“A Kite Waiting for the Wind”: The USSR and the Founding of UNESCO, 1942–1945

This article examines the participation of the Soviet Union in the wartime negotiations that led to the establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) between 1942 and 1945. The Second World War created the conditions for a new international order centred on the United Nations, within which education, science, and culture were viewed as vital tools for ensuring lasting peace. The USSR played an active role in shaping the framework of post-war multilateral cooperation but ultimately refused to join UNESCO. Drawing on documents from the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation and published collections of US and British diplomatic papers, the study analyses the motives behind Moscow’s position. It argues that the Soviet government supported international cooperation in principle but found the proposed organisational structure politically unfavourable: voting procedures would have marginalised Soviet influence, while the leadership already possessed its own ideological and propaganda mechanisms. The French draft charter of September 1945 failed to resolve these concerns, reinforcing the USSR’s decision to abstain. The article concludes that the Soviet refusal was driven primarily by pragmatic considerations rather than by ideological confrontation. It also highlights that the diplomatic approaches developed during these negotiations anticipated the Soviet Union’s later strategies in other United Nations bodies and offer new insight into the early Soviet vision of multilateral diplomacy.

USSR, United States, United Kingdom, United Nations, UNESCO, Second World War, diplomacy, multilateralism, international organisations