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Just weeks after the end of the cold war, in 1989, a frenzy of activity began among historians in cold war studies. The reason for this activity, which has only intensified in the subsequent 16 years, is simple: after every major world event, history must be rewritten, for we then know things we didn’t know before. For example, only when an event is over do we know its outcome and can then properly judge it. With the fall of the wall, historians were in a unique position to understand the cold war and they were not about to waste time in taking advantage of it. Ever since this activity began, increasingly complex, and increasingly interesting pictures of the cold war have emerged. One subject—the study of the so-called “cultural” cold war, that is, of the role played by intellectuals in the cold war, and the influence the cold war had upon them—has raised the question of the effects and propriety of covert government support for intellectual activity during the cold war. It is that question that concerns us here. In its August 2003 issue, the BRSQ published a brief report on allegations by Timothy Garton Ash that Bertrand Russell had not only been paid by secret British government agencies to write anti-communist tracts that were then published and distributed with funds by the same government agencies, but that Russell had known at the time that it was government agencies that were paying him and publishing the pamphlets. After a lengthy and intense discussion of these charges by a wide variety of Russell scholars in the online Russell discussion group, russell-l, Jack Clontz wrote a systematic account of them for the BRSQ that was published in its August 2004 issue.[1] In this issue, Andrew Bone, Senior Research Associate at the Bertrand Russell Research Centre at McMaster University, examines Clontz’s claims in greater detail and with further evidence, and essentially agrees that Russell not only wrote his anti-communist tracts knowing that he was being paid by the British government, but that he took very specific instructions from his publishers about what he should say. But more importantly than this, Bone goes on to provide a comprehensive survey of Russell’s entire anti-communist work for the British government and supplies a richer context for Russell’s activities and writings in the early cold war than we have previously had. This is the first comprehensive discussion of Russell’s work for the British government as an anti-communist cold warrior. It is, I think, significant both for Russell studies and cold war studies, for the story Andy tells is not yet standard even among Russell scholars and certainly not among cold war historians. For example, Francis Stonor Saunders has written the most widely read book on the cultural cold war, and yet, as David Blitz has pointed out, she did not even consult the Bertrand Russell Archives when writing her book.[2] And if one were to look for a picture depicting Russell as an anti-communist cold warrior, one would look in vain. Every photograph of Russell and the cold war in any book on Russell this editor knows of either depicts him as an anti-nuclear campaigner or anti-Vietnam War activist, but none as a cold war anti-communist. Since photographs in such books serve mainly as icons of various aspects of the subject’s life, it seems that the idea of Russell as an anti-communist cold warrior working closely with his government in the conflict is not yet a part of the standard view of him, even among Russell scholars, and so is still in need of emphasis and exploration. Also in this issue, Nikolai Milkov writes about Russell Studies in Germany—past and present—in his review of Guido Imaguire’s recent book on Russell’s early philosophy Russells Frühphilosophie: Propositionen, Realismus und die sprachontologische Wende. Of special interest is information Milkov provides about the roles played by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson in early German studies of Russell. Milkov, the author of two books on the history of 20th c. English philosophy, several detailed studies of the influence of Rudolf Hermann Lotze on Russell and Moore, and several other articles on early German influences on analytic philosophy, will spend the 2005-2006 academic year in the United States as a Research Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. This coming December, he will speak at the BRS session of the Eastern APA meeting in NYC on Lotze and Russell. David Sullivan, who has written an excellent article on Lotze for the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, will comment on Milkov’s talk. Everyone is encouraged to attend. It promises to be a significant session. This Year is both the 100th anniversary of Russell’s groundbreak¬ing study, ‘On Denoting’, and the 50th anniversary of the equally groundbreaking anti-nuclear statement, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto. ‘On Denoting’ was celebrated at a conference this past May at McMaster University in conjunction with the Russell Society’s own annual meeting. The next issue of Quarterly will report on both the ‘On Denoting’ conference and the BRS annual meeting. In this issue, we have a report from Ray Perkins, Jr. on the continuing relevance of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. As Joseph Rotblat reminded us in a recent New York Times editorial (May 17, 2005), today we face the possibility of nuclear terrorism, the former super-powers still hold enormous nuclear arsenals, North Korea and Iran are advancing in their capacities to build nuclear weapons, and other nations are increasingly likely to acquire them on the excuse that they are needed for their own security. The work of Russell and Einstein 50 years ago indeed continues to be relevant. Christopher Pincock, of Purdue University, discusses another article from a past issue of the BRSQ when he questions some of the claims made by Justin Lieber in Lieber’s May 2004 BRSQ essay on Russell and Wittgenstein. Those questions have provoked Justin to dig deeper into the story and provide further evidence for his claims. Finally, Rosalind Carey’s Conference Report of the BRS session at the Pacific APA and Dennis Darland’s Treasurer Report of the Society’s presently healthy finances, which are published in the back, round out this issue of the Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly.
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