ABOUT THIS BOOK

The perils of equating notions of freedom with artistic vitality

Eloquently extolled by President John F. Kennedy, the idea that only artists in free societies can produce great art became a bedrock assumption of the Cold War. That this conviction defied centuries of historical evidence--to say nothing of achievements within the Soviet Union--failed to impact impregnable cultural Cold War doctrine.

Joseph Horowitz writes: “That so many fine minds could have cheapened freedom by over-praising it, turning it into a reductionist propaganda mantra, is one measure of the intellectual cost of the Cold War.” He shows how the efforts of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom were distorted by an anti-totalitarian “psychology of exile” traceable to its secretary general, the displaced Russian aristocrat/composer Nicolas Nabokov, and to Nabokov’s hero Igor Stravinsky.

In counterpoint, Horowitz investigates personal, social, and political factors that actually shape the creative act. He here focuses on Stravinsky, who in Los Angeles experienced a “freedom not to matter,” and Dmitri Shostakovich, who was both victim and beneficiary of Soviet cultural policies. He also takes a fresh look at cultural exchange and explores paradoxical similarities and differences framing the popularization of classical music in the Soviet Union and the United States. In closing, he assesses the Kennedy administration’s arts advocacy initiatives and their pertinence to today’s fraught American national identity.

Challenging long-entrenched myths, The Propaganda of Freedom newly explores the tangled relationship between the ideology of freedom and ideals of cultural achievement.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Joseph Horowitz is an award-winning cultural historian specializing in the American arts. His thirteen books include Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music and Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts. His “More than Music” documentaries are a regular feature of NPR’s 1A.

REVIEWS

“The Propaganda of Freedom makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the Cold War. The thesis that an ideology of ‘freedom’ made it impossible for leading American intellectuals to recognize the cultural achievements of Soviet artists during the Cold War is compelling and convincing--even for readers unversed in the cultural or musical history of the twentieth century. Moreover, it exposes one of the weaknesses of an omnipresent American world view: the fallible notion that, by virtue of its devotion to individual liberty, the United States surpasses the rest of the world in its ability to nurture artistic, scientific, and cultural achievement. In fact, all too often American foreign policy is based on the false premise that promoting ‘individual freedom’ must remain at the heart of the nation’s efforts to exert influence abroad.

“The book raises important questions not only about the efficacy of US foreign policy, but also about the relationship between culture and democracy, even about the nature of democracy itself --questions extremely pertinent in a world where populist political movements have called into question democratic norms that once seemed unassailable.

“Above all, it is the author’s extrapolation of a ‘fetishization of freedom’ that makes this work so vital. Horowitz writes: ‘That so many fine minds could have cheapened freedom by over-praising it, turning it into a reductionist propaganda mantra, is one measure of the intellectual cost of the Cold War.’ I would argue that these same reductionist tendencies have played a significant part in the rise of volatile populist movements, as well as in the construction of the so-called war on terror that followed the 9-11 attacks. In this sense, the book serves as a warning that the American tendency towards political and cultural unilateralism is not only naïve, but dangerous.”--David Woolner, Resident Historian, the Roosevelt Institute; author of The Last One Hundred Days: FDR at War and at Peace

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: Why and What

JFK, the Artist, and “Free Societies”: A Cold War Myth
Nicolas Nabokov and the Cultural Cold War
Lines of Battle: The Case for Stravinsky; the Case against Shostakovich
CIA Cultural Battlegrounds: New York and Paris
Survival Strategies: Stravinsky and Shostakovich
Survival Strategies: Nicolas Nabokov
Cold War Music, East and West
Enter Cultural Exchange

Summing Up: Culture, the State, and the “Propaganda of Freedom”

Afterword: The Arts, National Purpose, and the Pandemic

Appendix A: Nicolas Nabokov, “The Case of Dmitri Shostakovitch” (1943)

Appendix B: President John F. Kennedy/Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Amherst Speech (1963)

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index