Cold War Broadcasting Impact
This is a short report based on my paper delivered at the Cold War Broadcasting Impact conference at Hoover Institution, Stanford, October 2004. It describes the ideological warfare between the West and the East and provides some previously unpublished testimonies shedding new light on the Cold War rivalries.
Water Shaping the Rock
or
Cold War Broadcasting Impact in Latvia
RFE/RL broadcasts in Latvian started in 1975 from Munich. Although the Latvian-American lobbying efforts dated much earlier the beginning of broadcasts was delayed mostly because the Diaspora leaders could not agree whether it was acceptable to start Latvian programming as part of Radio Liberty. Radio Liberty (Liberation at that time) was known as broadcaster to the peoples of the Soviet Union. The forceful incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia was never recognized by the United States government. Some cautioned that this might send a wrong signal to Moscow as if the US Government would have changed its mind.
The beginning of RFE/RL broadcasts to Latvia was preceded by a Soviet anti-West campaign that was specifically critical of RFE/RL activities. RFE/RL broadcasts, when they started, were heavily jammed. As George Woodard described it in his paper, Western engineers used several techniques to overcome the jamming that proved to be quite effective: short-wave sunspot cycle or “twilight immunity” advantages, increasing signal strength, transferring the power from one frequency to another, slightly shifting the frequency value (Woodard, Cold War Radio Jamming). All these techniques, as we have learned from recent testimonies of former Soviet officials, had a powerful cumulative effect of disseminating uncensored news and opinion beyond the Iron Curtain.
Compared to other international broadcasters RFE/RL was perceived by the listeners as more interested in their daily lives, more sympathetic to their pro-independence aspirations and more anti-Soviet; to some extent also more aggressive than VOA. Former Latvian dissidents believe that RFE/RL broadcasts gave them moral strength. Soviet authorities put in great effort and resources in counter-measures: jamming, counter-propaganda, political persecution and monitoring. These measures however forced Soviet authorities into defensive and often proved to be counterproductive (Tolz). They only increased the credibility and appeal of the RFE/RL and other Western broadcasts to the audience. Ironically by combating RFE/RL broadcasts and its impact on audience, the Soviet elite itself, including high-ranking KGB officers, got influenced by Western information (remarks by General Kalugin, panel 6).
It seems that on some instances the Soviet authorities over-estimated the capabilities and coordination of the Western broadcasts to Latvia. They perceived RFE/RL as an integral part of a smoothly functioning highly centralized Western propaganda system. Even though some efforts of cooperation were made by individual broadcasters it was far from what the Soviets believed.
Pavils Bruvers, one of the veteran broadcasters of RFE/RL Latvian Service and a former dissident who along with his family was extradited from the USSR in 1974 (joined the radios in 1979), said that at that time there was no cooperation between RFE/RL and VOA language services. As for the cooperation with Latvian Diaspora in the Western countries, it was rather spontaneous than organized.
For a few years, starting with 1980, there was an amateur-publication “The World and We” published by the World Federation of Free Latvians (WFFL) Its content was largely based on the aired materials from RFE/RL Latvian Service programs. During his leisure time Pavils Bruvers and some of his colleagues compiled these "recycled" materials and wrote the articles. Julijs Kadelis, director of the WFFL Information branch, was the editor and publisher. All this was a pure volunteer effort.
As for their primary work, in addition to the analytical pieces provided by RFE/RL's Analysis unit, the broadcasters kept their own personal files on the issues related to their area of their responsibility. According to Bruvers, the Analysis unit materials were very good for in-depth series of programs but often they were not timely enough. To be able to react quickly to the developments in the target country, broadcasters needed to have their own files.
We had great creative freedom. We were limited only by the professional principles of journalism, and we were required to provide objective information. Propaganda and inflammatory content were not allowed. We promoted Western values and democracy by the means of professional journalism (Bruvers 2004).
The veteran broadcaster believes that the very principle of the surrogate broadcasting was irritating the Soviet leadership of Latvia. It gave the listeners a chance to compare Western and domestic coverage of the same events. The comparison was not favorable to the Soviet media. Bruvers said that RFE/RL paid much attention to the credibility of their broadcasts. They valued the letters received from listeners from behind the Iron Curtain. Imitating VOA, RFE/RL Latvian Service started regular reviews of the letters.
