The ‘Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century’ Festival and the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Origins and Consolidation 1947-1952
Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 15 No. 1, May 2000, pp. 121-143
Giles Scott-Smith Roosevelt Study Center Middelburg The Netherlands Tel. 0031 118 631459 Email
[email protected]
The Congress for Cultural Freedom has long been recognised as one of the CIA’s major Cold War operations. Founded in 1950, the Congress held the ‘Masterpieces’ festival in Paris as its first major event two years later. Intending to demonstrate the cultural vitality of the West as opposed to the sterility of art in the Soviet Union, the festival was a month-long agenda of orchestras, ballets, theatre, and literary events organised largely by Congress General Secretary Nicolas Nabokov. A remarkable mix of culture, politics, and propaganda, the organisation of the festival marked a turning point for the consolidation of the Congress.
“I remember the enormous joy I got when the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have bought with a hundred speeches.”1
This article attempts to reconstruct some of the major developments in the earliest years of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), the organisation of intellectuals established to co-ordinate and solidify anti-communist opinion during the Cold War. While the work of Peter Coleman, Pierre Grémion, and more recently Frances Stonor Saunders has thrown considerable light on the overall history and operation of the Congress, there has remained a lack of clarity and understanding as to the initial manoeuvrings of personnel both within and without the organisation concerning its long-term purpose, methods, and goals.2 The intention here is to partly redress this by focusing on the background and build-up to the festival ‘Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century’, which, despite (or perhaps because of) its deliberate grandeur, has not
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received enough attention as one of the major initial events held by the CCF. Yet it was, in the words of Congress biographer Peter Coleman, the event that ‘well and truly launched’ the nascent institution.3 Accordingly, the origins and preparation of the festival, and particularly how it displays the shifting arguments that were going on amongst Congress personnel during 1950 1951, will be outlined here. In particular, the aim is not to downplay the CIA role (Coleman), avoid it (Grémion), or emphasise it (Saunders), but to try and map some of the interactions between the CIA and other groups and individuals more publicly involved during this period, and to note the results of these interactions for the evolution of the CCF.
THE FORMATION OF THE CONGRESS The Congress came into being with its inaugural conference held in West Berlin from 26-29 June 1950. 118 invited delegates, all but two from either Europe or the United States, gathered together to attend seminars on ‘Science and Totalitarianism’, ‘Freedom and the Artist’, ‘The Citizen in a Free Society’, and ‘The Defence of Peace and Freedom’. The delegates included some of the most respected and some of the most notorious thinkers of the period, for example Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Sidney Hook, James Burnham, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Hugh TrevorRoper, and Franz Borkenau. The panel of honorary chairmen was even more prestigious: Bertrand Russell, James Dewey, Karl Jaspers, Benedetto Croce, and Jacques Maritain. Whatever the rumours from the beginning of secret American funding and agendas (and there obviously were rumours), an impressive array of intellectual talent assembled under the CCF’s name in order to denounce the repression of Stalinism and to discuss the conditions for free enquiry and expression in the immediate post-war years. The Kongress für kulturelle Freiheit, as it was known in Berlin, was largely the work of Melvin J. Lasky, a journalist with New Leader and Partisan
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Review who had remained in Germany after demobilisation as a combat historian with the US Seventh Army. Lasky’s prominence within the German intellectual scene had begun with his intervention at the first German Writers Congress held in Berlin from 4-8 October 1947. Organised by the Kulturbund and the Association of German Authors (Schutzverband deutscher Autoren), and coinciding as it did with Stalin’s reconvening of the Comintern, this was a key event in terms of the unfolding political alignments and conflicts among the German intelligentsia in the immediate post-war period.4 Given the podium at a certain point by Günther Birkenfeld, Lasky opposed the call from members of the Soviet delegation for an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist (i.e. anti-American) ‘Peace and Freedom’ movement with the demand that writers should remain true to their profession as progressive social critics and not to be mere tools for any governing power.5 It is possible that this provocation came about in collusion with Lasky’s contacts in the US Military Government (OMGUS), particularly Michael Josselson, a member of OMGUS’s Information Control Division (ICD), who was also present at the conference. The result, however, was to increase the already-present antagonisms within the German intellectual community over their orientation in relation to the growing East-West divide.6
Pre-1947 concerns over the US army’s role in post-war educational policy because of its propaganda element, and uncertainty over the goals of policy itself, had led to a ‘lack of systematic co-ordination of cultural policy between these information control and education, religion, and culture agencies’ in occupied Germany.7 This changed with the initiation of Operation ‘Backtalk’ by Military Governor Lucius D. Clay in October 1947, which passed to ICD the task of promoting the values of Western democratic society in Germany and counteracting the negative image of American foreign policy being portrayed by Soviet-sponsored outlets. Central
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to this was the need to promote the socio-economic consensus model as put forward by the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), and its appropriateness for the conditions of postwar European reconstruction. The goal was the ‘assimilation of the German people into the society of peaceful nations through the revival of international cultural relations’.8 Into this situation Lasky put forward a proposal for a new literary review with a culturally-cosmopolitan and politically-Atlanticist outlook in order to solidify a ‘vital centre’ between continuing rightwing sympathies and the communists and their ‘fellow-travellers’. The aims for the review were threefold: to create a more favourable impression of the United States and emphasise its contributions to the Western cultural tradition; to reunite the German intelligentsia with the West after the enforced isolation of the Nazi years; to stress, beyond the necessary re-evaluation of the fascist experience, the looming threat of Soviet-inspired communism. In these respects Der Monat: Eine Internationale Zeitshrift für Politik und geistiges Leben (the title Der Monat was a suggestion of Klaus Mann) was quite unique in the German literary scene when it first appeared in October 1948.9
Der Monat was the ideal stepping-stone towards the institutionalisation of an anti-communist, anti-neutralist international intellectual community. Peter de Mendelssohn of the New Statesman commented in 1950 that ‘in order to convoke a “Congress for Cultural Freedom” to Berlin, he had, in fact, to do little more than send out invitations to his prominent contributors over the past two years.’10 Yet initially, despite ‘Backtalk’, Lasky was apparently on the verge of being expelled from Germany by Clay because of the Soviet response to his intervention at the Writer’s Congress.11 While his original journal proposal met with a favourable response from ICD in Berlin it was opposed by the New York Field Office of the Defense Department, which was
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responsible for all German-language publications issued by OMGUS. Alongside the existing publications - the newspaper Neue Zeitung (circulation 1.2m) and the magazines Heute (400,000), Neue Auslese (650,000), and Amerikanische Rundschau (185,000) - another review seemed superfluous. There was also the issue of Lasky’s own political orientation, connected as he was to the formerly Trotskyite Partisan Review and his growing reputation as something of an intellectual maverick.12 Nevertheless, it was Clay and ICD Director Colonel Textor who, in the context of the worsening international situation (the Berlin blockade began in June 1948), were able to overrule any opposition and go ahead.13 Crucially, despite Der Monat appearing under the auspices of OMGUS and the editorial office being based in its military headquarters, Clay guaranteed Lasky freedom from interference on all editorial issues.14
