Because of its geographical proximity to communist-ruled Eastern Europe, Austria and its vibrant capital city, Vienna, played a key role throughout the duration of the book distribution and book mailing programs. Many people, Austrians and East European emigres, were involved in this endeavor, as well as a number of Austrian organizations. But the key role was played by one single man who, for close to a quarter of a century, became George Minden’s most important man in Vienna. After 1990 until his retirement in 2002, he managed the Wiener Spielzeugschachtel, a children’s toyshop in Vienna. Today, Peter Straka enjoys the quiet and well-deserved life of a pensioner, dividing his time between his hometown Vienna and his bucolic home in the small village of Ratsch in southern Styria, on the Austrian-Slovenian border, which lies at the end of his garden and vineyard. Still an active traveler, friendly and unassuming, it is hard to believe how important a role he played at a time when it was risky and sometimes dangerous to smuggle Western and emigre political and other books and periodicals across the Iron Curtain, or to approach large groups of East European tourists, with a possible informer lurking among them. Yet, for over two decades, Straka managed, alone or with the cooperation and assistance of others, to mail or to distribute hand to hand tens of thousands of the best books the West had to offer to the culturally and intellectually starved intellectuals and readers of Eastern Europe.
This author, at that time the Hungarian national plans advisor for George Minden’s Book Center in New York, has known Peter for some three decades. We met for the first time in 1971 in Vienna, on a
Hot summer day at his Jungbrunnen bookstore. He looked and dressed more like a British gentleman than an Austrian bookshop manager, and he still looks like that today. His assortment and selection of Western and emigre literature, both supplied from New York and purchased in Europe, were truly impressive, as he proudly showed his visitor around and explained the various facets of his book distribution activities. As we left the store, we noticed that we were being followed, but eventually we managed to shake off the unwanted company. In true Viennese tradition, the city was teeming with Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and other communist secret service agents. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the great mastermind of the program at times chose to meet Straka and others in places like Lausanne or London, during his bi-annual meetings with his book distributors in Western Europe. After two recent personal meetings in Vienna and a regular exchange of correspondence, it became absolutely clear that this modest and unassuming man, who once managed the Jungbrunnen and Frick bookstores, was in fact the very center and soul of the Austrian book distribution program in Vienna until the very end, when the program was terminated in the fall of 1991. Based on his own account and personal experiences, here is the fascinating story of what for decades took place on the geographic and ideological East-West frontline and meeting point in Vienna.
Peter Straka was born in 1941 in London, the son of Dr. Anton Straka, a Social Democrat who emigrated from Austria in 1939. His Jewish mother spent half a year in hiding in the Wienerwald forest near Vienna before she managed to flee to England. After working for the BBC, M15, and M16, Dr. Straka returned from England to Austria in 1947 and joined the Austrian security services. He served as secretary to Josef Holaubek (1905-1999), police chief of the 18th and 20th districts of Vienna, then as Security Chief of the province of Carinthia, and from 1965 until his death in 1966 as head of the State Police, that is, the Domestic Secret Service at the Ministry of the Interior. During his first school years in Vienna, young Peter had some problems with the German language, but he perfected it as an employee and later manager of the Braumuller and Frick bookshops, both owned by the Forum Verlag, the publishing house of the Austrian Socialist Party (SPO). He also enriched his librarian’s skills at the Times Book Store in London, and set up an English book section at Frick. He got his first baptism of fire at the age of 18, while distributing books
And periodicals at the 1959 World Youth Festival in Vienna, a communist-organized propaganda affair. The festival was challenged by a joint U. s.-British counteraction program with the aid and support of several Austrian politicians, some of whom became quite prominent later. Members of the austrian Bundesjugendring (Federal Youth Association), which comprised all Austrian democratic youth organizations, gave each East European participant 1 to 5 schillings worth of small-format books in practically all east european languages. Distribution took place at special kiosks or at the Jungbrunnen bookstore, and the most successful authors where those blacklisted in eastern europe, such as Milovan djilas, George orwell, arthur Koestler, Ignazio silone, and many others.
