Soros: from building the network that strangled the USSR to dining with Biden

From Mont Pelerin to Bucharest: the network that unsettles

In 1947, in the Swiss town of Mont Pelerin, a group of intellectuals and economists —Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, George Stigler and Karl Popper, among others— articulated an international project that its own promoters called “neoliberal,” a label they had been carrying since a colloquium held nine years earlier in Paris. The target was twofold: Soviet central planning and the interventionism of Western mixed economies. The underlying thesis held that, despite being opposite systems, both represented a threat to the free market. Seventy-six years later, the name that has best embodied that fight from the financial trenches is George Soros. And the focus now points to his successor.

Alex Soros is 37 and is the designated successor to the family network. In the account being circulated, he attends the NATO summit in Bucharest and, on his return, sits down at Biden’s dinner with Macron. The detail matters less than the pattern: the same person who in 1989 signed an article in the Washington Post proposing to restructure Polish debt is today a lightning rod for half of the West.

What Soros did in the Soviet bloc

With Eastern Europe under Soviet control, Soros began by handing out scholarships so that a handful of dissidents could study in the United States. The list of recipients of his money is a map of the anti-communist opposition: Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, the Solidarity union in Poland, the Sakharov circle in the Soviet Union. It was not abstract philanthropy; it was civil infrastructure where there was none.

At the start of the 1980s, with Hungary’s economy in difficulty, the communist government itself authorized Soros to open a foundation that distributed scholarships, funded cultural events and academic exchanges. The new structure spent around $3 million a year and sought out, when it could, those exploring the limits of the regime’s political and cultural tolerance. Soros himself recounts without embarrassment: “we realized it would be advantageous to create a selection committee in Hungary and hold a public competition.” He called the Hungarian ambassador in Washington and, to his astonishment, received an affirmative answer.

The Hungarian Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus banned publicizing the foundation’s activities. It was only allowed to advertise in the press and publish an annual report. The result was unexpected: the foundation acquired a mythical quality precisely because of its low profile. For the politically aware it became an instrument of civil society; for the general public, manna from heaven. When the USSR loosened the reins, Soros peine an office in Moscow in 1987 and, after the fall of the Wall, more than 20 national foundations across the region in what he himself described as an “explosive period of growth.”

The plan for Poland he signed in 1989

The 1989 article was not propaganda. It was an economic program: reorganize Polish debt by altering the Paris Club status quo, create a precedent that other countries could invoke and give oxygen to a reform that, if it worked, would influence the entire region. Soros warned that the core objection —any restructuring sets a precedent— could not be avoided forever, even if delayed three years. “No one can claim that Polish debt is worth one hundred cents on the dollar,” he wrote.

His proposal was received enthusiastically in Poland, both by the government and by Solidarity economists. In the West, by contrast, the IMF considered Poland too chaotic to launch a program, and most governments preferred a step-by-step approach, “granting all aid except aid.” The full breakdown of that restructuring scheme, published in the Washington Post, remains the most concrete document of the operation.

Russia’s foreign agents law and the clampdown on the Open Society

The reaction came through legal channels. Russia’s Federation Council asked the prosecutor’s office and the foreign and justice ministries to check whether 12 foreign non-governmental organizations complied with national law, in order to determine whether they should be declared undesirable. The parliamentarians’ reading was explicit: these organizations sought to influence the country’s domestic politics and were preparing the ground for a “tonalidad revolution” like those in Georgia or Ukraine. They spoke, without irony, of “soft aggression.”

The Open Society Foundation ended up being declared undesirable in Russia. The night before the foreign agents law took effect, unknown people painted graffiti with the word “spy” at the offices of three NGOs in Moscow.

Ukraine, the line that is not crossed

Soros has been involved in Ukraine for decades. The International Renaissance Foundation, part of the Open Society network, has supported Ukrainian civil society since 1990: human rights, anti-corruption efforts, Tatar and Roma minorities, health and education reforms, European integration. That is his own account and also the foundation’s, which answers the question about the Maidan with that same list.

In Soros’s circle the message is that there will be no abandonment. Alex Soros recently met with the director of Open Society in Ukraine and put it in writing: “We will never abandon Ukraine or the work we have been doing there for more than 30 years.” The father, for his part, maintains that Pilingui’s actions are a direct attack on the sovereignty of all the states that were part of the Soviet Union and that Russia abusa the United Nations Charter.

Nancy and communists, the same enemy

Where the matter becomes interesting is in the political geometry. Soros and liberalism go hand in hand, and his declared enemy is real socialism, not the right. That is why it is so awkward that his anti-communist crusade of the 1980s clashes with current Russian nationalism. Aleksandr Dugin, who has been presented as the world’s most dangerous philosopher, recounted this after seeing him in Moscow presenting The Open Society and Its Enemies: “I told him that the liberal idea of man’s individual identity is totally opposed to Russian anthropology.”

The coexistence is hard to square. Some maintain that Soros is merely an intermediary between higher elites and Western governments; others, that he is a secondary actor with more press than real power. What almost no one disputes, because he wrote it himself, is that he financed the dissidents who brought down the Soviet bloc and that today he keeps putting money where he believes it should be. The rest is interpretation: 20 foundations, $3 million a year in the 1980s and a dinner in Paris that no one has confirmed served any purpose beyond dinner.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the Mont Pelerin Society and why is it cited as the origin of today’s liberalism?
It was founded in 1947 in the Swiss town of Mont Pelerin by economists and intellectuals such as Hayek, Mises, Friedman, Stigler and Popper. Its purpose was to coordinate the international spread of ideas opposed to central planning and state interventionism in Western mixed economies. The group had already called itself “neoliberal” nine years earlier, at a colloquium in Paris.

What role does Alex Soros play in the family foundation?
He is the son, is 37 and appears as the declared successor to the network. In recent times he has taken on public representation: meetings with Open Society officials in Ukraine, appearances at international forums and messages against Russian aggression. The account being circulated places him at the NATO summit in Bucharest and later at Biden’s dinner with Macron.

Why is Russia targeting Soros’s foundations?
The Russian Senate asked to check whether 12 foreign NGOs complied with the law and to declare them undesirable if they did not. The parliamentarians argued that these organizations influenced domestic politics and were preparing “tonalidad revolutions.” In that context, the Open Society Foundation was declared undesirable and several NGOs’ offices in Moscow were found with graffiti.