Origins on 1 July 1952 showing Picasso's dove above the stage, banner reading "Germany must be a land of Peace" In August 1948 through the initiative of the
Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) a "
World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace" was held in
Wrocław, Poland. This gathering established a permanent organisation called the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace—a group which joined with another international Communist organisation, the
Women's International Democratic Federation to convene a second international conclave in
Paris in April 1949, a meeting designated the World Congress of Partisans for Peace (Congrès Mondial des Partisans de la Paix).
Lawrence Wittner, a historian of the post-war peace movement, argues that the Soviet Union devoted great efforts to the promotion of the WPC in the early post-war years because it feared an American attack and American superiority of arms
Julian Huxley, the chair of
UNESCO, chaired the meeting in the hope of bridging Cold War divisions, but later wrote that "there was no discussion in the ordinary sense of the word." Speakers delivered lengthy condemnation of the West and praises of the Soviet Union.
Albert Einstein had been invited to send an address, but when the organisers found that it advocated world government and that his representative refused to change it, they substituted another document by Einstein without his consent, leaving Einstein feeling that he had been badly used.
Paris and Prague 1949 The World Congress of Partisans for Peace in Paris (20 April 1949) repeated the Cominform line that the world was divided between "a non-aggressive Soviet group and a war-minded imperialistic group, headed by the United States government". One delegate to the Congress, the Swedish artist , heard no spontaneous contributions or free discussions, only prepared speeches, and described the atmosphere there as "agitated", "aggressive" and "warlike". A speech given at Paris by
Paul Robeson—the
polyglot lawyer,
folksinger, and actor son of a
runaway slave—was widely quoted in the American press for stating that
African Americans should not and would not fight for the United States in any prospective war against the
Soviet Union; following his return, he was subsequently
blacklisted and his passport confiscated for years. The Congress was disrupted by the French authorities who refused visas to so many delegates that a simultaneous Congress was held in Prague." and was subsequently adopted as the symbol of the WPC.
Sheffield and Warsaw 1950 In 1950, the World Congress of the Supporters of Peace adopted a permanent constitution for the World Peace Council, which replaced the Committee of Partisans for Peace. It was originally scheduled for Sheffield but the British authorities, who wished to undermine the WPC, refused visas to many delegates and the Congress was forced to move to Warsaw. British Prime Minister
Clement Attlee denounced the Congress as a "bogus forum of peace with the real aim of sabotaging national defence" and said there would be a "reasonable limit" on foreign delegates. Among those excluded by the government were Frédéric Joliot-Curie,
Ilya Ehrenburg,
Alexander Fadeyev, and
Dmitri Shostakovich. The number of delegates at Sheffield was reduced from an anticipated 2,000 to 500, half of whom were British. through the
Soviet Peace Committee, although it tended not to present itself as an organ of Soviet foreign policy, but rather as the expression of the aspirations of the "peace loving peoples of the world". In its early days the WPC attracted numerous "political and intellectual superstars",
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Diego Rivera,
Muhammad al-Ashmar and
Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Most were Communists or
fellow travellers. In the 1950s, congresses were held in
Vienna, Berlin, Helsinki and Stockholm. resulting in a more broad-based conference. Among those attending were
Jean-Paul Sartre and
Hervé Bazin. In 1955, another WPC meeting in Vienna launched an "Appeal against the Preparations for Nuclear War", with grandiose claims about its success. Following the
Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the WPC convened a conference in Helsinki in December 1956. Although there were reportedly "serious differences" regarding the Hungarian situation within both the WPC and national peace movements, the conference passed a unanimous resolution blaming the Hungarian government for the Soviet invasion, citing "the faults of an internal regime as well as their exploitation by foreign propagandists". The resolution also called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the restoration of Hungarian sovereignty. The WPC led the international peace movement in the decade after the Second World War, but its failure to speak out against the Soviet suppression of the
1956 Hungarian uprising and
the resumption of Soviet nuclear tests in 1961 marginalised it, and in the 1960s it was eclipsed by the newer, non-aligned peace organizations like the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. but they were compelled to join it when they saw how popular it was.
1960s Throughout much of the 1960s and early 1970s, the WPC campaigned against the US's role in the
Vietnam War.
Opposition to the Vietnam War was widespread in the mid-1960s and most of the anti-war activity had nothing to do with the WPC, which decided, under the leadership of
J. D. Bernal, to take a softer line with non-aligned peace groups in order to secure their co-operation. In particular, Bernal believed that the WPC's influence with these groups was jeopardized by China's insistence that the WPC give unequivocal support to
North Vietnam in the war. In 1968, the
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occasioned unprecedented dissent from Soviet policy within the WPC. It brought about such a crisis in the Secretariat that in September that year only one delegate supported the invasion. Several non-aligned peace groups who had distanced themselves from the WPC advised their supporters not to sign the Appeal.
