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The Difficult Emergence of an ‘Anti-Totalitarian’ Journal in Post-War France: Preuves and the Congress for Cultural Freedom

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Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War

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Abstract

Preuves was created in 1951, in a context of uncertainty regarding the definition of the overall strategy of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). This chapter provides information on the circumstances that led to its launching by the Swiss journalist François Bondy, as well as on its editorial policy. Conceived as an ‘international journal’ in the French language rather than a typical French review, Preuves faced difficulties in establishing itself in the French intellectual scene. Its history reflects the tension within the CCF between its ambition to act as an international organisation and the necessity to anchor its action within national spaces.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    François Bondy, ‘Reflexions by someone directly concerned. What is to become of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its publications?’, p. 3, translation from Die Welt, 24 May 1967, International Association for Cultural Freedom Papers, Box 318, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago (hereafter IACF).

  2. 2.

    ‘It is my own opinion that the CIA at the time [i.e. the 1950s] was a refuge for a few strong opponents to McCarthyism.’ Ibid., p. 3.

  3. 3.

    Notes taken at Fontaine-le-Port, 18–19 July 1950, Box 56, IACF.

  4. 4.

    Executive Committee meeting, Paris, 30 August 1950, Box 56, IACF.

  5. 5.

    Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the struggle for the mind of postwar Europe (London: Collier Macmillan, 1989), pp. 33–36.

  6. 6.

    Suzanne Labin, ‘Confidential Report’, and François Bondy, ‘Notes about the Confidential Report by Suzanne Labin’, 13 August 1962, Box 613, IACF.

  7. 7.

    International Committee meeting, Brussels, 27–30 November 1950, Box 56, IACF.

  8. 8.

    Executive Committee meeting, Paris, 30 August 1950, Box 56, IACF.

  9. 9.

    Nicolas Nabokov, ‘Report No. 1 to the American Committee’, 22 May 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  10. 10.

    Quoted from Rousset at the Executive Committee meeting, Versailles, 9–11 February 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  11. 11.

    Anne-Marie Corbin, Manès Sperber. Un combat contre la tyrannie (1934–1960) (Berne: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 259–264.

  12. 12.

    Quoted from Aron at the Executive Committee meeting, Versailles, 9–11 February 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  13. 13.

    Pierre Grémion, ‘Preuves dans le Paris de guerre froide’, Vingtième Siècle 13 (January–March 1987), p. 66.

  14. 14.

    Pierre Grémion, Intelligence de l’anticommunisme. Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris (1950–1975) (Paris: Fayard, 1995), p. 78.

  15. 15.

    Nabokov, ‘Report No. 1 to the American Committee’, Box 56, IACF.

  16. 16.

    Jean-Paul de Dadelsen to Albert Camus, 5 September 1951, European Cultural Centre Papers, II-O-15-a, Geneva (hereafter ECC).

  17. 17.

    Nicolas Nabokov to James Burnham, 27 June 1951, quoted in Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 2000), p. 101.

  18. 18.

    Executive Committee meeting, Versailles, 9–11 February 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  19. 19.

    Report to the members of the Executive Committee, 18 January 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  20. 20.

    ‘Programme de travail du secrétariat international du Congrès pour la liberté de la culture, 1er août 1951–1er août 1952’, II-I-3-b, ECC.

  21. 21.

    See Nicolas Stenger, Denis de Rougemont. Les intellectuels et l’Europe au xx e siècle (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015).

  22. 22.

    See Pierre Grémion, ‘François Bondy (1915–2003)’, Commentaire 104 (Winter 2003–2004), pp. 971–974; Melvin J. Lasky, ‘François Bondy: A Man of Letters’, in François Bondy (ed.), European Notebooks: New Societies And Old Politics, 1954–1985 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005), pp. ix–xiv; Melvin J. Lasky, ‘The Transmission of Ideas’, in Richard Reich and Béatrice Bondy (eds.), Homme de lettres. Freundesgabe für François Bondy (Zurich: Schulthess, 1985), pp. 86–92; Keith Botsford, ‘François Bondy & Melvin J. Lasky’, News from the Republic of Letters 14–15 (2005), pp. 19–32.

  23. 23.

    Ioana Popa, Traduire sous contraintes. Littérature et communisme (1947–1989) (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2010), p. 140.

  24. 24.

    Daniel Bell, ‘Intellectual Curiosity’, in Reich and Bondy (eds.), Homme de lettres, p. 94.

  25. 25.

    Grémion, ‘François Bondy (1915–2003)’, p. 973.

  26. 26.

    Manès Sperber, ‘Critique des revue du Congrès’, Executive Committee meeting, 29 January 1956, Box 57, IACF.

  27. 27.

    Executive Committee meeting, Versailles, 9–11 February 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  28. 28.

    Denis de Rougemont to Nicolas Nabokov, 23 July 1951, II-I-1-a, ECC.

  29. 29.

    Executive Committee meeting, Versailles, 9–11 February 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  30. 30.

    François Bondy to Denis de Rougemont, 3 March 1951, Box 282, IACF.

  31. 31.

    ‘Rapport de M. Bondy sur les publications’, 15 May 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  32. 32.

    Executive Committee meeting, Paris, 15 December 1951, Box 56, IACF.

  33. 33.

    Executive Committee meeting, Paris, 31 May 1952, Box 56, IACF.

  34. 34.

    Bondy to Nabokov, 28 June 1952, Box 56, IACF; Nicolas Nabokov, ‘Report to the members of the Executive Committee’, Paris, 1 November 1952, II-I-3-b, ECC.

