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I remember Encounter with affection as the best magazine published in English during my lifetime. When I heard about the CIA my first thought was that Encounter was probably the nicest thing the CIA ever did.

In Encounter Isaiah Berlin wrote wisely about 19th-century Russian literature and Hugh Trevor-Roper delivered a famous attack on the bloated reputation of Arnold Toynbee’s 10-volume Study of History. (“Every chapter of it has been shot to pieces by the experts.”) Waugh debated Nancy Mitford on upper-class and lower-class English usage. Dwight Macdonald, one of the brilliant American journalists of the era, spent a year in London as an associate editor and later wrote for Esquire his “Confessions of an Unwitty CIA Agent.” Persecuted Russian writers, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Joseph Brodsky, appeared often. Poland was extensively represented by the anti-Marxist philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, Hungary by Arthur Koestler. The young George Steiner made the beginnings of his reputation there. The Angry Young Men, from John Osborne to John Wain, were heard from.

After generations of abuse, the 1950s solution may be worth considering

The current view of Encounter and the Congress suggests that there may be something to learn from them. Paul Berman, the author of Terror and Liberalism, has pointed out that intellectuals in the Congress for Cultural Freedom campaigned against the totalitarian currents of their time “and there is no reason why this couldn’t be done in our own day.” Leon Wieseltier, a major figure in Washington journalism, has confessed that he has “Congress for Cultural Freedom envy.” David Brooks of The New York Times has argued that to deal with Islamist jihadism, the West needs an outlet like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, “to give an international platform to modernist Muslims and to introduce them to Western intellectuals.”

After generations of abuse, the 1950s solution may be worth considering. If it’s revived, it should involve many countries rather then one — it might work as an offshoot of NATO. Doing it in secret has been tried and failed and from the start it might be wise to avoid CIA participation.

National Post

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca