Pugwash in Eastern Europe the Limits of International Cooperation Under Soviet Control in the 1950S and 1960S
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Pugwash in Eastern Europe The Limits of International Cooperation Under Soviet Control in the 1950s and 1960s ✣ Doubravka Olšáková The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies saw their fight against non- Communist countries as a “struggle for peace” and consequently appropriated notions of themselves as being “fighters for peace,” an idea that became an in- tegral part of their Cold War rhetoric until 1989.1 Such terms—and the peace movements associated with them, including the activities of the World Peace Council (WPC), a Soviet front organization—dominated the field of “peace ideology” in the early 1950s.2 Nonetheless, from 1956 on the Communist peace movements had to face the growing influence of Western counterparts, such as the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (“Pugwash”).3 This article addresses a set of research questions: What led the Eastern bloc to accept and join the Pugwash movement? Was Soviet interest in participat- ing in the Pugwash movement an ideological goal (to appropriate the role of “world peace leader”)? Or was it merely one means of seeking advantage in the Cold War, including by developing friendly ties with scientists who were 1. A network of “Fighters for Peace” was established in the Soviet bloc by national Committees of Fighters for Peace and Committees of Young Peace Fighters and affiliated mass organizations whose activities were coordinated by the Soviet-dominated World Peace Council. 2. The WPC was established in 1948 as a result of the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace held in Wrocław in 1948. This initiative was launched by the Communist Information Bureau with the aim of advancing the cause of peace and justifying the peace policy of the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union. See Ruud van Dijk et al., eds., Encyclopedia of the Cold War,Vol.2,K–Z (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 962–996. 3. See David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2008); Werner Kaltefleiter and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, The Peace Movements in Europe and the United States (Chatham, UK: Mackays of Chatham, 1985); David Gress, Peace and Survival: West Ger- many, the Peace Movement, and European Security (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1985); and Alice Holmes Cooper, Paradoxes of Peace: German Peace Movements since 1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Few publications, however, are devoted to an analysis of the WPC and its role in the coordination of peace movements in Eastern and Central Europe. See Jack Rosenblatt, Soviet Propaganda and the Physician’s Peace Movement (Toronto: Mackenzie Institute, 1988). Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2018, pp. 210–240, doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00805 © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 210 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00805 by guest on 02 October 2021 Pugwash in Eastern Europe “close to ruling establishments” in Western countries? How did Eastern Eu- rope respond to Soviet plans, and what limits did the Soviet Union place on individual East-bloc countries’ participation in Pugwash? The focus here is on the role of East European scientists in the peace movement and the extent to which they shaped its structure and character in the 1960s. The first section deals with the tenuous position of peace move- ments in Eastern Europe from 1948 through 1968, as well as the limits of contemporary research on the issue. The second part assesses the international position of the World Peace Council when Pugwash began in the late 1950s. The third and fourth sections analyze the early development of Pugwash in Eastern Europe before and after its sixth annual conference, held in Moscow in 1960 and widely seen as an important moment in East European engagement with Pugwash. These sections argue that Pugwash represented a new stimulus for international cooperation and that its initiatives were welcomed and even expanded by East European researchers. The final section highlights the limits of the active involvement of two Soviet-bloc countries—Czechoslovakia and Poland—in international movements such as Pugwash when international crises erupted in 1968. The article concludes with a comparison of the roles, structures, and positions of the Pugwash committees in the “West” and in Eastern Europe. The conclusion explains Pugwash’s success in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and shows how its activities were ultimately circumscribed by the Soviet Union, most conspicuously in the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine. Problems with Peace Movement(s) Historiography in Eastern Europe In West European and U.S. historiography, peace movements have been ex- tensively studied—for example, by Lawrence S. Wittner—with some atten- tion to developments in the Eastern bloc; notably, Matthew Evangelista’s Unarmed Forces.4 Nonetheless, studies written by East European historians 4. Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); Lawrence S. Wittner, The Struggle against the Bomb,Vol.1:One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Lawrence S. Wittner, TheStruggleagainsttheBomb,Vol.2:Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997); Lawrence S. Wittner, TheStruggleagainsttheBomb,Vol.3:Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); and Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 211 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00805 by guest on 02 October 2021 Olšáková on this topic are still rare and tend to focus on the period after 1975. This has resulted in some basic terminological idiosyncrasies and differences between the historiography of Western Europe and that of Eastern Europe. In East European historiography, as a holdover from the Communist pe- riod, the singular term “peace movement” is still used more frequently than the plural “peace movements,” reflecting the meaning of this term in the Communist rhetoric of the 1950s and 1960s. This rhetoric asserted that there was only one indivisible peace movement, coordinated by Soviet-dominated organs.5 Apart from obvious reasons resulting from the joint policy of the international Communist movement, ideological arguments in favor of a sin- gular “peace movement” were based on the notion of the “dialectical union” of all peace movements. This interpretation survived the dissolution of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) in 1956 and persisted until 1989. The union comprised three related policies: first and foremost, the peace policy of the USSR; second, the peace policy of the international work- ers’ movement in “capitalist” countries; and finally the peace policies of the various participants in national liberation struggles in the Third World.6 In these struggles the idea of peace was closely linked to the struggle for national self-determination aimed against neocolonialism.7 The union of these three parts created the unified ideological front of “the peace movement.” Thus, the term “peace movement” is still employed to refer to official Communist activ- ities in this field, whereas the term “peace movements” reflects Western peace movements and dissent activities in favor of peace in the 1970s and 1980s.8 In Eastern Europe, peace movements became social movements only af- ter an official acknowledgment of human rights in Communist Europe. The Helsinki conference in 1975 has therefore become a symbolic starting point for the birth of the historiography of the peace movements in Eastern Europe. This conference smashed the concept of a single, unified peace movement insofar as many Helsinki-influenced organizations arose in the years follow- ing 1977, notably Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia (which dealt with peace in its 5. Jacek Slusarczyk,´ Powstanie i działalno´s´cRuchuobronców´ Pokoju w latach 1948–1957 (Wrocław: PAN, 1987), pp. 107–109. 6. Ján Zvada, Mírová politika tˇrí souˇcástí svˇetového revoluˇcního hnutí (Prague: Práce, 1986), p. 6. 7. See Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., 1965). 8. See Petr Blažek, “Dejte šanci míru! Pacifismus a neformální mírové aktivity mládeže v Ceskoslovenskuˇ 1980–1989,” in Miroslav Vanek,ˇ ed., Ostruvky˚ svobody: Kulturní a obˇcanské aktiv- ity mladé generace v 80. letech v Ceskoslovenskuˇ (Prague: Votobia—ÚSD AV CR,ˇ 2002), pp. 11–107; and Gerd-Rainer Horn and Padraic Kenney, eds., Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). 212 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00805 by guest on 02 October 2021 Pugwash in Eastern Europe communications and actively sought out contacts with West European move- ments); and Solidarity, as well as the Wolno´sc´ i Pokój (Freedom and Peace) movement, founded in 1985, in Poland.9 East European scholarship has tended to ignore peace movement(s) and their histories within the discourse of national historiographies. The domi- nance of individual national histories has meant that transnational and in- ternational perspectives, as well as international initiatives