radio

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Records

Overview

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.

Anatol Shmelev Hoover Headshot

Anatol Shmelev

Robert Conquest Curator for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia / Research Fellow

Anatol Shmelev is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Robert Conquest Curator for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia at Hoover’s Library & Archives, and the project archivist for its Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Collection. Shmelev’s expertise is in twentieth-c...

About

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.

RFE/RL Copyright

Copies of sound recordings not yet digitized may be ordered. For further information, email hoover-library-archives@stanford.edu.

Additional recordings available via the following online resources:

  • Szabad Európa Rádió >>
    • Hungarian broadcasts from 22 October-12 November 1956
    • National Széchényi Library (Budapest)
  • Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Archives >>
    • Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tatar-Bashkir, Turkmen and Uzbek Service broadcasts from the 1990’s
    • Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center, University of Indiana (USA)
cold war

Conference on Impact of Cold War Broadcasting, 2004

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.

Conference report

Vaclav Havel's video message

Johnson, A. Ross and R. Eugene Parta, eds. Cold War Broadcasting; Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Central European University Press, 2010.

Film and Audio

Explore

Date (field_news_date)
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News/Press
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Tape Boxing Project Completed

An ambitious project to box, label, and accurately count the 80,000 seven-inch open-reel audiotapes in the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) broadcast records is complete.

August 12, 2009
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News/Press
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Tape Boxing Project Completed

An ambitious project to box, label, and accurately count the 80,000 seven-inch open-reel audiotapes in the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) broadcast records is complete.

August 12, 2009
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News/Press
Radio Free Europe (RFE) Serbo-Croatian Tapes Digitized

The entire collection of audiotapes created by RFE’s Serbo-Croatian Language Service has been digitized for preservation and access. Use copies of the recordings are available for listening at the Hoover Archives.

July 16, 2009
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Musical ambassadors documented in Hoover’s Radio Free Europe records

Ella Fitzgerald speaks with Radio Free Europe shortly after appearing at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany.

March 05, 2009
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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Belarus Service Audiotapes Digitized

The entire collection of audiotapes at Hoover created by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service has been digitized for preservation and access. Use copies of the recordings are available for listening at the Hoover Archives.

March 24, 2010
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