Sixty-five years ago, on February 15, 1956, retired Columbia University Prof. Clarence A. Manning was named by Aleksei I. Kirichenko, a Ukrainian delegate to the Communist party congress in Moscow, as “an old American spy and specialist in slandering the Soviet Union.”
Prof. Manning was also a longtime columnist, whose articles regularly featured in The Ukrainian Weekly, and he had authored a number of books on Ukrainian history and literature that were published by American publishing houses and many that were sponsored by the Ukrainian National Association.
He came under attack for his book “20th Century Ukraine,” which Kirichenko described as being “full of lies, slander and wild inventions.”
Prof. Manning responded to the vilification of him at the Communist party congress, and acknowledged proudly that he was an old enemy of the Soviet Union since 1917, “one of the first in the United States.” He denied there were “lies” or “wild inventions” in any of his works.
Considered a specialist in Slavonic literature since 1917, although the professor had not been in Russia or the Soviet Union, he taught literature of Eastern Europe at Columbia University since 1917, and retired in 1958, remaining as associate professor and publishing until his death in 1972. Prof. Manning was appointed chairman of the Department of Slavic Studies at Columbia, and, prior to earning his Ph.D., he worked with the intelligence police corps of the translation section of the Military Intelligence Division. He was a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society as well as a recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Ukrainian Free University in Munich.
Source: “Prof. Manning accused by Reds of being ‘an old American spy,’” The Ukrainian Weekly, February 25, 1956.