Books, Libraries, Reading and Publishing in the Cold War

Citation

Line, M.B. (2003), "Books, Libraries, Reading and Publishing in the Cold War", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 59 No. 1, pp. 105-108. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410310458037

First, a warning. Libraries that already take the journal Libraries and Culture will find the contents of this book in Vol. 36 No. 1, Winter, 2001. The volume contains most of the papers presented at an international conference held in Paris in June 1998. The conference was organised by a team that included Pamela Spence Richards; illness prevented her from attending it, and she died in 1999. The book is dedicated to her, and the early pages contain tributes to her work in the international field.

The “Cold War” lasted from 1945 to 1990. It has been argued (e.g. Bobbitt, 2002) that it was merely the last phase of a longer period of war, which started in 1914, and that the phase embraced several “hot” wars (e.g. Korea, Vietnam); but it is distinct in that it related to relations between the Communist East and the capitalist West. I am not sure about the correctness of including China in a volume on the Cold War; it had first warm then hostile relations with the USSR during the period, while the de‐chilling of its relations with the West started in the 1970s and is still going on.

There are 20 papers, somewhat artificially divided into four sections. The papers vary in length from 7 pages to 29. Perhaps unexpectedly, fewer than half deal with censorship the other side of the Iron Curtain. Most articles deal with the earlier years of the Cold War; an exception is one of those on Romania (by one of the editors, Anghelescu), which considers the effects of the period 1945‐1990 on subsequent efforts to recreate a decent library system.

The Soviet bloc countries that appear in the book are Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union itself. The control over formal publication and distribution in most of Eastern Europe was absolute, as is clear from the papers by Smejkalová (on Czechoslovakia), Czarnik (on Poland), Stelmakh (on Russia) and Király (on Romania). In Russia, 80 per cent of all publications were issued by the state. Many Russian and nearly all foreign works were put in spetskran – that in the Lenin State Library contained over 1 million items. What is alarming is that librarians were sometimes more rigorous than the official censors in placing books there – possibly because of “politcontrollers” who were added to the staff to exercise control. Nevertheless, in spite of all the state did to restrict publishing and reading, the unofficial (and illegal) production of samizdat in Russia increased over the period.

The effects of the Cold War were often indirect, as Volodin’s paper shows. Many Russian scholars chose careers as librarians to escape the constraints placed on original scholarship; librarianship, on which a great deal was published, was “safe”. Unfortunately, these effects have not yet worn off: Russian library literature is still very largely inward‐focused.

One does not expect Finland to appear in the book, but in 1944‐1946 (before the existence of the Cold War was recognised) the country came under a Soviet Controlling Commission, which used methods of censorship familiar in the USSR. The author goes on to consider libraries’ self‐censorship, in Nazi Germany and elsewhere – including Finland. The shortness of this paper (seven pages) belies its interest.

The Cold War had its effects also in France, which is the subject of three papers. Pudal shows how the powerful French Communist Party made strong efforts to neutralise the influence of anti‐Communist literature. Crépin deals with Communist attempts to combat the effect on children of American cartoons and comics by producing French (and non‐capitalist) parallels. Poulain discusses the strong reactions to Koestler’s 1940 novel Darkness at Noon, published in France in 1945, because of its portrayal of the Moscow trials of 1938.

Whether or not China belongs in a book on the Cold War, Chinese libraries certainly suffered in the period, more than in any other country except probably Vietnam and Cambodia. Cheng Huanwen divides Chinese librarianship into four periods: 1880‐1949, when it followed Western models; 1949‐1966, characterised by a dramatic swing against the West and towards the USSR; 1966‐1976, when a breakdown in relations with Russia led to isolation and a campaign against intellectual life in general and libraries in particular (the number of public libraries declined from 1,093 in 1960 to 323 in 1970); and 1977‐1991, when relations with other countries resumed and their influence was exerted once more. It is an intriguing story; in the last 25 years the previous 25 have evidently been airbrushed out of history. Another paper (by Yu) deals with Chinese library collections during the Cold War, in particular their acquisition of Russian library materials.

