I was saddened to learn that Stefan Bratkowski, born 22.11.1934, described on Culture.pl website as “one of the outstanding Polish journalists of the last few decades” died on April 18, 2021. He was one of the organizers of the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański Association of Employees, Freelancers and Friends of the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe formed in Poland in 1994.…
by Ted Lipien Kazimierz Adamski, “Dywersja Głosu Ameryki: Polska na specjalny obstalunek,” Głos Pomorza, January 9, 1986. An article titled, “DYWERSJA ‘GŁOSU AMERYKI’ Polska na specjalny obstalunek” (“‘Voice of America’ Sabotage: Poland by Special Order“), appeared in the regional Polish Communist Party newspaper Głos Pomorza on Poland’s Baltic coast on January 9, 1986.[ref]Kazimierz Adamski, “Dywersja Głosu Ameryki: Polska na specjalny…
Having served briefly (Dec. 2020-Jan. 2021) as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) President and having been before Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service chief in the 1980s and VOA acting associate director in 2005/2006 in charge of central programs, I wanted to repost my 2019 Silent Refugees website’s article on how early VOA managers, editors and journalists lied about Stalin’s crimes and repeated Soviet propaganda. Fortunately, VOA no longer repeated such Soviet disinformation during the Cold War, and dropped all restrictions during the presidency of Ronald Reagan on reporting on communist human rights abuses. To their great credit, neither Radio Free Europe (RFE) nor Radio Liberty (RL) ever censored news about the Soviet Gulag, which the Voice of America occasionally did even as late as the 1970s.
A Soviet-instigated plan to kill an anti-communist woman journalist in the early years of the Cold War was linked to her attempts to tell the story of thousands of Polish children who in 1940-1941 had been deported with their families from eastern Poland to Siberia and Central Asia where many died from brutal treatment. The assassination plan was revealed in 1953-1954 by a defector to the West from communist-ruled Poland and was never carried out.
Dear Friends: Some of you may have learned that I had a brief tenure as President of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. Some of you may be also interested to know that just a few hours before the new Acting U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) CEO, Ms. Kelu Chao, had an e-mail sent to me by an administrative…
“Jako były słuchacz programów sekcji polskiej Radia Wolna Europa w PRL-u uzyskałem dostęp do informacji, których reżimowa cenzura chciała nas pozbawić. RWE odmieniła bieg mojego życia i życia milionów ludzi. Dlatego czuję się zaszczycony, że powierzono mi zadanie kierowania tą legendarną instytucją w dalszym przełamywaniu cenzury i udzielaniu głosu niesłyszanym” – powiedział PAP Lipien.
“When I was a teenager in Communist Poland, I would listen to Radio Free Europe to find out what the government was not telling me,” said Mr. Lipien. “It had an enormous impact on my life, and on the lives of millions of others. I’m honored, and humbled, to be entrusted with helping this storied organization continue to break the hold of…
As I prepare to start my new job as President and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/FL), an organization which contributed greatly to the peaceful fall of communism in East Central Europe and in the former Soviet Union and continues today to counter censorship, propaganda and disinformation with outstanding journalism, I’m re-reading books on U.S. international broadcasting history published…
Mira Złotowska, later known as Mira Michałowska, who during the Cold War published books and articles in English in the United States and in Great Britain as Mira Michal and used several other pen names, was one of many radically left-wing journalists who had worked in New York on Voice of America (VOA) U.S. government anti-Nazi radio broadcasts in the…
Comrade Absolonova is a tall, blond, sexy-looking girl and a devout Communist who seduced young men and blackmailed them to become informers. “Radio Free Europe calls the citizens of Bratislava! … We are warning you…” Newsweek reported that after RFE called her “a prostitute, an immoral woman, and a tramp … Comrade Absolonova doesn’t work in Bratislava any more.” The…
By Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum Polish communist intelligence service and secret police spied on Voice of America’s (VOA) jazz expert Willis Conover during his visit to Poland in 1959 and tried to exploit it to influence U.S. diplomats into silencing Polish broadcasts of Radio Free Europe (RFE). As reported by Polish media, the spying on Conover is…
Toward the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the Republican administration of conservative President Ronald Reagan greatly increased spending on U.S. international broadcasting to the Soviet Union and to other communist-ruled nations. Broadcasts to nations behind the Iron Curtain were carried out by the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL). President Reagan…
By Ted Lipien I would like to thank Bill Coe for bringing Victor Suvorov’s book to my attention. Journalists reporting on Vladimir Putin’s latest attempt to re-write history with his propaganda and disinformation blaming the start of World War II on Poland–the first victim of the war and the first country to resist militarily Hitler’s Nazi Germany–should read The Chief…
I learned something today by reading on the Internet the Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture delivered on December 7, 2019 at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. As a young girl growing up in Poland in the 1960s and the 1970s, a country at that time still under communist rule until 1989, she was often listening…
OPINION AND ANALYSIS Cold War Radio Museum By Ted Lipien Note: The article has been updated to include information that Heda Margolius Kovály had worked in the 1970s as a freelance reporter for the Voice of America Czechoslovak Service under a radio name Kaca Kralova. A declassified CIA report from 1953 featured a claim by a still unidentified Slovak source…
This ad for Radio Free Europe was placed in American magazines in 1969 toward the end of the CIA’s involvement with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Such advertising by Radio Free Europe in American media would also soon end. This particular ad, as opposed to previous Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Europe Fund ads,…