In the late 1940’s Lasky became a pivotal figure within the increasingly active anti-communist intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic.15 Having studied in the late 1930’s at City College and Columbia, and been attached to the Trotskyites in the factional struggles of the New York left, Lasky was a contemporary of some of the major figures in that scene: Sidney Hook, Dwight Macdonald, James Burnham, James Farrell, and Partisan Review editors Philip Rahv and William Phillips. In the late 1940’s Hook became a key figure in the organisation of American anti-Stalinism and its projection to Europe. In the summer of 1948 he acted as an educational advisor for OMGUS, and via successive gatherings such as Europe-America Groups, Friends of Russian Freedom, and Americans for Intellectual Freedom (AIF) he began to orchestrate a more coherent and solidified anti-communist intellectual community in response to the Comintern’s ‘Peace Offensive’.16 AIF led directly into the CCF’s American wing, the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF), in 1951. When Hook travelled to Paris in April 1949 to represent
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the AIF at the counter-demonstration to the Cominform’s World Congress of Partisans for Peace, Lasky was in attendance ‘to see how it was done’, and the two corresponded over the next year on the possibilities for a permanent committee of anti-communist intellectuals to initiate, in Lasky’s words, ‘a radical democratic political offensive’.17 Hook, along with Burnham, acted as a kind of consultant for the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC, the covert operations wing of the CIA) and was in regular contact with Walter Bedell Smith whom he met in 1949 to discuss ‘matters of mutual interest’.18 Lasky’s drive to mobilise a community of anti-Stalinist intellectuals in the West had been heavily influenced by George Orwell, whom Lasky had visited in London in the winter of 1946-47.19 Back in Germany his circle of contacts grew significantly through 1948-49. Hochgeschwender refers to him as an unofficial middle-man in Berlin between the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the reformist pro-American elements of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).20 The ADA, under the tutelage of Reinhold Niebuhr, had been formed in January 1947 to unite New Dealers, trade unionists, and liberals against both the conservative Right and the mobilisation of Left-liberals around former VicePresident Henry Wallace. In the words of one of its prominent spokesmen, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the ADA marked the point where ‘America found itself reaching the same conclusions as the non-Communist left of Europe…[F]reedom had values which could not be compromised in deals with totalitarianism.’21 Present at the ADA’s inaugural meeting were UAW chief Walter Reuther, representing the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO), and David Dubinsky, a union leader associated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). It was Reuther who, by ‘purging’ his union of communist influence in 1947, played a crucial role in shifting the CIO towards a centrist position that would lead it to support the European Recovery Program and open an office in Paris in 1951 (with his brother Victor as Director).22 In the SPD Lasky was closely associate with Ernst
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Reuter, who had been elected mayor of Berlin by the city assembly in June 1947. Reuter’s refusal to work with the KPD and his role in the ‘reorientation’ of the SPD towards a more centrist position made him an important figure in the increasingly polarised politics of the city. It was Reuter who, along with Lasky and fellow SPD members Edwin Redslob and Otto Suhr, was named head of the Organising Committee that issued the invitations for the CCF meeting in Berlin in June 1950.23 Lasky had other important meetings in 1949. Most notorious was the Frankfurt hotel room gathering with former KPD leader Ruth Fischer and Comintern historian Franz Borkenau in August 1949. A recent study notes this meeting as ‘crucial’ for the development of the CCF, particularly due to Fischer’s input and contacts in Washington, but there is some doubt about this.24 Later the same year Lasky met former OSS chief William Donovan at a cultural congress of the European Union movement in Lausanne, Switzerland, which Donovan was attending as a representative of the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE). Donovan’s value, like that of Fischer, probably came from being a go-between in the development of the CCF idea.25 However, before the Frankfurt meeting Lasky had already made contact with Irving Brown, formerly with the UAW and from the mid 1940’s the representative for the AFL’s Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) in Europe. It was Brown who would provide the initial finance to get the CCF off the ground.
While Lasky was ‘free-lancing’, the most important figure behind the scenes was Michael Josselson. Edward Shils stated later that ‘without Josselson’s energy, convictions, affections, discrimination and intelligence, the Congress would never have flourished for a decade and a half between 1950 and 1965’.26 Neither would it, of course, without Josselson’s logistical and financial backers in the CIA. An Estonian emigré, Josselson moved from wartime service with
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the Psychological Warfare Division to Cultural Affairs Officer with ICD, and it was there that in 1948 he was recruited as head of covert operations for OPC in Berlin.27 Josselson, along with ICD colleague Nicolas Nabokov and Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) official Boris Shub (all three being emigrés from Eastern Europe), was one of the few OMGUS personnel not afflicted by ‘the evangelical liberalism, the pro-Soviet illusions, and the unreal hopes for greatpower collaboration’ that pervaded the approach of the occupation administration in 1946-47.28 Josselson had attended the German Writers Congress while still only an OMGUS official, but in 1949 (as a member of OPC) he attended both the inaugural AIF meeting in New York in March (where Nabokov was a speaker) and the anti-Comintern gathering in Paris in April in order to assess the possibilities for similar manifestations in the future.29 Between September 1949 and January 1950 it was Josselson who, in collusion with de Neufville and influenced by Lasky and Koestler, put together a coherent proposal for an intellectual counter-offensive to solidify ‘the fundamental ideals governing cultural (and political) action in the Western world and the repudiation of all totalitarian challenges’. Despite support from key personnel in OPC such as ACUE and union liaison Carmel Offie, de Neufville’s comment that ‘I got Washington to give it the support it needed…We had to beg for approval’ suggests there was a good deal of uncertainty as to how to proceed. The limits to covert control over the idea were also illustrated by OPC chief Frank Wisner approving the plan on the condition that Lasky and Burnham stay out of sight in Berlin, Lasky because of his overt connection to OMGUS via Der Monat and Burnham because he was too much of an anti-Soviet hard-liner. Yet Burnham would give one of the key-note speeches, and Lasky, his name on the invitations as self-appointed General Secretary, would be the perfect high-profile host for the birth of the CCF.30
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THE CONGRESS ESTABLISHED: 1950 - 1951 The ‘grand coalition’ of individuals and viewpoints that gathered in Berlin for the opening conference represented a wide cross-section of post-war intellectual life. Coleman emphasises the number of delegates who were either former prisoners of or refugees from the Nazi, fascist, and Soviet states.31 Grémion identifies four main categories amongst those who attended: former communists, those from the non-communist anti-fascist resistance, emigrés/refugees from Soviet or Soviet-controlled territories, and supporters of the European federalist movement.32 Politically, the dominant theme was liberal/social democratic, although some prominent delegates were certainly more to the right.33 According to nationality, the concentration of delegates from the United States and Germany was apparent - of the 118 invited individuals fifty were American or German. Above all, it represented an important post-war intellectual axis between the US and Europe, and specifically between New York and Berlin.34
Despite the common denominator of anti-totalitarianism, it was immediately clear that the many and varied factions present in Berlin would have difficulty holding together. A coherent group could not continue effectively if based solely upon an ‘anti’ platform, despite the unanimity behind the newly-adopted Freedom Manifesto.35 In his post-conference report Lasky remarked that
The main difference in the Congress was represented by two tendencies - the one (spokesmen: Koestler and Burnham) put main emphasis on the drive of the Soviet imperialism towards world-conquest and the urgent necessity of resistance programs. The second tendency (spokesmen: most of the French, Italians, British, and non-Berlin
