Western Cold War Broadcasting

In the 1940s and 1950s, Western governments turned to radio as the most effective means of countering the Soviet information monopoly. U.S. and West European radio stations attempted to provide listeners with the kind of programs they might expect from their own radio stations if the latter were free of censorship. For most of these listeners in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the broadcasts were their only contact with the outside world. The importance of the foreign radio programs was confirmed not only by audience estimates, but also by the considerable efforts the Communist regimes made to jam the transmissions. Given the importance of foreign broadcasting for the political life of the Soviet bloc, it is remarkable that these broadcasts have received scant scholarly attention in the Western countries that sponsored them. The three books reviewed here help to fill that gap.