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.
Organizers were the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The conference was made possible by a generous gift from the Bernard Osher Foundation. The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands sponsored a synthesis of the conference results.
Václav Havel, once a dissident and later president of the Czech Republic, welcomed conference participants in a video message in which he said that the “influence and significance of RFE/RL broadcasts had been great and profound.”
Václav Havel’s thoughts on the significance of RFE
October 2004
A leading dissident during the Communist era, Václav Havel’s writings reached his fellow citizens through the broadcasts of the RFE Czechoslovak Service. Invited to address the Conference on Cold War Broadcasting Impact at the Hoover Institution in 2004, Havel was unable to attend but recorded for conference participants these thoughts on the significance of RFE.
(Conference on Cold War Broadcasting Impact proceedings records, Box 1, Hoover Institution Archives)
George P. Shultz, Hoover Distinguished Fellow opened the conference. He said the research presented this week “would contribute to a better understanding of an important period of world history and contribute to our ability to structure communications in the new global political arena.”
Hoover Director John Raisian introduced human rights activist Elena Bonner and RFE/RL President Tom Dine, who addressed the meeting. The conference was organized by Hoover research fellow A. Ross Johnson. Participants included Dr. Elena Bashkirova, president of the Romir survey research firm in Moscow; Professor Istvan Rev, head of the Open Society Archives in Budapest; Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general; and former RFE/RL, VOA, and BBC broadcasting officials.
The conference discussed papers based on research in previously inaccessible East European and former Soviet communist archives. These materials included secret Communist Party discussions of broadcasting impact and propaganda countermeasures, secret police plans to penetrate RFE/RL, directives on jamming, and internal secret audience surveys.
For the conference report, see http://media.hoover.org/documents/broadcast_conf_rpt.pdf
Revised conference papers were published, along with translated documents from East European and Soviet Communist archives, in the volume Cold War Broadcasting; Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, A. Ross Johnson and R. Eugene Parta, eds., New York and Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010.
