Builders and Dissectors

This chapter examines a series of meetings of anti-communist organizations in West Germany from 1951 to 1953 devoted to creating a united-front organization of Soviet exiles. The project, supported by a CIA front organization called the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc. (Amcomlib), had the unanticipated consequence of launching a many-sided debate about national identities. Inadvertently, the Americans spearheaded a virtual dismemberment of Russian nationhood, as ethnic Russians promoted a conception of Russia as a multiethnic nation and non-Russian exile groups invited to take part defended national self-determination for their peoples.