Roots of ‘Liberation’: American Images of the Future of Russia in the Early Cold War, 1948–1953

the early cold war, psychological warfare was the vogue. From the escalation of tension with the Soviet Union in 1948 to the crushing of the East German revolt in 1953, an array of American intellectuals, journalists, politicians, officials, and military officers demanded aggressive propaganda campaigns and vigorous covert action to free Eastern Europe from Stalinist domination.1 'Liberation' was more than a daydream of anti-Communist philosophers and a campaign slogan for Republican critics of containment.2 With the adoption of National Security Council (NSC) paper 68 in 1950, the administration of Harry S. Truman officially committed itself to fostering 'fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system' through programmes designed to 'make the Russian people our allies'. After the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States spent large sums on psychological warfare.3 Congress tripled the appropriation for the US Information and Educational Exchange (USIE) programme to over $100 million; Radio Free Europe, which spent $3 million in 1950, its first year, received more than four times that amount from the