For The Freedom of Captive European Nati PDF

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1 ‘For the freedom of captive European nations’:

2 east-European exiles in the Cold War*
3
4 Martin Nekola
5 Prague
6
7
8 Abstract
9 This article discusses the formation and development of organizations of political exiles from
10 the countries of east-central and south-east Europe in the West, particularly in the U.S.A.,
11 during the Cold War. The inclusion of this topic in a wider international context and its
12 comparative research is still fundamentally lacking. The chief aim of the article, therefore, is to
13 provide a basic factual overview, and to outline the general preconditions leading to a
14 comparison of the operation of the anti-communist exile movements. It discusses the political
15 organizations and representatives of a number of individual national exile groups, and explains
16 that their role and standing were essentially derived from changes in international politics. The
17 characteristic view of anti-communist exiles includes internal crises and conflicts, which were
18 often rooted in petty quarrels, personal animosity, arguments about the legitimacy of leading
19 bodies, an absence of charismatic leadership, and the predominance of propaganda in their
20 work.
21
22 For many years, the subject of east European exiles to the United States during the
23 Cold War has been neglected. It has recently and rightfully become the subject of
24 historical and political research in countries which lately emerged from behind the
25 Iron Curtain – high-quality studies describing the escape of political refugees from
26 Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary or Bulgaria have begun to appear.
27 Estimates of the numbers of émigrés in the years following the Second World War
28 vary widely and still inspire disagreement. Workers and peasants fled, as well as the
29 better-known cultural, scientific, intellectual and political elites of eastern Europe. All
30 these groups undertook the challenge of liberating their homelands from communist
31 rule. To this end, they needed to gain support from world powers and, most
32 importantly, to establish unifying umbrella bodies that would become responsible
33 partners of Western governments. Were they able to build effective and widely
34 respected organizations among the exile communities, with real influence and the
35 standing effectively to warn the world public about the communist threat, to influence
36 the development of the Cold War, and even to alter the direction of American foreign
37 policy?
38 This article does not offer a detailed overview of all political organizations, nor the
39 history of all democratic exile groups from the countries where communists took
40 power. Instead, its chief aim is to provide a basic summary, and to outline the origins
41 and general preconditions for the operation of the east European anti-communist exile
42 groups connected with the National Committee for a Free Europe and the Assembly
43
44 * This article presents the long-term research project of the author, currently working under a Fulbright
45 Commission grant.
Copyright © 2014 Institute of Historical Research DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.12061 Historical Research, vol. ••, no. •• (•• 2014)
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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2 East-European exiles in the Cold War
1 of Captive European Nations. It also illuminates a little-known chapter of the Cold

