“Radio Liberation” (Radiostantsiya Osvobozhdeniye) was first broadcast from transmitters in Lampertheim, Germany, on March 1, 1953, with a 20-minute program that was rebroadcast 12 hours. It opened with Soviet émigré Sergey Dubrovsky giving the station’s broadcast times and frequencies. This was followed by a political and moral proclamation read by Boris Vinogradov that began:
"Listen! Listen! Today, a new radio station, Liberation, begins broadcasting. (Слушайте! Слушайте! Сегодня начинает свои передачи новая Радиостанция Освобождени)
The program continued with, “The radio would advocate “complete freedom of conscience and the right to religious preaching,” as well as “the elimination of exploitation of man by a party or the state. Listen to the first program here:
World news followed and was read by Ekaterina Goby and Sergei Dubrovsky. The program ended with a historical program read by Sergi Dubrovsky that focused on the anniversary of the 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion when disillusioned revolutionary sailors, soldiers, and workers rose against Bolshevik power.
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| RL in 1953 |
The American Committee for Freedom for the Peoples of the USSR was founded in the United States on January 18,1951, in the state of Delaware. Newspaper columnist Eugene Lyons was the first president. Unlike the National Committee for a Free Europe, the American Committee for the Freedom of the Peoples of the USSR decided not to raise public funds in the United States, which would have “aided in providing plausible cover for its true sponsorship”—the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination directed by Frank Wisner. Eventual funding from the U.S. Government for Radio Liberty was almost $160 million.
The Committee would undergo names changes to American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR, American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism in March 1953, and, finally, in 1964, Radio Liberty Committee. The American Committee’s position was that the most effective psychological war against the Soviet regime would be conducted by former Soviet exiles united in speaking out against Communism. However, there were difficulties in the way of accomplishing this aim: one was the extreme hostility between Great Russian groups and non-Russian nationalities of the USSR. The other difficulty was the basic political differences between Marxist and non-Marxist exiles, regardless of their nationality.
After long and arduous negotiations among the émigré groups at meetings held throughout Germany, an agreement was finally reached in October 1952, forming a Coordinating Center composed of four Great Russian and five nationality groups. This was not a unified émigré agreement: certain Great Russian émigrés (NTS, for example) and representatives of important minority groups in the USSR, including Ukrainians and Byelorussians, did not join the Coordinating Center.
On June 30, 1953, a Presidential Commission issued a Top Secret report to President Eisenhower on International Information activities ("Jackson Commission”). The Commission's recommendations are very revealing:
In a situation short of war, the project can probably make its greatest contribution by de-emphasizing its political activities and devoting its major effort to improving broadcasts from Radio Liberation.
This station should use Soviet émigrés in an effort to weaken the Soviet regime and should concentrate on the Soviet military, government officials, and other groups in the population which harbor major grievances against the regime.
The American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc., should concentrate on improving Radio Liberation and reduce expenditures on the émigré coordinating center.
By the summer of 1953, the Coordinating Center was dissolved, and any idea that the émigré groups would run their own radio station faded into history.
Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tatar-Bashkir, Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, Chechen, and Ingush language broadcasts were added to RL’s programming. From 1955 to 1973, Radio Liberty broadcasted from Pa Li, Taiwan, to eastern parts of Siberia and the Maritime Provinces of the Soviet Union. RL’s signal was capable of geographically covering, at various times, 90 percent of the USSR.
One of the first, if not the first, newspaper accounts of Radio Liberation appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on February 2, 1955. The article, written by George W. Neill, began by quoting from a RL program:
Attention!
This is Radio Liberation.
Listen to the free voice of your brother fighters from abroad.
Listen to our true information, which the Kremlin tyrants and their lackeys conceal from you.
Pass along what you hear on Radio Liberation to your relatives, friends and acquaintances.
This is Radio Liberation.
The radio station’s name was changed to Radio Liberty in 1959. Former US Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower were “honorary chairmen” of Radio Liberty at that time. The Committee press release gave the ideological justification for the existence of Radio Liberty:
Radio Liberty’s broadcasts analyze events and developments in the Soviet Union and the acts and policies of the Soviet government from the point of view of the best interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Radio Liberty’s writers and speakers seek to give expression to the innermost feelings, thoughts, and repressed aspirations of their fellow countrymen.
In January 1964, Howland Sargeant, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and now president of the Radio Liberty Committee, issued a prepared statement giving the main task of the committee:
To sponsor efforts to communicate with the people of the Soviet Union in order to achieve the long-range goal of a fundamental change in Soviet policies and practices, which will reflect the will of the Soviet people for genuine peace and freedom.
On March 23, 1959, Radio Liberty transmitted its first broadcast from the beautiful beach Playa de Pals, on the Mediterranean coast, north of Barcelona, Spain. Shortwave broadcasting from this site would continue until May 25, 2001. Exactly 27 years after the first broadcast, on March 23, 2006, the huge transmitter towers, some of which reached a height of over 500 feet, were demolished in a live Spanish television broadcast.
The collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union was hastened in August 1991 when government officials illegally attempted to oust Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. President Gorbachev publicly recognized the role played by Radio Liberty in informing the Soviet people. Gorbachev said he relied on its broadcasts for news while held under house arrest in his Black Sea vacation home during the attempted coup.
Shortly afterward, Russia's first President Boris Yeltsin enthusiastically, if not fully accurately, said, “During the 3-4 days of this takeover, Radio Liberty was one of the very few channels through which it was possible to send information to the whole world and, most important, to the whole of Russia, because now almost every family in Russia listens to Radio Liberty -- and that was very important.”
A few weeks later, he signed a Presidential Decree giving RFE/RL special status, which allowed it for the first time in its history, to officially operate a news bureau in Moscow. Ten years later, Russian President Putin repealed this decree in October 2002.
On March 20, 1993, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was an invited guest at RFR/RL’s 40th-anniversary celebration in Moscow of the first Radio Liberty broadcast; Gorbachev told the assembled audience of diplomats and journalists, "In the dark years of Communist rule before my own perestroika (reconstruction) reform program began, Radio Liberty told the truth.”
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