The CIA Book Club
This was an interesting read. The main title says what its all about but I think it is a little bit misleading. You’d think that a book talking about the CIA book club would be primarily about the machinations about how the CIA would spawn a book club that might subvert the communist presence in Eastern Europe, and there is a little bit about that. But when you look at how much of the other contents overshadow what the CIA actually did, its really 10% about the CIA and 90% about the Polish folks who actually ran the book club.
It makes sense when you think about it, but reading the title in and of itself does not give you that impression. Of course running a book club where freedom of thought and expression in a heavily soviet influenced country would be dangerous and thereby most of the action is going to be “on the ground” so to speak.
And so the book is mostly about the folks who ran the book club. The background where all this takes place is in Poland and right after when the Warsaw Pact was signed to counteract Nato. Its difficult at least for me to discombobulate Eastern Europe from Russia but in fact it was many many countries, and Poland was one of the most western points of what we now term Soviet influenced Eastern Europe. As such, perhaps the influence of Russia was much less so, but for whatever reason, the Poles always had a bit more freedom than the other satellite countries. This gave a rich undercurrent where subversion was possible through books because the Russian identity and influence was not quite as strong as in other Warsaw Pact countries.
The CIA saw this as an opportunity and decided to invest a modest sum to see if the underground in Poland could carry the day and it was an investment that was far better than other things. Basically bankrolling some publishers both within the Warsaw Pact and without to supply the underground with books, printing materials and other small acts of support.
The result was that even under the darkest hour of the Soviet influence, when the government cracked down hard, there was always a little bit of books being passed around, and underground publishers willing to run the risk of incarceration or worse to pass around the beacon of freedom.
There’s a lot of politics within the underground of course, and there’s a lot of jockeying around influence and style (whether to make one big shipment of illicit goods or several small shipment) and no small amount of cat & mouse between the authorities wanting to stomp out this movement versus the underground.
All in all, its a bit of a good read to see how even a small amount of people can stand up to the might of a government, but the ultimate story might be a bit sad. In that the reason why everything ended up going topsy turvy for the soviet influence was the end of the cold war itself, after Gorbachev started perestroika and the subsequent collapse of the soviet run economy.
The book club did have an influence, albeit a small one, in keeping the flames of the western idea of freedom alive, but ultimately it was still the failure of soviet style communism that was the downfall. Still, its a good read and one I recommend for history buffs. Its a bit of a spy book, but not really how you’d imagine one to be.