Hot Books in the Cold War : The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain

Chapter 7. New Opportunities Through East-West Contacts

Chapter 7 New Opportunities through East-West Contacts From its beginning, the Free Europe Committee was eager to establish and become actively engaged in contacts with the East. An unsigned office memorandum from 1959 dealt with the ways in which to conduct successful new operations in the field of East-West contacts by creating new instrumentalities and improving existing techniques . FEC recognized the fact that, because it was known as a “cold war propaganda organization,” it could only play a “small direct role in these contacts.” Many organizations, foundations, and universities active in the contacts field were reluctant to jeopardize their own contact programs through an open association with FEC. To have a chance of success, these contacts had to be conducted “indirectly through outside organizations,” such as the creation of the East Europe Institute, and the greater use of already supported exile groups, such as the Polish institutes, foundations, and libraries seeking to contact Polish scholars travelling in the West. At the same time, most of the exile organizations were considered “too political to be useful,” explaining the need for new organizations and new methods, such as expanded direct person-to-person distribution to East European visitors , negotiations with publishers, travel and research grants, scholarships , lecture tours, and symposia. Through intermediaries, FEC also arranged conferences designed to “attract specific groups from behind the Iron Curtain” such as writers, scholars, journalists, or translators.1 1   Unsigned FEC Memorandum, dated June 21, 1959, 1– 3. HIA, Sam Walker Collection, Box 8. Thanks to the U.S. State Department, FEC was well informed about the various exchanges between the East European couni5 Cold War.indb 103 2013.03.04. 13:37 104 Hot Books in the Cold War Since the early 1960s, FEC’s West European Operations Division (WEOD), through its offices in London and Paris, headed by Mucio Delgado and Eugene Metz, respectively, had already been conducting a variety of programs publicly disassociated from FEC. These activities included so-called East-West Contacts and additional means of reaching persons in the Captive Nations, as well as activities in Africa, Asia, and South America, which will not be addressed here. Publications were distributed through Sweden at the Eighth World Youth Festival in Helsinki on 28 July–6 August, 1962,2 visits to England by Polish deputies were organized, and various publications in East European languages and in Russian were published in Vienna for distribution to visitors in Austria and through the Austrian legations in East Europe.3 By 1963, FEC supported an impressive total of 70 organizations and publications, and between June 1962 and September 1965 contributed to no less than 180 international conferences, 138 of them in Western Europe. By 1965, FEC was assisting 22 East-West projects in seven West European countries, including the sponsorship of student seminars and summer schools, bringing in mostly young students, and financing the travel of selected writers to the West.4 tries and the Free World, the number of East European tourists to the West, and that of delegations attending various conferences. Notes on SatelliteFree World Exchanges, January 30, 1959, 14–17. U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C. 2  During and after the festival, a special staff was to distribute books shipped to Stockholm and Helsinki to delegates from Eastern Europe and from the uncommitted world in information centers, hand-to-hand, mailing, as well as by other means such as in hotels and conferences rooms. Books in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish were given only to Soviet bloc delegates, together with records and fashion magazines. The President [FEC] to the Executive Committee, Publications Project for Helsinki Youth Festival, May 24, 1962. HIA, RFE/RL Corporate Records, Box 31. 3   Following the visit to England of several deputies from the Polish ZNAK Catholic parliamentary group who made pro-regime statements, the CIA felt that “We are now on the losing end of most of these visits from the standpoints of both propaganda and information gains.” Letter from The Executive Committee to The President [FEC], January 11, 1992, 1–2, and Mucio Delgado to John Richardson, July 2, 1992, ibid. 4  Organizations and Publications Supported by FE, undated list from circa 1963, 1–2, and WEOD Survey of European East-West Contact Programs, John F. Leich to Richardson, February 24, 1965, 1–5, ibid. There were i5 Cold War.indb 104 2013.03.04. 13:37 105 New Opportunities through East...