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Cultural Relations and Soviet Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Frederick C. Barghoorn  and
Paul W. Friedrich
Frederick C. Barghoorn
Affiliation:
Political Science at Yale and Visiting Professor of International Relations, Columbia
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Extract

WE attempt in this article to identify some politically significant characteristics of Soviet policy in the field of “cultural relations. These are discussed in the context of international affairs since the death of Stalin. The significance of this topic for governments was reemphasized by its prominence at the two Geneva East-West meetings of 1955. It impinged noticeably upon world attention once the ”Geneva spirit” had rekindled hope for a lessening of tension.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , April 1956 , pp. 323 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

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References

1 We are grateful to the administrators of the Stimson Fund of Yale University for financial assistance which facilitated preparation of diis study. The writer received major assistance in assembly of data and valuable anmropological counsel from Mr. Friedrich. He was also assisted by Mr. George Chranewycz and Mr. George Carnett. Mrs. Thelma Freides and Mr. Stephen Hosmer, graduate students in International Relations at Yale University, brought certain facts to his attention.

2 In 1955, the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States took steps to establish new administrative arrangements to deal with travel, and associated cultural and scientific exchange, with the Soviet Union. See, for example, Christian Science Monitor editorial, June 2, 1955; New York Times article by Harrison E. Salisbury, August 1, 1955.

3 Useful historical material on the role of cultural relations in the foreign policy of various states, including Soviet Russia, is contained in McMurry, Ruth Emily and Lee, Muna, The Cultural Approach, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1947; pp. 110–36Google Scholar deal with the Soviet Union. On die organizational structure of Soviet foreign cultural activity, see Nemzer, Louis, “The Soviet Friendship Societies,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XIII (Summer 1949). pp. 265–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Kluckhohn, Clyde, Mirror for Man, New York, 1949, p. 289.Google Scholar

5 Reischauer, Edwin O., Wanted: An Asian Policy, New York, 1955, p. 206.Google Scholar See also Schwantes, Robert S., Japanese and Americans, New York, 1955Google Scholar, especially p. 3, defining cultural relations as “all the ways in which peoples learn about each other.”

6 Kluckhohn, , op. cit., p. 289.Google Scholar

7 Karpov, G., O sovetskoi kulture i kulturnoi revolyutsii v sssr, Moscow, 1954, p. 78.Google Scholar This book received a highly favorable review in the Central Committee theoreticalorgan, Kommunist, No. 17 (1954), pp. 123–28. A similar “two worlds” approach is taken in the article on “Culture” in Volume 24 of the new edition of Bohhaya sovets Kaya entsi Klopediya, released by the Soviet censorship in December 1953, and, indeed, in all other available Soviet sources.

8 Karpov, , op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar

9 Evans, F. Bowen, ed., Worldwide Communist Propaganda Activities, New York, 1955, p. 89.Google Scholar

10 See his amusing article, “Capitalist on the Loose in Moscow,” Life, June 2, 1952.

11 Inostranmye delegatsii o sovetskom soyuze, Moscow, 1953, p. 4.

12 Evans, , op. cit., pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

13 Sovets Kaya Kultura, September 1, 1955.

14 New York Times, August 4, 1955. It appears to be impossible to obtain, either from American or from Soviet sources, exact figures on Soviet-American travel. The figures referred to above do not, of course, include American official personnel stationed in the Soviet Union.

15 According to Pravda for January 20, 1955, 104 American citizens visited die USSR “in 1953 and 1954.” New Times for February 27, 1954, revealed diat only 42 persons from all countries visited the USSR on an individual basis in 1953.

16 A Columbia Russian Institute student, Francis D. Randall, contributed a delightful article, entitled “Four Holes in the Iron Curtain,” to the Amherst Alumni News for January 1955.

17 Some of the most interesting of these, by such men as H. N. Brailsford and Karl Borders, were published by the Vanguard Press in its Vanguard Studies of Soviet Russia.

