Radio Free Europe: Still Broadcasting
For those of you who are unfamiliar (as I was) with the full history and current status of Radio Free Europe, this article will provide an introduction.
Radio Free Europe: 1950 to 1995
When the Iron Curtain went up after WWII, there was more than just barbed wire separating East from West. The Soviet Union and its satellite states were sealed off by harsh communist regimes, with leaders like Stalin and Khrushchev using military power, communist propaganda, and other repressive controls to keep Western ideologies out of the Eastern bloc. As Americans grew increasingly suspicious and fearful of the Soviet Union, they devised a way to communicate with citizens of Soviet satellite countries and expose those people to pro-Western propaganda that they hoped would result in regime change. The idea was to broadcast news and opinion pieces by recent emigres who had managed to escape to Western Europe. By using the languages and voices of the communist countries, it was hoped, these radio broadcasts could slowly break down the Soviet stronghold on ideas and values.
In 1950, just a short distance from the West German border with Czechoslovakia, Radio Free Europe made its first short-wave broadcast in Czech. Programming was soon extended to Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, with a permanent headquarters established in Munich. Radio Liberation, a separate cognate of Radio Free Europe created in 1953, began broadcasts in Russian aimed at the residents of the Soviet Union. Although Eastern bloc governments jammed the signals, many people on the far side of the Iron Curtain were able to hear the broadcasts through careful tuning. Even though listening to Radio Free Europe was criminal in communist countries, the programming developed quite an underground following, with Polish folks cryptically referring to the broadcasts simply as “light.”
Broadcasts continued to diversify in language, with Armenian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian, and many other native tongues added in 1953 and 1954. Despite some suspicious deaths of emigres involved in Radio Free Europe broadcasts, including a prominent Belarusian commentator in Munich, expansion continued. Towers were added in Portugal and Spain to improve signals and help overcome jamming. Radio Free Europe covered the crushed Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, the rise of the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, all the while providing either an anti-Soviet perspective or an “open” view sponsored by the US government. Critics often expressed concern that Radio Free Europe was biased toward the West, and although that was probably the case, coverage of the Watergate scandal was used to help show citizens of Eastern bloc nations that American politics were far from perfect or rosy.
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation (by then Radio Liberty) were eventually combined in the 1970s to form “RFE/RL.” The joint station continued to broadcast into the 1980s, covering the Russian presence in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl incident. Soviet jamming finally ceased in 1988 at Gorbachev’s order. With the Iron Curtain collapsing, RFE/RL was able to cover the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and other notable events. Many believe that RFE broadcasts in the 1950s and 1960s helped to lay the groundwork for the ideological shifts that manifested themselves by the early 1990s.
With the Cold War essentially over, the status of RFE/RL came into question. However, the situation in Iraq (surrounding the first Gulf War) and the impending crises in the Balkans gave radio leaders renewed inspiration and material. US leaders decided that RFE/RL broadcasts should continue as Eastern Europe transitioned into democracy and as other problems elsewhere (including human rights abuses) rose to the forefront.
Ironically, 54 years after the first broadcast of Radio Free Europe was directed at Czechoslovakia, Czech leader Vaclav Havel asked President Clinton to consider relocating RFE/RL operations from Munich to Prague in the newly free Czech Republic. Clinton warmly accepted the proposal, and in 1994, the organization began to operate from what was once “the other side.” Talk about Iron Curtain Irony.
RFE/RL Today
What was once Radio Free Europe did not simply disband and disintegrate into the history books after the Cold War (as I had naively supposed). Rather, the organization continued to diversify its news efforts. Today, RFE/RL broadcasts in over 25 languages in several formats. Programming is available through the original short-wave signals as well as AM, FM, and streaming internet audio.
According to its own website, RFE/RL employs over 1500 freelance journalists and maintains 23 news bureaus, some of which are even located in the former Soviet Union. The organization continues to receive funding through the US Congress, though it functions as a so-called private organization. Some critics conceptualize a problem with the continued American government financing of RFE/RL, and their criticisms should not be dismissed lightly. Anytime a government-funded entity claims to sponsor objective international news (which the public has little ability to “check”), these claims should be examined by third parties. Just as we would scrutinize a state-run news agency in another country, we must question how “we” (as the promoters of RFE/RL) drive the bias in the news.
RFE/RL today covers all kinds of news stories, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia. The developing nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and their peers are frequently the topic of RFE/RL reporting, with elections carefully covered by the station’s reporters with an eye on freedom and “true” democracy (whatever that may ultimately mean). Given the US-led coalition involvement in Iraq, it is vital for Americans to understand that RFE/RL is being used there too as a propaganda tool. Whether the reporting amounts to free exchange of ideas in the war-torn Iraqi nation is debatable, as some critics are suggesting that RFE/RL journalists’ stories are being delivered by military personnel to media outlets, thus resulting in somewhat forced American “control” (or at least influence) of the would-be free Iraqi press. The situation is complicated, of course, but we must continue to evaluate our role and balance stories. Whether we are capable of doing that depends on your views of the current administration, which is beyond (though related to) the purview of this article.
Although print stories are available on the RFE/RL website, radio broadcasts are not available in English. While this is understandable, given the propensity to broadcast in native languages to countries in question, the lack of English broadcasting complicates the American public’s ability to understand and evaluate how the Western concept of freedom is being conveyed abroad on RFE/RL airwaves.
Final Thoughts
The 50-year celebration section of the RFE/RL website features a 13-minute audio compilation which includes the first words spoken on what were popularly called “The Radios.” The medley reviews other historic moments during the Cold War and how they were captured by reporters, reminding me how powerful the RFE/RL presence may have been. Imagine hearing gunshots in the background of a report and how the simple aural access to current events shaped viewpoints and created currents for change.
Although Americans were sometimes fearful of communist regimes beyond reason (remember McCarthyism!), it can at least be solidly concluded that RFE/RL helped bring more ideas and information to people living in repressed societies. Even if the messages were biased in favor of the West, the access to these broadcasts facilitated dialogue and questioning at a critical time. How continued RFE/RL broadcasts will affect places like Iraq, though, remains to be seen.
