World Peace Council

The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization that advocates universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. It was founded in 1950, emerging from the policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to promote peace campaigns around the world in order to oppose "warmongering" by the USA. Its first president was the eminent physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. It was based in Helsinki from 1968 to 1999 and its headquarters are now in Greece.

Current organisation
The WPC currently states its goals as: Actions against imperialist wars and occupation of sovereign countries and nations; prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction; abolition of foreign military bases; universal disarmament under effective international control; elimination of all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination; respect for the right of the peoples to sovereignty and independence, essential for the establishment of peace; non-interference in the internal affairs of nations; peaceful co-existence between states with different political systems; negotiations instead of use of force in the settlement of differences between nations.

The WPC is a registered NGO at the United Nations and co-operates primarily with the Non-Aligned Movement. It cooperates with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), International Labour Organization (ILO) and other UN specialized agencies, special committees and departments. It is said to have successfully influenced their agendas, the terms of discussion and the orientations of their resolutions. It also cooperates with the African Union, the League of Arab States and other inter-governmental bodies.

Membership
Under its current rules, WPC members are national and international organizations that agree with its main principles and any of its objectives and pay membership fees. Other organizations may join at the discretion of the Executive Committee or become associate members. Distinguished individuals may become honorary members at the discretion of the Executive Committee.

Although the WPC has been said to represent over 100 nations and national peace movements, in March 2011 its website listed 22 members:


 * Belgium-International Action for Liberation (INTAL)
 * Belgrade Forum for the world of equals
 * Brazilian Center for Solidarity of the peoples and struggle for Peace (CEBRAPAZ)
 * Canadian Peace Congress
 * Consejo Español en Defensa de la Solidaridad y la Paz (CEDESPAZ)
 * Cuban Movement for Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples (MOVPAZ)
 * Cyprus Peace Council
 * Czech Peace Movement
 * Finnish Peace Committee
 * German Peace Council
 * Greek Committee for International Détente and Peace (EEDYE)
 * Japan Peace Committee
 * Le mouvement de la paix de France
 * Movement for Peace,Sovereignty and Solidarity between the Peoples(MOPASSOL-Argentine)
 * Nepal Peace and Solidarity Council (NPSC)
 * OSPAAAL Spain
 * Peace Association of Turkey
 * Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation
 * Romanian Peace Council
 * Swedish Peace Committee
 * Swiss Peace Movement
 * US Peace Council
 * VREDE (Belgium)

In its early days the WPC attracted numerous "political and intellectual superstars", including W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, Pablo Picasso, Louis Aragon, Jorge Amado, Pablo Neruda, György Lukacs, Renato Guttuso, Jean-Paul Sartre, Diego Rivera and Joliot-Curie. Most were Communists or fellow travellers.

Leadership

 * President: Socorro Gomes, Brazilian Center for the Solidarity with the Peoples and the Struggle for Peace (CEBRAPAZ)
 * General Secretary: Thanasis Pafilis, Greek Committee for International Détente and Peace (EEDYE)
 * Executive Secretary: Iraklis Tsavdaridis, Greek Committee for International Détente and Peace (EEDYE)

Secretariat
The members of the Secretariat of the WPC are:
 * All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation (AIPSO)
 * Brazilian Center for the Solidarity with the Peoples and the Struggle for Peace (CEBRAPAZ)
 * Congo Peace Committee
 * Cuban Movement for Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples (MOVPAZ)
 * German Peace Council (DFR)
 * Greek Committee for International Détente and Peace (EEDYE)
 * Japan Peace Committee
 * Palestinian Committee for Peace and Solidarity (PCPS)
 * Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation (CPPC)
 * South African Peace Initiative
 * Syrian National Peace Council
 * US Peace Council (USPC)
 * Vietnam Peace Committee (VPC)

Peace prizes
The WPC awards several peace prizes, some of which, it has been said, were awarded to politicians who funded the organisation.

Origins
The WPC emerged from a Communist-led peace congress held at Wroclaw, Poland in 1948. A subsequent congress in Paris and Prague in 1949 set up a World Committee of Partisans for Peace, and a congress in Sheffield and Warsaw in 1950 reconstituted the Partisans as the World Peace Council.

