Political Warfare in Helsinki: American Covert Strategy and the Union of Free Eastern European Sportsmen

When a group of East European exiles named the Union of Free Eastern European Sportsmen (UFEES) attempted to enter stateless athletes into the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, they executed a deliberate anti-communist manoeuvre. Perhaps more significantly, the UFEES was secretly funded by the U.S. government, a fact which serves to demonstrate the remarkable range of ways in which Washington was able to fund and work with private organisations and individuals in a ‘state-private network’ known only to those who were permitted access to it. This clandestine strategy of ‘political warfare’ was used to wage the Cold War at home and abroad, part of a veritable crusade against the perceived enemy of Soviet-style communism. Academics and contemporary onlookers have tended to view Helsinki as a forum for the Soviet Union's relentless campaign of propaganda which disparaged the West and elevated the Marxism of the East. This article endeavours to paint a different picture of the Helsinki Games, and argues that the U.S. government was also directing its covert political warfare apparatus towards the events in Finland.