way around, with Italian left-wing politicians and intellectuals striving to
spread Yugoslav cultural products in Italy, which mostly consisted of com-
mitted artists that drew on a declared ideological affinity. Popular culture
was simply ignored, as both major Italian political forces—Catholic and
Communist movements—were hostile toward entertainment.52
Consequently, Italian popular culture was able to spread in Yugoslavia
in a spontaneous way, outside official frames, with its agents at least partly
unconscious of their role. On the other hand, official Yugoslavia allowed
these influences to penetrate, not considering them subversive, allowing
them to become mainstream. In this way, the government was aware of
the foreign influences existing in the country, especially popular among
young people, but it also delivered a message of democratic Yugoslavia
abroad. Moreover, to some extent, Yugoslavia’s access to Western popular
culture and consumer society was part of a deliberate strategy carried on
by the government to present the country as a successful blend of Socialist
and Capitalist elements and a testing ground for the “new social form that
might avoid some of the worst ills and excesses of both Cold War para-
digms.”53 Contemporary memories of citizens of former Yugoslavia about
meetings with Italy often underline them as moments of opening up, get-
ting to know the world, reminding them of a time when people were free to
travel and had better economic standards than now, allowing them to buy
cheap Italian goods and to get a little taste of increasing wellbeing.
It has to be noted that, in the second postwar decade, Italy and Yugo-
slavia were both living a period of economic boom. Both started with very
poor economic standards, developing and urbanizing quickly, but at the

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 Francesca Rolandi

same time suffering—to a different extent—from similar economic and so-

cial problems. Especially the southern areas of both countries felt the con-
tradictions of fast urbanization strongly leading to a clash of modernization
and patriarchal society. Moreover, Italian and Yugoslav migrants could be
found side by side as guest workers in German and Swiss factories. The
affection for Italy in the Yugoslav gaze was possibly fostered by these shared
experiences, allowing Yugoslavs to look at Italy not as a rich and faraway
Western country but as a place of gradual passage between what has been
called the “real West”54—meaning countries such as France, Germany, and
Switzerland—and Yugoslavia itself, sharing some characteristics with both
systems. This gradual aspect is even more evident in the place of passage
of Trieste, an Italian city that was also home to a strong Slavic community.
Drawing on this familiarity, Italian popular culture contributed to the
shaping of Yugoslav popular culture, inserting new influences in a more
harmonious and less conflicting way than would have probably been the
case with a direct connection with the United States. The Italian model,
far from being demonized, represented a more acceptable one, based on
experiences not far from the Yugoslav reality and mentality.
The cultural phenomena that entered Yugoslavia through the Italian
filter did not just originate in Italy but also from the United States, for
which there were not that many direct channels at that time. Italian yellers
(young singers who, inspired by rock ’n’ roll, sang loudly, differentiating
themselves from the typical Italian melodic style) brought to Belgrade, Za-
greb, and Ljubljana the rock ’n’ roll sound based on American models;
Italian public television broadcast quiz shows inspired by American ones;
and Italian electric appliances (symbols of the success of Western Capital-
ist society), bought in Italy by the most well-off Yugoslav families, allowed
the Yugoslav way of life to resemble the American one. Western elements
from Italian culture were emblems of a modernity deprived of transgressive
elements, representing a model of “moderate consumerism” in compari-
son with the American model. Through the Italian intermediary, however,
these influences became acceptable in Yugoslavia.
Considering a wide range of different elements, this chapter has demon-
strated how Italy can be regarded as a filter for Western cultural products
entering Yugoslavia. One could define a filter as an element that allows
a flow but professes selection, retaining only some of the features. In this
case, another selection took place in the Italian context, removing the
most controversial aspects of the Western Capitalist model from the Yu-
goslav perspective. Furthermore, if we look at the chain of influences con-
necting the Western and the Eastern bloc through the Italian-Yugoslav
connection, we should not forget that this connection was also a filter
further east, to other people’s democracies. As has been pointed out, this
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 A Filter for Western Cultural Products