Soviet Counter-Propaganda in Latvia
Only the most experienced and trusted Soviet propaganda masters were allowed to counter the Western broadcasting. Most of the Soviet Latvian publications against Western broadcasters were written in Moscow, and later translated and published in Latvia. The Deputy Chairman of Latvian Committee for Radio and Television, Peteris Jerans, was one of the few exceptions to this rule.
In 1971 he was allowed (or asked) to write his own book about the Western radios Attention! Anti-Communism On-Air. It was published in 1972 and was meant to serve as guideline to Communist party activists and journalists in Latvia. Besides VOA, it also attacked Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Both of them had no broadcasts in Latvian at that time. It is still not known with certainty why this Soviet propaganda publication paid so much attention to RFE/RL. Was this Kremlin's imposed standard approach to the topic of Western broadcasting? Or was this an indication of the awareness of Soviet intelligence of the ongoing Baltic Diaspora lobbying efforts in the US to start Radio Liberty broadcasts in Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian? A detailed description (prepared by KGB in January 1974) of this lobbying effort later was found in the former KGB archives in Latvia.
Jerans’s book was one of the few anti-Western-broadcasting books published in Latvia. However its place among such a literature is unique in the sense that it was the only one using specific Latvian examples and written by well-known Latvian political commentator. Commenting on this book the Director of the Latvian Center for Documentation of the Crimes of the Totalitarian Regimes, Indulis Zalite, said:
… He could not have had all the information he used in the book. It is obvious that he was provided with the information about the number of employees, budget figures, and work schedules [of Western broadcasters] by an organization, which knew it all. The book may be written in cooperation with the KGB.
Peteris Jerans was the deputy chairman of the Soviet TV and radio in Latvia (LCRTB), and supervised the broadcasting entities directly competing with Western broadcasters for the same audience. His book included recommendation for Latvian propaganda professionals working in the Soviet mass media.
Jerans depicted Western broadcasting and Western press as psychological warfare operations and warned against listening to the arguments of such seasoned anticommunists as Zbignev Brzezinsky and Samuel Huntington (Jerans 29). He also warned against building bridges between the two systems. This, he said, is a method used by imperialist ideologists to establish contacts with people who still have in their mind some residue of the old social order.
As have declared the managers of Free Europe, the main goal … is to attract the audience to Western standards. … They have all kind of methods to monitor radio broadcasts, to process and analyze more than 700 press publications. Interviews with betrayers of the socialist cause, contacts with decadent people from socialist countries, and the traditional spying - all serve this same goal (ibid.).
Jerans alleged that The New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Indian Express, Die Welt were among the publications controlled by Washington. (ibid. 28, 39). The controlling organization – USIA - according to Jerans, was manipulated by State Department, Pentagon and CIA (ibid. 43).
The topic of Western broadcasting to Latvia was considered by the local Soviet nomenclature to be very dangerous and sensitive. Only at the end of his book Jerans dared to touch the specific Latvian language broadcasts by VOA:
Voice of America is broadcasting answers to questions that they allegedly have received from the listeners in Soviet Latvia. … Please pay attention to the fact that Voice of America answers a question of an anonymous listener. The analysis of numerous broadcasts reveals that in reality there is no such letter with question from a listener; sometimes even the employees of the radio have unwillingly admitted that there is no such listener or a letter from a listener. (ibid. 75)
Other anti-Western propaganda books published in Latvia were mostly written in Moscow and translated from Russian into Latvian. Some, for the use of the Communist party activists, were published in Russian. One such book Problema Svobody Cheloveka v Sovremenoy Ideologicheskoy Borbe was a compilation of propaganda related articles. From nine authors one, R. Pudels, was Latvian. He was the only one who touched the real issue - Western broadcasting to Latvia. Pudels portrayed all Western research and broadcasting institutions as a huge well-coordinated espionage network. He listed what he perceived as the most dangerous centers of anti-Soviet subversion, with Hoover Institution among them. (Problema Svobody 164) A book by Shitov (Shitovs) was one of the few books published in Latvian that was specifically focused on Western broadcasting. The author played by the rules of the Brezhnev era and tried to equal Western “imperialist” intentions with the goals of the Nazis (Problema Svobody 62).
