When Orwell Was Propaganda

Nick Romeo recounts the CIA’s efforts to undermine the Soviet Union with literature:

Through a number of front organizations, including Bedford Publishing Company in New York City, the agency successfully purchased, printed, distributed, and even commissioned a number of books with the goal of promoting a “spiritual understanding of Western values.” This included novels by authors as diverse as George Orwell, Albert Camus, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce; and as [Petra] Couvée and [Peter] Finn reveal, one book Bedford commissioned was a false memoir of a Soviet-U.S. double agent. By smuggling books to the Soviet Union in everything from food cans to Tampax boxes, Bedford got as many as one million books to Soviet readers over the course of 15 years. The CIA’s program for the dissemination of literature continued until the fall of the USSR.

Given its literary culture, some CIA staff probably realized the irony of a powerful and well-funded government agency using clandestine methods to distribute novels by George Orwell. The American government was trying to manipulate the culture of the Soviet Union to help Soviet citizens recognize the dangers of a powerful government manipulating their culture. (Unsurprisingly, they didn’t want anyone to know they were involved.)

Update from a reader:

Of course Orwell was a propagandist, working for the BBC during World War II. I have a book titled George Orwell: The War Broadcasts. Good stuff, too.