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.160
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, 1962,161 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.162 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.163
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WEOD was subsequently dissolved and some of its activities terminated as of July 1, 1965, and its Paris office, which administered scholarships and grants to East Europeans and East Europeans exiles in the West, was closed at the end of June 1966. The balance of the activities was transferred to New York and assigned to George Minden’s PsPD. the RFE/RL Corporate Records include the microfiche copies of seven semi-annual reports on the East-West Contacts Program, covering the four-year period from July 1, 1965 through June 30, 1969, each averaging 25 to 30 pages in length and all written by Minden. These very detailed reports were divided into four parts: 1. A country-by-country description of East-West projects carried out in cooperation with outside organizations and individuals in various West European countries, including a special project for Polish visitors to France; 2. The student and youth program, involving scholarships and grants to East Europeans; 3. The labor program carried out by the ICFTUE (International Centre of Free Trade Unionists in Exile); and 4. Publications assisted, that is, partially subsidized, by PSPD. This aspect of the program, for which every dollar spent was accounted for, deserves a special mention because most of these emigre publications were also active in both the book mailing and distribution and in the East-West contacts programs.
The new program started with a one-year period of re-evaluation and closer supervision of all activities through the New York office, and regular field trips by PSPD personnel, with Minden going to Europe in the summer of 1965 to meet with all major organizations and individuals who cooperated with FEC in its East-West Contacts program. Similar inspection trips were made later by his executive assistant and the Polish and Hungarian national editors/plans advisors. Grants and scholarships to East Europeans in exile were terminated in order to expand those given to East Europeans. It was decided to utilize as many outside cover organizations as possible—foundations, societies, some exile groups (mainly Polish and a few Hungarian), and various organizations, book publishers, and individuals—and to keep Free Europe and its subsidies out of the picture completely. Many of these organi-
Seven such programs in Austria, six in France, three in England, two each in Switzerland and Sweden, and one each in Italy and Belgium. Ibid.
Zations and individuals were already active and had proved themselves in the person-to-person book distribution program in Vienna, Rome, London, Paris, Munich, and Geneva. Moreover, international seminars, lectures tours, and conferences of writers and scholars held with indirect PsPD assistance, or congresses to which it contributed financially, also offered excellent opportunities for the distribution of books to East European participants. The texts of the symposium or congress discussions were later published in book form, purchased by PsPD, and distributed or mailed. Under this program, selected East European visitors also received travel and research grants. For example, PsPD contributed $4,600 to cover the expenses of eleven east european delegates, among them Vaclav Havel and Gyula Illyes, to the June 1965 International PEN Congress in New York, which was also attended by the Russian exile novelist Valery Tarsis. Another example of this indirect support was the ICFTUE Congress held in Vienna in April 1966, attended by 35 delegates from Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics, to which PSPD contributed $6,000. Support was also given to Zygmunt Kallenbach and the Polish YMCA in Geneva, the Polish School of Political and Social Sciences in London, and seminars in Vienna, Stockholm, Ghent, and Enkhuizen in the Netherlands. Minden was eager to revamp the program and exploit all new opportunities by improving existing instruments and techniques and trying new, more subtle institutional and operational forms and methods to enhance efficiency. For him, the main objective was to influence the minds and eventually the actions of selected East Europeans by exposing them to western democratic thought and ideas.164
Minden’s next report covered the first year of the East-West project and marked the end of the period of reevaluation and reorganization. In some cases, projects were reduced, while a number of grant programs were discontinued. Nansen Haus in Vienna, operated by Kazimierz Knap, from whom FEC had officially “disassociated itself,” now received money from Minden to set up a guest room for Poles visiting Vienna and to give them books and periodicals. Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian organizations and individuals were included for the first time in Free europe’s 1967 budget for the project. Financial assistance to Western organizations engaged in East-West contacts was to be used for specific projects, and to be matched by a corresponding contribution from their side. Minden admitted that the program “is by its nature a complicated affair. It is in reality not one but many separate programs carried out by different organizations and individuals spread out in various west European countries and in the United States and dealing with many individual East Europeans.” In his view, grants to selected “opinion leaders” for study in the West or participation in seminars or round-table discussions organized by West European organizations “constitute the heart of our program.” He listed the Austrian Literary Society, the Europahaus in Vienna, the ICFTUE, and the Esperienze Internationali in Italy, as well as the International Advisory Council, the Wanda Roehr Foundation, and several universities in the United States. In line with his concept of ideological warfare, Minden described the program as one “based on faith—faith that the democratic way is the better way and that bringing east Europeans to the West, having them come into contact with a democratic society [...] will have repercussion on their future thinking and behavior [...] We can and must be selective in choosing the East Europeans we bring to the West; we can and must provide worthwhile, intellectually stimulating contacts for them during their stay in the West.” He advocated a wise selection of Western organizations, equal financial contribution on their part, and a careful supervision for all programs. He also stressed the importance of keeping covered the role of Free Europe in the file of East-West contacts and the “wisdom of increased discretion.”165
Minden continued to refine the program during the second half of 1966, calling it “highly selective” and aimed at reaching “influential East Europeans established in their fields or well advanced in their studies [...] who are in a position to influence their associates in the community at large.” such people included professors, economists, sociologists, writers, artists, journalists, and government planners. Working through established West european and American organizations and individuals, Minden was in constant search of new channels, stopping cooperation with organizations that had proved “unproductive,” and working with others, some of which had previously been assisted by EEC’s Paris and London offices. He described the project as “a fluid, constantly changing program dependent on outside organizations and individuals.” He called the East Europeans living in the West, and the organizations that were in regular contact with their compatriots managed by them, “service centers.” The achievements for this six-month period included study grants to one Czech and two Polish economists, one Hungarian and two Czech philosophers, and 26 Poles studying in the West. Support was also given through the Wanda Roehr Foundation to international conferences and seminars organized by the Europa Haus in Vienna. The project contributed $4,000 to the 1966 Alpbach Forum organized by the Austrian College Society, at which the Jungbrunnen bookstore distributed some 300 political books to the 36 East European participants. Some support went to the Nansen Haus in Vienna, Pax Romana in Freiburg, Germany, the Hungarian emigre magazine Magyar Muhely (Hungarian workshop) in Paris, as well as the Polish Library and the Polish School of Political and Social Thought, both in London. Most of the grants were given to post-graduate East European students working toward doctoral degrees, and most of the subsidized magazines were distributed to East Europeans.166
Throughout 1967 and 1968, PSPD vigorously continued its East-West contacts activities without openly sponsoring them. Its role was to consider projects for which help was needed, to make suggestions and recommendations, and to reimburse the West European spon-
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Sors for their work and expenses after the project had been approved. The program was divided into three categories. Programs were carried out by reputable, independent “field organizations” with a basic interest in East-West contacts. they sponsored conferences and seminars to which they invited a select group of east europeans, gave them study grants, and assisted east european visitors. these organizations included esperienze Internazionali in Rome, concerned with cultural exchanges between countries; europa Haus, the Austrian Literary society, the austrian College, and the newspaper Die Furche in Vienna; the international Pen in london; the East European Quarterly of the University of Colorado in Boulder; and Hamburg University. Some were Hungarian emigre organizations—Magyar Muhely in Paris, the Szepsi Csombor Literary Circle in London run by Istvan Siklos, the Mikes Kelemen Circle in Tilburg, the Netherlands, headed by S. M. Nemeth, the Kossuth Foundation, and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Science in New York. The so-called “service centers” consisted of Polish and Hungarian emigre organizations, acting independently of PSPD, which had contacts with their visiting compatriots and gave them books and periodicals. They included the Nansen Haus and the editorial office of the Hungarian emigre monthly Magyar Hirado in Vienna, the editorial office of the magazine Uj Ldtohatar in Munich, the Polish YMCA in Geneva, the Polish Youth Center run by the Benedictine priest Placyde Galinski, the Bibliotheque Polonaise, the Librairie Polonaise, Kultura managed by Jerzy Giedroyc, as well as the Galerie Lambert in Paris, the Polish School of Political and Social Sciences, the Polish Library, the Polish ex-Combatants Association, and the Polish Christian Social Youth Federation in London. Finally, there were east-West contacts through the unofficial representative of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), for the publishing and distribution of articles on trade union developments in eastern europe.167
