The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization created in 1949 by the Cominform and propped up by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, WPC engaged in propaganda efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union, whereby it criticized the United States and its allies while defending the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts.
The organization had the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty, independence, peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. The organization's propagandizing for the USSR led to the decline of its influence over the peace movement in non-Communist countries.
Its first president was the French physicist and activist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. It was based in Helsinki, Finland, from 1968 to 1999, and since in Athens, Greece.
History
Origins
In August 1948 through the initiative of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) a "World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace" was held in Wrocław, Poland.Milorad Popov, "The World Council of Peace," in Witold S. Sworakowski (ed.), World Communism: A Handbook, 1918–1965. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973; pg. 488.
This gathering established a permanent organisation called the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace—a group which joined with another international Communist organisation, the Women's International Democratic Federation to convene a second international conclave in Paris in April 1949, a meeting designated the World Congress of Partisans for Peace (Congrès Mondial des Partisans de la Paix). Some 2,000 delegates from 75 countries were in attendance at this foundation gathering in the French capital.
A new permanent organization emerged from the April 1949 conclave, the World Committee of Partisans for Peace. At a Second World Congress held in Warsaw in November 1950, this group adopted the new name World Peace Council (WPC). The origins of the WPC lay in the Cominform's doctrine that the world was divided between "peace-loving" progressive forces led by the Soviet Union and "warmongering" capitalist countries led by the United States, declaring that peace "should now become the pivot of the entire activity of the Communist Parties", and most western Communist parties followed this policy.
In 1950, Cominform adopted the report of Mikhail Suslov, a senior Soviet official, praising the Partisans for Peace and resolving that, "The Communist and Workers' Parties must utilize all means of struggle to secure a stable and lasting peace, subordinating their entire activity to this" and that "Particular attention should be devoted to drawing into the peace movement trade unions, women's, youth, cooperative, sport, cultural, education, religious and other organizations, and also scientists, writers, journalists, cultural workers, parliamentary and other political and public leaders who act in defense of peace and against war."Suslov, M., The Defence of Peace and the Struggle Against the Warmongers , Cominform, 1950.
Lawrence Wittner, a historian of the post-war peace movement, argues that the Soviet Union devoted great efforts to the promotion of the WPC in the early post-war years because it feared an American attack and American superiority of arms at a time when the US possessed the atom bomb but the Soviet Union had not yet developed it. This was in opposition to the theory that America had no plans to attack anyone, and the purpose of the WPC was to disarm the US and the NATO alliance for a future Soviet attack.
Wrocław 1948 and New York 1949
The World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace met in Wrocław on 6 August 1948.Wittner, Lawrence S., One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953 (Vol. 1 of The Struggle Against the Bomb) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Paperback edition, 1995. "Communists", Time Magazine, 2 May 1949. Julian Huxley, the chair of UNESCO, chaired the meeting in the hope of bridging Cold War divisions, but later wrote that "there was no discussion in the ordinary sense of the word." Speakers delivered lengthy condemnation of the West and praises of the Soviet Union. Albert Einstein had been invited to send an address, but when the organisers found that it advocated world government and that his representative refused to change it, they substituted another document by Einstein without his consent, leaving Einstein feeling that he had been badly used.
The Congress elected a permanent International Committee of Intellectuals in Defence of Peace (also known as the International Committee of Intellectuals for Peace and the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace) with headquarters in Paris. It called for the establishment of national branches and national meetings along the same lines as the World Congress. In accordance with this policy, a Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace was held in New York City in March 1949 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, sponsored by the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions.Committee on Un-American Activities, Report on the Communist "peace" offensive. A campaign to disarm and defeat the United States, 1951Gerald Horne, Mary Young (eds), W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia, p. 47.
