When a man named Gutenberg invented the printing press in Germany around 1440, it became possible to spread information around town, around the country and, in theory, around the world. But it seems that from that very moment forward, there were those who hated and feared the power of books, who tried their best to keep all but the safest books out of people’s hands.
Most famously, the Nazis of Hitler’s Germany built huge bonfires in the central squares of cities and tossed in books they felt would be dangerous to read. Dangerous to the Nazis, anyway. Such fires made a dramatic picture, something the Nazis produced every chance they got. But it also produced a legacy. In our democratic Western civilization, anybody who works to prevent information and ideas from reaching people is likely to be called a “book burner.”
An interesting new book talks about this subject but not going back as far as the Nazis. In the 1980s, the country of Poland was starting to rise up against the communist Soviet Union built around what we now know as Russia. Idealistic ideas about freedom and human rights and drastic change were moving through all levels of Polish society, and the Soviets were fighting to keep people ignorant of those ideas. What we call censorship was everywhere – indeed throughout the entire Soviet world created at the end of World War II.
The book by British journalist Charlie English dives right into what became the free world’s response to such desperate efforts, which within a few years would spell the end of the Soviet Union and the entire Soviet world. The book is called The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature. In other words, after dreadful years of global combat using guns and bombs, the American intelligence community decided to fight a war using books.
A bit of a history lesson would be helpful here. The period between the end of World War II in 1945 and the fall of the Soviet Union starting in 1989 is known as the Cold War. It was a time of huge, even hysterical tensions between the United States and Russia, a time of fears and threats of the atomic weapons that both sides now had. It was also a time of heated competition to win over the rest of the world – even to be the first landing on the moon.
In simple terms, the US sought to encourage democratic governments in each country. The Soviets preferred the same kind of control over people’s daily lives they imposed every day back home. Some days, we now know, neither side had any good guys.
Based in Langley, Va., the Central Intelligence Agency was seen then (and now) as an essential part of defending America from foreign threats. These included outright attacks, of course, upon the United States and any country we considered our friend. Much of what we think of American espionage, the business of recruiting and sending out so-called spies, comes to us from CIA operations. The organization was wildly secretive, even ordering its employees to never admit being in the CIA. But that only added to the mystery and the romance, at least according to popular books and movies over several decades.
The book by Charlie English concentrates on a very specific secret mission, mostly in the proud but overwhelmed country of Poland, in the early 1980s. There the so-called Polish government was chosen and controlled by the Soviet Union, giving the place the gray, monotonous, lifeless feeling of most Soviet countries during that period. The fact that most Poles in Poland hated living this way was clear, as were the strong feelings of Poles living in exile in Paris or London, or indeed in certain American cities like Chicago.
So… when labor unrest started in the shipbuilding factories in the northern Polish city of Gdansk – a movement that came to be known as Solidarity – many people in different parts of the world supported it with passion. The movement’s leader, Lech Walesa, became an international hero, a media celebrity. But how on earth, with the government arresting thousands and censoring everything, could the Polish people get the information and ideas they’d need to stage a true national revolt?
The CIA took this on as a mission, yet another of its many efforts to weaken or eventually destroy the enemy, the Soviet Union. As the new book explains, this was not one project but many. Still, all required money, which was something the CIA could request and get from the US Congress. Some money would go to small publishers of political newsletters and books in Poland itself, while other money went to different ways of smuggling western books into the country – an act that could land anyone in jail if their luggage got checked carefully at the Polish border. Every step of the way required bravery, but the Polish people have never been short of that.
To most Americans, who of course were never told of this “book club” or most other things the CIA tried, this was simply what Americans did to help less fortunate countries. To the people of Poland, it was a life and death fight for their own freedom.
History books tell us how things turned out. With support from the entire free world, Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement survived crackdowns by the government and grew into a power that did eventually overthrow the government. It demanded and got free elections. And, as other Soviet-controlled countries joined in, it drove out the repressive system for something much closer to western democracy.
The CIA and its operatives have suffered much criticism in recent years, and they have probably deserved every bit. Some of their killing and torture would seem to conflict with the very American values they are so quick to proclaim. But during the 1980s, with its “book club” in Poland, the CIA really did prove that, as the old saying goes, the pen can be mightier than the sword.
