Cold War Books: George Minden and His Field Workers,1973–1990

Introduction

Exile communities have often influenced their countries of origin. ¹ They are more or less rooted in the place where they spent their early days, where they left friends or families. Migrants—like no one else—can emphasize the needs of compatriots. An identity shared with those who live on the other side of a boundary is reflected in the same language and common memories, symbols, or legends that, for instance, represent values of national independence, solidarity, religious belief, and freedom. In Polish history—replete with struggles for independence and anti-government conspiracy—books have been regarded as capable of delivering hope for a better future. ² Émigrés could mobilize their visitors from the homeland to take common action through shared ethnicity and culture. This is what social scientists have named a “perfect cultural framing.” ³

No wonder then that throughout history state actors have used the bridge-building abilities of the diaspora. ⁴ In the Cold War context, state–private networks were created as covert enterprises run by intelligence services. ⁵ Little did we know about the secret ties between migrants and state powers, but it is safe to say that such alliances were generated on all sides of the conflicts, to infiltrate one another. ⁶ One of the most interesting projects of this kind was a book program for Eastern Europe that lasted more than thirty years and contributed to the so-called cultural Cold War. This cross-border literature service was organized by the US government and channeled through East European émigré circles based in Western Europe in order to export “banned ideas” behind the Iron Curtain—all in the hope that anticommunist protesters would secretly exchange those publications and create a tiny space for freedom under dictatorship.

The US government and Polish anti-totalitarians had much in common. The older generation of the Polish diaspora, ex-military personnel who had fought in the Second World War, treated the book program as a continuation of their wartime alliance with the United States. In general, the Polish wartime diaspora who had settled in Western Europe felt very bitter after Western governments accepted in Yalta the new world order that left Poland dependent on the Soviet Union. ⁷ All the more, they eagerly remobilized in a new fight for Polish freedom in the cultural Cold War. Newcomers, pushed into exile by the Polish government after the 1968 protests, represented a more leftist movement. Unlike West European protesters of their own age, some of them became friendly to the United States and increasingly anticommunist, which made them inclined to join the book program as well. The last wave of expatriate Poles—Solidarity campaigners migrating after the 1981 imposition of martial law in Poland—could be coined the “revolutionary diaspora.” ⁸ They naturally contributed to transnational anticommunism once living abroad.

This scholarship explores only one specific area of this program, namely, the “strategic interaction” ⁹ between the diaspora organizations and George Minden, the head of the US book program. Existing historiography argues that exiles were a vast and largely autonomous part of the US information policy. ¹⁰ This argument can also be applied to the whole project run by the Central Information Agency (CIA) program named the International Literary Centre (ILC). Beginning in the 1950s, in an effort to undermine Communist rule, approximately ten million books (Western and émigré literature, scholarly books, and periodicals) were sent into Eastern Europe, including four million to Poland. The ILC coordinated those efforts from its New York headquarters, working undercover in the guise of a private, nonprofit society established to provide people around the world with good books, free of charge. ¹¹ My focus of interest is mainly the Polish diaspora, owing to the availability of sources.

The efforts made by George Minden for the sake of expanding freedom of thought in Eastern Europe entailed an annual purchase of several hundred copies of leading émigré publications. Some were dispatched to the East by post since at the time this was a safer procedure. From 1958 onward, however, half of the books were presented to arrivals from beyond the Iron Curtain in émigré cultural centers in Vienna, Munich, Geneva, Rome, Paris, London, Stockholm, and other cities. The Minden center in New York cooperated with about one hundred émigrés of various nationalities—about thirty-eight of them of Polish origin—scattered across Western Europe. The publications reached Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and certain parts of the Soviet Union, the sole exception being the GDR. ¹²

The growing literature on US influence programs helps us to better understand the broader context of covert operations concerning citizen groups. The Cultural Cold War by Frances S. Saunders ¹³ shed light on a previous CIA covert enterprise called the Congress for Cultural Freedom (1950–1967). Her interpretation is highly critical. She describes the CIA’s involvement in terms of secret, manipulative power. Intellectuals taking part in the Congress are presented as victims forced to perform in the US propaganda campaign. This notion can be questioned since it does not render the feelings and opinions of many of the people, especially emigrants, involved. Saunders does not prove there was a strong link between financial dependence and the content of the writers’ works. ¹⁴ She also fails to place her story in the more general context of Soviet domination over Central Europe and the emigrants’ fight for democracy. Still, her inquiries as to what extent the American side interfered in writers’ and publishers’ freedom of speech is obviously justified.