The origins of the WPC lay in the Communist Information Bureau's (Cominform) doctrine, put forward 1947, that the world was divided between peace-loving progressive forces led by the Soviet Union and warmongering capitalist countries led by the United States. In 1949, Cominform directed that peace "should now become the pivot of the entire activity of the Communist Parties", and most western Communist parties followed this policy. In 1950, Cominform adopted the report of Mikhail Suslov, a senior Soviet official, praising the Partisans for Peace and resolving that, "The Communist and Workers' Parties must utilize all means of struggle to secure a stable and lasting peace, subordinating their entire activity to this" and that "Particular attention should be devoted to drawing into the peace movement trade unions, women's, youth, cooperative, sport, cultural, education, religious and other organizations, and also scientists, writers, journalists, cultural workers, parliamentary and other political and public leaders who act in defense of peace and against war."

Lawrence Wittner, a historian of the post-war peace movement, argues that the Soviet Union devoted great efforts to the promotion of the WPC in the early post-war years because it feared an American attack and American superiority of arms at a time when the USA possessed the atom bomb but the Soviet Union had not yet developed it.

Wroclaw 1948 and New York 1949
The World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace met in Wroclaw on 6 August 1948. It elected a permanent International Committee of Intellectuals in Defence of Peace (also known as the International Committee of Intellectuals for Peace and the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace) with headquarters in Paris. It called for the establishment of national branches and national meetings along the same lines as the World Congress. In accordance with this policy, a Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace was held in New York City in March 1949 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, sponsored by the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions.

Paris and Prague 1949
The World Congress of Advocates of Peace in Paris (20 April 1949) repeated the Cominform line that the world was divided between "a non-aggressive Soviet group and a war-minded imperialistic group, headed by the United States government". It established a World Committee of Partisans for Peace, led by a twelve person Executive Bureau and chaired by Professor Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, High Commissioner for Atomic Energy and member of the French Institute. Most of the Executive were Communists. One delegate to the Congress, the Swedish artist Bo Beskow, heard no spontaneous contributions or free discussions, only prepared speeches, and described the atmosphere there as "agitated", "aggressive" and "warlike". The Congress was disrupted by the French authorities who refused visas to so many delegates that a simultaneous Congress was held in Prague." Picasso's lithograph, La Colombe (The Dove) was chosen as the emblem for the Congress and was subsequently adopted as the symbol of the WPC.(see picture).

Sheffield and Warsaw 1950
In 1950, the World Congress of the Supporters of Peace adopted a permanent constitution for the World Peace Council, which replaced the Committee of Partisans for Peace. The opening congress of the WPC condemned the atom-bomb and the American invasion of Korea. It followed the Cominform line, recommending the creation of national peace committees in every country, and rejected pacifism and the non-aligned peace movement. It was originally scheduled for Sheffield but the British authorities, who wished to undermine the WPC, refused visas to many delegates and the Congress was forced to move to Warsaw. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee denounced the Congress as a "bogus forum of peace with the real aim of sabotaging national defence" and said there would be a "reasonable limit" on foreign delegates. Among those excluded by the government were Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Ilya Ehrenburg, Alexander Fadeyev and Dmitri Shostakovich. The number of delegates at Sheffield was reduced from an anticipated 2,000 to 500, half of whom were British.

1950s
The WPC was directed by the International Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party through the Soviet Peace Committee, although it tended not to present itself as an organ of Soviet foreign policy, but rather as the expression of the aspirations of the "peace loving peoples of the world".

Subsequent Congresses were held in Vienna, Berlin, Helsinki and Stockholm.

The WPC led the international peace movement in the early 1950s, but its failure to speak out against the Russian suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the resumption of Soviet nuclear tests in 1961 marginalised it, and in the 1960s it was eclipsed by the newer, non-aligned peace organisations like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. At first, Communists denounced the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for "splitting the peace movement" but they were compelled to join it when they saw how popular it was.

Activities
Until the late 1980s, the World Peace Council's principal activity was the organization of large international Congresses, nearly all of which had over 2,000 delegates representing most of the countries of the world. Most of the delegates came from pro-Communist organizations, with some observers from non-aligned bodies. There were also meetings of the WPC Assembly, its highest governing body. The Congresses and Assemblies issued statements, appeals and resolutions that called for world peace in general terms and condemned US weapons policy, invasions and military actions. The WPC was involved in demonstrations and protests especially in areas bordering U.S. military installations in Western Europe believed to house nuclear weapons. It campaigned against US-led military operations, especially the Vietnam war, although it did not condemn similar Soviet actions in Hungary and Afghanistan.

