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To Monitor and be Monitored – Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the Cold War

To Monitor and be Monitored – Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the Cold War
To Monitor and be Monitored – Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the Cold War

Monitoring of Soviet bloc radios was an important input to Radio Free and Radio Liberty broadcasts during the Cold War. RFE and RL also monitored the official print media and interviewed refugees and travelers. Soviet bloc officials in turn monitored RFE, RL, and other Western broadcasts (while jamming their transmissions) to inform themselves and to counter what they viewed as “ideological subversion.” On both sides, monitoring informed media policy. RFE and RL monitored their radio audiences through listener letters and extensive travel surveys, while the Communist authorities monitored those audiences through secret police informants and secret internal polling. Both approaches were second-best efforts at survey research but in retrospect provided reasonably accurate indicators of the audience for RFE, RL, and other Western broadcasters.

To learn more and view the attached document appendicies, please download the PDF below.

A. Ross Johnson is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, adviser to the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Archive Project at Hoover, and History and Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

About the Author

A. Ross Johnson

A. Ross Johnson

History and Public Policy Program Fellow;
Senior Adviser, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; former Director, Radio Free Europe

Before his passing in February 2021, A. Ross Johnson was a Wilson Center History and Public Policy Fellow and Senior Advisor for Archives at RFE/RL. He was a former director of Radio Free Europe. 

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History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more

Cold War International History Project

The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program.  Read more