Hugh Wilford, in his 2008 book about Frank Wisner, the first CIA head of cultural warfare during the early Cold War, describes the early Cold War game played by Wisner. ¹⁵ Wisner used to compare his job to the Mighty Wurlitzer. The phrase refers to an organ able to play any propaganda tune desired. In the context of the anticommunist diaspora, this meant Wisner should have been able to shape émigré organizations exactly as he wanted. Wilford, however, is skeptical about the CIA’s capacity to control the “secret army” of Eastern European migrants. He concluded “the CIA might have tried to call the tune,” but the goal seemed elusive because of clashes within the diasporas and the resistance of migrants who did not want to be treated as paid agents of the US government. Wilford’s book is a balanced judgment on US covert actions of the 1950s.

However, his findings cannot be simply transposed onto later years. The first, pioneering account coming from the highest level of the book program itself is Alfred Reisch’s Hot Books in the Cold War. ¹⁶ His approach to the CIA’s secret involvement is definitely more moderate in interpretation than Saunders’s attempt. Reisch does not reject the opinion that the book program was a part of the US Cold War strategy, but strongly stresses the autonomy of the CIA instruments designed to manage the book program. ¹⁷ The chief of the program, Romanian exile George Minden, is described by Reisch as a man of letters, who “does not want to feed propaganda to the people of Eastern Europe” like a new Mighty Wurlitzer. ¹⁸ In Reisch’s approach, the distinction between state and society is rather blurred. He is largely laconic about personal relations within the network.

The topic of book programs for communist countries remains unexamined, especially in regard to the 1970s and 1980s, because most of the records are still classified. I have sought out the evidence from both George Minden and his distributors’ papers. The detailed reports of field workers, which Reich did not use at all, constitute a very valuable portion of historical materials on the operation, since the European representatives reported on a regular basis to Minden’s organization. ¹⁹ I have explored only a few cases out of dozens. Most of the distributors’ papers are lost or inaccessible. Based mostly on availability, I used the collections of Jerzy Giedroyc in Paris, Jerzy Kulczycki in London, Witold Zahorski in Rome, and Norbert Żaba in Sweden. Those few cases represent, however, vast and long-lasting distribution operations across the entire network, and they are diverse in geographical terms.

Notes from twenty-three European trips taken by George Minden in 1973–1990 are a valuable and little used source as well. ²⁰ This source (a total of 517 pages) portrayed almost all the participants in Minden’s network and recorded the emotions, fears, and hopes of the period. The start and end dates of Minden’s notes thus draw the dividing lines for the chronology of the whole article. Minden provided us with insight—naturally, incomplete—into elusive psychic tensions, states of spirit, and impressions. This source also reveals the nature of US patronage, built on common political convictions. Minden seemed perfectly fitted for the role of such a liaison owing to his émigré background, good knowledge of the book world, and his personal ability to be very diplomatic and subtle with his “field representatives,” as he called émigré publishers and dealers. ²¹ Not every bookseller, however, trusted Minden. Jerzy Giedroyc, editor of the Paris-based Kultura, met Minden on very rare occasions and expressed critical views of him. ²²

Using Minden’s notes as the only source might be considered inappropriate, as those notes reflect only one side of the network. What is more, Minden was more of a guest than a host in Europe. He hurriedly noted down his subjective emotions and was not always capable of balancing his opinions or deciphering the game played by the different, frequently contrary opinions that reached him. He wrote as if behind the backs of the publishers. The complexities of comprehension were intensified by cultural and language differences. Sometimes, Minden was unable to faithfully render what he actually heard in conversations. “His notes often do not reflect the situation or my opinions, nor do they correspond to the reality of the period”—Eugeniusz Smolar, the London-based publisher and Minden’s interlocutor, wrote to me, and listed a number of episodes distorted by Minden.

On certain occasions, Minden might have got the facts wrong, as in a note from 1979 about a successful court trial against IBM, the computer firm, which supposedly enabled Aneks to improve its financial situation thanks to compensation. “This is sheer fantasy. There simply was no such trial,” Smolar recalls, claiming that IBM did not play a role in the publishing undertakings of Aneks. ²³ Obviously, emigrants’ sources also reflect only one-sided opinions. That is why I believe that the most appropriate methodology is to combine Minden’s notebook with the distributors’ papers and, if possible, oral accounts from diaspora members, Minden’s former interlocutors. Putting together all sources seems to be the optimal research strategy, including even oral histories regardless of the way that retrospective interviews could deform the realities of the past.

