The paper focuses on a nongovernmental organization which promoted transnational circulation of ideas and individuals across the Iron Curtain. Created in 1966, the Fondation pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne operated from France and Switzerland. It offered to intellectuals living under undemocratic regimes opportunities of socialization through the access not only to intellectual contents but also to a different “way of life”.
The paper examines the political and social conditions that allowed such an organization to come into being and to operate. It also considers its early affiliation with the Congress for cultural freedom. The foundation was thus rooted in the Cold War initiatives of the U.S. cultural diplomacy but expanded its own identity, practices, and networks. Operating unofficial intellectual transfers instead of implementing an explicit political agenda euphemized an anticommunist undertaking. Studying this organization gives an insight on non frontal confrontational strategies during the intellectual Cold War.
