This Essay was posted on 8/21/2025.
The CIA Book Club by Charlie English tells a compelling story of a long-term CIA book smuggling program that supplied banned books to the Iron Curtain countries. The practice started in the 1950’s and evolved into a major smuggling operation in the 1970’s. But this story is more about smugglers and dissidents in Poland, and the CIA plays a supporting role.
One of the most intriguing parts of the story was the description of a dissident’s life in a Communist dictatorship. Dissidents were always mindful of State Police forces and the extreme danger of being caught and imprisoned, often without due process, and then tortured. The life of a dissident was perilous, but their desire for true freedom was powerful. When I read about the incidents in the book, I was reminded how the goals of Federal Police forces in the US are changing from fighting crime to throttling dissent.
While there were book smuggling operations in all of the European Communist Bloc countries, the book focuses on the efforts of the Polish resistance and tells the story of the influential worker strikes in 1970, 1980, and 1988. These strikes eventually led to a democratization of the Polish government, and the 1988 strike presaged the collapse of the USSR.
How important was the book smuggling program? Polish dissident Asam Michnik gave high praise to the book program, for example. But others were not so certain. From my perspective, the evolution of Communism in the USSR stalled in a way that led to its ultimate failure, and the book smuggling program enabled a strong infrastructure of dissidents to quicken the pace of failure.
I recommend this book because it shows what people are willing to do to gain their freedom.
Click for Next Essay: The Future of Renewables