Books, Libraries, Reading, and Publishing in the Cold War

Citation

Feather, J. (2003), "Books, Libraries, Reading, and Publishing in the Cold War", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 7, pp. 349-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310487452

The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress has re‐published the papers from a conference under the same title held in Paris in 1998; they were originally published in Libraries & Culture (2001, Winter, Vol. 36 No. 1). In this version, however, they have been turned into a tribute to the distinguished information historian and educator, Pamela S. Richards, who, unable to attend because of her illness, died shortly after the conference. This is a fine gesture to a lamented colleague, and the tributes which form the bulk of the preliminary matter are a worthy memorial.

The substance of the book itself is as mixed as that of almost any such collection. Thematically, the organisation is sound, retaining the basic structure of the conference, and considering in turn books, publishing, reading and libraries, although they are of course inextricably interlinked. Indeed, one of the editorial weaknesses of the book (understandable in a journal perhaps, but less so here) is that there is almost no cross‐referencing between the papers, although there is an excellent and comprehensive index. The editing, unfortunately, does not always attain the same high standard as the indexing, and one or two authors may have been badly served by translators.

Some of the papers are outstanding contributions to scholarship, and of those it is appropriate to begin with Richards’s own on how the USSR and the USA exploited library activity outside their own countries to support their respective positions between 1946 and 1991. This draws on a wide range of sources, and shows deep awareness of the broader political context. Indeed, it is one of the few papers from which one derives a sense of the profound rivalries which underlay almost all of the activities discussed in every contribution to the book. Ilkka Mäkinen’s paper on how Finland rebuilt its academic and special libraries with US aid, while engaging in a seemingly impossible balancing act between East and West, is similarly learned, engaging and informative. A third paper, which will certainly stand the text of time, and which probes into a comparatively unworked area, is Mary Niles Maack’s on the use of books and libraries as instruments of so‐called “cultural diplomacy” in Francophone Africa from the late 1940s to the late 1980s; like Richards, Maack coveys a real sense of national rivalries, including some jockeying for position between the western nations. Louise S. Robbins deals with the issues of McCarthyism and how librarians and publishers responded to it; this is a fine piece of scholarship from which at least some of those involved emerge with great credit. Contributions by one of the editors, Poulain, on the history of Darkness at Noon, and by Martin Meyer on US library activities in immediately post‐war Germany are also enlightening scholarly contributions.

Some of the other papers, however, are more problematic, not least because the topics under discussion are still so sensitive and the events which are described are so comparatively recent. Cheng Hunawen’s paper on the impact of the Cold War on libraries and the library profession in China is particularly notable in this respect. It is a fascinating view from the inside and will become an important primary source for understanding Chinese attitudes to libraries in the first 50 years after the Revolution. It is not, however, an objective work of scholarship. Nor are a number of the contributions by both European and US authors. Such matters as censorship of books and the control of access to materials in libraries need scholarly analysis rather than political exposition. A few of the authors descend into a sort of post‐Cold War triumphalist rhetoric. While this is all too understandable when it comes from those who suffered under the former socialist regimes (and some of these authors did), it is perhaps less excusable, and certainly less acceptable, when it comes from the alleged victors.

There are also some gaps, again perhaps an inevitable consequence of a conference assembled largely, one assumes, from the response to a call for papers. Perhaps the biggest of all is the lack of any conceptual and theoretical context for the individual studies. There is no attempt, beyond a few succinct and excellent paragraphs in Poulain’s preface, even to attempt a definition of the Cold War, or to set it in an ideological, military and political context. Yet the generation which is now of undergraduate age knows it only as an historical phenomenon, and even among older people the names of Stalin, McCarthy and Mao no longer have the resonance they might once have had. It is only in this broader context that we can really understand the global rivalries which were reflected in cultural missions, overseas libraries and more covert activities such as the provision of cheap school text books. There are some more specific gaps too – little on China, nothing on the still on‐going US obsession of Cuba, almost nothing on how the superpower conflicts were played out in the emergent nations of Asia and Africa, and little on the clandestine cultural war which lasted for two generations.

Perhaps this would have been too much to expect. Perhaps we are still too close to the end of the Cold War, and the whole subject is still too personal and too emotional for some people to be able to engage with it as scholars. When the time comes for the history of East‐West cultural rivalry to be truly written, many of the papers in this book will be important sources for historians. On those grounds, as well as because it is a vehicle for some truly scholarly contributions, the publication of this book is to be welcomed.