In 1966, through the mediation of the austrian Minister of Justice, Christian Broda, a friend of his father, straka had his first meeting with Frau erna dobler in Munich, George Minden’s contact person in Germany, eventually he met with ethel Schroeder in New York, who at the time was head of the International Advisory Council (lAC), a fictitious U. S. organization that served as cover for the Publications and Special Projects Division (PSPD) of Free europe, Inc., under Minden’s direction. straka was asked whether he would be willing to mail Western books to eastern europe, with a slip inside that the addressees would send back to acknowledge receipt of the book. lAC would pay for the books, their handling, packing, and mailing, and only wanted a written report on the results and the letters received from eastern europe.544 Straka liked the idea, because, as he put it: “I was always of the opinion that the people behind the Iron Curtain should have the possibility to think freely and to inform themselves freely.”545 For a bookshop manager, besides providing opportunities for the dissemination of Western books to the east, the program also had obvious commercial advantages. Straka sent a catalogue to New York with a list of titles on politics, soci-
Ology, philosophy, and economics for mailing to East European libraries. He soon came in direct contact with George Minden, and he spent four days with him to discuss a distribution concept for the future. He then began to mail books and periodicals to intellectuals and libraries in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, with the help of addresses supplied by Minden’s PsPD. He estimated that 40% to 60% of these publications reached their destination. Straka himself recommended some 80% of the German-language books mailed. The Austrian Association for Literature also became involved in the book mailing program. Later, book recipients were invited by the senders should they ever visit Vienna.
In July 1970, Minden and his staff were separated from Free Europe, Inc., and the PSPD assumed the name of its former cover, the International Advisory Council, Inc., with Minden as its president. When Radio Liberty ended its secret book distribution program to the USSR, Minden inherited the program, and IAC became the International Literary Center, Ltd. (ILC), and remained under that name until the termination of the book program. The Vienna distribution point was further expanded and, by Minden’s own admission, steadily became one of the more important of his book distribution centers, both by mail and hand to hand. As ILC’s main representative there, Peter Straka controlled the ordering of books and all the operations run with the help of Austrian embassies and other official institutions.
Starting in 1966, Straka began to distribute thousands of books on politics, philosophy, religion, sociology, economics, psychology, and contemporary history and literature to Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians, as well as to Poles (although the latter had a marked preference for Paris, London, and Rome), arriving individually or on organized tours by bus or Danube steamer in Vienna. This was the safest method of providing controversial works and highly political East European emigre books and periodicals, which, if mailed, would have been stopped by the censors. At the Jungbrunnen bookstore, and later at the Frick bookshops, visitors could choose books and periodicals worth up to $10 or 250 Schillings each. For especially interesting or prominent visitors, or visitors from the USSR, the amount could be increased up to 1,000 Schillings. Recipients were only asked to give their occupation and place of residence, but some also gave their addresses and asked for the mailing of more books.
All these publications, sent from the U. S. or purchased in Western Europe, were paid for by the lAC/ILC in New York, with the CIA remaining in the background as the unknown and invisible paymaster—a role it never ceased to play since the book program was launched in July 1956. The Vatican also gave some modest financial aid, primarily for religious publications. there were also many legitimate sponsors, American and West European book publishers in England, France, Italy, and also in neutral switzerland and Austria. East European visitors received books from the Austrian Association for Literature in Vienna led by Wolfgang Kraus, and were then directed toward straka’s bookstores, where the selection was much greater. Besides the East European emigre periodicals and dissident literature that was distributed after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, after 1975 Russian dissident literature in Russian also began to be handed out, most of it published by emigre publishers in Paris. They included the works of such authors as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sinyavski, Zhores and Roy Medvedev, Michael Voslenski, and many others.