Paris and Prague 1949 The World Congress of Partisans for Peace in Paris (20 April 1949) repeated the Cominform line that the world was divided between "a non-aggressive Soviet group and a war-minded imperialistic group, headed by the United States government". It established a World Committee of Partisans for Peace, led by a twelve-person Executive Bureau and chaired by Professor Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, High Commissioner for Atomic Energy and member of the French Institute. Most of the Executive were Communists.Santi, Rainer, 100 years of Peace Making: A History of the International Peace Bureau and other international peace movement organisations and networks , Pax förlag, International Peace Bureau, January 1991. One delegate to the Congress, the Swedish artist , heard no spontaneous contributions or free discussions, only prepared speeches, and described the atmosphere there as "agitated", "aggressive" and "warlike".Andersson, Stellan, "'Madness is Becoming More Widespread.' Peace and disarmament". A speech given at Paris by Paul Robeson—the polyglot lawyer, folksinger, and actor son of a runaway slave—was widely quoted in the American press for stating that African Americans should not and would not fight for the United States in any prospective war against the Soviet Union; following his return, he was subsequently blacklisted and his passport confiscated for years. The Congress was disrupted by the French authorities who refused visas to so many delegates that a simultaneous Congress was held in Prague." Robeson's performance of "The March of the Volunteers" in Prague for the delegation from the incipient People's Republic of China was its earliest formal use as the country's national anthem. Picasso's lithograph, La Colombe (The Dove) was chosen as the emblem for the Congress and was subsequently adopted as the symbol of the WPC.
Sheffield and Warsaw 1950 In 1950, the World Congress of the Supporters of Peace adopted a permanent constitution for the World Peace Council, which replaced the Committee of Partisans for Peace. The opening congress of the WPC condemned the atom-bomb and the American involvement in the Korean War. The WPC was used by the Soviet Union to promote baseless claims that the United States used biological weapons in the Korean War.
It followed the Cominform line, recommending the creation of national peace committees in every country, and rejected pacifism and the non-aligned peace movement. It was originally scheduled for Sheffield but the British authorities, who wished to undermine the WPC,Defty, A., Britain, America, and anti-communist propaganda, 1945–53, Routledge, 2004. p. 217 refused visas to many delegates and the Congress was forced to move to Warsaw. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee denounced the Congress as a "bogus forum of peace with the real aim of sabotaging national defence" and said there would be a "reasonable limit" on foreign delegates. Among those excluded by the government were Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Ilya Ehrenburg, Alexander Fadeyev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. The number of delegates at Sheffield was reduced from an anticipated 2,000 to 500, half of whom were British.
1950s
The WPC was directed by the International Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist PartyLaird, R. F., and Erik P. Hoffmann. Soviet Foreign Policy in a Changing World, New York: Aldine, 1986. p. 189. through the Soviet Peace Committee,Burns, J. F., "Soviet peace charade is less than convincing" , The New York Times, 16 May 1982. although it tended not to present itself as an organ of Soviet foreign policy, but rather as the expression of the aspirations of the "peace loving peoples of the world".The Way to Defend World Peace , Speech by Liao Cheng-Chin at the Stockholm session of the World Peace Council, 16 December 1961.
In its early days the WPC attracted numerous "political and intellectual superstars", including W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, Pablo Picasso, Louis Aragon, Jorge Amado, Pablo Neruda, György Lukacs, Renato Guttuso,Moro, R., "Catholic Church, Italian Catholics and Peace Movements: the Cold War Years, 1947–1962". Jean-Paul Sartre, Diego Rivera,"Congress For Peace - Vienna 1952" (book), A History of the World in 100 Objects. Muhammad al-Ashmar and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Most were Communists or fellow travellers.
In the 1950s, congresses were held in Vienna, Berlin, Helsinki and Stockholm. The January 1952 World Congress of People in Vienna represented Joseph Stalin's strategy of peaceful coexistence,Stalin, J. V. The People Do Not Want War. resulting in a more broad-based conference. Among those attending were Jean-Paul Sartre and Hervé Bazin. In 1955, another WPC meeting in Vienna launched an "Appeal against the Preparations for Nuclear War", with grandiose claims about its success.
Following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the WPC convened a conference in Helsinki in December 1956. There were reportedly "serious differences" regarding the Hungarian situation within both the WPC and national peace movements. The conference passed a unanimous resolution blaming the conflict on "the cold war with its years of hate and distrust and its policy of blocs", and "the faults of an internal regime as well as their exploitation by foreign propagandists". The resolution also called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the restoration of Hungarian sovereignty.
The WPC led the international peace movement in the decade after the Second World War, but its failure to speak out against the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the resumption of Soviet nuclear tests in 1961 marginalised it, and in the 1960s it was eclipsed by the newer, non-aligned peace organizations like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. At first, Communists denounced the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for "splitting the peace movement"Seedbed of the Left, Workers Liberty, WL Publications, 1993. but they were compelled to join it when they saw how popular it was.
1960s