The Soviet propaganda was only partially successful. It managed to scare people: many got the warning message that listening to foreign radio stations is a punishable activity. Some indeed stayed away from such a risky endeavor, others took great care to camouflage their activity. Soviet propaganda was able to convince many listeners that Western broadcasting is part of Western intelligence. It seems that this conspiracy myth appealed to great numbers of the audience. They believed, and some still believe, that American international broadcasting is a CIA-controlled operation. One of such listeners, Ojars Rubenis, later became chairman of the Council for Radio and TV of independent Latvia. Paradoxically, in the eyes of the audience the alleged intelligence link added to the prestige of the radios. Many listeners felt encouraged by their belief that important Western government agencies were involved in combating Soviet communist propaganda. This gave them additional reason for hope that Soviet totalitarianism will be defeated. People enjoyed listening to what they believed was subversion against their oppressors. Even a former Latvian dissident who later became one of RFE/RL veteran broadcasters, Pavils Bruvers, admitted in his recent interview that after he was hired by the radios, he was surprised to discover that RFE/RL was just a media organization.
Soviet Jamming of Western Broadcasts to Latvia
By recurring to jamming, the Soviet authorities acknowledged that counter-propaganda and repressions against listeners were not sufficient to reduce the influence of Western broadcasting in Latvia.
Jamming needed construction of huge transmitter-sites and considerable financial investment. According to a retired Soviet-era veteran engineer, Uldis Rutks, who worked at the government transmitting facilities, the jamming was a complicated centrally-controlled broadcasting system directed mostly against short-wave (SW) broadcasting. Medium-waves (MW) were jammed selectively.
Supervisors at the transmitting-sites received their orders with time, frequency, and power specifications directly from the KGB in Moscow. The audio-signal for the jamming broadcast also came on tape from Moscow. The tape was periodically changed, apparently in an attempt to discourage the amateur-constructors of illegal anti-jamming devices. Each new tape had different range of audio frequencies. At one instance Soviet authorities even experimented with a pre-recorded radio program in English played in reverse mode.
There were four permanent jamming sites in Latvia: in Riga, Liepaja, Ventspils, Daugavpils. The only full-time jamming facility was in Riga. It was a purpose-built Soviet 600-series jamming facility, which consisted of two metal towers connected by SW transmitting antenna, and a 12-program broadcasting center. The transmitter was a Soviet KV5 (Russian abbreviation for 5 kW SW transmitter). The bodies of the two towers and the antenna worked as one huge antenna. The 600-series were standard facilities for all the capital cities of the Soviet republics. Exact copies of the Riga facility existed in Tallinn and Vilnius. In Soviet technical slang they were called the “horned-series” because of their two towers connected by antenna. They were serviced by shifts of 15 technicians and a few supervisors (Rutks).
The other three permanent jamming facilities in Latvia were part-time and besides the jamming activity were also used for SW communication with Soviet merchant marine, and for the needs of Soviet Civil Defense. Also any non-jamming broadcasting facility in Latvia could receive orders to broadcast a jamming signal (for example the two 50 kW MW transmitters in Rezekne). Riga facility was located in the central residential part of the city on Erglu street, just a few dozen meters off the main street (Lenin street at the time). According to Guntars Plucis, Technical director of the Latvian Radio, the local jamming facilities were equipped to jam the SW signal on 25-meter frequency and above, but they were not able to jam 19, 16-meter and lower bands. Soviet regulations allowed a mass production of SW commercial receivers equipped with 25-meter band and higher.
Jamming consisted of several steps. First, KGB monitoring stations identified the exact frequency and power of the Western transmitter. Second, they sent this information to KGB command center. Third, the command center ordered broadcasting facilities to start jamming on the specified frequency with specified power. Fourth, the technicians at the facility adjusted the equipment and started jamming. After that the monitoring stations controlled the quality of what in a Soviet technical slang was called the “coverage” of Western signal. If more power was needed, then additional facilities were ordered to join the jamming. The four-step command procedure started for those facilities. Complete jamming of a particular Western signal could take up to 10 minutes from the beginning of the broadcast.
The SW jamming was a technically complicated task and not always successful. Because of the SW ionosphere reflection much depended on the meteorological conditions at the broadcasting site and the target area. Jamming was the least successful at night (in the Soviet territory) when, depending on weather, there was a chance of the SW signal reflecting in much higher atmospheric strata then usual and also a sunspot cycle advantage could be used by the broadcasters.
Adjusting to all those factors sometimes could take the Soviet jamming system up to the end of a Western broadcast. Uldis Rutks said that from time to time the Soviets simply abandoned jamming at late night. Even when the jamming was successful it had an adverse psychological effect on the audience. Many former listeners have told the author that jamming convinced them that the Western radios must have been telling the truth. Ironically, the Soviet jamming added to the credibility of Western broadcasts (Rutks).
