Cold War Broadcasting

Cold War Broadcasting
Author: A. Ross Johnson
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 612
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9639776807

"It was not a matter of propaganda ... black and white ideological broadcasts ... What made [Radio Free Europe] important were its impartiality, independence, and objectivity."---Vaclav Havel "Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were critically important weapons in the free world's competition with Soviet totalitarianism---and without them the Soviet bloc might even have not disintegrated ... The account in this book of their activities is therefore not only informative, but critical to understanding recent history."---Zbigniew Brzezinski "The studies and translated Soviet bloc documents published in this book demonstrate the enormous impact of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Voice of America during the Cold War. By promoting democratic values and undermining the monopoly of information on which Communist regimes relied, the Radios contributed greatly to the end of the Cold War."---George P. Shultz "I know of no other mass media organization that has done more than RFE/RL to help create the Europe in which we live today---a Europe not divided into two opposing camps."---Elena Bonner Examines the role of Western broadcasting to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, with a focus on Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. It includes chapters by radio veterans and by scholars who have conducted research on the subject in once-secret Soviet bloc archives and in Western records. It also contains a selection of translated documents from formerly secret Soviet and East European archives, most of them published here for the first time.

Western Broadcasting over the Iron Curtain

Western Broadcasting over the Iron Curtain
Author: K.R.M. Short
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1003820700

Western Broadcasting Over the Iron Curtain (1986) examines the development of broadcasting policy by Western democracies, levels of government control of policy, efforts by communist regimes to minimize the effects of western broadcasting, and Soviet and Eastern European audience opinions on such diverse subjects as the success or failure of socialism and the Korean airline disaster.

War of the Black Heavens

War of the Black Heavens
Author: Michael Nelson
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 1997-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780815604792

International diplomacy and a changing global economy did not bring about the fall of the Iron Curtain. Radio did, and it was mightier than the sword. Based on first-hand interviews and documents from the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, Michael Nelson shows that Western radio—principally, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and the Voice of America—were unrivaled forces in the fight against communism and the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Communists did everything in their power to prevent the infiltration of Western thought into their world, resorting to jamming radio signals, assassinating staff, and bombing stations. The Russians, for example, decided to stop the mass production of short-wave radios so that their citizens could not hear Western broadcasts. War of the Black Heavens reveals that, due to administrative incompetence, short-wave radio production continued, making worthless many of the billions of dollars spent on jamming. These radio programs introduced a forbidden, exciting culture to millions of eager listeners. Pop music, talk shows, news, and information about consumer goods all relayed a message of the good life, subtly undermining the values of the communist regimes. Western radio actively connected listeners with the cultures of Europe and North America. War of the Black Heavens describes an unheralded story of success and adds a new interpretation that helps us understand some of the most momentous political events of this century.

Cold War on the Airwaves

Cold War on the Airwaves
Author: Nicholas J Schlosser
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252097785

Founded as a counterweight to the Communist broadcasters in East Germany, Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) became one of the most successful public information operations conducted against the Soviet Bloc. Cold War on the Airwaves examines the Berlin-based organization's history and influence on the political worldview of the people--and government--on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Nicholas J. Schlosser draws on broadcast transcripts, internal memoranda, listener letters, and surveys by the U.S. Information Agency to profile RIAS. Its mission: to undermine the German Democratic Republic with propaganda that, ironically, gained in potency by obeying the rules of objective journalism. Throughout, Schlosser examines the friction inherent in such a contradictory project and propaganda's role in shaping political culture. He also portrays how RIAS's primarily German staff influenced its outlook and how the organization both competed against its rivals in the GDR and pushed communist officials to alter their methods in order to keep listeners. From the occupation of Berlin through the airlift to the construction of the Berlin Wall, Cold War on the Airwaves offers an absorbing view of how public diplomacy played out at a flashpoint of East-West tension.

Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain
Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 803
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385536437

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

Hot Books in the Cold War

Hot Books in the Cold War
Author: Alfread A. Reisch
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 597
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 6155225230

This study reveals the hidden story of the secret book distribution program to Eastern Europe financed by the CIA during the Cold War. At its height between 1957 and 1970, the book program was one of the least known but most effective methods of penetrating the Iron Curtain, reaching thousands of intellectuals and professionals in the Soviet Bloc. Reisch conducted thorough research on the key personalities involved in the book program, especially the two key figures: S. S. Walker, who initiated the idea of a ?mailing project,? and G. C. Minden, who developed it into one of the most effective political and psychological tools of the Cold War. The book includes excellent chapters on the vagaries of censorship and interception of books by communist authorities based on personal letters and accounts from recipients of Western material. It will stand as a testimony in honor of the handful of imaginative, determined, and hard-working individuals who helped to free half of Europe from mental bondage and planted many of the seeds that germinated when communism collapsed and the Soviet bloc disintegrated.

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War
Author: Yale Richmond
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2003-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0271031573

Some fifty thousand Soviets visited the United States under various exchange programs between 1958 and 1988. They came as scholars and students, scientists and engineers, writers and journalists, government and party officials, musicians, dancers, and athletes—and among them were more than a few KGB officers. They came, they saw, they were conquered, and the Soviet Union would never again be the same. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War describes how these exchange programs (which brought an even larger number of Americans to the Soviet Union) raised the Iron Curtain and fostered changes that prepared the way for Gorbachev's glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War. This study is based upon interviews with Russian and American participants as well as the personal experiences of the author and others who were involved in or administered such exchanges. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War demonstrates that the best policy to pursue with countries we disagree with is not isolation but engagement.

Radio Wars

Radio Wars
Author: Linda Risso
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317373200

During the Cold War, radio broadcasting played an important role in the ideological confrontation between East and West. As archival documents gathered in this volume reveal, radio broadcasting was among the most pressing concerns of contemporary information agencies. These broadcasts could penetrate the Iron Curtain and directly address the ‘enemy’. Radio was equally important in keeping sustained levels of support among the home public and the public of friendly nations. In the early Cold War in particular, listeners in the West had to be persuaded of the need for higher defence spending levels and a policy of containment. Later, even if other media – and in particular television – had become more important, radio continued to be used widely. The chapters gathered here investigate both the institutional history of the radio broadcasting corporations in the East and in the West, and their relationship with other propaganda agencies of the time. They examine the ‘off-air’ politics of radio broadcasting, from the choice of theme to the selection of speakers, singers and music pieces. The key issue tackled by contributors is the problem of measuring the impact of, and qualifying the success of, information policies and propaganda programmes produced during the Cultural Cold War. This book was originally published as a special issue of Cold War History.

The Collapse

The Collapse
Author: Mary Sarotte
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465064949

On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was an accident. In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin. We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control. Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Radio Wars

Radio Wars
Author: Linda Risso
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317373219

During the Cold War, radio broadcasting played an important role in the ideological confrontation between East and West. As archival documents gathered in this volume reveal, radio broadcasting was among the most pressing concerns of contemporary information agencies. These broadcasts could penetrate the Iron Curtain and directly address the ‘enemy’. Radio was equally important in keeping sustained levels of support among the home public and the public of friendly nations. In the early Cold War in particular, listeners in the West had to be persuaded of the need for higher defence spending levels and a policy of containment. Later, even if other media – and in particular television – had become more important, radio continued to be used widely. The chapters gathered here investigate both the institutional history of the radio broadcasting corporations in the East and in the West, and their relationship with other propaganda agencies of the time. They examine the ‘off-air’ politics of radio broadcasting, from the choice of theme to the selection of speakers, singers and music pieces. The key issue tackled by contributors is the problem of measuring the impact of, and qualifying the success of, information policies and propaganda programmes produced during the Cultural Cold War. This book was originally published as a special issue of Cold War History.