Russia

All About Poland - Facts - Figures - Documents Edited by J. H. Retinger Litt.D. with Map of Poland, Mineva Publishing Co Ltd, London. 1941. Cover and map showing division of Poland by Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin Soviet Russia after their attack on the country in September 1939.
Poland, Russia

All About Poland 1941

All About Poland – Facts – Figures – Documents Edited by J. H. Retinger Litt.D. with Map of Poland, Mineva Publishing Co Ltd, London, 1941. The map included with the book shows the division of Poland by Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s communist Soviet Russia after their attack on the country in September 1939. An amazing find at Powell’s Bookstore…

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Segment of The Voice of America QSL card circa 1949.
China, Cold War, Glos Ameryki, International Broadcasting, OWI, Poland, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA, VOA80

Biden can combat foreign propaganda by reforming Voice of America

OPINION My op-ed in The Washington Examiner was written in response to recent media reports suggesting that leaders who have been long in charge of both the Voice of America (VOA) and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) are responsible for a management culture which allows major abuses of journalistic practices and the VOA Charter to occur, such as…

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Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Building in Prague. Photo by Ted Lipien. January 17, 2021.
Featured, International Broadcasting, Radio, RFE, RL, Russia

Putin is blackmailing US taxpayer-funded Radio Liberty | Washington Examiner

by Ted Lipien in The Washington Examiner May 03, 2021 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where I served briefly as president and CEO until earlier this year, is under assault by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Through his agencies and obedient courts, he is blackmailing the media organization funded by U.S. taxpayers, issuing fines and threats of criminal prosecutions unless Radio Liberty agrees…

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Cold War, Glos Ameryki, Photos, Russia, VOA, VOA80

Letters from Australia to the Voice of America in New York in the late 1940s

As the Voice of America (VOA), the United States government radio station for international audiences, observes its eightieth anniversary, it may surprise Americans who know about its existence that in its first years during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), the U.S. taxpayer-funded broadcaster had a long period of intense fascination with Soviet communism.  During World War II,…

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Cold War, History, International Broadcasting, Russia

Techniques of Soviet Propaganda – Radio Broadcasts

By Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum Recently I bought on eBay a pamphlet titled “The Technique of Soviet Propaganda” published in 1960 by the United States Government Printing Office. It is described as a study presented by the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the…

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Digital Journal, International Broadcasting, Poland, RL, Russia, VOA

Op-Ed: Murder of Polish priest may offer clues in Boris Nemtsov’s case | Digital Journal, March 3, 2015 Republished

Photo of Vice U.S. President George H. W. Bush, Barbara Bush, and Polish Solidarity trade union leader Lech Wałęsa in Warsaw, Poland at the tomb of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko with the slain priest’s parents, Marianna and Władysław Popiełuszko and other family members, September 28, 1987. Photos and audio recordings from Warsaw by Ted Lipien, then Voice of America (VOA) Polish…

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International Broadcasting, RL, Russia, VOA

Op-Ed: From Russia with Censorship 2009 – Republished 2021

One of my commentaries on media censorship in Vladimir Putin’s Russia was first published in Digital Journal on September 16, 2009 as “Op-Ed: From Russia with Censorship.” Since then, both the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Liberty (known in Russia as Radio Svoboda) have improved their Russian coverage, but Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is now facing a defining…

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Blog, Children, Highlights, History, RFE, Russia, Women

Planned assassination of a journalist linked to Polish children prisoners in Soviet Russia

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.

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International Broadcasting, RL, Russia

Neglect of Media Freedom Contributed to 2006 Murder of a Russian Journalist

Russian President Vladimir Putin is again increasing pressure on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where I served briefly as president in December 2020-January 2021. I had worked also indirectly for RFE/RL from 1993 to 2003 in Munich Germany and at their current headquarters in Prague as International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)-Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) regional Eurasia marketing director. Toward the…

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Cold War, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, Russia, VOA

George Soros’ building in NYC saw Voice of America’s early love affair with Stalin

By Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum The Argonaut Building in New York City at 224 West 57 and Broadway, where first Voice of America (VOA) radio programs were produced in 1942, is now the headquarters of Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, originally created and funded by billionaire investor and philanthropist  George Soros to help countries move…

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Children, Glos Ameryki, History, OWI, Photos, Russia, VOA

Polish children refugees from Russia – silenced by Soviet and U.S. propaganda

U.S. Government Propaganda Photo (OWI – 1943) By Ted Lipien U.S. government propaganda pictures taken in 1943 by the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) photographer in Iran showed Polish children and women several months after they had come out of Soviet Russia in a mass exodus of former Gulag prisoners and their families.[ref]Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White…

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Digital Journal, International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy, RFE, RL, Russia

Op-Ed: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty can’t cope with Putin propaganda | Digital Journal

By Ted Lipien Published May 8, 2016 by Digital Journal Arguing that the United States has so far failed to invest seriously in understanding or pushing back against the problem of Russian propaganda and disinformation, Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington Post columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are launching this week a counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy…

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Digital Journal, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA

Op-Ed: Anti-Israel RFE/RL Facebook message may inspire terrorists | Digital Journal

By Ted Lipien Published March 28, 2016 by Digital Journal Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the independent federal agency in Washington, DC, wrote in an introduction to its Facebook post on March 25, 2016 that there is “wholesale racism” in Israel. [Emphasis added.] This stunning and, in my view, false and irresponsible message from a…

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