World Peace Council  The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization that advocates universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. It was founded in 1950, emerging from the policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to promote peace campaigns around the world in order to oppose "warmongering" by the United States. Throughout the Cold War, it was largely funded and controlled by the Soviet Union, and refrained from criticizing or even defended the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts. These factors led to the decline of its influence over the peace movement in non-Communist countries. Its first president was the French physicist and activist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. It was based in Helsinki, Finland from 1968 to 1999 and since in Athens, Greece. In August 1948 through the initiative of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) a "World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace" was held in Wroclaw, Poland. This gathering established a permanent organisation called the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace—a group which joined with another international Communist organisation, the Women's International Democratic Federation to convene a second international conclave in Paris in April 1949, a meeting designated the World Congress of Partisans for Peace (Congrès Mondial des Partisans de la Paix). Some 2,000 delegates from 75 countries were in attendance at this foundation gathering in the French capital. A new permanent organization emerged from the April 1949 conclave, the World Committee of Partisans for Peace. At a Second World Congress held in Warsaw in November 1950, this group adopted the new name World Peace Council (WPC). The origins of the WPC lay in the Cominform's doctrine that the world was divided between "peace-loving" progressive forces led by the Soviet Union and "warmongering" capitalist countries led by the United States, declaring that peace "should now become the pivot of the entire activity of the Communist Parties", and most western Communist parties followed this policy. In 1950, Cominform adopted the report of Mikhail Suslov, a senior Soviet official, praising the Partisans for Peace and resolving that, "The Communist and Workers' Parties must utilize all means of struggle to secure a stable and lasting peace, subordinating their entire activity to this" and that "Particular attention should be devoted to drawing into the peace movement trade unions, women's, youth, cooperative, sport, cultural, education, religious and other organizations, and also scientists, writers, journalists, cultural workers, parliamentary and other political and public leaders who act in defense of peace and against war."