As the Winter Olympic games get under way in Sochi, the American press appears to be extra sensitive about getting the ‘real story’ out of Russia lest they be tagged propagandists for what many in the United States still see as ‘the evil empire’.  Truth be told, while we’re no longer talking about the communist Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and its oligarchy remain a far cry from the iconic New England town meeting, and Pussy Riot travels to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn to perform unhampered.

During the 1960s there was a small effort by WNYC to bridge the cultural, if not political, divide by periodically airing some English language Radio Moscow programs. They were mostly arts and music related shows, but it appears a few other genres occasionally made it to air. Among them, an April, 1965 marking of Cosmonautics Day, an appeal to U.S. women by Soviet first lady Nina Khrushchev and an edition of Moscow Mailbag which debunks common myths about Russia.

An excerpt of Nina Khrushchev’s 1962 ‘Appeal to the Women of the United States of America’ for world peace.

Excerpts from Moscow Mailbag

Cosmonautics Day Program from 1965

But this type of broadcast, despite being clearly identified as Radio Moscow and not WNYC, as instructed by city attorneys, eventually ran afoul of cold warriors who took their complaint to the top: J. Edgar Hoover.

WNYC’s FBI file is a curious collection of memoranda between assorted and unnamed SACs (special agents in charge) at the New York bureau and the Director’s office in Washington, D.C. Among the later entries is a United Press report and SAC follow-up from May, 1969 about the anti-Communist Latvian language newspaper Laiks publishing a story titled, “Moscow Propaganda on the New York City Radio Station.”

The stories take WNYC to task for broadcasting Radio Moscow propaganda tapes “regarding occupied Latvia, which attempted to create the impression, by statistical manipulation, that the Communist way of life has transformed Latvia into a paradise on earth.” The Latvians wanted equal time. While it’s not clear if they ever got to make their case on the air, they certainly got the attention of the FBI.

According to the Bureau’s informant at WNYC in October, 1969, it was not clear who initiated the relationship with Radio Moscow, but that it had begun about few years earlier “as a result of some cultural exchange program.” Indeed, WNYC and other educational stations played tapes from a number of international broadcasters at the time as part of a periodic cultural series worked out with the non-profit Broadcasting Foundation of America.

The somewhat defensive mole at WNYC, however, noted that the Soviet shows are not presented on a regular basis nor does the station allow for news commentary to be heard. These shows, if received, “are automatically discarded.” The blacked-out WNYC source indicated the station was primarily concerned with airing cultural programs and that these tapes were edited by WNYC staff so that “information known to be false, a distortion of the truth, or pure propaganda in nature, is edited out before being presented to the listening public.” Presumably then, the few tapes we have since located in the archives were aired except perhaps for this edition of Lenin’s Family. 

While this tape didn’t end up in the garbage, it seems unlikely WNYC aired it, since someone did write “prop” on the tape box, presumably for “propaganda.” According to the broadcast, Lenin’s mother did not focus on dress and idle gossip. His father made sure he had a great work ethic and didn’t read trashy novels. To be sure, it is heartwarming, in a Soviet sort of way.

Fortunately for students and scholars of the former Soviet Union, these items have been saved and can now be listened to as artifacts of the Cold War ‘from the other side.’ Whether there’s any similarity between these broadcasts and what we hear from Sochi, well, we report, you decide.

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This wasn’t the first time WNYC was accused of being a propaganda arm of the Russian government. Back in 1938 a series of Soviet travelogues promoted by a subsidiary of the American Express Company provoked a City Council investigation of the station and its manager Morris Novik. For more on the 1938 controversy see: Communist Propaganda or Capitalist Commercial? A 1930s WNYC Broadcast is Mired in Controversy.

Audio courtesy of the New York City Department of Records/Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Special thanks to Katrina Dixon and Danielle Cordovez at the NYPL Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound.

On display in Special Collections from January 15 to May 15 is an exhibit titled, Observing Africa: The Life and Career of Stuart Marks. 

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At the recent conference on the Berlin Wall, the Director of the National Declassification Center (NDC) announced that the NDC completed the quality assurance review of the nearly 352 million pages that constitute the backlog of classified Federal records in the custody of the National Archives.  The backlog was a result of previous reviews of poor quality conducted under the automatic declassification provisions established in 1995.  Errors made during those reviews precluded public access. The President directed agencies in his 2009 Implementing Memorandum to review these records by the end of 2013.   During this review, the NDC used a sampling methodology that focused on identifying information missed in prior reviews concerning the identity of human intelligence sources and key design concepts of weapons of mass destruction.  The completion of this quality assurance review is a major step in making these records available.  The PIDB congratulates the National Archives, the NDC staff, and the staff from all agencies who participated in the exceptional task of reviewing these records.  This is a historic accomplishment worthy of recognition.

The mission of the NDC is “to advance the declassification and public release of historically valuable permanent records while maintaining national security.”  In creating the NDC in 2009, the President directed agencies to work more collaboratively with each other, streamline processes, improve quality, and develop standardized training to achieve this goal.  Conducting the quality assurance review of the backlog and implementing new processes to keep new backlogs from forming are two critical steps forward as the NDC works with agencies to improve declassification at the National Archives and across Government.  We salute your efforts thus far.

The PIDB, the NDC, agencies and the public recognize that challenges and impediments remain.  There is still critical work needed to address persisting problems that inhibit public access to these historically significant records.  Agencies continue to perform the same page-by-page, pass/fail reviews and use the same risk management practices (that adopt little to no risk) as they have for decades.  The way agencies implement Kyl-Lott certification continues to pose a serious obstacle to making records fully available, requiring cumbersome reviews.   A public release rate of just 61% during the reviews demonstrates that agencies still make too many unnecessary referrals to each other.  Additionally, many important series of records still require privacy and access screening before being made available in the research room.  Clearly, we need better risk management and process reforms to improve access.

Despite the recent NDC success, the NDC continues to need support if it is to continue its mission.   The way forward should include not only a prioritization plan, but also a commitment to strengthening and modernizing processes and technology at the NDC and agencies.  In our 2012 Report to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System, the PIDB recommended that the President strengthen the role and authority of the NDC.  The NDC already proved its worth through its backlog accomplishments – and our recommendations, if adopted, will build on that success.  Among our other recommendations is a call for a Government-wide declassification policy, led by the NDC, to implement a fully integrated approach to the review of historical records.  This action would eliminate many of the referrals now holding up public access to the records.  We recommended the piloting and adoption of new technologies and risk management practices to increase access to historical records and prepare for the upcoming automatic declassification of born-digital records.  With careful policy and process improvements, we also see an opportunity to provide greater access to obsolete historical nuclear information of our Government, a truly transformational reform.  These changes, and many others, will modernize the declassification system for the 21st century and greatly improve public access.

Prioritization remains a challenge and is of particular importance to the public and to the PIDB.   Meeting the December 31, 2013 deadline to complete the review of the backlog understandably took precedence in managing the NDC, but now we believe there is an opportunity to improve the way the Government prioritizes records at the NDC and across agencies.  The PIDB proposes the NDC considers prioritization as an important and meaningful step forward in making records fully accessible to the public, including younger records and born-digital records typically not selected for review.  We hope the declassification priority topics the PIDB is soliciting on our blog and that our upcoming report on our findings will produce a framework to assist the NDC and agencies in their efforts to focus their limited resources on making access available to those records most sought after by requesters.

The PIDB commends the NDC and agencies for working together and with great transparency, and under challenging conditions often not under their control (the partial shutdown of the government was one such challenge).  We recognize that under these constraints, many challenges still impede access to and the full release of the entire backlog of records.  The PIDB understands there is still much work to be done on the backlog and on newly accessioned records at the NDC.  We look forward to working with the NDC to build upon your accomplishments thus far.

From the July, 1944 WQXR Program Guide:

Mrs. Sternberger has been a WQXR commentator for over four years, presenting her “Washington Front” program each Monday through Friday at 5:15 P.M. Before coming to radio she was a newspaper-woman whose travels had taken her to all major European countries, most of Asia and part of South America. 

Because of the great interest in the news at this time,we have asked Mrs. Sternberger to give her views on what she feels a commentator’s responsibility is to the listening public in this crisis.

