My Grandfather was Ukrainien and would broadcast Bible readings and studies through Radio Monte-Carlo during the Cold War. When the Iron Curtain fell and he was able to go back to Ukraine, people would recognize his voice.
@@theparadigm8149 BUt your dad supported zionist capitalism, which undermines the family, demographically destroys Christian nations, and worships commerical consumerism. As an example, the CIA, today, would view your grand dad as a blanco suPremacist.
@Just me which made Albanians incredibly skilled in the Italian language (my native language). Every time I met an Albanian who had lived under Communist rule, I was shocked by how good their Italian was, and they explained to me that radio and TV from Apulia were the reason.
I was watching Yugoslavian TV channels and listening to radio stations in the NW part of Bulgaria. I know not quite Western, but Yugoslavia was slightly more open then Bulgaria at the time. They had western films on the TV, better show programs and entertainment, and sport (mostly football from Europe, but some other too). My location also allowed me to tune in to the Romanian broadcast and compare this 3 countries - theirs was the worst. My father was frequently listening to RFE (especially in the last years of the communism) and I vividly remember one evening he was listening some music on the radio and I was surprised and asked him why he is not listening RFE, and he said to me never again to even mention this especially outside the house! I was 10-11 years old, but clearly understood that what he was doing was dangerous and could have get him in serious troubles!
I can solidly confirm 4:33 There is nothing more common in the Middle East, as shopkeepers who all have a radio in their shop where they keep up to date with what's going on in both their country and every country around them, as far down south as Sudan. Even.beggars on the streets can be found holding a walkman to their ears when it's news hour.
In Hungary it's common to listen to radio while at work. The instruments are usually continuously on in common areas, diners, offices, monitoring rooms or labs.
@@sydneyallen5788 I guess it's a difference whether you're a regular guy sitting in Dubai or Doha or a poor-as-heck herder in Yemeni or Sudani countryside...
I have a great moral debt to Radio Free Europe. At the time, I considered it propaganda, and in a way it was. However, they provided accurate news, and while not perfect they provided a much wider coverage of news and this is why I, and most likely most Romanians, listened to it. At the time, I could not appreciate the quality of its editorial team, which was remarkable, the quality of their standards (not BBC-high, but close), and their professional archive and documentation units. That was because censorship limited their access to domestic news and they were forced to fill up their airtime with a lot of opinion and with whatever correspondence and interviews with Romanians they could get their hands on. It was only after 1989, when they had direct contact with Romania that I could fully appreciate the breadth and the quality of the information and of its interpretation they provided. Heck they had supplied an alternative platform to anybody, from radical anti-communists to party dissidents, going through the domestic intelligentsia and the artistic world. By contrast, the domestic media had become almost worthless by the early 1980s. And Radio Moscow was comically bad and false. I would listen to it to make fun of their messages and their unmistakeable accents (the quality went up dramatically in the wake of the Moscow coup, when I suspect competent people wit ha bad cadre file where finally allowed on air). My standards for journalism were shaped by the BBC World Service of the 1980s (almost unimaginable these days) but it was the content of RFE that shaped my understanding of the political and cultural news on the Eastern Block. I am indebted to the journalists of the RFE, first and foremost those attacked and killed in their line of duty, Cornel Chiriac and Emil Georgescu , but also the literary critic Monica Lovinescu, and then the directors Noël Bernard and Vlad Georgescu, and all the others, including those who would abandon their professional ethics in the following years.
Most American media is as bad as Soviet pravda was, heavily influenced by communist China and super rich establishment elites. So far I believe Fox News, newsmax, breitbart, and OAN remain true to truth and liberty and individualism.
Did you see the interview where Larry Hagman was talking about how Romanians were walking up to him saying, “J.R. you have saved our country!”? It was when Ceasescu aired Dallas on national tv to show the depravity and greed of the West. But the people saw it and were like, “They have food!” It added a lot of fuel to the anti-government protests and the rest is history.
I was still a kid when my father was listening during the evenings Radio Europa Liberă...Emil Hurezeanu, Monica Lovinescu and all the people at the Romanian Section in Munich were keeping the hopes of romanians that the comunism in Romania will end one day. I was allowed to listen the RFE when I was only 17 y.o., but shortly after, the comunism in Romania ended in the blood bath in December 1989. It was a privilege for me to be admited in the kitchen to listen the RFE together with my parents.
This brought back memories. As a teenager I was very interested in listening to shortwave radio. I would record broadcasts on my faithful reel-to-reel tape recorder. Using the information gathered in reports for school. I remember the Prague spring and doing a current affairs report based on Radio Prague, V.O.A., B.B.C., and Radio Moscow broadcasts as I was writing it. I think that it was my only A+ in high school.
I just wanted to thank you for creating this channel. I have always been a big WWII and WWI fan but to hear about events that happened in my lifetime is just amazing. A lot of this was just something we took for granted, without considering all of the effort that went on behind the scenes. In 1998 I went to training at the FBI Academy in Quantico. One of my classmates was a Russian police officer, who I listened to as he and the local FBI agent band played "Back in the USSR." I remember remarking that 20 years before the Marine Corps had been training me on how to fight Soviet Bloc troops, which would have included my classmate. That moment was surreal to me. I guess it's similar to the feeling WWII vets got when we joined with Germany and Japan in military exercises.
Next time talk about Finnish TV. For us Estonians it may have been even more important than radio. There has been made very good documentary about it in Estonian. It had some fun places, so it wouldn't be boring to watch
Similarly with West German TV in East Germany. Being able to watch the actual TV programming due to there being (almost) no language barrier, was really important.
@@joshuakehl5891 Your comment is old, but I´ll respond. I think he referred to "Disko ja tuumasõda". Which you might be able to see from this link (if it is not geolocked) jupiter.err.ee/924473/disko-ja-tuumasoda
Cool to hear the mention of the Hungarian uprising. As a kid (grades 3 to 7) I lived in a small Canadian town where our doctor and his wife had fled Hungary as part of the uprising. They had kids the same age as my younger brother and sister - they lived almost across the street and we played over there a great deal. The mother actually watched us kids when our mother was dying - to this day I can vividly remember this poor woman putting some sort of wonderful Hungarian casserole on the table for supper and us roast beef and potatoes Canadian kids just turning our noses up at it!