took place in the smuggling of goods through Yugoslavia, or in Yugoslav

performers’ tours within the Soviet bloc. In this chain, every step repre-
sented a new process of accommodation and negotiation of foreign influ-
ences in a local context.
Although at first sight this relation could seem a one-way street domi-
nated by the West, one should remember that, in cultural encounters, even
the most influential culture is compelled to interact with external influ-
ences and, to be successful, has to adjust to the local context. Therefore,
local cultures were not just passive receptors but also actively influenced
the external stimuli, allowing them to enter the country after a process
of negotiation with the dominant values. Yugoslav directors and produc-
ers, musicians, and fashion designers were not importing foreign models,
but essentially made acceptable versions of them. Western trends could
be made acceptable for official Yugoslavia, but certain elements that were
considered alien by politicians had to be played down. Also, some other
elements had to be added sometimes in order to help the reception. In view
of the fact that every border crossing represented a new process of accom-
modation and negotiation, trends and goods acquired a meaning different
from the original one when introduced in a new context. Indeed, while the
light motorbike Vespa was in the UK a symbol of the working class teenager,
in Yugoslavia it was affordable only to older and well-educated members of
the urban middle class.55
If Italy was perceived as a gradual place of passage to the real West,
Yugoslavia was, even on the geopolitical plane, a place of passage to the
“real East,” sharing several political and economic features with the East-
ern bloc, but with an independent international position.

Francesca Rolandi studied history at the University of Milan. She ob-

tained a Ph.D. in Slavic studies at the University of Turin in 2012. Her
Ph.D. research, which received the Vinka Kitarovic award in 2014, inves-
tigates the influence of Italian popular culture in Yugoslavia in 1955–65
and its role as a filter for Western cultural products. Her current research
is focused on the migrations of Yugoslav citizens to Italy in the 1950s and
1960s. She has been a research fellow at the Italian Institute for Histor-
ical Studies in Naples and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Southeast
European studies of the University of Graz. She is currently based at the
University of Rijeka, Crotia.

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

2. I. Duda, U potrazi za blagostanjem. O povijesti dokolice i potrošačkog društva u Hrvatskoj

1950–ih i 1960–ih (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2005); I. Duda, Pronađeno blagostanje. Svakodnevni
život i potrošačka kultura u Hrvatskoj 1970–ih i 1980–ih (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2010); Z. Jan-
jetović, Od “internacionale do komercijale.” Popularna kultura u Jugoslaviji 1945–1991 (Beograd:
Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2011); R. Vučetić, Koka-kola socijalizam (Beograd: Službeni
glasnik, 2012); B. Luthar and M. Pušnik, eds., Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday
Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2010); H. Grandits
and K. Taylor, eds., Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s)
(Budapest: Central University Press, 2010).
3. M. Merolla, Rock ‘n’ roll, Italian Way. Propaganda americana e modernizzazione nell’Italia
che cambia al ritmo del rock (Roma: Coniglio, 2011), 11–13.
4. P. Scrivano, “Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conver-
sion to Consumerism,” Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 317–40; R. Agostini,
“Change and Continuity in Italian Mainstream Pop: A Study on the Sanremo Festival in the
50s and the 60s,” paper presented at the conference Making Music, Making Meaning, IASPM
13th Biennial Conference on Popular Music Studies, Rome, 25–30 July 2005; A. Portelli,
“L’orsacchiotto e la tigre di carta. Il rock and roll arriva in Italia,” Quaderni storici 58, no. 1
(1985): 135–47; Merolla, Rock ‘n’ roll.
5. J. Perovic, “The Tito-Stalin Split: A Reassessment in Light of New Evidence,” Journal of
Cold War Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 32–63.
6. L. M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia and the Cold War 1945–1960
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
7. S. Bianchini, La questione jugoslava (Firenze: Giunti, 1999), 93–95; S. Rajak, Yugoslavia
and the Soviet Union in the Early Cold War: Reconciliation, Comradeship, Confrontation 1953–57
(London: Routledge, 2010).
8. The foundations of the Non-Aligned Movement were set at the Bandung Conference
(1955) in order to gather all the countries that considered themselves an alternative to both
blocs. Together with India, Egypt, and Indonesia, Yugoslavia was one of the leading countries
of the Non-Aligned Movement and hosted its first summit in 1961.
9. P. J. Marković, Beograd između Istoka i Zapada (Beograd: Službeni list SRJ, 1996).
10. Sednica o omladini, 26–27, 9/1/1960, I/2- b. 132, k. 8, fond 507 (Ideološka komisija),
Centralni Komitet Saveza Komunista Jugoslavije (CKSKJ), Arhiv Jugoslavije (AJ).
11. Neki vidovi idejnog uticaja iz inostranstva u određenim oblastima našeg kulturno-
umetničkog, zabavnog i naučnog života, 9, 1/6/1962, II/2-b.166, fond 507, CK SKJ, AJ.
12. Ibid., 8.
13. Teza za diskusiju o nekim obeležjima i problemima današnje omladine, 7, 11/05/1962,
II/2—b. 165, k. 10, fond 507, CK SKJ, AJ.
14. Ibid., 8.
15. Marković, Beograd između Istoka i Zapada, 263.
16. R. Senjković, Izgubljeno u prijenosu. Pop iskustvo soc kulture (Zagreb: Biblioteka et-
nografija, 2008), 77.
17. Quoted in Senjković, Izgubljeno u prijenosu, 74.
18. M. Kolanović, Udarnik! Buntovnik! Potrošač! Popularna kultura i hrvatski roman od soci-
jalizma do tranzicije (Zagreb: Ljevak, 2011), 77–79.
19. P. H. Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 1–18.
20. G. Sluga, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity and
Sovereignty in Twentieth Century Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).
21. M. Crevatin, “La stampa jugoslava e la polemica anti-italiana,” in La questione adriatica
e l’allargamento dell’Unione Europea, ed. F. Botta, I. Garzia, and P. Guaragnella (Milano: Franco
Angeli, 2007), 200.

