‘Of the utmost importance for the survival of mankind’: The Alerdinck Foundation, the Media, and Citizen Diplomacy to End the Cold War, 1984–1992

ABSTRACT

In 1985, Dutch businessman Frans Lurvink created the Alerdinck Foundation and its Centre for East-West Communications. A private venture, Alerdinck set out to achieve greater understanding between Eastern and Western media to reduce Cold War tensions. An example of citizen diplomacy aimed at promoting peace, Alerdinck’s story illustrates the strengths of a private initiative in creating spaces for dialogue and relationship-building, and the limitations of a non-state actor aiming to alter international relations. The article chronicles the formation, ambitions and obstacles faced by Alerdinck as it endeavoured to improve cross-bloc dialogue through its conferences, bilingual newspaper, and journalist exchange programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen Diplomacy
• Media
• Transnational Relations
• Philanthropy
• Track 2

Introduction: Citizen Diplomacy beyond Track Two

The 1980s saw multiple attempts to bridge the divide between West and East in order to bring the Cold War to an end. Studies have so far concentrated largely on the official diplomacy of Reagan and Gorbachev and the significance of arms control initiatives.¹ But there has also been something of a ‘transnational turn’ that instead has focused on the role of non-state actors and citizen activism in pursuing dialogue towards normalisation of relations.² Such normalisation requires the changing of cross-bloc perceptions from enemy to, if not friend, at least a recognition of mutual interest.³ Activities ranging from expert groups and epistemic communities to human rights campaigners and children wanting to speak out against a doomsday future all added to ‘the multifaceted and multi-level processes that ended United States (US)-Soviet enmity’.⁴ The 1980s saw a surge not only in the peace movement, but also in contributions from ‘citizen diplomacy’.⁵

Non-state forms of diplomacy have long been designated as Track Two (as opposed to traditional inter-state Track 1). The multi-track framework of Diamond and McDonald identifies wider fields of activity, such as the role of private citizens (Track 4), philanthropy (Track 8) and the importance of communications and media (Track 9).⁶ Definitions of citizen diplomacy emphasise the role of individuals or groups in improving ‘cross-cultural understanding and knowledge between people from different countries’ for the purpose of improving international relations.⁷ All of these Tracks seek to establish contacts for mutual understanding, the building of trust, the use of media advocacy and lobbying, and the creation of new structures outside of official diplomatic channels in order to bring pressure for change.⁸ An important point is whether all Track activities need to be at the service of Track 1 diplomacy.⁹ Citizen diplomacy can contribute to the wider context of improved international relations – ‘creating atmospherics favourable to negotiation’, in the words of one practitioner.¹⁰ For this reason, citizen diplomacy should be viewed as a distinct field of activity and not simply judged according to its direct impact (or lack of) on Track 1. Another US practitioner commented at the time on ‘the burst of citizen diplomacy since 1980’:

[R]ecent citizen diplomacy is not limiting itself merely to supporting or mediating government policies. Citizen diplomats from America have been setting their own agendas … certain that they have a responsibility to create their own relationships and momentums with the Soviets, to which the governments can then respond rather than dictate.¹¹

As this article will demonstrate, this sense of motivation for change, personal responsibility, and imagination was not confined to the United States alone.

The Alerdinck Foundation was the brainchild of Frans Lurvink, a former Philips executive turned successful venture capitalist. By the early 1980s he was a tax exile living in London and on the Côte d’Azur, having successfully turned his hand to moped and bicycle manufacturing, textiles, trailers, bungalow parks and sun blinds.¹² A turning point came when he reached the age of 50 in 1983 and felt the need to direct his creative, can-do mentality to world affairs. Alerdinck’s goal was to achieve mutual understanding by undermining negative stereotypes perpetuated in the media of both East and West (Track 9). As a private citizen, Lurvink’s philanthropic operation was initially self-funded. He claimed to have invested 1.3m Dutch Guilders to run the foundation till the end of 1986, although he did receive support from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations later (Tracks 4 and 8).¹³ The Netherlands was an ideal base for this venture, with the Dutch lacking great power ambitions and having a reputation for promoting humanitarian causes. Alerdinck therefore provides a valuable case study of a private actor from a small West European country attempting to alter Cold War dynamics on a large scale. In his bid for funding from the Ford Foundation in 1986, Lurvink made this explicit:

Having shared the scars of war with its East European neighbours yet maintaining the strong democratic traditions of the West, the Netherlands has special credibility as it seeks to establish a new balance of understanding among the superpowers and their allies … The refusal to view East-West and Soviet-US relations as synonymous has generated particular enthusiasm from often-isolated Eastern European journalists.¹⁴

Studies of the media in the Cold War – covering print, radio and television – have covered its importance for framing debate and projecting propaganda.¹⁵ There was a fundamental divide separating the outlook of US and Soviet media. As Dina Fainberg has argued,

many American observers believed the Soviet people would never understand or trust the United States if their information came from articles written by loyal party propagandists and the censored Soviet media. In contrast, Soviet officials and propagandists claimed that the primary manifestations of the Cold War was the American press’s hostility toward the Soviet Union.¹⁶

However, some radio and television enterprises were also involved in cross-bloc collaborations, developing relations that sought to overcome East-West frictions.¹⁷ Media was therefore a field of activity that not only shaped perceptions but also developed channels for overcoming antagonisms, for instance by creating infrastructure for sharing of common cultural experiences.¹⁸ Working with media partners, Alerdinck aimed to establish such infrastructure, enabling a dialogue that could loosen the ideological coordinates of media practitioners as described by Fainberg. Multiple grandiose projects were proposed during its existence, with the goal of generating maximum publicity to emphasise the possibilities of East-West collaboration. However, Alerdinck’s purpose was most clear in three main activities, and this article is structured to give each sufficient attention: regular conferences to enable media professionals from East and West to build relations and establish common ground; a cross-bloc bilingual newspaper, the Alerdinck Tribune, to overcome stereotypes; and an exchange programme for journalists to spend time working with counterparts in East or West.

1983 was a pivotal year in East-West relations. Both the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and the negotiations on Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) had broken down in that year, and the US and Soviet Union would not return to Geneva until 1985. The Netherlands saw its largest ever demonstration in The Hague in October 1983 in opposition to the proposed placement of 48 Gryphon Cruise missiles on Dutch soil. It was a period of Olympic boycotts and high-level tension exemplified by the downing of KAL007 and the NATO Able Archer war-game.¹⁹ For Lurvink, it was time to apply a practical business approach to break open the calcified Cold War international system. In 1985 he was asking:

how it is possible that the world has become so weaponised and runs the risk that our civilisation and the future of our children and grandchildren can be blown sky-high at any given moment. The political blocs have built up enormous arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, in fact only because of the fear that exists for political differences with the other system. But how long does such a system stay valid?²⁰

The statutes for the Alerdinck Foundation, legally codified in February 1985, stated the conviction that ‘more knowledge about and a better mutual understanding between the peoples of the East bloc and the West can help to lessen tensions and restrict the danger of war’.²¹ Lurvink was certainly motivated by the humanitarian cause, but he was also determined to bring his management skills to international politics, and he wanted to attain a public status for doing so.²² The recorded conversations of the second Alerdinck conference in March 1985 include this insight into his business worldview:

I’m a businessman between journalists, and when I was in Moscow for the first time I was received by a group of Novosti press, important managers of the agency. I said ‘listen, I don’t understand the Russian government, I mean I’m not from your system, you have your own system, its different from mine, but why don’t you put on your budget 30 million dollars, why don’t you get the best public relations companies from the United States, pay them a lot of money and buy the pages of Newsweek like Saudi Arabia is doing and get your story around. This would shock America, and by doing that … because you can turn them around very quickly, you might get also a loosening up in the United States’ … . I had the feeling that my Russian colleagues don’t know how our system in the West is working. When you have money, you can do a lot. You can do a lot. [‘Bravo’]²³

This can come across as rather naive, yet its disarming idealism also displays Lurvink’s corporate problem-solving mentality towards a seemingly intractable conflict. Critically approaching media as actor rather than observer also began to gather support across the profession.