As briefly mentioned, there was a somewhat similar operation by the Republic of CHina, based on the island of Taiwan, to have radio stations send messages directed at Occupied Communist China. One of my favorite stories of this was the singer Theresa Teng aka Deng Lijun who's songs were considered "too bourgeois" by the CCP yet she was well-loved by those across the strait that she became affectionately known as "Little Deng" (小鄧）since she had the same surname as then CCP leader Deng Xiaoping, and there was the saying that "Deng the leader ruled by day, but Deng the singer ruled by night."
Occupied China? Yeah right. Taiwan is not the 'real' China. It is a little US puppet island and behaves like a teenage brat that has run away from home. The 21st century is going to be China's finest I think. They are doing some amazing stuff with building all those mega infrastructure projects etc. They really know how to get stuff done. Standards of living have greatly increased too, as has literacy and life expectancy. They must be doing something right. There are things about it I would not want my country NZ to be like, but I also see the good stuff they do.
@@aquilarossa5191 Be abused at home Run away yeah sounds about right. It's not like they are doing any worse than communist China is. "They must be doing something right" Yeah they embraced mixed economy and the capitalist model of production, opened up to the west and became the world's factory. Mao has been rolling in his grave since 1978 at this revisionism but ain't nothing he can do about it.
Considering that Taiwan back then was not actually a democracy, their impact on building democracy in mainland China was probably not very big long after Taiwan became democratic.
@@aquilarossa5191 found the stooge of the Communist party. I'm guess you got your 50 cents for that. Taiwan is the real China, they are the Republic of China that was founded in 1911 by Sun Yat-Sen after the fall of the Qing dynasty. The CCP are just some sad evil bastards that were so incompetent that they can't even make a functional carrier.
KMT and Sun's republic are not the same thing, especially after they got into bed with Uncle Sam who always wants something in return for his 'help'. Incompetent? Now you are getting silly. Stooge? I am English, Welsh, Scots, Irish and Italian. I live in NZ. CCP have no interest in little old me, let alone would pay me to post on their behalf, but you are welcome to keep wearing that tin foil hat. 50c? You can have it for free.
I was part of a group of anthropologists in Kenya in the early 80s. Every morning we listened to Radio Moscow because they had a great Jazz Hour. Once the Jazz stopped and the news began, we turn to a different station.
Radio Moscow was one of the stations I listened for on my shortwave radio as I grew up in North Carolina in the 80s. That was a way for me to get a different perspective in the pre-Internet days.
So how did listening to the Soviets do for you? Sort of like listening to a Democrat news conference or watching their allies in the corporate fascist media of today who are dedicated to the fall of this country.
@@Las-Vegas-Muskets That, and many other choices, gave me the wisdom to see that 1) the Democratic Party isn't fascist, 2) corporate media wants to make money, and 3) the right wing is divorced from reality.
The radio broadcasts gave us information, but also hope and companionship. Few days without my radio and the weight of loneliness and isolation was crushing.
Shortwave listening before the internet was awesome & as a hobbyist I did a lot of listening during the cold war. As a Ham operator I remember the Russian over the horizon radar called the woodpecker because it caused massive interference on the HF ham bands & sounded like a woodpecker. They even sold special radio filters to help.
Those of us old enough even remember the "marvel" of AM broadcasts. There were many nights when I was a lad in the 50s when we would vacation on the Texas Gulf coast around Corpus Christi listening to stations from Chicago.
I grew up North of Houston and had a old World Band radio, I would listen to all sorts of AM shows with that thing from all over the world. Well, mainly the english ones lol
@@plhebel1 I don't remember the stations but what I do remember is lying in bed in the dark, on a screen porch (no A/C), listening to the waves crash about 100 feet away, while listening to music and news from Chicago. It was as if I was listening to another world.
In our block of flats for trustworthy comrades (not nomenklatura, but the levels below: design engineers, managers, professors, junior embassy staff, etc.) I could hear the RFE jingles through the walls and through the ceiling from all our neighbours (soundproofing was terrible). In fact, a lot of the neighbourly conversations would be about the news from RFE.
@Random I guess you just don't know what communist news sounded like. It was propaganda and lies 24/7. The only time you could hope for some truth was when you read about sports. Are you living in the West by any chance?
@@makeromaniagreatagain9697 "Communist news". It's a joke, right? More seriously, there were hardly any lies in the international news (except for the insgnificant ones about the greatness and wisdom of the leadership), but there was a lot censorship and a lot of "grim realities of the world of the capital" were completely taken out of context. People would start reading the papers "Jewish-style", from the last page (international news) to the previous one (sports and possibly "human touch") and went on to the ads if the paper had any. Hardly anybody would read the first page (of four to six) other than during political meetings (for "political information", "political education", or various organisation meetings), about once per week.
Not every Soviet citizen had a radio. Not every Soviet citizen knew how to tune banned frequencies And even fewer were not afraid to listen to forbidden frequencies for which you can go to jail.
This was a nice video. I've heard of Radio Liberty a few times before but never knew any of the details of this radio station. Now I do. My compliments to those who made this video a reality.
As a swede, growing up during the cold war, having blast shelter drills in school and listening to shortwawe at nights, this was intresting, but not new to me. As good as the western radio stations was, the eastern ones sent out better goodiebags if you sent them a listening report, the commies sent parcels with flags, pins, calenders and even sometimes t-shirts, the western stations just sent a QSL card. The ting was, once you were in the communists books, they kept track of you even if you were just a kid, I got stuff sent to me even after moving a couple of times after sending them my report. I also had some illegal contacts on CB radio with russians and Baltc states, no doubt they risked more then I did.
Others did their part. In 1978, I visited KJNP, a 50,000 watt Christian radio just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. During the day time, they broadcast in all directions to cover much of northern Alaska. At night, when the signals carried much further, the FCC required them to use a directional antenna aimed away from Canada to avoid interfering with stations there. The result was programming in Russian and directed toward Siberian Christians in the early morning of the next day.
