Building an Informal Transnational Information Network on the USSR from Paris: An Outside Perspective on Soviet Life in 1923–1939

Abstract

The article presents findings on the informal network exchanging and disseminating information about socioeconomic and political trends in the USSR in 1923–1939. This network, formed through interactions between the workers of the American Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and Soviet émigrés in Paris, was supported by American and British academics, public figures, and religious actors. Their goal was to improve public information and raise awareness of repressions in the USSR. The central argument is that this network emerged spontaneously to meet the demand from religious and public actors for regular, objective, and reliable information amid polarized Western views on Soviet experiment in building socialism and communism in the 1920s–1930s. It primarily distributed translations into English of Soviet press articles, official documents, laws, propaganda, and literature. Personal accounts from émigrés or travelers to the USSR were taken into account, but rarely cited in the disseminated materials. An exception highlighted is the 1932–1933 famine, which was omitted from the official Soviet documentation and press. The article reconstructs the information network through the individuals’ professional and personal connections, examining covered topics, methods of information presentation, key communication channels, and obstacles. It briefly discusses the spontaneous involvement of the network’s workers in attempts to influence political and diplomatic decisions, including the restoration of diplomatic and trade relations with the USSR by the British government in 1929 and the US administration in 1933.

Article in English