The Free Europe University in Exile Inc. (FEUE) was founded on 23rd July 1951 in New York City. It provided suitable higher education facilities in Western Europe for exiled youth from Central and Eastern Europe, who had fled their countries because of the Communist takeover in the aftermath of WW2. Since these young refugees were not citizens of their newly adopted countries, they were unable to obtain adequate educational assistance and facilities. The FEUE fellowship enabled them to pursue university studies based on their previous academic experience and their manifest interest in continuing their studies.
Beyond its humanitarian aim, the FEUE also pursued an openly political aim. It attempted to train Eastern European refugees as future leaders who, upon returning to their homelands after the liberation from Soviet control, would introduce democracy. For this purpose, the FEUE created its study center called Collège de l’Europe libre (Free Europe College) in Strasbourg, France, to complement the students’ university studies with “national seminars” focusing on Soviet-controlled countries concerned by the FEUE fellowship (Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) — intended to keep national sentiment alive in exile — and a series of summer lectures taught by both Western and exiled lecturers.
Housed at the 18th century Château de Pourtalès in a 40-hectare wooded park, six kilometers from the center of Strasbourg in the Robertsau district, the Collège de l’Europe libre ran as a boarding school. Nearly 200 refugee students enrolled at the University of Strasbourg each year, on an equal playing field with French students, and pursued mainly human and social sciences (law, political studies) as well as medical studies and applied sciences. FEUE fellows were young men and women, without distinction to race or faith. Throughout the year, the Collège de l’Europe libre received several visits from distinguished personalities, both Western and in exile. Its summer lecture series were open to the public and dedicated to contemporary political, economic, and social questions, emphasizing Western democratic values. American and Western European press, as well as exile newspapers and Communist press behind the Iron Curtain, regularly reported about the institution.
Both the FEUE and the Collège de l’Europe libre were organized under the auspices of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE). The latter was an American anticommunist organization, created on 11th May 1949 in New York City by influential American citizens in reaction to the broken promises made by Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR, at the Yalta Conference in the Declaration of Liberated Europe, in which he guaranteed free elections in Europe after WW2. Reviving the American tradition of hospitality to political refugees, the NCFE noted in their policy statement their decision to “aid them in their peaceful efforts to prepare the way toward the restoration in Eastern Europe of social, political and religious liberties”. This resulted in, among others actions, setting up a radio station called Radio Free Europe to broadcast uncensored, native-language news about satellite countries behind the Iron Curtain; to help exiled leaders organize themselves into national committees or councils acting as governments in exile in the “free world”; and to launch a nation-wide fundraising campaign in the US to increase awareness about the “captive nations” of the USSR and the danger of Communism.
However, despite its pacifistic declaration in its policy and its generous public actions in favor of Eastern European exiles, the NCFE was an American psychological warfare operation. The anticommunist organization and its various activities were secretly “the chief East European counter-attack program” of the US government, according to a declassified document in 2012. Consequently, one of the aims of the FEUE was to prepare for the post-liberation of satellite countries from Communist yoke.
Although the FEUE and its auxiliary, the Collège de l’Europe libre, were pursuing an openly political aim and their operational costs were covertly financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), they were operating as ordinary educational institutions. The FEUE Inc. was administered by a Board of Trustees, composed of renowned American scholars. The staff at the Collège de l’Europe libre in Strasbourg-Robertsau, headed by an American dean and a French assistant dean, was composed of American officers, French teachers, and teachers in exile. The Collège de l’Europe libre’s special focus on geopolitical issues in Central and Eastern Europe maintained the public’s interest during the early Cold War period. The summer lecture series helped foster transatlantic academic ties between American and Western scholars.
The administration of the FEUE and the Collège de l’Europe libre strove to keep good relationships with French national bodies (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Interior and OFPRA), local institutions (University of Strasbourg, Prefecture), transnational institutions (Council of Europe), as well as American diplomatic representations and other NGOs working with refugees. As a matter of fact, good terms of cooperation with French authorities were sine qua non for operations in France, considering the FEUE’s political connotation at the time. The evolution of French-American relationships during the existence of the Collège de l’Europe libre, which essentially covered the period of the Fourth French Republic (1946-1958), also had a decisive impact on the institution. While the US considered France to be a cornerstone in the transatlantic partnership, and although both countries had combined interests in world affairs from the end of the 1940s until 1951-1952, this cooperation turned into a conflictual relationship by the end of the 1950s in terms of European affairs (the failed plan for a European Defense Community in 1954) and decolonization issues (the end of the First Indochina War in 1954, the Suez Crisis in 1956, and the Algerian War in 1958). The informal relations that American and French FEUE members established with national and local French bodies helped the operation endure.
Because both FEUE and the Collège de l’Europe libre were covert American Cold War assets, their policies and operational structures were readjusted to adapt to the changing US strategy towards Communist bloc countries. In the mid-1950s, considering the evolution of international relations, the US recognized that the Cold War was going to be a long war to win. Talk of a peaceful coexistence between the superpowers became a topic of diplomatic discussion, and the campaign directed at the liberation of Central and Eastern European countries seemed to be postponed. Thus, the new US strategy sought to “liberalize” Central and Eastern European Soviet countries by means of persuasion. This change in policy marked an important shift from a revolutionary strategy to an evolutionary one, which the “Free Europe Committee”, renamed in March 1954, consequently adopted into its operations.
In this context, and taking into consideration the fact that the number of newly arrived refugees from behind the Iron Curtain and university-aged refugees in Western Europe dramatically decreased by 1953-1954, the FEUE’s Board of Trustees decided to transform the Collège de l’Europe libre from a boarding school to a non-residential scholarship organization in 1955-1956. This meant that each FEUE fellow could freely choose a Western European university at which to pursue his or her studies, with the only obligation being attendance at the summer conferences. In light of these operational changes, the purpose of the summer lecture series, held at the Collège de l’Europe libre at the Château de Pourtalès, also transformed. The notion of a “return to the homeland” had been dismissed and replaced by a new mission: emphasizing Western indoctrination to create young promoters of democracy who were conscious of “communist danger” and willing to fight against Communist expansion in the “free world”.
This bold and ambitious agenda was disturbed by the Hungarian revolution in October 1956, and its vicious repression by the Red Army on 4th November 1956. The failure of the uprising and the consolidation of Communist regimes in Soviet satellite countries had consequences for American psychological warfare. The US government was committed to pursuing its liberalization strategy towards the Eastern Bloc, due to the undeniable achievement of Radio Free Europe in fomenting antitotalitarian resistance behind the Iron Curtain before and during the Hungarian revolution (even though the radio’s international reputation was seriously damaged because of its role in the events of 1956). The Free Europe Committee continued many of its activities. However, both FEUE and the Collège de l’Europe libre closed after seven years of existence because of geopolitical and strategic considerations on one hand, and the internal debate within the Free Europe Committee on the other. The last summer lecture series took place in 1958 at the Château de Pourtalès in Strasbourg-Robertsau and the fellowship program was phased out after having given grants to nearly one thousand exiled youth from Central and Eastern Europe.
Veronika Durin-Hornyik, PhD in History
Dissertation title in French: Le Collège de l’Europe libre : une opération de guerre psychologique américaine menée en France à l’égard de la jeunesse des pays communistes de l’Europe de l’Est (1948-1958)
Dissertation title in English: Free Europe University in Exile: An American Psychological Warfare Operation Targeting Youths from Soviet Satellite States in France, 1948-1958
PhD Defense: 15 March 2018 at Université Paris-Est
Supervisor: Professor Fabienne Bock