Althouse: "During the Cold War, the CIA loved literature — novels, short stories, poems. Joyce, Hemingway, Eliot. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabokov."

April 6, 2014

"During the Cold War, the CIA loved literature — novels, short stories, poems. Joyce, Hemingway, Eliot. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabokov."

"Books were weapons, and if a work of literature was unavailable or banned in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, it could be used as propaganda to challenge the Soviet version of reality. Over the course of the Cold War, as many as 10 million copies of books and magazines were secretly distributed by the agency behind the Iron Curtain as part of a political warfare campaign."

From a WaPo article titled "During Cold War, CIA used ‘Doctor Zhivago’ as a tool to undermine Soviet Union."

13 comments:

madAsHell said...: Cuz...they waz Christians.

I'm not sure this works with Islamic suicide bombers, or Persians with nukes.; 4/6/14, 9:46 PM
BAS said...: My Dad got in trouble for reading Animal Farm in Soviet Union, a friend of his went to jail for distributing it. It's a great book - timeless.; 4/6/14, 9:58 PM
traditionalguy said...: It is a good thing then that Saint Cyril from Byzantium took the Russians Old Church Slavonic (Cyrillic) to be their written language.

The Imperialism of a written language is a powerful thing.; 4/6/14, 11:18 PM
Austin said...: And of course, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.; 4/6/14, 11:19 PM
William said...: Slant topic: Gone With the Wind was a huge best seller in both Japan and Germany. It had a hopeful message. Your civilization and home can be destroyed, but life goes on and conquest by theYankees is endurable......In Ireland, books by Beckett and Joyce were banned. I suppose in those porno starved years, you could find items of interest in Ulysses, but I defy anyone to find anything of prurient interest in Beckett. It's not just the Communists who were stupid.; 4/6/14, 11:48 PM
Hyphenated American said...: I wonder why they don't smuggle "Satanic Verses" and "Innocence of Moslems" into Iran and the rest of the moslem world.
Sarcasm off.
I am not wondering about this, really, our first sharia-compliant president publicly announced that "The Future Must Not Belong to Those Who Slander the Prophet of Islam". End of story.; 4/6/14, 11:52 PM
Jaq said...: Now in stead of banning books, or burning them, we ban browsers.; 4/7/14, 5:52 AM
Michael said...: Professor

Thank you for this article. It suggests a reason to hoarde physical books against the day the CIA or another helpful government agency decides to erase certain ebooks, or all ebooks.; 4/7/14, 7:10 AM
Paco Wové said...: I just learned that one of my very favorite authors ever, Peter Matthiessen, has died. R.I.P.

He's even got a CIA tie-in – he worked for them briefly in the '50's.; 4/7/14, 7:12 AM
KCFleming said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/7/14, 7:40 AM
Anonymous said...: One of the smarter operations (even with its faults) that the CIA ever ran...

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”; 4/7/14, 8:30 AM
Cedarford said...: Hyphenated American said...
I wonder why they don't smuggle "Satanic Verses" and "Innocence of Moslems" into Iran and the rest of the moslem world.

=================
Because both works were meant to tick off the average Muslim rather than show a world that is better for them than primitive Salafism.; 4/7/14, 9:30 AM
Ficta said...: As I understand it, while in much of the English-speaking world, Ulysses was banned for prurient interest (which, as Judge Woolsey pointed out, was absurd), in Ireland, its biggest problem was publishers' fears of libel actions because Joyce mentioned actual businesses by name.

That sort of censorship is widespread to this day...

In fact, it's really easy to cloak political censorship in the garb of libel actions; just ask Mark Steyn.

Beware.; 4/7/14, 9:39 AM