Others in the Netherlands, inspired by Détente and the Helsinki Process, were also seeking alternative channels of dialogue with the Soviet Union outside of formal (and frozen) Track 1 diplomacy.²⁴ In the early 1980s the equally high-level citizen diplomacy of Amsterdam businessman Ernst van Eeghen sought to replicate the citizen diplomacy of the Dartmouth conferences and their informal East-West trust-building.²⁵ The Dutch Foreign Ministry kept a distance while at the same time reluctantly acknowledging the influential networks, access to power and independent means that both Lurvink and van Eeghen possessed. There were no moves to endorse a Track 2-type connection. Alerdinck was deliberately high-profile and publicity-seeking rather than discreet, and diplomats considered such ventures risky and lacking sufficient insight in world affairs. Alerdinck, in setting its own agenda, was challenging the ability of official diplomacy to improve East-West relations, and this approach was viewed cautiously rather than embraced as an opportunity.²⁶

The Alerdinck Conferences

In late 1983 Lurvink bought the Den Alerdinck mansion near the Dutch town of Zwolle, subsequently using the unique name of this location to promote his philanthropic enterprise. Lurvink was first able to convince Carel Enkelaar, the influential boss of the Dutch television broadcaster NOS, that the media could do more to bridge the Cold War divide than simply reporting on the tensions and lack of dialogue.²⁷ Contacts in both New York and Moscow were then established via prominent Dutch journalists Andre Spoor and Willem Oltmans. Early Alerdinck promotional materials indicated a belief that television could achieve more through powerful visual representation, in one go, than reams of print media. During the conferences, the advantage was often taken to televise a set debate between US and Soviet journalists which would then be distributed internationally. BBC reporting on the Ethiopian famine in October 1984 and the subsequent Live Aid concerts were seen as key examples of raising global awareness and triggering activism through television:

Famine relief efforts were only minimally successful until the pictures of the starving began appearing on the world’s television screens. Televised appeals for concern, solutions and funds have brought impressive results. It is ironic that a similar approach has not yet been organized to try solving the world’s most serious communications problem.²⁸

Between 1984-90, the Alerdinck enterprise organised or co-organised a total of nine conferences, the first two at the Alerdinck mansion (1984, 1985), followed by events in Moscow (1985, 1986, 1990), New York (1986), Vienna (1986), Budapest (1987) and Paris (1988). In seven years, these events grew from being small-scale exchanges of views to major examples of international ‘citizen summitry’.²⁹ The first Alerdinck conference (Alerdinck I) took place on 10-11 December 1984, involving Joseph Angotti of NBC, William Rademaekers of Time Magazine, Vladimir Dunayev of Soviet TV, Michael Ozerov of Sovietskaya Rossiya, AVRO radio correspondent Link van Bruggen, NRC New York correspondent Andre Spoor and Enkelaar, with Lurvink as chair. The ambition was clear:

The media did not create the antagonistic perceptions that today so divide the superpowers, but the mass media (both print and broadcast) are responsible for disseminating and perpetuating these perilous images. The media alone speak to millions of people each day on both sides. Therefore, the mass media can act directly and effectively to correct the misperceptions and to promote better understanding … . Personal encounters between media representatives of East and West would make it harder to adhere to the old cliches and stereotypes.³⁰

The result was ‘a media-mixture of a Bilderberg conference, a Rotary meeting and a gathering of Moral Rearmament’ that succeeded in achieving a level of camaraderie and consensus as to purpose and raison d’etre.³¹ Dutch media reporting on the event was sceptical, with some claiming that allowing Soviet media representatives to participate in an ‘open dialogue’ seemed to play into the KGB’s hands. ³² Soviet ‘active measures’ to undermine Western unity through supporting the anti-nuclear peace movements had heated up in the early 1980s.³³ In April 1981 Vadim Leonov, TASS correspondent, was expelled from the Netherlands for being an undercover KGB agent, and later the same year he promptly outlined his ability to manipulate the peace movement in an interview with a Dutch newspaper.³⁴ West German counter-intelligence noted in 1985 that ‘Manipulating the media is the single most commonly used method to realise “active measures” in the Western world’.³⁵ Material from Russian archives shows how the Soviet Committee for European Security and Cooperation was active in countering Western fears of ‘the Soviet military threat’ and highlighting instead ‘the military industrial potential of the USA’.³⁶ The Soviet participants at Alerdinck I duly came under the spotlight. Elseviers remarked on the cynical, libelous attitude of Ozerov’s previous reporting on the Netherlands in the pages of Sovietskaya Rossiya, and Dunayev’s depiction of the country as a capitalist failed state. The conclusion was clear: ‘The Soviets have the most interest in these gatherings … the meetings offer them the perfect opportunity to develop their manipulative talents’.³⁷ Sovietskaya Rossiya was the official press organ of the Supreme Soviet and would soon become one of the principal communist outlets opposed to Gorbachev’s reforms.³⁸

The challenge for Alerdinck was therefore to demonstrate that it was more than a mere arm of Soviet propaganda. The uniqueness of the first meeting generated enough enthusiasm for Lurvink to issue a rapid set of proposals, sent out by Telex from the Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz: a press conference to declare the goals; the production of joint East-West TV productions combined with a revival of the bilingual newspaper plan; ‘a tv panel conference at the alerdinck of personalities from usa Europe and udssr, china and Japan to analyse soc economic and political development since end world war ii and were [sic] to go from here’.³⁹ There was an even more grandiose plan for a celebration of the 1945 meeting of the US and Soviet militaries on the river Elbe, forty years later, with NBC, NOS and Soviet TV coordinating a mutually beneficial television spectacular.⁴⁰

Alerdinck II took place on 16-17 March 1985, a week after Konstantin Chernenko’s death and the announcement of Mikhail Gorbachev as the new Soviet leader. Previously Andropov’s most prominent protégé for ‘new thinking’, Gorbachev had emphasised the importance of economic reform above ideological struggle in a speech as Secretary of Ideology in December 1984.⁴¹ In April 1985, as the new leader at the Plenary Meeting of the Soviet Communist Party, he orchestrated the first moves towards Perestroika, involving the large-scale restructuring of the Soviet economy and society.⁴² This change in Soviet outlook is clearly evident in the line-ups for Alerdincks I and II. Ozerov and Dunayev were replaced by Vladimir Lomeiko, spokesperson of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Anatoli Gromyko, son of the Soviet Foreign Minister and head of the Institute for African Studies in Moscow and Vladimir Molchanov, the Dutch-speaking Novosti correspondent based in the Netherlands. These new voices pointed to a shift in Soviet media as economic necessity, technological challenges and the threat of the US under Reagan forced a new outlook that was more open for engagement and the ‘reestablishment of broad, vital ties with the West’.⁴³ Lomeiko and Gromyko were co-authors of Novoe myshleniev v iadernyj vek (New Thinking in the Nuclear Age) in 1984, and Lomeiko would continue in his position as a key Gorbachev ally up to 1991.⁴⁴ All three were connected to what Elseviers referred to as a ‘New Information and Communications Order’: a strategy of openness and transparency that criticised the West and defended the Soviet system in a more sophisticated manner. Molchanov had already given a taster of this approach in several suave interviews that questioned Western motives, attacked American militarism, but praised Dutch cultural prowess and sensibilities.⁴⁵ He would soon become a prominent figure on Soviet TV as host of Before and After Midnight, one of the landmark shows of the Gorbachev glasnost era.⁴⁶

The Americans also turned up in force for Alerdinck II: former US Ambassador to the UN Donald McHenry, Scott Sullivan of Newsweek, John Vinocur of the New York Times, Tom Wolzien of NBC News and Professor Stephen Cohen from Princeton University. Hopes for attracting Lomeiko’s US counterpart, State Department spokesperson Bernard Kalb, proved unsuccessful, but Cohen was an important addition. Author of Rethinking the Soviet Experience, Cohen belonged to those commentators on the left who felt the Bolshevik Revolution had genuine merit as a popular uprising and who did not believe Stalinism and repression were an inevitable outcome.⁴⁷ He was also one of the leading figures in the American Committee for East-West Accord (ACEWA), originally created in 1974 by professor Fred Warner Neal as a conglomerate of academic and business interests to push back against (often neoconservative) critics of the superpower détente process (McHenry was also a member).⁴⁸

A separate discussion involving Lomeiko, Gromyko, Vinocur and Gerd Ruge of West German WDR TV was televised by the NOS and distributed internationally, which enabled the Soviet delegates to gain maximum publicity by criticising the Strategic Defense Initiative and rejecting the claim that Moscow had been forced back to the Geneva negotiation table by US pressure. They also avoided specific questions on the Dutch decision on cruise missiles, delayed till 1 November 1985 and dependent on Soviet actions, instead cleverly insisting on the need for a global approach to the nuclear threat (including the redirection of defence budgets towards hunger relief in Africa).⁴⁹ The deft approach of both Lomeiko and Gromyko in these situations perfectly displayed the new strategy of combining openness with steadfastness that Gorbachev was seeking to promote.

