What would Edward Barneys do? How abstract expressionism became a weapon during the cold war, MoMA and the Rockefellers, Paris Review, and post-soviet tv series in Kazakhstan.

1. US CULTURAL PROPAGANDA IN WESTERN
EUROPE DURING THE COLD WAR
THE BATTLE FOR MEN’S MIND

2. CULTURAL PROPAGANDA
 Edward Bernays (1891-1995)
The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.
 The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses
is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism
of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We
are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men
we have never heard of.

3. AMERICAN CULTURAL PROPAGANDA IN THE COLD WAR
 The Smith-Mundt Act (1949)
 Fulbright Scholarship
 Truman Doctrine
 CIA
 Congress of Cultural Freedom
 International Organizations Division
 Case Study: Paris Review
 Case Study: MoMA
 Post-Cold War activities
 Current activities

4. THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT
 US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948
authorizes the U.S. State Department to communicate to audiences outside of the borders of the
United States through broadcasting, face-to-face contacts, exchanges (including educational,
cultural, and technical), online activities, the publishing of books, magazines, and other media of
communication and engagement
 Goal: permanent global engagement

5. THE US STATE DEPARTMENT
 ten of the twelve committee members were against anything the State Department favored
because of its "Communist infiltration and pro-Russian policy.” (1946)
 The FBI was concerned over their ability to manage exchange programs as well
The first iteration of the bill was eventually blocked by the Senate.

6. „TRUTH CAN BE A POWERFUL WEAPON”
 The principle purpose of the legislation: engage in a global struggle for minds and wills
 Six principles declared by the Congress – still serves as the foundation for US overseas
information and cultural programs at the Department of State

7. „TRUTH CAN BE A POWERFUL WEAPON”
 Six principles declared by the Congress – still serves as the foundation for US overseas
information and cultural programs at the Department of State
 tell the truth
 explain the motives of the United States
 bolster morale and extend hope
 give a true and convincing picture of American life, methods, and ideals
 combat misrepresentation and distortion
 counter and inoculate against propaganda from the Soviet Union and communist organizations across
Europe

8. WHAT DOES THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT COVER?
 Broadcasting Board of Governors
 Voice of America
 Alhurra
 Radio Farda
 Radio Free Asia
 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
 Radio Martí and TV Martí
 Radio Sawa

9. RESTRICTIONS TO THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT
1. The prohibition on domestic dissemination of materials intended for foreign audiences by the
State Department
2. The information activities should only be conducted if needed to supplement international
information dissemination of private agencies
3. The prohibition of the State Department from having monopoly in any "medium of information"

10. FULBRIGHT PROGRAM (1945)
 a bill to use the proceeds from selling surplus U.S. government war property to fund
international exchange between the U.S. and other countries
 To promote peace and understanding through educational exchange
 Bernays: „The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society:
informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people.”

11. FULBRIGHT-HAYES ACT (1961)
 The purpose of this chapter is to enable the Government of the United States to increase
mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other
countries by means of educational and cultural exchange; to strengthen the ties which unite
us with other nations by demonstrating the educational and cultural interests, developments,
and achievements of the people of the United States and other nations, and the contributions
being made toward a peaceful and more fruitful life for people throughout the world; to
promote international cooperation for educational and cultural advancement; and thus to
assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations between the United
States and the other countries of the world.

12. TRUMAN DOCTRINE
 Truman: „it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting
attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” (1947)

13. NATIONAL SECURITY ACT (1947)
 America’s first peacetime intelligence organization
 Coordinate military and diplomatic intelligence
 Authorized to carry out unspecified „services of common concern” and „such other functions
and duties”
 NSC-4A appendix
 NSC-10/2
 Propaganda Assets Inventory

14. CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM
 „Give me a hundred million dollars and a thousand dedicated people, and I will guarantee to
generate such a wave of democratic unrest among the masses--yes, even among the soldiers-
-of Stalin's own empire, that all his problems for a long period of time to come will be internal. I
can find the people.” - Sidney Hook, 1949

15. PRELUDE
 1949, Waldorf-Astoria, NYC: Stalinist Peace Conference

16. INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS DIVISION
 1950
 animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm,
 sponsored American jazz artists,
 opera recitals,
 the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme
„The Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the United States in Paris than John
Foster Dulles or Eisenhower ever could”
 Agents in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers

17. TOM BRADEN, IOD’S FIRST DIRECTOR
 "We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to
demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and
to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you
must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in
the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that
it played an enormous role in the Cold War."

18. AMERICAN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
 Similarity between American Cold War rhetoric and the Abstract-Expressionist artists
existentialist-individualistic credo

19. PRELUDE: „ADVANCING AMERICAN ART”

20. PRELUDE II: MCCARTHYST WITCH HUNT
 9 February, 1950: list of 205 people in the State Department who were known members of the
American Communist Party
 chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate

22. THE DILEMMA
 „It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism
look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was” – Donald Jameson

23. MOME
MoMA Government
Nelson Rockefeller Director from 1939, again from
1946
1940: co-ordinator of the Office
of Inter-American Affairs
John Hay Whitney Chairman of Board OSS during the 2nd WW
René D’Harnoncourt 1944: Vice-president of foreign
activities
1949: director
1943: Nelson’s OoIAA
Porter A. McCray 1950: International Program
Director
OoIAA
Thomas Braden Executive secretary IoD (1951-54)

25.  "The New American Painting", visited every big European city in 1958-59
 "Modern Art in the United States" (1955)
 "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952).

26. MORALE
 How did Abstract Expressionism end up on the walls of banks?

27. CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM
 1950, 26 June, Berlin, Hotel Titania
 Franz Borkenau, Karl Jaspers, John Dewey, Ignazio Silone, James Burnham, Hugh Trevor-Roper,
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Bertrand Russell, Ernst Reuter, Raymond Aron, Alfred Ayer, Benedetto
Croce, Jacques Maritain, Arthur Koestler, James T. Farrell, Richard Löwenthal, Robert
Montgomery, Melvin J. Lasky, Tennessee Williams, Sidney Hook
 35 offices, magazine publishing

28. CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM: ACTIVITIES
 “Proposal for the American Review,” Melvin Lasky argued for the creation of a magazine to
“support the general objectives of U.S. policy in Germany and Europe by illustrating the
background of ideas, spiritual activity, literary and intellectual achievement from which the
American democracy takes its inspiration.”

29.  Germany’s Der Monat.
 France’s Preuves
 UK’s Encounter
 Japan’s Jiyu
 All, funded by CFC
 Encounter finally launched with an initial grant of $40,000, which came via Julius Fleischman.

30. PARIS REVIEW
 Founder: Peter Matthiessen – recruited to CIA straight from Yale
 Requests funding from Fleischman
 highly profitable art of selling interviews for reprints in Congress-affiliated magazines
 Issue on Pasternak’s Nobel prize
 Darkness at Noon

31. THE END
 Late 1960s: NYT articles

32. POST-SOVIET BLOCK
 USAID
 Britain’s Know-How fund ->
Kazakhstan’s „Crossroads”

33. THE PRESENT
 USAID was kicked out of Russia in 2012
 Still fairly active in Afghanistan