Books as Weapons: The Line Between Art and Propaganda

All art is propaganda, he wrote George Orwell In 1940, “but not all propaganda is art.” Few would dare to argue with the second part of this quote. There is nothing artistic about the ghastly babblings of “Mein Kampf.” But the first part of Orwell’s claim only seems true if you use a broad definition of propaganda. Today, great works of art rarely serve the goals of a government. They may promote certain ideas, but that is usually not why people appreciate them. The books in the following list, however, partially confirm the first part of Orwell’s claim. Governments or ideological groups either encouraged their authors to write them or promoted their works for political purposes.

Famous writers throughout history have often found themselves at the crossroads between art and ideology, balancing personal expression and the pressures of socio-political circumstances. Their works have often served as tools of propaganda, whether consciously or unconsciously, shaping public opinion and paving the way for ideas that reflected the spirit of the times. In some cases, writers have agreed to be the messengers of ruling regimes, while others, guided by ethical principles, have used the pen as a weapon of resistance. Regardless of the context, their relationship to propaganda remains complex and multifaceted, raising questions about the boundaries between artistic freedom and the political instrumentalization of words.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin he once described writers as “engineers of the human soul” and argued that “the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.” He believed that literature was a powerful political tool, so much so that he was prepared to execute writers whose works he considered treasonous to the Soviet Union.

A similar comment was made by one of the CIA chiefs during the Cold War: “Books are distinguished from all other propaganda media primarily in that a single book can significantly change the attitude of the reader to an extent that cannot be compared with the influence of any other medium.” He also called books “the most important weapon of strategic propaganda.”

During the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies funded writers, sometimes very good ones. The CIA founded literary magazines in France, Japan and Africa. One aim was to counter the censorship of autocrats. Another was to make global culture more favorable to Western interests. British intelligence commissioned literary works that supported empire. Some writers consciously offered their pens to the state; others did not realize that governments or groups would promote their work. Here are six books, selected by the British Economist, all by noteworthy authors, that are - in one way or another - works of propaganda.

“The Eyes of Asia” by Rudyard Kipling

the role Rudyard Kipling as propagandists for the British Empire is often forgotten. British intelligence hired the writer during World War I to write fiction intended to weaken Indian nationalism. In 1916, a British official James Dunlop Smith sent Kipling private letters from Indian soldiers fighting in France. Smith asked Kipling to edit them to remove any pro-Indian or revolutionary sentiment. The American magazine The Saturday Evening Post published four such letters between May and June 1917 (three were published in the London Morning Post). Kipling only put his name to them when he collected them in a book called The Eyes of Asia. The writer told Dunlop Smith that in editing the letters he had “somewhat enhanced the spirit which he thought was behind them”. In reality, his edits were much more creative than that.

In turning the soldier's epistles into fiction, Kipling completely refined them. He removed complaints such as "we are like goats tied to a butcher's stake" and inserted admiring descriptions of Britain, presenting it as a country filled with "golden furniture, marble, silk, mirrors." British intelligence was pleased with what it read. Kipling asked Dunlop Smith if he had noticed any "faults in the caste or mental outlook of the characters." Apparently not. Many readers admired what one critic (writing about the novel "Kim")) called Kipling's “positive, detailed, and non-stereotypical portrait” of the Indian people. However, his role as a propagandist clouded his vision.

"Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak

During the Cold War, the CIA sought to undermine censorship in the Soviet Union by secretly encouraging the distribution of books and magazines. Spies sent novels Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy i Vladimir NabokovTheir favorite author was Boris pasternak. His novel “Doctor Zhivago” had “great propaganda value,” as a 1958 CIA memo noted. It may seem surprising to say this about a love story, but the CIA was interested not only in the “provocative nature” of the novel but also in “the circumstances of its publication.” Soviet literary magazines and publishing houses banned the book. One of them cited Pasternak’s “maliciousness” and his “unacceptance” of socialism as reasons.

The Soviets also didn’t like his religious zeal. An Italian literary agent smuggled the manuscript of “Doctor Zhivago” to Italy, where it was published in 1957. The CIA saw it as “an opportunity for Soviet citizens to start wondering what was wrong with their government, while at the same time a masterpiece of literature, by an author recognized as the greatest living Russian writer, could not be found in their own country.” The spy agency therefore published the book in Russian. It distributed more than 1.000 copies through agents in Eastern Europe and distributed them at the World’s Fair in Belgium in 1958. It hoped that publishing it in the original Russian language would pave the way for Pasternak to win the Nobel Prize. He won it, but the Soviets forced him to decline it. He did not live to see “Doctor Zhivago” become a blockbuster in 1965.

“Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi

Random Nafisi, an Iranian émigré and English teacher, rose to fame in 2003 when she published her memoir about the Islamic Revolution. “Reading Lolita in Tehran” became an immediate hit in the United States, where it remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 117 weeks. Every Thursday morning, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, during the dictatorship of the ayatollah Khomeini, the brave and inspired professor Azar Nafisi secretly gathers seven of her best female students in a secret literary workshop where they read and study banned classics of Western literature.

As Islamic morals squads raid Tehran, fundamentalists seize the university, and censors stifle artistic freedom, the girls at Azar Nafisi's literary workshop risk their lives by rejecting the law and immersing themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov. Azar Nafisi's story paints a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq War as experienced from Tehran, giving us a rare inside look at the life of a woman in revolutionary Iran. Ms. Nafisi's students are the children of the Islamic Republic who rebel against book bans and the "rotten and misleading exaggerations" of official rhetoric.

But the book owes a debt of gratitude to institutions that are not typical of literary memoirs. Azar Nafisi thanks the Smith Richardson Foundation, which seeks to “promote American interests and values ​​abroad,” for a grant that helped her write the book. “Only through literature can we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes,” Nafisi writes. For Western readers, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” is as enlightening as it was for her students. The book, which America still hopes will be influential, also upholds a harsh judgment on Iran’s ruling theocracy.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

America banned To Gabriel Garcia Marquez entry into the country for three decades because of his association with the Communist Party of Colombia in the 1950s. He was briefly a member of the party branch. However, the CIA-funded Colombian magazine Mundo Nuevo published two chapters of his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude a year before the book was published, in 1967. These excerpts did not include the story of the 1928 “Banana Massacre” of United Fruit workers, when the Colombian army, under US pressure, killed about 75 strikers.

What Mundo Nuevo published were descriptions of Colombia in a style that would later become known as magical realism. The magazine, which published mostly pro-American and anti-communist articles, also showed itself open to works from the political left. One CIA agent called this approach “fidelismo sin Fidel” (Fidelism without Fidel), a communist credo. Fidel Castro without his anti-American revolution. Marquez was furious when he learned that the magazine was funded by the CIA. In a letter to his editor Rodriguez Monegal, he wrote that he felt betrayed and like a cuckold.

"The Moon Has Set" by John Steinbeck

In June 1940, two days after the signing of the armistice between France and Germany, the future Nobel laureate John Steinbeck he wrote to the American president Franklin Roosevelt, suggesting that his administration conduct “immediate, controlled, and deliberate” propaganda. Steinbeck followed his own advice, writing the story to inspire the people of occupied Europe to rebel against the Nazis. The novel “The Moon Has Set” is set in an unnamed European country occupied by a fascist power.

This fictional country, Steinbeck writes, possesses the cruelty of Norway, the cunning of Denmark, and the intelligence of France. The invaders, led by Colonel Lanser, struggle to suppress the rebellion. Members of the anti-Nazi resistance translated the novel and smuggled it into Norway, Denmark, and France. In 1945, after the end of the war, the Norwegian king awarded Steinbeck the Order of Freedom of the Land for his contributions to European resistance movements.

“Partizani” by Peter Matthiesen

When the CIA was founded in 1947, it employed many graduates of Yale University. Peter Matisen was one of them. The agency sent him to Paris, where he used the cover of writing a novel, a story that his superior at the CIA in Paris considered “weak.” Mathisen did indeed write a novel in Paris, two in fact. The second, “Partisans,” follows Barney Sand, a Parisian reporter for an American news agency, on his quest to find the former leader of the French Communist Party, whom he hopes to interview. The communist had helped Sand escape the Spanish Civil War when he was a child. The novel displays such detailed knowledge of the workings of the party that the Chicago Tribune suggested in a review that its author should return to Moscow. Yet his sympathies were clearly with the West. Sand sees the communists as selfish and insincere, and his patriotism is growing. The self-conscious prose in which “Partisans” is written hints at the next phase of Mathisen’s career. He founded the Paris Review, a literary magazine that he also used as a front for spying on left-wing American artists and intellectuals who had settled in Paris. The CIA found it a much better front for its own espionage activities. Partisans is not Matthiessen's best work. He is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for both fiction and non-fiction. Yet, as he wanders through Paris, Sand reminds readers that Matthiessen did not observe his left-wing friends simply for the love of art.