The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist propaganda group founded on June 26, 1950 in West Berlin, and was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency and its allies. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group. The congress aimed to market propaganda and misinformation based on the Western notion that liberal democracy was more compatible with culture than communism, whether or not that notion was true. In practical terms, the group aimed to challenge the post-war sympathies with the Soviet Union of many Western intellectuals, particularly among American liberals and the non-Communist Left.
Historian Frances Stonor Saunders writes (1999): "Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists, or critics in postwar Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise." A different slant on the origins and work of the Congress is offered by Peter Coleman in his Liberal Conspiracy (1989), where he talks about a struggle for the mind...
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