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Logo of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, prominently featuring the acronym VOKS in both Cyrillic and Latin characters.
VOKS (an acronym for the Russian "Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul'turnoi Sviazi s zagranitsei" — Всесоюзное общество культурной связи с заграницей, All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) was an entity created by the government of the Soviet Union in 1925 to promote international cultural contact between writers, composers, musicians, cinematographers, artists, scientists, educators, and athletes of the USSR with those of other countries. The organization conducted tours and conferences of such cultural workers.
Although of Soviet origin, VOKS was in fact an international organization, with parallel national branches around the world, such as the "American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia" (established 1926) and the "Society for Polish-Soviet Friendship" (established 1944). VOKS was frequently criticized by Western government officials, public intellectuals, and the press for functioning as a de facto communist propaganda organization. VOKS was restructured and renamed in 1958, replaced by a new so-called "friendship organization" known as the "Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries," which continued to exist until 1992.
Yuri Georgy Aleksandrovich Zhukov (Russian: Юрий Александрович Жуков; also Георгий Александрович Жуков; 1908-1991) was a prominent journalist and political figure in the Soviet Union.
Member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Around 1938-1945 he toured Dalkrai and wrote books on Soviet Far East and Japan.
Later, he sat on the editorial board of Soviet daily Pravda (1946-1987); he was also a columnist of the paper. Zhukov served as the newspaper's Paris correspondent in 1948-1952. From 1952 to 1957 he was the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper.
In 1957 he became the first Chairman of the powerful State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (GKKS), an organ that took sizable portion of responsibilities from the Soviet Foreign Ministry from 1957 to 1967. Zhukov would oversee preparations and signing of the first agreement on cultural exchanges with the United States (Lacy-Zarubin act, signed in January 1958) and the Soviet national exhibition in New York in summer 1959. He also hosted Vice President Richard M. Nixon on an unofficial visit to the Soviet Union July 23 - August 2, 1959 to open the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow.
-- Yuri Zhukov (journalist), by Wikipedia
Organizational history
Establishment and structure
Olga Davidovna Kameneva, sister of Leon Trotsky, was the first chief of VOKS, holding the post of chair (predsedatel) from 1925 until 1930.
VOKS, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, was established in Moscow in 1925 as a mechanism to coordinate cultural contact between Soviet cultural workers and intellectuals and their peers in the capitalist countries of the West. Planning for the organization seems to have begun in May 1925, with a formal constitution for the society approved by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars dated August 8 of that same year.[1] According to this formal public document, VOKS was intended "to cooperate in the establishment and development of scientific and cultural relations between institutions, public organizations and individual scientific and cultural workers in the USSR and those of other countries."[1]
VOKS was subdivided by field of interest into a number of sections, including a Literary Section concentrating upon publishers and authors; a Musical and Theatrical Section for composers, musicians, actors, and playwrights; a Cinema Section for cinematographers and those concerned with film production; a Juridical Section dealing with matters of interest to jurists; and an Exhibition Section to deal with the presentation of international expositions relating to art and literature.[2] VOKS also maintained a Press Department, which published an organ called the Weekly News Bulletin in Russian, English, French, and German.[3]
Official function
The organization had both international and domestic functions, managing the activities of a growing number of "societies of friends of the Soviet Union" around the world as well as gathering information about cultural trends in the West and sponsoring direct contract between Soviet and non-Soviet cultural workers and intellectuals.[4]
From its earliest days VOKS coordinated cultural, scientific, and literary exchanges and was the organization which frequently received prominent visitors to the Soviet Union from the West and arranged their contacts with Soviet peers.[4] Inside the USSR, the organization facilitated the importation and translation of foreign scientific and literary texts and organized public presentations by artists and scholars returning from trips to the West.[3] The society also helped with currency transfers to enable Soviet scholars to join foreign academic societies, expedited the acquisition of travel visas, and assisted with the difficult process of receiving foreign books and journals through the USSR's tight net of internal censorship.[5]
Although officially launched by the Council of People's Commissars and maintaining close connections with both the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the secret police, VOKS consistently maintained the pretext of being an independent "society" rather than an official appendage of the Soviet state apparatus.[6] This semi-independent status was accentuated by the inclusion of significant numbers of non-Party intellectuals within its membership ranks.[6]
Propaganda function
As part of its propaganda efforts, VOKS published a Weekly News Bulletin in Russian, English, German, and French which featured stories about the positive achievements of Soviet medicine, literature, art, and science.
A key aspect of VOKS was its ability to put forward articulate intellectuals to defend the Russian revolution and the Soviet system in an international setting. VOKS-sponsored scientists, artists, and educators reached the general public through lectures, exhibitions, and other forms of public interaction, and were also instrumental in maintaining Moscow's influence over the network of so-called "friendship societies" across Europe and around the world, putting a learned and cultured face on a sometimes brutal revolutionary reality.
