ABSTRACT
On 24 March 1953, Jack Nicholls, Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office with overall responsibility for information activities, observed that the moment was opportune for a fundamental review of British Cold War propaganda policy.1 Earlier that month the Kremlin had announced the death of Joseph Stalin. Almost immediately Stalin’s successor, Georgi Malenkov, launched a peace offensive designed to improve relations with the West. On 15 March, Malenkov declared that there were no disputes between Moscow and Washington, ‘that cannot be decided by peaceful means, on the basis of mutual understanding.’ By the end of the month the communists in Korea had announced their willingness to exchange sick and wounded POWs and suggested that truce talks be reopened.2 Although officials in the Foreign Office were predictably sanguine about the prospect that Stalin’s death would usher in an era of détente, Nicholls conceded, that ‘something like a stabilisation of the Cold War front can at the moment be said to exist.’ The local war fronts, Nicholls observed, were ‘static,’ there was equilibrium in the defence field, ‘and in the realm of ideas the Soviet political warfare offensive is by and large not gaining ground.’3
