A wonderful archive of the major anti-communist intellectual weapon during the Cold War. The monthly Encounter magazine that carried pieces from practically every writer and scholar during that period who was not either a communist or an active fellow traveller.
It was the showcase for the Congress of Cultural Freedom and Peter Coleman told the story of its rise and fall in a very fine book The Liberal Conspiracy.
In June 1950, as the Cold War grew more intense in Europe and North Korea invaded South Korea, more than a hundred European and American writers and intellectuals met in Berlin and established the Congress for Cultural Freedom to resist the Kremlin’s sustained assault on liberal democratic values. In the 1950s the Congress spread throughout the world, successfully creating magazines, organizing protests, establishing a network of affiliated national committees and fostering international contacts. The Congress continued into the 1960s, broadening its focus to lay the basis of an international community of liberal and democratic intellectuals. It was America’s principal attempt to win over the world’s intellectuals to the liberal democratic cause.
Encounter is only one of a large suite of periodicals that have been put on line under the same roof by UNZ.org whoever it may be. I don’t know how long they have been available but I only found them yesterday (h/t Rob Stove).
Surely they can’t have been up for long, someone would have spread the word, they are so relevant to the IPA “defence of Western Civilization” project.
Rafe. What a Treasure! Has it just come into existence or has it been there all these years and I haven’t known? Thank you for putting this up.
Steve Kates
26 Oct 12 at 9:09 pm
Yes, yes, thanks Rafe. BTW, I was sorry to see you would finally have to dust off that obituary. I’m going to get his From Dawn to Decadence out of my library and finally read it.
dover_beach
26 Oct 12 at 9:16 pm
I am still rubbing my eyes with disbelief, this is such a storehouse of treasures.
Like this 1987 piece on terror in the Muslim world.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1987feb-00012
Sad to say, economics was not its strong suite!
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1979apr-00029
Poor Old Rafe
26 Oct 12 at 9:21 pm
I vividly remember buying a small format magazine with a bright yellow cover from a newsagent in Indooroopilly Shoppingtown (Brisbane) in 1981. The cover said “Taking Ideas Seriously – Lezek Kolakowski”. It was a revelation. I later acquired his masterpiece, The Main Currents of Marxism. I have often fruitlessly searched old boxes of my stuff for that Encounter issue but suspect it was given to Bond University library when it first set up (they advertised in the paper for material!), along with rafts of my Quadrant magazines. But now it is there, on-line, January 1981. I am eternally grateful Rafe!
Siltstone
26 Oct 12 at 10:05 pm
The same work was done here by B.A. Santamaria – whose Movement destroyed the communists’ attempt to imperil our democracy, an attempt that was a near-run thing. Mannix and Santamaria are thus the greatest intellectual warriors against tyranny – for everyman – certainly in the last 100 years of Australian history.
The left has given us Tim Flannery, by contrast.
C.L.
26 Oct 12 at 10:19 pm
The Left also gave us Jim Cairns, who in his position as Federal Treasurer, cheered and applauded as the Reds took over Indochina and began to commit genocide.
Fisky
26 Oct 12 at 10:31 pm
great links. full of treasures. good search engine too
Jim Rose
26 Oct 12 at 10:41 pm
Many thanks.
stackja
26 Oct 12 at 10:54 pm
Token
26 Oct 12 at 11:25 pm
Token
26 Oct 12 at 11:26 pm
From the web-site formatting I would say it was done in the 1990′s. Perhaps with a quick conversion from Gopher.
ad
27 Oct 12 at 12:01 am
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if our friend Mr Harbuttle didn’t have a hand in the design of the layout.
ad
27 Oct 12 at 12:05 am
The same work was done here by B.A. Santamaria – whose Movement destroyed the communists’ attempt to imperil our democracy, an attempt that was a near-run thing.
Rubbish. Firstly, it wasn’t a “near-run thing”. There were some Western countries, such as Italy, that were initially in danger of falling into the Communist orbit after WW2. Australia was never one of them.
Secondly, the leading anti-communist in Australia was a certain R.G. Menzies. Santamaria had the right ideas, mostly — though his anti-capitalist economics did not do him credit. But there’s no need for hagiography.
Piett
27 Oct 12 at 1:32 am
Rafe, my thanks also.
I still have a few Encounters in hard copy, but this is a wonderful resource.
mct
27 Oct 12 at 6:09 am
Fantastic, and what a coincidence -yesterday I finished culling my stock of Encounter 1970s and 80s issues.
gian
27 Oct 12 at 8:15 am
[...] Rafe reminds us that the entire archive of Encounter magazine is online. While Encounter, like the Congress on Cultural Freedom, was a CIA project, it still managed to publish a number of important and influential essays by Hayek, Popper, Polanyi, and other classical liberal scholars. (Use the search box.) A few highlights: [...]
Encounter Magazine Online :: The Circle Bastiat
29 Oct 12 at 1:47 am
I am happy to see that the writers for and readers of this site are enjoying the full-run archive of Encounter magazine (posted to the web in December 2011 at Unz.org), and the ideas of such among the magazine’s signature contributors as the late Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. You might also enjoy the Wikipedia entry for Encounter, which I (save for the earlier stub of its first three paragraphs) finished and posted online on August 31, 2012, and for which the judges of the first Unz Historical Research Competition awarded me, much to my grateful surprise, First Place.
Scott Lahti
1 Nov 12 at 10:26 am