Volume 52, Number 17 · November 3, 2005
The Mystery of Willi Münzenberg
By Michael Scammell
The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West
by Sean McMeekin
Yale University Press, 397 pp., $32.50
Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg, and the Seduction of the Intellectuals
by Stephen Koch, with an introduction by Sam Tanenhaus
Enigma Books, revised and updated edition, 421 pp., $18.00 (paper)
The cold war ended in 1991, but a continuing flow of books on the subject testifies to our deep fascination with it, and to the contested meaning of its legacy. This is particularly true of its ideological component, the 'cultural cold war,' for as David Caute has noted, the 'mortal 'stroke'' that buried Soviet communism was not just economic and military, but also 'moral, intellectual, and cultural.'[1] The opening of the archives east and west over the past fifteen years has greatly contributed to the debate over what exactly happened, by allowing commentators to reexamine, for example, the role of the CIA in front organizations in the West, like the Congress for Cultural Freedom,[2] and that of the NKVD/ KGB and its affiliates in Communist fronts of a similar nature.
Review, 4658 words
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