The RFE/RL Broadcast and Corporate Records are a rich and extraordinary resource for the study of the Cold War through one of the leading organizations that fought it. As a conflict of ideas and ideologies, the Cold War was unique not for its muddy battlefields and the stench of dead bodies so much as for the culture wars it inaugurated by broadcasting decadent Western music to Eastern Europe and by creating Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as a surrogate national outlet for news and cultural programming for the Soviet Bloc.
Comprising 10.5 million pages and more than 100,000 sound recordings from the 1950s to 2006, the records are separated in two collections representing broadcast and corporate arms. Many of the broadcast records are housed off-site, requiring advance notice for use. Contact RFE/RL project archivist Anatol Shmelev before visiting to determine availability.
The sound recordings are fragile and often unique. As a result, digital use copies must be produced before recordings can be made available. Thousands already exist and are available now on Hoover’s Digital Collections site, including more than 5,500 RFE/RL broadcast recordings and 160 RFE/RL corporate recordings.
Available services include:
Copies of sound recordings not yet digitized may be ordered. For further information, contact Jim Sam.
Additional recordings available via the following online resources:
Contains materials intended for broadcast or related to the language services
Concerns the policies and organization of the Free Europe Committee and RFE and the Radio Liberty Committee and RL
Wrote Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty
President of RFE/RL, 1975–78
Hungarian-American writer and RFE staff member
Deputy Political Advisor, RFE, Munich, Germany
Chairman, Trans-Atlantic Dialogue on European Broadcasting
RFE correspondent, Rome
RFE Polish section music director
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Other institutions with RFE/RL-related collections include:
Contact L&A For assistance contact hooverarchives [at] stanford.edu or 650-723-3563
International researchers and former officials met at the Hoover Institution to address the impact of Western broadcasting—especially Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)—during the cold war.
Johnson, A. Ross and R. Eugene Parta, eds. Cold War Broadcasting; Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Central European University Press, 2010.
