VOKS

VOKS (an acronym for the Russian Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul'turnoi Sviazi s zagranitsei — Всесоюзное общество культурной связи с заграницей, All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries), or the Society of Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union, was an entity created by the government of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1925 to promote international cultural contact between writers, composers, musicians, cinematographers, artists, scientists, educators, and athletes of the USSR with those of other countries. The organization conducted tours and conferences of such cultural workers.

Although of Soviet origin, VOKS was in fact an international organization, with parallel national branches around the world, such as the American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia (established 1926) and the Society for Polish-Soviet Friendship (established 1944). VOKS was frequently criticized by Western government officials, public intellectuals, and the press for functioning as a de facto communist propaganda organization. VOKS was restructured and renamed in 1958, replaced by a new friendship organization known as the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, which continued to exist until 1992.

VOKS, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, was established in Moscow in 1925 as a mechanism to coordinate cultural contact between Soviet cultural workers and intellectuals and their peers in the capitalist countries of the West. Planning for the organization seems to have begun in May 1925, with a formal constitution for the society approved by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars dated 8 August. According to this formal public document, VOKS was intended "to cooperate in the establishment and development of scientific and cultural relations between institutions, public organizations and individual scientific and cultural workers in the USSR and those of other countries."

VOKS was subdivided by field of interest into a number of sections, including a Literary Section concentrating upon publishers and authors; a Musical and Theatrical Section for composers, musicians, actors, and playwrights; a Cinema Section for cinematographers and those concerned with film production; a Juridical Section dealing with matters of interest to jurists; and an Exhibition Section to deal with the presentation of international expositions relating to art and literature. VOKS also maintained a Press Department, which published an organ called the Weekly News Bulletin in Russian, English, French, and German.

The organization had both international and domestic functions, managing the activities of a growing number of "societies of friends of the Soviet Union" around the world as well as gathering information about cultural trends in the West and sponsoring direct contract between Soviet and non-Soviet cultural workers and intellectuals.

From its earliest days VOKS coordinated cultural, scientific, and literary exchanges and was the organization which frequently received prominent visitors to the Soviet Union from the West and arranged their contacts with Soviet peers. Inside the USSR, the organization facilitated the importation and translation of foreign scientific and literary texts and organized public presentations by artists and scholars returning from trips to the West. The society also helped with currency transfers to enable Soviet scholars to join foreign academic societies, expedited the acquisition of travel visas, and assisted with the difficult process of receiving foreign books and journals through the USSR's tight net of internal censorship.

Although officially launched by the Council of People's Commissars and maintaining close connections with both the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the secret police, VOKS consistently maintained the pretext of being an independent "society" rather than an official appendage of the Soviet state apparatus. This semi-independent status was accentuated by the inclusion of significant numbers of non-Party intellectuals within its membership ranks.

A key aspect of VOKS was its ability to put forward articulate intellectuals to defend the Russian revolution and the Soviet system in an international setting. VOKS-sponsored scientists, artists, and educators reached the general public through lectures, exhibitions, and other forms of public interaction, and were also instrumental in maintaining Moscow's influence over the network of so-called "friendship societies" across Europe and around the world, putting a learned and cultured face on a sometimes brutal revolutionary reality.