Many visitors who left their addresses later received books by mail. In addition to Frick, which took care of the billing and handling, books were mailed from a variety of Vienna bookstores—Jungbrunnen, Universitat Bookshop, Braumuller, Urania—all owned by the SPO, to ensure that East European authorities did not become suspicious if all parcels bore Frick bookstore labels. Mailings were also carried out using addresses received from New York through IAC and afterwards ILC. On the basis of the returned acknowledgements of receipt, Straka estimates that between 40% and 60% of the book parcels got through the postal censors and reached their destination. Another channel was the distribution of books in German through the Austrian cultural institutes in Prague and Warsaw.
In May 1968, during the Prague Spring under the Dubcek regime in Czechoslovakia, the one-week book exhibit in Bratislava, organized with the joint cooperation of the Austrian Association for Literature, the Austrian Europa Verlag, publisher of the Austrian Association of Trade Unions (OGB), and the Austrian General Consulate in Bratislava, was a major success. At the end of the exhibit, some 600 books about politics, sociology, and other subjects, worth over 100,000 Schillings, had been distributed. It was a real sensation for the recipi-
Ents to take away books free of charge. Other book exhibits were held in Sofia in October 1968, in Varna in 1969, in Bucharest in June 1969, and in May 1982 in Moscow and in Leningrad, with the Residenz publisher in salzburg, where 100,000 schillings worth of books were discreetly distributed with assistance from the soviet Writers’ Union and the Austrian embassy in Moscow. Minden was always concerned about Straka going to Eastern Europe, as he was able to go to Bratislava, but not to Sofia or Varna. After learning that he had been blacklisted in Czechoslovakia, Straka preferred to remain in Vienna, but he later went to Moscow and Leningrad at the invitation of the Writers’ Union of the USSR.546
Books worth up to 1,000 Schillings, many of them critical of communism, were given out to top Marxist-Leninist historians, philosophers, and party officials from Eastern Europe at the annual congresses on the history of the workers’ movement organized in Linz by Herbert Steiner (1923-2001), secretary of the Documentationsarchiv des oster-reichischen Widerstandes (DOW) (Documentation Archives of the Austrian Resistance), where all the democratic Austrian associations were represented. In this manner, highly controversial books could be handed out and taken across the Iron Curtain. A few participants from the Soviet Union left the books at the Vienna embassy, which then sent these by pouch to Moscow and Leningrad. The same was done at the Alpbach Forums of the Austrian College, attended by historians, philosophers, and economists from Czechoslovakia (among them the current Czech President Vaclav Klaus), Poland, and Hungary, and a few from Romania and Bulgaria. The procedure was the same: books that were exhibited could be taken away or ordered by the visitors. These were then mailed to them from Vienna. Meetings between East European visitors and Austrian historians and politicians took place at Straka’s apartment, not in his bookstore.547
In the case of the Soviet Union, to which no books could be mailed, other ways had to be found in order to get the books into the country.
Straka had excellent personal connections to the top leadership of the SPO, including Minister of Justice Christian Broda, Vienna Mayor and later Foreign Minister Leopold Gratz, and Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, and, through them, with the various Austrian embassies and consulates in Eastern Europe and in the UssR, not to mention the various academies of sciences. In 1975, straka received a letter from Minden informing him: “instead of the $40,000 to $50,000 we were able to spend every year in austria for the buying of books for east europeans, we shall only be able to spend roughly one-third that amount.” Minden asked straka to approach interested people and institutions for financial help. straka showed the letter to kreisky, who exclaimed: “But this is from the CIA. You cannot send [books] from Frick and work with them.” straka showed him the stationary that bore the name of the international advisory Council. kreisky still refused, but a few weeks later, straka received a phone call informing him that books could now be sent to the austrian embassies through the diplomatic pouch.548 This ingenious system, aptly called “the pouch route,” was utilized by a number of other Western countries as well. in this way, books could be exhibited and given to guests invited to various events organized by the austrian embassy, in addition, they could simply be handed out in private to Russian friends. During the Kreisky era, neutral austria was favorably looked upon by the East European states, their traditional mutual historical ties playing a role in this. But throughout this period, great caution and, to use straka’s words, a “Fingerspitzengefuhl” had to be observed.
