Soviet Cultural Diplomacy towards Denmark during the Cold War, 1945-1991 Frederichsen, Kim Publication date: 2017 Document version Other version Document license: CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Frederichsen, K. (2017). Soviet Cultural Diplomacy towards Denmark during the Cold War, 1945-1991. Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet. Download date: 04. Oct. 2021 UNIVERSITY OF COPENH AGEN Faculty of the Humanities Soviet Cultural Diplomacy towards Denmark during the Cold War, 1945-1991 KIM FREDERICHSEN Supervisor: Tine Roesen Submitted on: 8 MAY 2017 Name of department: Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies Author(s): Kim Frederichsen Title and subtitle: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy towards Denmark during the Cold War, 1945- 1991 Supervisor: Tine Roesen Submitted on: 8 May 2017 2 Table of Contents Foreword 4 Introduktion 6 Chapter 1: Approaches 19 Chapter 2: Structures 62 Chapter 3: In the spirit of the Grand Alliance, 1945-1949 122 Chapter 4: The first struggle for Peace, 1949-1956 141 Chapter 5: Direct Soviet Activities 163 Chapter 6: The hum-drum years, 1957-1974 188 Chapter 7: The Second Peace Struggle, 1974-1985 201 Chapter 8: Delegations and tourism 227 Chapter 9: The Glasnost Years, 1985-1991 244 Conclusions 265 Appendix 1: List of abbreviations 273 Appendix 2: List of archvial abbreviations 276 Bibliography 278 Summaries in Danish and English 302 3 Foreword The Soviet apparatus for cultural diplomacy consisted of numerous organizations. They all had longish names that wreak havoc on a dissertation with a 100,000 word limit. Luckily, the Soviet organizations excelled in the use of abbreviations. For pragmatic reasons I have expanded this use of abbreviations to include both international and Danish organizations and a full list of the many abbreviations utilized in the dissertation is found in appendix 1.Also due to the word limit the footnotes are full of abbreviations. They are listed in appendix 2. Finally, it should be noted that with the same pragmatic reason in mind the various parts of archival references in the footnotes are separated by “/”, as this approach saves me a lot of words. The bibliography includes a note on sources. Transliterations of names and place follow the Library of Congress style except in a few cases where another form is more commonly used (e.g. Moscow for Moskva or Trotsky for Trotskii). All place names correspond with the names in use at the time (eg. Leningrad and not Saint Petersburg). All quotes originally not in English have been translated into English by the author. This dissertation is primarily based on unpublished as well as published sources. I would therefore like to thank the archivists and librarians at TORS library, Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Rigsarkivet, Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier , Lamont Library, Wiedener Library, and Harvard Law School Library. Especially Jesper Jørgesen at ABA. I am very grateful to the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies for housing me for one semester as a visiting scholar. My stay was made possible thanks to a EliteForsk rejsestipendium (‘EliteResearch Travel Grant’) awarded by Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet (‘The Ministry of Higher Education’). I would like to thank all those I have met along the way who had to suffer the long talks concerning Soviet cultural diplomacy. The dissertation has benefited from all your discussions and input. You all know who you are. I would like to thank associated professor Rosa Magnusdottir for her constructive criticism at my pre-defense without a doubt it made this finished version of the dissertation much better. Naturally, I am solely responsible for the way all the utilized materials are presented in this dissertation, and the conclusion drawn on that basis. I am very grateful to Tine Roesen, who stepped in as my new supervisor at a very difficult point in time, for your patience, comments, and technical know-how. 4 Finally thanks to Marianne and Sophia for patiently surviving my years as a PhD candidate and for traveling with me to Boston, arriving during the coldest winter ever recorded, so I could spend half a year in a library basement reading microfilms. This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my mother, paternal grandmother, mother-in-law, and my first supervisor, Professor Jens Nørgård-Sørensen, who all held a living interest in my dissertation, but did not live to see it finished. 5 Introduction “More than four centuries ago, Nicola Machiavelli advised princes in Italy that it is more important to be feared than to be loved. But in today’s world, it is best to be both. Winning the hearts and minds has always been important”. 