2 War. A number of existing books and academic articles give a brief mention to the
3 intriguing, but neglected, topic of east-European exiles in the U.S.A. and to their
4 political and propaganda significance. However, these writings pay only marginal
5 attention to political activities. This partially comparative article will serve as a short
6 introduction, which directs researchers to relevant literature and archival collections.
7
8 The representatives of democratic parties in Bulgaria and Romania had to leave their
9 homelands by 1945–6, with Hungarians, Poles and Czechoslovaks following soon after.
10 Dozens of former ministers, deputies, ambassadors and senior government officials,
11 expelled by communist regimes abroad, looked to the U.S. government and expected
12 full support in their struggle to return democracy to eastern Europe.1 Washington D.C.
13 preferred not to be seen to be involved in the co-ordination of exiles, because of the
14 need to preserve good diplomatic and economic relations with countries in the Soviet
15 sphere of influence.The U.S. granted asylum to incoming eastern European politicians,
16 but strongly warned against the establishment of exile governments, like those which
17 had been set up during the Second World War. France and Great Britain also refused
18 to grant exile government status to the nascent organizations of anti-communist exile.
19 As can be seen in State Department memos from the years 1947–8,2 American
20 diplomacy often teetered on the edge of a slippery slope, deliberately avoiding delicate
21 issues such as the granting of entry visas to prominent exiles (for example, the
22 Romanian ex-king Michael I, who had to wait many months for admission to the
23 United States).3 At the same time, there was still a high likelihood of armed conflict
24 between East and West, and the defectors from the ‘enemy camp’ were both a handy
25 propaganda triumph and a source of strategic information for the U.S. The Americans
26 were assembling pawns for a dangerous game on the world chessboard and hoped to
27 use them at appropriate times to weaken the enemy. The central goal of all exiles,
28 namely the return of freedom to the communist countries, was considered of
29 secondary importance by American diplomatic, military and intelligence planners.
30 The first organization of free Bulgarians was founded in 1945 in New York. Then,
31 in October 1947, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, chairman of the Polish government in exile
32 during the Second World War, became the head of the Polish National Democratic
33 Committee. In November 1947, under the chairmanship of Monsignor Bela Varga, the
34 Hungarian National Committee was established, followed by the Romanian National
35 Committee in January 1948. The Council of Free Czechoslovakia was organized in
36 February 1949, followed in December of the same year by the National Committee of
37 Albanians.4
38 These ‘national committees’ were similar in many respects. Typically they were
39 managed by a board of fifteen to twenty members, recruited from among former
40 statesmen, party and government officials, senior civil servants, etc. A high percentage
41 had also been diplomats representing their homelands in missions abroad before
42 the communist coups. Once they had received instructions from the new ‘red’
43
44 J. R. Wegs and R. Ladrech, Europe since 1945: a Concise History (Boston, 1996), pp. 38–53.
1
2
45 ‘Attitude of the United States toward eastern European exile leaders and organizations’, in United States
46 Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, iv: Eastern Europe;The Soviet Union (Washington,
47 D.C., 1974), pp. 396–435.
48 3
See I. Porter, Michael of Romania: the King and the Country (Stroud, 2005).
49 4
J. F. Leich, ‘Great expectations: the national councils in exile 1950–60’, Polish Review, xxxv (1990), 183–96.
Copyright © 2014 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. ••, no. •• (•• 2014)
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East-European exiles in the Cold War 3
1 governments, they often disobeyed and refused to leave office.5 Their experience and
2 knowledge at the international level proved crucial during negotiations with Western
3 governments.
4 Each committee had its own offices with a paid staff in New York or Washington.
5 Generally there was an office manager, secretaries, and several editors, who published
6 newsletters, brochures and magazines in English or in their national languages.
7 The numbers of staff varied widely, depending mainly on the financial support
8 received from the American government.6 The activities of the committees consisted
9 of lobbying American officials and compatriot associations in the interests of east
10 European émigrés, participating in cultural, educational and memorial events, and
11 maintaining an intensive information campaign in the press. The most important
12 information/propaganda channel, Radio Free Europe, first broadcast on 1 May 1951,
13 but the Americans deliberately kept away from the influence of quarrelling exile
14 representatives. On the occasion of anniversary events, representatives of the
15 committees were given an opportunity to present their various points of view, but
16 were otherwise rarely able to influence the content of broadcasts.7 These committees
17 continued to maintain contacts with their homelands and provided information to U.S.
18 politicians, and especially the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), which was very
19 interested in detailed reports from behind the Iron Curtain and keen to learn about the
20 most recent developments in the new communist regimes. However, all attempts to
21 create illegal, sophisticated, organized networks of informers and spies failed.8
22 As will be demonstrated in the next part of this article, which focuses on individual
23 cases, none of the national committees was in an ideal position. Essentially, they were
24 unable to avoid internal strife and financial problems. Initially, only the Romanian
25 exiles enjoyed financial independence, as they had part of the country’s gold deposits
26 at their disposal. Exiles from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were also able to access
27 state accounts, frozen in U.S. banks, because Washington refused to recognize Stalin’s
28 annexation of the Baltic states for a long time. The Hungarians could rely on a large,
29 influential and relatively active compatriot community in the U.S.A., and successful
30 entrepreneurs and industrialists of Polish origin provided invaluable support to the
31 Poles.9
32 The exile communities formed a conglomerate of diverse political currents, and the
33 American government felt the need to co-ordinate their activities. In December 1947
34 the newly formed National Security Council (N.S.C.) warned that the Soviet Union
35 was conducting an intensive propaganda campaign directed primarily against the U.S.,
36 employing co-ordinated psychological, political and economic measures designed to
37 undermine non-communist elements in Europe and elsewhere. The only response
38 available to weaken and roll back this communist influence was to initiate a
39
5
40 One of the most daring diplomats was Jan Papanek, the Czechoslovak ambassador to the United Nations,
41 who instigated the proceedings of the Security Council on the situation in Czechoslovakia after the communist
42 coup in Feb. 1948. He endured numerous attempts to effect his return by the communist authorities, and worked
43 at the United Nations headquarters in New York until the end of his regular term of office in Dec. 1950.
6
44 University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center (hereafter I.H.R.C.), A.C.E.N. records
45 1953–72, box 1, folders 1–9.
7
46 A. Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: the Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington,
47 Ky., 2000), pp. 210–13.
48 8
P. Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain (New York, 2000), pp. 11–32.
9
49 J. Radzilowski, ‘Ethnic anti-communism in the United States’, in Anti-Communist Minorities in the U.S., ed.
50 I. Zake (New York, 2009), pp. 1–17.
Historical Research, vol. ••, no. •• (•• 2014) Copyright © 2014 Institute of Historical Research
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1 psychological offensive in return.The director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State
2 Department, George F. Kennan, presented the document ‘Inauguration of organized
3 political warfare’ at an N.S.C. meeting on 4 May 1948 in the presence of President
4 Harry Truman. Kennan highlighted the importance of providing assistance for
5 ‘liberation committees, underground activities behind the Iron Curtain, and the
6 support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the Free
7 World’.10 The ‘liberation committees’ proposed by Kennan would encourage the
8 formation of a public organization to sponsor selected political exile bodies to pursue
9 their anti-Soviet and anti-communist activities, support popular resistance directly
10 within communist-led nations, and prepare liberation movements for the eventuality
11 of an armed conflict between East and West. Kennan’s proposal was summarized
12 in N.S.C. directive 10/2. Covert activities behind the Iron Curtain, information
13 campaigns, the launching of new propaganda channels, the uniting of political exiles
14 through a common organizational platform – all forms of political warfare were now
15 sanctioned and were to be carried out by the anodyne-sounding Office of Policy
16 Co-ordination (O.P.C.).11
17 Kennan, together with the nascent C.I.A. and O.P.C., and drawing on advice and
18 support from various former diplomats, businessmen and public figures, outlined a
19 form of anti-communist struggle that should proceed without official support,
20 distancing the U.S. government, and allowing for deniability and the maintenance of
21 diplomatic relations with the East. Political and financial aid to exile leaders could then
22 be presented as a public cause and not simply as an extension of U.S. foreign policy.
23 In February 1949 Kennan first discussed these issues with Secretary of State Dean
24 Acheson, who gave his assent and asked for the formation of a working committee
25 representing leading political, social, economic and religious figures, which could then
26 arrange contacts with the various exile organizations. This liaison would enable the
27 provision of assistance and ensure that such activities could be directed for the benefit
28 of U.S. foreign policy.
29 The founders of the nascent organization were initially not entirely certain of its
30 exact purpose and functions. They knew that the National Committee for a Free
31 Europe (N.C.F.E.) would not provide humanitarian aid to refugees from eastern
32 Europe or apply for U.S. visas for those still interned in refugee camps. Instead, it
33 would focus on a chosen group of non-fascist and non-communist leaders who had
34 successfully made it to the United States, to find them appropriate employment and
35 make use of their knowledge and abilities during their enforced stay in ‘the Land of
36 Freedom’.12 The committee’s articles of association were signed in New York on 17
37 May 17 1949.
38 At the time of its foundation, the N.C.F.E. consisted of four basic divisions: the
39 National Councils Division responsible for supporting the political organizations of
40 the émigrés; Radio Free Europe; the Middle European Studies Center for scholarly
41 research; and the American Contacts Division, which provided the link between exile
42 structures and American audiences, especially the trade unions.13 Financial aid for the
43 N.C.F.E.’s activities was assured. While donations came from private individuals, the
44
45 10
R. H. Cummings, Cold War Radio: the Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950–89
46 (Jefferson, N.C., 2009), pp. 6–7.
47 11
Cummings, p. 8.
48 12
Leich, p. 183.
49 13
Puddington, pp. 7–13.
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1 main contributions were from large corporations and foundations, and above all there
2 was the behind-the-scenes support from the C.I.A. Soon after its foundation the
3 N.C.F.E. began to bargain about the size and regularity of its contributions to the exile
4 national committees. Each committee received monthly subventions for administration,
5 travel expenses, information and social services.
6 However, the N.C.F.E.’s money could not prevent the ineffectiveness of the
7 quarreling committees, which caused extreme dissatisfaction among the Americans. In
8 some cases, other ways of keeping the qualified, experienced and well-known exile
9 leaders ‘busy’ were employed. The Middle European Studies Center was used as a
10 platform for former diplomats and political leaders, where they could write memoirs,
11 essays, analyses and situation reports on their home countries. The topics of the
12 resulting publications varied widely, from land reform, mining and the oil industry to
13 freedom of speech, international relations and the Sovietization of agricultural policies.
14 The Free Europe Press was created to distribute the reports and to issue a monthly
15 magazine, News from Behind the Iron Curtain. Most important was involving prominent
16 exiles in radio broadcasting to their home countries. Besides joining in the
17 programmes of Voice of America, this led directly to the first broadcasts of Radio Free
18 Europe in May 1951.
19 The Americans continued with their efforts to unite the leading personalities among
20 the east European exiles, to let them speak with one voice, and in line with U.S.
21 foreign policy. On 11 February 1951 202 exile representatives signed the ‘Declaration
22 of the aims and principles of liberation of the central and eastern European peoples’
23 in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was a symbolic act, whereby the participants
24 expressed their will to fight against world communism and to co-operate closely.To try
25 to ensure the greater effectiveness of the co-operation, from late 1953 moves were
26 made to create a new representative body, fully controlled and funded by the U.S.
27 government through the N.C.F.E. (now renamed the Free Europe Committee
28 (F.E.C.)). As a result, the Assembly of Captive European Nations (A.C.E.N.), a pointed
29 exile counterbalance to the United Nations, was founded on 20 September 1954. Nine
30 nations (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland
31 and Romania) and a number of supranational exile organizations (the Christian
32 Democratic Union of Central Europe, the International Peasant Union, the Socialist
33 Union of Central Eastern Europe, the Liberal Democratic Union of Central Eastern
34 Europe, etc.) were allowed to nominate their delegates to A.C.E.N. bodies.
35 A.C.E.N. was actually one of the few supranational bodies operating in support
36 of eastern European exiles which received wide publicity and had at least partial
37 propaganda success.14 Initially there were fears that certain members of A.C.E.N.
38 would not be able to co-operate at all.The Second World War and the years preceding
39 it had exposed many reasons for distrust and bitterness. Fortunately, the complicated
40 relationships between the Poles and Czechoslovaks, or Hungarians and Romanians, for
41 example, did not threaten the nascent organization. Moreover, the Americans clearly
42 stated that they were interested only in fighting a common communist enemy.
43
14
44 The entire documentation of A.C.E.N. activities, including the biographical profiles of its officials, is
45 deposited in I.H.R.C., A.C.E.N. records 1954–72 <http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/research/vitrage/all/am/
46 GENassembly.htm> [accessed 28 June 2013]. Other important archival sources are California, Stanford
47 University, Hoover Institution, East European Collection <http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives/
48 collections/east-europe/> [accessed 28 June 2013]; and New York, Columbia University, Rare Books and
49 Manuscript Library, Ferenc Nagy papers, 1940–79 <http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/
50 ldpd_4079757/> [accessed 28 June 2013].
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1 The structure of A.C.E.N. generally followed that of the United Nations. It

