On the back cover Allen Kassof beats the drum for this book on Soviet-American cultural exchange in the Cold War era. “Yale Richmond records a highly significant chapter in Soviet-American relations. An […] account of the cultural exchanges that were such important channels of influence and persuasion during those years.” The fact that Allen Kassof personally headed IREX – the pivotal US exchange organization – from 1968 to 1992 gives his praise a strong pro-domo bias. Richmond himself, a retired Foreign Service officer mostly in communist countries, has been directly involved in the initiation and implementation of cultural exchanges across the ideological divide. Having read the book, one has to agree with Kassof’s assessment. Richmond has indeed recorded the history of the cultural exchanges, but now it is time for professional historians to step in.
The lack of professionalism and in-depth knowledge of the Soviet system are obvious in this study, e.g., the irritating and highly selective references to academic experts to state the obvious, interspersed with quotes from US newspapers and magazines. It is also obvious from the author’s claim that the opening of the exchange programs constitutes almost an alternative rather than a complementary explanation for the fall of the USSR. They opened the eyes of Soviet citizens to the falsity of Soviet propaganda and the superiority of the American system in terms of wealth and freedoms. The alleged contribution of the exchanges to the demise of the Soviet system seems plausible, for it cannot be really verified or substantiated (as Richmond tries to). Both the quoted confirmations of the decisive impact of their programs by relevant key officials from the US and ex-post statements by key figures of detente and perestroika on the Soviet side are highly subjective. The famous case of Aleksandr Yakovlev, who was among the first group of exchange students in 1958, may be illustrative, but fails to prove Richmond’s claim that this first-hand experience of the American way of life “planted the seeds of reform.” What of the many reformers who never traveled abroad, or the hardliners and hawks who spent many years in the West? Typically, Richmond highlights Mikhail Gorbachev, although he never participated in any of the Soviet-American cultural or educational exchange programs. Therefore, his contacts with communist students from eastern Europe, his vacations in Western Europe as a party apparatchik, and his trip on invitation by Western communist parties are “considered a form of cultural exchange,” too (P. 192). Not only Gorbachev, despite his merits as the architect of perestroika and glasnost, has since demonstrated the persistence of old-style thinking; many younger Russians with free access to Western media, youth, and universities have baffled us with nationalist or communist views.
Apart from this exaggerated claim, the book is nothing more (and nothing less!) than a comprehensive and well-written record of half a century of exchange programs and organized people-to-people initiatives across the Iron Curtain. Diligently, Richmond records and systematizes the exchange programs, ranging from academic lecturers to artists, from youth festivals to art exhibitions. Although the author does not explicitly prioritize some forms of exchange over others, some chapters are quite long (ch. 7 on Moscow think-tanks is 15 pages) and others too short (e.g., ch. 12 on exhibitions, three pages). The length and depth of the chapters seem to depend not so much on the importance of the topic, but rather on the amount of information readily available to the author. The non-hierarchical structure of the book (with 25 chapters) tends to underrate the change over time in the exchange programs for the sake of describing the various forms and institutional set-ups of Soviet-American connections. The one-and-a-half-page chapter on Radio Liberty and other broadcasters of “Western propaganda” can hardly be subsumed under “cultural exchange.”
Essentially, this book is presented as a success story of the long-term US policy of cultural exchange as a “weapon” to defeat the communist regime in Moscow. Overall, the images of the two ideologically competing states and societies are stereotypical and, to some extent, ahistorical and most of all one-sided. From Richmond’s point of view, the Soviet Union was evidently struggling to contain and control the exchange programs and those participating in them. His analysis of Soviet motives and concerns is largely limited to speculations by Western Sovietologists. An alternative and potentially interesting source of information (in the State Archive of the Russian Federation) – the official reports by Soviet scholars who had participated in exchange programs to their superiors in the party and state apparatus – are referred to only once (Pp. 73-75). Conversely, US society and politics appear natural and unperturbed as ever by the threats of communism, nuclear Armageddon, Soviet spies, and agitprop. Only the very attentive reader will notice the role of the CIA in the preparation of some of the exchanges and National Security Council deliberations in the initial phase. Moreover, Richmond’s conclusion (again quoting Kassof) “that many of the Soviet Americanists who came to do research on the United States as adversaries developed a very complex symbiotic relationship with their subjects” (P. 91) mutates mutandis certainly applies to American Sovietologists as well!
Recent research on the Cold War tends to look beyond the fundamental differences between the US and the USSR in political and social institutions and traditions. The Cold War impacted US daily life, political behavior, and even academic thinking, in many barely explored ways. The cultural exchanges (involving up to 100,000 persons since 1958) are part of that larger story and thus the real question is not whether Soviet citizens involved lost their faith in the communist system. The current book provides a wealth of information, but merely scratches the surface of many interesting questions. Only one chapter, for instance, pays attention to the American critics of the exchange programs (most prominently Richard Perle), but instead of analyzing and contextualizing their arguments, the author sets out to refute their assertions passionately. History may have proven him right, but this should never be the objective of history writing. At this point professional historians ought to take over from those personally involved.