He said Communist broadcasts were a "curiosity" to Western listeners. Fairly true. I received the North American Service of Radio Moscow loud and clear in Northen California. As a kid, it was weird hearing them bad mouth my country, and overselling how great the USSR was. I once was able to tune in Radio Havana; they were having an essay contest. It was something like "write how the revolution has positively impacted your life" or some crap like that. First prize was a free trip to and tour of Havana. Like sure, I was going to do some sort of homework like that!
huge antennas for Radio Liberty were built here in Catalonia, in the Costa Brava (Platja de Pals). They were demolished just a few years ago, and now the place is part of a nature reserve, as it's use preserved a strench of coast from the overbuilding of hotels, as most of the rest of the Costa Brava
Radio definitively won with TV. You can't work, housekeep, or drive watching TV or VOD, but radio becomes the main information platform today. Internet is a newspaper TV and video stores replacement, in case of radio it is just another "frequency" - AM FM internet. We should more appreciate it.
Even though Shortwave popularity has waned in developed countries, it is still an important tool to flow information in and out of third world regions where the free press are being suppressed. And there is still a variety of content to listen to even today.
Both my parents worked for RFE in Munich - and my godfather was the director of the Polish section of RFE. My first job was at RFE distributing mail. It was, in large part, congressionally funded. I don't think you a say the East Block made a "valiant" effort - considering they enslaved their populace.
@@2112jonr ??? Wtf are you talking about. I don't think you know the definition of communism. No actual communist government exists in the world today. Dictatorships and oligarchies are not communism btw.
2112jonr. You are a complete and utter idiot. Are you even aware of the meaning of “Communism”? If you are aware, then the definition does not fit our current president as well as it fit the previous “Obammunist”.
I really enjoy your channel. You're knowledgeable and authoritative in the vids. I miss my favorite genre of literature, Cold War spying. May John LeCarre live forever!
I got into Shortwave radio a bit around 2008. I tuned into the numbers stations and silent broadcasts out of Russia, Cuban propaganda detailing daily updates on a fictitious war with the US, a Chinese station in English covering the Beijing Olympics, and a Romanian station discussing the crisis in Ukraine. Also Africa had a good amount of local shortwave and medium wave local stations, probably still do.
I so enjoy all the "props" that you have there in the room with you, and I wish that you could explain some of them. Please visit the VOA museum near Cincinnati if you are in this neck of the woods. All the Best! 73 DE W8LV BILL
Hard to say. The MiG was absolutely cutting edge at the time but soldiers/pilots always seem to have a "the grass is greener on the other side" attitude about their equipment
Up until the MiG-29 Russian planes were preferred in the eastern block to their American counterparts even well into the late 90's, partly due to Russia offering upgrades to MiG planes in exchange for less reparations (they had to pay to former Warsaw pact countries). The Sukhoi line of planes never really took root though.
@@csfelfoldi Eventually they did fall behind in some areas. One of the issues was the USSR had little access to things like aluminum. The embargo of raw materials meant that they either could only buy limited numbers of smuggled material they could not manufacture. When the US was developing faster and more powerful aircraft Midway through the cold war, they had to take more and more drastic designs to make up for deficiencies. It was revealed for example that Belenko's MiG-25 was a giant airplay that can go at Mach 3.2 but was not maneuverable, had short range, would destroy it's engines past Mach 2.5, and was still running on vacuum tubes. The American Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird turned out to be a far superior aircraft. Example:
In Vietnam, whenever there are unrests and protests against chinese agression, or the chinese roaming in the South China Sea; the Internet will suddenly become very slow, laggy and make it impossible to search the news. Kind of intentional like the Soviet with the radio trick during tensions with the West.
Great episode. Reminded me of reading about the CIA's covert operation that targetted the citizens of Western Europe rather than those behind the Iron Curtain, They funded the publication of what appeared to be, to the reader, cultural magazines that were 'local' in origin, i.e. within a specific European country. The targetted countries were the Western European ones - West Germany, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands are the ones I recall. These 'cultural' magazines printed articles that promoted democracy over communism with the actual writers being hidden behind an alter ego - an Italian, French, or Spanish 'author' with enough status to draw in readers or in cases where the writer truly was an Italian, French, etc author, the articles were vetted by the CIA who altered the article as they saw fit before they could be published. For writers in these countries it posed a dilemma - get in step with the program and see 'your' articles in print or don't get published. The CIA published in almost every Western European country beginning in the late 1940s, increased through the 1950s, peaked in the early t0 mid-1960s, and dwindled through the 1970s. Several of today's popular magazines began as propaganda tools of the CIA whose funding for these vehicles only ended in the 1980s. I think some of the titles remain in print today though the links to the CIA were cut decades ago (as the story is told now - who knows what will be told in 50 years).
In the early days of the USSR, radio was the only way to broadcast the current events to all 11 time zones. I would LOVE to have one of those old Soviet generators. A kerosene lamp heated two different metals, like the thermocouple in a natural gas dryer keeps the pilot light burning. This lamp produced enough electricity to run community radios all across the USSR.
Will you do a segment on the East German economy and living standards. I’d really like to see one about this for the other satellite nations too like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria as well.
It's weird how different the world is today. I still have trouble grasping there is no East Germany, and I remember when Radio Free Europe was a normal thing.
I was hoping to see some of the public service announcements that were broadcast in the late 1950s, early 1960s advertising for contributions to RFE. One I remember in particular (I was 9 years-old in 1963) had a family huddled around a radio when Soviet police break down the door and take a long-handled ax to the radio set. I have yet to find one on TH-cam. Plus, something else broadcast at the time and somewhat unrelated, there were the commercials aired in January reminding citizens that all aliens must register with the federal government every January first or whatever. Those were creepier than the tags on pillows that warned prosecution to anyone who removed them.
The audio seems to be a bit out of sync. His hand movements drew attention to it, and his lip movements confirmed it. Common on TH-cam and easy to ignore usually but the slight delay of the hands makes it hard to ignore.
Not for routine detection as the radiated power is very low and the radio would have to be inspected to determibe the if frequency. But if someone is zooming in on a suspect, certainly.
This is inefficient because China is a mono-ethnic country. And the USSR was a multi-ethnic garbage dump. Radio Liberty has always played an inter-ethnic "card".