2 consisted of a general assembly, secretarial services and several working committees.
3 Sessions were held once a year, usually in September, in New York or Strasbourg. The
4 chairman was elected for a one-year term, and he moderated sessions, represented
5 A.C.E.N. to the world, and supervised communication with international,
6 governmental and private organizations.15 Much more important was the position of
7 the secretary general, who oversaw all administrative matters and daily operations.16
8 Unfortunately, after a promising beginning, A.C.E.N. did not have much of an impact
9 on the history of the period; it served more as a tool of propaganda. The Cold War
10 entered a phase when armed conflict between the East and West became less likely.
11 If we look at State Department dispatches from the years 1955–7,17 we find intense
12 interest in as well as concern about dramatic events in eastern Europe. Along with
13 the Suez Crisis in the Middle East, this was the area where developments could
14 unexpectedly erupt, producing conditions which would be very disadvantageous to
15 U.S. strategic interests. The political analyses of the State Department noted that the
16 workers’ riots in East Germany, Poland and Hungary had broken out unexpectedly
17 and had frightened Moscow. The U.S. government decided to send a clear signal to
18 Moscow that existing borders and spheres of influence established at the end of the
19 Second World War would be respected. Even the Hungarian revolution in the autumn
20 of 1956, with its thousands of casualties, failed to change this position among Western
21 governments.18
22 A.C.E.N. was gradually subsumed into the strategy of the U.S. government, which
23 had adopted the doctrine of peaceful co-existence with the Soviets. In June 1965, the
24 assembly suffered a drastic 56 per cent reduction in its budget, and as a result, it had
25 to suspend payment for a range of activities. Many A.C.E.N. offices round the world
26 had to be closed, the publication of periodicals was stopped, and most of the staff of
27 the secretariat was let go. In December 1971, the American press revealed that the
28 C.I.A. had pumped money into the F.E.C. for years. A.C.E.N. attracted a lot of
29 negative attention and lost the rest of its financial support from the government. On
30 22 May 1972, the supreme court in New York registered it as an incorporated
31 company, which allowed it to continue its activities, but only to a very limited extent.
32 During the last years of its existence, this company ran out of funds and was ultimately
33 closed down.19
34
35 This article will now describe the development of national committees of east
36 European émigrés. Although there is still a great deal of research to be undertaken, it
37 provides a basis for further investigation by those who are interested in a comparison
38 of various national exile groups. How were they alike and different?
39 There was a long tradition of Bulgarian exile in the U.S.A., beginning in the
40 nineteenth century, when peasants and members of the intelligentsia, as well as
41
42 Latvian diplomat Vilis Māsēns acted as the first chairman, exceptionally, for a four-year term 1954–8.
15
43 Romanian diplomat Brutus Coste acted as secretary general in the years 1954–65, Polish diplomat Feliks
16
44 Gadomski in the years 1966–85.

17
45 ‘United States policy toward Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania: U.S.
46 consideration of detachment of a major satellite in Eastern Europe’, in Foreign Relations of the United States
47 1955–7, xxv: Eastern Europe, ed. J. P. Glennon (Washington, D.C., 1990), pp. 4–55.
18
48 M. J. Medhurst, ‘Eisenhower and the crusade for freedom: the rhetorical origins of the Cold War
49 campaigns’, in Presidential Studies Quarterly, xxvii (1997), 646–61.
50 19
A. Mazurkiewicz ‘The voice of silenced people’, in Zake, Anti-Communist Minorities, pp. 175–79.
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1 businessmen and aristocrats, left the Balkans because of Ottoman terror. After the
2 governmental crisis in July 1946 and the communist coup, another massive wave of
3 emigration occurred. By the end of the nineteen-forties there were more than 40,000
4 people of Bulgarian origin living in the U.S.A.20
5 Bulgarian politicians created two umbrella exile organizations, the Bulgarian
6 National Committee (Balgarski Nacionalen Komitet – B.N.K.) and the Bulgarian
7 National Front (Balgarski Nacionalen Front – B.N.F.), which were unable to agree on
8 a single political representation. The B.N.K. was led by one of the most famous
9 opponents of communism, Georgi Gemeto Dimitrov (not to be confused with leader
10 of the Communist International and Stalin’s friend Georgi Dimitrov). A medical
11 doctor, Dimitrov represented the left wing of the Agrarian party in Bulgaria and was
12 imprisoned and tortured under the regime of Tsar Boris III. After the Second World
13 War, he returned to high-level politics. By 5 September 1945, Dimitrov had to leave
14 the country, under the protection of the British embassy, and he then took up
15 residence in the U.S.A.21
16 Within the B.N.K., in whose foundation Dimitrov participated, Bulgarian
17 republicans, agrarians and social democrats, who opposed both the communist and the
18 tsarist regimes, worked together. Its political programme demanded the liberation of
19 Bulgaria at any cost and as soon as possible. Dimitrov emphasized the democratic
20 composition of the B.N.K., to make it the most appropriate partner for the
21 Americans.22 Consequently, he forbade his associates from co-operating with the
22 influential nationalist Alexander Tsankov, who led the Bulgarian pro-Nazi puppet
23 government in exile, and General Vasil Velčev, former minister of war.
24 The other leading body, the B.N.F., led by Hristo Statev and Ivan Dočev,
25 categorically demanded the return of the monarchy to Bulgaria. Disputes about the
26 role of the tsar derailed the efforts of the entire Bulgarian exile movement for a long
27 time. The B.N.F. pushed the young monarch Simeon II as the natural symbol of the
28 anti-communist struggle, while the B.N.K. awarded this role to the head of the
29 Bulgarian Orthodox Church abroad, Archbishop Andrej.23 The form of their resistance
30 also differed significantly. The radicals around Valčev demanded an armed struggle on
31 Bulgarian territory and a strengthening of the partisan element in the mountains and
32 forests. Dimitrov preferred publicity campaigns about communist crimes in Bulgaria.
33 He published the exile newspaper Free and Independent Bulgaria (Svobodna i Nezavisima
34 Balgaria) as well as many brochures with detailed information on the economic
35 plundering of Bulgaria, forced collectivization and political intrigues.24 The race to win
36 influential friends on American soil began. The B.N.F. had maintained contacts with
37 industrialists, journalists and local American politicians; the B.N.K., on the other hand,
38 focused on the State Department and American diplomats.
39 Finally, on 11 February 1948, American officials ended this nonsensical rivalry
40 between Bulgarian émigrés and recognized the B.N.K. as its only relevant political
41 partner. Dimitrov himself understood this act to be important and helpful, although in
42 practice it did not calm the turbulent atmosphere among the exiles. Even though the
43
20
44 I. Ilchev, ‘To the land that was never promised: Bulgarian emigration to the United States in the late
45 19th–early 20th century’, in Immigration/Emigration in Historical Perspective, ed. A. K. Issacs (Pisa, 2007), pp. 119–40.
46 21
C. Mozer, Dr. G. M. Dimitrov – Biografia (Sofia, 1992), pp. 228–46.
47 22
I.H.R.C., A.C.E.N. records 1953–72, box 35, folder 1.
48 23
49 24
M. M. Boll, Cold War in the Balkans: American Foreign Policy and the Emergence of Communist Bulgaria 1943–7
50 (Lexington, Ky., 1984), pp. 174–89.
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1 Bulgarian Communist party was transformed into a monolithic organization, led by