Straka recalls that he came to know a high-ranking diplomat at the Bulgarian embassy in Vienna who always took a large number of books with him to Bulgaria, part of which he sold there or on the way through Hungary and Romania. some of these books found their way via sofia into the UssR. This was also a way to get literature critical of com-
Munism into Eastern Europe and beyond.549 In another instance, a photocopying machine was broken down into several pieces and secretly taken to Prague, mainly by diplomats, and reassembled at the Technical University. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, students and historians wrote and photocopied, within one week, The Black Book of the Invasion of the CSSR. straka received a copy and took it to New York, where it was published ten days later in pocket format.550
Straka also recalls that when the first volume of solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago appeared in Switzerland in 1974, he phoned his colleagues in the U. s. and suggested to purchase more copies to have enough in stock. The Americans immediately bought 1,000 copies, which were delivered to Frick, which hardly had enough space to store them. When the news hit the press, Frick delivered the book, which Straka then sold to Minden before it was printed again.
In 1967-1968, Straka agreed with Minden to start sending French and German books, including the works of Leszek Kolakowski, Milan Kundera, Pavel Kohout, Alexis de Tocqueville, Manes Sperber, Milovan Djilas, Witold Gombrowicz, Arthur Koestler, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Hermann Broch, Robert Musil, Gunther Grass, Heinrich Boll, Karl Popper, and many others, including a most valuable annual German publication, the Fischer Almanach. Straka recommended 80% of these works. The Europa Verlag and its director, Erich Pogats, gave him their full support. The bookstores involved in the mailings joined forces with the various organizations and institutes that had contacts with Eastern Europe, and whose members were able to travel to Eastern Europe and to take Western books with them for distribution. Minden soon recognized that Austria had become one of the most important and successful partners for his organization. In this increasingly complex and somewhat risky enterprise, from the
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Late 1960s onwards the Jungbrunnen and Frick bookstores became the most important distribution points for all East European visitors to Vienna. In the early 1980s, so many Hungarians and Poles came to take books that in 1984, Minden had to impose a monthly limit of $400 for the former, and to limit Polish distribution to travel groups that could be identified as coming from Poland.
Straka estimates that between 40,000 and 50,000 books and periodicals were distributed throughout the years in Vienna, including some 1,000 copies of Gulag Archipelago. He also assumed a key role as the main contact person and book supplier of Minden’s other national distributors in Vienna: the Czech Ludwig Kolin, the Hungarians Gyula Klamar and Jozsef Varga, the Bulgarian Stefan Tabakoff, the Pole Kazimierz Knap at the Nansen Haus, and the Russian Lev Rudkevich, just to name the most important.551 Straka also closely cooperated with Karl Matal (1923-2001), a journalist of Czech origin and the Vienna representative of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), as well as Count Richard Belcredi, who was of Czech origin and later served as ambassador to switzerland under the presidency of Vaclav Havel. In 1985, Minden asked Straka to become the president of the Board of Directors of the Association Internationale de Planning, S. A. (AIDP), succeeding Andre Mari, the son of a former mayor of Nice and owner of a bookstore in Aix-en-Provence, and one of Minden’s key French book mailers. The other board members were Zygmunt Kallenbach in Geneva, Zdenek Mastnik in London, and Elizabeth (Jo) Esterhazy, born Wilson, as secretary general and treasurer in Brussels.552
