Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty by Mark G. Pomar

IF 0.7 2区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY Journal of Cold War Studies Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.1162/jcws_r_01152
Thomas A. Dine
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The two stations transmitted sophisticated, popular broadcasts into the Soviet Union featuring current news, opinion programs, music, and cultural personalities on a daily basis.The two U.S. shortwave radios offered competing programing approaches during the Cold War, a duality that has now been reconstructed and detailed by scholar-practitioner Mark Pomar of the University of Texas in his new book, Cold War Radio: Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Having worked in high positions in both organizations, he labels VOA's Cold War Russian programing “purist journalism”—straightforward, objective journalism—and Radio Liberty's approach to be strategic, indeed confrontational journalism. Both approaches amounted to “war by non-military means” against Communist ideology and autocratic Soviet governance.Other Western-oriented, anti-Communist radios included the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from London, Radio France International (RFI) from Paris, West Germany's Deutsche Welle (DW) from Bonn, and Israel's Kol Yisrael (KL) from Tel Aviv. These broadcasters offered similar twin approaches.Individually and in the aggregate, Western broadcasters provided Soviet audiences with news and information they could not otherwise obtain, and they thus helped to erode the Soviet regime's grip on its population. One significant reason for the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and fall of the Iron Curtain was the cumulative impact of international broadcasting.The Russian services of VOA and RL were separate from each other in programing, personnel, funding, and space. Both radios, however, targeted Russian speakers throughout the Soviet Union and successfully attracted large, important, diverse, and loyal audiences despite expensive, systematic jamming by the Soviet state security apparatus and Communist Party. Analytic practitioners L. Eugene Parta and A. Ross Johnson published a book in 2010 discussing the estimated sizes of the broadcasts’ audiences, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Kremlin authorities forbade people to listen, and the regime spent many millions of rubles trying to block listeners from hearing the broadcasts. But behind apartment doors and walls, inside bathrooms, under bed blankets, and in forested dachas, Soviet citizens who wanted accurate information about the world persistently listened to the shortwave radio channels.More than three decades after the crumbling of the Soviet imperium, Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule in the Russian Federation and brutal war of conquest against Ukraine have reinvigorated those audiences. Since February 2022, VOA's and RFE/RL's Russian services have gained renewed life. Both services again command large audiences who desire up-to-the-minute accounts of Kremlin politics, military strategies and personnel, battlefield locations, and the fate of Russian troops. No longer served by short or medium wave, today's social media platforms lure many millions via the Internet; indeed, the services have greater engagement now than during the Cold War. For instance, viewership of Current Times, RFE/RL's flagship Russian-language program, has more than tripled on Facebook and more than quadrupled on YouTube. These large audiences are “vital” to Ukraine's war effort says Estonia's former president and career Kremlin-watcher Toomas Hendrik Ilves.Pomar's history is a worthy sequel to the book by Parta and Johnson. As a student of the subject myself, I found Pomar's inside exploration of Russian-language programming, policies, and debates within the two U.S. Russian services during the Reagan administration to be insightful, coherently organized and written, and relevant to the grave situation that has emerged with Putin's Russia. Since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, RL's Russian audiences have increased precipitously, especially viewership of the Current Times program on the Internet. Another sign of recognition is that the Russian authorities have jailed an inordinate number of RL journalists. Moreover, RFE/RL and VOA programing has received a great deal of meritorious attention in Kyiv, Berlin, Paris, London, and New York, including a large audience for CBS's celebrated Sunday program 60 Minutes when it ran a fifteen-minute segment featuring RL's popularity in Putin's Russia.Pomar possesses special qualifications. Fluent in Russian, he was trained in Russian history and culture at Columbia University, receiving a Ph.D. In the 1960s and 1970s, he enjoyed inside managerial experiences in both U.S. media companies as the assistant director of RL's Russian Service, director of the USSR Division at VOA, and executive director of the federal Board for International Broadcasting. During my nine-year tenure as president of RFE/RL in the post–Cold War period at the Prague headquarters, I wish I had had the benefit of