By May 1985, Alerdinck’s international connections were developed enough to enable Lurvink to pursue a televised interview with Gorbachev himself, backed by the combined forces of NBC, NOS and WDR.⁵⁰ However, neither the anniversary meeting on the Elbe nor the interview with Gorbachev would proceed. NBC’s Larry Grossman, after consulting Secretary of State George Shultz, had pulled out of the Elbe plan after Shultz pushed back against the joint venture with Soviet TV. It would have been ill-advised to display US-Soviet comradeship on German soil, based on German defeat, at a time when US-West German relations were vital for Western unity in general and NATO strategy in particular. Shultz, in an interesting aside on Track 2, later admitted to being ‘somewhat leery’ of private initiatives during his time as Secretary because they ‘would get in the way of our official diplomatic efforts and confuse others’.⁵¹

Evidence that Alerdinck was seen as useful in early 1985 from the Soviet perspective is provided by Lomeiko’s proposal to hold the next Foundation gathering in Moscow itself, hosted by the School of Journalism of Moscow State University. The Moscow meeting was planned to coincide with the revival of the Geneva arms control talks in November. Alerdinck III, just as the Geneva superpower summit itself, had a broad agenda, covering the place of Europe between the superpowers, the United Nations and ‘the future of space’, alongside attention for the role of journalists in East-West relations. This was also due to teaming up with the Soviet Committee for European Security, the principal body for interactions with the West on post-Helsinki Accord matters, including cultural and technical exchange. An audience of over 300 Soviet journalists and media students attended the event, and additions to the Soviet line-up indicated increasing official approval: Gennady Gerasimov, Moscow News editor and soon-to-be foreign affairs spokesperson for Gorbachev, and Aleksandr Bovin, the popular state TV commentator whose criticism of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 had led him to be suspended and then transferred to Izvestia.⁵² The Soviet press also praised Alerdinck’s agenda as a path towards achieving ‘equal partnership’ in managing the ‘common home’.⁵³ Despite Shultz’s veto of the Elbe anniversary plan, proposals were pitched for a conference in Cannes in 1986 to focus on the East-West co-production of television programmes. Furthermore, the decision to create a UK-based affiliate committee began to attract media attention in the English-speaking world.⁵⁴

Following Moscow, Alerdinck IV was a move to consolidate relations in the United States. Lurvink had been keen from the beginning to secure US sponsors and reduce his personal financial contribution, and a prospectus was drawn up and sent to around forty US foundations. Returning from a fund-raising tour of the US in March 1986, Lurvink exclaimed that ‘committees are needed in every NATO and Warsaw Pact country’ in order to unite business and media interests.⁵⁵ The New York meeting, hosted by the Center for War, Peace and the News Media at New York University, was again given an expansive title: ‘An International Conference on Media Coverage of Soviet-American Relations, the Nuclear Arms Race, and Everyday Life’. The Center was a logical partner. Founded in September 1985 thanks to support from both the Carnegie Corporation and the W. Alton Jones Foundation, it set out to ‘improve the coverage of East-West relations by assessing the accuracy, thoroughness and reliability of such reporting’.⁵⁶ The one-day event on 2 May 1986 had a strong Soviet presence – Alerdinck stalwarts Lomeiko and Molchanov were joined by Bovin and Leonid Kravchenko, first deputy chair of Gosteleradio, the Soviet State Committee for Radio and Television. Superpower relations were in another dip, with Reagan having rejected Gorbachev’s offer of an ongoing nuclear test moratorium in mid-March, and Gorbachev in turn rejecting US counterproposals for improved test verification. Nevertheless, New York involved a noteworthy cross-section of US correspondents: David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Peter Jennings of ABC’s World News Tonight, Elizabeth Pond of the Christian Science Monitor and David Shipler of the New York Times. It also hosted what had been proposed at Alerdinck III – a joint US-Soviet panel scrutinising media coverage of the November 1985 Geneva summit as broadcast by NBC and Gosteleradio.⁵⁷ However, the conference was soon having to deal with a more recent event – the Chernobyl disaster.

On 26 April 1986, the Number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded after a safety test malfunctioned. Radiation drifting westwards caused Swedish enquiries on 28 April about a possible nuclear accident in the Soviet Union, but they were initially met with denial.⁵⁸ A 20-second announcement on Moscow TV news later that day was all that was shared with the Soviet audience. US satellite imagery confirmed the scale of the accident and the following day the New York Times ran the story on the front page, but Soviet media would continue to downplay the event.⁵⁹ Gorbachev’s first public statement after 28 April was solely related to attacking the US for continuing underground nuclear testing.⁶⁰ Chernobyl was a major test for Alerdinck’s formula of open dialogue. Faced with US criticism of unnecessary secrecy and a fundamental disregard for human life, Lomeiko, Bovin and Kravchenko held a common line in New York: information needed to be completely verified before any announcements could be made to avoid unnecessary panic. While the Americans played up the humanitarian cause, the Soviet delegation hit back, with Lomeiko attacking ‘a certain superiority complex’, ‘an anti-Soviet circus’, and the unsubstantiated sensationalist claims of 2000 deaths as opposed to the Soviet announcement of only two (both technicians at the plant).⁶¹ The lack of compassion expressed by US media would become the standard line of Soviet ripostes to criticism of Moscow’s handling of the catastrophe.⁶² Bovin took the opportunity to contrast the two media worlds of East and West:

I don’t always need to be in a hurry to report – to hurry and print a lot of gossip and unsubstantiated rumours. It may be more interesting that way. It may sell newspapers and attract viewers. But it turns the story into a circus, and I do not work for the circus.⁶³

Grossman responded with a typical ‘free media’ critique – Soviet journalists were no more than spokespeople for the government. The first morning session of Alerdinck IV, supposed to be about Geneva, duly ‘degenerated into a heated, sometimes bitter and frequently recriminatory sniping exchange’.⁶⁴ But the public fracas also resulted in extensive media attention, exactly the kind of publicity that Alerdinck needed. Capitalising on the spotlight, Lurvink put up 400,000 Guilders for a six-month study on improving information provision at times of nuclear emergency.⁶⁵ Neither did everyone on the US side fall in line with the anti-Moscow orthodoxy. Manoff, in a wry commentary a couple of months later, accepted the irony ‘that Russians are so sensitive to our stories about them, which purport to reveal the truth, while we are merely amused by their reports about us, which we dismiss as nothing but Government lies’.⁶⁶

Moscow and New York had proven to be high-profile, publicity-gaining events that pushed Alerdinck and its mission further into the international spotlight. The US committee now included Donald Kendall, chairman of Pepsi, Laurence Grossman, president of NBC News, Joseph Filner, president of Newmet Corporation and William vanden Heuvel, former US ambassador to the UN and an ACEWA board member. Kendall had taken Pepsi into the Soviet market already in 1972, and Filner, a member of Americans for Democratic Action and the ACEWA, had become an importer of Soviet metal-coating technology in the late 1970s. His subsequent corporate venture, Project Development International, would be closely involved with the post-Soviet transition to capitalism.⁶⁷ With Cohen signed on as consultant, the US contingent consisted of an interesting mix of left-wing Democrats and corporate power. Alerdinck’s New York office was run by none other than Grace Kennan Warnecke, daughter of George Kennan. In her memoir, she describes Lurvink as ‘a buoyant, wealthy entrepreneur who had a new idea every five minutes’ and was able to remove her from the Soviet blacklist to enable participation in subsequent Moscow conferences.⁶⁸

Two further conferences would be held in 1986: Alerdinck V in Vienna in June, and Alerdinck VI in Moscow in September. Vienna was significant for indicating a shift in attention towards the business side of East-West relations. Held as an addition to the ‘New Horizons in East-West Trade’ event of the détente-era ‘Club of Vienna’ (International Council for New Initiatives in East-West Cooperation), the involvement of Alerdinck pointed to a new strategy to link the transformation of media reporting with the increasing interest of business to gain from the changing East-West environment. Similar to Alerdinck’s push for East-West media partnerships, the Vienna conference was focused on the ways and means of establishing joint ventures to enable Western concerns to access Eastern markets, and Eastern producers access to Western techniques of management, marketing and technological innovation.⁶⁹ The apparent win-win for both sides was echoed by Gerd Ruge, who emphasised the media-economy connection during the event’s closing session:

A prerequisite of adequate reporting on the development of the world economy and on East-West trade is access to pertinent facts and figures and to sources of information. This includes access to responsible officials who can discuss the issues with authority. The work of foreign correspondents who bear a special responsibility for explaining and presenting problems across frontiers should all the more enjoy access to such information.⁷⁰

At the following meeting in Moscow in September 1986, moves were again made to consolidate cooperation in television production. The event was dampened due to the arrest of US News and World Report bureau chief Nicolas Daniloff on a Moscow street for alleged espionage on 30 August, but it went ahead regardless.⁷¹ The goal now was to organise a series of interviews with individual world leaders, whereby a panel of international journalists representing East and West would have the opportunity to quiz them on current issues. It was a worthy plan, but not one that had much chance of success. More likely to make progress was the proposal for co-production of a satellite TV programme covering current affairs. Since the early 1980s Gosteleradio, the event’s local sponsor, had been involved in the ‘space bridges’ project that connected audiences in the United States and the Soviet Union via live satellite linkups. Originating from an eclectic group that included media activist Kim Spencer, personal computer pioneer Steve Wozniak, the Esalen Institute and Gosteleradio, the first space bridge had been held on 5 September 1982 to link a young Soviet audience with Americans attending a music festival in San Bernardino, California. A series of space bridge events (Telemost in Russian) followed, with Gosteleradio serving as the key Soviet partner and Vladimir Pozner often acting as the Soviet host.⁷² Pozner was also the logical candidate to host Alerdinck’s televised journalist round table discussion that aired during the Moscow conference in September 1986, with Ruge, Lomeiko, RTF’s Soviet specialist George Bortoli, Hungarian TV broadcaster György Baló, Dutch TV commentator Rene Eijbersen and journalist Nikolai Yefimov participating. The panel was a trial run for what was intended to be a series of similar discussions, but they never materialised.

