Exploiting the Exiles: Soviet Émigrés in U.S. Cold War Strategy

This article discusses the abortive U.S. government effort to organize Soviet émigrés after World War II. After years of a lack of interest on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Soviet émigrés and émigré politics came to the fore with the onset of the Cold War. The U.S. government sought to use émigrés in political and psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc. The many studies that have looked at Cold War–era psychological warfare have largely ignored U.S. plans to enlist Soviet émigrés on the West’s behalf. Attempts to create a political forum for anti-Bolshevik Soviet émigrés were broader than have been understood thus far, revealing important information about the postwar emigration from the Soviet Union, the émigrés’ role in the Cold War in general, and the development of U.S. Cold War strategies in relation to the émigrés.