Ilya Ehrenburg, the Peace Movement and the Crisis of 1956

As a leading figure of the postwar communist peace movement, Ilya Ehrenburg was reviled as Stalin’s stooge in the cold war cultural contest with the west. Behind the scenes, however, Ehrenburg was trying to loosen Moscow’s grip on the World Peace Council and make the movement more diverse and independent. These efforts culminated in Ehrenburg’s resistance to Moscow’s directives during the 1956 Hungarian crisis. To avoid a split in the peace movement Ehrenburg brokered a resolution that blamed the crisis on the cold war and stopped short of endorsing Soviet military intervention in Hungary. But by the time Moscow took heed of Ehrenburg’s advice it was too late. The peace movement had split and a once-powerful movement that had mobilized millions of people across the globe and exercised significant influence on western public opinion went into decline. 

Geoffrey Roberts is IAS CEU Senior Fellow and Professor of History at University College Cork, Ireland. His many books include The Unholy Alliance: Stalin’s Pact with Hitler (1989); Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (2006); Molotov: Stalin’s Cold Warrior (2012) and the award-winning Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (2012), which has been translated into a dozen languages.