Intellectuals and the Cold War Exile – Framework of Analysis

Abstract

This article is devoted to the problem of political emigration in the Cold War period. This problem has been studied by a large group of intellectuals-thinkers, writers, and academics. The author of the article focuses on the individual strategies of sentiments among Central and Eastern European intellectuals. Their decisions were as much the result of an impulse and reaction to circumstances as the rational premise that the outside world was a place where they would be safer with their family and friends, and where they would not have to succumb to political pressure in their work and research. The author relies on conceptual developments among specialists in the field of the analysis of behavioral patterns of intellectuals. Particular attention is paid to the example of Adam Ulam, whose personality combined the specific features of emigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. Much attention is paid to the theoretical and methodological aspects of the problem of intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe. The author analyzes the approaches of researchers to the problem of the formation of the Polish intelligentsia. As a result of the study, it has been shown that, during the Cold War, intellectuals were mobilized on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Some of them played an important role, such as in US Cold War strategies, especially within the so-called Cultural Cold War. Сonclusions drawn from such study are of a more universal nature and allow one to pose a question about the specificity of the intellectual émigré as an important element of global intellectual history.