Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941

Michael David-Fox. Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xii, 396 pp. Notes. Index. US $55.00 / Cdn $60.50, cloth.Cultural diplomacy between the Soviet Union and the West was filled with paradoxes in the interwar period. Western visitors considered the country a representation both of the world's future and of its past. Soviet leaders were wary of foreign guests but wanted, even needed, to impress them. This contradictory relationship, argues Michael David-Fox, spawned an unprecedented system for receiving foreign visitors and influencing the image of the Soviet Union abroad (p. 16). Examining this system, the ambitious Showcasing the Great Experiment frames Soviet cultural diplomacy through expressions of superiority and inferiority (p. 24). To do so, David-Fox intertwines the history of the main institutions responsible for cultural diplomacy with illustrative and compelling case studies of visitors.Soviet cultural diplomacy was a child of necessity. After the revolution the country was diplomatically isolated, but it was also desperately in need of material aid. Soviet leaders employed the main tool they had, cultural diplomacy, to garner support with sympathizers abroad, mostly left-leaning intellectuals. The main bureaucratic player in this system was the Ail-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (VOKS). On VOKS-organized tours, guides acted as interpreters not only of language but of Soviet culture, attempting to monitor and control the impressions of guests. Working abroad, VOKS friendship societies had varying degrees of success in the countries of Europe and North America in creating support, particularly through scientific exchanges.The burdens placed on VOKS created a crisis of authenticity-a central theme in the work as a whole. It appears most strongly as the Potemkin village dilemma. VOKS officials ultimately wanted guests to take home positive impressions of the Soviet Union's progress. The tension was that guided tours of model farms might seem inauthentic, while less controlled tours would seem more authentic but might reflect poorly on the USSR. The imperative for authenticity won the day in the 1927 VOKS-led trip of author Theodore Dreiser, but in the 1930s visits became far more staged. The book also challenges notions of the (in)authentic nature of intellectuals' visits and impressions of the Soviet Union. Tours of prominent fellow travellers provide case studies that revisit the question of these foreigners' complicity in the regime. Were they simply dupes or guilty of whitewashing the crimes of Stalinism? …

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