Signal Strength: Lessons from RFE/RL’s Latvian Service
Straining through Soviet frequency jammers, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Latvian service broadcasters waged an ethereal Cold War battle, breaking through information barriers to connect with Baltic dissidents and feed popular independence revolutions across the USSR. In retrospect, these broadcasts would turn out to be some of the most impactful within the Soviet Union, though their existence was hard-fought, and far from guaranteed. Why did it take 25 years for the Latvian service to come into being? How did it affect democratic transition, and what insights does its history provide for resisting Russian disinformation in the Baltics today?
Speaker: Indra Ekmanis, Title VIII Research Scholar, PhD, University of Washington
Discussant: A. Ross Johnson, History and Public Policy Program Fellow, Visiting Scholar, Hoover Institution; Adviser to the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Project, Hoover Archives; former Director, Radio Free Europe
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