By late 1986, despite the gradual improvement in superpower relations, the international context for Alerdinck’s operations had become more problematic. Grossman withdrew his involvement in October 1986, citing ‘the conviction that it is really inappropriate for the President of NBC News to have a Director’s responsibility in an organisation, no matter how worthwhile, that bears so directly on the reporting work we do’.⁷³ Increasing attention in the United States for Soviet media and information strategies had led to congressional enquiries, most notably the report Soviet Advocacy and the US Media issued the same month that Grossman withdrew. The Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy that compiled the report was at the time chaired by Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation and included Priscilla Buckley from the National Review and Richard Mellon Scaife, all fervent critics of the Soviet system and East-West Detente. Highlighting the new, more professional media styles evident since Gorbachev came to power, the report criticised the lack of reciprocity in allowing access to media outlets, with far more Soviet spokespeople being invited on to US shows than vice-versa.⁷⁴ The report also emphasised the different relationship between media and state in the Soviet Union:

State ownership of media outlets does not necessarily mean the media will be the mouthpiece of government in societies where freedom of speech and the press is constitutionally and traditionally respected (the BBC, for example). In the case of the Soviet Union, however, where the concept of an independent press does not exist either in practice or in law, journalists are required to advocate policies decided by higher party authorities, and be supportive of Marxist-Leninist theory, including belief in the class struggle and the inevitable victory of communism over capitalism.⁷⁵

During 1986 the CIA had also briefed Congress on the ways in which the US was portrayed in Soviet media. The predominant message was that the US economy was run at the behest of a militaristic elite, while large sections of society suffered at the hands of a capitalist system, the result being widespread unemployment, poverty and drug addiction.⁷⁶ From a Soviet perspective, the United States, as the prime capitalist nation, had to be displayed as a ‘failed state’ as part of the inherent process of Marxist-Leninist self-justification. This was revealed in stark fashion during two remarkable media space bridge events in January and April 1987 hosted by Novosti’s Vladimir Pozner and ABC’s Phil Donahue. Both events brought the journalists together into:

didactic platforms, where they could showcase and explain the superiority of their own political systems to journalists and the viewing public on the other side … the spacebridges also examined the sincerity of the rival’s commitment to change and international partnership.⁷⁷

As Fainberg points out in her study of these events, the dividing line rested on the different understandings of ideology. For Soviet journalists, ideology represented their ‘internal moral compass’ based on viewing the world as a communist, whereas for US journalists ideology meant ‘an external pressure or a dictat, distinct from personal background or interests’.⁷⁸ From a US perspective, since it was the Soviet Union and not the US that was seeking to reform its system, the emphasis would always be on the ability of the Soviet side to ‘prove’ that they now had a free press along the lines of Western liberal norms and expectations.

Despite this negative context, the Alerdinck Foundation continued to receive international recognition as a unique space for dialogue for US, Soviet, Western and Eastern European journalists. Gorbachev’s effort to shift Western perception of Soviet interests was starting to have an effect, at least in the Netherlands.⁷⁹ Alerdinck VII, held in Budapest on October 23-24, 1987, attracted the most impressive line-up of international journalists up to that point. Hosted by prominent Hungarian broadcast journalist György Baló, the conference focused on the perception of political, economic and military-strategic threats from both East and West. Participants included Flora Lewis (New York Times), Jim Hoagland (Washington Post), Daniel Franklin (The Economist) and Neal Ascherson (The Observer), with the last three reporting on it favourably afterwards.⁸⁰

By 1988 there was a clear shift in focus for the Foundation. Lurvink had sold the Den Alerdinck mansion, moved the administrative work to an office in The Hague and himself withdrew once again to the south of France.⁸¹ The development of a journalist exchange programme (see below) was now occupying the Foundation’s small bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the final two conferences would be the most imposing yet. The tone set by Alerdinck VI in Vienna, which linked media reporting with the opportunities opened by economic transitions in the East, would be pursued further. Alerdinck VIII, held at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in December 1988, was a lavish affair. Co-hosted by ABC’s Pierre Salinger and Lomeiko and attended by Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, the event displayed public confidence in Alerdinck as a vehicle for citizen diplomacy in the service of East-West rapprochement, separate from state agendas. Significantly, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff gave the event positive coverage in Die Zeit, and Flora Lewis reported in the New York Times that it had provided revealing insights into the new Soviet discourse on the ‘humanisation of society and foreign policy’.⁸² Dönhoff was a valuable advisor to Lurvink during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Alerdinck IX was held in Moscow in December 1990 and hosted by Ruge and Gennady Gerasimov, the participant of Alerdinck III and now the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s information chief. Known for his wry humour, in the previous month Gerasimov had been awarded the ‘Communicator of the Year’ award from the National Association of Government Communicators, and the lavish event was titled ‘The End of East West Confrontation’. Following on from Paris, high-level sessions on the possible futures of the Soviet Union and the role of media in democracies were interspersed with lunchtime talks by Helmut Schmidt on German unification, Henry Kissinger on the Gulf crisis and Vaclav Havel on Central Europe’s future.

The conferences had begun as small-scale sites for exchanging views on media reporting, but seven years later they had expanded into major surveys of international relations attended by prominent statesmen. Along the lines of Track 2, Alerdinck had successfully established these events as alternative structures outside of formal diplomacy and had laid the grounds for mutual understanding. The Anglo-American press was recognizing it as a site of interest and value for exchange. However, conferences are fleeting events and are not enough on their own to achieve change on the scale of Alerdinck’s ambitions. Both Paris and Moscow showed that the core mission – changing media attitudes – was being diluted within a broader agenda, causing Alerdinck to lose some of its uniqueness. Aware of the shift, Lurvink announced that Moscow was to be the final conference. Within a year of Alerdinck IX, the Soviet Union would be officially dissolved.

The Alerdinck Tribune

From the very beginning, Lurvink had wanted to create a newspaper devoted to cross-bloc reporting to open a new channel for dialogue outside of national biases. A 1984 New Year’s message to business associates had expressed the ambition to create an ‘Alerdinck Group’ for ‘Analysis of economic, social, political and technological trends in the world’. Initial sketches covered simplistic plans for surveying public opinion, organising birthday wishes for the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union and sending messages of peace between citizens of East and West, before settling on the idea of a joint East-West newspaper:

we are all human beings, we have our hospitals and our primary schools … It would be the first joint venture between East and West in media, a newspaper that transcends borders … Journalists represent such a factor of power. They could at least contribute to strengthening the contact between East and West.⁸³

Plans for a bilingual publication were eventually announced at Alerdinck II in March 1985. Closely modelled on Lurvink’s favourite International Herald Tribune, the first edition of the Alerdinck Tribune had a print run of 20,000. The paper was ‘distributed to a list of 20,000 media persons in East and West’, but was also intended to reach those involved with foreign policymaking.⁸⁴ Lurvink announced the paper’s arrival by sending a copy to Dutch minister-president Ruud Lubbers. 5000 copies were also distributed through all Geneva hotels in time for the November 1985 superpower arms control summit. The Swiss chief of the International Press Centre had refused to allow access to the conference itself, denying the paper official credibility and introducing another formal barrier to Alerdinck’s informal approach.⁸⁵

The paper was originally intended to appear quarterly, but ultimately only three issues appeared, in November 1985, May 1986 and November 1986. The first issue amounted to only eight pages, with the final page devoted to a Foundation fundraising announcement. Significantly, the editorial used the tenth anniversary of the Helsinki Accords to position Alerdinck as fulfilling that agreement’s aim to facilitate East-West media exchange. There were articles in English and Russian by Lomeiko, Molchanov, Ruge and Cohen, the latter emphasising the Alerdinck’s importance in ‘creating what does not now exist and what is so needed – a permanent forum for meetings between East-West media’.⁸⁶ The second Tribune, up to 12 pages, appeared in time for Alerdinck IV, but it had been drafted just before Chernobyl hit the news, giving the paper an unfortunate out-of-touch feel. Two articles contrasted the unproductive meetings between the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Union of Soviet Journalists with the more low-key, informal, de-politicised meetings of the New England Society for Newspaper Editors with Soviet counterparts. The conclusion that ‘The Russians may have totally different political and journalistic philosophies, but they are human beings, and there are ways to get through to them’ pointed to the possible rewards of small-scale grassroots contacts in contrast to more official engagements.⁸⁷ It was this approach that Alerdinck took into its own journalist exchanges in the coming years.

