218 The Propaganda War
32.4.4: The Propaganda War
Soviet propaganda was disseminated through tightly controlled media outlets in the Eastern Bloc. The U.S. tried to counter this with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc by providing an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press.
Learning Objective
Give examples of propaganda used by both parties to the Cold War
Key Points
- Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party. Radio and television organizations were typically state-owned while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly the local communist parties, and was largely used for disseminating propaganda against capitalism and the West.
- State and party ownership of print, television, and radio media was used to control information and society in light of Eastern Bloc leaderships viewing even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat to the bases underlying Communist power therein.
- Circumvention of dissemination controls occurred to some degree through samizdat (underground publications produced and disseminated by hand) and limited reception of western radio and television broadcasts.
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government-funded broadcasting organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries “where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed,” and was used especially during the Cold War as a counter to communist propaganda and controlled media in the Eastern Bloc.
- RFE played a critical role in Cold War-era Eastern Europe; unlike government-censored programs, RFE publicized anti-Soviet protests and nationalist movements, influencing major events such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Key Terms
- propaganda
- Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view; the psychological mechanisms of influencing and altering the attitude of a population toward a specific cause, position or political agenda in an effort to form a consensus to a standard set of beliefs.
- samizdat
- A key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
- A United States government-funded broadcasting organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East “where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed.”
Overview
Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party. Radio and television organizations were typically state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by local communist parties. Soviet propaganda used Marxist philosophy to attack capitalism, claiming labor exploitation and war-mongering imperialism were inherent in the system.
Along with the broadcasts of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of America to Central and Eastern Europe, a major propaganda effort begun in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of the most prominent architects of America’s early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan.
Propaganda in the Eastern Bloc
Eastern Bloc media and propaganda was controlled directly by each country’s Communist party, which controlled the state media, censorship, and propaganda organs. State and party ownership of print, television, and radio media was used to control information and society in light of Eastern Bloc leaderships viewing even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat to the bases underlying Communist power therein.
The ruling authorities viewed media as a propaganda tool and widely practiced censorship to exercise almost full control over information dissemination. The press in Communist countries was an organ of and completely reliant on the state. Until the late 1980s, all Eastern Bloc radio and television organizations were state-owned and tightly controlled.
In each country, leading bodies of the ruling Communist Part exercised hierarchical control of the censorship system. Each Communist Party maintained a department of its Central Committee apparatus to supervise media. Censors employed auxiliary tools such as: the power to launch or close down any newspaper, radio or television station, licensing of journalists through unions, and the power of appointment. Party bureaucrats held all leading editorial positions.
Circumvention of censorship occurred to some degree through samizdat (underground publications produced and disseminated by hand) and limited reception of western radio and television broadcasts. In addition, some regimes heavily restricted the flow of information from their countries to outside of the Eastern Bloc by regulating the travel of foreigners and segregating approved travelers from the domestic population.
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government-funded broadcasting organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East “where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed.”
During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was broadcast to Soviet satellite countries and Radio Liberty (RL) targeted the Soviet Union. RFE was founded as an anti-communist propaganda source in 1949 by the National Committee for a Free Europe. RL was founded two years later and the two organizations merged in 1976. Communist governments frequently sent agents to infiltrate RFE’s headquarters. Radio transmissions into the Soviet Union were regularly jammed by the KGB. RFE/RL received funds from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) until 1972. During RFE’s earliest years of existence, the CIA and U.S. Department of State issued broad policy directives, and a system evolved where broadcast policy was determined through negotiation between them and RFE staff.
Radio Free Europe was created and grew in its early years through the efforts of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), an anti-communist CIA front organization formed by Allen Dulles in New York City in 1949. The United States funded a long list of projects to counter the Communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. RFE was developed out of a belief that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means. American policymakers such as George Kennan and John Foster Dulles acknowledged that the Cold War was essentially a war of ideas. The implementation of surrogate radio stations was a key part of the greater psychological war effort.
RFE played a critical role in Cold War-era Eastern Europe. Unlike government-censored programs, RFE publicized anti-Soviet protests and nationalist movements. Its audience increased substantially following the failed Berlin riots of 1953 and the highly publicized defection of Józef Światło. Its Hungarian service’s coverage of Poland’s Poznań riots in 1956 arguably served as an inspiration for the Hungarian revolution.
During the Revolution of 1956 RFE broadcasts encouraged rebels to fight and suggested that Western support was imminent. These RFE broadcasts violated Eisenhower’s policy which determined that the United States would not provide military support for the Revolution. In the wake of this scandal a number of changes were implemented at RFE, including the establishment of the Broadcast Analysis Division to ensure that broadcasts were accurate and professional while maintaining the journalists’ autonomy.
Attributions
- The Propaganda War
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“Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
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“Eastern Bloc media and propaganda.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_media_and_propaganda. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
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“Screen Shot 2016-11-10 at 3.55.37 PM.png.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_media_and_propaganda. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
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