Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty by Mark G. Pomar

Abstract

U.S. international broadcasting platforms—Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, DC, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Munich and since 1995 in Prague—have been continually broadcasting to native Russian speakers in their own language from the Second World War through the Cold War into the post-Communist period, especially now with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As is the case today, the Cold War period was marked by high tensions between Washington and Moscow and creative programming by the VOA and RFE/RL. The two stations transmitted sophisticated, popular broadcasts into the Soviet Union featuring current news, opinion programs, music, and cultural personalities on a daily basis.The two U.S. shortwave radios offered competing programing approaches during the Cold War, a duality that has now been reconstructed and detailed by scholar-practitioner Mark Pomar of the University of Texas in his new book, Cold War Radio: Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Having worked in high positions in both organizations, he labels VOA's Cold War Russian programing “purist journalism”—straightforward, objective journalism—and Radio Liberty's approach to be strategic, indeed confrontational journalism. Both approaches amounted to “war by non-military means” against Communist ideology and autocratic Soviet governance.Other Western-oriented, anti-Communist radios included the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from London, Radio France International (RFI) from Paris, West Germany's Deutsche Welle (DW) from Bonn, and Israel's Kol Yisrael (KL) from Tel Aviv. These broadcasters offered similar twin approaches.Individually and in the aggregate, Western broadcasters provided Soviet audiences with news and information they could not otherwise obtain, and they thus helped to erode the Soviet regime's grip on its population. One significant reason for the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and fall of the Iron Curtain was the cumulative impact of international broadcasting.The Russian services of VOA and RL were separate from each other in programing, personnel, funding, and space. Both radios, however, targeted Russian speakers throughout the Soviet Union and successfully attracted large, important, diverse, and loyal audiences despite expensive, systematic jamming by the Soviet state security apparatus and Communist Party. Analytic practitioners L. Eugene Parta and A. Ross Johnson published a book in 2010 discussing the estimated sizes of the broadcasts’ audiences, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Kremlin authorities forbade people to listen, and the regime spent many millions of rubles trying to block listeners from hearing the broadcasts. But behind apartment doors and walls, inside bathrooms, under bed blankets, and in forested dachas, Soviet citizens who wanted accurate information about the world persistently listened to the shortwave radio channels.More than three decades after the crumbling of the Soviet imperium, Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule in the Russian Federation and brutal war of conquest against Ukraine have reinvigorated those audiences. Since February 2022, VOA's and RFE/RL's Russian services have gained renewed life. Both services again command large audiences who desire up-to-the-minute accounts of Kremlin politics, military strategies and personnel, battlefield locations, and the fate of Russian troops. No longer served by short or medium wave, today's social media platforms lure many millions via the Internet; indeed, the services have greater engagement now than during the Cold War. For instance, viewership of Current Times, RFE/RL's flagship Russian-language program, has more than tripled on Facebook and more than quadrupled on YouTube. These large audiences are “vital” to Ukraine's war effort says Estonia's former president and career Kremlin-watcher Toomas Hendrik Ilves.Pomar's history is a worthy sequel to the book by Parta and Johnson. As a student of the subject myself, I found Pomar's inside exploration of Russian-language programming, policies, and debates within the two U.S. Russian services during the Reagan administration to be insightful, coherently organized and written, and relevant to the grave situation that has emerged with Putin's Russia. Since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, RL's Russian audiences have increased precipitously, especially viewership of the Current Times program on the Internet. Another sign of recognition is that the Russian authorities have jailed an inordinate number of RL journalists. Moreover, RFE/RL and VOA programing has received a great deal of meritorious attention in Kyiv, Berlin, Paris, London, and New York, including a large audience for CBS's celebrated Sunday program 60 Minutes when it ran a fifteen-minute segment featuring RL's popularity in Putin's Russia.Pomar possesses special qualifications. Fluent in Russian, he was trained in Russian history and culture at Columbia University, receiving a Ph.D. In the 1960s and 1970s, he enjoyed inside managerial experiences in both U.S. media companies as the assistant director of RL's Russian Service, director of the USSR Division at VOA, and executive director of the federal Board for International Broadcasting. During my nine-year tenure as president of RFE/RL in the post–Cold War period at the Prague headquarters, I wish I had had the benefit of Pomar's professional knowledge and insights into Russian culture and society as well as his charming personality.An example of Pomar's scholarly diligence is the nearly 1,000 hours he spent listening to on-air programs of the two U.S. Russian broadcast services from various periods of the Cold War. His study of multiple “voices” gave him what he calls a “nuanced understanding of how VOA and RL sought to communicate with their listeners. “In sharp contrast to Soviet news media that strived for a standard homogenous sound [and] propaganda,” Pomar writes, both of the U.S. stations “gloried in the voice and language of a free society,” assigning a wide range of native-speaking individuals to radio microphones who blended creativity, honesty, and heterogeneous presentations.Pomar highlights three reasons for the Cold War effectiveness of both VOA and RL. The first is the high quality and authenticity of the broadcasters. Both Julian Panich of RL and Alexey Kovalev of VOA had been professional actors. Others had the talent to speak directly and naturally to listeners, such as RL personages Irena Khenkina and Vladimir Matusevich. Pomar mentions self-effacing broadcasters Yuri von Schlippe of RL and Nik Sorokiun of VOA, who engaged listeners without calling attention to themselves. Finally, Pomar focuses on such prominent Russian writers and cultural figures as Yurii Lyubimov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Voinovich. “We gave our listeners the sound of vivid, highly individual broadcasters who not only spoke of freedom but also lived that freedom in their voices.” Pomar reminds his readers that broadcasters and guests “were free to argue and debate, so long as they adhered to accepted Western norms of decorum and relied on fact-based information” (p. 262).Both Russian services successfully faced three challenges head-on. First was piercing Russia's censorship, which contemporary Russian artists, writers, philosophers, historians, and human rights activists did. Second was the presentation of Western life in a way that Soviet listeners could understand and appreciate rather than just turn off. Presentations had to be critically constructive, airing all sides of an issue, and they were. Third was to confront the Soviet Union by exposing its distortions and countering Soviet disinformation.Overall, radio broadcasts by the Russian Services of VOA and RL were unrivaled treasure troves. So, too, is Cold War Radio by Mark Pomar.