Abrams Kleckins, professor of journalism at the University of Latvia, believes that probably the jamming discouraged some listeners, but it angered most of the intellectuals and made them listen to Western radios even more. He added that in his view the jamming was counterproductive because it alienated the intellectuals from the regime (Kleckins).
Soviet Repressions Against Listeners in Latvia
Listening to Western radio stations in Latvia in 1970s and 1980s, according to Indulis Zalite, was no longer a sufficient ground for sentencing a person to Soviet prison, as it was during Stalin's rule. This may partially explain the increasing popularity of such broadcasts among the population. However it was still perceived as semi-criminal activity by the authorities and was used as aggravating evidence against anyone accused of anti-Soviet activities. Telling someone about the content of Western broadcast was still a punishable crime: it was considered a “dissemination of anti-Soviet propaganda”.
One of the most courageous Latvian dissidents was Gunars Astra. He was twice sentenced to lengthy prison terms: in 1961 and 1983. Listening to Western radios was mentioned as aggravating circumstantial evidence at both trials. In 1983 Astra was also accused of recording the broadcasts on tape with the purpose of making the recordings available to others:
In 1983 two Latvian dissidents were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for anti-Soviet activities. Among the crimes incriminated to Astra was the recording on tape of Western radio broadcasts. The process lasted from December 1 to December 19, 1983. In his closing speech Astra unmasked the lies of the Soviet regime. The Soviet authorities afterwards censured even the official court transcripts. His words however were not in vain. Two other dissidents: Juris Ziemelis and Alfreds Stinkuls secretly recorded his speech at the court session and smuggled the audiocassette abroad. A few days later his speech was broadcast by VOA and Radio Free Europe (Okupacijas Varu…).
Summaries of the investigative cases of Latvian KGB are available at the Latvian Center for Documentation of the Crimes of the Totalitarian Regimes. They give some understanding about the system of total control and repression practiced by the KGB:
Sulimov V. P. was spreading the content of anti-Soviet radio broadcasts among his acquaintances: he made anti-Soviet remarks; spoke highly about Western way of life; voiced treacherous intentions…. Twice he already has been submitted to prophylactic treatment because of dissemination of the content of anti-Soviet radio broadcasts and treacherous intentions (Unnamed KGB document NS=005345; from 1965).
Engineer Kadikis R. T. greeted his employees with the independence of bourgeois Latvia … he spoke highly about the living standards in the USA on the basis of information heard from foreign anti-Soviet radio broadcasts (Unnamed KGB document NS=0053639; based on the reports by agent “Zanis”; from 1975).
During a prolonged period of time in 1979 Jaundzems regularly made ideologically destructive statements among his closest acquaintances…. He made the above-mentioned statements because of his political illiteracy, and because he was listening to foreign radio broadcasts of the Voice of America (Unnamed KGB document NS=005052; from 1979).
To understand the scale of KGB repressions against the active listeners of Western broadcasting one should examine thousands of investigative summaries available at the Latvian archives. The director of the Latvian Center for Documentation of the Crimes of the Totalitarian Regimes, Indulis Zalite, believes that the scale of repression was impressive. He said that the number of arrested anti-Soviet resistance groups was surprisingly high for such a small country as Latvia. On average the Latvian KGB crashed 6 to 12 such groups each year. All the accused, among other things, were incriminated with actively listening to Western broadcasting. Active listening included telling others about the content of broadcasts. The persecuted were both: Latvians and Russians.
Soviet Monitoring of Western Broadcasts to Latvia
Soviet authorities in Latvia considered Western broadcasts very important and dangerous and continued detailed monitoring and analysis even during the Perestroika period. Even though in Latvia most of the monitoring of Western broadcasting was done by The Committee for Radio and Television Broadcasting (LCRTB), there are a few samples of monitoring documents that are typical KGB documents.
Here are two fragments from these documents:
Radio station “Radio Free Europe” (Latvian Service) informed, quoting as source archbishop of the Latvian Lutheran church, Matulis J.P. that currently there are 206 Lutheran parishes in the Latvian SSR but only 100 priests, and that there are around 50 students at the Theology Seminary in Riga (unnamed KGB document NS=0302461; November 28, 1984; sent from the Secretariat of the KGB of the USSR to the Secretariat of the KGB of Latvian SSR).