  35. 35.

    Executive Committee meeting, Paris, 29–30 December 1952, Box 56, IACF.

  36. 36.

    Pierre Grémion, ‘Regards sur la diplomatie américaine des idées pendant la guerre froide’, Communisme 62–63 (2000), p. 81.

  37. 37.

    François Bondy, ‘Pour Kot’, Commentaire 39 (1987), pp. 622–624; Czeslaw Milosz, ‘Konstanty Jelenski’, in Abécédaire (Paris: Fayard, 2004), pp. 172–173.

  38. 38.

    In September, the Congress held a press conference where Milosz described the conditions and reasons for his exile. In October, under the presidency of Rougemont, a seminar about his work was organised in Andlau where Milosz, Sidney Hook, Roger Caillois and Boris Souvarine discussed the ‘diamat’ or dialectical materialism, and its impact on communist intellectuals. ‘La semaine d’étude d’Andlau’, Preuves 8 (October 1951), p. 32.

  39. 39.

    Czeslaw Milosz, ‘B…ou l’amant malheureux’, Preuves 9 (November 1951); ‘Ketman ou les hypocrites’, Preuves 20 (October 1952); ‘Ribald ou le troubadour’, Preuves 29 (July 1953).

  40. 40.

    Czeslaw Milosz, La Grande Tentation (Paris: Preuves ‘Essais et témoignages’, 1951).

  41. 41.

    Isaac Deutscher, ‘Réponse aux critiques’, Esprit (March 1954); Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Les Communistes et la paix [1952]’, in Situations VI (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). See also Goulven Boudic, ‘Esprit’ (1944–1982). Les métamorphoses d’une revue (Paris: IMEC, 2005), pp. 217–219.

  42. 42.

    Manès Sperber, ‘Critique des revue du Congrès’, Executive Committee meeting, 29 January 1956, Box 57, IACF.

  43. 43.

    Quoted in Grémion, ‘Regards sur la diplomatie américaine’, p. 81. See also Constantin Jelenski, ‘Sous le signe de Gombrowicz’, in Reich and Bondy (eds), Homme de lettres, p. 72.

  44. 44.

    Pierre Grémion (ed.), Preuves: une revue européenne à Paris (Paris: Julliard, 1989), p. 21.

  45. 45.

    Boris Souvarine to François Bondy, 7 February 1966, Box 609, IACF.

  46. 46.

    See Grémion (ed.), Preuves, p. 16; Grémion, ‘Preuves dans le Paris de guerre froide’, p. 65.

  47. 47.

    Veronika Heyde, De l’esprit de la Résistance jusqu’à l’idée de l’Europe. Projets européens et américains pour l’Europe de l’après-guerre (1940–1950) (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 129–130 and 160–167.

  48. 48.

    François Bondy, ‘Une revue française pas comme les autres’, in Grémion (ed.), Preuves, p. 556.

  49. 49.

    Denis de Rougemont, ‘Le dialogue Europe-Amérique’, Preuves 18–19 (August–September 1952), pp. 68–70.

  50. 50.

    François Bondy to Daniel Bell, 25 June 1953, Box 599, IACF.

  51. 51.

    Volker R. Berghahn, ‘Du Congrès à l’Association internationale pour la liberté de la culture. Entre “pragmatisme” et “existentialisme”’, in Philippe Urfalino and Martha Zuber (eds.), Intelligences de la France. Onze essais sur la politique et la culture (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2010), pp. 73–101.

  52. 52.

    François Bondy, ‘Une revue française pas comme les autres’, p. 571 (emphasis added).

  53. 53.

    François Bondy to Nicolas Nabokov, 28 June 1952, Box 56, IACF.

  54. 54.

    Stonor Saunders, pp. 165–189; Hugh Wilford, ‘The uses of Encounter’ in The CIA, the British Left, and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 262–296.

  55. 55.

    See, in particular, ‘Report on Preuves’ and ‘Further notes on Preuves’, n.d., no author, Box 599, IACF; Louis Mercier, ‘Note sur Preuves’, 21 August 1956, II-I-5-b, ECC.

  56. 56.

    Boxes 599, 603 and 604, IACF.

  57. 57.

    Manès Sperber, ‘Critique des revue du Congrès’, Executive Committee meeting, 29 January 1956, Box 57, IACF.

  58. 58.

    Grémion (ed.), Preuves, p. 19.

  59. 59.

    Irving Kristol to Denis de Rougemont, 13 January 1954, Fonds Denis de Rougemont, Folder: ‘CCF’, Bibliothèque de Neuchâtel.

  60. 60.

    Michael Hochgeschwender, ‘A Battle of Ideas: The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) in Britain, ltaly, France, and West Germany’, in Dominik Geppert (ed.), The Postwar Challenge: Cultural, Social, and Political Change in Western Europe, 1945–1958 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 330.

  61. 61.

    International Executive Committee meeting, 23–25 January 1959, Box 59, IACF.

  62. 62.

    François Bondy, ‘Preuves vers l’an sixième de son âge’, 21 October 1955, Box 599, IACF.

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  1. University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Nicolas Stenger

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  1. Institute of History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Giles Scott-Smith

  2. Amerika-Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

    Charlotte A. Lerg

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Stenger, N. (2017). The Difficult Emergence of an ‘Anti-Totalitarian’ Journal in Post-War France: Preuves and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. In: Scott-Smith, G., Lerg, C. (eds) Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59867-7_5

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