The Book Program before 1973

The book program social infrastructure came into existence mostly from the bottom up, not the top down. This was a spontaneous and sometimes a chaotic process of self-creation, and the program outlets were deep-rooted and authentic. The Paris-based Kultura had been formed by Jerzy Giedroyc several years before the book program was launched, and the journal served for many years as the main hub for Polish anti-communist resistance and an extensive intellectual center. ²⁴ Kulczycki was also not only the book program dealer but also an independent bookseller and publisher who carried on a trade in books on the British market. ²⁵ Zahorski in Rome as well as Żaba in Sweden can be seen as leading figures of Polish diasporic communities, and their activities went far beyond the book service for Minden’s organization. ²⁶ The same can be said about the Aneks team. This was a genuinely grassroots endeavor established in Sweden by recent members of the Polish diaspora. ²⁷

The origins of the book program for Poland can be traced back to the early 1950s. In 1950 or 1951, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) funded the first grants for Jerzy Giedroyc’s Kultura. ²⁸ This early covert activity paved the way for the systemic transfer of books for Eastern Europe, run from 1956 to 1971 by the Committee of Free Europe (FEC). ²⁹ The first Polish distribution network was directed by Samuel S. Walker in New York and his European representative Andrzej Stypułkowski in London. The joint Polish-American project took the name of Polonia Book Fund Ltd. and operated for several years outside the FEC structures. This person-to-person (ptp) distribution vehicle started in 1958 and quickly covered Great Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and other European countries. It was not until 1963 that George Minden took over the ptp mechanism from Walker-Stypułkowski and transferred it back to FEC’s Press and Special Projects Division (PSPD). ³⁰

In 1967 and the next few years, FEC-CIA connections were revealed to public opinion. This marked the most dramatic moment in the whole history of Radio Free Europe (RFE) and the book program. The disclosure that FEC was sponsored by the CIA led to a change in the organizational pattern of US government influence programs. FEC and its PSPD terminated in 1971. From this time on, RFE was not supervised by the CIA and the broadcasting became a totally overt US instrument of policy. ³¹ The book program—a much smaller entity than RFE—continued to function under the cover name of International Advisory Council (IAC), which finally turned into the International Literary Centre (ILC), with George Minden in charge of the whole project. ³²

As before 1971, there were no relations between CIA and the emigrants, and ILC as the go-between allowed émigré circles to maintain their non-agent-like participation in the project The “sponsor” remained undisclosed even for ILC headquarter employees. ³³ ILC’s main field representatives in Europe had direct contact with the ILC’s New York headquarters, exchanging official letters on a regular basis with Polish national advisor Adam Rudzki, who “enjoyed the absolute trust of Minden.” ³⁴ Rudzki played a very strong role as the Polish section manger, acting as interpreter and troubleshooter between Minden and the Polish publishing diaspora for thirty years. ³⁵ His remarkable insight into personal relations in the Polish network is largely missing because he did not take notes on his conversations with field workers as Minden did.

“Partnership over Secrets”

Minden’s opinions on his diaspora associates varied from one to another, but in general he was rather positive toward the migrants’ commitment and dedication to the common cause. In his notebook, he often painted a positive picture of the effort they put into doing their job well. He used to comment that the European network was hardworking, competent, or wise. ³⁶ There are also a number of passages in his records throwing a very favorable light on himself as a generator of good advice and feedback. It appears that he took care of publishers and distributors when they were in need. When he himself was unable to help, he passed on the information to the US officials, which acted as his personal recommendation. This was, first of all, the case for new arrivals to the network, for instance, Paris-based young Polish editor Barbara Toruńczyk or London-based Tadeusz Kadenacy. ³⁷

