Let’s Learn about the Cold War: Part 8 – Radio Free Europe

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Sean D. Smith
  • Minot Air Force Base Public Affairs
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. --  Propaganda was the face of the Cold War, and there was no shortage of iconic posters and slogans on both sides -- but media in the Soviet Union was a tool of the Communist Party. The USSR strictly controlled the news and provided plenty of anti-capitalist propaganda.

A competition emerged between Western and Soviet media. The Cold War was a conflict of ideas, and both sides wanted to win the war in the hearts and minds of the people. At the time, radio was one of the central tools for the dissemination of information.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was the American response to Soviet radio, founded by the National Committee for a Free Europe, which was a group of influential Americans whose mission was to support refugees from Soviet states.

Radio Free Europe was aimed at Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe, and Radio Liberty targeted the Soviet Union itself. Soviet broadcasts and influence were pervasive, and RFE/RL was founded to bolster anti-communist media and provide information to people in Soviet-controlled territory that couldn't get it any other way.

The Western radio campaign was effective. In 1986 the Chernobyl Disaster released dangerous radiation in Ukraine. Soviet media was extremely slow in reporting the incident, and many Soviet citizens had to turn to Radio Liberty to get relevant information about danger from radiation and necessary precautions. 

RFE/RL gained a reputation as a reliable and accurate source of information. When the Soviet Union's efforts to compete with Western media failed, the USSR turned to limiting its influence. Broadcasts were banned, and the KGB even turned to jamming Radio Free Europe broadcasts.

The Soviet government went as far as making it illegal to manufacture radios in the USSR that were capable of receiving a short wave signal.

RFE/RL and the information it presented was seen as a threat by communist leaders, particularly in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. RFE facilities and personnel were repeatedly targeted in attacks that included bombings and even a failed attempt by the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service to poison the salt shakers in an RFE cafeteria.

In its early days, RFE/RL received funding from the Central Intelligence Agency, though that funding would trail off toward the end of the Cold War. Radio Free Europe still exists today in countries where free press is discouraged.

In the early days of the Cold War, while RFE/RL worked in Europe to push back against communist propaganda and demonstrate to people under Soviet control what free information looked like, in America the organization was criticized for being too evenhanded and not sufficiently anti-communist.

This was related to the anti-communist culture influenced by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Next time: McCarthyism