Curtain of lies : the battle over truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe

257 Pages·2017·8.426 MB·English

by  Feinberg, Melissa

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CURTAIN OF LIES
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CURTAIN OF LIES
The Battle over Truth in Stalinist
Eastern Europe
Melissa Feinberg
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1
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Two Camps, Two Truths ix
1. Telling Lies, Making Truth 1
2. The Fight for Peace 31
3. Battling the Big Lie 60
4. That Funny Feeling Creeping Up Your Back 88
5. Soporific Bombs and American Flying Discs 117
6. The Power of the Powerless 143
Conclusion 175
Notes 179
Selected Bibliography 217
Index 227
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book began in the aftermath of 9/ 11, when I found myself in an archive in
Prague reading about a show trial. I knew about show trials as perversions of
justice based on false charges and false confessions, but it was only when I started
reading more about them that I realized they were also part of a larger attempt
to mobilize a population through fear, a topic that had a new resonance for me
at that moment. It was a long time before I realized exactly where the inspiration
I had then would take me. It is a pleasure to finally be able to thank the many peo-
ple who helped me along the way. I started thinking about this project when I was
at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, but most of it was completed
at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. In both places, I have been fortunate to
work among colleagues who constantly inspire me to be a better historian. This
book is much better because of your influence. I am also grateful to UNCC and
the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University for the financial support
that made the research for this book possible.
It was only when I realized that what began as a book about fear was really
a book about the political uses of truth that this volume finally started to take
shape. For that, I owe a great debt to the members of the Kennebunkport
Circle— David Frey, Eagle Glassheim, Paul Hanebrink, and Cynthia Paces— who
read a very early draft and helped me see how much work I had to do. A fellow-
ship at the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena gave me the time to do much of that work.
I am grateful to the Kolleg staff and to all the other fellows for providing me
with such a stimulating working environment. A number of people graciously
made very useful comments on one or more chapters of the manuscript, includ-
ing Barbara Cooper, Melanie Feinberg, David Foglesong, Jochen Hellbeck,
Lutz Niethammer, Joachim von Puttkamer, Mate Tokić, the participants in the
Philadelphia Area Modern Germany Workshop, organized by Paul Steege (who
read several chapters despite the fact they had no Germans in them), the partici-
pants in the Iron Curtain Crossings Workshop at Ohio State University, orga-
nized by Malgorzata Fidelis and Theodora Dragostinova, the participants in the
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viii • Acknowledgments
Ethical Subjects Seminar at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, organized
by Seth Koven and Judith Surkis, and the two anonymous readers for Oxford
University Press. I owe a tremendous thanks to Bonnie Smith, who heroically
read the entire manuscript at a very late stage and provided me with invaluable
feedback and even more invaluable encouragement. At Oxford University Press,
Nancy Toff and Elda Granata were wonderful to work with. I am also grateful to
Dáša Frančíková for her help in obtaining several of the images used in this book.
Thanks also to Courtney Doucette for her excellent work on the index.
A very preliminary sketch of c hapter 1 was previously published as “Die
Durchsetzung einer neuen Welt. Politische Prozesse in Osteuropa, 1948– 1954,”
in Angst im Kalten Krieg, ed. Bernd Greiner, Christian Th. Müller, and Dierk
Walter (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2009), 190– 219. The last section of
that chapter was published in “Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies: Radio Free
Europe and the Response to the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia,” Contemporary
European History 22, no. 1 (2013): 107– 125. An early version of c hapter 5 was
published as “Soporific Bombs and American Flying Discs: War Fantasies in
East- Central Europe, 1948– 1956,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa- Forschung 62,
no. 3 (2013): 450– 471. I thank the publishers for permission to use that material
again here. Thanks also to John Connelly for organizing the publication of the
article in ZfO.
This book would likely never have existed without Paul Hanebrink. He com-
mented on every chapter many times, tirelessly listened to me try to puzzle out its
themes, comforted me when I despaired, gave me insight, and even allowed me
to raise the temperature in our shared office in Jena above what he would have
ideally preferred. I have been lucky in many things, but I am luckiest of all to have
him in my life.
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INTRODUCTION: TWO CAMPS, TWO TRUTHS
On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman stood before a joint session of
the US Congress to announce a fundamental change in American foreign pol-
icy. The forces of Communism, Truman declared, were threatening the very
existence of the United States. The world had become irrevocably divided into
two opposing camps, each representing a distinctive way of life. One way—
the American way— was characterized by freedom and individual liberty. It
emphasized free thought, free speech, and democratically elected governments.
The other way of life— the Communist way— was its direct opposite. Truman
equated Communism with totalitarianism, a word used to describe both Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union under the rule of Joseph Stalin.1 Totalitarian
regimes were dictatorships ruled by fear and terror. There was no freedom under
such regimes. Government- controlled media restricted the open flow of knowl-
edge and spewed false propaganda. In Truman’s view, no nation, if given a free
choice via free elections, would willingly accept Communism. The Soviets, he
warned, were denying many nations the opportunity to choose freedom. They
had already forced the Poles, Bulgarians, and Romanians to accept Communist
governments, and they threatened to do the same in Greece and Turkey. If they
succeeded in those countries, they would set their sights farther afield, gathering
more and more of the world into their sphere of influence. To save its own way of
life, the United States must halt this relentless spread of totalitarianism, using its
economic and military might to assist other nations in keeping their freedom.2
Communists saw the world quite differently. Six months after the procla-
mation of the Truman Doctrine, in September 1947, representatives of nine
European Communist parties met in the Polish mountain town of Szklarska
Poręba, where they would agree to create the Communist Information Agency,
or Cominform. At the meeting, a leading Soviet Communist, Andrei Zhdanov,
issued a stern rejoinder to Truman. Zhdanov agreed that the world was rapidly
being divided into two competing ideological camps, each with its own distinct
way of life. For Zhdanov, however, it was the Americans who were the aggressors,