Consider covering the cold war affect on spandau prison in berlin as well as the soviet war monument that was located in west berlin (and why the west berliners said his hand cant raise)
During the 1956 revolution memorial the radio free europe broadcasts are played live on TH-cam with a "few" years of delay (when the broadcaster says its midnight, its midnight in the present too)
The role of Radio Free Europe with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is a very murky area - on one hand, the revolution would broke out without it (but undoubtable helped to inform everyone whats going on in Budapest during the events, while the government tried to cover it and in this way it surely helped to spread out from the capital). But the Radio Free Europe is also responsible for the death of tens of thousands during this event, since the radio broadcast promised Western help (which the west had NO INTENTION to provide from the get go), if the hungarians know this the revolution would die out within the 4-5 day (when the new still communist government promised amnesty and begged to stop before the soviets muster the entire red army - it was Imre Nagy's government). In Hungary it was the last time RFE played any role, after this event the population didnt even listened it anymore (partly because the Kádár-regime decided to soften the censorship and many other thing which made possible to listen western music and even news in hungarian broadcast - and not from a liar propaganda broadcast as it was widely labeled by the population at this point. Furthermore, the censored journalists managed to give the real news "between the lines" - as we say - and the population widely understood it too.)
We couldn't get these interesting broadcasts in the U.S. due to limits put on CIA funding by Congress. I have heard that a lot of great US music was broadcast on these stations especially Jazz.
At night I used to listen that days top stories on "world news", first on Radio Moscow (hilarious to listen for all the political buzz words like "bourgeoisie" and "capitalists"), then I would listen to VOA, which was no less funny as it was so militantly pro-American, then I would end with BBC World News, to find out what really happened that day.
What if the BBC broadcast at 89.3 AM couldn't the Soviets broadcast at the same frequency to essentially garble the signal (have competing audio on the same frequency)? Did the west change frequency at random to prevent this?
Great video guys! Many thanks.... this has given me further ideas for a book I'm writing... P.S: In 2015, information emerged that Russia may be developing a new nuclear torpedo, up to 100 megatons, the Status-6 Ocean Multipurpose System code named "Kanyon" by Pentagon officials. This weapon is designed to create a tsunami wave up to 500m tall that will radioactively contaminate a wide area on an enemy coast with cobalt-60, and to be immune to anti-missile defence systems such as laser weapons and railguns that might disable an ICBM Sleep well everybody 😉 ☢️ ⚛️
Exerting soft power via radio is harder and riskier than it looks from this video essay. Clumsy lies backfire. Accurate reporting sways highly-educated, shrewd opinion leaders. Willis Conover's politics-free VOA jazz broadcasts probably had more impact. than all the news programs combined.
Wow, Ukraine was also a country that RFE/RL broadcast to (perhaps regarding Ukraine also an undemocratic country) in 2021, but now Ukraine's become a country that West supports.
My Grandfather was Ukrainien and would broadcast Bible readings and studies through Radio Monte-Carlo during the Cold War. When the Iron Curtain fell and he was able to go back to Ukraine, people would recognize his voice.
Love that story.
Wonderful! 🙏❤️
God bless him!
Why couldn't broadcast union and workplace democracy?
@@barron8006
Workplace-democracy is good and all, but NOTHING beats the Gospel of Christ, comrade! 🙏❤️
@@theparadigm8149 BUt your dad supported zionist capitalism, which undermines the family, demographically destroys Christian nations, and worships commerical consumerism.
As an example, the CIA, today, would view your grand dad as a blanco suPremacist.
Northern Estonia was in a funny position in that Helsinki TV signal reached to Estonia, so we truly had a window into west.
Berlin too.
I'm surprised they didn't manufacture TVs so that they could only be tuned to certain frequencies.
@Just me which made Albanians incredibly skilled in the Italian language (my native language). Every time I met an Albanian who had lived under Communist rule, I was shocked by how good their Italian was, and they explained to me that radio and TV from Apulia were the reason.
I was watching Yugoslavian TV channels and listening to radio stations in the NW part of Bulgaria. I know not quite Western, but Yugoslavia was slightly more open then Bulgaria at the time. They had western films on the TV, better show programs and entertainment, and sport (mostly football from Europe, but some other too). My location also allowed me to tune in to the Romanian broadcast and compare this 3 countries - theirs was the worst.
My father was frequently listening to RFE (especially in the last years of the communism) and I vividly remember one evening he was listening some music on the radio and I was surprised and asked him why he is not listening RFE, and he said to me never again to even mention this especially outside the house! I was 10-11 years old, but clearly understood that what he was doing was dangerous and could have get him in serious troubles!
CircleofMadness And we had Radio Luxembourg.
I can solidly confirm 4:33 There is nothing more common in the Middle East, as shopkeepers who all have a radio in their shop where they keep up to date with what's going on in both their country and every country around them, as far down south as Sudan. Even.beggars on the streets can be found holding a walkman to their ears when it's news hour.
In Hungary it's common to listen to radio while at work. The instruments are usually continuously on in common areas, diners, offices, monitoring rooms or labs.
How can you confirm that? I’m Arab. We have the latest iphone here...
@@sydneyallen5788 here where?
@@sydneyallen5788 I guess it's a difference whether you're a regular guy sitting in Dubai or Doha or a poor-as-heck herder in Yemeni or Sudani countryside...
I've seen central americans in the mission district in SF bust out the shortwave on the streets
I have a great moral debt to Radio Free Europe. At the time, I considered it propaganda, and in a way it was. However, they provided accurate news, and while not perfect they provided a much wider coverage of news and this is why I, and most likely most Romanians, listened to it. At the time, I could not appreciate the quality of its editorial team, which was remarkable, the quality of their standards (not BBC-high, but close), and their professional archive and documentation units. That was because censorship limited their access to domestic news and they were forced to fill up their airtime with a lot of opinion and with whatever correspondence and interviews with Romanians they could get their hands on. It was only after 1989, when they had direct contact with Romania that I could fully appreciate the breadth and the quality of the information and of its interpretation they provided. Heck they had supplied an alternative platform to anybody, from radical anti-communists to party dissidents, going through the domestic intelligentsia and the artistic world.
By contrast, the domestic media had become almost worthless by the early 1980s. And Radio Moscow was comically bad and false. I would listen to it to make fun of their messages and their unmistakeable accents (the quality went up dramatically in the wake of the Moscow coup, when I suspect competent people wit ha bad cadre file where finally allowed on air). My standards for journalism were shaped by the BBC World Service of the 1980s (almost unimaginable these days) but it was the content of RFE that shaped my understanding of the political and cultural news on the Eastern Block.