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 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-
retariat za notranje zadeve, Ministarstvo za notranje zadeve, Arhiv Republike Slovenije.
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-
tus, 2003), 25.
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.
30. S. Škarica, Kad je rock bio mlad. Priča s istočne strane 1956–1970 (Zagreb: VBZ, 2005),
45–47.
31. D. Vuletic, Sounds Like America: Yugoslavia’s Soft Power in Eastern Europe, in Divided
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 INDEX

A Anglia, 218–19, 222–31

anti-Communism, anti-Communist, 26, 28–29,
Abraham, Pierre, 177 34, 39, 71, 85–88, 156, 160, 166, 169, 222,
academic exchanges, 104, 121, 124, 133, 154 266
ASLA-Fulbright, 104 anti-Westernism, 178, 183–85, 192
fellowship(s), 131, 153, 164–65 Apple Computers, Inc., 110
grant(s), 33, 122, 125–28, 131, 153, 158– Aron, Raymond, 161, 163
59, 164–67 Asia, 244–47
scholarship(s), 2, 5, 122, 124–30, 286 Association for Technical Internships (ASTEF)
academics, 30, 49, 124–25, 131, 165, 205, 209 (France), 125, 130, 133
Afghanistan, 209 Atlantic alliance, see NATO
Africa, 35, 156, 244–47 Australia, 109, 117
agreements on cultural and scientific exchanges, Austria, 14, 157–59, 242, 247, 283, 287
7, 44–46, 66–68, 89
Denmark and German Democratic
Republic (1972), 48 B
Denmark and Poland (1960), 45–47
Denmark and the Soviet Union (1962), Baltic Sea, 57, 261
45 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), 238,
Finland and Hungary (1959), 140 240, 245–47, 250–51, 288
Finland and the Soviet Union (1955), 104 Russian Service, 227
France and Romania (1965), 123, 130 World Service, 168
France and the Soviet Union (1957), Behrendt, Walter, 207
202–3, 220 Belgium, 27, 154, 157, 202
Italy and the Soviet Union (1959), 203 Belgrade, 31, 277, 279, 290
United Kingdom and the Soviet Union Beneš, Edvard, 180, 185
(1959), 220 Bolshoi Theatre and Ballet, Moscow, 201
United States and the Soviet Union Bondy, François, 154–55
(1958), 220 Bonn, 67, 131, 206
Albania, 63, 68 Bonnard, André, 87
Alliance française, 125, 129, 180, 182 books
All-Union Society for Cultural Relations sending, distribution, circulation of, 153,
(VOKS), 196, 219 157–59, 161–64
Alting von Geusau, Frans, 23, 25, 28, 32–34, flows, 162, 169
37–38 Brandt, Willy, 58, 206
americanization, 186, 278 Ostpolitik, 24, 27, 206–8
Amerika, 218–19, 221–23, 225–26 Brezhnev, Leonid, 29, 64, 69, 72, 74, 76, 210,
Amnesty International, 27, 31 265
Andersin, Hans, 105–6 British Ally, 221, 227
Andropov, Yuri, 76 British Council, 201–2