1 Joseph S. Nye, Jr. On April 3rd 1954 at a concert in The Smaller Hall at Odd Fellow Palæet (‘the Odd Fellow Palace’) in Copenhagen the Soviet violinist Mikhail Vaiman and the pianist Maria Karandasiova played a selection of – among others – Bach and Beethoven. A few days earlier the baritone Pavel Listsian had guest performed in the opera Bajadser at The Royal Danish Theater.2 Although ordinary spectators most likely did not consider the reason, the performances of the Soviet artists did not take place by chance. They were in Denmark as part of a Soviet cultural delegation to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Danish-Soviet Friendship Association.3 Such delegations visited Denmark and other countries annually. Each year the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union approved a drawn up plan for the cultural activities to take place.4 SOVIET CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN DENMARK AS THE CASE STUDY Cold War studies have traditionally placed emphasis on the study of grand politics or diplomatic history – that is, super power politics, security politics, bloc politics and the balance of terror – whereas the struggle over hearts and minds has been largely neglected, and earlier research has almost exclusively focused on the Anglo-American actors. It is very peculiar that the high level of activity by practitioners of Soviet cultural diplomacy during the Cold War is almost inversely proportional with the research interest after the end of the Cold War. Meanwhile, research on the American apparatus for state cultural diplomacy has turned into something of a research industry,5 although this apparatus did not function as widely or for as long as the Soviet equivalent. This led to a problematic tendency of turning the cultural Cold War into an almost one-sided affair of shadow 1 Joseph S. Nye, Jr: Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York 2004), 1. 2 Politiken 3.29.1954; 4.4.1954. 3 KB/JJ/24 /General report draft DKSU congress 1954. 4 E.g. RA/Danica/105/О мероприятиях по культурным связям со скандинавскими странами 4.18.1956. 5 Klaus Petersen and Nils Arne Sørensen: ”Den kolde krig på hjemmefronten. En indledning”, in Klaus Petersen og Nils Arne Sørensen (ed.): Den kolde krig på hjemmefronten (Odense, 2004), 23. 6 boxing of the USA vs. the USA where the Soviet Union with affiliations seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.6 By turning the searchlight towards the cultural diplomatic activities of the USSR and including new archival sources with Denmark as the case study it is the aim of this dissertation to analyze a neglected field within Cold War studies concerning Soviet cultural diplomacy. The utilized archival documentation as well as other studies gives the impression that the attempted Soviet cultural diplomatic activities did not differ much whether from one side of the Iron Curtain to the other or from one continent to the next. It could be argued that the greatest difference from one country to the next is the quantity of activities. The level of activity in Denmark, the number of organizations and actors involved, and full access to numerous archival sources give us the perfect opportunity to present this first full analysis of the many corners of the Soviet apparatus for foreign cultural diplomacy 1945-1991, its products, and their possible impact. Regarding the title of this dissertation the emphasis will therefore be placed on the words “in Denmark”. RESEARCH QUESTIONS When investigating the research interests wothin the cultural diplomatic activities of the USSR with affiliations in Denmark during the Cold War three key groups of research questions can be organized. We consider them equally important. 1: How was the Soviet apparatus for cultural diplomacy with international affiliations organized, planed and financed? 2: What kind of activities took place? 3: How were the activities perceived and received, and can they be said to have had any effect? With Denmark as our case study we can base our answers to these questions on examples and themes that may also be considered representative on a wider scale insofar as it is possible to find similar organizations and manifestations in most other countries. 6 David Caute: “Foreword”, in Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (ed.); The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945-1960 (London, 2003), viii. 7 Examples of are the journal Fakta om Sovjetunionen [“Facts on the Soviet Union”] published in Danish, the Danish Language broadcasts by Radio Moscow, and other publications in Danish as well as activities within different forms of bilateral cultural agreements were concluded between the two countries. Alongside the state-sponsored Soviet activities, attempts were made to carry out activities with a postulated Danish point of origin in the form of front organizations such as Fredens Tilhængere (“Partisans of Peace”, the Danish affiliate of the World Peace Council). These organizations claimed to work independently of the interests of any political party, but in reality had an objective of furthering foreign policy aims of the USSR. This dissertation includes an analysis of these organizations.