An extensive critical overview of US reporting on Chernobyl was later provided in the third edition of the Alerdinck Tribune in November 1986.⁸⁸ Meant to be a self-supporting publication, it was only this third issue that included advertisements: Pepsi, Lufthansa, Newmet, the Frankfurt-based Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and the Belgian steel giant Sidmar. An accountant’s overview for 1984-86 reveals that the three issues cost 153,754 dollars to produce, with only 34,814 dollars coming in from advertisement revenue (the most from Lufthansa).⁸⁹ The Tribune had improved through its three issues in terms of the quality and diversity of the content. However, Ruge, the editor-in-chief, returned to Moscow for WDR in later 1986 and was no longer available. This move, plus the failure to secure sufficient sponsorship, meant that Lurvink had to cut his losses and halt production after the third issue. Ultimately, the paper required more management, time and financial investment than Alerdinck could sustain. Nevertheless, for a while it represented very visibly the kind of cross-bloc rapprochement and mutual respect that the Foundation was aiming to achieve.

The Journalist Exchange Programme

Establishing the conferences to facilitate regular East-West dialogue was important, but changing actual journalistic practice required a more grassroots approach. Lurvink, together with Ruge and Grace Kennan Warnecke, had approached the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations in 1985 and 1986 for a journalists exchange programme. Inspiration for this came from similar citizen diplomacy East-West initiatives such as the New England Society for Newspaper Editors and the Esalen Institute’s Soviet-American Exchange Program, although there was no direct contact with those organisations.⁹⁰ Following the second visit, Ford director Enid Schoettle noted to colleagues that ‘when Lurvink first came to see me, I thought this idea was a somewhat risky venture. But clearly over the last year, it has gained momentum’.⁹¹ The Ford Foundation’s International Program had moved away from transatlantic relations following the departure of Shepherd Stone in the 1970s, but interest in projects aimed at transforming the security dilemma of East-West relations continued.⁹² While Ford had no particular interest in media, Lurvink’s initiative struck a chord. By December 1986 a fully documented proposal was presented:

The Alerdinck Center is neither naïve nor utopian … Broadening the perspectives of journalists on both sides [of] the East-West conflict and providing a forum for personal encounters makes it harder for them to adhere to old cliches and rigid stereotypes and easier to ask open-ended questions; encourages less propaganda and more real coverage; and generates fewer suspicions while spurring greater understanding.⁹³

Central to Alerdinck’s pitch was the Young Journalists Exchange Program. Lurvink had already arranged this as a cooperative venture with AFS International (providing ‘cross-cultural orientations’ for both US and Soviet participants, as well as accommodation in the US), the Columbia School of Journalism (consultants) and Novosti. This brought success, as both the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) and the Rockefeller Family Fund backing the exchanges, with the RBF with providing 90,000 dollars spread over three years.⁹⁴ Three Soviet and three US journalists under the age of 35 would spend two-three months working on the staff of a newspaper, reporting on ‘the other side’ to achieve full media openness.⁹⁵ At Alerdinck VII in Budapest in October 1987, Lurvink finally confirmed with Valentin Falin, who was then the chief of Novosti and close to Gorbachev, that the exchanges could go ahead.⁹⁶ The Ford Foundation, impressed that the likes of Flora Lewis and Jim Hoagland were participants at Alerdinck VII, followed up with a sum of 50,000 dollars over two years.⁹⁷

In 1989 the first group set out: Wendy Sloan from Time and Eric Semier of the New York Times went to work for Moscow News; photojournalist Karen Sherlock of the Indianapolis Star went to Zycie Warszawy; Andrei Baidak of Novosti went to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette; Anton Safronov from Moscow News went to the Arkansas Gazette; Polish journalist Michal Ksiezarczyk went to the Appleton Post-Crescent (Wisconsin). The Soviet journalists, arriving appropriately on 1 May, began with a five-day tour of New York City, including in-depth meetings at CBS and the New York Times, before moving on to begin their six week ‘35-hour-a-week professional internships’. They were ‘treated like local celebrities’ and published several articles on their impressions of the United States, although ‘their biggest problem was writing in English’. The self-evaluation report from July 1989 emphasised the long-term positive impact of this person-to-person, professional training, relation-building approach, but it also included a significant observation on the changing context:

When this program was first conceived “glasnost” was only a glimmer and Soviet journalists were perceived in the West as propagandists and were, in fact, spokesmen for Soviet government policy … In light of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe in the last four years, a new breed of journalist is emerging … Even the more conservative journals cover a far broader range of subjects with much more latitude given to the individual reporter.⁹⁸

This liberalisation did not diminish Alerdinck’s determination to contribute to glasnost and the building of relations with the Soviet media. The United States had run countless journalist exchanges during the Cold War, but this was the first time that a non-US outfit was actually organising mutual exchanges, with the same number of journalists travelling from both East and West.⁹⁹ Lurvink made a point of emphasising that the end of Cold War structures also required generating new mentalities to ‘restructure the perceptual system by which each side has historically taken measure of the other’.¹⁰⁰

Reports from participants repeatedly emphasised the value of such an immersive experience. Denise Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times, who spent time in Budapest with Magyar Hirlap in 1989, wrote afterwards:

I made an important discovery about a month into the program when I spent time with the international press corps, which had swooped into Budapest to cover the June 16^th reburial of Imre Nagy … What I realized is that I knew more about the realities of everyday life in Hungary, the national psyche, the way Hungarians felt and feared and thought, than a foreign correspondent who parachutes into town for a three-day whirlwind set of interviews … That’s what this fellowship did for me.¹⁰¹

In 1990 David Goldberg of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went to the weekly Kuranti and Helen Holter of CBS-affiliate KIRO-TV went to Gosteleradio in Uzbekistan. Goldberg experienced disorganisation and a paper that wanted to keep him away from news reporting but was still able to witness (and contribute to) the editor’s efforts ‘to make Kuranti the first Western-style, general interest newspaper in the Soviet Union’. Holter was additionally restricted as ‘a foreign female in a Moslem country where the definition and collection of news is at odds with my sense of journalism and work ethic’. Yet a contact in Ukraine enabled her to make an unnerving visit to the ghost town near the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Both returned to the United States knowing they had been through something quite unique.

Despite these successes, plans for expanding the programme suffered setbacks. The increasing economic and socio-political upheaval in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union – soon to be dissolved – led to delays in arranging media hosts on that side, and US candidates ‘gradually began to loose [sic] faith in the program’.¹⁰² In April-May 1993 the last (delayed) Russian participants – Anna Pouliaevskaya of Ostankino TV and Andrei Karaulov of Nezavissima Gazetta – undertook their internships in the USA.¹⁰³ By that stage, commercial set-backs were leading Lurvink to completely withdraw his involvement in Russian affairs. In 1989-93 the exchanges had involved around fifteen journalists on either side working alongside their counterparts. Reports confirm the novelty of these experiences, the relationship-building and the positive impact on perceptions of ‘the other’. Ultimately, the program’s lifespan was curtailed by the rapidly changing, unstable environment caused by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Conclusion

Alerdinck was a non-state actor attempting to influence the course of international affairs by changing attitudes in the media of East and West. Lurvink’s overall goal was clear: If media reporting could be more human-orientated – if journalists and media organisations could recognise the value of partnership instead of perpetuating tensions – then dialogue and the chances for conflict resolution could be improved. As Lurvink outlined in an interview in March 1986: ‘We must create a movement of journalists who say: We need to report in a more realistic manner and place everything in perspective, we must not only write about the SS-20, and the SS-24, but instead devote more attention for a better picture of both societies’.¹⁰⁴ The gradually widening network of participating journalists would themselves promote and perpetuate the Alerdinck vision through their subsequent reporting. It was a bold gamble, part of the 1980s wave of citizen diplomacy initiatives that channelled a strong sense of personal responsibility for achieving positive change. Alerdinck represented the disruptive creativity of citizen diplomacy, crystalizing in a short space of time the desire of many for some kind of end to the Cold War. It also generated mistrust and resistance from those who did not accept its legitimacy as an international actor.

