The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Cultural Cold War in the Nordic region, 1950-1970

The Cold War was much more than the military arms race and proxy wars between the two superpowers. At its core, the Cold War was a battle between cultures, between ideas and visions. The Cultural Cold War is therefore not a side show, but a central aspect of the Cold War.

In this cultural contest, The Congress for Cultural Freedom, founded in 1950, was the largest covert program of its kind by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in terms of activities, budgets and longevity. Until the CIA-link was revealed in 1966-67, the Congress organized local subchapters and published journals in more than 30 countries worldwide, including on all five continents. 

Congress magazines focused on high culture and included contributions from leading Western writers, artists, and philosophers. Promoting freedom and combatting totalitarianism, the Congress published books and organized conferences, concerts, exhibitions, and campaigns that contributed to a positive view of American culture and the spread of an anti-Communist “Cold War modernism”. On the political level, the Congress contained communist peace initiatives, combatted neutralist tendencies, advanced a Cold War consensus liberalism, and common security in NATO.

In the past twenty years scholars have studied the Congress locally and globally, including in the Nordic region. However, this panel will deepen and widen the study of this phenomenon, including to new places in the Nordic region, but also with a focus on the still largely unexplored 1960s, including how Congress activities became centrally coordinated from Copenhagen. This will be done with an eye to how Congress activities related to official diplomacy.