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Germans): concentrated on the strengthening of the West-European unity idea, social and economic reforms (so as to eliminate Communist strongholds in discontent), and a less polemical attitude towards Moscow. There is no fundamental conflict between these two positions. But they can come into dangerous battles if not properly moderated.36
Yet later in the same report he contradicted the above analysis. Commenting on the principal successes of the Congress in Berlin he pointed out that ‘tendencies toward “neutrality” and appeasement in the West are from now on counterbalanced by a free, independent body of high intellectual stature.’ Whereas the more hard-line Koestler-Burnham approach differed previously with that of the Europeans only on matters ‘of accent, of priorities, of language’, a few pages later it is clear that the issue of neutralism, and in particular for US-European relations the issue of a potential European Third Way, was to be the real target of the CCF’s organisational zeal.37 Alongside this standpoint was another of equal importance for what was to come:
The fact was generally noted, and contributed a great deal to the success of the Congress, that it was not a “political demonstration”, or rather not only a political demonstration but simultaneously a performance of a very high intellectual and cultural level. Here again that which had to be demonstrated was presented by its very fruits: That culture can exist only in freedom and that freedom can lead to cultural progress.38
These two positions, the attack on neutralism and the insistence that ‘true’ culture could only exist under conditions of freedom (and therefore only in the West), would provide the ideological rationale for the Paris festival two years later. But Lasky, having set out the framework for a
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continuing organisation, would not remain General Secretary for very long. Did he know this already ? Or was he simply being democratic when, commenting on the need to sort out the CCF’s constitutional basis, he states that ‘this should be done in conjunction with the man who will probably be General Secretary and/or Executive Director of the Congress.’39 Whichever it was, Frank Wisner’s insistence that Lasky be removed from his high-profile position, to the point of saying that continuing OPC support was conditional on this action, forced the issue soon after the close of the conference. It was his good friend Josselson who had to transmit the news.40 Was Lasky also an agent with OPC ? If he was, then his continuing presence as a member of the CCF’s ‘apparat’ (albeit less visibly) should have amounted to gross insubordination. Perhaps it is more appropriate to describe him in the words Russian historian Oleg Tsarev used for Oxford Fellow Goronwy Rees: ‘[He] could not be called an ‘agent’. He was a ‘source’ and an ‘operational contact’, motivated by ‘romanticism’ and ‘ideological conviction’.’41
From July 1950 to May 1951 the questions over the organisational structure and leading personnel of the CCF were largely resolved, but not without difficulty. As Grémion states, ‘progress is chaotic, riddled with obstacles, curtailed enquiries, personal intrigues and conflicts exacerbated by the irritability of the writers and journalists themselves.’42 Alongside this, note should be made of de Neufville’s comment regarding OPC involvement - ‘Be careful of thinking there was a system for anything in those days. It was all improvised.’43 The goals and methods of the Congress still had to be resolved, and these issues caused the main disagreements and the most influential changes. The principal division was over how overtly political the CCF should be. Koestler, a member of the Executive Committee appointed (or self-appointed) in Berlin and one of the CCF’s most important exponents, ‘wanted the Congress to be aggressive, to take the
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ideological war to the enemy and challenge neutralism head-on.’44 Koestler, like Burnham and Lasky, had been useful for his ideas and influence but no longer for his visible presence. Despite playing host to Lasky, Burnham, Brown and others at his home outside Paris, and scripting the first public statement on the CCF’s future aims, it was Koestler’s determination to forge an anticommunist mass movement in alliance with the unions, Gaullists, and other groups that alienated him from the emerging power structure of the Congress.45 Apparently ‘the response from headquarters [of OPC] was to authorize the removal of Koestler from his central position in the organization.’46 Effectively being sidelined, Koestler resigned from the Executive Committee in a state of great anguish within seven weeks of the Berlin conference. Cesarani’s comment that he quit because he ‘was too much of a loner to persist in any institutional framework’ is far enough up to a point, but it cannot have helped that this particular institution was turning its back on his viewpoint.47
Koestler was not alone in his rejection of an elitist CCF of ‘intellectuals’ in favour of a wider and more activist political movement, and the division of opinion on this issue was strong enough to impede a consensus on the future direction of the Congress. During the first reunion of the Executive Committee in Versailles in February 1951 SPD politician Carlo Schmid (later President of the European Assembly) put in a strong demand for an organisation that would aim to reach as wide an audience as possible by working together with political parties and unions. The matter was brought to a head at the same meeting by the split that occurred over two proposals for a follow-up conference to be held in Paris later in the year: Norwegian union leader Haakon Lie put forward a political manifestation, while Denis de Rougemont wanted a gathering of as many famous writers and intellectuals as possible, including those with equivocal
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standpoints such as Sartre and Thomas Mann, under the banner ‘The Freedoms We May Lose’.48 At this point, in early 1951, the newly-formed CCF seems to have been in the middle of a serious identity crisis that was hampering its further development. Above all the situation was not helped by the constantly shifting membership of the meetings, and, with Lasky ‘removed’, the lack of a central figure around whom the organisation could continue to revolve. A viable spokesman was desperately needed. Another organisational matter needed to be resolved. Soon after Berlin Wisner had installed Josselson and de Neufville as OPC’s on-site controlling apparat for the Congress, codenamed QKOPERA, with the aim of moving the operation’s headquarters to the French capital.49 With OPC control now becoming more direct, the position of Irving Brown had to be clarified. Brown had had considerable input and influence in the formation and maintenance of the Congress up to this point. A member of the ‘steering group’ for Berlin alongside Koestler, Lasky, Burnham, and Hook, Brown had provided about $100,000 for the conference through the FTUC and channelled $170,000 to the newly-formed Secretariat to establish itself.50 When the International Committee of the Congress met in Brussels in November 1950 it took place in the premises of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), orchestrated by Brown.51 He also had some say over CCF personnel when, significantly, the Gaullist Daniel Apert was replaced by union official Jean Enoch as head of the Paris branch in January 1951.52 Preuves, the CCF’s first journal (initially more of a newsletter), was also used as a mouthpiece for the anti-communist union movement.53 Lastly Brown, disappointed over the indecision concerning Lasky’s replacement, had attempted to secure the post of CCF General-Secretary for former Nation journalist and Münzenberg affiliate Louis Fischer. Brown appears to have had an agenda for the CCF that may have been in conflict with that of OPC. The FTUC, formed in 1944 to aid the rebuilding of democratic institutions in post-war Europe, had formally agreed to work
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in collusion with OPC in December 1948 and it began to receive clandestine funds for activities in Europe through 1949.54 Already by late 1950 the relationship was going sour due to the Committee’s dislike of OPC/CIA opinions and tactics (including their interest in the CIO), and this led to a withdrawal from some projects that had less of a labour content - including the CCF.55 Yet Brown does not seem to have handed over complete financial responsibilities for the Congress to Josselson until autumn 1951. How far did Brown’s selfless support for the CCF operation go ? Perhaps it is a mistake to assume he had a definite agenda, but it would also seem unwise to simply refer to him during this period as a mere channel for covert funding.56 Instead, Brown’s role points to how the connection between ideals, money, and power can make it difficult to ascertain what the most important motives are in such a situation.
