ABSTRACT
In late 1947, Berlin was the birthplace of both the Soviet campaign to resurrect Münzenberg’s successes and an unexpected resistance movement. Stalin’s creation of the Cominform in September 1947 ended any pretense of genuine cooperation with the West.1 The Cominform resurrected all the prewar tactics of the Comintern, namely to wage subversion and mount worldwide propaganda campaigns to rally the world’s populations to the Soviet cause. There were “two camps” dividing the world, announced Andrei Zhdanov, the Central Committee figure charged with cultural policy: an American and British “imperial camp,” and the Soviet “antifascist” camp.2 Thus began the “fight for peace” against a United States bent on the “preparation of a new imperialist war” and committed to “an aggressive and openly expansionist policy,” in Zhdanov’s words.3 During the first few days of October, while the Cominform held its inaugural meeting in Belgrade, Tulpanov and Dymschitz were ahead of the curve, launching the German Writers’ Congress. The similarities to the congresses of the thirties were striking – and intentional. The opening convocation invoked the 1935 Mutualité Congress and its “lessons” for “the activation and integration of the intellectual class in the revolutionary struggle.” Even panel titles were recycled.4 Held in the new annex to the Max Reinhardt Theater, the event was nominally sponsored by all four occupying powers. The Americans sent no one. The distinguished Soviet delegation comprised the satirist Valentin Katayev, the playwright and screenwriter Vselovod Vishnevsky, and Boris Gorbatov, the chronicler of Soviet miners’ purported revolutionary enthusiasm. With them were Johannes Becher and Anna Seghers, two prominent and ardently Communist German writers.5 The opening banquet had “a particularly surreal effect” for near-starving German intellectuals: “The enormous table groaned under the weight of bowls of caviar and seafood salad,” recalled Austrian writer Hilde Spiel. “[T]ones of a balalaika orchestra were drowned by . . . the ever more fervent invitations of our hosts to yet another toast to the glorious Red Army, [and] to the King of England.”6 The German Writers’ Congress began on October 4 with appeals to comradeship among all nations. Those pleas ended on the second day, when Vishnevsky veered from reflections on the Battle of Leningrad to announce that “the Soviet
Washington and London are trying to create an iron curtain.” Vishnevsky – resplendent in a tweed suit and three rows of medals that bounced when he spoke – finished jubilantly: “Brothers, comrades, we know how to answer. If you need us, call for our help and we will fight together.”7