Pomar's professional knowledge and insights into Russian culture and society as well as his charming personality.An example of Pomar's scholarly diligence is the nearly 1,000 hours he spent listening to on-air programs of the two U.S. Russian broadcast services from various periods of the Cold War. His study of multiple “voices” gave him what he calls a “nuanced understanding of how VOA and RL sought to communicate with their listeners. “In sharp contrast to Soviet news media that strived for a standard homogenous sound [and] propaganda,” Pomar writes, both of the U.S. stations “gloried in the voice and language of a free society,” assigning a wide range of native-speaking individuals to radio microphones who blended creativity, honesty, and heterogeneous presentations.Pomar highlights three reasons for the Cold War effectiveness of both VOA and RL. The first is the high quality and authenticity of the broadcasters. Both Julian Panich of RL and Alexey Kovalev of VOA had been professional actors. Others had the talent to speak directly and naturally to listeners, such as RL personages Irena Khenkina and Vladimir Matusevich. Pomar mentions self-effacing broadcasters Yuri von Schlippe of RL and Nik Sorokiun of VOA, who engaged listeners without calling attention to themselves. Finally, Pomar focuses on such prominent Russian writers and cultural figures as Yurii Lyubimov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Voinovich. “We gave our listeners the sound of vivid, highly individual broadcasters who not only spoke of freedom but also lived that freedom in their voices.” Pomar reminds his readers that broadcasters and guests “were free to argue and debate, so long as they adhered to accepted Western norms of decorum and relied on fact-based information” (p. 262).Both Russian services successfully faced three challenges head-on. First was piercing Russia's censorship, which contemporary Russian artists, writers, philosophers, historians, and human rights activists did. Second was the presentation of Western life in a way that Soviet listeners could understand and appreciate rather than just turn off. Presentations had to be critically constructive, airing all sides of an issue, and they were. Third was to confront the Soviet Union by exposing its distortions and countering Soviet disinformation.Overall, radio broadcasts by the Russian Services of VOA and RL were unrivaled treasure troves. 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引用次数: 0

Abstract

U.S. international broadcasting platforms—Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, DC, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Munich and since 1995 in Prague—have been continually broadcasting to native Russian speakers in their own language from the Second World War through the Cold War into the post-Communist period, especially now with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As is the case today, the Cold War period was marked by high tensions between Washington and Moscow and creative programming by the VOA and RFE/RL. The two stations transmitted sophisticated, popular broadcasts into the Soviet Union featuring current news, opinion programs, music, and cultural personalities on a daily basis.The two U.S. shortwave radios offered competing programing approaches during the Cold War, a duality that has now been reconstructed and detailed by scholar-practitioner Mark Pomar of the University of Texas in his new book, Cold War Radio: Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Having worked in high positions in both organizations, he labels VOA's Cold War Russian programing “purist journalism”—straightforward, objective journalism—and Radio Liberty's approach to be strategic, indeed confrontational journalism. Both approaches amounted to “war by non-military means” against Communist ideology and autocratic Soviet governance.Other Western-oriented, anti-Communist radios included the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from London, Radio France International (RFI) from Paris, West Germany's Deutsche Welle (DW) from Bonn, and Israel's Kol Yisrael (KL) from Tel Aviv. These broadcasters offered similar twin approaches.Individually and in the aggregate, Western broadcasters provided Soviet audiences with news and information they could not otherwise obtain, and they thus helped to erode the Soviet regime's grip on its population. One significant reason for the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and fall of the Iron Curtain was the cumulative impact of international broadcasting.The Russian services of VOA and RL were separate from each other in programing, personnel, funding, and space. Both radios, however, targeted Russian speakers throughout the Soviet Union and successfully attracted large, important, diverse, and loyal audiences despite expensive, systematic jamming by the Soviet state security apparatus and Communist Party. Analytic practitioners L. Eugene Parta and A. Ross Johnson published a book in 2010 discussing the estimated sizes of the broadcasts’ audiences, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Kremlin authorities forbade people to listen, and the regime spent many millions of rubles trying