18 Steiger, Andrew J., “American Engineers in the Soviet Union,” pamphlet, New York, 1944, p. 7.Google Scholar

19 New York Times, August 21, 1955.

20 Three of the nine objectives of VOKS identified by McMurry and Lee from the Voks Bulletin and other official sources were concerned with the “struggle for peace,”and the remaining six objectives consisted mainly of means to this end. McMurry, and Lee, , op. cit., pp. 110–18.Google Scholar

21 Pravda, August 5, 1955, p. 3.

22 Pravda, June 18, 1953. Three days earlier, the Pravda editorial entitled “The Word of Truth” had already stated that all who came with “honorable intentions” would be welcomed in the Soviet Union.

23 See, for example, me statement by the Soviet journalist Litoshko, quoted in New York Times, August 2, 1955.Google Scholar

24 See “Cultural Relations Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” Department of State Publication 3480, released April 1949, Washington, D.C., U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1949.

25 Zaslavski, D., “The Iron Curtain in the United States of America,” Pravda, January 20, 1955.Google Scholar Scores of such items have appeared in all leading Soviet newspapers and magazines during the past two years.

26 Pravda, September 24, 1954.

27 Bey, Hamdi, “The Indian Intelligentsia and the Western World,” New World Writing, 3rd Mentor Selection, New York, 1953, pp. 213–17Google Scholar; quotation on p. 216.

28 pravda, July 17, 1955.

29 See, for example, Pravda editorial, October 14, 1955, on “The Flourishing of the Arts in Socialist Nations,” which proclaims, as one of the major values of Soviet socialism, the ideal of “mutual cultural enrichment”; New York Times, October 30, 1955.

30 Izvestiya, May 20, 1955.

31 Department of State, The National Interest and Foreign Languages, prepared by William R. Parker for Citizens Consultations, initiated by the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, Washington, D.C., 1954, p. 71.

32 Sovets Kaya Kultura, June 30, 1955.

33 Inostrannye yazyki v shkole, No. I (1953), pp. 104–8.

34 Pravda, April II, 1954.

35 This point is stressed in Soviet encyclopedias and in die announcement in Sovets-Kaya Kultura for June 9, 1955, of a ten-volume “universal history.”

36 Kommunist, No. 8 (May 1955), pp. 74–83; quotation on p. 83. A condensed versionis available in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, VII, No. 28 (August 24, 1955), pp.21–24.

37 Ibid., p. 77.

38 Pravda, October 5, 1954.

39 Sovetskaya Kultura, September 17, 1955.

40 Pravda, September 4, 1955; Sovetskaya Kultura, September 8, 1955.

41 Pravda, June 1, 1955; Sovets Kaya Kultura, June 2, 1955.

42 “A Book on the Great Indian People,” Kommunist, No. 9 (1955), pp. 96–106.

43 Pravda, June 8, 1955. Almost the whole front page was devoted to Nehru's arrival.

44 Pravda, September 21, 1955; Sovets Kaya Kultura, October 12, 1955.

45 See, for example, New York Times, January 11 and February 5, 1954, and May 22, 1955; Christian Science Monitor, December 28, 1954.

46 Monroe, Keith, “Guatemala: What the Reds Left Behind,” Harper's Magazine, CCI (July 1955), p. 58.Google Scholar

47 Evans, , op. cit., pp. 95–100.Google Scholar

48 Pravda, March 13, March 16, and April 28, 1955.

49 Sovets Kaya Cultura, April 28, 1955.

50 Pravda, August 13 and September 3, 1954, the latter containing an article by Ehrenburg.

51 See, for example, New York Times, January 27, 1955, and considerable material in McMurry and Lee, op.cit.

52 Pravda, July 28, July 31, and August 1, 1955; New YorK Times, August 2, 1955.

53 Sovets Kaya Kultura, May 31, 1955. Also interesting in connection with the current Soviet image of American morality and culture is a very long article by Charles White in the issue of July 9, 1955, entitled “The Path of a Negro Artist,” reprinted from Masses and Mainstream (April 1955), pp. 33–4; on the other hand, Pravda for October 12, 1955, reported an “evening of American music” in honor of die visiting American, Carleton Smim.