Wallerstein and the Cold War

Yesterday I became curious about the "advent" of world-systems theory in Hungary. So, I turned to  Arcanum, an online repository of the history of scanned press publications in Magyar, to find the first printed mention of the name "Immanuel Wallerstein" in the Hungarian press. This is what I found, from June 1956:

"Communiqué Concerning Paris Consultation between Two Large World Youth Organizations." Szabad Ifjúság,  (Free Youth), 1956. June 10, p. 5. (The same text is re-published here in October, 1956.)  

This has nothing to do with world-systems theory (for all we know, it didn't quite exist yet) but it is an interesting detail concerning Wallerstein's life. 

The article is a nondescript report of a consultation between the "Democratic World Federation of Youth" (DWFY) and the "World Assembly of Youth" (WAY). Here is a rough translation of the first two paragraphs: 

"Representatives of DWFY and WAY met in Paris on May 30, 1956, to clarify the relationship between the two organizations and consider the possibility of connections at a later time.

After a friendly conversation, they agreed that a later meeting would be useful. They resolved to report to their respective executive committees about the propositions made by the two sides," 

That is followed by much more interesting section: a list of those present at the meeting. This includes, for WAY: 

• Jacques Duquesne (France), treasurer of WAY,
• Maurice Foley (United Kingdom), member of the subcommittee for the development of WAY,
• Gerrit Krevid (Belgium), former vice president of WAY, treasurer of the National Council for Belgian Youth,
• Antoine Lawrence (French Guiana), vice president of WAY, and
• Immanuel Wallerstein (USA), vice president of WAY. (The report also mentions "members of WAY's secretariat," without giving names.)

For DWFY, the list of the participants includes the following: 

• S. D. Bandaranaike (Ceylon), president of the Sri Lanka Peace Organization, member parliament,
• Chris Burch (Great Britain), member of the secretariat of DWFY,
• Jacques Denis (France), secretary general of DWFY,
• Emo Egoli (Italy), secretary general of the Italian Socialist Youth, member of the executive committee of DWFY,
• Orlando Gomez (Brazil), secretary of DWFY,
• Valentin Vdovin (Soviet Union), secretary of DWFY, vice president of Antifascist Committee of Soviet Youth, and
• Leon Lorenzi (France), member of the executive committee.

WFDY--subject to hundreds of works--was widely seen (for one example from 1957, see) as a "front organization" designed for the furtherance of global Soviet influence. Specifically, its "avowed goals" included: 

"(a) The promotion of international understanding,

(b)  International co-operation in economic, cultural and social activities,

(c)  The maintenance of freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly, and 

(d)  The defence of the rights of youth, particularly as regards standards of living and conditions of employment."

As for WAY, David Maunders summarized its project, in an article published in 2003, as follows: 

"To  counter  the  left  influences  in  the  pre-war  American  and  world  youth congresses  and  the  communist  domination  of  the  World  Federation  of Democratic  Youth,  founded  in  1945,  leaders  of  youth  organisations in the  USA  and  Britain  set  up  national  and  international  agencies  for  the development  of  youth  work  and  the  involvement  of  young  people  to promote  democracy  and  human  rights.  Such  agencies  needed  extensive  funds,  which  were  eventually  liberally  provided  by  the  CIA. Generational  conflict  in  the  1960s  finally  exposed  this, but  the  State Department  continued  financial  support.  From  the  beginning,  young American delegates argued for the democratic control of World Assembly  of  Youth  (WAY)  by  young  people,  thus  directing  generational  conflict  to  the  international  arena,  which  suited  US  government  agendas. Government  withdrew  its  financial  support  when  WAY  no  longer  served its  purposes  and  the  United  States  Youth  Council  (USYC)  rationalised  its withdrawal by accusing WAY of no longer being committed to democracy  and  human  rights.  The  USYC  became  more  narrowly  based  and subject  to  government  agendas,  which  prompted  Congress  to  withdraw  funds.  The  collapse  of  the  Soviet  Union  and  the  dominance  of New  Right  agendas  removed  the  likelihood  of  renewed  support." 

What a wonderful topic for a study on the historical sociology of knowledge and organizations of the cold war! Or, better yet, a novel or a film.

BTW, otherwise . . . Wallerstein's list of publications suggests that his first publication appeared two years later, at his age of 28, with the title "La Ghana face au present" in Présence africaine. 

His name as a scholarly authority shows up in Magyar, first, in 1972, as a passing reference in a dismissive discussion of "zero growth", interpreted as "a romantic gaze into the past." The first text of his own, published in Magyar (in the journal Valóság, in 1975) is titled, in its Magyar version, "Class and Class Struggle in Africa." (This is the Hungarian translation of what Wallerstein's online list of papers refers to as a "partial trans[lation] in German"--specifically, a publication by the title Wiener Tagebuch, in Austria. I have not been able to find the German version of this piece online. The Tagebuch was resurrected in 2020 but the earlier years are not available online.) The English original is item 35 in his list of publications and its title reads "Class and Class-Conflict in Contemporary Africa." Wallerstein's work, and the world-systems paradigm in general, became a point of reference in the late seventies, owing to the 1974 publication of the English original of volume 1 of his magnum opus, The Modern World-System I. The Magyar version was publisehd in 1983.