“Wall Street’s Peace Shenanigans”: Stalin and a U.S.-Soviet Backchannel during the Korean War

Abstract

During the Cold War, the Soviet people learned from newspapers and propagandists that “Wall Street” was synonymous with the ruling class of the United States. Countless cartoons and headlines touted “the Wall Street shenanigans,” usually meaning war-mongering and anti-Soviet plotting. At universities and party schools, students memorized Vladimir Lenin’s thesis that big business, especially the financial oligarchy of the largest banks, controls government and foreign policy in capitalist countries. Soviet diplomats constantly repeated this mantra at international meetings.1 This article tells a story about how some U.S. big business actors really behaved, which was in contrast to the Soviet propaganda narrative. In 1950–52, at the height of the Korean War, U.S. corporate business leaders, along with the leaders of philanthropic institutions, especially the Quakers, both acted at the behest of the U.S. government and demonstrated agency of their own. Yet in all cases they acted in contradiction of Leninist dogma. Even when seeking to influence U.S. foreign policy, the main motive of U.S. “Wall Street” and corporate business figures was not to exacerbate war tensions or seek war profits, but to prevent their further escalation.