I am indebted to the journalists of the RFE, first and foremost those attacked and killed in their line of duty, Cornel Chiriac and Emil Georgescu , but also the literary critic Monica Lovinescu, and then the directors Noël Bernard and Vlad Georgescu, and all the others, including those who would abandon their professional ethics in the following years.
I cried when Securitatea fell...
BBC is today equivalent to the Soviet Pravda with all the lies
Most American media is as bad as Soviet pravda was, heavily influenced by communist China and super rich establishment elites. So far I believe Fox News, newsmax, breitbart, and OAN remain true to truth and liberty and individualism.
@@Perktube1 sorry to say this, but you are very biased...
@@Perktube1 God this is top tier bait.
VOA was part of daily diet for me as a child..I learned English listening VOA...
As an American I also use VOA to learn Chinese XD. Funny how that works
Radio : I am the one who destroys nations! But..Who are you ?
Computer : I am you...but stronger
With the exception of the third world, where a 2 dollar radio is more available than the computer.
Smartphones: *are we a joke to you*
Did you see the interview where Larry Hagman was talking about how Romanians were walking up to him saying, “J.R. you have saved our country!”? It was when Ceasescu aired Dallas on national tv to show the depravity and greed of the West. But the people saw it and were like, “They have food!” It added a lot of fuel to the anti-government protests and the rest is history.
I heard Ceasescu airred Dallas becuase he really like the show, and was somehow convinced it was Communist
@@alcarbo8613
He thought people would see how dysfunctional the Ewings were with all their money and that it would reinforce communism.
Still to this day whenever I hear The Drifters "On Broadway" I remember the Radio Free Europe PSA from 1971....
I was still a kid when my father was listening during the evenings Radio Europa Liberă...Emil Hurezeanu, Monica Lovinescu and all the people at the Romanian Section in Munich were keeping the hopes of romanians that the comunism in Romania will end one day. I was allowed to listen the RFE when I was only 17 y.o., but shortly after, the comunism in Romania ended in the blood bath in December 1989. It was a privilege for me to be admited in the kitchen to listen the RFE together with my parents.
Jamming costs money. Broadcasting on one frequency is expensive enough. Blocking a whole range of frequencies is a splurge.
This brought back memories. As a teenager I was very interested in listening to shortwave radio. I would record broadcasts on my faithful reel-to-reel tape recorder. Using the information gathered in reports for school. I remember the Prague spring and doing a current affairs report based on Radio Prague, V.O.A., B.B.C., and Radio Moscow broadcasts as I was writing it. I think that it was my only A+ in high school.
I’m fascinated by shortwave radio, especially when they broadcasted messages for the spies.
@@N_0968 I can remember when I was in high school, listening to all he "national" SW radios stations: VOA, Moscow, London, etc.
I just wanted to thank you for creating this channel. I have always been a big WWII and WWI fan but to hear about events that happened in my lifetime is just amazing. A lot of this was just something we took for granted, without considering all of the effort that went on behind the scenes. In 1998 I went to training at the FBI Academy in Quantico. One of my classmates was a Russian police officer, who I listened to as he and the local FBI agent band played "Back in the USSR." I remember remarking that 20 years before the Marine Corps had been training me on how to fight Soviet Bloc troops, which would have included my classmate. That moment was surreal to me. I guess it's similar to the feeling WWII vets got when we joined with Germany and Japan in military exercises.
Next time talk about Finnish TV. For us Estonians it may have been even more important than radio. There has been made very good documentary about it in Estonian. It had some fun places, so it wouldn't be boring to watch
Similarly with West German TV in East Germany. Being able to watch the actual TV programming due to there being (almost) no language barrier, was really important.
Can you provide a link to the documentary?
@@joshuakehl5891 Your comment is old, but I´ll respond. I think he referred to "Disko ja tuumasõda". Which you might be able to see from this link (if it is not geolocked) jupiter.err.ee/924473/disko-ja-tuumasoda
@@xxxrrrxxxrrr That one is now gone, but I think I found it on youtube:
cp1CGNR86Zw
(format should be /watch?v= and the string above)
Cool to hear the mention of the Hungarian uprising. As a kid (grades 3 to 7) I lived in a small Canadian town where our doctor and his wife had fled Hungary as part of the uprising.
They had kids the same age as my younger brother and sister - they lived almost across the street and we played over there a great deal.
The mother actually watched us kids when our mother was dying - to this day I can vividly remember this poor woman putting some sort of wonderful Hungarian casserole on the table for supper and us roast beef and potatoes Canadian kids just turning our noses up at it!
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also has a TH-cam channel. I just found them a while ago.
Really ?
Oh wow
Both fall under under the IBB which is an US company that host VOA RFE Alhurrah and RFA and various pro American media
As briefly mentioned, there was a somewhat similar operation by the Republic of CHina, based on the island of Taiwan, to have radio stations send messages directed at Occupied Communist China.
One of my favorite stories of this was the singer Theresa Teng aka Deng Lijun who's songs were considered "too bourgeois" by the CCP yet she was well-loved by those across the strait that she became affectionately known as "Little Deng" (小鄧）since she had the same surname as then CCP leader Deng Xiaoping, and there was the saying that "Deng the leader ruled by day, but Deng the singer ruled by night."
Occupied China? Yeah right. Taiwan is not the 'real' China. It is a little US puppet island and behaves like a teenage brat that has run away from home. The 21st century is going to be China's finest I think. They are doing some amazing stuff with building all those mega infrastructure projects etc. They really know how to get stuff done. Standards of living have greatly increased too, as has literacy and life expectancy. They must be doing something right. There are things about it I would not want my country NZ to be like, but I also see the good stuff they do.
@@aquilarossa5191
Be abused at home
Run away
yeah sounds about right. It's not like they are doing any worse than communist China is.
"They must be doing something right"
Yeah they embraced mixed economy and the capitalist model of production, opened up to the west and became the world's factory. Mao has been rolling in his grave since 1978 at this revisionism but ain't nothing he can do about it.
Considering that Taiwan back then was not actually a democracy, their impact on building democracy in mainland China was probably not very big long after Taiwan became democratic.
@@aquilarossa5191 found the stooge of the Communist party. I'm guess you got your 50 cents for that.
Taiwan is the real China, they are the Republic of China that was founded in 1911 by Sun Yat-Sen after the fall of the Qing dynasty. The CCP are just some sad evil bastards that were so incompetent that they can't even make a functional carrier.