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 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

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 Index

public, 14–15, 218 Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), 242–43,

magazine, 219 250–51
dissident movement, 155, 27 Finnish-Soviet Commission on Scientific and
dissidents, 58, 77, 160, 162–64 Technical Cooperation, 105
Dorodnitsyn, Anatolii A., 105–7, 109 working group on cybernetic, 105–7
Dönhoff, Marion Gräfin (von), 158, 207 Finno-Ugric studies, 142–43
Dubinin, Yuri, 70 Foundation pour une entraide intellectuelle
Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, 91–92 européenne (The Foundation for European
Intellectual Cooperation), 151–76
Ford foundation, 153, 157–59, 168
E France, 14, 63–81, 83, 121–137, 151–73, 177–95,
196–217, 220, 290
Eastern bloc, 27, 31, 44–48, 51–53, 55, 58–59, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE), 65, 127, 130,
63, 65, 67, 77, 83, 87–88, 90–91, 101, 109, 155, 183, 202, 204, 208
114, 192, 263–64, 266, 269, 280, 285, 290–91 Ministry of Internal Affairs, 128
East Germany. See German Democratic Republic freedom (as Cold War concept), 30, 64–65, 67,
EBU. See European Broadcasting Union 131, 140, 267, 279–80
École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie (ESPCI) French National Centre for Scientific Research
in Paris, 130 (CNRS), 125, 129
Eden, Sir Anthony, 220 Freymond, Jacques, 86
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 88, 200 friendship societies, 196, 198, 200, 202, 205, 210.
electrocardiology, 147 See also SSOD & VOKS
Eliade, Mircea, 163 Belgo-Soviet society, 196, 210
elites, 7, 24, 39, 49, 124, 166, 177, 223, 258–59, British-Soviet society, 202–4, 209, 229
267–68, 272 Finnish-Hungarian society, 139
emigration, 66, 262, 269 France-Czechoslovakia society, 181–82
Emmanuel, Pierre, 154–55, 160, 181 French-Soviet society, 200, 202–5, 209–10
entangled history, 1, 12, 198 German-Soviet society (DSF), 198–99,
espionage, 87, 182, 184 206, 211
Estonia, 101–120 Italian-Soviet society, 203
Soviet occupation of (1944), 102 Swiss-Soviet society, 83, 86–87, 89, 92
Academy of Sciences, 113 West-German-Soviet society(ies), 207–10
Estonian-Finnish Joint Committee of Informatics Frisch, Max, 87, 91–92
(1988), 107, 110–11, 114–16
European Broadcasting Union (EBU), 237–40,
242–49, 251–52, 287 G
European Security Conference. See Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe Gagarin, Yuri, 239
European Union (EU), 6, 9, 112, 258 Gampfer, Georg, 199
Eurovision, 238, 241, 249–51, 287 Gaulle, Charles de, 64–67, 73, 77–78, 122, 124,
experts, 7, 30, 102, 104–8, 111–13, 116, 139, 128, 130, 208–9
145–47, 230 Geremek, Bronislaw, 166
German Democratic Republic (GDR), 27, 93,
161, 250, 268, 271
F the recognition of, 48
Geneva, 63, 69, 70, 74, 77, 85, 88, 178, 191, 219,
Farner, Konrad, 87, 92 238, 246, 249
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 49–50, Geneva Conference (1955), 201
104, 138, 145, 157–59, 198–99, 206–8, 211, Germany. See either German Democratic
238 Republic or Federal Republic of Germany
Foreign Office, 206–8 Gide, André, 189
Ostpolitik, 24, 27, 206–8 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 63, 78, 164, 209
FEIE. See Foundation pour une entraide Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), 228
intellectuelle européenne Gottwald, Klement, 190–1
Finland, 3, 14, 101–20, 138–50, 247, 249, Granö, Olavi, 145
257–76
Academy of Finland, 138, 144–45
Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 (YYA), 104, H
262
neutrality, 56, 140–41, 265, 267 Haavikko, Paavo, 143

