Don and diplomat: Isaiah Berlin and Britain's early Cold War

Abstract

Many academics were involved in government in Britain during and immediately after the Second World War. This created a powerful epistemic community among decision-makers and academic elites which helped to shape the Atlanticist bias in politics and in the cultural Cold War from the 1940s. Sir Isaiah Berlin, (1909 − 1997) was employed as a British civil servant in the US and then the USSR, for five years to 1946. He then became an influential scholar, writer, public intellectual, and academic entrepreneur. His practical experiences in government informed and reinforced his support for Atlanticism, and revealed his ambiguity about British initiatives for postwar West European unity. This article contributes to our understanding about the dominance of the Anglo-American cultural relationship in the Cold War, and also throws more light on the relationship between individual academics and policy-makers.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Antony Copley, Eliza Gheorghe, Henry Hardy, Kai Hiruta, Jonathan Hogg, Avi Shlaim, Vit Smetana, and to two anonymous referees for all their helpful comments.

Notes

¹ There is a growing literature on this: Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: the State, Propaganda, and Consensus (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001); Tony Shaw, Propaganda and the Cold War (London: Longman, 2001); Tony Shaw, ‘Britain and the Cultural Cold War’, Contemporary British History (special issue), 19:2, (2005); Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Sheppard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy and Diplomacy (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001); Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht, ‘Culture and the Cold War in Europe’, in Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1, eds. Mel Leffler and O. Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 398–419; Dianne Kirby, Religion and the Cold War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012); Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, eds., The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960 (London: Cass, 2003); Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, ‘Culture’, and Richard Aldrich, ‘Intelligence’, in Palgrave Advances in Cold War History, eds. Saki R. Dockrill and Geraint Hughes (London: Routledge, 2006). On culture and US capitalism in Europe, David W. Ellwood, The Shock of America. Europe and the Challenge of the Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). The same methodology is being fruitfully applied to non-Western countries, but this is not the focus of this article.

² On the Cold War at home, Anne Deighton, ‘Britain and the Cold War’, Cambridge History, 123–5.

³ Academics nevertheless need to have freedom of expression even if their ideas do not ‘fit’, and be able to air unpopular or unexpected ideas without fear for their own careers, which makes the relationship between academics and the centres of formal decision-making a delicate one. Christopher Hill and Pamela Beschoff, eds., Two Worlds of International Relations: Academics, Practitioners and the Trade in Ideas (London: Routledge, 1994); Piers Dixon, Double Diploma: the Life of Sir Pierson Dixon, Don and Diplomat (London: Hutchinson, 1968).

⁴ John Lewis Gaddis, George F Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). Berlin and Kennan discussed the Marshall Plan proposal in Paris in September 1947, and corresponded subsequently. Isaiah Berlin, Enlightening: Letters, 1946–1960, eds. Henry Hardy, Jennifer Holmes and Serena Moore (London: Chatto & Windus, 2009), 38, 212–20.

⁵ Jonathan Hogg, ‘Locating Isaiah Berlin in the Cultural Cold War Context: Text and Ontology, 1945–1989’ (PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 2007), 194; Edward Said, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (New York: Vintage, 2001), 218. Said argued that Berlin supplied the West with its ‘self-image’ in the Cold War.

⁶ Dr Henry Hardy was Berlin's editor. He has drawn together Berlin's archive and a list of his publications at http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/. Ignatieff wrote an authorised biography upon which I have relied for the narrative of Berlin in the 1940s: Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998). Berlin's Jewishness, and his active Zionism are not dealt with in this essay, but see, e.g. Berlin, Enlightening, 524n3.

⁷ This is a vast topic, see Nicholas Cull, Selling War: the British Propaganda Campaign against American ‘Neutrality’ in World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). The difficulties of the shifting wartime relationship with the Soviet Union, and the spying activities of some in the higher echelons of the British establishment are not discussed here, but see: Christopher M. Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: the Authorised History of MI5 (London: Penguin Books, 2010); Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (London: Macmillan, 2001).

⁸ There was a powerful link between his Zionism, his dislike of foreign secretary Ernest Bevin's policies, and his Atlanticism.

⁹ Berlin had a minor physical deformity that would most probably also have precluded him from active service.

¹⁰ Ignatieff, Berlin, 93; Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939); Isaiah Berlin, Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946, ed. Henry Hardy. (London: Pimlico, 2005), 312.

¹¹ Noel Annan, Changing Enemies: the Defeat and Regeneration of Germany (London: Harper Collins, 1995), 225–7.

¹² H.G. Nicholas, ed., Washington Dispatches, 1941–1945. Weekly Reports from the British Embassy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981). The exceptionally rich ‘Introduction’ by Berlin is at vii-xiv. Many people were recruited to Washington from British academia. This was not unexpected, given the importance attached by the British coalition government to forging and consolidating American support for Britain. Berlin called this a ‘Don's war’. The archive of Isaiah Berlin, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, (henceforth MS BERLIN), B/B1/shelfmark 111, fol 309, Berlin to Grundy, 23 November 1944. He shared a house with Guy Chilver, ancient history tutor at The Queens, Oxford, and his boss was Harold Butler (Minister of Information, who was the former Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford). See also, Michael F. Hopkins, Oliver Franks and the Truman Administration. Anglo-American Relations, 1948–1952 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 8–11.