to block listeners from hearing the broadcasts. But behind apartment doors and walls, inside bathrooms, under bed blankets, and in forested dachas, Soviet citizens who wanted accurate information about the world persistently listened to the shortwave radio channels.More than three decades after the crumbling of the Soviet imperium, Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule in the Russian Federation and brutal war of conquest against Ukraine have reinvigorated those audiences. Since February 2022, VOA's and RFE/RL's Russian services have gained renewed life. Both services again command large audiences who desire up-to-the-minute accounts of Kremlin politics, military strategies and personnel, battlefield locations, and the fate of Russian troops. No longer served by short or medium wave, today's social media platforms lure many millions via the Internet; indeed, the services have greater engagement now than during the Cold War. For instance, viewership of Current Times, RFE/RL's flagship Russian-language program, has more than tripled on Facebook and more than quadrupled on YouTube. These large audiences are “vital” to Ukraine's war effort says Estonia's former president and career Kremlin-watcher Toomas Hendrik Ilves.Pomar's history is a worthy sequel to the book by Parta and Johnson. As a student of the subject myself, I found Pomar's inside exploration of Russian-language programming, policies, and debates within the two U.S. Russian services during the Reagan administration to be insightful, coherently organized and written, and relevant to the grave situation that has emerged with Putin's Russia. Since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, RL's Russian audiences have increased precipitously, especially viewership of the Current Times program on the Internet. Another sign of recognition is that the Russian authorities have jailed an inordinate number of RL journalists. Moreover, RFE/RL and VOA programing has received a great deal of meritorious attention in Kyiv, Berlin, Paris, London, and New York, including a large audience for CBS's celebrated Sunday program 60 Minutes when it ran a fifteen-minute segment featuring RL's popularity in Putin's Russia.Pomar possesses special qualifications. Fluent in Russian, he was trained in Russian history and culture at Columbia University, receiving a Ph.D. In the 1960s and 1970s, he enjoyed inside managerial experiences in both U.S. media companies as the assistant director of RL's Russian Service, director of the USSR Division at VOA, and executive director of the federal Board for International Broadcasting. During my nine-year tenure as president of RFE/RL in the post–Cold War period at the Prague headquarters, I wish I had had the benefit of Pomar's professional knowledge and insights into Russian culture and society as well as his charming personality.An example of Pomar's scholarly diligence is the nearly 1,000 hours he spent listening to on-air programs of the two U.S. Russian broadcast services from various periods of the Cold War. His study of multiple “voices” gave him what he calls a “nuanced understanding of how VOA and RL sought to communicate with their listeners. “In sharp contrast to Soviet news media that strived for a standard homogenous sound [and] propaganda,” Pomar writes, both of the U.S. stations “gloried in the voice and language of a free society,” assigning a wide range of native-speaking individuals to radio microphones who blended creativity, honesty, and heterogeneous presentations.Pomar highlights three reasons for the Cold War effectiveness of both VOA and RL. The first is the high quality and authenticity of the broadcasters. Both Julian Panich of RL and Alexey Kovalev of VOA had been professional actors. Others had the talent to speak directly and naturally to listeners, such as RL personages Irena Khenkina and Vladimir Matusevich. Pomar mentions self-effacing broadcasters Yuri von Schlippe of RL and Nik Sorokiun of VOA, who engaged listeners without calling attention to themselves. Finally, Pomar focuses on such prominent Russian writers and cultural figures as Yurii Lyubimov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Voinovich. “We gave our listeners the sound of vivid, highly individual broadcasters who not only spoke of freedom but also lived that freedom in their voices.” Pomar reminds his readers that broadcasters and guests “were free to argue and debate, so long as they adhered to accepted Western norms of decorum and relied on fact-based information” (p. 262).Both Russian services successfully faced three challenges head-on. First was piercing Russia's censorship, which contemporary Russian artists, writers, philosophers, historians, and human rights activists did. Second was the presentation of Western life in a way that Soviet listeners could understand and appreciate rather than just turn off. Presentations had to be critically constructive, airing all sides of an issue, and they were. Third was to confront the Soviet Union by exposing its distortions and countering Soviet disinformation.Overall, radio broadcasts by the Russian Services of VOA and RL were unrivaled treasure troves. So, too, is Cold War Radio by Mark Pomar.