Track 2 initiatives aiming to establish dialogue in conflict-resolution situations are by necessity discreet. Alerdinck was the opposite – maximum publicity was sought to establish its presence in an already crowded field. By bringing Eastern and Western media together, Alerdinck itself wanted to become a media event. The constant search for grandiose projects and joint ventures confirms this, demonstrating Lurvink’s business worldview. At the same time, the lofty rhetoric and ambition generated disbelief. Dutch reporting on Alerdinck was sceptical of a Dutch millionaire achieving a Cold War breakthrough.¹⁰⁵ Lurvink’s free-wheeling management style led to internal conflicts that inevitably landed in the press, further undermining credibility. There were also suspicions that Alerdinck fit too neatly into the propaganda strategies of the Soviet regime. It is certainly true that Alerdinck provided a useful platform for the Gorbachev-era promotion of ‘common humanity’ and ‘new thinking’. These were after all soft power messages designed to maintain Soviet influence over international public opinion in a period of hard power decline. Gorbachev’s relaxation of restrictions on the Soviet press was meant to generate support for his managed reforms of the Soviet economy and society. Instead, liberalisation caused the media to push for greater change, leading to a volatile relation between media and regime in the late 1980s and early 1990s.¹⁰⁶ This volatility also undermined Alerdinck’s abilities to build solid relations and facilitate a stable transition of attitudes through its conferences and exchanges.

An additional obstacle was the in-built assumption of Western superiority. Win-win through partnership – Lurvink’s essentially business-orientated outlook – could not conceal the fact that it was essentially a one-way transfer of techniques and outlook, West to East. Gorbachev’s strategy was based on positively shifting perceptions in the West towards the possibility of socialist reform, changing international relations as a result. At the time of Alerdinck’s creation, there was little chance of achieving equality and mutual respect in a context where both sides drew their legitimacy from downgrading and delegitimising the other.¹⁰⁷ Alerdinck called for self-reflection from the media as to its own role in perpetuating Cold War dynamics. This was meant to expose the biases of the West as much as the controls of the East. Media on both sides was complicit in ‘the production and maintenance of antagonism’.¹⁰⁸ US scepticism concerning the lack of a free press in the East was persistent. Attitudes did alter in the late 1980s as public opinion embraced Gorbachev’s new style, but Walter Cronkite’s remark to Lomeiko at the time of Alerdinck III in Moscow is telling: ‘I am a journalist today and will still be tomorrow, but you will then be the Soviet spokesperson again’.¹⁰⁹ Set against this attitude was the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media’s study of US and Soviet TV news reporting on the Geneva summit of November 1985, which found that ‘both reflected their government’s position’.¹¹⁰ Bias was obviously present on both sides. Alerdinck could make the differences between Eastern and Western media a topic of conversation, but it was difficult to move beyond this bias. Danish TV journalist Samuel Rachlin later reflected on it all as ‘a well-funded dream with the best intentions’ but one that struggled to meet its lofty goals.¹¹¹

Alerdinck was creative in its efforts to build new structures for establishing trust and bridge the Cold War divide. It therefore represents an important example of citizen diplomacy trying to establish new channels for dialogue during a period of diplomatic stasis (particularly during 1984-87). However, altering East-West relations on the scale it imagined was ultimately beyond its capacities, and a lack of state endorsement, together with the Soviet instability of the late 1980s and early 1990s, forced Lurvink to abandon the dream.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).

Notes

¹ Simon Miles, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020); Bernhard Blumenau, Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Barbara Zanchetta, eds., New Perspectives on the End of the Cold War: Unexpected Transformations? (London: Routledge, 2018); Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds, Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970—1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Robert Service, The End of the Cold War, 1985-1991 (New York: Public Affairs, 2015); James Graham Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014).

² On cross-bloc interactions see Simo Mikkonen, Giles Scott-Smith, and Jari Parkkinen, eds., Entangled East and West: Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction during the Cold War (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2019); Poul Villaume, Ann-Marie Ekengren, and Rasmus Mariager, eds., Northern Europe in the Cold War, 1965–1990. East-West Interactions of Trade, Culture, and Security (Tampere: Juvenes Print, 2016); Patrick Babiracki, Kenyon Zimmer, eds., Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc (College Station: A&M University Press, 2014); Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, eds., Reassessing Cold War Europe (London: Routledge, 2011); Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, eds., Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History (London: Frank Cass, 2004).

³ See David Foglesong, ‘When the Russians really were coming: citizen diplomacy and the end of Cold War enmity in America’, Cold War History 20 (2020): 419–40.

⁴ Foglesong, ‘When the Russians really were coming’, 422. See Anna Fett, ‘US People-to-People Programs: Cold War Cultural Diplomacy to Conflict Resolution’, Diplomatic History 45 (2021): 714-42; Matthias Neumann, ‘Children Diplomacy during the Late Cold War: Samantha Smith’s visit of the “Evil Empire”‘, History 104 (2019): 275–308; Margaret Peacock, ‘Samantha Smith in the Land of the Bolsheviks: Peace and the Politics of Childhood in the Late Cold War’, Diplomatic History 43 (June 2019): 418–44; Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

⁵ See Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Lawrence Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

⁶ Louise Diamond and John McDonald, Multi-Track Diplomacy: A Systems Approach to Peace (West Hartford: Kumarian Press, 1996). The full list is as follows: Track 1: Government officials; Track 2: Professional conflict resolution; Track 3: Business contacts; Track 4: Private citizens; Track 5: Research, training, and education; Track 6: Peace activism; Track 7: Religion; Track 8: Funding/Philanthropy; Track 9: Public opinion/Communications/Media.

⁷ See the useful definition provided by Pauline Kerr and Geoffrey Wiseman, eds., Diplomacy in a Globalizing World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 346.

⁸ The literature on citizen activism, multi-track diplomacy and conflict resolution is vast, but important insights for this study were gained from the following: Lior Lehrs, Unofficial Peace Diplomacy: Private Peace Entrepreneurs in Conflict Resolution Processes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022); Stella Wasike, Pontian Okoth, and Edmund Were, ‘The Nature of Track Three Diplomacy and its Influence on Cross-Border Security Relations between Kenya and Somalia’, International Journal of Managerial Studies and Research 4 (2016): 1–12; A. Shemesh, ‘Citizen Diplomacy: Creating a Culture of Peace, The Israel-Palestinian Case’, Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 2:3 (2012): 58-69; H.H. Saunders, A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts (London: Macmillan, 1999).

⁹ The original usage comes from William Davidson and Joseph Montville, ‘Foreign Policy According to Freud’, Foreign Policy 45 (1981-82): 145–57. See Peter Jones, Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015); John Davies and Edward Kaufman (eds.), Second Track / Citizens’ Diplomacy: Concepts and. Techniques for Conflict Transformation (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

¹⁰ Robert Fuller, Belonging: A Memoir (Self-published manuscript, 2013), 153.

¹¹ James Hickman and James Garrison, ‘The Psychological Principles of Citizen Diplomacy’, in Private Diplomacy with the Soviet Union, ed. David Newsom (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987), 132.

¹² Henk Mulder, ‘Nederlanders op de Côte d’Azur’, De Tijd, 7 August 1981.

¹³ Henk de Mari, ‘Waarom de Vrede van Alerdinck stuk liep’, De Telegraaf, 14 September 1985, 17.

¹⁴ ‘A Proposal to the Ford Foundation’, December 1986, FA732A, Grants, A-B, Reel 6244, Alerdinck Foundation 1988-1991, Archive of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Archives Center, New York (hereafter FF RAC).

¹⁵ See Rosa Magnusdottir, Enemy Number One: The United States of America in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Henrik G. Bastiansen, Martin Klimke, and Rolf Werenskjold, eds., Media and the Cold War in the 1980s: Between Star Wars and Glasnost (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union built the Media Empire that lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); A. Ross Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); John Jenks, British Propaganda and News Media in the Cold War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).

¹⁶ Dina Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), 9.

¹⁷ See Alexander Badenoch, Andreas Fickers, and Christian Henrich-Franke, eds., Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War (Baden: Nomos, 2013); Eugene Eugster, Television Programming across National Boundaries: The EBU and OIRT Experience (Dedham, MA: Artech House, 1983).

¹⁸ See the important work of Lars Lundgren and Christine Evans, ‘Producing Global Media Memories: Media Events and the Power Dynamics of Transnational Television History’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 20 (2017): 252–270.