2 the not very competent or clever comrade Todor Zhivkov, the exile leaders could not
3 take advantage – they were too busy with their quarrels and insults.25 On 3 March
4 1960, to mark the occasion of the eighty-second anniversary of the Bulgarian
5 liberation from the Ottoman empire, the Bulgarian National Committee (Balgarski
6 nacionalen Komitet) was established in the Baltimore Hotel in New York.26
7 Members of the committee welcomed dozens of Bulgarians living round the world,
8 the delegates of many political, cultural or research centres in exile, who unanimously
9 agreed to co-operate closely.27 Most of the quarrelling leaders responsible for the
10 lamentable state of affairs were replaced. The committee presented a new programme
11 consisting of eight points, including demands for a democratic constitution and free
12 parliamentary elections, and the rejection of left- or right-wing dictatorship. Dr.
13 Dimitrov remained a well-known Bulgarian expert until his death on 21 November
14 1972. He lectured at American universities, published and was active in A.C.E.N. and
15 many humanitarian organizations.
16
17 After the governmental crisis and the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February
18 1948, a large group of democratic politicians fled to Western countries.28 After the
19 initial formation of exile movements in Germany, Belgium, France and Great Britain,
20 the attention of the Czechoslovak community in exile gradually focused on the
21 U.S.A., where ‘prominent individuals’, mostly ex-politicians, diplomats and journalists,
22 moved.
23 With the former vice-president of post-war Czechoslovakia, Petr Zenkl, formally in
24 charge, many of the meetings of Czechoslovak exiles took place in Washington, with
25 a view to unifying exile opinion and establishing a respected central body of political
26 exiles. After complicated negotiations, the Council of Free Czechoslovakia (Rada
27 svobodného Československa) was established on 25 February 1949.29 A declaration
28 about its formation was sent to thirty-nine governments; twenty-one of them,
29 including the U.S., acknowledged the notification. Zenkl was elected chairman and the
30 Slovak Jozef Lettrich became his deputy, to retain the national duality within council
31 leadership. However, the Council of Free Czechoslovakia was condemned to failure
32 from the beginning. There were too many players among the Czechoslovak exiles:
33 social democrats, Christian democrats, agrarians, pro-fascists and separatist Slovaks, as
34 well as political representatives of the German minority displaced from Czechoslovakia
35 soon after the Second World War. All of these interfered with the main goal of the
36 anti-communist struggle.30
37 The founders of the council in Washington represented only one wing of opinion;
38 they refused to co-operate with ‘the others’, and one by one ‘the others’ lost faith in
39 the council and formed their own organizations. In fact, no unification occurred and
40 the quarelling Czechoslovak exiles needed a strong and widely respected leader.
41 Unfortunately, the stubborn Zenkl, barely able to make compromises, was not that
42 man. As a former minister in the coalition government with the communists, he was
43
44 V. Paraskevov, ‘Bulgarian ethnic anti-communist groups’, in Zake, Anti-Communist Minorities, pp. 151–66.
25
45 I.H.R.C., A.C.E.N. records 1953–72, box 35, folder 1.

26
46 27
47 28
H. G. Skilling, ‘The Prague overturn in 1948’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, iv (1959), 88–114.
29
48 I. Lukes, ‘Czechoslovak political exile in the Cold War: the early years’, in Polish Review, xlvii (2002),
49 332–43.
50 30
F. D. Raška, Fighting Communism from Afar: the Council of Free Czechoslovakia (Boulder, N.Y., 2008), pp. 14–43.
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1 often blamed for the failure of democracy in February 1948.The disputes about Zenkl
2 spread into Czech-Slovak disputes, as well as into struggles for influence and personal
3 representation in the apparatus of the council among exile political parties. It was
4 significant that these conflicts could be overcome only temporarily and no permanent
5 ceasefire was ever arranged.31 The first serious break-up of the council came in the
6 autumn of 1950 and others soon followed. The council was drowning in a permanent
7 crisis, rather than focusing on propaganda issues, activities within A.C.E.N. or the very
8 important question of the care of Czechoslovak refugees in camps. Because of the
9 endless bickering of the Czechoslovak exiles, the F.E.C. cut off financial support to the
10 council in 1957. Later, and as post-war exile leaders died or retired, the younger
11 generation, unaffected by the disputes of the previous two decades, prepared favourable
12 conditions for the re-unification of the council at the end of the nineteen-sixties.32
13 These events were influenced by the Prague Spring of 1968, the Soviet invasion of
14 Czechoslovakia, and the new wave of almost 105,000 Czechoslovaks coming to the
15 West.
16 On 10 November 1972 the assembly of the council in Washington elected new
17 leaders and revitalized the stagnant activities of the organization. Then, the council
18 participated in the process leading up to the signing of the Helsinki Final Act on
19 1 August 1975, which aroused resistance to the violation of human rights by the
20 communist regime in Czechoslovakia and all around Europe.33 After the fall of the
21 Iron Curtain, the reorganized Council of Free Czechoslovakia afforded assistance to
22 the young Czechoslovak democracy and thus achieved its original mission.
23
24 In Hungary, the communists occupied a less favourable position than in neighbouring
25 countries. In the closely watched parliamentary elections of 4 November 1945, the
26 Communist party finished third, nearly two million votes behind the winner, the
27 Smallholders’ party. A coalition was formed, which was disrupted by communist
28 provocations from the start. The first controversy erupted over the post of minister of
29 the interior. It was occupied by a communist, Imre Nagy, who received regular orders
30 from Moscow about how to incite factory workers to strikes and street riots, how to
31 spy on the leaders of democratic parties and how to provide ‘evidence’ of their links
32 to the ‘fascist and reactionary elements’.
33 His namesake, Ferenc Nagy, who led parliament, became prime minister on
34 4 February 1946. Infiltrators within the Smallholders party arranged for it to be
35 fragmented into four smaller, weaker entities. Freedom of speech and assembly were
36 curtailed, as well as the influence of the Catholic Church, and the communists
37 gathered all strategic positions in the state administration into their own hands. The
38 weakened Prime Minister Nagy was in an unenviable position. He was afraid to irritate
39 Moscow, but he knew that the entire democratic camp was missing its opportunity. In
40 May 1947, the communists resolved to undertake the final ambush.While Nagy was on
41 holiday in Switzerland, the communist-controlled police accused him of preparing for
42 an anti-Soviet coup. He was ordered to return immediately to his homeland to face the
43
31
44 P. Tomek, ‘The highs and lows of Czech and Slovak émigré activism’, in Zake, Anti-Communist Minorities,
45 pp. 109–26.
46 32
I.H.R.C., A.C.E.N. records 1953–72, box 36, folders 2–3.
47 33
M. Povolný, Zápas o lidská práva: Rada svobodného Československa a Helsinský proces (Brno, 2007), pp. 8–42.
48 For a review of Povolný’s work, see F. D. Raška, ‘The struggle for human rights’, Slavonic and East European
49 Review, lxxxvii (2009), 384–6.
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1 charges, in other words, to be arrested. Nagy chose to resign as prime minister, a