Associated groups In accordance with the Comniform's 1950 resolution to draw into the peace movement trade unions, women's and youth organisations, scientists, writers and journalists, etc., several Communist
mass organisations supported the WPC, for example: •
Christian Peace Conference •
Women's International Democratic Federation From the 1950s until the late 1980s it tried to use non-aligned peace organizations to spread the Soviet point of view, alternately wooing and attacking them, either for their pacifism or their refusal to support the Soviet Union. Until the early 1960s there was limited co-operation between such groups and the WPC, but they gradually dissociated themselves as they discovered it was impossible to criticize the Soviet Union at WPC conferences. and Soviet defector
Vladimir Bukovsky claimed that they were co-ordinated at the WPC's 1980 World Parliament of Peoples for Peace in
Sofia. The FBI reported to the United States
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the WPC-affiliated
U.S. Peace Council was one of the organizers of a large 1982 peace protest in New York City, but said that the KGB had not manipulated the American movement "significantly."
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War was said to have had "overlapping membership and similar policies" to the WPC. and the
Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and the
Dartmouth Conferences were said to have been used by Soviet delegates to promote Soviet propaganda. As the non-aligned peace movement "was constantly under threat of being tarnished by association with avowedly pro-Soviet groups", many individuals and organizations "studiously avoided contact with Communists and fellow-travellers." Some western delegates walked out of the Wrocław conference of 1948, and in 1949 the
World Pacifist Meeting warned against active collaboration with Communists. In Britain,
CND advised local groups in 1958 not to participate in a forthcoming WPC conference. In the US,
SANE rejected WPC appeals for co-operation. A final break occurred during the WPC's 1962 World Congress for Peace and Disarmament in Moscow. The WPC had invited non-aligned peace groups, who were permitted to criticize Soviet nuclear testing, but when western activists including the British
Committee of 100 tried to demonstrate in
Red Square against Soviet weapons and the Communist system, their banners were confiscated and they were threatened with deportation. As a result of this confrontation, 40 non-aligned organizations decided to form a new international body, the
International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace, which was not to have Soviet members. From about 1982, following the proclamation of
martial law in Poland, the Soviet Union adopted a harder line with non-aligned groups, apparently because their failure to prevent the deployment of Cruise and
Pershing missiles. In December 1982, the Soviet Peace Committee President,
Yuri Zhukov, returning to the rhetoric of the mid-1950s, wrote to several hundred non-communist peace groups in Western Europe accusing the
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation of "fueling the cold war by claiming that both
NATO and the
Warsaw Pact bear equal responsibility for the arms race and international tension. Zhukov denounced the West Berlin Working Group for a Nuclear-Free Europe, organizers of a May 1983 European disarmament conference in Berlin, for allegedly siding with NATO, attempting to split the peace movement, and distracting the peaceloving public from the main source of the deadly threat posed against the peoples of Europe-the plans for stationing a new generation of nuclear missiles in Europe in 1983." also tried to attend the 1983 Assembly but were met with tear gas, arrests, and deportation to Hungary; Rainer Santi, in his history of the
International Peace Bureau, said that the WPC "always had difficulty in securing cooperation from West European and North American peace organisations because of its obvious affiliation with Socialist countries and the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Especially difficult to digest, was that instead of criticising the Soviet Union's unilaterally resumed atmospheric
nuclear testing in 1961, the WPC issued a statement rationalizing it. In 1979 the World Peace Council explained the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as an act of solidarity in the face of Chinese and US aggression against Afghanistan." Following the
1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the WPC lost most of its support, income and staff and dwindled to a small core group. Its international conferences now attract only a tenth of the delegates that its Soviet-backed conferences could attract (
see below), although it still issues statements couched in similar terms to those of its historic appeals. In 1957 it was banned by the Austrian government. It was invited to Prague but did not move there, In 1968 it re-assumed its name and moved to Helsinki, After the year 2000 and the shifting of the Head office to
Athens, its current finances derive exclusively from Membership Fees and contributions/donations by members and friends, based on the rules and regulations adopted in 2008, during the 19th Assembly of the WPC held in Caracas/Venezuela. The executive committee and Assemblies receive financial reports on income and expenses.
CIA measures against the WPC The
Congress for Cultural Freedom was founded in 1950 with the support of the
CIA to counter the propaganda of the emerging WPC, and
Phillip Agee claimed that the WPC was a Soviet front for propaganda which CIA covertly tried to neutralize and to prevent the WPC from organizing outside the Communist bloc. ==Current organisation==