Radio’s reporting job in covering its first war has been a good one, commanding the respect of all. It reached its peak of efficiency on D-Day when, after days of nervous waiting, H-Hour finally arrived. No one in radio was found napping, least of all the commentator whose job has become one of the important factors of radio. He must be the eye and ear of the listener.

What should be the respective roles of the public and the commentator in this tremendous sweep of events? Should the commentator bend to public opinion? Or should public opinion defer to commentators? The intelligent listener and the intelligent commentator reject both of the proposals implied in those questions.

Public opinion must be respected. But the commentator must be sufficiently alert to recognize when the public or a group swaying public opinion is using its power the wrong way. The commentator must hold his ground. It is here that the commentator commands the respect of the listener in being able to weed out the rumor from the truth.

The commentator cannot indulge in blatant cheers as victory piles on victory, and America’s casualties mount with those victories. He must be conscious of the mother who may be sitting at her radio asking herself whether her son is yet alive. The words of the commentator must spare her additional anguish, and help provide the comfort and strength for which this mother is searching.

During the months and years leading up to the Invasion Day, commentators and the public alike had much to say concerning it. When the record of this war is written, some people may have cause to regret their strident campaign for a Second Front. And the commentators who failed to hold their ground and bowed to that clamor, may suffer a few pulls of conscience.

It is quite understandable why so many Americans reacted in that way. The Russian people were being bled by the Nazi armies. Furthermore, Americans had been fed, during the first seven months of this war, with stories that suggested this was a “phony war.” These stories implied that if the British and French had only possessed the will to fight, the Nazis could have been held inside the borders of Germany.

Later, people failed to make allowance for the fact that our formal entrance into the war, after Pearl Harbor, injected a new spirit into the ranks of the Allies. We needed time, and not public pressure, to mobilize our resources of manpower and material.

Public opinion, after Pearl Harbor, often often failed to separate the purely military issues from those that were honeycombed with political factors. It was indeed the business of the people to tell their heads of state and military officials that Marshall Tito was more useful to the cause of democracy than was General Mikhailovitch; that it was wiser to rely on General de Gaulle than on Admiral Darlan or General Giraud. But it was not the business of the people to attempt to tell our military leaders where and when to make the next move on the international chessboard of global strategy.

When the troops landed in France, the public cheers broke all bounds. Those cheers, in some instances, took the forms of exultant predictions that the Allies would be in Paris in a few days, and in Berlin in a few weeks. Some endorsed the overenthusiastic reports from the other side that the mighty Atlantic Wall of the Nazis had turned out to be a cardboard fortress magnified to impregnability by Hitler’s propaganda machine. The hospitals of Great Britain in the very first days disproved that. The commentator must resist those manifestations of the public’s enthusiasm that tend to distort the magnitude of the job confronting us. He or she can bring the public down from the stratosphere of exuberant imagination to the earthly level of realistic perspective.

Some sections of the public, and even the White House, in the early stages of our participation in this war, advised that we forget political and social issues, and get on with the war. There was no hour, they said, for pushing social or international reform.

By now we have arrived at a more balanced judgement on those questions. We now see that we must do more than follow maps of military progress. We must watch the diplomatic bulletins that come from the White House, from Downing Street, from the Kremlin, and from Chungking. We shall have to keep our sights on the political battles inside Italy and on the moves of General de Gaulle. The commentator must be on the job during this critical military stage to help the public keep the diplomatic, economic and postwar issues in the clear.

If the commentators meet that responsibility well, the public may be spared much disillusionment. The commentators need a loyal public. And the public needs courageous commentators, loyal to the people.

(Photo: Correspondent Estelle Sternberger, Bain News Service/Library of Congress)

Title page of The White Wampum (read digitized version from HathiTrust)

The last time we posted about the Kim-Wait/Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection was in November, and Mike happened to mention a 1931 biography called The Mohawk Princess. The subject of that biography was E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) also known as Tekahionwake. Thanks to the Kim-Wait/Eisenberg collection, we now hold first edition copies of all six of Johnson’s books. Johnson was one of the first Native American women to publish poetry and prose, and “one of Canada’s leading poets of the late nineteenth century…notable because she celebrated her Mohawk heritage at a time when it was not fashionable; she wrote about the Canadian landscape from a native perspective.”¹

Emily Pauline Johnson was born on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. Her father was a Mohawk leader named George Henry Martin Johnson and her mother was Emily Susanna Howells, born in England. Johnson’s writing style reflects the influence of the English Romantics as well as stories learned from her paternal grandfather. Johnson published poems in newspapers and magazines in the 1880s and 1890s.