On 18 March 1950, the WPC launched its Stockholm Appeal at a meeting of the Permanent Committee of the World Peace Congress, calling for the absolute prohibition of nuclear weapons. The campaign won popular support, collecting, it is said, 560 million signatures in Europe, most from socialist countries, including 10 million in France (including that of the young Jacques Chirac), and 155 million signatures in the Soviet Union – the entire adult population. Several non-aligned peace groups who had distanced themselves from the WPC advised their supporters not to sign the Appeal.

A World Congress of People for Peace was held in Vienna in 1952. It represented Joseph Stalin's strategy of peaceful coexistence, resulting in a more broad-based conference. Among those attending were Jean-Paul Sartre and Hervé Bazin.

In June 1975 the WPC launched a second Stockholm Appeal during a period of détente between East and West. It declared that, "The victories of peace and détente have created a new international climate, new hopes, new confidence, new optimism among the peoples."

In the 1980s it campaigned against the deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe

It published two magazines, New Perspectives and Peace Courier. Its current magazine is Peace Messenger.

Associated groups
In accordance with the Comniform's 1950 resolution to draw into the peace movement trade unions, women's and youth organisations, scientists, writers and journalists, etc., several Communist mass organisations supported the WPC, for example:


 * Christian Peace Conference
 * International Federation of Resistance Fighters
 * International Institute for Peace
 * International Organization of Democratic Lawyers
 * International Organization of Journalists
 * International Union of Students
 * World Federation of Democratic Youth
 * World Federation of Scientific Workers
 * World Federation of Trade Unions
 * Women's International Democratic Federation

Relations with non-aligned peace groups
The WPC has been described as being caught in contradictions as "it sought to become a broad world movement while being instrumentalized increasingly to serve foreign policy in the Soviet Union and nominally socialist countries." From the 1950s until the late 1980s it tried to use non-aligned peace organizations to spread the Soviet point of view. At first there was limited co-operation between such groups and the WPC, but western delegates who tried to criticize the Soviet Union or the WPC's silence about Russian armaments were often shouted down at WPC conferences and they gradually dissociated themselves from the WPC.

As the non-aligned peace movement "was constantly under threat of being tarnished by association with avowedly pro-Soviet groups", many individuals and organizations "studiously avoided contact with Communists and fellow-travellers." As early as 1949 the World Pacifist Meeting warned against active collaboration with Communists. In 1950, several Swedish peace organizations warned their supporters against signing the WPC's Stockholm Appeal. In 1953, the International Liaison Committee of Organizations for Peace stated that it had "no association with the World Peace Council". In 1956, a year in which the WPC condemned the Suez war but not the Russian suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the German section of War Resisters International condemned it for its failure to respond to Soviet H-bomb tests. In Sweden, Aktionsgruppen Mot Svensk Atombomb discouraged its members from participating in communist-led peace committees. The WPC attempted to co-opt the eminent peace campaigner Bertrand Russell, much to his annoyance, and in 1957 he refused the award of the WPC's International Peace Prize. In Britain, CND advised local groups in 1958 not to participate in a forthcoming WPC conference. In the USA, SANE rejected WPC appeals for co-operation.

A final break occurred during the WPC's 1962 World Congress for Peace and Disarmament in Moscow. The WPC had invited non-aligned peace groups, who were permitted to criticize Soviet nuclear testing, but when western activists including the British Committee of 100 tried to demonstrate in Red Square against Soviet weapons and the Communist system, their banners were confiscated and they were threatened with deportation. As a result of this confrontation, forty non-aligned organizations decided to form a new international body, the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace, which was not to have Soviet members.

In the mid-1960s, under the leadership of J. D. Bernal, a high-profile British scientist, the WPC tried to secure the co-operation of non-aligned peace groups in demanding an end to hostilities in Vietnam, which Bernal believed was jeopardised by China's insistence that the WPC give unequivocal support for North Vietnam. In 1968, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia brought about a crisis in the WPC, and at a Secretariat meeting in September that year only one delegate supported it.

Because of the energetic activity of the WPC from the late 1940s onwards, with its huge conferences and large budget, there was a tendency for the general public and some Western political leaders to regard all peace activists as Communists and it was sometimes said that the peace movement in the West danced to the tune of the WPC. For example, US President Ronald Reagan said that the big peace demonstrations in Europe in 1981 were "all sponsored by a thing called the World Peace Council, which is bought and paid for by the Soviet Union", and Soviet defector Vladimir Bukovsky claimed that they were co-ordinated at the WPC's 1980 World Parliament of Peoples for Peace in Sofia. The FBI reported to the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the WPC-affiliated U.S. Peace Council was one of the organizers of a large 1982 peace protest in New York City, but said that the KGB had not manipulated the American movement "significantly."