No matter how hard Minden tried to help the Polish diaspora, the real challenge remained how to deal with the problem of the secret involvement of the US government, especially the CIA. Both parties in the “state-private partnership” paid much attention to concealing this connection from the public. The American side did not tell its field workers much about the exact source of the money and how Minden’s organization was linked to state power. As some migrants guessed who was behind this, the game became a “partnership over secrets” ³⁸ but also a possible source of concern among the book program front-liners. Jerzy Giedroyc, émigré publisher of Paris-based Kultura liked to stress that he was not dependent on any external subsides while in fact he was supported by the United States. ³⁹ He kept this secret even in a letter to his most trusted distributor Norbert Żaba, Polish ex-diplomat in Stockholm, assuring him that he did not get any help from sponsors. ⁴⁰

At one time, rumor had it amid political exiles that Giedroyc was being secretly financed by the American side. One of the claims, according to Stockholm-based book distributor and Radio Free Europe coworker, Ludomir Gąssowski-Garczyński, was that Giedroyc’s Kultura journal “is for sure funded by the Americans, though, to a lesser degree than Radio Free Europe.” ⁴¹ In another conversation, he would say that the CIA used to buy 1,500 copies of Kultura through the Congress for Cultural Freedom. ⁴² More evidence on this sort of speculation about other field workers can be found in Minden’s notes. A Polish émigré publisher in Paris, Piotr Jegliński, started a rumor about the US government connections of London bookseller Jerzy Kulczycki in his conversation with a young lady, a secretary of Kulczycki. This was probably said to compromise Kulczycki’s business after Jegliński had unsuccessfully tried to secure the services of this secretary, “offering her twice as much money as Kulczycki could pay.” ⁴³ This incident caused Minden to worry, as he always did when he came across examples of disintegration or internal clashes within the network.

Another security lapse is exemplified by Eugeniusz Smolar’s attempt to bypass the ILC. He wanted to lobby US government for money and, more importantly, to establish direct contact with the “sponsors,” as Minden defined them. Smolar, though a relatively new addition to the network, knew perfectly well who the “sponsor” was. ⁴⁴ Minden did his best to discourage him from embarking on this sort of campaign in the United States. Again, the head of the ILC probably believed this constituted a threat to the whole operation. This argument, however, is less convincing when we take into account that Soviet propaganda had accused migrants of being paid by the CIA for a long time. ⁴⁵ The problem of nonstate actors’ consciousness is tackled by Wilford with regard to 1950s and 1960s undercover operations. He concluded that “genuine unwittingness was a rare condition.” ⁴⁶ My impression of the book program is the same. The majority of field workers must have suspected who was behind the cover of the ILC name. But if so, it is more difficult to claim that migrants were manipulated.

From the CIA’s perspective, the argument for staying under cover might have been that the operation took place overseas, mainly in Western Europe, and it would have been difficult to finance it overtly. Western governments would not very warmly welcome the fact that the CIA and migrants were working together on their territory without anyone knowing about it. As far I as I can tell, CIA officials were well aware of the fact that the program’s cover was partly blown. But they were still afraid to confirm government funding publicly. Total disclosure of US involvement might even result in the evacuation of some of the migrants involved from Western Europe to the United States because of a potentially strongly negative reaction by local public opinion. Pointing out who was receiving government payment could lead to a significant reduction of whole action and to losing the momentum of the project. Book smugglers would have worried about getting involved in espionage and would have lost faith in the operation. ⁴⁷

Minden often advised distributors about safety, at times warning or outright complaining about lighthearted or excessively risky behavior. But this was mutual reinforcement of the network. The distributors could also share their anxieties and suspicions with him, as they did on certain occasions. ⁴⁸ Minden attempted to pass on such rumors to the “Board” ⁴⁹ or personally sought the truth in further conversations. This might have triggered a sense of unity with Minden in the core of his network. On the other hand, presumptions about Minden’s double role—as head of the ILC and a CIA contractor ⁵⁰ —must have produced assorted tactics of selecting information while talking to him, even while sharing the general purpose of the struggle.

The New York–based ILC was engaged in building a smuggling organization and thus entered a world of conspiracy—menacing and full of pitfalls. The Minden notebook contains a recurring motif of fear of penetration by the communist regime. “As usual, [Piotr] Jegliński warned me against some of his friends by providing the latest security information on them. For instance, he drew my attention to Piotr Lasota’s recent visit to Poland, and to his sister’s [Irena] going by various names and using three passports: one French, one American, and one Polish. There is definitely something Robespierre-like in him”—Minden noted in November 1985. ⁵¹ It is worth noting the last sentence: Minden was not easily swayed by such suggestions. Nor did he lose trust either in Lasota or in Jegliński. He did take into consideration agents’ activity, but also remained moderately suspicious. Above all, Jegliński’s warning against Lasota is a clear example of tactics some ILC dealers used to secure a better place in the network.

