American Visions and Émigré Realities

Abstract

Chapter 4 addresses the origins of the CIA project to create a Russian political center abroad. The chapter argues that transnational flows of ideas and historical memories were important for a major CIA psychological warfare project. George F. Kennan and other policymakers involved in the project were driven by a romantic attachment to Russian history and the conviction that exiles were potent weapons for psychological warfare against the USSR. Accordingly, plans for the political center—its political complexion and structure—emerged from the interactions of influential Americans and Russian émigrés. The dependence of US psychological-warfare projects on exile politics would prove dysfunctional, as the OPC planners read the state of Russian opinion in the USSR through the distorting lens of exile anti-communism.