2 decision which many of his critics called a coward’s trade. In return, he was allowed
3 to remain in Switzerland, and a special train was arranged to take his family and
4 personal property to him.34 The next parliamentary elections on 31 August 1947 were
5 firmly in the hands of communists. Many persecuted supporters of the Smallholders
6 party, Christian and social democrats chose escape to the West. The paths of these
7 refugees led to the U.S.A., and above all to Ohio, New Jersey and New York, known
8 to have influential Hungarian communities.
9 These Hungarian-Americans financially supported the foundation of the Hungarian
10 National Council (Magyar Nemzeti Bizottmány) in November 1947. Its membership
11 soon grew to 50,000, including a large number of eminent personalities from
12 Hungarian political, artistic and scientific life, and it was led by a 100-member
13 executive committee. Initially, the Hungarian community in exile became a large
14 humanitarian organization, working together in efforts to rescue their fellow citizens
15 from refugee camps after they had fled Hungary.35 The problem arose when it came to
16 searching for a respected leader. Many members of the council claimed the leadership:
17 Tibor Eckhardt, a diplomat and Hungarian ambassador to the League of Nations who
18 had live in the U.S.A. since 1941;36 Bela Varga, former president of the Hungarian
19 parliament; and former prime ministers Ferenc Nagy and Pal Auer, the chief of the
20 council office in Paris.
21 Eckhardt, Varga and Nagy all belonged to the Smallholders party, but the
22 contradictions between them very soon emerged. Nagy was a staunch republican who
23 advocated a nation based on ethnicity and proposed to free Hungary of minorities.
24 Although one of the few legitimately elected representatives of the Hungarian people
25 among the exile leaders, he did not enjoy strong support and his influence was eroding.
26 The extraordinary circumstances of his resignation were suspicious to many council
27 members. On the other hand, the conservative Tibor Eckhardt struggled to restore the
28 monarchy and advocated the idea of ‘Great Hungary’, including the pre-First World
29 War territories. The third camp was represented by the ambitious Monsignor Bela
30 Varga, who had connections to the Vatican. The destructive competitive atmosphere
31 within the Hungarian exile community was worsening and, from today’s perspective,
32 pointless arguments about future political structures within a liberated homeland split
33 the power of the exiles. Fortunately for them, although less fortunately for Hungary,
34 there were a great many dramatic events during the nineteen-fifties which would
35 reunite the community abroad.37
36 The Hungarian National Council started one of its major campaigns in early 1949.38
37 Through the press, it alerted the American public about the arrest of the popular
38 Hungarian cardinal, Joseph Mindszenty, archbishop of Esztergom. On 23 December
39 1948, he was suddenly kidnapped by the secret police, accused of espionage, trading on
40 the black market and preparation of a plot. In January, the cardinal stood before the
41 popular tribunal which pronounced a verdict of life imprisonment.39 At the same time,
42
43 34
P. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: the Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944–8
44 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 127–46.
45 35
F. Nagy, The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain (New York, 1948), pp. 52–69.
46 36
K. Kadár Lynn, Tibor Eckhardt: his American Years 1941–72 (New York, 2007), pp. 156–73.
37
47 J. Fai-Podlipnik,‘One goal, many paths: internal and external struggles of the Hungarian émigrés’, in Zake,
48 Anti-Communist Minorities, pp. 87–108.
49 38
Ferenc Nagy papers, 1940–79, boxes 69–71, organizations, Hungarian National Council.
50 39
Kenez, pp. 165–77.
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1 a nationwide campaign was launched against the clergy, resulting in over 1,400
2 detainees. On 28 April 1949, and with great fanfare, the committee held its first major
3 convention in New York. Mindszenty’s fate inspired a sharp resolution to Western
4 governments and the United Nations. However, rivalry between the leaders was
5 deepening.Tibor Eckhardt resigned from his post on the executive committee in April
6 1954, and led the only Hungarian delegation in A.C.E.N.40 The council was controlled
7 by the less capable Ferenc Nagy and his wing, which resulted in further fragmentation
8 of the organization. In time, the council ceased to exist de facto.41
9 The Hungarian uprising in 1956 brought a revival. Exiled politicians wrote articles,
10 did interviews, lobbied powerful American friends, and used A.C.E.N. as a loudspeaker
11 to rouse the apathetic United Nations and public opinion in the West. However, the
12 committee tried not to influence directly the dramatic events in Hungary, so that the
13 communist regime could not accuse exiles of encouraging people to break the law.
14 Two representatives of the committee appeared in Budapest during the few days in
15 November 1956 when the city was free, but the purpose of their visit was to establish
16 ruptured contacts with former party men.42 During October 1956, more than 15,000
17 Hungarians fled to the West, more precisely to poor conditions in refugee camps.
18 Eckhardt convened a summit of the most influential Americans of Hungarian origin
19 in New York, and the idea to establish a new humanitarian organization was born. On
20 29 October 1956 First Aid for Hungary was founded. It began to organize fundraising
21 and to send clothes, food, drugs and supplies through the International Red Cross to
22 suffering Hungary. By the end of 1956, 200,000 Hungarians had fled their homeland;
23 30,000 of them were brought to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. American humanitarian
24 organizations started collections and retraining programmes for newcomers.43
25 This was another chance to show the unity of the political leadership in exile,
26 but the exile politicians missed it. The committee ceased its activities entirely. In 1958,
27 the newly formed Hungarian Committee (Magyar Bizottság) wanted to gain the
28 confidence of the exile community. The post-war generation of exile leaders had
29 already lost the last word, and the ‘fifty-sixers’ tried to take over the enterprise, to no
30 effect.
31
32 The most active, most numerous, but also the most problematic of all post-war exile
33 groups was undoubtedly the Polish. Poles in Great Britain and the U.S.A. successfully
34 built their own educational institutions, art academies, libraries, research institutions
35 and publishing houses, which overcame all political turmoil, and became famous
36 among the exile community.44 Polish compatriots in the U.S.A. also enjoyed
37 considerable political influence in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois,
38 Michigan, Massachusetts and Maryland, and were not afraid to apply it for the needs
39 of exiles.45 Unfortunately, exile political leaders failed to take advantage of these
40
41 40
42 41
43 42
C. Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow,Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Washington, D.C., 2006),
44 pp. 210–38.
45 43
A. Petö, ‘Memories of the Hungarian revolution’, in Issacs, pp. 153–64.
46 44
A. Jaroszyna-Kirchmann, Exile Mission: the Polish Political Diaspora and the Polish Americans 1939–56
47 (Columbus, Ohio, 2004), pp. 10–36.
48 45
In Nov. 1960, Democratic senator John F. Kennedy also won the presidential elections thanks to support
49 in these states. The influential Polish minority simply gave precedence to the candidate of Roman Catholic
50 confession, the same as their own.
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1 extremely favourable conditions, wasting time, as had colleagues from other countries,
2 on power struggles and mutual accusations of collaboration with the communists.
3 The origin of the deep rifts in the Polish anti-communist exile community probably
4 formed in June 1945, when the wartime prime minister in London Stanisław
5 Mikołajczyk, successor to the late Marshal Sikorski, famously returned to his homeland
6 as vice-president and minister of agriculture in the new coalition government
7 of national unity.46 This coalition was already under the powerful influence of
8 communists and was committed to respecting the post-war border shifts, exchange
9 of populations and other controversial decisions made by ‘the Big Three’ at the Yalta
10 Conference in February 1945.
11 Poles fought for the liberation of their Nazi-occupied country through almost six
12 years of the Second World War. The Polish nation faced total extinction. After the
13 defeat of the Nazis, Poland stood formally among the victorious allied countries, but
14 was, in fact, a defeated and, as many times in the past, a humiliated state, dependent on
15 the will of the great powers. The Yalta Conference, which left Poland under Soviet
16 rule, was, in the eyes of most Poles, treason (as was Mikołajczyk’s government
17 involvement). This was a crucial moment, which fundamentally influenced the
18 development of the whole Polish exile movement in the West. With the onset of the
19 Cold War, exiled Poles considered it their moral right to demand Western help in
20 the removal of Soviet domination of their homeland. Thanks to adequate funding, a
21 strong lobby in the U.S.A. and close contacts in high levels of British politics, the
22 Polish exiles were initially independent of financial assistance from outside and enjoyed
23 widespread acclaim.47
24 After ballot rigging, the communist candidate Bolesław Bierut became the president
25 of Poland on 5 February 1947, and communist repression forced many politicians to
26 leave the country. In October, even Mikołajczyk infamously escaped with the help of
27 the U.S. embassy. The arrival in the U.S.A. of this former minister and other
28 personalities with somewhat controversial histories immediately unleashed negative
29 reactions. When preparations for the establishment of the exiled National Committee
30 began, it was expected that Mikołajczyk would force his followers onto the leading
31 bodies of the committee.48 In early 1948 he was present at the establishment of the
32 exiled Polish People’s party, of which he had been the leader in his homeland.
33 However, Mikołajczyk ran into a skilful competitor, Śtefan Korboński, the leader of
34 the Warsaw Uprising and the anti-Nazi resistance.49 Korboński was also a member of
35 the People’s party, but soon, along with other partisans, defied Mikołajczyk’s
36 authoritarian leadership and, without his permission, joined the Polish Political
37 Council (Polska Rada Polityczna – P.R.P.), founded by Poles in London close to the
38 wartime government in exile. Mikołajczyk tried to establish the Polish National
39 Committee in the U.S.A., but the existence of a competing exile organization in Great
40 Britain interfered with his plans. He excluded Korboński and the other critics from the
41 People’s party, an unwise decision which forced the able and respected Korboński to
42 oppose him. This implacable rivalry between Mikolajczyk and Korboński dramatically
43 influenced the Polish exiles. In 1950, Korboński became the president of the P.R.P.
44
45 46
K. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland 1943–8 (Berkeley, Calif., 1991), pp. 232–84.
47
46 D. Pienkos, ‘The Polish American congress, Polish Americans and the politics of anti-communism’, in
47 Zake, Anti-Communist Minorities, p. 25−41.
48 48
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanislaw Mikolaczyk papers, 1899–1966, box 84.
49 49
See Stefan Korboński <http://korbonski.ipn.gov.pl> [accessed 28 June 2013].
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1 branch in the U.S.A., which was quickly recognized by American officials.

