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3 CHaPter 1 rfe’s early Years: evolution of Broadcast Policy and evidence of Broadcast impact paul b. henze since the liberation of eastern europe and the collapse of the soviet union, the effectiveness of radio free europe broadcasts has never been questioned. testimony on the impact of the broadcasts has come repeatedly from the new leaders of eastern europe, and from millions of citizens who began listening in the 1950s. i have talked to many former listeners who recall the details of specific broadcasts and the circumstances under which they listened. many remember the names of broadcast personalities they listened to. Partly as a result of this, what could almost be termed a mythology has developed about rfe’s effectiveness, and the foresight that guided its founding and operation. it is flattering to those of us who were involved in the early period of the organization to be credited with so much wisdom, but it is far from justified. What we do deserve credit for is the fact that we took advantage of the opportunity offered to us to build an effective broadcasting project that was undertaken in spite of obstacles and skepticism. radio free europe was an experiment. it was jerry-built. its success was far from fore-ordained. the early years of its operation were never trouble-free. it faced many difficulties, some inherent in the operation itself, some the result of bureaucratic factors, many caused by doubts about—even strong opposition to—the notion of radio broadcasts as a means of communicating with peoples that had been forcibly incorporated into the soviet empire and isolated from the outer world with no immediate prospect of an improvement in their situation. the early history of rfe needs to be better understood as background for current radio broadcasting ventures. none of these is likely to repeat the success of rfe broadcasts to eastern europe, for times and technology have changed drastically and irreversibly. i4 J&P.indb 3 2010.07.05. 7:54 4 When the national Committee for free europe (nCfe), soon renamed the free europe Committee (feC), was formed in 1949, radio broadcasting was not envisioned as an important aspect of its activity. to the eminent men of affairs who founded the organization with White House and state department encouragement, the feC was primarily a device for taking care of left-over east european political leaders who had set up exile governments during WWii and been left high and dry at the end of the war, after the soviets took over their countries. they were respectable men who had served their countries well and been supportive of allied war aims. many of them hoped they might soon be enabled to return home. some of them nursed the illusory hope that communist domination of eastern europe might not last much longer than nazi occupation . meanwhile something had to be done for these men, who had become an embarrassment and a burden to the us government, especially the state department. they needed to be given something constructive to do. a major consideration in establishing the feC was to create an opportunity to keep them busy. the modest staff which the feC assembled in new York first decided that these exiled east europeans could be more effective in opposing communist domination of their homelands if they could be persuaded to set partisan differences aside and form united “national committees” that would inspire people under communist domination to resist. so the initial feC thrust was to persuade each exile group to form a broadly representative national council representing the entire political spectrum except the two extremes: nazi collaborators and Communists . much negotiating was done and numerous meetings held in america and europe during the early 1950s, but the few national councils that emerged never attracted great enthusiasm among the exiles, and did not have the capacity to do anything worthwhile with respect to the occupied countries. almost all of them became irrelevant by the end of the 1950s. the feC lost interest in them. the feC came into being with a strong sense of activism and was encouraged by the us government. if exile national committees were ineffective , other ways of keeping the exiles busy accomplishing something had to be found. exiles could do research and it could be publicized. a mid-european studies Center was set up and former diplomats and political leaders wrote memoirs and analyses. a free europe Press was set up to distribute reports to newspapers, and began to...

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