Portrait frontispiece of E. Pauline Johnson from Canadian Born (1903)

Beginning in 1892, she began to perform her works at “literary evenings” and recitals. The money she made from these performances financed her first trip to England in 1894.  “…She carried numerous letters of introduction which opened doors of London society to her. Both as a performer and as a guest at many social evenings given by aristocratic London hostesses, she was the hit of the season…[London] granted her the status of being “both the cultivated lady and the princess from the primeval forests” that she had been trying so hard to establish in Canada. In London she also achieved her goal of finding a publisher for her poetry manuscript when the Bodley Head, foremost publisher of all new English poetry, accepted The White Wampum.”²

Portrait frontispiece from The Moccasin Maker (1913)

She continued to perform readings (including on the Chautauqua circuit) all across North America throughout her life, until forced to stop by her battle with cancer. In her final years, she published three books of prose stories and essays. She had settled in Vancouver, and some of her best work came from a collaboration with Joe Capilano, a Squamish chief. She published the stories in the Vancouver Daily Province, and then gathered them together in Legends of Vancouver in 1911. As she explains in her foreword to the volume:

These legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me personally by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of Vancouver, whom I had the privilege of first meeting in London … To the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook tongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I owe the friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me when I came to reside on the Pacific Coast. These legends he told me from time to time, just as the mood possessed him, and he frequently remarked that they had never been revealed to any other English-speaking person save myself.

Works of E. Pauline Johnson.

When she died in March of 1913, her funeral procession in Vancouver passed by mourners lining the streets, public offices were closed and flags flew at half-mast. Her ashes were buried in Stanley Park. If your curiosity is peaked, and you want to learn more, I highly recommend Charlotte Gray’s biography Flint and Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake (2002).

¹ “Johnson, Emily Pauline,” American Indian Biographies, Rev. ed., (Salem Press, 2005), 235.

² Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown, Introduction to The Moccasin Maker, by E. Pauline Johnson, (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1987), 8-9.

Yesterday we were privileged to host two special advance screenings of The Monuments Men, one especially for the staff of the National Archives.  Thanks to the generosity of Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and Robert Edsel, author of The Monuments Men upon which the film is based for making this possible. The film will open in theaters around the country on February 7^th.

In our East Rotunda Gallery, through the 19^th of February, our featured document is an Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) album that records artwork looted by the Nazis during the Second World War – one of a series of photo albums created for Adolph Hitler’s benefit to document the Nazis’ systematic looting of cultural treasures and to serve as a pick list for his planned museum in Linz after the war. The Army’s Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program recruited the group known as the Monuments Men (although there were also Monuments Women), and they used these albums to return treasures to their rightful owners. The volume on display is one of several recently discovered albums donated to the National Archives by Robert Edsel, the president of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. The newly discovered albums supplement the 40 already in the custody of the National Archives.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by … [ Read all ]

This year marks the 50th anniversary of what some call “the most important public health document of the 20th century”: the Surgeon General’s first Report on Smoking and Health.

The report was the defining work of Surgeon General Luther Terry, newly appointed to the position by John F. Kennedy (himself a cigar smoker, although rarely in public). Although it was not the first such study, it “hit the country like a bombshell. It was front page news and a lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad.”

Even if you watch Mad Men, the percentage of smokers in the US at the time seems mind-blowing: it was estimated that 42% of adults smoked cigarettes around the report came out on January 11, 1964. Despite a decline shortly after publication, smoking rates climbed back up later that year  —a fact that Terry lamented on WNYC that summer. Of course, tobacco companies attacked the evidence relentlessly, most infamously through their industry-sponsored Tobacco Institute, while also continuing to advertise the benefits of cigarettes, presented as everything from “soothing to your throat” to “just what the doctor ordered” (!).

But the dam was cracking. A flood of additional evidence poured in over the decades; government at the federal and state level stepped in with labeling and regulations; smoking rates steadily declined and eventually, the grip of tobacco companies loosened on US soils, preferring to seek new market opportunities abroad. Despite that, smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. –although, since 1964, few are unaware of its effects anymore.