2 Mikołajczyk’s group managed to set up the Polish National Democratic Committee
3 (Polski Komitet Narodowy Demokratyczny – P.K.N.D.) in May 1950.50 Mikołajczyk
4 was supported by European agrarian parties in exile, but he still failed to engage the
5 key sympathies of the Polish community abroad. Both camps realized the devastating
6 effect of this double-tracked exile leadership. May 1951 saw the first plan for
7 unification, with the establishment of the Council of National Unity. There were
8 several meetings, which unsurprisingly failed because of the personal animosity
9 between Korboński and Mikolajczyk. The F.E.C. also refused to support Polish
10 politicians in London, where they were not completely under its control. Generally,
11 Americans looked with disapproval on this dispersion of the exile organizations, which
12 resulted in the foundation of A.C.E.N. in 1954.
13 For the Poles, A.C.E.N. did not represent the hoped-for umbrella body, which
14 would allow controversies to be quietly resolved. The authority of A.C.E.N. did not
15 actually lead to the calming of the troubled waters of Polish exile; on the contrary,
16 according to the Polish delegation to A.C.E.N., a rare and curious situation
17 developed.51
18 On 20 September 1954 the rules for determining delegations to A.C.E.N. were
19 approved. Each national committee at the ‘national membership level’ was allowed to
20 list a sixteen-man delegation. Skirmishes over these nominations occurred among all
21 exile groups, but only the Poles were unable to reach agreement, despite numerous
22 requests, demands and threats. In the end, A.C.E.N. had to retreat and allow two
23 separate Polish delegations, each consisting of eight members.The first represented the
24 members of the P.K.N.D., the other the members of the P.R.P., led by Korboński.This
25 uneasy balance of power did not last long. At the end of 1954, two members of
26 Mikołajczyk’s camp announced their defection to Korboński. The winner in the
27 competitive, nerve-racking struggle was virtually decided. Mikołajczyk experienced
28 a drop in financial support and international recognition, which, along with his
29 dictatorial manner and explosive nature, had a devastating effect on the operation of
30 the entire P.K.N.D.
31 In September 1955, A.C.E.N. intervened again and shuffled the cards within the
32 Polish delegation: Korboński’s group was awarded eleven seats, while Mikołajczyk’s got
33 just five. The P.K.N.D. left A.C.E.N. and ended its period of co-operation in January
34 1957. Mikołajczyk lost many supporters and found himself in isolation and in disputes
35 with the rest of the Polish exiles. Conversely, Stefan Korboński’s importance in
36 A.C.E.N. was growing every month.52 As its chairman in 1959, he received a decent
37 monthly allowance of $985, took part in a tour of the Far East, which was widely
38 promoted in the media, published, and was among the most active speakers for ‘captive
39 nations’.53 Polish exile actions were almost overwhelmed by meaningless political
40
41 50
Stanislaw Mikolaczyk papers, 1899–1966, box 82.
51
42 A. Mazurkiewicz, ‘The schism within the Polish delegation to the Assembly of Captive European Nations
43 1954–72’, in Polish Diaspora in America and the Wider World, ed. A. Walaszek and J. Pezda (Kraków, 2010),
44 pp. 73–108.
52
45 A. Mazurkiewicz, ‘Wybrane aspekty dzialalnosci Stefana Korbońskiego w Zgromadzeniu Europejskich
46 Narodów Ujarzmionych’, in Conference ‘Inwigilować, neutralizować, rozbijać. Stefan Korboński i emigracja polityczna
47 jako obiekt zainteresowania wywiadu PRL w latach 1945–89’ (Warsaw, 2010).
48 53
Korboński was elected A.C.E.N. chairman in the years 1958, 1966 and 1971, and vice-president in 1960 and
49 1965. After the transition of A.C.E.N. to an incorporated company in 1972, he became its director for the next
50 12 years.
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1 frictions.Within this stalemate, however, the exiles were able to switch from the sphere
2 of politics to that of culture and the arts. They realized that traditional Polish national
3 culture was facing unscrupulous Sovietization, and therefore undertook the task of
4 maintaining Polish cultural identity for future generations. The Polish Institute of Arts
5 and Sciences in America (Polski Instytut Naukowy w Ameryce)54 was founded, as
6 well as a number of archives, libraries and research centres. Their exceptionally rich
7 activities helped the refugees to forget the hardships associated with life in exile.
8
9 The progress of the communists in Romania was slowed down by the extreme
10 popularity of young King Michael I, who had succeeded his frivolous and hated father
11 Carol II when the latter had been forced to flee the country in 1940. Michael was the
12 man who overthrew the fascist regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu in August 1944, and
13 declared war on Germany. He then established a coalition government that managed
14 the country during the first two critical post-war years.The communists occupied only
15 three seats, but these were the key ministries of defence, interior and agriculture.
16 Prime Minister Petru Groza of the Agrarian party was playing a risky game and did
17 not have an entirely clear conscience. He tried to keep the communists at bay, but
18 with their help he was systematically liquidating his liberal opposition. Parliamentary
19 elections, held in November 1946, ended with some hope for the democratic parties,
20 but Red Army occupation of every corner of Romania, nationalization of industry,
21 collectivization of agriculture, starvation and communist infiltrators in the government
22 did not bode well for peaceful development in the coming months. The communists
23 grew stronger and Prime Minister Groza became a powerless puppet in their
24 hands.55 The twenty-six-year-old King Michael represented the arch-enemy to the
25 communists, and this lonely and inexperienced champion of democracy had little
26 chance of succeeding. First, he was put under house arrest in his summer residence in
27 June 1947, and then he was blackmailed by Groza’s government into abdicating on 30
28 December; exactly a month later he was forced to move to Switzerland.The new rulers
29 of Romania changed the country, on the orders of the Kremlin, from a kingdom to
30 a ‘People’s republic’.56
31 Several major political leaders refused to participate in the construction of a
32 totalitarian state and found asylum in the West. One of them had been the young
33 king’s mentor, General Nicolae Rădescu, who had served as prime minister for a
34 short period in the winter of 1944–5. At that time, the communists provoked
35 anti-government demonstrations, during which several people were shot. The
36 government was forced to resign and Rădescu fled to the U.S.A., where he
37 immediately began his exile political work.
38 Brutus Coste was a diplomat with extensive experience in Paris, London and
39 Washington. From 1942 until the end of the Second World War, he had worked at
40 the Romanian embassy in Lisbon. He came into conflict with Groza’s government,
41 refused to abide by its regulations, and also declined to release documents and office
42 equipment. In November 1947, he joined Rădescu’s group in New York, where he
43 warned the American public about the communist threat. He wrote a masterpiece
44
45 54
See the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America <http://www.piasa.org> [accessed 28 June 2013].
46 55
V. Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: a Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley, Calif., 2003),
47 pp. 85–106.
48 56
G. Boldur-Lăţescu, The Communist Genocide in Romania (New York, 2005), pp. 3–29.
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1 about propaganda in eastern Europe,57 as well as hundreds of articles and studies,

