Overview

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA committed to supporting Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War Two or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA's Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA's patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

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9780198880691

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Reviews

Detailed, well written and accessible to general readers, the book mines rich veins of paradox and complexity. * Gregory Feifer, Times Literary Supplement * With lively stories from the everyday of espionage, Tromly shows how Cold War spy operations moved between borders and national groups. Scholars of Cold War intelligence, postwar Germany, and the transnational aspects of Russian history will want to read this book. * Seth Bernstein, University of Florida, Gainesville, Canadian Slavonic Papers * Cold War Exiles and the CIA makes a strong case against covert action programs conducted by inexperienced intelligence officers and supervised by managers overseen by politicians, all seeking outcomes not supported by operational reality. * Studies in Intelligence * Tromly's book...will remain an essential guide to the murky world of covert operations, anti-Soviet plots, and propaganda in the early Cold War. * Mark Edele, University of Melbourne, Australian Book Review * For those interested in topics both directly and tangentially related to the focus of the book, Cold War Exiles and the CIA unquestionably provides interesting lessons and insights and is a welcome addition to the literature. * Mate Nikola Tokic, Cold War History *

Author Information

Benjamin Tromly is Professor of History at University of Puget Sound, where he teaches Russian and European History. He is the author of Making the Soviet Intelligentsia: Universities and Intellectual Life under Stalin and Khrushchev.

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