As mentioned, from the early 1960s onwards, Minden visited most if not all of his East European and later Russian book distributors twice a year. This was his way of controlling, through personal observation, the effectiveness of the hand-to-hand distribution method, as well as to discuss with his field people the various aspects of their activities—in which financing played an important role—and to make plans for the future. Between 1974 and 1990, Minden met straka on no less than 18 occasions, in Vienna, Geneva, London, or in lausanne, where one of his sons lived. His reports are full of praise for the excellent work and organizational skills of his main Vienna distributor. Minden also held in high regard straka’s opinions and suggestions, and he fully trusted his capabilities. Theirs were two somewhat similar personalities, preferring to work discreetly and without fanfare, emphasizing good organization, financial management, and effective implementation, and avoiding any adventurous actions. As Minden wrote: “I know you have this operation at heart as much as I do and that you have many friends who think well of our book distribution.”553 Another testimony to the value of straka’s work is the personal letter he received one year after the Warsaw Pact invasion from Bishop Frantisek Tomasek, the Apostolic Administrator of Prague, thanking him in German for supplying both priests and laymen with valuable theological literature.554 Straka also often met in Vienna, or every three or four years in New York, with Minden’s national plans advisor for Czechoslovakia, William (Vilem) Brzorad (1911-1995), and with Dr. Bohumir Bunza (1908-1990), a Czech freelancer for Radio Free Europe in Rome who gave out books to East European visitors. Every
Christmas, Straka sent several boxes of the famous Viennese Sacher Torte to New York, to the delight of Minden’s staff members.
In the secret and also not so secret ideological and cultural warfare between East and West during the Cold War, it is estimated that during a period of 35 years, some 10 million books were mailed and smuggled across the Iron Curtain, despite the futile attempts of the communist postal censors and customs inspectors to stem the flow. During those decades, many individuals in the East as well as in the West risked a great deal, but especially in the East, where functionaries could lose all the benefits they enjoyed as members of the “nomenklatura.” Both Minden and Straka acted with the utmost discretion; only a few persons were aware of these activities, and no journalist ever wrote about them. If not, the communist regimes would have certainly stopped them. There was no criticism of the discreet contacts made with East European intellectuals and scientists not necessarily tied to party and government members. As Straka puts it: “I would like to stress that many people ‘smuggled knowledge’ to make it possible to build democratic states later. This was possible only through absolute discretion. It was interesting, difficult, at times nerve wrecking work which ended up with success. A successful revolution through books and information carried out without ostentation.”555 Without the material aid of the U. S., through the invisible channel of the CIA, this enterprise could have never been financed. But those individuals, institutions, and organizations that carried it out on both sides of the Atlantic for so many years also deserve praise for their efforts and ideas, and for their faith in the ultimate victory of the pen over the sword. Peter Straka belongs to those Austrian liberals who were not deterred by neutrality, and who did their best to reach out to their less fortunate East European neighbors.
The Western book exhibition in Bratislava during the Prague Spring. An exhibition of Western books, organized by the Vienna publisher Europa Verlag, was held in the House of Culture in Bratislava on May 17-27, 1968. It was highly successful, with 700 to 1,000 books worth 100,000 Schillings given out to interested visitors by the end of the exhibition. The event elicited requests for 4,485 books from some 1,500 Czechoslovak visitors. A short item about the exhibit appeared in the May 19, 1968 issue of the Bratislava newspaper Lud (The people).
The exhibition was held in cooperation with the slovak academy of sciences and the Jungbrunnen bookshop in Vienna. Peter straka was the originator of the project, and chiefly responsible for its execution. With George Minden’s approval, visitors were provided with forms at the exhibit asking them to list titles published by Europa Verlag which they would like to receive free of charge. The form stated: “We will try to send you the books from Vienna free of charge.” After screening the requests, at least one book was to be sent to each individual who filled out the form.