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 Index

Hamon, Léo, 202 influence of the fall on historiography, 4,

Haraszti, Miklós, 163 238
Heinemann, Gustav, 207 and isolation, 54, 66, 220
Helsinki Accords. See Conference on Security permeability of, 133, 163, 169, 239
and Cooperation in Europe Iron Curtain metaphor, 1–3, 122, 124, 133, 179,
Helsinki Final Act. See Conference on Security 259–61, 272–74
and Cooperation in Europe carbon curtain metaphor, 272–74
Himmelstrup, Per, 48 nylon curtain metaphor, 273
historiography, 1, 9, 25, 63, 152, 197, 219, 238 Iron Curtain speech. See Churchill, Winston
Hoffmeister, Adolf, 181 Israel, 37, 75, 242, 244, 246–47
Huber, Hans, 88 Italian public television (Radiotelevisione
humanities, 129, 144, 161, 165 Italiana, RAI), 247, 287–88, 290
human rights, 15, 25, 29–32, 35, 38, 57, 64, 69, Italian-Yugoslav border
124, 267 settling of the border dispute, 282
Hungary, 14, 31, 34, 47, 138–50, 156, 161–64, shopping in Trieste, 277, 283
184 Italian-Yugoslav coproductions, 286–287
Academy of Sciences, 138, 145–46 Italy, 14, 132, 134, 154, 159, 247, 277–94
Soviet invasion of (1956), 8, 139–40,
202–3, 221
J
I Japan, 109, 117, 184
Jelenski, Constantin, 153–55, 157
IACF. See International Association for Cultural Joliot-Curie, Frédéric, 199
Freedom Jotterand, Franck, 87–88, 92
IBU. See International Broadcasting Union
IFIP. See International Federation for
Information Processing K
Ignotus, Paul, 163
immigration, 87, 262, 271 Kabalevsky, Dmitry, 201
Information Research Department (IRD) (UK), Kádár, János, 139–43
201, 222, 225–26 Kekkonen, Urho Kaleva, 139–44, 265
Initiative ’87, 209–10 KGB, 36, 39, 76, 267
Institut des hautes études cinématographiques Khrushchev, Nikita, 64, 140, 202–3, 220, 279
(Institute of Higher Cinematographic Studies, visit to Britain, 220
IHEC), 127 King, Mavis, 226
intellectual(s), 49, 70, 75, 88, 91, 124, 151, knowledge transfer, 8, 129. See also technology
153–57, 160–67, 178–79, 185, 191, 196–97, transfer
200, 209, 289 cultural (and scientific), 151, 160, 168–69,
Interdoc (International Documentation and 186
Information Center), 28–29 Koch, Harald, 207
International Association for Cultural Freedom, Kogon, Eugen, 206
153–57, 160 Koivisto, Mauno, 141
International Broadcasting Union, 239 Kolakowski, Leszek, 159
International Federation for Information Konrad, György, 166
Processing (IFIP), 105–6, 113 Kosygin, Alexei, 73
international history, 4, 10 Kremlin, 32, 36, 67–68, 76, 78
internationalism, 9–10, 32, 144, 177, 241 Kuibyshev (Samara), 227
International Organization of Radio and Kunth, Donald, 113
Television (OIRT), 237–39, 241–49, 251–52, Kuznetsov, Vladimir, 29–30
287
Internet, 111–13
internships, 124–25, 129–30 L
Intervision, 238, 241, 249–51, 287
intrabloc trade, 109 Laborey, Annette, 158, 167
Irk, Ferenc, 146 Labour Party (UK), 200–201
Iron Curtain La Gazette de Lausanne, 92
contact across, 6, 7, 49, 55, 58, 68, 90, 94, Le Journal de Genève, 92, 94
101–2, 104–5, 108, 114, 129, 131, 138, Lenin, V. I., 210, 224, 265
151–53, 197, 218, 248–49, 268–69 Leningrad, 103, 113, 227, 263

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 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

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 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

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 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

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