¹³ In 1943, Berlin privileged his personal, Zionist interests over the policy of his employer, the Foreign Office, and then also concealed his own role in leaking information about UK policy. This raised important ethical questions about his behaviour, but these were never known about / confronted by the Foreign Office at the time. Ignatieff also ducks the significance of what it was that Berlin did, by rather shamefully blaming the culture of the Foreign Office. Ignatieff, Berlin, 117–8.

¹⁴ MS BERLIN, B/B1/ 111, fol. 338, Toynbee to Berlin, 28 December, 1944; 112, fols. 8–9, Berlin to Arnold J. Toynbee, 11 January 1945.

¹⁵ Berlin found Toynbee's proposal ‘rather insulting.’ There was also a suggestion that Berlin might be made the Foreign Office librarian, or even a press attaché in Paris (offered by Duff Cooper). MS BERLIN, B/B1/ 112, fols. 10–12, 15, Berlin to Rumbold, 11 January 1945; fols. 52–4, Rumbold to Berlin, 28 March, 1945; fols. 48–9, Berlin to Scott (FO), 26 March 1945.

¹⁶ MS BERLIN, B/B1/ 112, fols. 158–9, Balfour to Berlin, 27 July 1945; fols. 184–5, Balfour to Berlin, 17 September 1945. Berlin was given a CBE in the January 1946 New Year's Honours list, no doubt in part a sort of apology, or, as he put it, as ‘a sop to heal my pride greatly wounded during the month of July rather than a reward for largely imagined services’. MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 79, Berlin to Frank Darvall, 13 February 1946; MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 73, Berlin to Bevin, 13 February 1946; Berlin, Flourishing, 582–3.

¹⁷ MS BERLIN, B/B1/112, fol. 112, Berlin to Christopher Hill, 29 May 1945. The plan had originally been that he would write a 50–60 page account of US foreign policy over the previous five years, while remaining in Washington, B/B1/ 112, fol. 119–20, Berlin to W.G.S. Adams (Warden of All Souls College), 6 June 1945.

¹⁸ MS BERLIN, B/B1/112, fol.162, Clark Kerr to Berlin, ud.

¹⁹ Frank Roberts, Dealing with Dictators: the Destruction and Revival of Europe 1930–70 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991); MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 173ff; Tompkins to Berlin, 15 April 1946.

²⁰ Julian Lewis, Changing Direction: British Military Planning for Post-War Strategic Defence, 1942–1947 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), xcviii, 338; Deighton, ‘Britain and the Cold War’, 116.

²¹ MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 96, Berlin to Angus Malcolm, 20 February 1946.

²² Ignatieff, Berlin, 143. In 1956, Pasternak gave Berlin the manuscript of Zhivago, for publication in the West. Ignatieff, Berlin, 147.

²³ The accounts given to Ignatieff combine unexpected meetings in Leningrad bookshops while being ‘minded’ by a British Council representative; being pursued by a boorish Randolph Churchill; undertaking the political meetings required of him, as well as falling under the spell of Akhmatova. Akhmatova was to continue to suffer terribly from the Soviet authorities probably as a result of Berlin's visits. György Dalos, The Guest from the Future. Anna Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), passim. Six years later, Berlin's uncle, who still lived in the Soviet Union, was also rounded up, imprisoned for over a year, and accused being in a spy ring with Berlin. Ignatieff, Berlin, 148–169. Berlin was therefore acutely aware of the dangers of writing directly about individuals in the Soviet Union. Berlin: Enlightening, 240.

²⁴ The National Archives of the UK (henceforth TNA) FO/371/56725, Isaiah Berlin, ‘A Note on Literature and the Arts in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in the closing months of 1945’. This telegram is reproduced in Isaiah Berlin, The Soviet Mind. Russian Culture under Communism, ed. Henry Hardy (Washington: Brookings, 2011), 1–27. TNA/ FO/371/56725, Roberts to Bevin, Roberts to Warner, 23 January 1946.

²⁵ MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 154, Berlin to Harriman, 26 March 1946; B/B1/113, fol. 89, Berlin to Roberts, 20 February 1946.

²⁶ MS BERLIN, B/B1/115, fol 28, Eytan to Berlin, 21 January 1947. It is interesting that Eytan made this suggestion, even though he knew that Berlin was ‘not too keen on the present political set-up’.

²⁷ The immediate postwar months and years were awash with intellectual and political debate about the new world order, although Berlin does not seem to have wanted to commit himself in writing to these debates. See generally: Andrew Williams, Failed Imagination?: New World Orders of the Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Jonathan Haslam, Vices of Integrity. EH Carr, 1892–1982 (London: Verso, 1999), Charles Jones, ‘“An Active Danger”: EH Carr at The Times, 1940–1946’ in E.H. Carr: a Critical Appraisal, ed. Michael Cox (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000).