VOKS sponsored artistic exhibitions, cultural exchanges, concerts, tours, lectures, and sporting events which helped to cast the USSR in a positive and humane light. The society also published travel guides in English, German, and French and made efforts to solve problems and expedite contacts for foreigners traveling in the Soviet Union.[5] The successes and prestige of VOKS abroad seem to have additionally had a positive impact on shaping the attitudes of the Soviet intelligentsia during the 1920s, building support among the sometimes feisty artistic community for the new regime.[5]
The organization also served as an effective front for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence operations, as historian Svetlana Chervonnaya notes:
However, VOKS also often served as a convenient 'roof' for operations of both branches of Soviet intelligence, whose residents and operatives used opportunities provided by VOKS to establish and maintain contacts in intellectual, scientific and government circles. These contacts were, for the most part, unaware that they were dealing not with 'cultural representatives' and diplomats, but with intelligence officers.[7]
Leadership
The leading figure in VOKS from the time of its establishment until 1930 was Olga Kameneva, the sister of prominent Bolshevik Leon Trotsky and wife of Soviet leader Lev Kamenev.[4]
WOODROW WILSON AND A PASSPORT FOR TROTSKY
President Woodrow Wilson was the fairy godmother who provided Trotsky with a passport to return to Russia to "carry forward" the revolution. This American passport was accompanied by a Russian entry permit and a British transit visa. Jennings C. Wise, in Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution, makes the pertinent comment, "Historians must never forget that Woodrow Wilson, despite the efforts of the British police, made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia with an American passport."
President Wilson facilitated Trotsky's passage to Russia at the same time careful State Department bureaucrats, concerned about such revolutionaries entering Russia, were unilaterally attempting to tighten up passport procedures. The Stockholm legation cabled the State Department on June 13, 1917, just after Trotsky crossed the Finnish-Russian border, "Legation confidentially informed Russian, English and French passport offices at Russian frontier, Tornea, considerably worried by passage of suspicious persons bearing American passports."9
To this cable the State Department replied, on the same day, "Department is exercising special care in issuance of passports for Russia"; the department also authorized expenditures by the legation to establish a passport-control office in Stockholm and to hire an "absolutely dependable American citizen" for employment on control work.10 But the bird had flown the coop. Menshevik Trotsky with Lenin's Bolsheviks were already in Russia preparing to "carry forward" the revolution. The passport net erected caught only more legitimate birds. For example, on June 26, 1917, Herman Bernstein, a reputable New York newspaperman on his way to Petrograd to represent the New York Herald, was held at the border and refused entry to Russia. Somewhat tardily, in mid-August 1917 the Russian embassy in Washington requested the State Department (and State agreed) to "prevent the entry into Russia of criminals and anarchists... numbers of whom have already gone to Russia."11
Consequently, by virtue of preferential treatment for Trotsky, when the S.S. Kristianiafjord left New York on March 26, 1917, Trotsky was aboard and holding a U.S. passport — and in company with other Trotskyite revolutionaries, Wall Street financiers, American Communists, and other interesting persons, few of whom had embarked for legitimate business. This mixed bag of passengers has been described by Lincoln Steffens, the American Communist:The passenger list was long and mysterious. Trotsky was in the steerage with a group of revolutionaries; there was a Japanese revolutionist in my cabin. There were a lot of Dutch hurrying home from Java, the only innocent people aboard. The rest were war messengers, two from Wall Street to Germany....12
Notably, Lincoln Steffens was on board en route to Russia at the specific invitation of Charles Richard Crane, a backer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee. Charles Crane, vice president of the Crane Company, had organized the Westinghouse Company in Russia, was a member of the Root mission to Russia, and had made no fewer than twenty-three visits to Russia between 1890 and 1930. Richard Crane, his son, was confidential assistant to then Secretary of State Robert Lansing. According to the former ambassador to Germany William Dodd, Crane "did much to bring on the Kerensky revolution which gave way to Communism."13 And so Steffens' comments in his diary about conversations aboard the S.S. Kristianiafjord are highly pertinent: " . . . all agree that the revolution is in its first phase only, that it must grow. Crane and Russian radicals on the ship think we shall be in Petrograd for the re-revolution.14
Crane returned to the United States when the Bolshevik Revolution (that is, "the re-revolution") had been completed and, although a private citizen, was given firsthand reports of the progress of the Bolshevik Revolution as cables were received at the State Department. For example, one memorandum, dated December 11, 1917, is entitled "Copy of report on Maximalist uprising for Mr. Crane." It originated with Maddin Summers, U.S. consul general in Moscow, and the covering letter from Summers reads in part:I have the honor to enclose herewith a copy of same [above report] with the request that it be sent for the confidential information of Mr. Charles R. Crane. It is assumed that the Department will have no objection to Mr. Crane seeing the report ....15
In brief, the unlikely and puzzling picture that emerges is that Charles Crane, a friend and backer of Woodrow Wilson and a prominent financier and politician, had a known role in the "first" revolution and traveled to Russia in mid-1917 in company with the American Communist Lincoln Steffens, who was in touch with both Woodrow Wilson and Trotsky. The latter in turn was carrying a passport issued at the orders of Wilson and $10,000 from supposed German sources. On his return to the U.S. after the "re-revolution," Crane was granted access to official documents concerning consolidation of the Bolshevik regime: This is a pattern of interlocking — if puzzling — events that warrants further investigation and suggests, though without at this point providing evidence, some link between the financier Crane and the revolutionary Trotsky.
-- Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony C. Sutton
Kameneva was followed in 1930 by Fedor Nikolaevich Petrov, a college educated Old Bolshevik who had worked previously in the Soviet bureaucracy in the Main Directorate for Scientific, Artistic, Museum, Theatrical, and Literary Institutions and Organizations (Glavnauka), part of the People's Commissariat for Education.[4]
In 1934 Petrov was replaced as head of VOKS by Alexander Arosev, a writer and former Ambassador to Czechoslovakia who was a longtime acquaintance of Joseph Stalin's right-hand man, V.M. Molotov.[4] Arosev would run afoul of the secret police in 1937 during the Terror of 1937-38. He was replaced by Viktor Fedorovich Smirnov, who remained as head of VOKS until 1940.
Viktor Smirnov would be followed by just three other chairs of VOKS and its successor organization during the entire decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and the first half of the 1970s — Vladimir Kemenov (1940 to 1948), Andrei Denisov (1948 to 1957), and Nina Popova (1957 to 1975).
VOKS in the 1950s
By 1957 so-called "friendship societies" had been established in 47 countries, all of which were coordinated by VOKS.[7]
In America, VOKS gained new notoriety in the 1950s when U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy accused journalist Edward R. Murrow of colluding with the organization on the CBS television program See It Now.[8]
From VOKS to SSOD
In 1958, VOKS was reorganized as a new entity called the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Contacts (SSOD).[7] The new SSOD continued to fulfill the role previously played by VOKS until it was disbanded in 1992, in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December of the previous year.[7]
An official government agency for international cultural affairs followed in the post-communist period, called since 1994 the "Russian Center for International Scientific and Cultural Cooperation of the Government of the Russian Federation."[7]
Overseas counterparts
American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia
The American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia was established 1926 and organized in 1927, with offices at 49 East 25th Street, New York, NY.[9]
In the exchange of books on cultural and technical subjects with learned societies, universities and Government departments in foreign countries has reached considerable proportions, the USA sent more than 48,000 volumes, representing some 60 percent of the exchange.[9]
As of 1928, members included:
Officers:
• President: William Allan Neilson
• Vice Presidents: John Dewey, Stephen P. Duggan, Floyd Dell, Leopold Stokowski, Lillian D. Wald
• Treasurer: Allen [Alan] Wardwell
• Secretary: Lucy Branham
In New York the socialist "X" club was founded in 1903. It counted among its members not only the Communist Lincoln Steffens, the socialist William English Walling, and the Communist banker Morris Hillquit, but also John Dewey,
-- Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony C. Sutton
The 1917 American Red Cross Mission to Russia
Alan [Allen] Wardwell, also a deputy commissioner and secretary to the chairman, was a lawyer with the law firm of Stetson, Jennings & Russell of 15 Broad Street, New York City, and H. B. Redfield was law secretary to Wardwell. Major Wardwell was the son of William Thomas Wardwell, long-time treasurer of Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York. The elder Wardwell was one of the signers of the famous Standard Oil trust agreement, a member of the committee to organize Red Cross activities in the Spanish American War, and a director of the Greenwich Savings Bank. His son Alan [Allen] was a director not only of Greenwich Savings, but also of Bank of New York and Trust Co. and the Georgian Manganese Company (along with W. Averell Harriman, a director of Guaranty Trust). In 1917 Alan [Allen] Wardwell was affiliated with Stetson, Jennings & Russell and later joined Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Gardner & Read (Frank L. Polk was acting secretary of state during the Bolshevik Revolution period). The Senate Overman Committee noted that Wardwell was favorable to the Soviet regime although Poole, the State Department official on the spot, noted that "Major Wardwell has of all Americans the widest personal knowledge of the terror" (316-23-1449). In the 1920s Wardwell became active with the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in promoting Soviet trade objectives.