¹⁹ Raymond Garthoff, The Great Transition: American Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1994); Marilyn Young and Michael Launer, Flights of Fancy, Flight of Doom: KAL 007 and Soviet-American Rhetoric (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988); Nate Jones, Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that almost triggered Nuclear War (New York: New Press, 2016); Remco van Diepen, Hollanditis: Nederland en het kernwapendebat 1977-1987 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2004).

²⁰ Bert Bommels, ‘De zakenman en zijn club van wereldverbeteraars’, Elsevier, 23 February 1985, 20.

²¹ Copy of the Instrument of Establishment of ‘Stichting’ Alerdinck Foundation, 19 February 1985, Folder: Statutes, File 6: Correspondence 1985-1991, Archive of Frans Lurvink (hereafter FL).

²² Hans Lurvink (brother), interview with author, Urmond, 3 December 2022.

²³ Frans Lurvink, recorded during Alerdinck II, 16-17 March 1985.

²⁴ See Giles Scott-Smith, ‘Opening Up Political Space: Informal Diplomacy, East-West Exchanges, and the Helsinki Process’, in Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe, eds. Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 23–43.

²⁵ See Giles Scott-Smith, ‘Taking Stock of a ‘Ruslandganger’: Ernst H. van Eeghen, The Burght Foundation, and Private Diplomacy in East-West Relations during the 1980s and 1990s’, in Shaping the International Relations of the Netherlands 1815-2000, eds. Ruud van Dijk, Samuël Kruizinga, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, and Rimko van der Maar (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 223-39; Giles Scott-Smith, ‘A Dutch Dartmouth: Ernst van Eeghen’s Private Campaign to Defuse the Euromissiles Crisis’, New Global Studies 8 (2014): 141–52. On Dartmouth see James Voorhees, Dialogue Sustained (Washington DC: US Institute for Peace, 2002).

²⁶ Hans Lurvink (brother), interview with author, Urmond, 3 December 2022. The archives of the Dutch foreign ministry hold evidence of a lack of trust towards both of these citizen diplomacy projects.

²⁷ Bommels, ‘De zakenman’, 21.

²⁸ Alerdick Foundation: Center for East-West Communications, n.d. [1986), 2.

²⁹ ‘Citizen summitry is the application of individual initiative to what are normally considered the highest matters of state – relations with an adversary’, Craig Comstock, ‘Going Beyond War’, in Citizen Summitry, eds. Don Carlson and Craig Comstock (Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher Inc., 1986), 10.

³⁰ Alerdinck Foundation, 2.

³¹ Bommels, ‘De zakenman’, 17.

³² Diplomaticus, ‘Mini-Bilderberg’, Haagse Post, 2 March 1985, 11; G. Hiltermann, ‘De acties Lurvink en van Eeghen’, De Telegraaf, 30 March 1985; J. Vermaat, ‘Privé-diplomaten lopen regering voor de voeten’, Nederlands Dagblad, 2 April 1985.

³³ Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (London: Profile, 2020), 263–77. For a more nuanced interpretation of peace activism that highlights its agency beyond Soviet strategy, see Holger Nehring and Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Do all paths lead to Moscow? The NATO dual-track decision and the peace movement – a critique’, Cold War History 12 (2012): 1–24.

³⁴ ‘Waarom kameraad Leonov Nederland moest verlaten’, Reformatorisch Dagblad, 15 July 1981, 7.

³⁵ Quoted in Rid, Active Measures, 318.

³⁶ Eugen Silin to Ernst van Eeghen, 12 January 1982, Correspondence with the National Committees for European Security and Cooperation of the Capitalist Countries on Cooperation. England-USA, 1982, P. 9619, op. 1, d. 88, S. 110, 119, State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).

³⁷ Frank Lafort and Peter van Nuijsenburg, ‘Hoe groot is de invloed van de KGB in de clubs van Lurvink en van Eeghen?’ Elseviers, 2 March 1985, 24–7.

³⁸ On Sovietskaya Rossiya’s conservatism see David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Vintage, 1993).

³⁹ Frans Lurvink to Carol Enkelaar, Andre Spoor, and Willem Oltmans, 2 January 1985, Folder: Correspondence 1984-1986, File 6: Correspondence 1985-1991, FL.

⁴⁰ ‘Het nieuwe Genève van Franciscus Lurvink’, Vrij Nederland, 16 March 1985.

⁴¹ Jonathan Becker, Soviet and Russian Press Coverage of the United States: Press, Politics and Identity in Transition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 34–35.

⁴² Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 27.

⁴³ Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Soviet Media (London: Routledge, 2006 [1991]) 2; Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 194.

⁴⁴ The publication appeared in a German edition as Neues Denken im Atomzeitalter (Leipzig: Urania, 1985). Gromyko later recycled the message in Anatoli Gromyko and Martin Hellman, eds., Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking (New York: Walker, 1988). The Introduction, with its plea for an end to “nuclear overkill” and the recognition of earth as a “common home”, is available here: <https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/gromyko.pdf> (accessed 25 July 2022).

⁴⁵ Lafort and van Nuijsenburg, ‘Hoe groot is de invloed’, p. 26; Alexander Munninghoff, ‘Ik gruw van het morele verval hier’, Haagsche Courant, 24 February 1984; Cees Veltman, ‘Vladimir Moltsjanov: Nederlanders zijn nieuwsgerig, ze willen alles weten’, HN Magazine, April 17-28 1984, 6–11.

⁴⁶ Christine Evans, Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 236.

⁴⁷ See Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography 1888-1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Stephen Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

⁴⁸ Benjamin Wallace, ‘Fighting Back against the Cold War: The American Committee on East-West Accord and the Retreat from Détente’ (master’s thesis, Ohio University, 2013). Cohen became increasingly apologetic towards Russia. See Cathy Young, ‘Putin’s Pal’, Slate, July 24, 2014, <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/07/stephen-cohen-vladimir-putins-apologist-the-nation-just-published-the-most-outrageous-defense-of-the-russian-president.html> (accessed 25 July 2022).

⁴⁹ Rijk Timmer, ‘Nederland stopt SS-20 opbouw niet’, Het Vrije Volk, 19 March 1985; Theo Koelé, ‘Die 48 raketten kunnen de Russen niets schelen’, Trouw, 21 March 1985.

⁵⁰ Frans Lurvink to Willem Oltmans, 12 May 1985, Folder: Correspondence 1984-1986, File 6: Correspondence 1985-1991, FL.

⁵¹ George Shultz, ‘Foreword’, in Jones, Track Two, ix. The first interview with Gorbachev in the Western media was secured by Time in its 9 September 1985 issue, which also included an assessment of the propaganda war by Evan Thomas (‘The Great War of Words’) that noted ‘The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Vladimir Lomeiko, has instituted regular on-the-record press briefings that now attract more newsmen in Moscow than the off-the-record backgrounders at the US embassy’.

⁵² Bovin’s position regarding New Thinking is amply illustrated by how he opened his anti-nuclear treatise The Imperative of the Nuclear Age (Moscow: Novosti, 1986) with a quote from Gorbachev: ‘The time urgently demands a new understanding of the present stage in the development of civilization, of international relations, of the world.’ See also ‘Obituary: Alexander Bovin’, The Times, 5 May 2004, <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/alexander-bovin-s35bqz5h5vq> (accessed 26 July 2022).

⁵³ ‘In and Around the Alerdinck Castle’, журналист [Journalist], November 1985; ‘In the Spirit of Geneva’, советKAя россия [Soviet Russia], 29 November 1985; ‘Let’s Communicate’, Izvestia, 29 November 1985; ‘Geneva and Journalists’, Soviet Culture, 30 November 1985.

⁵⁴ Martin Walker, ‘Critics Forum’, The Guardian, 23 December 1985.

⁵⁵ Robert van de Roer, ‘Eerste stapje van Alerdinck op weg naar détente’, NRC Handelsblad, 15 March 1986.

⁵⁶ ‘Between the Summits’, Alerdinck East-West Media Conference IV, 2 May 1986.

⁵⁷ The proceedings were later published: Robert Manoff and Gerd Ruge, eds., Between the Summits: Proceedings of an International Conference om Media Coverage of Soviet-American Relations, Nuclear Issues, and Everyday Life (New York: Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, 1988).

⁵⁸ For a detailed account of the disaster and its aftermath see Kate Brown, Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Survival (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020).

⁵⁹ Serge Schmemann, ‘Soviet announces nuclear accident at electric plant’, New York Times, 29 April 1986.

⁶⁰ ‘Soviet: It was human error’, New York Daily News, 3 May 1986.

⁶¹ Victoria Irwin, ‘US, Soviet journalists scrutinize each other’s coverage of Chernobyl’, Christian Science Monitor, 5 May 1986.

⁶² Alexander Amerisov, ‘A chronology of Soviet media coverage’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42 (1986): 38–9.