The choice of Paris above Berlin is not hard to explain. From the perspective of post-war US foreign policy one of ‘the key issue[s] was how France should align itself in a Europe being partitioned between East and West.’57 American interference in the French economy and its preference for German reconstruction and rearmament did little to help relations. Also, from the point of view of the CCF, French intellectual life was marked by a determined independence in the face of an increasing American presence in socio-cultural life. Sidney Hook had come up against this when, as representative of the AIF, he had flown to Paris in March 1949 to join the left-wing coalition the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire (RDR) for an antiCominform International Day of Resistance to Dictatorship and War. Refusing to attend, RDR leaders Sartre and Merleau-Ponty promptly announced they were as much against the Atlantic Pact as they were against Stalinism.58 Writing in 1950 Sartre stated that
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If we want French culture to survive, it must be integrated in the framework of a great European culture…This cultural unity can exist only if it is one of the elements of a politics that seeks to defend not only the cultural independence of Europe against America and against the USSR, but also its own political and economic unity, so that Europe may stand as a whole and single force between the two blocs - not as a third bloc but as an autonomous force.59
THE FESTIVAL: 1951-1952 At the second meeting of the Executive Committee in Paris in May 1951 the impasse over the CCF’s leadership and direction was solved by a Machiavellian intervention that saw Nicolas Nabokov assume the post of General Secretary. With Koestler and Brown side-lined and Lasky now (publicly) more of an independent advisor, Nabokov set about putting his imprimatur on the Congress’s future course. There is little doubt that the festival was his creation, backed by his supporters in the American foreign policy establishment, designed to move the CCF away from confrontational politics towards a new raison d’être as a defender of Western cultural values. In one of his few references to direct covert involvement, Coleman states that ‘it is impossible to separate this coup - at once ideological and pragmatic - from the decision of the US Central Intelligence Agency to assume responsibility for the continuing funding of the Congress.'60 Nabokov’s arrival as General Secretary came on the back of support from Josselson, George Kennan and Charles Bohlen, all three being Nabokov’s friends and the latter two both Sovietologists who could see the value of a Russian emigré fronting the new organisation. Also, in a letter from November 1950 Hook expressed the general line of the ACCF that
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two criteria should guide us in the selection of a general secretary. First, he should not be an American. Second, if possible, he should not have been too closely identified in the past with the Communist movement. Under the circumstances then I doubt the wisdom of making L. Fischer the titular head of the organization in Europe.61
Hook preferred Denis de Rougemont, with Nabokov as his assistant. It is noticeable that, despite the divisions of opinion, Nabokov was apparently able to assume his position without public drama.62
In his memoir Nabokov blandly states that it was on the plane to Paris in May to assume his post that he formulated his plan for the festival. Yet at this Executive Committee meeting he outlined a scheme that was effectively already in progress. 63 A major arts festival was to be held in Paris in 1952, including representations in the fields of ballet, opera, orchestral composition, literature, and modern art. The focus would be on modern works, particularly those regarded as being avantgarde. This would include not only achievements by Western artistes but also work by East Europeans which was forbidden by Soviet cultural dictat. The decision to pursue the Festival of the Twentieth Century marked the end of any suggestion that Koestler’s (or Brown’s) wishes for the CCF would now be realised. Nabokov’s plan was received warily, particularly by Josselson, de Neufville, and Lasky, and Burnham wrote to him in June 1951 that ‘I altogether share your enthusiasm (though the approval here is not unanimous)’. He continued -
It seems to me that we should think of it as a kind of concentrated expression of the “values” of our culture, a confident contrasting display of what they and we have to offer
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in the arts, music and literature, and an answer thereby to the question which side represents the future.64
Above all ‘it must be done on a really big scale. In terms of money, I think that it needs at least one and possibly as much as two million dollars.’ It would be pointless to stage a festival based on the achievements of modern culture that was not as grandiose as possible, since the sheer extent and vitality of that culture (in contrast to repressed culture under Soviet control) was what had to be on display. Nabokov was well aware of this when he wrote to NATO Information Officer Geoffrey Parsons that ‘because of its political implications such a project as we envisage cannot be allowed to become second rate. To do so would be only to put into the hands of the Communists a new propaganda weapon which they could be counted upon to exploit.’65 Therefore to succeed the festival had to be as impressive as possible. But it was the cost of such an enterprise with dubious political merits that caused the most criticism. Hook later stated that
there is something awesome in the enumeration of the personages, organizations, and events connected with this festival and at the same time something much more depressing in the light of the cost and the realization that it had not the slightest perceptible effect in altering the climate of political opinion in Europe, especially in France.66
Thomas Braden, who as Allen Dulles’ assistant created the International Organisations Division (IOD) to co-ordinate OPC’s burgeoning foreign interests like the CCF, was much more enthusiastic. Dulles, who became convinced of the merits of clandestine activity during his wartime operations for OSS in Bern, became Deputy Director of Plans in January 1951 and was
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therefore responsible for OPC operations above Wisner. Braden, presumably with Dulles’ support, had Nabokov’s plan approved by OPC’s project review board in April 1951, which does suggest that when Nabokov arrived in Paris the following month the festival idea was already a fait accompli.67 This would explain Lasky’s dismissal of the whole affair as an extravagant CIA operation that had no value in terms of changing anti-American or pro-Soviet attitudes in Western Europe.68 But for Braden and Nabokov the staging of a major cultural spectacle that could unite Americans and Europeans under the same tradition of innovation and achievement had important merits. To confirm the shift away from confrontational politics, Nabokov wrote to Schlesinger that his festival ‘will have much more retentissement than a hundred speeches by Arthur Koestler, Sidney Hook, and James Burnham about the neurosis of our century.’69 He was right, but not in the way he intended.