Throughout the 1960s, the Galerie Lambert in Paris, run by Kazimierz Romanowicz and his wife Zofia, a talented author, remained a very important “service center.” It was visited by many Polish and Czechoslovak artists, as well as by painters from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, lithuania, and even the soviet Union. the owners developed a warm and continuing personal relationship with many of these East European artists and writers, and organized a series of art exhibitions of the works of modern Polish artists, young Czechoslovak painters, the Hungarian painter tibor Csernus, and the soviet painter ely Bielutin. the soviet poet Andrei Voznesensky also visited the Galerie in 1966 to see its art exhibit. A first attempt at having an exhibition of Czech abstract art in Paris, planned for 1964, had to be called off because of rigid Czech government cultural policies. it could be held a year later, while the Galerie did not succeed in arranging an exhibition of Lithuanian art. Many East European and a number of soviet artists sent their works to Romanowicz, who regularly mailed his art catalogues and books to artists and art critics all over Eastern Europe, as well as to Polish universities and libraries. He also distributed many books to Polish and other east european visitors in the frame of the person-to-person project. the Galerie was frequently praised in the Polish press for its successful promotion of Polish art on the international scene. it is worth noting that Czechoslovak, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, and soviet artists had to turn to a Polish art gallery in Paris to get their works known and even exhibited.168
The 1968 alpbach Forum, sponsored by the austrian College society under the theme “Power-Law-Morals,” took place from august 17 to september 2 under the shadow of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. 45 to 50 east europeans were among the 450 participants. As soon as the news of the invasion reached the Forum, many Czech and slovak participants left for Vienna, where the philosopher Ivan svitak penned a manifesto of protest that was signed
By some 130 Czechoslovak intellectuals who were in Vienna at the time. Svitak then flew to New York and started teaching at Columbia University. The East European Quarterly of the University of Colorado sponsored a conference on “Eastern Europe in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” held in Vienna in September 1968, with the attendance of 16 East European historians. The various “service centers” also hosted a large number of visitors. A stormy meeting of the International PEN Club in London was marked by the passage of a resolution urging the restoration of the Czech and Slovak writers’ freedom to engage in their art. The next meeting, scheduled for 1969 in Varna, Bulgaria, was cancelled in protest against the invasion.169
As appears from the last semi-annual report available in the Hoover Institution Archives, The Institute of Social Studies at The Hague gave grants of $500 to two Czech economists and one Slovak engineer to enable them to attend its courses. More Czechoslovaks were assisted by the Institut d’Etudes Slaves in Paris, and by Father Karl Fort, a Czech Jesuit in Munich in charge of the spiritual care of Czechs and Slovaks in West Germany. 14 Polish and two Czechoslovak professors, writers, and historians were invited by the University of Geneva with the assistance of Zygmunt Kallenbach, and small grants were given through Ambassador Gaetan Morawski in Paris to assist Polish visitors in need. The Polish School of Political and Social Sciences in London, run by Jan Ostaszewski and the meeting place of many Polish visitors, shipped some 130 books to six academic libraries in Poland. Also, two major studies on Czechoslovakia were prepared by Karl Matal in Vienna.170
With the separation of PSPD from Free Europe, Inc., in 1970, the extensive East-West Contacts Program was also terminated, and with it the various grants and financial support for conferences and seminars. However, Minden continued to run some of his operations through many of the same sponsors and “service centers” in existence throughout the 1960s. This was in particular the case for the person-to-person book distribution program and the financial support for emigre newspapers and magazines, which continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Minden never gave up Free Europe’s nor his own ultimate objective, namely to help East Europeans move toward an open, democratic society and self-determination, and to expose them through books to Western democratic thought and developments in all fields.
World History
