Photographs of the German and Soviet pavilions facing off at the Paris International Exposition in 1937 offer an iconic image of the interwar period, and with good reason. This image captures the interwar period's great conflict of ideologies, the international interconnectedness of the age and the aestheticisation of political and ideological conflict in the age of mass media and mass spectacle. [Figure 1] Last but not least, it captures the importance in the 1930s of what we now call cultural diplomacy. Both pavilions – Germany's, in Albert Speer's neo-classical tower bloc crowned with a giant swastika, and the Soviet Union's, housed in Boris Iofan's forward-thrusting structure topped by Vera Mukhina's monumental sculptural group – represented the outcome of a large-scale collaboration between political leaders and architects, artists, intellectuals and graphic and industrial designers seeking to present their country to foreign visitors in a manner designed to advance the country's interests in the international arena. Each pavilion, that is, made an outreach that was diplomatic – in the sense that it sought to mediate between distinct polities – using means that were cultural – in the sense that they deployed refined aesthetic practices (like the arts and architecture) and in the sense that they highlighted the distinctive features, or ‘culture’, of a particular group (like the German nation or the Soviet state).

The emergence of a Soviet cultural diplomacy in the 1920s was hardly predictable. Bolsheviks’ propaganda for ‘world revolution’ reduced the image of Soviet Russia to one of Leninist-proletarian victory, while the rejection of diplomatic tradition and a distrust of artists and intellectuals precluded any commitment to cultural action abroad. This article explores how, when and why a Soviet cultural diplomacy developed. It focuses on two episodes related to the famine of 1921, including, based on new archival evidence, the First Exhibition of Russian Art in Berlin in October 1922. The exhibition's spectacular success paved the way for Soviet cultural diplomacy that moved away from overtly communist propaganda in order to address Western avant-garde literary and artistic milieus.

This article examines the first German PEN Club (established in 1924) as a semi-formal agent of cultural diplomacy after the First World War. It shows that leading figures in the German PEN negotiated a role in the International PEN which blended PEN's ostensibly non-political literary internationalism with the national interests of the young Weimar Republic. It explores their mutually expedient relationship with the German Foreign Ministry their efforts to influence state cultural diplomacy and their use of the International PEN framework to test alternative visions of international order. The article complicates the notion that PEN was an ‘instrument’ or ‘extended arm’ of foreign policy by underlining the agency of PEN intellectuals and by showing how PEN was part of a wider search for new ways to shape international affairs and find ideological compromise in an era often seen through a dominant lens of confrontation and polarisation.

This article explores the historical factors that allowed a weak state like Spain to have cultural influence in other European countries during the interwar period. Drawing on archival material from several countries, I argue that Spain could not promote systematically its culture in the early 1920s, but that it gained in soft power because of Western European countries’ new interest first in Spanish neutrality and then in the Latin American market. When the Spanish state developed an active cultural diplomacy in the late 1920s, it was able to derive benefit from the work that other countries had already done to promote Spanish language and culture.

This article examines a previously un-researched aspect of nationalist politics, borderland contestation, national indifference and the politicisation of youth and cultural diplomacy in interwar Central Europe: the German–Polish ‘summer vacation exchange for children’ (Ferienkinderaustausch). The Versailles territorial settlement, which left nationalists in both countries in discontent about territories and minority groups remaining in the hands of the neighbour, formed the basis for this venture in cultural diplomacy. Each party gave the other the right to rally ‘its youth’ living on the other side of the border to travel to its ‘motherland’ for summer camp. Focusing on the case study of the heatedly contested industrial borderland of Upper Silesia, this article examines the German–Polish children's exchange on two levels. On the local level it examines how youth were rallied and transported to their ‘motherland’ for the summer and what treatment and experience they received. On the international level it explores the paradox of German–Polish cooperation and the conflict that was an inherent aspect of this venture.