The USA had its own bad experiences in the Cold War, particularly early on in the McCarthy era. Several papers are concerned with this period: one (by Robbins) on the investigation McCarthy launched into the Department of State’s overseas libraries and another (by Jenkins) on the blacklisting of books for children and youth that might conceivably be construed as pro‐Communist propaganda. As usual in such cases, there were absurdities: a children’s book called Finders Keepers contained a picture (reproduced in the book) of a spotted dog, whose spots were accused of resembling outlines of several countries, and a back cover with a cartoon dog whose face to some appeared to be a caricature of the President’s. In both papers the American Library Association comes out well. A better side of the USA emerges from Meyer’s paper on its distribution of literature in post‐war (west) Germany in order to help re‐educate the people in democratic values.

A paper by Richards herself deals with both Russian and US efforts to influence attitudes during the Cold War through librarianship. Various means were used by both countries, but Russia’s most effective method was the education of foreign librarians, mainly in Leningrad, while the USA’s was the USIS libraries that were scattered over the world (dealt with more extensively in Jenkins’ paper). Russia feared the influence of US library utilities, online databases, and other products of library technology; and it was right to do so, though as Richards points out there is still a strong legacy of Soviet‐style librarianship in many less developed countries.

Two chapters are perhaps of special interest to British readers. The first, by Davis, discusses how the Cold War affected IFLA and its proceedings. Peace was kept by skilful handling on the part of IFLA’s presidents and others, but underneath there were all manner of resentments, accusations and counter‐accusations. Those attending conferences in communist countries were for the most part only dimly aware of these, but they were certainly conscious of a generally hostile atmosphere and of librarians who were afraid of being seen speaking to anyone from the West for more than three minutes. Oddly, the paper does not mention the conference in Strbske Pléso in 1978, which seemed near to explosion at one or two points.

The other paper I found of special interest is that by Maack on “Books and libraries as instruments of cultural diplomacy in francophone Africa during the Cold War”. This paper – by some distance the longest in the book at 29 pages – compares the different strategies used by the USA, France and the UK in their book‐related programmes, mainly in Senegal: the USA aimed to build understanding of the USA, France to foster cultural exchange, and the UK to encourage the use of English.

The volume is concerned mainly with restrictions of varying forms and subtleties. We hear little about the efforts made by many, especially among the intelligentsia, to circumvent all the restrictions; there must still be people who remember what they did along these lines. Surely other East European countries had their own equivalents of the Russian samizdat? It is unfortunate that Hungary is not represented in the book, as its citizens were the most ingenious and successful of the East European countries in circumventing rules and restrictions. And the attention devoted to France can be explained by the fact that the conference took place in Paris, but surely the Cold War had effects on literature and libraries in other Western countries with powerful Communist parties?

Censorship did not of course end with the Cold War, nor does it have to be officially established or controlled by the state. The public mood, encouraged by governments, can all too easily result in censorship by consensus, even if the consensus is far from total; after a short time, people censor themselves. We have seen recently how hard it is for patriotic US citizens who disagree with the President’s policies and actions to gain a hearing; Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal, among others, are widely reviled and their views largely suppressed. And once again the FBI is asking libraries what people are reading – once again, since the same happened in the mid‐1950s in the FBI’s Library Awareness Program. No country can be complacent, especially at a time when the threat of terrorism and the needs (real or supposed) of security all too easily become reasons – or excuses – for suppression.

As will be apparent, there is some overlap between the papers in the book, while some major matters are not dealt with. It is more a set of snapshots than a balanced and thorough account of the subject, but that hardly diminishes its value. The conference may have been held four years ago, but the book is unlikely to become outdated. It holds value for all concerned with reading, books, and restrictions on information, and indeed for historians of the period. Indeed, one of the conclusions one draws from reading it is the importance of books and libraries in political as well as cultural history.

The book is nicely produced, has a good index, and suffers from very few misprints. Even those libraries that do subscribe to Libraries and Culture may wish to have a hard‐bound copy in its rightful place in the classified sequence.