In early August 1951 Nabokov undertook a week-long visit to the United States to meet with important artistes such as George Balanchine, Leonard Bernstein, Bruno Walter, and personal friend Igor Stravinsky. He also made contact with Hook, Burnham, Brown, millionaire philanthropist Ben Sonnenberg, and Time-Life President Charles (C.D.) Jackson.70 Jackson at that time was also President of the Free Europe Committee, formerly known as the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE). ACUE and NCFE were closely related. According to F.X. Rebattet ACUE was founded in 1948 and officially launched in March 1949, influenced by the efforts of European federalists Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and Joseph Retinger. Under the influence of Allen Dulles, who was desperate to become involved in the expansion of US foreign policy interests, ACUE became a major institution uniting prominent members of the intelligence, military, corporate and banking elite behind the goal of a united federal Europe in
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line with the Marshall Plan’s wider implications. NCFE seems to have come out of Dulles’ wish to utilise the many exiles from Eastern Europe towards promoting a restoration of political and social freedoms in the Soviet bloc.71 While the creation of Radio Free Europe in Munich was its biggest concern, it also connected to the CCF’s plan for a ‘university of exiles’ in Strasbourg.72 The relationship between the goals of ACUE, NCFE, and OPC was strongly affected by the relationship between Dulles and Wisner, who were both aiming to control their own spheres of influence during the OPC-CIA reorganisation of 1950-51. Braden was Dulles’ recruit, and although Wisner was IOD’s direct controller it was with Dulles that Braden dealt on a more constructive basis. At this time Braden was also Executive-Director of the ACUE board. While there had been caution on the part of Wisner about going wholeheartedly with the Congress scheme, no such reticence existed with Braden or Dulles. It is worth noting that the NFCE was also a sponsor of the Berlin Congress alongside Brown’s OPC-funded FTUC, probably as a result of the Lasky-Donovan-Braden meeting in late 1949.73
The ACUE-NCFE network was influential in arranging important aspects of the festival plan, including the securing of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Henry Cabot, President of the Orchestra’s Board of Trustees and a member of ACUE, was able to call on the support of fellow Trustees and ACUE members such as President of Gillette J.P. Sprang Jr., and Norton Co. President George N. Jeppson, as well as contacts with its fund-raising arm the Crusade for Freedom. Sonnenberg and Trustee/NCFE President C.D. Jackson also used their influence to smooth out any problems for the tour. This was no small undertaking, with the total cost of the venture coming to $171,606.21.74 Regarded as the finest American orchestra, the Boston Symphony was at the centre of the festival’s strategy. To boost receipts Nabokov also arranged
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through Office of Public Affairs Director Shepard Stone for the orchestra to tour West Germany under the auspices of John McCloy’s High Commission. Wary of any overt connection, he added that ‘the name of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, for reasons understandable to you, should not be used in connection with HICOG.’75
In a speech delivered in February 1952 Nabokov talked in a melancholic fashion about a Europe
with a great middle layer of intellectuals who have simply lost faith in the West in terms of its creative forces. Particularly in France and Italy there are many who proclaim bitterly that our culture is dead, that Western civilisation is sterile and decadent and that our culture lacks meaning in today’s world…Convinced that the world is divided into two imperialistic camps, they have been brought to the conclusion that the United States is the most belligerent and the least cultured, and so have chosen the other side.76
Aiming to redress this tendency, Nabokov stated that the cultural achievements of the previous fifty years simply had to be emphasised once more. ‘It is not necessary for us to confine ourselves to polemics about artistic freedom. We have only to exhibit the products of that freedom to win our argument. This is precisely what we plan to do…’ It was, in a sense, a cultural addition to Truman’s ‘Campaign of Truth’ - by laying out the facts of Western freedom and Eastern despotism, how could anyone prefer the latter ?77 Essential to this ploy was the demonstration that the United States belonged to the same tradition of cultural innovation that had for over a century been centred in Europe, if not as an equal then at least as a worthy associate. American involvement had to be carefully managed - ‘we have to limit the American participation in the
21
Festival…in order not to give the impression here, that we are trying to impose something which the Europeans do not want. All this is a matter of tact…’78 The fact that prominent emigrés such as Stravinsky, Balanchine, Bruno Walter, and Arnold Schoenberg were among the line-up for the festival reinforced the image of a Euro-American event based on a common cultural heritage and common values. Lasky, like all good editors guided by precision, could not sanction the festival’s needless fanfare despite his support for its overall aims. Although he wrote to Nabokov that ‘I wish we didn’t have to go around trying to make ‘Propaganda Kapital’ out of everything, especially the arts; but I’m afraid we do’, this didn’t include the Paris extravaganza.79 His reticence was reflected in Der Monat’s subdued reporting of the festival, with only a few photos and an article by sub-editor Helmut Jaesrich, in contrast to the full-scale coverage given by Francois Bondy’s Paris-based Preuves.80 Writing in the April issue Denis de Rougemont introduced ‘L’Œuvre du XX Siècle’ by stating that the art on display alone would be enough to answer all criticisms of decadent Western culture. For him it posed simple questions:
Never before has one seen a similar freedom to investigate and postulate, never fewer doubts over expressiveness in the sciences, the arts, and literature; and never moreso such a clumsy conformism eager to control the very sources of creation. Is it a matter of one compensating for the other, or one of these phenomena holding the other to ransom ?81
In other words, no-one in the West should take for granted this freedom or the cultural achievements that stemmed from it. In a document outlining the details of the festival issued to CCF offices in December 1951 Nabokov outlined the scale of his ambition. Above all, the festival should establish the CCF ‘in Europe and the world at large as a powerful association of
22
intellectuals united by a broad program to defend our culture against any form of totalitarian control.’ Alongside directly confronting the negative impressions of American culture common in Europe, its principal goal was to ‘counteract the hold exercised by the Communist Party upon the mind and will of intellectuals of the Western world.’82 No-one could fault the scale of his programme. Beginning on April 30 1952 with an inaugural concert in Église St. Roch dedicated to all victims of oppression, Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century ran opera, ballet, chamber and symphony concerts on almost every night through to the finale of pieces by Prokofiev, Ravel, Copland, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss on 1 June. Works by sixty-two modern composers were performed by among others the Vienna Philamonic and State Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the Suisse Romande, Radiodiffusion Française, RIAS Berlin, Santa Cecilia of Rome, and Boston orchestras. Nabokov carefully chose appropriate pieces, with particular emphasis on those either banned or rarely performed in the Soviet bloc. Writing to Leopold Stokowski, he urged the inclusion of Finlandia by Sibelius because among other things ‘Finland has become in the minds of the free world a symbol of courage and resistance.’83 He also went to great lengths to obtain a copy of the music for Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mzensk, the work that in 1936 had been severely criticised by Pravda for its ‘formalism’ and ‘bourgeois decadence’.84 Most of the major events took place in the Théatre des Champs-Élysées. In 1913 Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring had been premiered there on a night that entered legend due to the raucous response of the audience. Thirty-nine years later, with Stravinsky present and conducted by the same man, Pierre Monteux, it was performed again, only this time, significantly, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Alongside this a modern art and sculpture exhibition was arranged by ACCF member James Johnson Sweeney with works from the Museum of Modern Art and many private collectors. Between 16 and 30 May six lecture round-tables and public debates were held on
23
‘Isolation and Communication’, ‘Diversity and Universality’, ‘The Spirit of Twentieth Century Painting’, and ‘The Future of Culture’ (where renowned guest William Faulkner proclaimed somewhat inadvisably that ‘in the intelligence of the French members here, and the muscle of Americans may rest the salvation of Europe’).85 Ticket sales were good but critical responses were mixed. American journalist Janet Flanner referred to it boldly as ‘the biggest cultural propaganda effort, either private or governmental, since the war’, sponsored as it was ‘by a recent American organization practically unheard of here before, called the Congress for Cultural Freedom.’ For many French it was still part of the ‘constantly reinforced Coca-Colonization’, and unfortunate associations were drawn between the CCF and NATO due to the simultaneous arrival of General Ridgway, accused of using chemical weapons in Korea by the communist press, to become Supreme Commander. Those French papers more or less aligned with the Congress Franc-Tireur, Figaro, L’Observateur, even Le Monde - reserved some quiet praise; Combat of the non-communist left was mixed on the festival’s utility. L’Humanité and the communist press, as was to be expected, were strongly hostile.86