⁶³ Quoted in Rick Lyman, ‘US and Soviet reporters’ views on Chernobyl a world apart’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 May 1986.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ ‘De Alerdinck Foundation en Tsjernobyl’, Vrij Nederland, 12 July 1985.

⁶⁶ Robert Manoff, ‘Soviet Sensibilities’, The Progressive, 50 (August 1986), 14.

⁶⁷ Craig Waters, ‘Silicon Steppe’, Inc., 1 January 1984, <https://www.inc.com/magazine/19840101/1407.html> (accessed 26 July 2022); ‘US Policy in a Changing World’, C-Span, 23 June 1990, <https://www.c-span.org/video/?12870-1/us-policy-changing-world> (accessed 26 July 2022).

⁶⁸ Grace Kennan Warnecke, Daughter of the Cold War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), 213–14.

⁶⁹ W. Weenink, ‘Kwaliteit van de Oost-Westhandel moet verbeteren’, NRC Handelsblad, 24 June 1986.

⁷⁰ Gerd Ruge, Closing Statement, Vienna III: New Horizons in East-West Trade, June 1986, Alerdick Foundation: Center for East-West Communications, n.d. [1986), 5.

⁷¹ Daniloff was almost certainly arrested in reprisal for the apprehension of Soviet scientific attaché Gennadii Zakharov a week before. See Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents, 234–41.

⁷² Pozner’s memoir covers the Space Bridges project: Vladimir Pozner, Parting with Illusions: The Extraordinary Life and Controversial Views of the Soviet Union’s Leading Commentator (New York: Harper Collins, 1991). See also Ellen Mickiewicz, Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Helene Keyssar, ‘Space Bridges: The US-Soviet Space Bridge Resource Center’, PS: Political Science & Politics 27 (1994): 247–53; Nicholas J. Cull, ‘The Forgotten Process: Information Disarmament in the Soviet/US rapprochement of the 1980s’, Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University: International Relations 14 (2021): 257–72.

⁷³ Grossman to Lurvink, October 17, 1986, Folder: Correspondence 1985-1991, File 6: Correspondence 1985-1991, FL.

⁷⁴ Soviet Advocacy and the US Media, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, October 1986, Appendix B. Between 1983 and 1985 there had been 138 appearances by Soviet diplomats, scientists, and journalists on US television broadcasters, with Vladimir Pozner at the top of the list with 21 (mostly on ABC). Arbatov was third with 12.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 7.

⁷⁶ ‘Soviet Media’s portrait of the United States’, CSPAN, 1986, <https://archive.org/details/CSPAN3_20171226_192200_Reel_America_Soviet_Medias_Portrait_of_the_United_States-_1986/start/180/end/240> (accessed 29 July 2022).

⁷⁷ Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents, 244.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 246.

⁷⁹ Soviet-Dutch meeting on European security and disarmament issues, Moscow, 27-29 January 1987, P. 9619, op. 1, d. 129, State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).

⁸⁰ Jim Hoagland, ‘A shower for Shultz, then a speech for the comrades’, International Herald Tribune, 29 October 1987; ‘An uncommon castle for Europe’, The Economist, 31 October 1987, 48; Neal Ascherson, ‘Why the West still has bad dreams’, The Observer, 30 October 1987. La Stampa used the conference to interview Valentin Falin, see ‘L’URSS non ripetera errori del passato’, 30 October 1987.

⁸¹ Frans Lurvink to Alerdinck board members, March 1989, Folder: Alerdinck Foundation inc. Journalists Program 1988-1994, File 7: 1988-2001, FL.

⁸² Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, ‘Eine Brücke zwischen West und Ost’, Die Zeit, 9 December 1988; Flora Lewis, ‘Tell it straight to Gorbachev’, New York Times, 4 December 1988.

⁸³ Hubert Smeets, ‘Conferentie op particuliere initiatief’, NRC Handelsblad, 16 March 1985.

⁸⁴ ‘Where we have come from’, Alerdinck Tribune, November 1985, 3.

⁸⁵ Lurvink to Lubbers, 15 November 1985, Folder: Correspondence 1985-1991, File 6: Correspondence 1985-1991, FL.

⁸⁶ Stephen Cohen, ‘Americans and Soviets’, Alerdinck Tribune, November 1985, 6.

⁸⁷ Charles Hauser, ‘Approaching the Russians: New England editors ‘embarked on this adventure with the Soviets with no illusions’’, Alerdinck Tribune, May 1986, 11.

⁸⁸ ‘De Alerdinck Foundation en Tsjernobyl’, Vrij Nederland, 12 July 1985; Tom Gervasi, ‘The Lessons of Chernobyl: How America’s press covered the event’, Alderdinck Tribune, November 1986, 12.

⁸⁹ Overall, the official cost of Alerdincks I-VI during 1984-86 came in at $319,487, not including preparatory expenditures. Financial Report, 1-7-1984 – 31-12-1986, Kooij en Partners, 18 March 1987, FA732A, Grants, A-B, Reel 6244, Alerdinck Foundation 1988-1991, FF RAC.

⁹⁰ The Alerdinck papers include a copy of Charles Hauser, ‘Impressions of Russia: Grim façade, inner warmth’, Providence Sunday Journal, 29 September 1985. See also Jane Hartford, Esalen’s Half-Century of Pioneering Cultural Initiatives 1962 to 2019 (Sausalito: Esalen Institute, 2019), 8-11.

⁹¹ Enid Schoettle to Paul Balaran, Gary Sick, and Tom Bayard, 15 September 1986, FA732A, Grants, A-B, Reel 6244, Alerdinck Foundation 1988-1991, FF RAC.

⁹² See Volker Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

⁹³ ‘A Proposal to the Ford Foundation’, December 1986, FA732A, Grants, A-B, Reel 6244, Alerdinck Foundation 1988-1991, FF RAC.

⁹⁴ Geri Mannion to Schoettle, 13 April 1988, and Lurvink to Schoettle, April 23, 1988, Ibid.

⁹⁵ ‘The Alerdinck East-West Journalists Exchange Program (USA – Soviet Union)’, Ibid.

⁹⁶ Lurvink to Hilary Palmer [Rockefeller Brothers Fund], 17 November 1987, Folder 78: Alerdinck Foundation 1986-1994, Box 14, Subgroup 3.3, RG3, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, FF RAC.

⁹⁷ Enid Schoettle to Susan Berresford, 22 September 1988, FA732A, Grants, A-B, Reel 6244, Alerdinck Foundation 1988-1991, FF RAC.

⁹⁸ ‘Interim Report: AFS/Alerdinck Journal Exchange Program, May-June 1989’, July 1989, Folder: Alerdinck Foundation inc. Journalists Program 1988-1994, File 7: 1988-2001, FL.

⁹⁹ See Giles Scott-Smith, ‘Sites of Exchange: Locating Mobility in Cold War Internationalisms’, in Educational internationalisms in the Global Cold War, eds. Damiano Matasci and Raphaelle Ruppen Coutaz (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

¹⁰⁰ ‘Alerdinck Journalism Fellowship Program – Funding Proposal’, May 1990, FA732A, Grants, A-B, Reel 6244, Alerdinck Foundation 1988-1991, FF RAC.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² David Goldberg, ‘1990 Alerdinck Fellowship Program: An Informal Report from David Goldberg’, n.d. [1990], and ‘Alerdinck Journalism Fellowship Program 1990/1991 – Narrative Report’, 27 December 1990, Folder: Alerdinck Foundation inc. Journalists Program 1988-1994, File 7: 1988-2001, FL.

¹⁰³ Frans Lurvink to William Moody, 9 March 1993, Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ De Roer, ‘Eerste stapje’.

¹⁰⁵ Occasionally the value of creating ‘a web of mutual accessibility’ across the blocs was acknowledged, see Herman Sandberg, ‘Alerdinck – nuttig Oost-West forum? I’, Het Parool, 27 October 1987, and ‘Alerdinck – nuttig Oost-West forum? II’, Het Parool, 30 October 1987.

¹⁰⁶ Becker, Soviet and Russian Press, 37–64.

¹⁰⁷ See Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 8–72.

¹⁰⁸ Alexander Stafford, ‘The role of the media during the Cold War’, E-IR, 26 October 2013, <https://www.e-ir.info/2013/10/26/the-role-of-the-media-during-the-cold-war/> (accessed 29 July 2022).

¹⁰⁹ Quoted in ‘Vriendelijke Oost-West krant in Genève positief ontvangen’, Het Binnenhof, 19 November 1985.

¹¹⁰ ‘Summits for the Television Audiences’, Alerdinck Tribune, November 1986, 10.

¹¹¹ Samuel Rachlin, correspondence with author, 19 February 2021.