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

Introduction

Introduction Book Distribution as Political Warfare Mark Kramer Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union waged “political warfare” against each other and their respective allies. This form of interaction, unlike the global military standoff between the two sides, was intended by each superpower to affect the perceptions , attitudes, motives, and—ultimately—political behavior of the other side’s organizations, groups, individuals, and government officials .1 The aim of the operations was to overcome (or at least diminish) the opposition of those who were most hostile, to gain the allegiance of those who were neutral or uncommitted (i.e., to “win their hearts and minds”), to reinforce the loyalty of supporters, and, in wartime, to erode the enemy’s will to fight. Political warfare long predated the Cold War, but it was never more widely or intensively practiced than during the five decades from 1941 to 1991. Bilateral cultural exchanges; Soviet financial assistance to foreign Communist parties; U.S. funding for pro-democratic groups and labor unions in foreign countries; disinformation and propaganda campaigns conducted by the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB); the covert dissemination of anti-Communist leaflets and publica1   For a survey of literature on this topic as of 2002, see Kenneth A. Osgood, “Hearts and Minds: The Unconventional Cold War – Review Essay,” Journal of Cold War Studies 4, No. 2 (Spring 2002): 85–107. Numerous other important studies have appeared since then, including Osgood’s own book, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2006). i5 Cold War.indb 9 2013.03.04. 13:37 x Hot Books in the Cold War tions behind the Iron Curtain by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the KGB’s sponsorship of front organizations and anti-nuclear movements in the West and the Third World; short-wave radio broadcasts by Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE), Radio Liberty (RL), and other official radio stations; the USSR’s distribution of periodicals to promote Communist views; cultural programs funded by the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) to support democratic capitalist values—all of these were forms of political warfare. Alfred Reisch’s important book provides the first in-depth look at a specific type of political warfare against the Soviet bloc that went wholly unnoticed in the West during the Cold War, namely, programs funded by the CIA to distribute books to key individuals, libraries, research institutes, cultural organizations, and universities and schools in six Warsaw Pact countries (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union) from mid-1956 through 1991. Until 1970, the CIA funding for book distribution in Sovietbloc countries was channeled through entities of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, with administrative jurisdiction divided between the Free Europe Committee (FEC), which handled Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the three Soviet Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), and the Radio Liberty Committee’s secret Bedford Publishing Company, which covered the Soviet Union apart from the three Baltic states. In 1970, a few years after the CIA’s secret funding of RFE and RL had been publicly disclosed, the ensuing controversy over the matter led to the end of RFE’s role in the book distribution. A CIA front organization, the International Advisory Council (IAC), acquired administrative jurisdiction over what had been the FEC’s book distribution activities. Five years later, the two main book distribution programs—one managed by the IAC and the other by the RLC’s Bedford Publishing Company—were merged under the jurisdiction of the International Literary Center (ILC), another CIA front organization. This unified arrangement lasted until the book distribution programs finally ended in late 1991.2 Although 2  I use the term “book distribution program” throughout this introduction to refer to several interrelated activities—the mailing of books and other publications to specific elites, the mailing of publications in response to requests generated by the dissemination of lists, the provision of books to East i5 Cold War.indb 10 2013.03.04. 13:37 xi Introduction precise numbers for the entire period cannot be tallied from the currently available records, careful estimates suggest that the programs involved the transfer of roughly ten million books and other publications to recipients in the six targeted countries. Some of the major aspects of the FEC/IAC book distribution program were discussed in 2003 by John P. C. Matthews...