Above all Nabokov’s festival, through its programme and location, evoked a strong sense of nostalgia for the pre-war era. The art nouveau symbolism made it seem ‘a rearguard festival’, evoking a time of experimentation and innovation that, under the continuing shadow of totalitarianism, needed to be revived. In this sense Der Monat was also something of a focus for the reconstitution of ‘Weimar culture’ (but this time within a more definite Western-orientated world-view).87 The avant-garde used to be free to travel across Europe from one cosmopolitan centre to another, but with the disasters of fascism, WW II, and Stalinism, it was now up to the United States to reintroduce that cosmopolitanism into Paris itself (with many of that avant-
24
garde’s own emigrés). As both Helmut Jaesrich and Herbert Luethy commented, what shocked before had now been appropriated as official culture. This restoration was replete with problems, and not just because for Luethy ‘the society that generously grants a vital minimum of freedom to create is wrong to congratulate itself on its generosity’. Maybe a greater awareness of the cultural achievements that need defending would be the result, but ‘not so much because somebody came to prove and demonstrate this…but because someone came with enough publicity to force recognition of the fact.’88
In terms of the CCF, Nabokov’s festival effectively marked the transformation of the organisation from a diversity of proposals to a body run by the Paris headquarters with the support and guidance of Braden’s IOD. Both de Neufville and Josselson had been uncertain over the festival’s merits, but its scale ensured that they at least had a major organisation on their hands. There was now a definite commitment to the Congress from the covert power structure, and while Lasky, Hook, Burnham, and others among the New York intellectuals had provided (and would continue to provide) inspiration, it was no longer their operation.89 Linked to this shift was the final jettisoning of a militant posture in the CCF’s public presentation, a shift that the festival played a major role in defining. From then on it was to be directed explicitly at the high-brow cultural scene of the international intelligentsia, expressed perfectly by the arrival of Encounter the following year. This was also reflected by the way in which the funding, previously channelled through Irving Brown, would now come largely via Julius Fleischmann’s CIA-front the Farfield Foundation, set up for this purpose in January 1952. Fleischmann, a Cincinnati millionaire and a major patron of the arts, had been part of the festival’s Artistic Direction committee and was now conveniently introduced as the CCF’s principal financial benefactor. Soon after he received a
25
useful confirmation of this role by being awarded the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by the French government for his ‘meritorious contribution to Franco-American cultural relations’.90 Braden was especially enthusiastic - not for nothing did he leave the CIA in 1954 because ‘it was no longer exciting’, the battle of ideas being over (presumably having been won).91
Ambitiously, Nabokov had set out to not only establish the Congress as an institution of patronage, but also as the centre of a new ‘aesthetic of freedom’ opposed to the dominant theses of Marxist-based cultural theory such as Socialist Realism and Formalism. This would be developed further with its association with the ‘end of ideology’ position of the mid to late 1950’s, a position which, in all but name, the Congress was effectively already occupying and making its own. However, the goals of this bold move were beset with contradictions. As Luethy pointed out, ‘can the creations of a culture really be mobilised around a flag like soldiers, even if it is the flag of freedom ?’92 In a time of crisis, possibly. But despite being able to move beyond the crisis-period of its foundation the Congress was never able to lose its straight-jacket of the necessity of mobilised intellectual consensus, for that was its sole operational raison d’être. It is this aspect of hidden agenda-setting that continues to make the Congress so awkward to assess in terms of its actual intellectual and cultural merits. As one commentator has put it,
One of the possibilities for West European intellectuals inclined towards anticommunism, democracy, and the ‘free society’ in the 1950’s to raise their international profile was to become a member of the Congress and to regularly attend its conferences.93
26
Yet, by doing so, were they simply fooled into taking part in a large (and effective) confidence trick, or were they participating in an institution that did actually represent something of the intellectual zeitgeist of the times ? It is, and will probably remain, an awkward issue. It is not the actual covert history to the CCF that makes it so intriguing; rather, it is the blend of covert and overt influences, and the varied outcomes that resulted from this, which maintain this institution as being open to continued deciphering.
27
Notes: 1
Thomas W. Braden, ‘I’m glad the CIA is ‘immoral’’, Saturday Evening Post (20 May 1967) p.12.
2
Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of
Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press 1989); Pierre Grémion, Intelligence de l’Anticommunisme: Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris 1950-1975 (Paris: Fayard 1995); Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid The Piper ?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta 1999). 3
Coleman op.cit. p.57.
4
The ‘Kulturbundes zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands’ was founded on 3 July 1945 with the purpose of
leading a ‘cultural-moral-spiritual renewal’ of Germany. Despite initially being authorised by all four occupying powers, under its President Johannes Becher it effectively became a ‘fellow-traveller’ institution closely aligned with the KPD/SED leadership in the Soviet Zone. A month after the Writers Congress it was banned from the American and British sectors of Berlin. See Michael Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive ? Der Kongress für kulturelle Freiheit und die Deutschen (Munich: Oldenbourg 1998), pp.136-137. 5
For the complete transcripts of the Congress see U. Reinhold, D. Schlenstedt, H. Tannenberger (eds.), Erster
Deutscher Schriftstellerkongress (Berlin: Aufbau 1998). 6
Hochgeschwender op.cit. pp.142-143. Grémion claims Lasky attended the conference after becoming suspicious
about the arrival of the Soviet delegation in Berlin. OMGUS apparently considered the event a purely German affair and therefore not requiring any official representation, cf. Grémion op.cit. p.17. 7
Rebecca Boehling, ‘The Role of Culture in American Relations with Europe: The Case of the United States’s
Occupation of Germany’, Diplomatic History 23/1 (1999) p.59. 8
Ibid. p.66.
9
Melvin J. Lasky, ‘Towards a Prospectus for the “American Review”’, 9 December 1947, OMGUS Information
Control Division, National Archives RG260/Box 246; Marko Martin, Orwell, Koestler, und all die anderen: Melvin J. Lasky und “Der Monat” (Asendorf: MUT 1999) p.28; Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 3 April 1999. 10
‘Berlin Congress’, New Statesman and Nation 40/1010 (15 July 1950) p.62.
11
Coleman op.cit. p.19.
28
12
In an article in early 1948 Lasky cemented this reputation. Referring to the atomized conditions of the post-war
German intelligentsia, he complained about the continuing restrictions on freedom of intellectual and cultural expression, vital for the re-emergence of a critical democratic society, that were being practised by all sides. “The supreme right of the State in matters of art and culture, the partisan party standard as a measure of a writer’s legality these are the two great principles accepted by both East and West in Germany.” ‘Berlin Letter’, Partisan Review 15/1 (1948) pp.60-68. 13
Hochgeschwender op.cit. pp.152-153; Occupation of Germany: Policy and Progress 1945-46 (Washington D.C:
Department of State 1947) p.66. On the 1947-48 shift from ‘de-Nazification’ and ‘re-education’ to anticommunism in OMGUS cultural policy, which also lay behind the Der Monat decision, see Jessica Gienow-Hecht ‘Art Is Democracy and Democracy Is Art: Culture, Propaganda, and the Neue Zeitung in Germany, 1944-1947’, Diplomatic History 23/1 (Winter 1999). 14
Martin op.cit. p.23; Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 5 April 1999.
15
On the importance of Lasky’s initial input into the CCF, see Giles Scott-Smith ‘A Radical Democratic Political
Offensive: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom’, Journal of Contemporary History 35/2 (April 2000). 16
On these groups and the Comintern-sponsored meetings in New York and Paris that inspired the formation of the
AIF in 1949 see Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the Twentieth Century (New York: Macmillan 1987) pp.383-403; Hugh Wilford, The New York Intellectuals: From Vanguard to Institution (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1995) pp.171-180, 196-197. 17
Hook op.cit. p.433; Frank Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: US Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations 1938-
1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981) p.165; Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 3 April 1999. 18
Saunders op.cit. pp.157-158; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale
University Press 1989) p.69. On Burnham see obituaries by Brian Crozier and Miles Copeland, National Review 39/17 (11 September 1987) pp.36-38. 19
Martin op.cit. pp.20-21; On Orwell’s contact with Arthur Koestler in 1946 over plans to create a League for the
Rights of Man see David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (London: Heinemann 1998) pp.251-256.
