Partisan Review (PR) was a left-wing small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City.

[3] Early issues of the magazine included a mixture of ostensibly proletarian literature and essays of cultural commentary — the latter of which became a hallmark of PR for the whole of its nearly seven decades of existence.

A new cast of editors were brought on board, including Dwight Macdonald and literary critic F. W. Dupee, and a sympathy for Trotskyism began to make itself felt in the magazine's editorial political line.

A new group of left-wing writers deeply critical of the Soviet Union began to write for the publication, including James Burnham and Sidney Hook.

Rahv and Phillips gave qualified support to the campaign for American rearmament and the country's preparation for war, opposed by Macdonald and another editor at the time, Clement Greenberg.

[6] Anti-Communism began to loom in the raison d'être of Partisan Review in the post-war years and bolstered by the contributions of such writers as Hook, James Farrell, George Orwell, and Arthur Koestler, the political trajectory of PR moved rightwards.

[8] Although vehemently denied by founding editor William Phillips, following the fall of the Soviet Union it was revealed that Partisan Review was the recipient of money from the Central Intelligence Agency as part of its effort to shape intellectual opinion in the so-called "cultural cold war".

The financial shortfall was made up by a $2,500 grant from the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF), a CIA front organization on the executive board of which editor Phillips sat throughout the decade of the 1950s.

[12] Having invested more than $1 million in Partisan Review over the years and stored the publication's archive since 1963, Rutgers physically blocked the transfer of PR's files to the new institution.

[12] A standoff resulted and attorneys for both parties hastily came to an agreement by which Phillips was allowed to remove back issues, financial files, and current documents necessary for the magazine's publication to Boston University with Rutgers holding the archival originals until the matter could be legally settled.