KMT and Sun's republic are not the same thing, especially after they got into bed with Uncle Sam who always wants something in return for his 'help'. Incompetent? Now you are getting silly.
Stooge? I am English, Welsh, Scots, Irish and Italian. I live in NZ. CCP have no interest in little old me, let alone would pay me to post on their behalf, but you are welcome to keep wearing that tin foil hat. 50c? You can have it for free.
I was part of a group of anthropologists in Kenya in the early 80s. Every morning we listened to Radio Moscow because they had a great Jazz Hour. Once the Jazz stopped and the news began, we turn to a different station.
Radio Moscow was one of the stations I listened for on my shortwave radio as I grew up in North Carolina in the 80s. That was a way for me to get a different perspective in the pre-Internet days.
So how did listening to the Soviets do for you? Sort of like listening to a Democrat news conference or watching their allies in the corporate fascist media of today who are dedicated to the fall of this country.
@@Las-Vegas-Muskets That, and many other choices, gave me the wisdom to see that 1) the Democratic Party isn't fascist, 2) corporate media wants to make money, and 3) the right wing is divorced from reality.
There's still stations broadcasting on short wave. I have a Grundig shortwave receiver. Living in Washington state, I can pick up radio from Cuba.
This is brilliant stuff! I had a short wave radio in the 1970's and used to listen to their programming.
The radio broadcasts gave us information, but also hope and companionship. Few days without my radio and the weight of loneliness and isolation was crushing.
Shortwave listening before the internet was awesome & as a hobbyist I did a lot of listening during the cold war. As a Ham operator I remember the Russian over the horizon radar called the woodpecker because it caused massive interference on the HF ham bands & sounded like a woodpecker. They even sold special radio filters to help.
As a kid I barely remember it and forgot all about it but I got a private tour of Radio Free Europe in Munich right around the wall fell.
Those of us old enough even remember the "marvel" of AM broadcasts. There were many nights when I was a lad in the 50s when we would vacation on the Texas Gulf coast around Corpus Christi listening to stations from Chicago.
I grew up North of Houston and had a old World Band radio, I would listen to all sorts of AM shows with that thing from all over the world. Well, mainly the english ones lol
@@plhebel1 I don't remember the stations but what I do remember is lying in bed in the dark, on a screen porch (no A/C), listening to the waves crash about 100 feet away, while listening to music and news from Chicago. It was as if I was listening to another world.
@@stischer47 was it 890 wls
My grandpa used to listen to this radio with his family in the basement. It was the only truth source during communism.
In our block of flats for trustworthy comrades (not nomenklatura, but the levels below: design engineers, managers, professors, junior embassy staff, etc.) I could hear the RFE jingles through the walls and through the ceiling from all our neighbours (soundproofing was terrible). In fact, a lot of the neighbourly conversations would be about the news from RFE.
@Random I guess you just don't know what communist news sounded like. It was propaganda and lies 24/7. The only time you could hope for some truth was when you read about sports. Are you living in the West by any chance?
@@makeromaniagreatagain9697 "Communist news". It's a joke, right?
More seriously, there were hardly any lies in the international news (except for the insgnificant ones about the greatness and wisdom of the leadership), but there was a lot censorship and a lot of "grim realities of the world of the capital" were completely taken out of context.
People would start reading the papers "Jewish-style", from the last page (international news) to the previous one (sports and possibly "human touch") and went on to the ads if the paper had any. Hardly anybody would read the first page (of four to six) other than during political meetings (for "political information", "political education", or various organisation meetings), about once per week.
on the radio freedom Soviet citizens learned feminine sanitary pads are not a luxury, but a hygiene product available in normal countries of the world
Not every Soviet citizen had a radio.
Not every Soviet citizen knew how to tune banned frequencies
And even fewer were not afraid to listen to forbidden frequencies for which you can go to jail.
But later Video killed the Radio Star on MTV and MTV was killed by TH-cam and iTunes
Oh wow I never really thought of it like that but your right.
MTV was killed by reality tv.
Newsflash
Wifi is radio
This was a nice video. I've heard of Radio Liberty a few times before but never knew any of the details of this radio station. Now I do. My compliments to those who made this video a reality.
I really can’t get enough of these videos. Amazing job!
As a swede, growing up during the cold war, having blast shelter drills in school and listening to shortwawe at nights, this was intresting, but not new to me.
As good as the western radio stations was, the eastern ones sent out better goodiebags if you sent them a listening report, the commies sent parcels with flags, pins, calenders and even sometimes t-shirts, the western stations just sent a QSL card.
The ting was, once you were in the communists books, they kept track of you even if you were just a kid, I got stuff sent to me even after moving a couple of times after sending them my report.
I also had some illegal contacts on CB radio with russians and Baltc states, no doubt they risked more then I did.
Soviet Agent: Hey, American, I jammed your radio.
CIA Agent: Hey, Russian, I jammed your mom.
*Atomic Mic Drop*
Extremely educational and very well prepared. Now I find history so interesting. Thank you. RS. Canada
Thank you this was very helpful for my upcoming exam
Others did their part. In 1978, I visited KJNP, a 50,000 watt Christian radio just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. During the day time, they broadcast in all directions to cover much of northern Alaska. At night, when the signals carried much further, the FCC required them to use a directional antenna aimed away from Canada to avoid interfering with stations there. The result was programming in Russian and directed toward Siberian Christians in the early morning of the next day.
He said Communist broadcasts were a "curiosity" to Western listeners. Fairly true. I received the North American Service of Radio Moscow loud and clear in Northen California. As a kid, it was weird hearing them bad mouth my country, and overselling how great the USSR was. I once was able to tune in Radio Havana; they were having an essay contest. It was something like "write how the revolution has positively impacted your life" or some crap like that. First prize was a free trip to and tour of Havana. Like sure, I was going to do some sort of homework like that!
Typical.
huge antennas for Radio Liberty were built here in Catalonia, in the Costa Brava (Platja de Pals). They were demolished just a few years ago, and now the place is part of a nature reserve, as it's use preserved a strench of coast from the overbuilding of hotels, as most of the rest of the Costa Brava
Radio definitively won with TV. You can't work, housekeep, or drive watching TV or VOD, but radio becomes the main information platform today. Internet is a newspaper TV and video stores replacement, in case of radio it is just another "frequency" - AM FM internet. We should more appreciate it.