In the wake of the First World War there was an explosion of cultural diplomatic activity and Hungary was no exception. However, as this study shows, Hungary was very much unlike its regional and Western European counterparts. Unlike the Germans, Italians, British and French, Hungarians were not trying to spread Hungarian culture per se. Hungarians employed cultural diplomacy to alter the post-war order. Considering the weakness of its economy, the frailty of its nearly non-existent military and the lack of weight that the country carried on the international political stage, the Hungarian government saw cultural diplomacy as a promising and viable alternative for changing the post-war status quo. Demonstrating the country's contribution to European and indeed to universal culture and civilisation was the fundamental message of Hungarian cultural diplomacy. However, other regional powers also aimed to portray their contributions in the very same way. In the resulting competitive climate, the Hungarian political leadership not only believed that the international community needed to be enlightened about the historical and cultural deeds of the Hungarian nation but also aimed to prove Hungary's supposed cultural supremacy over its regional counterparts. This article traces these efforts and their main themes through domestic and international festivals and gatherings, amongst them the 1930 St. Emeric's Year, the Fourth World Scout Jamboree in 1933 and the 1937 Paris World's Fair. In the end, the essay examines the real and perceived utility and limitations of small power cultural diplomacy in the age of great power politics.

The article explores the role of cultural diplomacy in Weimar Germany and France's competing efforts to win the sympathies and support of the United States after the First World War. In the post-war United States, both France and Germany used cultural initiatives to pursue their opposing visions of the new international order: France to maintain and extend wartime cultural alliances beyond the armistice and implement the provisions of the peace treaty; Germany to overturn these very alliances and build a desirable transatlantic ‘friendship’ in line with its efforts to revise the Versailles Treaty. By focusing on the Franco–German rivalry for US affinities, the article calls attention to the transatlantic dynamics of interwar cultural diplomacy. It shows that the emergence of German cultural diplomacy was strongly shaped by French competition for the affections of politically isolationist Americans and that, in general, the rapid expansion of cultural diplomacy in interwar Europe arose from mutual feelings of crisis, starkly competing ambitions as well as the rapid circulation of ideas and practices.

This article explores the UK government's first foray into cultural diplomacy by focusing on the activities of the British Council's Students Committee in the run-up to the Second World War. Students were placed at the heart of British cultural diplomacy, which drew on foreign models as well as the experience of intra-empire exchanges. While employing cultural internationalist discourse, the drive to attract more overseas students to the United Kingdom was intended to bring economic and political advantages to the host country. The British Council pursued its policy in cooperation with non-state actors but ultimately was guided by the Foreign Office, which led it to target key strategic regions, principally in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

While recent scholarship has highlighted how participating countries at the interwar world's fairs competed by displaying ideological versions of modernity, the alternative national projections of smaller states have received less attention. This study of the Swedish national pavilions from Brussels 1935 via Paris 1937 to New York 1939 analyses how a loose but well-connected network of communicators over the course of three fairs responded to, and used, the evolving trends at these international mega-events. In the threatening international atmosphere of the late 1930s, the network convinced the Swedish government to seize the opportunities opened up by the crises of capitalism and democracy. The 1937 and 1939 pavilions showcased Sweden at the world's fairs as an example of the successful handling of economic and socio-political crisis, and the experience had a formative impact on the post-war institutionalisation of Swedish cultural diplomacy.

Bilateral treaties are an age-old tool of diplomacy, but before the First World War they were only rarely applied to the world of intellectual and cultural relations. This article explores the process by which diplomatic agreements on intellectual and cultural exchange came instead to be a common feature of interwar European international relations by contrasting two types of agreements identified by period observers: ‘intellectual’ accords, typified by the agreements France signed in the 1920s, and ‘cultural’ treaties, advanced by fascist Italy in the 1930s. Comparing France and Italy's use of such agreements in Central-Eastern Europe reveals that Italy's fascist regime responded to the crises and opportunities of the interwar period by developing a distinctive model of ‘cultural treaty’ that applied state power to international cultural exchange, and mobilised the idea of ‘culture’ itself, in a new and influential manner.