New Book of Interest: Cold War Exiles and the CIA ©

A recently published book of interest:

Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia byBenjamin Tromly, which

·      Examines the US strategy to utilize emigres from the USSR as a weapon in the Cold War

·      Explores the psychological warfare and espionage operations that emerged from this strategy

·      Adopts a transnational approach by linking Russian emigres to the wider Cold War contexts of U S policy and divided Germany

·      Draws extensively on recently declassified CIA documents and emigre sources that are not in wide scholarly use

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Many Faces of Russian Anti-Communism 
1. A Fissile National Community: The Political World of Russian Emigres
2. 'A Political Maze based on the Shifting Sand': the Vlasov Movement and the Gehlen Organization in postwar Germany
3. Socialists and Vlasovites: War Memories and a Troubled Cross-Continental Encounter

Part II: The Transnational Quest for Russian Liberation 
4. American Visions and Emigre Realities: The American Project to Unify the Russian Exiles
5. Builders and Dissectors: Emigre Unification and the Russian Question
6. Reluctant Chieftains: The Ascendance of the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism

Part III: The CIA Operational Front 
7. From Revolution to Provocation: The NTS and CIA Covert Operations
8. Spies, Sex, and Balloons: Emigre Activities in Divided Berlin
9. The Real Anti-Soviet Russians? Soviet Defectors and the Cold War

Part IV: The End of the Affair: The Decline of Emigre Anti-Communism 
10. 'All will be Forgiven': The Soviet Campaign for Return to the Homeland
11. Unreliable Allies: The German Crucible and Russian Anti-Communism

Conclusion

Author Information

Benjamin Tromly is Professor of History at University of Puget Sound, where he teaches Russian and European History. He is the author of Making the Soviet Intelligentsia: Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev.

On September 25, 2019,  Benjamin Tromley will be speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C.

"During the early Cold War, the United States government backed exiles from the Soviet bloc as part of an effort to subvert communist power from abroad. In his new book, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, Professor Benjamin Tromly tells the story of the involvement of Russian exiles in US political warfare and espionage programs in the 1950s. He will explain how officials and spies on both sides of the Iron Curtain became entangled with the internal struggles of the Russian diaspora in Europe. He will also analyze exile politics as a sub-front of the Cold War in Europe that involved the marshaling of proxies and non-state actors."

Moderator 

Eric Lohr

For more information, visit https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/book-talk-cold-war-exiles-and-the-cia

Voices from the East: CIA sponsored Russian Language Broadcasting from Taiwan, Part Two, NTS and TsOPE ©

In part one, we looked at Radio Liberation / Radio Liberty broadcasts from Taiwan. Below is a look at two emigre organizations that also broadcsast via short-wave from Taiwan in Russian to the USSR

NTS and Radio Free Russia

The initials NTS stand Narodno Trudovoi Soyuz -- National Alliance of Russian Solidarists or National Labor Alliance” (In Russian: Национально Трудовой Союз, Народно-Трудовой Союз российских солидаристов—Narodno-Trudovoy Soyuz Rossiyskikh Solidaristov). The initials NTS were also used for two patrioticslogans “Nesem tiranam smert” (We are bringing death to tyrants) and “Nesem trudiashimsia svobodu” (We are bringing liberty to the workers). 

NTS was founded in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in 1928 (sometimes given at 1930) by a group of Russian exiles opposed to Soviet Communism. NTS settled in Germany after World War Two

In December 1950, NTS began broadcasting Radio Free Russia that was beamed at the Red Army in Eastern Germany from a station it owned and operated in the British Zone—the broadcast operation eventually moved into the U.S. Zone. The first transmitting station placed on a small truck was a small battery operated one of only 38 watts of power. There were no poles for the antennas, trees were used instead to string the wires.

At a radio conference in Europe in 1953, representatives of Nationalist China and NTS met for the first time. Reportedly, the Chinese Nationalists were, “Favorably impressed with the work of NTS” and even supplied and planned to continue to supply NTS with materials for broadcasting and publications.” 

Dr. Roman Redlich of NTS reportedly flew to Taiwan in late 1955 to establish his residence and work with the Chinese Nationalists in a “joint effort against Communism.” In 1957, NTS received permission from BCC to broadcast out of Taiwan to the Eastern USSR via the powerful short-wave transmitter. Eventually, it broadcast an average of ten hours daily.

Redlich was succeeded by veteran NTS member Gleb Rahr, who arrived in 1957 or 1958 and remained there until 1960, when he moved to Japan to teach Russian at the University of Tokyo. In 1963, he returned to NTS in Germany, where he worked until 1974 (possibly the date that Radio Free Russia ceased broadcasting) before working for Radio Liberty in Munich. Rahr then wrote and recorded religious programs for RFE/RL’s Russian Service until it moved to Prague in 1995. 

NTS stopped broadcasting from Taiwan in 1974.

TsOPE 

CIA’s created and controlled the Russian émigré organization “Central Association of Post-War Émigrés” (TsOPE – transliteration of ЦОПЭ - Центральное Объединение Послевоенных Эмигрантов)in November 1952. It was based in Munich, Germany.

TsOPE did not have its own radio station: it wrote scripts and  that were broadcast over other radio stations. At one point in the early Cold War, for example, TsOPE members wrote and produced a weekly half-hour show over Voice of America studios in Munich entitled "Life in the Free West through Our Eyes."  

Probably beginning in 1959, TsOPE also provided tapes and scripts for Russian-language broadcasts over BCC radio on Taiwan. As an example of the scope of the TsOPE broadcasts, during Fiscal Year 1961, TsOPE Munich radio section produced approximately 1,000 scripts and 48 15-minute taped programs, which were broadcast by the BCC. 

TsOPE broadcasts ceased in 1962.