2 and regularly prepared foreign policy comments for N.B.C. broadcasting. Coste was
3 employed by the University of New York, the University of Pennsylvania and the
4 Institute of World Affairs. In 1954, he found even wider scope for his activities through
5 A.C.E.N., when he was elected its secretary general (he would be re-elected seven
6 more times).58
7 Coste created the so-called Tuesday Board – on the first Tuesday of every month the
8 group of east European exile leaders discussed policy issues and prepared a common
9 press release. Moreover, out of these meetings emerged the initiative to sign the
10 Declaration of Philadelphia59 on 11 February 1951, which saw a total of 195
11 anti-communist exile leaders demand the liberation of the peoples of Europe from
12 communism.60 Another powerful supporter of the Romanian exile was the writer,
13 diplomat and editor of the well-known literary magazine Viata Românească, Constantin
14 Vişoianu, who had worked in The Hague, and Warsaw, and also for the League of
15 Nations in Geneva. As the last non-communist foreign minister of Romania, he
16 disputed the terms of the armistice with the Soviet Union, and in the autumn of 1946,
17 he left for the U.S.A., along with other representatives of the persecuted Peasant and
18 Liberal parties.
19 The Romanian National Committee (Comitetului Nat,ional Român) in its first
20 form was born in January 1948, on the initiative of Nicolae Rădescu.61 In addition to
21 Vişoianu and Coste, one of the prominent founding members was the former minister
22 of finance, Alexander Cretzianu. Thanks to his efforts, a small portion of the
23 Romanian national treasury had been successfully transferred abroad. Other founding
24 members included former foreign ministers Grigore Gafencu and Grigore Niculescu
25 Buzesti and the parliamentary deputies Augustin Popa and Iancu Zissu.The rest of the
26 committee was composed of former diplomats. The committee got off to a good start
27 because of its solid financial basis. It established offices in many countries, from
28 Argentina to Israel, organized humanitarian aid for refugees in camps, and published
29 pieces in Romania (1956–73) in New York and La Nation Roumaine (1948–73) in Paris.
30 Inspired by King Michael I, who took a very active interest in exile events, the Royal
31 Institute of Carol I was established. It published information materials and books
32 written by exile authors, as well as organizing lectures and providing university
33 scholarships.62 Unfortunately, a conflict also developed within the Romanian National
34 Committee, because of General Rădescu. Cretzianu and Vişoianu were critical of the
35 general’s pre-war activities in right-wing movements and decided that, at the age of
36 seventy-five, he was too old to lead the exiled community. However, Coste and
37 Gafencu still supported him. The committee fell apart in summer 1950. Rădescu and
38 four other founding members left and Constantin Vişoianu took over the leadership of
39 the reorganized body.63 Thanks to its strong financial situation, the Romanian National
40 Committee could, until the mid nineteen-fifties, afford to be less dependent on the
41 F.E.C. than the other exile committees. However, the low level of interest among other
42
43 57
B. Coste, The Political Premises of Successful Propaganda to Eastern Europe (New York, 1950).
44 58
Hoover Institution Archives, Brutus Coste papers, 1940–85, box 39, folders 1–2.
59
45 ‘Declaration of the aims and principles of liberation of the central and eastern European peoples’.
46 60
61
47 A. Deciu Ritivoi, ‘Talking the (political) talk – Cold War refugees and their political legitimation through
48 style’, in Rhetoric in Detail, ed. B. Johnstone and C. Eisenhart (Philadelphia, Pa., 2008), pp. 33–56.
49 62
Deciu Ritivoi, pp. 33–57.
50 63
Hoover Institution Archives, Comitetul national Roman records 1945–75, box 1, folders 16–20.
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1 exiles in the committee’s activities, along with adverse international developments,