29
20
Hochgeschwender op.cit. p.151. In spite of Lasky’s 1930’s Trotskyism Hook later proclaimed him, along with
Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, to be a traditional social democrat - ‘we are all offspring of Eduard Bernstein’. See Neil Jumonville, Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Post-War America (Berkeley: University of California Press 1991) p.26. 21
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Politics of Freedom (London: William Heinemann 1950) p.153; On the origins of
the ADA see Mary McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals 1947-1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1978) pp.6-7. 22
McAuliffe ibid. p.17; Federico Romero, The United States and the European Trade Union Movement 1944-1951
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1992) pp.108-109, 206. 23
Grémion op.cit. p.15.
24
Michael Warner ‘Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom 1949-50’, Studies in Intelligence 38/5 (Summer
1995). When asked, Lasky referred to Fischer’s influence as ‘nothing at all’, the same as Michael Josselson’s opinion. Yet others have emphasised her importance. Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 3 April 1999; Hochgeschwender op.cit. p.220; Iain Hamilton, Koestler: A Biography (London: Secker & Warburg 1982) pp.174-176. 25
Ninkovich op.cit. p.165; Thomas Braden, later to set up the International Organisations Division to co-ordinate
CIA-CCF relations, was Donovan’s assistant in Lausanne. Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 3 April 1999. 26
Edward Shils ‘Remembering the Congress for Cultural Freedom’ (Part II), unpublished article (Part I in Encounter
75/2 September 1990). 27
Josselson’s recruiter was former OSS agent and OMGUS consultant Lawrence de Neufville, cf. Saunders op.cit.
p.42. 28
Coleman op.cit. p.17-18; George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 (New York: Bantam 1969) p.392.
29
OPC money may already have been used to fund the AIF counter-demonstration in New York via Dubinsky, who
also provided the logistical support for Hook’s operation. See S.A. Longstaff ‘The New York Intellectuals and The Cultural Cold War: 1945-1950’, New Politics 2/2 (Winter 1989) p.163; Saunders op.cit. pp.54-55. 30
Warner op.cit.; Saunders op.cit. p.71.
31
Coleman op.cit. pp.19-21.
32
Grémion op.cit. pp. 24-26.
30
33
For instance the British conservatives Julian Amery and Christopher Hollis. Amery later became president of the
notorious right-wing think-tank the ‘Pinay Circle’, cf. Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991 (London: HarperCollins 1993) p. 193. 34
‘The aphorisms of the American Founding Fathers and of Lincoln relate empirically to the circumstances of life in
West Berlin.’ James T. Farrell, ‘Congress Comments’ (Report for the ADA) CCF/IACF Archive, Regenstein Library Chicago (hereafter noted only with Series/Box/Folder nos.) Series III Box 1 Folder 1. 35
Yet even the generalised wording of the Manifesto, drafted largely by Koestler, drew insistent opposition from
British delegates Hugh Trevor-Roper and A.J. Ayer, causing it to be amended. This was in the face of the determination of Hook, Burnham, Brown and Lasky to force the Manifesto through. Coleman op.cit. pp.249-251; Hamilton op.cit. p.190. 36
Melvin J. Lasky, ‘The “Congress for Cultural Freedom”’ (5 July 1950) Series III Box 1 Folder 1.
37
‘There were a number of French delegates who, whilst opposed to totalitarianism, did more or less reveal or imply
that they have not abandoned the position of neutrality…In the future these differences can become very important and they have practical consequences.’ James T. Farrell op.cit. 38
Melvin J. Lasky, ‘The “Congress for Cultural Freedom”’ op.cit.
39
Ibid. (italics added).
40
Warner op.cit.; Saunders op.cit. pp.85-86. When asked about his removal, Lasky only made reference to an oblique
comment of Josselson’s at that time: ‘Melvin, you look tired, you shouldn’t travel so much’. Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 3 April 1999. 41
Quoted in Diana Trilling ‘Goronwy Rees - And Others: A Remembrance of England’, Partisan Review 63/1
(1996). 42
Grémion op.cit. p.69.
43
Saunders op.cit. p.174.
44
Cesarani op.cit. p.90.
45
Koestler, with Manès Sperber, wrote the pamphlet Que veulent les Amis de la Liberté and made moves to establish
a French branch to the CCF under this title. Aside from his more militant views it is clear that Koestler’s
31
organisational activity alone was a potential obstruction to OPC’s increasing management of the CCF. Coleman op.cit. pp.140-141; Cesarani op.cit. p.366. 46
Saunders op.cit. p.90.
47
Cesarani claims not only that Koestler did not hear about the CIA-CCF link until he was informed by friend and
CIA official Bob Joyce in April 1951, but also that he was uncomfortable with the funding arrangements via Irving Brown. This is despite the significant contacts he made in government circles during his visits to the US in 1948 and 1950 (often, in 1950, via Burnham), and the fact that his sister-in-law, Cynthia Kirwan, was an officer with British Foreign Office propaganda outfit the Information Research Department. The IRD covertly funded the British individuals invited to Berlin. Cesarani op.cit. pp.306-307,366-369; Saunders op.cit. p.76; Paul Lashmar & James Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War 1948-1977 (Stroud: Sutton 1998) pp.95-96. 48
Grémion op.cit. p.70-71.
49
Saunders op.cit. p.86-87. Given this move from Berlin to Paris it is highly probable that Lasky genuinely did not
want to leave his German base. 50
Coleman op.cit. p.27; Grémion op.cit. p.74; Lillie Brown to Francois Bondy (21 September 1950), Series II Box
47 Folder 9; René Lalive d’Epinay (Executive Secretary, CCF Secretariat) to Hook (12 March 1951) Series II Box 135 Folder 2. The Brussels ICTFU office would also provide support for the CCF’s first ‘closed’ intellectual symposium, on the psychological appeal of communism and how to address it, in Andlau (Alsace) in September 1951, cf. Francois Bondy to John Riddell (7 August 1951), Series II Box 2. 51
Brown played a major role in the formation of the ICFTU in 1949 to split the communist-backed World Federation
of Trade Unions and ensure greater support for the European Recovery Plan from European unions. Romero op.cit. pp.171-173; ‘Address delivered by Irving Brown, European representative, to the 70th Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor’, San Francisco (17 September 1951), Series II Box 47 Folder 9. 52
James Burnham to Francois Bondy (6 February 1951), Series II Box 48 Folder 9. Burnham, a supporter of the
Gaullists, derided this ‘corridor putsch’ and was strongly opposed to Brown’s influence over the CCF, since he felt Brown’s agenda to strengthen the European centre-left was undermining the chances for the Congress to become a broader ‘anti-communist united front’.
32
53
See the contributions of Brown, Walter Reuther, Christian union official Paul Vignaux and Force Ouvrière
executive Roger Hagnauer to ‘Où va le syndicalisme américain ?’, Preuves 3 (May 1951) pp.22-26. 54
Ronald Radosh, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy (New York: Random House 1969) p.309;
Anthony Carew ‘The American Labor Movement in Fizzland: the Free Trade Union Committee and the CIA’, Labor History 39/1 (1998) p.26. 55
Carew op.cit. p.32. In a reorganisation under Bedell Smith from 1950-52 OPC formally became part of the CIA.
