2 Given the widespread listenership and the perceived destabilizing role of Western programming, it is not surprising that the Communist regimes spent considerable time, energy, and resources fighting foreign broadcasts through jamming, censorship, and a renewed propaganda effort of their own national radio broadcasts. If recently published figures are correct, one-third of Soviet urban adults and around half of East European adults were regular listeners of Western broadcasts. For the audiences behind the Iron Curtain, Western broadcasting opened an alternative channel for the flow of new information and ideas and it contributed to the erosion of public support for the government. This was extremely important in the early Cold War. Radio broadcasts could penetrate the Iron Curtain and directly address the ‘enemy’.

Radio played an important role in the ideological confrontation between East and West as well as within each bloc and, as archival documents gathered here reveal, it was among the most pressing concerns of contemporary information agencies. If the Cold War was a war of ideas and ideologies for the ‘soul of mankind’ 1, radio was definitely one of the weapons of choice.

Hearts of iron 4 cold war