2 caused unavoidable cutbacks in Vişoianu’s cultural, educational and publishing efforts.64
3 Vişoianu remained the leader of the Romanian National Committee until its
4 dissolution in spring 1975. As one of the few post-war generation émigrés, he lived to
5 see the fall of the Iron Curtain, only dying, aged ninety-six, on 4 January 1994 in
6 Washington. Former King Michael was also able to return to his homeland. Millions
7 of onlookers gathered to witness the return of Romania’s king to Bucharest at Easter
8 1992.
9
10 The preceding brief digest of national committees and councils in exile focused on
11 ‘big’ nations struggling for the liberation of captive eastern Europe. However, we
12 should not forget the other European nations, which had to struggle even harder
13 because of their small population or a problematic international status. In the case
14 of Albanian, Croatian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian and Slovenian exile
15 movements research is still at a very early stage; we lack a historical overview, analyses
16 and sufficient objective evaluation of their activities, efforts and goals, success or
17 failures. It will be a future task for historians, political scientists, sociologists and
18 psychologists, focused on the Cold war era, American propaganda or European
19 diasporas, to improve knowledge in this area and to prepare the ground for further
20 research.
21 The Free Albania Committee (Komitat Shqipëria e lire), a first umbrella
22 organization of Albanian post-war exile, was set up on 26 August 1949 in Paris.65 The
23 committee’s composition was internationally regarded as troublesome. It was formed
24 by representatives of the royalist party Legaliteti and the ultra-nationalist National
25 Front (Balli Kombëtar), which had collaborated with the Nazis during the Second
26 World War.66 This collaboration allowed communist propaganda to attack the entire
27 committee immediately.
28 Exiled representatives of the peoples of Yugoslavia and the Baltic states were aware
29 of their vulnerability and disadvantages compared to other exile groups. The Baltic
30 states were re-annexed by the Soviet Union, while Yugoslavia, after Tito’s break with
31 Stalin in 1948, represented an important Balkan partner for American and, more
32 especially, for British diplomacy. Thus, ‘separatist’ representatives of the various peoples
33 of Yugoslavia had little chance for international recognition.67 Lithuanians, Latvians and
34 Estonians were allowed to establish fully-fledged national committees, to access money
35 from frozen accounts in U.S. banks, and to participate in A.C.E.N. sessions, but their
36 activities were not significant.68 A possible exception to this was the Committee for a
37 Free Latvia (Latviešu Brı̄vs Konsilijs), which was based on strong support among
38 compatriot communities in the U.S.A.69 It was created in July 1951 through the efforts
39 of a pre-war independent, Latvia’s ambassador to Washington Julijis Feldmanis. The
40 committee warned against the violent Sovietization of the country and published a
41 magazine, For Latvian Freedom (Latvijas Brivibai). Rather than locate itself in the U.S.A.,
42 the committee concentrated its activities in Stockholm, from where brochures and
43
44 64
45 65
46 66
O. Pearson, Albania in the 20th Century: a History, ii: Albania in Occupation and War: from Fascism to
47 Communism, 1940–45 (New York, 2006), pp. 327–40.
48 67
M. Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–51 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1998), pp. 67–85.
49 68
50 69
I. Zake, Politics of a Refugee Community: American Latvians (New Brunswick, 2010), p. 89–125.
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1 literature could be sent into Latvia by sophisticated smuggling routes across the Baltic
2 Sea. The Committee for a Free Latvia was led for many years by Vilis Māsēns.70 After
3 a varied diplomatic career, from 1950 he worked for the International Red Cross. In
4 1954 he was appointed to the preparatory committee of A.C.E.N. His right-hand man
5 was Alfreds Berzins, who before the war had been the organizer of the Latvian
6 paramilitary National Guard (Aiszargi) and a former minister for public affairs. In exile,
7 he became known as the editor of Baltic Review magazine.71
8 The diplomat Vaclovas Sidzikauskas presided over the Committee for a Free
9 Lithuania (Lietuvos Laisvės Komitetas) in the years 1952–1973,72 and philosopher and
10 politician Leonhard Vahter acted as chairman of the Committee for a Free Estonia
11 (Eesti Rahvuskomitee Ühend riikides). He was assisted by Karl Selter, who was
12 Estonian minister of foreign affairs 1938–9, and Johannes Klesmeet, former minister of
13 justice, who managed the headquarters of Estonian exile in Stockholm.73
14 The Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, three of the nations of Yugoslavia, are a very specific
15 case among post-war exiles. More than 70,000 Yugoslav refugees were crowded into
16 Italian and Austrian camps, with little prospect of a better life. Similarly,Yugoslav exile
17 leaders ran into the unwillingness of Western powers to engage on their behalf.
18 Moreover, the popularity of war hero Josip Broz Tito, who became the president of
19 Yugoslavia and foiled Soviet interventions, made the goals of the exiles even harder to
20 achieve. The corrupt parliamentary monarchy in the years 1918–41, and fratricidal
21 fighting between the Yugoslav nations during the Second World War, resulted in
22 poverty and suffering for the population. The Liberator Tito promised a better future,
23 and clerical, agrarian and liberal circles, compromised by previous unpopular regimes,
24 had no hope of success and were condemned to leave their homeland.
25 Yugoslav communists deprived ex-king Petar II and the rest of the Karad̄ord̄ević
26 dynasty of their property and civil rights, and they were banned outright from any
27 return to Yugoslavia. The young monarch and his supporters went to the U.S.A. on
28 27 April 1948, where they attempted to establish official talks with the American
29 government, since they were regarded as the chief mouthpiece of Yugoslavs in exile.74
30 However, various national wings of the exile community assumed dominant positions.
31 They refused to accept Petar’s authority, the idea of the return of the monarchy or
32 even the existence of one Yugoslav state in the future. The king developed serious
33 financial and health problems and gradually resigned from public activities. He died
34 from cirrhosis in Denver on 3 November 1970.
35 The largest number of Yugoslav émigrés were Croatian. A significant portion of
36 them had connections to the fascist Ustaša movement, with their centres in Canada,
37 Australia and Latin America. Most Western countries refused to accept them as part of
38 regular political representation. This gave a certain advantage to exiles of the Croatian
39 Peasant party (Hrvatska Seljačka Stranka), since they were the clear alternative to
40 Ustaša. The leader of the Peasants, Vladko Maćek,75 joined with other east European
41
42 70
43 71
Baltic Review <http://www.baltic-review.com> [accessed 28 June 2013].
44 72
45 73
J. L’Hommedieu, ‘Exiles and constituents: Baltic refugees and American Cold War politics 1948–60’
46 (unpublished University of Turku Ph.D. thesis, 2011).
74
47 R. Kullaa, Non-Alignment and its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge
48 (2012), pp. 27–48.
49 75
See I. Perić, Vladko Maćek: politički portret (Zagreb, 2003).
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1 agrarians the International Peasant Union.76 In their second congress in February 1949
2 in Chicago, exiled Croats adopted a resolution condemning fascism and communism
3 and repeated their demand for an independent Croatian state. Soon afterwards the
4 Croatian National Committee (Hrvatski Narodni Odbor) was set up, led by Maćek and
5 Dr. Ibrahim Beg Dzinić.77
6 Within the Serbian exile community there were several rival wings. The Peasant
7 party, led by Milan Gavrilović, the first Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow and later a
8 cabinet minister, was able to build a solidly functioning organization. In addition, the
9 bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. were strongly involved with
10 the exiles, as was the former Yugoslav ambassador to Washington, Konstantin Fotić.78 In
11 1947, at its founding convention in Chicago, Fotić was elected the first chairman of the
12 Serbian Central National Committee (Srpski Centralni Narodni Komitet). In a closely
13 watched speech he described Croats as pro-fascist elements and warmongers. Perhaps
14 he was merely expressing the opinion of the majority of Serbian exiles, but this
15 hampered the Croat-Serbian exile co-operation for many years. Two years later,
16 the Serbian National Council (Srpski Narodni Odbor) was founded in Ohio, and
17 subsequently competed with the Central National Committee of Serbia for influence
18 among the exile community.
19 The central figure of democratic Slovenian exiles was Christian Democrat Miha
20 Krek, vice-chairman of the Yugoslav government in exile in London during the
21 Second World War, after which he was sentenced to death in absentia by the
22 communists. In Washington, he founded the Slovenian National Committee (Narodni
23 Odbor za Slovenijo) and was also active in the Christian Democrat Union of Central
24 Eastern Europe.79
25
26 The exiles from communism bring to mind the old adage about glass houses. More
27 important than their positions and merits were their interpersonal relations, tolerance
28 and compromises. Disputes and unfinished business from the past all too often came to
29 the surface and dramatically impeded the functioning of an organization and the mood
30 of the exiles. Most important was the role of strong leaders, capable of putting down
31 all irrelevant tendencies and of getting rival factions to the negotiating table. Fortunate
32 indeed were those exile communities led by such respected personalities, who enjoyed
33 the general support of exiles and Western governments, and were also able to gain
34 access to sufficient funds. They could afford to play the role of impartial judges, to
35 settle disputes or make decisions on personnel issues. But how many such leaders were
36 there? To some degree, perhaps, kings Michael of Romania and Simeon of Bulgaria
37 were able to assist exiles over the long-term and could, from time to time, step in as
38 mediators. However, the vast majority of so-called exile leaders were not charismatic
39 individuals around whom it was possible to unite. They were more commonly
40 perceived as protectors of particular traditions, as symbols of previous regimes, deposed
41 by communists. However, they did not usually have a strong, modern political
42 programme which could be followed by the exile communities in the second half of
43
44 76
More could be found in Stanislaw Mikolaczyk papers, 1899–1966, International Peasant Union file
45 1948–66, boxes 118–46.
77
46 See B. Boban,‘Vladko Macek u emigraciji – od izlaska iz zemljedo odlaska u Sjedinjene Americke Države’,
47 Journal – Institute of Croatian History, xxxix (Zagreb, 2007), p. 7–24.
48 78
L. Lees, Yugoslav-Americans and National Security during World War II (Champaign, Ill., 2007), pp. 98–157.
49 79
Smiling Slovenia: Political Dissent Papers, ed. V. Bevc (New York, 2008), pp. 89–98.
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1 the twentieth century. Hence, the importance of exile politicians did not lie in the
2 originality of their agenda and ideas, nor in the real impact of their actions on the
3 international scene and the evolution of the Cold War.They served rather to maintain
4 the national awareness of their fellow citizens, who had, like them, fled from
5 communist rule to the West.The U.S. government supported them financially and used
6 them as an instrument of propaganda against the Soviet Union and its satellites when
7 necessary.The speeches, publications and tours of exile leaders irritated the intelligence
8 services behind the Iron Curtain and raised the hopes of the ‘captive peoples’ that
9 communist supremacy would collapse one day. That supremacy lasted for more
10 than four decades, longer than anyone within the F.E.C., A.C.E.N. or the national
11 committees could imagine.
12 The importance of exile organizations gradually declined, and their leaders
13 disappeared into retirement.The archives yield a valuable step-by-step testimony about
14 the activities of these people, and about their sincere endeavours towards remote, if not
15 impossible, goals. Many of them were forced to leave their homelands at an age when
16 most people are thinking of retirement. Without financial backing or knowledge of
17 the language, they suddenly found themselves in an unfamiliar city and country. They
18 had to fight for their very livelihood; they had to overcome the painful loss of home,
19 family and friends; and they had to start a new life. As honest patriots, longing for
20 freedom, not only for themselves but also for their entire nations, they never lost that
21 hope.They buckled down to lost battles, they founded organizations without influence,
22 they spent time at endless meetings and quarrelled with political opponents about
23 imaginary positions.
24 The post-war history of Czechoslovaks, Hungarians or Poles in exile has become an
25 extremely interesting topic in recent years, and all three groups are receiving more
26 attention. Not so yet for Romania, Albania or the former Yugoslavia, where the exile
27 is still regarded as a kind of marginal curiosity of history. The case of Yugoslavia – or
28 of Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian democratic exiles, who were unable to speak with
29 one voice because their projects followed completely different directions – is full of
30 such colourful and dramatic stories that it is only a matter of time until they, too, are
31 fully disclosed to the public.
32 The archives in Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Paris, London,
33 Stockholm and elsewhere still hide a number of key documents that could help the
34 next generation of researchers to understand the uneasy history of European nations
35 in the twentieth century.The author hopes to stimulate this research and the discussion
36 of its results.

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1 ‘For the freedom of captive European nations’:

2 East-European exiles in the Cold War

1 of Captive European Nations. It also illuminates a little-known chapter of the Cold

East-European exiles in the Cold War 3

4 East-European exiles in the Cold War

East-European exiles in the Cold War 5

6 East-European exiles in the Cold War

1 The structure of A.C.E.N. generally followed that of the United Nations. It

44 Gadomski in the years 1966–85.

East-European exiles in the Cold War 7

8 East-European exiles in the Cold War

1 Bulgarian Communist party was transformed into a monolithic organization, led by

45 I.H.R.C., A.C.E.N. records 1953–72, box 35, folder 1.

East-European exiles in the Cold War 9

10 East-European exiles in the Cold War

1 charges, in other words, to be arrested. Nagy chose to resign as prime minister, a

East-European exiles in the Cold War 11

12 East-European exiles in the Cold War

East-European exiles in the Cold War 13

1 branch in the U.S.A., which was quickly recognized by American officials.

14 East-European exiles in the Cold War

East-European exiles in the Cold War 15

1 about propaganda in eastern Europe,57 as well as hundreds of articles and studies,

16 East-European exiles in the Cold War

1 exiles in the committee’s activities, along with adverse international developments,

East-European exiles in the Cold War 17

18 East-European exiles in the Cold War

East-European exiles in the Cold War 19

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