More importantly, this leads to the problem of self-identity in the network. We do not know how Minden perceived his own employment but he did not think about his field workers in terms of CIA agents. “All field distributors offer their books as principals not as agents”—he wrote toward the end of the ILC operation. ⁵² They were most probably viewed by Minden as migrant entrepreneurs or citizen groups, clandestinely subsidized but not secret operatives. It might also be controversial to perceive his interaction with the diaspora as a US covert instrument of power. This hypothesis is criticized even in regard to the early Cold War. ⁵³ It was not only the United States seeking this alliance but also the exiles. A better way to describe the relationship is perhaps Johnson’s “state-private partnership,” ⁵⁴ because this undertaking was built on shared interests and values and derived much from democratic tradition. ⁵⁵ It can be said that Minden recruited migrants to the same extent as they recruited the CIA. ⁵⁶

Negotiating Duties

The other field of tension between grassroot activists and state actors emerged as a result of the network of various “repertoires of actions,” ⁵⁷ and different backgrounds and styles. Book distribution in Europe was informal and thus positioned closer to visitors from Eastern Europe. This informality increased the chances of influencing the target consumers in the East European countries but it also meant that the flow of books would not be totally controlled by the Americans. They wished more information about who brought the books and whether they arrived safely in Poland. The American stand is partly explained by the possibility that fraud could result if a no-name policy were to be fully implemented. ⁵⁸ Migrants, in turn, did not want to pass some information, especially the names of recipients, to protect the names of the carriers and informers from possible leaks of documentation.

The most argumentative on this issue was Norbert Żaba, who carried out a huge Polish distribution in Stockholm for Minden’s organization (a few hundred items monthly) from the early 1970s. His “pipeline” to Eastern Europe included not only Polish targets but also, to a lesser extent Russian ones. Żaba was, however, extremely careful when it came to passing on names and detailed reports to the American side. He wrote to Adam Rudzki, Minden’s aide in New York, that “the first principle of any covert operation is to not give any names of couriers.” ⁵⁹ Pressed on the issue of names, he answered back rather harshly that he would not be in a position to continue his services unless the American side agreed to this condition. ⁶⁰ And New York finally did. Every two months, Żaba made out a list including occupation, place of residence, and titles of books given out, but excluding the names of recipients. Those data were mailed to the ILC, which reimbursed by cheque Żaba’s expenditures.

Żaba was not the only ILC dealer in Europe who exchanged views with New York concerning policy on names. As the Kulczycki case demonstrates, the ILC required more names from large and long-lasting distribution points. Rudzki, mentioned above, repeatedly asked London-based Kulczycki, the owner of the Orbis bookstore, to provide the ILC with more detailed reports. ⁶¹ Kulczycki responded: “As you know, we have always guaranteed the anonymity of visitors delegated from Poland, and we have been against showing passports. Besides, we do not have time to check them. We hire only one attendant in the bookstore and she cannot devote too much time for conversations with recipients.” ⁶² Also, Witold Zahorski, Polish war combatant and ILC Rome distributor, was reluctant to report names of his visitors on the grounds that most of them refused to give their names. ⁶³ Paradoxically, for the ILC, urging people to stay covert meant also being less informed.

This might be regarded as a problem of misperception and distrust inside the network. Field workers imagined that the Americans should base their relationship with them on a gentleman’s agreement as the migrants were reliable, dedicated activists working long hours and generally men of honor. They held the notion that this devotion to the common cause should have created more space for maneuvers in negotiation with the ILC. Moreover, they found themselves real field workers—always on the move—apparently not bureaucrats who “waste their time” on collecting data and typing reports. ⁶⁴ This stand posed a problem for the American side since US tax payer money was involved to buy the migrants’ books and to pay for the migrants’ distribution service. The ILC, thus, needed to have as much solid data on the operation as possible to make the their actions better structured and to secure proper funding for the future. ⁶⁵