The treasurer of the mission was James W. Andrews, auditor of Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company of St. Louis. Robert I. Barr, another member, was listed as a deputy commissioner; he was a vice president of Chase Securities Company (120 Broadway) and of the Chase National Bank. Listed as being in charge of advertising was William Cochran of 61 Broadway, New York City. Raymond Robins, a mining promoter, was included as a deputy commissioner and described as "a social economist." Finally, the mission included two members of Swift & Company of Union Stockyards, Chicago. The Swifts have been previously mentioned as being connected with German espionage in the United States during World War I. Harold H. Swift, deputy commissioner, was assistant to the vice president of Swift & Company; William G. Nicholson was also with Swift & Company, Union Stockyards.
Two persons were unofficially added to the mission after it arrived in Petrograd: Frederick M. Corse, representative of the National City Bank in Petrograd; and Herbert A. Magnuson, who was "very highly recommended by John W. Finch, the confidential agent in China of Colonel William B. Thompson."4
-- Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony C. Sutton
Board:
• Chairman of the Executive Committee: Graham R. Taylor
• Members: Thomas L. Cotton, Jerome Davis, Ernestine Evans, Mrs. Norman Hapgood, Arthur Garfield Hays, Horace Liveright, Underhill Moore, Ernest M. Patterson, James N. Rosenbeg, Lee Simonson, Edgard Varese, above-mentioned officers
• Executive Committee: Thomas L. Cotton, Stephen P. Duggan, Ernestine Evans, Mrs. Norman Hapgood, Lee Simonson, Graham R. Taylor, Lillian D. Wald, Allen Wardwell
• Advisory Council: Jane Addams, Carl Alsberg, Franz Boas, Phillips Bradley, Stuart Chase, Haven Emerson, Zona Gale, Frank Goler, Mrs. J. Borden Harrison, David Starr Jordan, Alexander Kaun, Susan Kingsbury, Julia Lathrop, William Allen White, Eva Le Gallienne, Howard Scott Liddell, E. C. Lindeman, Robert Littell, H. Adolphus Miller, Boardman Robinson, Clarence C. Stein, Lucy Textor, Wilbur K. Thomas, Harry Ward, Lucy Wilson[9]
Polish–Soviet Friendship Society
The Society for Polish-Soviet Friendship (in Polish, Towarzystwo Przyjaźni Polsko-Radzieckiej or TPPR) was established 1944.[10]
Legacy
The papers of VOKS are housed in Moscow at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).[7]
See also
• Intourist
Footnotes
1. O.D. Kameneva, "Cultural Rapprochement: The U.S.S.R. Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries," Pacific Affairs, vol. 1, no. 5 (Oct. 1928), pg. 6.
2. Kameneva, "Cultural Rapprochement," pg. 7.
3. Kameneva, "Cultural Rapprochement," pg. 8.
4. Michael David-Fox, "From Illusory 'Society' to Intellectual 'Public': VOKS, International Travel and Party-Intelligentsia Relations in the Interwar Period," Contemporary European History, vol. 11, no. 1 (Feb. 2002), pg. 10.
5. David-Fox, "From Illusory 'Society' to Intellectual 'Public,'" pg. 13.
6. David-Fox, "From Illusory 'Society' to Intellectual 'Public,'" pg. 11.
7. Svetlana Chervonnaya, "VOKS," Documents Talk: A Non-definitive History, 2008, http://www.documentstalk.com/
8. "Senator Joseph R. McCarthy: Reply to Edward R. Murrow (See it Now)". CBS-TV. 6 April 1954.
9. "Society for Cultural Relations". Marxists.org. 1928. Retrieved 27 December2013.
10. Mevius, Martin (2013). The Communist Quest for National Legitimacy in Europe, 1918-1989. Routledge. p. 73.
Further reading
• Frederick C. Barghoorn, "Soviet Cultural Diplomacy since Stalin," Russian Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (Jan. 1958), pp. 41–55. In JSTOR
• Frederick C. Barghoorn, "Soviet Cultural Effort," Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, vol. 29, no. 3 (March 1969), pp. 156–169. in JSTOR
• Michael David-Fox, "From Illusory 'Society' to Intellectual 'Public': VOKS, International Travel and Party-Intelligentsia Relations in the Interwar Period," Contemporary European History, vol. 11, no. 1 (Feb. 2002), pp. 7–32. In JSTOR
• O. D. Kameneva, "Cultural Rapprochement: The U.S.S.R. Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries," Pacific Affairs, vol. 1, no. 5 (Oct. 1928), pp. 6–8. In JSTOR
• Susan Gross Solomon and Nikolai Krementsov, "Giving and Taking Across Borders: The Rockefeller Foundation and Russia, 1919-1928," Minerva, vol. 39, no. 3 (2001), pp. 265–298. In JSTOR
• Ludmila Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40: From Red Square to the Left Bank. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007.