56
Grémion op.cit. p.74. Saunders’ suggestion that Brown was little more than Wisner’s CCF paymaster is clearly too
simplified, since Brown was determined to maintain his autonomy on all his interests, cf. Saunders op.cit. p.87. 57
Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press
1993) p.15. 58
Sidney Hook ‘Report on the International Day Against Dictatorship and War’, Partisan Review 16/7 (July 1949);
Ronald Hayman, Sartre: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster 1987) pp.268-269. 59
Jean-Paul Sartre ‘A European Declaration of Independence’, Commentary 9/5 (May 1950) pp.412,414.
60
Coleman op.cit. p.34.
61
Hook to Francois Bondy (21 November 1950) Series II Box 135 Folder 2. In Out of Step Hook also suggests that
Schlesinger played a role in securing the top position for Nabokov, op.cit. p.444. 62
Hochgeschwender claims that Nabokov, a friend of Koestler, was initially supportive of a militant CCF similar to
people like Hook, Burnham, and others in the ACCF, but this does not seem to fit with his festival plan. Also Koestler was apparently more interested in Louis Fischer. It does seem that there was more to Nabokov’s delayed installation as CCF secretary than merely his teaching obligations at the Peabody Conservatory and Sarah Lawrence College. Hochgeschwender op.cit. p.273; Nicolas Nabokov, Bagazh: Memoirs of a Russian Cosmopolitan (London: Secker & Warburg 1975) p.242; Saunders op.cit. p.94. 63
Nabokov says remarkably little about it in his book despite it being his ‘most exciting festival’. The festival was
definitely a plan and not a proposition, and it received no opposition despite the extensive efforts that had already been made to pursue de Rougemont’s original festival idea for late 1951. Nabokov, op.cit. p.243; Grémion op.cit. pp.72-73; René Lalive d’Epinay to Hook (8 March 1951) Series II Box 135 Folder 2. 64
Burnham to Nabokov (16 June 1951) Series II Box 48 Folder 9.
33
65
Nabokov to Geoffrey Parsons (28 December 1951) Series III Box 2. Nabokov was writing to ask for support ‘both
artistically and propaganda-wise’. 66
Hook, Out of Step op.cit. p.445.
67
John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster 1986) p.199; Richard
J. Aldrich ‘OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948-60’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 8/1 (March 1997) pp.188-189. 68
Interview with Melvin J. Lasky, Berlin, 5 April 1999
69
Coleman op.cit. p.46.
70
‘Rapport sur le Voyage de M. Nicolas Nabokov aux Etats-Unis du 2 Aout au 8 Aout 1951’ (14 August 1951)
Series III Box 4 Folder 3. 71
Some authors refer to either ACUE or NCFE for the same organisation, while Aldrich states that the two
organisations worked closely together. See Hersh op.cit. pp.256-257; Aldrich op.cit. p.185; Saunders op.cit. pp.130131; F.X. Rebattet, The ‘European Movement’ 1945-1953: a Study in National and International Non-Governmental Organisations working for European Unity (unpublished PhD thesis, St. Anthony’s College Oxford, 1962) pp.294315. 72
When the university plan was outlined by Polish exile Joseph Czapski at the Brussels meeting in November 1950,
NCFE member Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was on its committee. It had been Burnham who brought Czapski to the CCF’s gathering in Berlin and who continued to press for CCF support for the idea, which did achieve fruition with the founding of the College of Free Europe near Strasbourg under Dulles’ man Tyler Royall. Grémion op.cit. pp.63-64; Hersh op.cit. p.257; Saunders op.cit. p.91; Jerzy Giedroyc, ‘Activist, Strategist’ (James Burnham obituary) National Review 39/17 (11 September 1987) pp.35-36. 73
Wisner had wanted promotion to Deputy Director of Plans but it went instead to Dulles. David Dubinsky was also
on the NCFE board. See Hersh op.cit. p.314; Rebattet op.cit. p.306; Hochgeschwender op.cit. p.223; Telephone interview with Braden, 16 June 1998. 74
Cabot to Burnham (17 October 1951), Julius Fleischmann to Nabokov (23 October 1951) Series III Box 2; Boston
Symphony Orchestra audit (13 November 1952) Series II Box 46 Folder 1. 75
Nabokov to Stone (13 February 1952) Series III Box 2.
34
76
Speech at the Anglo-American Press Club (February 1952) Series III Box 2 Folder 6.
77
On the Campaign of Truth and its connection to important Cold War strategy document NSC-68 see Walter Hixson
Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War 1945-1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin 1998) pp.14-16. 78
Nabokov to Executive Secretary, National Music Council (25 February 1952) Series II Box 2.
79
Lasky to Nabokov (2 August 1951) Series II Box 241 Folder 1. ‘The creation of a common European-American
spiritual community is the primary life-preserving task of Western culture’, Melvin J. Lasky ‘Literature and the Arts’ in Lewis Galantière (ed.) America and the Mind of Europe (London: Hamish Hamilton 1951)p.92. 80
Helmut Jaesrich ‘Töne und Theorien’, Der Monat 46 (July 1952).
81
Denis de Rougement ‘L’Œuvre du XX Siècle: Une réponse, ou une question ?’, Preuves 14 (April 1952) p.2.
82
Nicolas Nabokov ‘Report, Masterpieces of the 20th Century’ (17 December 1951) Series III Box 4 Folder 4.
83
Nabokov to Stokowski (25 January 1952) Series III Box 2.
84
After Lady Macbeth Shostakovich had to send a public apology to the Soviet press for not sufficiently controlling
the formalist tendencies in his work before being reinstated as a performable composer in 1937, cf. concerts brochure ‘L’Œuvre du XX Siècle’ pp.31-33, Series III Box 4 Folder 6. 85
‘The Future of Culture’ Report, Series III Box 3 Folder 6.
86
Janet Flanner ‘Letter from Paris’, New Yorker 38/15 (31 May 1952) pp.62-65, ‘Festival of Free-World Arts’,
Freedom & Union (September 1952) pp.6-7; ‘La Presse Français et ‘L’Œuvre du XX Siècle’’, Preuves 15 (May 1952) pp.48-57. 87
See Hochgeschwender op.cit. pp.154-158; Martin op.cit. pp.25-26.
88
Herbert Luethy ‘Selling Paris on Western Culture’, Commentary 14/1 (July 1952) pp.70-75; Jaesrich op.cit. p.352.
89
See Hochgeschwender op.cit. pp.282-286.
90
Formally solidifying Fleischmann’s position with the Congress was considered important, and the following year
Nabokov and Josselson suggested that Fleischmann become the CCF’s first Vice-President. This was instead of him becoming a member of the Executive Committee (a possible post they had already proposed to him), since increasing the American complement of the committee would have a ‘psychologically bad effect’. Nabokov to Fleischmann (23 February 1953), Series II Box 100 Folder 4; ACCF Press Release (no date), Series II Box 101 Folder 10.
35
91
Telephone interview with Braden, 16 June 1998.
92
Luethy op.cit. p.71.
93
‘Een van der mogelijkheden voor anti-communistische, vrijheidslievende en democratisch gezinde intellectuelen in
West-Europa in de jaren vijftig om zich internationaal te profileren, was lid te worden van het Congress en regelmatig de CCF-conferenties bij te wonen’, Tity de Vries, Complexe Consensus: Amerikaanse en Nederlandse Intellectuelen in debat over politiek en cultuur 1945-1960 (Hilversum: Verloren 1996) p.126.
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