Distributors relied mostly on unknown seamen, drivers, students, sportsmen, and casual visitors to do the smuggling for the book program. At the same time, those arrivals from Poland acted on their own as small entrepreneurs or petty traders of consumer goods. The American policy aimed to create those smuggling networks and channels as this ensured better communication with already existing channels and intensified the dissemination of information. At this level, the book program was not only a highly decentralized transfer of ideas but also an international endeavor. What should be stressed very strongly is that people from all over the world were involved in the smuggling. Statistics on the smugglers’ nationalities are not available for the mid and late book program but numbers from the early years (1959–1963) clearly show that at least 1,250 persons of non-Polish nationality—circa 10 percent of all carriers—transported publications to Poland. ⁶⁶

One venue that turned out to be the perfect gateway for Eastern Europe was Scandinavia. With the onset of detente, new communication lines emerged there, namely, ferry connections from Sweden to Poland and from Finland to Soviet Estonia. ⁶⁷ From the 1970s, the program was also gradually shifting its operations toward the USSR, and the ILC often used Poles as conveyer belts to the Soviet Union. ⁶⁸ To be more specific about this dimension, one should look not only at Żaba’s activities in Stockholm but also at Józef Lebenbaum’s group in Lund, in southern Sweden. Between 1976 and 1986, he was able to smuggle close to sixty thousand books to both Poland and the Soviet Union. ⁶⁹ It is an impressive result keeping in mind how heavily attacked he was by the Polish secret service. ⁷⁰ They wanted to compromise him, even kidnapping him once. In a way, Lebenbaum transformed the peaceful city of Lund into the front-line of the cultural Cold War.

A problem arose, however, in 1984 when an unidentified source claimed Lebenbaum had been selling books that were supposed to be distributed freely among Polish visitors. Minden personally inquired with Lebenbaum about this incident. He defended himself telling Minden that the books had been mistakenly mixed up with others that he sold. Minden took his explanation at face value. Finally, Lebenbaum was allowed by Minden to be placed in charge of ILC activities in southern Sweden. ⁷¹ What we learn from this story is that members of the diaspora worked at the same time as typical booksellers. Furthermore, this market-oriented activity was very much welcomed by Minden, because this let the US save substantially on the program’s costs, while better masking its secret involvement. Having in mind this dual nature of book circulation—commercial and nonprofit—we can imagine why the ILC was so sensitive on the issue of names and reports. Undoubtedly, they were trying to avoid their books being entirely mixed up on the distributor’s shelves.

Minden attempted to make sure that his collaborators observed proper mores as regards financial issues, but his European trips revealed little wrongdoing. Polish distribution centers did not commit any financial malfeasances. In contrast, it is likely that field workers’ own financial and human resources were invested in the program. Those resources are unquantifiable but were vital for the program to thrive. A considerable number of visitors from Eastern Europe formulated more prosaic requests than books. Distributors helped Eastern European travelers in solving their minor problems of lack of money. ⁷² They hosted them, provided them with food and lodging, job opportunities, etc. In this context, some ILC money might have been used but perhaps not excessively, and with the purpose of encouraging the guests to take books home. ⁷³

Wage and Offer Bargaining

Above all, personal and mutual assistance sheds some light on the everyday culture of the book smugglers—vivid and vibrant. The smuggling network shaped not only the community of political migrants but also connected them with people working undercover in the domestic literary underground. That is why the people in exile—as a link in the chain—were vitally important for the book project to flourish. Some of them expressed their sense of importance as well as their disappointment over the low wages for the job they did for the ILC. New York paid main distributors small salaries of a hundred to three hundred US dollars monthly. ⁷⁴ Distribution was usually a part-time scheme, and with a few exceptions, field workers had to find themselves another job on the domestic market to cover all their life expenses. This can be considered as another sign of their being less dependent on the United States. Some of them, like Norbert Żaba, tried to complain and negotiate with ILC to raise his rates as he was very busy with distribution in Sweden. Minden was, however, resistant to the idea of a pay raise on the grounds that the program was on a tight budget. ⁷⁵

Norbert Żaba’s outpost was located in his own small flat in Stockholm, which made his operations economical for the ILC. In some cases, mostly in Paris and London, the ILC used Polish bookstores as distribution points. Some might have an impression that those establishments were controlled by the Americans, but it was not so. “Those are genuine bookstores, one of them 150 years old [the Polish bookstore in Paris], which handle our work as special accounts for a modest financial reward: we claim only half their trade discount and allow them to keep half. There are no salaries, no fringe benefits and no rent to pay”—wrote Minden to the Board after meeting with Jan Chodakowski, director of the London-based publishing house Polonia Book Fund. Chodakowski provoked Minden by suggesting Americans fund a new Polish bookstore in Rome from scratch. Minden automatically pushed this concept aside as a “gimmicky idea.” ⁷⁶

