1893-1976
Eastern Europe
(372) documents
North America
-
1911- 1984
1920- 2001
1893- 1969
May 19, 1959
The following KGB document reports on problems jamming Western radio stations in a range of Soviet cities. It indicates times and frequencies on which Western radio broadcasts were clearly audible and Soviet jamming was ineffective.
September 15, 1958
Description of a 1958 press conference in Moscow organized by the State Committee on Cultural Relations, with KGB assistance, to discredit Western broadcasts to the USSR and Eastern Europe. The press conference drew on the presence of alleged former employees of the radio stations.
January 17, 1957
The following letter to Khrushchev in 1957 by members of the German Service of Radio Moscow proposed establishing a Soviet international broadcaster structured along the lines of Radio Free Europe, with formal independence from the government. Indirectly it acknowledges the effectiveness of RFE broadcasts.
March 9, 1984
This Central Committee Information Department document contains an analysis of “Western propaganda” during martial law. While claiming that Polish society is “stabilizing,” the Department recommends increased research, analysis, and coordinated publications to counter Western ideological “subversion.”
October 8, 1963
Politburo discussion of a report prepared for the Hungarian Politburo in1963 which concluded that current jamming efforts were ineffective. It provided two options for the Politburo: to maintain and redirect jamming, focusing it on RFE, or to end it entirely. Noteworthy is the assessment that the West has outstripped the Soviet bloc in terms of transmitters, and the assumption that ending jamming might be used as a bargaining chip to soften Western broadcasts.
April 11, 1969
This document indicates the continuing influence of German-language and other Western media in Czechoslovakia nine months after the Soviet invasion of August 1968. Czechoslovak officials criticized the heavy-handed Soviet broadcasts of Radio Vltava, and viewed other Soviet proposals to counter Western influence as counterproductive.
September 19, 1956
This Czechoslovak Politburo Resolution of 1956 approved an Interior Ministry plan to counter “reactionary exiles.” Radio Free Europe was an important target, and a series of disinformation actions were planned to disrupt its operations.
1979
This document provides further details of joint KGB-Bulgarian measures to counter RFE and RL. It vaunts the effectiveness of Bulgarian regime counterpropaganda, claiming that it thwarted Western efforts to create internal strife in Bulgaria.
December 27, 1977
This document from the Sixth Directorate of Bulgarian State Security thanks “Soviet comrades” for their assistance in combating hostile propaganda against Bulgaria. It acknowledges the role of State Security in publishing articles in the Bulgarian media “exposing” RFE and RL, and refers to joint Soviet-Bulgarian operations against Western radios.
December 30, 1985
This note regarding the results of the visit of a group of Interior Ministry officials to the KGB in Moscow contains a proposal to develop a coordinated plan to discredit RFE and RL.