²⁸ MS BERLIN, B/B1/116, Fol. 253, 274.

²⁹ TNA/ FO/953/ 144, Warner note, 19 February 1948.

³⁰ Anne Deighton, ‘Ernest Bevin and the Promotion of Human Rights in Europe, 1945–1950’, in Living Political Biography: Narrating 20th Century European Lives, eds. Christina L Knudsen and Karen Gram-Skjoldager (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012), 87–107.

³¹ TNA/ FO/953/144, Warner to Sargent, 13 February 1948.

³² TNA/ FO/953/144, Gore-Booth note, ud.

³³ TNA/FO/953/144, Rennie note, 18 March 1948.

³⁴ TNA, FO953/144, Dudley to Berlin, 9 March 1948.

³⁵ TNA, FO/953/144, Berlin to FO, handwritten letter, 17 March 1948; Berlin, Enlightening, 44ff.

³⁶ TNA/FO/953/144, Rennie note, 19 March 1948. The assumption of the ‘Europeanness’ of Marxism soon lost its salience in light of the ‘othering’ of Soviet communism by writers and policymakers alike.

³⁷ TNA/FO/953/145, Butler ‘Preliminary Memorandum’, 13 April 1948.

³⁸ TNA/ FO/953/145, meeting with the Secretary of State, 10 February 1948.

³⁹Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, HC, vol. 446, cc 383–409, 22–23 January 1948. For confirmation of Bevin's own anxieties about the reliability of US policy, Martin H. Folly, ‘“The Impression is Growing…that the United States is hard when dealing with us”: Ernest Bevin and Anglo-American Relations at the dawn of the Cold War’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 10:2, 150–166.

⁴⁰ MS BERLIN, C/1/1/e/429, fol. 77, draft notes for Isaiah Berlin, ‘Nineteen Fifty-One: A Survey of Cultural Trends of the Year’, in Britannica Book of the Year 1952 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952, 1951). I am indebted to discussion with Dr Kai Hiruta on this topic, especially on the attitude of Hannah Arendt to the human rights issue.

⁴¹ MS BERLIN, B/B1/118, fol. 282, 15 April 1949.

⁴² MS BERLIN, C/1/1/e/429, fol. 155ff, draft for Berlin, ‘Nineteen Fifty-One’, quote at fol. 166.

⁴³ Berlin, Enlightening, 159.

⁴⁴ For example, Berlin raised the money from the Ford and Wolfson College Oxford Foundations, and then founded Wolfson College, a graduate college of the University of Oxford.

⁴⁵ Berlin, ‘Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century’, Foreign Affairs, 28, (1950), 351–8.

⁴⁶ MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 96, Berlin to Angus Malcolm, 20 February 1946.

⁴⁷ Oliver Franks, was one more of those who did make successful crossings between academia and diplomacy. Alex Danchev, Oliver Franks: FoundingFather (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

⁴⁸ Ignatieff, Berlin, 130. Berlin supported the Eden government over Suez in 1956.

⁴⁹ MS BERLIN, B/B1/113, fol. 211, Roberts to Berlin, 17 May 1946.

⁵⁰The Listener, 29 September 1949.

⁵¹ Isaiah Berlin, ‘Nineteen Fifty: A Survey of Politico-Cultural Trends of the Year’, in 1951 Britannica Book of the Year (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1951), xxii–xxvii, draft at MS BERLIN, C/1/1e, B/B1/429, fols. 1–13, 1950; Berlin, ‘Nineteen Fifty-One’, xxii–xxxi.

⁵² Quoted in Ignatieff, Berlin, 199, from a letter from Berlin to Rees, 1994.

⁵³ Berlin used his diplomatic contacts to acquire literature, and diplomats kept in touch with him, in relation to cultural developments in the Soviet Union, and he returned there in 1956.

⁵⁴ For example, a draft on the Jewish Agency, MS BERLIN, B/B1/114, fol. 27ff. He was also involved in drafting material for Chaim Weizmann, MS BERLIN, B/B1/115, fol. 29ff, 1 January 1947, and was generous with his advice to Israeli friends on how best to organise their foreign and intelligence staff, to prevent them, as he said, becoming like British diplomats, ‘impertinent, prejudiced and ignorant’, Berlin, Enlightening, 225.

⁵⁵ John Lewis Gaddis first used the distinction between ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’ in Cold War historiography over thirty years ago, and this debate was usefully picked up by Odd Arne Westad in this journal in a criticism of works that drown in empirical detail. Yet, while of course wishing ‘splitters’ to raise their eyes, obviously the distinction is misplaced if generalised historical analysis is undermined by a lack of detailed and reliable archival evidence, and new historical arguments are not based upon extensive archival research. Odd Arne Westad, ‘Storia della guerra fredda: l'ultimo conflitto per l'Europa’, Cold War History, 12:4, (2012): 705–706.