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is said to have had "overlapping membership and similar policies" to the WPC. The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and the Dartmouth Conferences were said to have been used by Soviet delegates to promote Soviet propaganda. Joseph Rotblat, one of the leaders of the Pugwash movement, said that there were a few participants in Pugwash conferences from the Soviet Union "who were obviously sent to push the party line, but the majority were genuine scientists and behaved as such".

Rainer Santi, in his history of the International Peace Bureau, writes that the WPC "has always had difficulty in securing cooperation from West European and North American peace organisations because of its obvious affiliation with Socialist countries and the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Especially difficult to digest, was that instead of criticising the Soviet Union's unilaterally resumed atmospheric nuclear testing in 1961, the WPC issued a statement rationalising it. In 1979 the World Peace Council explained the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as an act of solidarity in the face of Chinese and US aggression against Afghanistan."

In 1983, the British peace campaigner E.P. Thompson attended the World Peace Council's World Assembly for Peace and Life Against Nuclear War in Prague at the suggestion of the Czech dissident group Charter 77. He raised the issue of democracy and civil liberties in the Communist states, but Assembly responded by loudly applauding a delegate who said that "the so-called dissident issue was not a matter for the international peace movement, but something that had been injected into it artificially by anti-communists." The banned Hungarian group Dialogue also tried to attend the 1983 Assembly but "were met with tear gas, arrests, and later deportation back to Hungary."

It was suggested by a former secretary of the WPC that it simply failed to connect with the western peace movement. It was said to have used most of its funds on international travel and lavish conferences, to have poor intelligence on Western peace groups, and, even though its HQ was in Helsinki, to have no contact with Finnish peace organizations.

After the demise of communism
By the mid-1980s the Soviet Peace Committee "concluded that the WPC was a politically expendable and spent force," although it continued to fund the WPC up to 1991. As the Soviet Peace Committee was the conduit for Soviet direction of the WPC, this judgement represented a downgrading of the WPC by the Soviet Communist Party. Under Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviet Peace Committee developed bilateral international contacts "in which the WPC not only played no role, but was a liability." Gorbachev never met with WPC President Romesh Chandra and excluded him from many Moscow international forums. Following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, the WPC lost most of its support and dwindled to a smaller core group. It was found to have lost most of its income and most of its staff. Its international conferences now attract only a tenth of the delegates that its Soviet-backed conferences could attract (see below), although it still issues statements couched in similar terms to those of its historic appeals.

Location
The WPC first set up its offices in Paris, but was accused by the French government of engaging in "fifth column" activities and was expelled in 1952. It moved to Prague and then in 1954 to Vienna. In 1957 it was banned by the Austrian government. It was invited to Prague but did not move there, had no official HQ but continued to operate in Vienna under cover of the International Institute for Peace. In 1968 it re-assumed its name and moved to Helsinki, Finland, where it remained until 1999. In 2000 it re-located to Athens, Greece.

Funding
According to the WPC, 90 per cent of its funding came from the Soviet Union, which was said to have given it $49 million. Its current income is believed to derive mainly from the interest on a $10m payment made by the Soviet Peace Committee in around 1991, although its finances remain shrouded in mystery and it has destroyed all its financial records from 1949 to 1991.

Congresses and assemblies
The highest WPC body, the Assembly, meets every three years.

Past Presidents

 * [[Image:Flag of France.svg|20px]] Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1950–1958)
 * [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|20px]] John Desmond Bernal (1959–1965)
 * [[Image:Flag of Belgium.svg|20px]] Isabelle Blume (1965–1969)
 * [[Image:Flag of India.svg|20px]] Romesh Chandra (General Secretary in 1966–1977; President in 1977–1990), since then he has been its President of Honour
 * [[Image:Flag of Greece.svg|20px]] Evangelos Maheras (1990–1993)
 * [[Image:Flag of South Africa.svg|20px]] Albertina Sisulu (1993–2002)
 * [[Image:Flag of India.svg|20px]] Prof Niranjan Singh Maan (General secretary )
 * [[Image:Flag of Cuba.svg|20px]] Orlando Fundora López (2002–2008)

Allegation of CIA measures against the WPC
The Central Intelligence Agency is said to have taken covert action against the WPC, for example, attempting to neutralize its campaigns against the US and preventing it from organizing outside the communist bloc. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, founded in 1950 with the support of the CIA, may have been established partly to counter the propaganda of the emerging WPC.