Since Europa Verlag specialized in books on political subjects, many of the requests were in that area. Of the 4,485 requests, roughly 1,800 were in international affairs and politics, 930 in religion and Marxist philosophy, 570 in sociology, 210 in economics, 120 in literature, 75 in education, 30 in psychology, as well as 30 requests for catalogues. Not all visitors indicated their profession. Among those who did, there were 181 technicians and scientists, 118 students, 115 professors and teachers, 95 physicians, 46 jurists, 35 journalists, 25 artists, 19 sociologists and historians, 16 writers, 16 economists, eight government and party officials, and two priests, a total of 676 persons. It was estimated that the majority of those who did not indicate their profession (803) were students. The titles selected included works by Paul Lazarsfeld, Adam schaff, Walter Laqueur, Vladimir Dedijer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and books on Christianity, Marxism, Karl Marx, social democracy, anti-semitism, China, and Israel.556
Some of the books requested during Europa Verlag’s May exhibition in Bratislava were mailed before the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 21. since most of the titles were political, PsPD decided to stop further mailings after this date. As acknowledgements of receipt continued to arrive even after the occupation, the Division decided to gradually resume the mailing from Vienna of those requests that still had not been filled. PSPD hoped to send off all 4,485 books asked for in Bratislava by the end of 1968.557
The International Book Fair in Sofia, Bulgaria. The International Book Fair held in Sofia on October 6-15, 1968, was very successful, and it gave PSPD useful pointers for the future course of its book projects. According to The New York Times, the fair “provoked excitement and a keen longing for wider cultural exchanges.” It displayed exhibits from booksellers from 20 different countries, most of them Western, and included a wide range of books in West European languages. All 15,000 foreign books (more than half of them from the West) were bought by the state import agency. Party and state leader Todor Zhivkov, as well as many other top-ranking party and government members, visited the fair. This made it clear that, after the long years during which almost all books from the West were anathema, the fog of suspicion and fear was lifting and the Bulgarian elite felt more secure and relaxed. Well over 40,000 persons attended the fair, and it was safe to assume that the bulk of them spoke at least one West European language. The fair revealed that English had superseded French as the Bulgarians’ first West European foreign language. In light of this, PSPD’s emphasis was on language, that is, books on linguistics, literature, philosophy, and social studies. PSPD also encouraged its sponsors to take part in next year’s book fair.558
The impact of the Fair continued to resound through letters received from Bulgaria. In its wake, intellectuals felt freer to write to the West and to request books and other printed matter. A Sofia professor asked for two books he saw at the Fair because they could not be obtained in Bulgaria. For lack of foreign currency, he offered to send the French publisher souvenirs or stamps. Another correspondent wrote that he had not had the opportunity to see new books for over twenty years, and asked for a catalogue.559
The Western Book Exhibit in Bucharest, Romania. The Jungbrunnen bookstore in Vienna and its manager Peter Straka made arrangements
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With the Romanian Academy of Sciences to stage a display of books at the Austrian house of Europa Verlag in Bucharest. Representatives of the Union of Communist Youth agreed to sponsor the exhibit, and the cultural section of the Foreign Ministry was equally favorable to the idea. The show, which was to include many political titles, was due to open in Bucharest in May, and visitors would be able to order copies of the books on display. Within the constraints of the budget for the next fiscal year, PsPD would try to fill out such orders. after the exhibit was over, the display copies of the books could not be given out to private individuals, but were to be presented to various Romanian libraries and the Union of Communist Youth.560
On June 9, 1969, Ion Popescu, secretary of the Union’s Central Committee, opened the exhibition—which was under the auspices of the Central Committee of Romania’s Union of Communist Youth— in the Mihai Eminescu bookstore in Bucharest. The whole range of Europa Verlag’s 1969 publications was on display, with the exception of 29 titles to which the censors objected. During its first four days, some 2,000 visitors viewed the display and were able to place orders for the books they wanted. PSPD tried to meet these orders as far as its budget allowed. once the exhibition was over, the display copies of the books were distributed to Romanian libraries and the Union.561 During the summer months, the Jungbrunnen bookstore forwarded 200 more requests. This brought the requests received as a result of the display of books published by Europa Verlag of Vienna and organized by Jungbrunnen in Bucharest in June 1969 to more than 800.562
World History