Radio station “Radio Free Europe” in its broadcast in Lithuanian informed that Lithuanian émigrés, jointly with other Baltic émigrés in Australia, are doing lot of lobbying to obtain from the Australian parliament a resolution recognizing the “problems of the Baltic countries”, similar to the resolution that two years ago was passed by the “European Parliament” in Strasbourg (unnamed KGB document NS=0302699; November 5-28, 1984; sent from the Secretariat of the KGB of the USSR to the Secretariat of the KGB of Latvian SSR).
Some of the documents in this collection are from 1974, others are from 1984, and 1988. Compared to these documents, the better known monitoring by the LCRTB seem more ideologically tainted and less factual. LCRTB materials have the tendency to prompt the reader to use the material for specific propaganda purposes. The tone of the summaries is almost always negative as if the monitoring person had to prove his or her allegiance to the Soviet cause. The following are fragments from the monthly summary of the broadcasts by VOA, RFE, and Radio Vatican for December 1987:
Strikingly, a lot of attention is devoted to the internal situation in the USSR, looking at it mostly from the point of view of perestroika. In this sense all spectrum of anti-Soviet colors and definitions is used. The commentaries and press reviews of the radios revolve around a formula invented by RFE that can be defined as “the current Soviet situation has reached a dead-end…”.
In the monitoring materials for November 1987 there was a warning remark:
[the document] was signed by the group Helsinki-86 on October 22, 1987 in Riga. As we can see, the very next day, October 23, the document was in the hands of Free Europe (Monitoring, November 1987).
Another type of monitoring materials by the LCRTB was a quarterly summary on the issues of religion and religious freedom “Review of the Clerical Propaganda by Radio Stations Voice of America, Free Europe, and Radio Vatican”. Most of the information in this selection was about the broadcast or Radio Vatican. RFE and VOA were mentioned mostly because of their support for religious freedom in Latvia. The following is a sample text from the summary for October-December, 1987.
... the life of religious people in the Soviet Union. Despite the slogans of democratization and perestroika, the persecution of religious activists has not stopped; they are still in detention: in prisons, psychiatric clinics; the activities of pastors are still restricted (Monitoring, October-December 1987).
On some issues Western broadcasts seem to be the only source of information to the monitoring person:
It appears from the broadcasts that these questions were quite largely discussed at various international conferences, at the meetings of politicians, émigrés, and religious leaders; they have an important place in the internal and foreign affairs of Vatican.
The radios informed that before Ronald Reagan's visit to Moscow there was an informative meeting of American political and religious leaders at the White House in Washington - “Religious Freedom in the USSR”. Many representatives of the émigrés from Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine etc. participated in the meeting and reported on the situation in different regions of the USSR.
Late former Soviet diplomat to Sweden and political commentator, Nikolajs Neilands, said in an interview for this research that monitoring was considered by Soviet authorities to be a very good source of information. He believed that Western broadcasting had great impact on the Soviet society. He recollected that most of the intelligentsia in Latvia listened to Western radios.
Western audience research in Latvia during the Soviet rule.
During the Cold War polls and other methods of direct audience research were not possible in the Soviet-controlled Latvia, therefore other methods had to be used. Soviet authorities perceived any attempt to collect information as espionage. Even students conducting their own sociological research were considered criminals by the totalitarian regime (unnamed KGB document NS=0053259; about questionnaire distributed by Bruvers, Silins, Vinkelis; Riga, February 1974).
Because of the restrictions imposed by the totalitarian regime during the Cold War, even today there is no direct measurement data available for those years. The impact of Western broadcasting to Latvia can be described by using indirect assessment methods, such as interviews with experts, analysis of Soviet monitoring of Western broadcasts, documents about the KGB repressions against the listeners of Western radios, Soviet counter-propaganda publications.
During the Cold War the population samples had to be replaced by simulation based on occasional data obtained from tourists and other travelers arriving from behind the Iron Curtain. Only in 1990 the researchers were able to obtain more accurate data.
Intermedia, a private company providing audience research services to RFE/RL, reported:
In 1990 we were able to add new methodological approach to improve our estimates of listening in the different regions of the USSR. The below figures are based on a log-linear imputation model to improve the geographical estimates deriving from the MIT simulation process of traveler data. The same sizes for the two data periods below are N=5,233 for 1988 and 4,593 for 1989 (this is for the entire USSR). The Baltic subsets were respectively 12% and 11%.
Weekly Reach
|
1988 |
1989 |
| RFE/RL | 11.3% | 20.7% |
| VOA | 17.1% | 12.8% |
| BBC | 9.8% | 9.3% |
| DW | 2.6% | 3.0% |