In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

299 CHaPter 15 foreign media, the soviet Western frontier, and the Hungarian and Czechoslovak Crises1 amir Weiner evaluating the impact of foreign broadcasts and publications is a tricky pursuit for those who seek to influence the course of events in an opponent ’s country, and the impact of Cold War broadcasts to the soviet union is not always easy to measure. this essay discusses soviet responses to the war of the airwaves with the West, and to lesser-known yet equally important east european media, in the context of the changes that took place during the two decades that followed stalin’s death. the bulk of data referenced in this article are drawn from reports by the KgB and Communist Party organizations, now stored in former soviet archives in the russian federation, ukraine and the Baltic states, as well as from “target area listener reports” compiled by rfe/rl audience research, which are now in the Hoover archives at stanford university . Both soviet and Western reports tried to assess the scope of popular reactions to foreign broadcasts on the basis of numerous individual cases. it should be noted that these did not constitute a public opinion survey. the soviet accounts were mostly police reports aimed at identifying individual troublemakers, which occasionally addressed the issue of the popular appeal of Western broadcasts in terms of content. the Western reports were compilations of conversations with soviet citizens traveling abroad, a fairly privileged stratum of soviet society. the focus here is on soviet official and popular reactions to foreign media reports and broadcasts in a specific place at specific times: namely, the Western frontier at the time of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis. the Western frontier is the area stretching between the Baltic and Black seas that was annexed by the soviets in 1939–40. Populated main1 thanks to simo mikkonen of the university of Jyväskylä in finland for his support in writing this chapter. i4 J&P.indb 299 2010.07.05. 7:55 300 ly by non-russians and impregnated with the living memory of national sovereignty, it was an obvious target for Western broadcasts. the volatility of the region was exacerbated by its proximity to, and growing contacts with the scandinavian countries and Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia (the trouble spots of the soviet Bloc), as well as the unsolved issues of post-war border demarcation. the 1956 Polish and Hungarian crises caught up with the soviets at a moment when cautious attempts to reform the stalinist system were growing bolder, notably with the release of a significant number of convicted nationalist guerrillas and activists, who were allowed to return to their homes on the Western frontier. the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis unfolded when the soviet polity appeared to have stabilized its domestic order , including the ethno-national homogenization of its Western frontier, even though it was facing increasing challenges in the international arena from both allies and rivals. the soviet handling of the challenges posed by foreign radio broadcasts, during these crises and beyond, touched on critical issues such as the boundaries of reform and the price the regime was willing to pay for relative loss of control over information flow and communications.2 the twentieth Party Congress, and the ensuing discussions inside and outside the Party cells, reopened the wounds of occupation and sovietization policies in the area of the Western frontier, and offered anti-soviet activists a vast pool of viable memories and rhetoric upon which to draw. the amnesty and return of political prisoners provided the required conduit. What was needed was a catalyst that would transform these dormant resentments into action. such a spark arrived from across the border in fall 1956. early signs that residents of the Western frontier were closely watching the turbulent events in eastern europe had been spotted in the immediate aftermath of Khrushchev’s speech to the Congress. in estonia, inquiries about the legality of purges in the eastern european satellite countries served as a tacit reminder that soviet power was an external force, and the estonian republic was a sovereign state. significantly, such inqui2 on the soviet Western frontier in the post-stalin decades, see amir Weiner, “the empires Pay a Visit: gulag returnees, east european rebellions, and soviet frontier Politics,” in The Journal of Modern History 78:2 (June 2006), and “déjà Vu all over again: Prague spring, romanian summer, and soviet autumn on russia’s Western frontier,” in The Journal of Contemporary European History, 2006...

Share