Because of the lack of information, we can only speculate on how ILC subsidies shaped the expenses and incomes of each diaspora publishing project. The only amount that sounds accurate and credible is that Paris-based Kultura, the most important Polish émigré monthly, was granted 115,000 dollars a year by the CIA in 1976. ⁷⁷ A more or less similar figure was reported to Warsaw by the Polish secret police agent “Lutus” with regard to the fiscal year 1982, ⁷⁸ which was about half of the whole annual budget for Kultura at that time. It is a vast amount of money compared to ILC spending in distribution points. But it has to be noted that the second half of the budget came from commercial activities, public subscriptions, and donations. Kultura was widely disseminated among Polish diaspora members and in the 1980s, the paid subscription could reach four thousand copies of each issue. ⁷⁹ There is a strong possibility that at that time Giedroyc’s monthly Kultura could operate without external help. The rest of Giedroyc’s publishing endeavors, however, would have been much affected by the cut in CIA funds. ⁸⁰

To remain an asset to ILC operations, émigré publishers needed to produce good publications at reasonable prices. Sometimes, publishers could not resist the temptation of raising book prices in order to secure their own income. The ILC usually negotiated discounts with them but still complained about high prices for books. Presumably, each and every publisher that was part of the network had to be careful not to price itself out of the market. This was most of all the case for Jerzy Giedroyc, the largest Polish émigré publisher. Sometimes, the ILC could not select much from Giedroyc’s offer, because his closing bid was very high, and lobbied him— unsuccessfully—about lowering prices. ⁸¹ Accordingly, the ILC took much care about putting new blood into field work, among others, Piotr Jegliński’s Spotkania publishing project and Barbara Toruńczyk’s Zeszyty Literackie journal. They were considered by Minden as experienced enough to take on the monopolist position of Giedroyc’s Institute Littéraire in Paris. ⁸²

By the 1980s, Giedroyc began to feel threatened by the considerably younger, but no less talented, publishers—the “new Poles,” as Minden used to call them. The situation even pushed Giedroyc to tell his close friend Norbert Żaba that London-based Eugeniusz Smolar and Barbara Toruńczyk wanted to take over Kultura and his communication channels to the literary underground in Poland. ⁸³ This stance reflected Giedroyc’s state of mind—full of fears about losing his influence in the circle of the anti-communist opposition. But it did not correspond with the real intention of younger editors, who just wanted to launch their own projects. ⁸⁴ Unlike Giedroyc and some other exiles, a culture of competition was something Minden believed in very strongly. He also believed that distributors, driven by financial pressure, were supposed to compete for his attention. The Americans did not want to sponsor “poor performance,” as Reisch put it. ⁸⁵ Distributors had to be creative in opening more and more routes through the Iron Curtain, for which social theory has coined the phrase “broadening and diversifying avenues of access.” ⁸⁶

Exploring Minden’s papers, one can find other examples of interpersonal relations in the network. What is missing in Minden’s notes is more general statistics. The book program shipped from three to even five hundred thousand copies annually to the countries of Eastern Europe in the later stage of the operation. Half of those copies went to the Soviet Union; Poland was in second place, followed by Czechoslovakia and Hungary. ⁸⁷ As time went by, the program also developed tactics for selecting titles. Not only were highly political books used but also more innocent products of Western culture—colorful magazines or purely scholarly books. Books were given out to visitors in rather small quantities (ceiling a set of three to five items per person). Keeping a rather low profile was the general strategy of the operation, but at least in the Polish case, this blueprint evolved into a slightly more aggressive pattern. More highly political books were to be smuggled into the “target areas” from the 1970s and 1980s.