Bonus: Listen to Philip Hilts, author of Smokescreen, speak to Lopate in 1996:

We are greatly anticipating this coming Tuesday, February 4, 2014, for our official, celebratory opening event for the Claude and ZerNona Black Papers. Here is the information for the event.

An exhibit accompanies the event, and opens Monday, February 3, 2014 — we will have a large video display with two silent, 16mm movies to view, as well as an audio station with a playlist to listen to a selection of sermons, music, and speeches. The exhibit is located in Special Collections and Archives, 2nd Floor, Coates Library, and will be up throughout February, Black History Month. We hope to see you here!

The National Archives is proud to join other federal agencies in support of the “It Gets Better Project.” Our participation in this project represents an opportunity for federal agencies and employees to openly talk about issues, share messages and stories of hope, and provide resources for support.

Thanks to all the NARA staff across the country who shared their stories and supported this project. And remember, it truly does get better.… [ Read all ]

The University of Stirling Archives is delighted to announce a new exhibition presenting a selection of foreign editions of Iain Banks’ novels from his personal collection.  The exhibition highlights the international appeal of Banks’ fiction and shows the variety of ways his work was presented in different countries around the world.  The volumes on display are part of a larger collection of almost 200 editions of Banks’ work translated into a range of languages and designed to reflect the tastes of readers in a range of markets including France, Germany, Israel, Russia and South Korea.

Detail from a Japanese edition of The Player of Games.

The exhibition also features a book sculpture commemorating Iain Banks which was presented to the University by the Edinburgh International Book Festival last September.  The sculpture is part of a set produced by an anonymous artist celebrating literature and the love of words. It represents Banks’ 1992 novel The Crow Road and is accompanied by a tribute to the writer from author Ian Rankin. The exhibition is on display in the Archives & Special Collections area of the University Library and runs until Friday 4^th April.

The book sculpture which forms the centrepiece of the exhibition.

Iain Banks was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed Scottish novelists of his generation, and an alumnus of the University of Stirling. The University is delighted to be working with his estate to collect and preserve an archive of his working papers and make this material available to researchers with an interest in his work.

Interviewed by the University for an alumni profile Banks reflected on his time at Stirling:

“I did get in a lot of writing… as well as a fair amount of walking in the hills. What I remember most keenly is the wonderful feeling of freedom of being there, and the sheer intoxication of living and working in a place devoted to learning, to the pursuit of knowledge. I still smile when I think of the place, the time, and my years at Stirling were some of the happiest and most productive of my life. All that, plus I got to be an extra in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, How cool was that?”

Some examples of Banks’ student writing can be found amongst the University’s own archives in the pages of the creative writing journal Cairn. Launched in Spring 1973 Cairn featured poetry and prose written by students and staff of the University, including the poet Norman McCaig. The journal is one of several student titles which are held in the University Archives along with a full run of the student newspaper Brig, which was first published in 1969.

Cover of the first issue of Cairn, Spring 1973.

If you’re in Providence (or anywhere else nearby), here are a pair of February events at the Library that you shouldn’t miss.

One week from today we’ll have the opening of an exhibition by two artists, Agata Michalowska and Andrew Oesch, who have been working with PPL Special Collections materials (particularly the Wetmore Collection) to create new art. The exhibition (on display in the Level 3 hallway outside Special Collections) will give offer a chance to see historical materials and their transformation into contemporary art. On February 3rd at 6:00 pm, Andrew and Agata will discuss the process in a lecture in the 3rd Floor Meeting Room. More information and online signup here.

And if you’re planning even farther out in the month,  save space for our February 27th event. We’ll be opening a new exhibition on the printer and typographer Giambattista Bodoni, who dieed 200 years ago, in the Providence Journal Rhode Island Room. Our opening event will feature a lecture by prestigious type designer Matthew Carter, who will discuss the role of historical research in type design. It’s a fitting topic for a night on which we’ll also be launching the Updike Prize for Student Type Design, a competition to reward undergraduate and graduate students who use the Updike Collection and then go on to design their own typefaces inspired by their research. More information about the event and online signup form here.