Love this channel , love the Cold War documentaries , keep up the good work
The topic in this video was fascinating!!!
Even though Shortwave popularity has waned in developed countries, it is still an important tool to flow information in and out of third world regions where the free press are being suppressed. And there is still a variety of content to listen to even today.
Can't block the airwaves
Internet has its many advantages, BUT shortwave radio crosses borders easily and those who listen are >anonymous
@@raybans4980 I heard the youtuber review brah actually does shows on shortwave radio
@@CMCSS-to3to yes he does and his show came to mind when I spoke of content still on shortwave.
And events today in Europe show it can still play a role in Major Industrialized nations in time of emergency
Both my parents worked for RFE in Munich - and my godfather was the director of the Polish section of RFE. My first job was at RFE distributing mail. It was, in large part, congressionally funded. I don't think you a say the East Block made a "valiant" effort - considering they enslaved their populace.
Give Coca-Cola the credit
*"War never Ends"* - Those radio-stations are still online
They need to be. We have a Communist sympathiser in the White House.
@@2112jonr Are you time traveller from 2009?
@@2112jonr ??? Wtf are you talking about. I don't think you know the definition of communism. No actual communist government exists in the world today. Dictatorships and oligarchies are not communism btw.
2112jonr. You are a complete and utter idiot. Are you even aware of the meaning of “Communism”? If you are aware, then the definition does not fit our current president as well as it fit the previous “Obammunist”.
@@maconp1119
Actually! He was referring to the deep-state personnel.
I really enjoy your channel. You're knowledgeable and authoritative in the vids. I miss my favorite genre of literature, Cold War spying. May John LeCarre live forever!
Thank you for sharing, and producing this amazing channel
The video was great, I learned quite a bit. I read the comments and am still learning. I had no idea how important this was to so many people.
Glasnost killed the Soviet Star
Gorbachev, with a little strawberry on his forehead.
@Polish Hero Witold Pilecki solidarity was the straw that broke the camels back, after that the republics fell one by one
I got into Shortwave radio a bit around 2008. I tuned into the numbers stations and silent broadcasts out of Russia, Cuban propaganda detailing daily updates on a fictitious war with the US, a Chinese station in English covering the Beijing Olympics, and a Romanian station discussing the crisis in Ukraine. Also Africa had a good amount of local shortwave and medium wave local stations, probably still do.
I really love your narration and the quality of this content in general, thank you so much for this high quality :)
I love your channel, interesting information with emotional music adding gravity to the subject matter. Great stuff.
It was mostly appreciated because it was something different and against the line of party.
The most wholesome and arguably, most effective CIA initiative
I so enjoy all the "props" that you have there in the room with you, and I wish that you could explain some of them. Please visit the VOA museum near Cincinnati if you are in this neck of the woods. All the Best! 73 DE W8LV BILL
Btw, were the Soviets proud of the MiG 15's performance in Korea or thought that the Americans had better jets??
Hard to say. The MiG was absolutely cutting edge at the time but soldiers/pilots always seem to have a "the grass is greener on the other side" attitude about their equipment
Up until the MiG-29 Russian planes were preferred in the eastern block to their American counterparts even well into the late 90's, partly due to Russia offering upgrades to MiG planes in exchange for less reparations (they had to pay to former Warsaw pact countries). The Sukhoi line of planes never really took root though.
@@csfelfoldi Eventually they did fall behind in some areas. One of the issues was the USSR had little access to things like aluminum. The embargo of raw materials meant that they either could only buy limited numbers of smuggled material they could not manufacture.
When the US was developing faster and more powerful aircraft Midway through the cold war, they had to take more and more drastic designs to make up for deficiencies. It was revealed for example that Belenko's MiG-25 was a giant airplay that can go at Mach 3.2 but was not maneuverable, had short range, would destroy it's engines past Mach 2.5, and was still running on vacuum tubes. The American Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird turned out to be a far superior aircraft.
Example:
V Guyver MiG 25 were not suppose to be a fighter, it was a dedicated interceptor
In Vietnam, whenever there are unrests and protests against chinese agression, or the chinese roaming in the South China Sea; the Internet will suddenly become very slow, laggy and make it impossible to search the news. Kind of intentional like the Soviet with the radio trick during tensions with the West.
The Chinese are screwing with the Vietnamese? Also isn’t the Vietnamese on bad terms with China, especially after the Sino invasion of the 79.
@@abandonedchannel281 1 year late, but the Chinese have been screwing with their neighbors.
I really like your videos! Subscribed :)
Thanks now I can't get the R.E.M. song out of my head
Interesting to think how important and powerful the radio was before the internet and before tv
Radio is still important and powerful. I listen to it every day.
16:25 They most certainly did promise. Theres nothing to debate. Especially in Hungary even to this day with those that lived through it.
Radio
Mein Radio
Ich lass' mich in den Äther saugen
Meine Ohren werden Augen
Information is surely powerful
Great episode. Reminded me of reading about the CIA's covert operation that targetted the citizens of Western Europe rather than those behind the Iron Curtain, They funded the publication of what appeared to be, to the reader, cultural magazines that were 'local' in origin, i.e. within a specific European country. The targetted countries were the Western European ones - West Germany, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands are the ones I recall. These 'cultural' magazines printed articles that promoted democracy over communism with the actual writers being hidden behind an alter ego - an Italian, French, or Spanish 'author' with enough status to draw in readers or in cases where the writer truly was an Italian, French, etc author, the articles were vetted by the CIA who altered the article as they saw fit before they could be published. For writers in these countries it posed a dilemma - get in step with the program and see 'your' articles in print or don't get published. The CIA published in almost every Western European country beginning in the late 1940s, increased through the 1950s, peaked in the early t0 mid-1960s, and dwindled through the 1970s. Several of today's popular magazines began as propaganda tools of the CIA whose funding for these vehicles only ended in the 1980s. I think some of the titles remain in print today though the links to the CIA were cut decades ago (as the story is told now - who knows what will be told in 50 years).
Any specific examples of such journals? ;)
I also wonder if they published about the advantages of democracy in Portugal and Spain?
Radio Luxemburg was pretty cool. More music,less talking.