This was probably due to the radicalization of public opinion in Poland after the rise of Solidarity in August 1980 and then after introduction of martial law in December 1981. Another reason was that the smugglers of those “bad books” were usually less harassed by the Polish government compared with other East Bloc countries. ⁸⁸ Unfortunately, solid statistical data on titles are hardly available. What is particularly interesting, however, is that not every Polish émigré publisher was happy about the ILC’s policy on titles. This transports us to the very center of political friction between hardliners and the more moderate wing of the diaspora. London-based Kulczycki was the most unhappy about some of the cuts the ILC made in his offer. Kulczycki was more open toward discussion about difficult Polish–Ukrainian relations during the Second World War and offered the ILC a book or two that supported the Ukrainian point of view. Rudzki, the Polish national editor in the ILC, declined this proposal as it could scandalize the Polish readership circle and thus cause harm to the program. ⁸⁹

The next problem confronting Kulczycki was that he, unlike most of the Poles, represented a liberal attitude toward some critical approaches to the papacy and the Catholic Church. He was also definitely more willing than any other ILC field worker to publish some authors with a strong tendency to compromise with General Jaruzelski’s martial law policy, ⁹⁰ which was not consistent with the Reagan administration’s line toward Poland. ⁹¹ All those cuts in the Kulczycki offer, finally agreed to by Rudzki and Minden, might be considered as politically motivated. It has to be stressed, though, that the ILC refusal did not stop Kulczycki from distributing those works. What we can assume from this case is that the ILC possibly had some bargaining power when it came to the offer, but the lack of sources leaves this question largely unanswered. Contrary to the Kulczycki case, most Polish publishers took an apparently hostile stand toward postwar Poland, which is defined in literature as “ethnic anticommunism.” ⁹² It seemed unlikely that they would experience the same problems that Kulczycki did.

It is more likely that most cuts in the publishers’ offers were “strict economy measures.” ⁹³ The budget of the program remained fairly small and was often subject to unexpected changes. For instance, in 1984 cost-cutting measures had to be taken. ⁹⁴ Unfortunately, the Minden files say very little about this aspect. According to Minden’s last report to the board of directors, dated January 30, 1991, the total expenditure on the ILC program was 2.7 million American dollars yearly for the whole of Eastern Europe, including handling of the books and maintenance costs of the New York headquarters. ⁹⁵ My general impression is that this number could not have included all of the American spending on the book project in the 1980s. ⁹⁶ Even if it was twice as much as 2.7 million, some of the ILC dealers in Europe still felt anxious about who got more funding. ⁹⁷ Minden was doing his best to deescalate tension within the network, but his position of book program manager sometimes put him on a collision course with the milieu of émigré publishers.

Conclusion

All things considered, my preliminary hypothesis about the autonomy of the diaspora intermediaries of the book program is that they were tied to US politics but were never fully dependent on US government money, nor did they follow all its advices, requests, and scenarios. Minden could hardly be called a new “Mighty Wurlitzer.” The “field representatives,” although very cooperative for the common cause, tried to play out their own personal agendas. Grassroots activism played a more significant role than in the early Cold War interactions described by Wilford. Sometimes the situation allowed them to earn more from other sources than from US governmental aid. This story also reveals the funding agency’s dilemma—too much supervision could produce tensions and even negatively impact the network’s performance. On the other hand, control over public spending was necessary. The irrepressible spirit of some of the migrants forced the ILC to get tough on the issue.

Obviously, US dollars and logistical support constantly influenced the dynamics and vitality of the intermediary actors. No doubt, some titles would have never been published or widely disseminated without the covert book program. Too much is still classified, however, to tell the CIA’s side of the story. Revealing more documents would provide us with a far more detailed picture of the operation, including interpersonal dynamics, diaspora–CIA connections, and solid statistical data. This connection was long-lasting and potentially vast, so that it could have acted as a soft agent in the collapse of communism and the process of gaining freedom in Eastern Europe. Smuggling publications became a common practice within the intellectual milieu. Some of the readers were even mobilized to reprint those books in samizdat. ⁹⁸ It would be harder, though, to measure the impact of the program on book-readers’ minds. ⁹⁹

Looking beyond the Cold War context, this case delivers fresh empirical material to the discussion about the nature of interactions in networks. ¹⁰⁰ Was the book program more partnership than patronage? Even if we consider the relationship to be patronage by the powerful US government, this still did not necessarily mean less freedom for publishers and distributors. Sponsorship is the general pattern for publishers who aim to produce more ambitious and elitist literature. ¹⁰¹ The United States and its émigré partners reached a compromise, that diaspora members would join political activity and be a part of the Cold War game. They could publish more in their own language and deliver their message to their homeland, and, in consequence, they were recognized by others, including by contemporary research. Given all the circumstances, this was the exiles’ great achievement and it should not be taken lightly.