Association for Cultural Freedom
| Founded | 26 June 1950 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | 1979 (as International Association for Cultural Freedom) |
| Location | |
| Origins | Central Intelligence Agency |
|
Area served
|
Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, Australia |
| Method | conferences, journals, seminars |
|
Key people
|
Melvin J. Lasky, Nikolai Nabokov, Michael Josselson |
| Endowment | CIA to 1966; Ford Foundation to 1979 |
| Mission | To counter the Communist "cultural offensive" and uphold the importance of intellectual freedom |
The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group.
Historian Frances Stonor Saunders writes (1999): "Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists, or critics in postwar Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise." A different slant on the origins and work of the Congress is offered by Peter Coleman in his Liberal Conspiracy (1989) where he talks about a struggle for the mind "of Postwar Europe" and the world at large.
The CCF was founded on 26 June 1950 in West Berlin, which had just endured months of Soviet blockade. Its stated purpose was to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy was less compatible with culture than communism. In practical terms it aimed to challenge the post-war sympathies with the USSR of many Western intellectuals and fellow travellers, particularly among liberals and the non-Communist Left.
Formation of the CCF came in response to a series of events orchestrated by the Soviet Union: the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wroclaw (Poland) in August 1948; a similar event in April the following year in Paris, the World Congress of Peace Partisans; and their culmination in the creation of the World Peace Council, which in March 1950 issued the . As part of this campaign there had also been an event in New York City in March 1949: the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was attended by many prominent U.S. liberals, leftists and pacifists who called for peace with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.
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