By PHK
As I watch the growing British-Russian spat over British Council operations in Russia, I keep wondering whether the British allowed their bilateral cultural agreement to lapse during the era of good feeling and if so, whether this might not have been a poor decision coming back to haunt them.
If not, and a government-to-government agreement is in force that covers Council operations then the FSB is operating illegally as well as playing its back-to-the-future intimidation game of British Council staff as a part of the larger tit-for-tat current political chill in British-Russian relations. I remember earlier renditions of this Soviet intelligence service out-of-bounds behavior prior to 1991. Since the British have carefully refrained from publicly mentioning any cultural agreement they might have with the Russians – I’m going to bet there is none – and, if so, that’s part of the problem. If nothing more, the lack of such an agreement makes Council personnel and programs far more vulnerable to FSB shenanigans than if internationally binding legal cover existed.
During the Cold War, no western countries were allowed to operate separate cultural institutions outside Embassy and Consulate walls. Only a few officially sanctioned Soviets were allowed in. Our ideas and freedoms were anathema to the land of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. The goal of officialdom was to keep Soviet citizens from glimpsing "Paree" and the Soviet government was largely – although not entirely – successful in doing so.
That’s why when I was educational exchanges officer at the US Embassy in Moscow from 1978-80 our offices were in the Chancery. Our “library” was a small room of books in the cultural section. In normal countries, USIS – as it was called most other places – was usually located in separate and far more publicly-accessible facilities. In the Soviet Union, we could not operate under our real name – so we were known as the Press and Cultural Sections of the American Embassy Moscow and the US Consulate General Leningrad.
Who needed Blackwater? We had the "mili-men" instead.
In the Soviet Union, Embassy and Consulate walls were ringed by burly, Soviet militia men. Who needed Blackwater when the Soviets kept the people out and the diplomats in? On occasion the six-foot plus tall “mili-men” mistook me for a Soviet – I’m convinced it was my forest green raincoat – and tried to keep me out too. Then there was the time they didn’t recognize the US Ambassador because he had decided to walk to work instead of ride in the usual Ambassadorial black, flags-sometimes-flying limousine. The Soviet guards tried to keep him out as well.
The cultural and educational programs we operated at the time were framed in a formal written agreement that we had negotiated and renegotiated with the Soviets over a number of years. As educational exchanges officer, I found the agreement indispensable. It was rarely easy to deal with Soviet bureaucracy – but being able to point out the agreement’s terms sometimes made the difference between night and day. Since the agreement was based on the tit-for-tat (the way we conducted business with the Soviets) principle, I could – if need be – let the appropriate Ministry officials know that it would not be in their interest to continue to violate whatever terms they were violating at the time. A lot of the stuff they did was petty – and some of the pettiness was KGB inspired – but on other occasions the impediments had all to do with the way the over-bureaucratized, stove-piped system misfired. Pointing out terms in the agreement sometimes broke those logjams. On other occasions - the agreement even helped deal with problems created by over-zealous KGB operatives.
Once the walls came down and it appeared as if the new Russia was going to leave the old Soviet paranoia behind, the US began to operate educational and cultural programs and open NGO offices throughout the country without protection of a formal government to government agreement. I suspect – although I’ve been away from it for some time – the only US-Russian cultural/educational agreement that is still in place is the one that legitimizes the binational Fulbright Commission. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
No Cultural Agreements Needed?
The official US position was that we did not need agreements to operate in friendly countries and besides such agreements committed the US to agree to funding levels it might not be able to meet. In my view, both arguments were specious. Sometimes – depending upon the type of cultural/educational program one wants to run – even the US needs official agreements. I know for sure that we would have been far better off in Athens in the 1980s with the Hellenic American Union had we operated it under an official agreement like one the British Council had in Greece at the time. Furthermore, the funding levels issue was and remains a canard. There was always a pending-sufficient-funds escape clause in all our agreements – as there should be. So - excuse me - what’s the problem?
Yes, negotiating cultural agreements takes staff time and thought but such documents can also enable and protect not restrict programs and people. I remain convinced that this administration’s allergy to treaties and executive agreements with countries like Russia is yet one more foreign policy Achilles’ heel the US will live to regret. Include culture and education in this as well.