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《冷战电台:美国之音和自由欧洲电台/自由电台的俄罗斯广播》马克·g·波马尔著
美国的国际广播平台——华盛顿的美国之音(VOA)和慕尼黑的自由欧洲电台/自由电台(RFE/RL),以及1995年在布拉格的自由欧洲电台(RFE/RL)——从第二次世界大战到冷战,再到后共产主义时期,特别是现在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰,一直在用母语向母语为俄语的人广播。就像今天的情况一样,冷战时期的特点是华盛顿和莫斯科之间的高度紧张关系,以及美国之音和自由欧洲电台/自由电台的创造性节目。这两家电台向苏联境内播送复杂而受欢迎的广播节目,每天播放时事新闻、观点节目、音乐和文化名人。这两种美国短波电台在冷战期间提供了相互竞争的节目方式,德克萨斯大学的学者兼从业者马克·波马尔(Mark Pomar)在他的新书《冷战电台:美国之音和自由欧洲电台/自由电台的俄罗斯广播》中对这种二元性进行了重建和详细描述。他曾在这两个机构担任要职,他把美国之音冷战时期的俄罗斯节目称为“纯粹主义新闻”——直截了当、客观的新闻——而自由电台的做法是战略性的,实际上是对抗性的新闻。这两种方法都相当于“非军事手段的战争”,反对共产主义意识形态和苏联的专制统治。其他以西方为导向的反共电台包括伦敦的英国广播公司(BBC)、巴黎的法国国际广播电台(RFI)、西德波恩的德国之声(DW)和特拉维夫的以色列之声(KL)。这些广播公司提供了类似的双重方法。无论是个人还是整体,西方广播公司为苏联观众提供了他们无法从其他渠道获得的新闻和信息,从而帮助削弱了苏联政权对其人民的控制。柏林墙倒塌和铁幕倒塌的一个重要原因是国际广播的累积影响。俄罗斯的VOA和RL在节目、人员、资金和空间上都是分开的。然而,这两种电台都以全苏联的俄语使用者为目标,成功地吸引了大批重要的、多样化的忠实听众,尽管苏联国家安全机构和共产党对其进行了昂贵的系统干扰。分析实践者L. Eugene Parta和a . Ross Johnson在2010年出版了一本书,讨论了广播听众的估计规模,《冷战广播:对苏联和东欧的影响》。克里姆林宫当局禁止人们收听广播,政府花费了数百万卢布试图阻止听众收听广播。但在公寓的门和墙后面,在浴室里,在床上的毯子下,在森林茂密的别墅里,想要准确了解世界信息的苏联公民坚持收听短波广播频道。在苏联帝国崩溃三十多年后,弗拉基米尔·普京(Vladimir Putin)在俄罗斯联邦的独裁统治和对乌克兰的残酷征服战争让这些观众重新振作起来。自2022年2月以来,美国之音和RFE/RL的俄语服务获得了新生。这两种服务再次吸引了大量观众,他们希望了解克里姆林宫政治、军事战略和人员、战场位置以及俄罗斯军队命运的最新报道。如今的社交媒体平台不再由短波或中波服务,而是通过互联网吸引了数百万人;事实上,现在各军种之间的接触比冷战时期要多。例如,RFE/RL的主打俄语节目《Current Times》在Facebook上的收视率增加了两倍多,在YouTube上的收视率增加了四倍多。爱沙尼亚前总统、职业克里姆林宫观察家托马斯·亨德里克·伊尔维斯说,这些庞大的听众对乌克兰的战争努力“至关重要”。波玛尔的历史是帕塔和约翰逊的书的值得续篇。作为这门学科的学生,我发现波马尔对里根政府期间美俄两军种的俄语节目、政策和辩论的内部探索是有见地的,组织连贯,写作严谨,与普京领导下的俄罗斯出现的严重局势相关。自从俄罗斯对乌克兰开战以来,RL的俄罗斯观众急剧增加,尤其是互联网上《当代时报》节目的收视率。另一个得到承认的迹象是,俄罗斯当局关押了数量过多的RL记者。此外,RFE/RL和美国之音的节目在基辅、柏林、巴黎、伦敦和纽约获得了大量值得称道的关注,其中包括哥伦比亚广播公司著名的周日节目《60分钟》的大量观众,该节目用15分钟的片段展示了RL在普京统治下的俄罗斯的受欢迎程度。Pomar拥有特殊的资质。
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