A sample broadcast would have been fitting.
Thanks
In the early days of the USSR, radio was the only way to broadcast the current events to all 11 time zones. I would LOVE to have one of those old Soviet generators. A kerosene lamp heated two different metals, like the thermocouple in a natural gas dryer keeps the pilot light burning. This lamp produced enough electricity to run community radios all across the USSR.
Very interesting Video
Will you do a segment on the East German economy and living standards. I’d really like to see one about this for the other satellite nations too like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria as well.
Very few people would be interested, thankfully.
Hey Can you please let us know the songs you use in your video?
It's weird how different the world is today. I still have trouble grasping there is no East Germany, and I remember when Radio Free Europe was a normal thing.
Polish comunnist party officials would even listen to RFE, because it often provided information on party politics far better then anything local.
I was hoping to see some of the public service announcements that were broadcast in the late 1950s, early 1960s advertising for contributions to RFE. One I remember in particular (I was 9 years-old in 1963) had a family huddled around a radio when Soviet police break down the door and take a long-handled ax to the radio set. I have yet to find one on TH-cam. Plus, something else broadcast at the time and somewhat unrelated, there were the commercials aired in January reminding citizens that all aliens must register with the federal government every January first or whatever. Those were creepier than the tags on pillows that warned prosecution to anyone who removed them.
Came for the geopolitics. Stayed for the background music. It's awesome! Where can I listen to it?
Rock music broadcast by radio liberty was one of the factor that bring dowm the berlin wall.
The audio seems to be a bit out of sync. His hand movements drew attention to it, and his lip movements confirmed it. Common on TH-cam and easy to ignore usually but the slight delay of the hands makes it hard to ignore.
Getting technical, could the authorities try to find the Intermediate Frequency if it leaked back out of the antenna?
Not for routine detection as the radiated power is very low and the radio would have to be inspected to determibe the if frequency. But if someone is zooming in on a suspect, certainly.
We need a version of this today for Chinese citizens to learn the truth about the CCP.
Taiwan has this, supposedly it broadcasts to the mainland on shortwave.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Taiwan_International
This is inefficient because China is a mono-ethnic country. And the USSR was a multi-ethnic garbage dump. Radio Liberty has always played an inter-ethnic "card".
Radio Free Asia serves the
same purpose. Giant operation through many relay stations.
@@hakangustavsson3538 Yeah but does the reception reach mainland China?
My dad really liked the BBC and Radio Free Europe, it was forbidden to listen to, but mostly nobody cared
Any idea how to send an email to the host here?
During gorbachev RFE got a longer leash by the soviets? That's a strange wording. Anyone having the leash controls the direction ?
Funny that you mentioned Cecil B demille at around 10 minutes but not one of the clips shows Cecil B demille
Thank you RFE: taxpayers' money actually well spent.
16:09 Classic America.
"Rise up, oppressed people. We'll help you!"
*People rise up expecting help.
"We'll, you see, the thing is...."
Consider covering the cold war affect on spandau prison in berlin as well as the soviet war monument that was located in west berlin (and why the west berliners said his hand cant raise)
According to a defector.late leonid brezhnev also listen to RFE.
Having have lived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain I am so thankful that it existed.
During the 1956 revolution memorial the radio free europe broadcasts are played live on TH-cam with a "few" years of delay (when the broadcaster says its midnight, its midnight in the present too)
The role of Radio Free Europe with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is a very murky area - on one hand, the revolution would broke out without it (but undoubtable helped to inform everyone whats going on in Budapest during the events, while the government tried to cover it and in this way it surely helped to spread out from the capital).
But the Radio Free Europe is also responsible for the death of tens of thousands during this event, since the radio broadcast promised Western help (which the west had NO INTENTION to provide from the get go), if the hungarians know this the revolution would die out within the 4-5 day (when the new still communist government promised amnesty and begged to stop before the soviets muster the entire red army - it was Imre Nagy's government).
In Hungary it was the last time RFE played any role, after this event the population didnt even listened it anymore (partly because the Kádár-regime decided to soften the censorship and many other thing which made possible to listen western music and even news in hungarian broadcast - and not from a liar propaganda broadcast as it was widely labeled by the population at this point. Furthermore, the censored journalists managed to give the real news "between the lines" - as we say - and the population widely understood it too.)
We couldn't get these interesting broadcasts in the U.S. due to limits put on CIA funding by Congress. I have heard that a lot of great US music was broadcast on these stations especially Jazz.
At night I used to listen that days top stories on "world news", first on Radio Moscow (hilarious to listen for all the political buzz words like "bourgeoisie" and "capitalists"), then I would listen to VOA, which was no less funny as it was so militantly pro-American, then I would end with BBC World News, to find out what really happened that day.
nice video
Can The Cold War do a Question- answer such as in (the Great War) (Out of the trenches )
As always I learned something
What if the BBC broadcast at 89.3 AM couldn't the Soviets broadcast at the same frequency to essentially garble the signal (have competing audio on the same frequency)? Did the west change frequency at random to prevent this?
If this interests you, visit the VOA museum in West Chester Ohio.
Great video guys! Many thanks.... this has given me further ideas for a book I'm writing...
P.S:
In 2015, information emerged that Russia may be developing a new nuclear torpedo, up to 100 megatons, the Status-6 Ocean Multipurpose System code named "Kanyon" by Pentagon officials.
This weapon is designed to create a tsunami wave up to 500m tall that will radioactively contaminate a wide area on an enemy coast with cobalt-60, and to be immune to anti-missile defence systems such as laser weapons and railguns that might disable an ICBM
Sleep well everybody 😉 ☢️ ⚛️
Would freedom have been a thing in the west without communism in the east?
Yes
No, they would be easier to instal and justify Right Wing dictatorships like in Latin America
damn the music is inspiring
Loving your videos but the heroic music in the background makes it hard to listen for a non native speaker.
Exerting soft power via radio is harder and riskier than it looks from this video essay. Clumsy lies backfire. Accurate reporting sways highly-educated, shrewd opinion leaders. Willis Conover's politics-free VOA jazz broadcasts probably had more impact. than all the news programs combined.
Wow, Ukraine was also a country that RFE/RL broadcast to (perhaps regarding Ukraine also an undemocratic country) in 2021, but now Ukraine's become a country that West supports.