I was saddened to learn that Stefan Bratkowski, born 22.11.1934, described on Culture.pl website as “one of the outstanding Polish journalists of the last few decades” died on April 18, 2021. He was one of the organizers of the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański Association of Employees, Freelancers and Friends of the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe formed in Poland in 1994.…
Toward the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the Republican administration of conservative President Ronald Reagan greatly increased spending on U.S. international broadcasting to the Soviet Union and to other communist-ruled nations. Broadcasts to nations behind the Iron Curtain were carried out by the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL). President Reagan…
2019 MP3 Recording of Original VOA Audio, Video with NASA Photographs, Transcript and Images of VOA’s 1969 LP Record by Cold War Radio Museum
Cold War Radio Museum Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service director Ted Lipien and VOA English Service correspondent Wayne Corey interviewed the then Vice President George H.W. Bush on September 24, 1987 in his office in Washington shortly before his trip to Italy to see Pope John Paul II and to Poland to confer with government and opposition leaders.…
By Ted Lipien Voice of America Polish Service Program “All About America” (Ameryka w Przekroju), July 9, 1983 Irena Radwańska Broni: Returning to the U.S. citizenship oath ceremony at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson would certainly approve of using his home for this purpose. … Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws…
Official documents declassified and released by the National Archives since 2012 show that during World War II and for years afterwards, the U.S. Government-run Voice of America external radio station broadcast Soviet propaganda and disinformation to Poland and to other countries throughout the world with the intention of covering up Stalin’s crimes. This was done primarily in the interest of supporting immediate U.S. military and foreign policy wartime goals set by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and other high-ranking U.S. officials. It was a far cry from the promise enunciated in what was later presented as VOA’s first broadcast on February 25, 1942 or about that time. The Voice of America did not adopt its full official name until a few years later but it was the same broadcasting organization, first within the Office of War Information (OWI) and after 1945 within the U.S. State Department (VOA staff was reduced in 1945, but many former OWI broadcasters continued to be employed by the State Department. Sometime in early 1942, a broadcaster announced in the first German U.S. shortwave radio broadcast to Germany: “The news may be good. The news may be bad. But we shall tell you the truth.”
WWII diplomatic dispatches and other accounts prove beyond any doubt that following the wishes of the Roosevelt White House, its own parent agency, the Office of War Information–but largely on their own initiative and through the work of some of its staffers who later joined communist regimes in Eastern Europe–the Voice of America, although it was not yet its official name at the time, was guilty of hiding, censoring, distorting and minimizing news about Stalin’s order to kill Polish military officers and other POWs, estimated to number over 20,000, in in what became known as the 1940 Katyń Forest Massacre near Smolensk and at other locations in the Soviet Union.
Originally posted on December 4, 2013
Today’s political prisoners who are fighting for democracy and human rights are still being held in China, Iran and in many other countries. While much of Central and Eastern Europe, previously under Soviet domination is now free, Belarus and Russia are still ruled by autocratic leaders and pro-democracy forces in Ukraine are struggling to free their country from Putin’s blackmail. Attacks on independent journalists continue in Russia. Media freedom and human rights situation in many other nations can be far worse.
In some countries like Iran, Tibet and China, even in the age of the Internet and smart phones, radio broadcasts remain the safest and still a vital link to uncensored outside information for pro-democracy and human rights activists and their families and supporters, although some individuals find ways to get their news from the blocked Internet sites. Tibetan monks told an NPR reporter that they listen to Voice of America (VOA) shortwave broadcasts. Blind Chinese human rights campaigner Chen Guangcheng said after being granted asylum in the United States that he was able to listen to VOA and Radio Free Asia even while being held in a Chinese prison camp. He did not disclose how it became possible for him to get a radio receiver into prison, but other political prisoners in other countries reported similar feats before. At the very least, their families were able to listen to Western radio broadcasts and pass on news to prisoners during prison visits.
In the early 1980s, America’s attention was on Poland and on Solidarity trade union leaders being interned by the communist regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who on December 13, 1981 had declared martial law. President Ronald Reagan and the rest of America immediately offered their moral and material support to Solidarność.
“It is difficult to imagine what would have happened if it were not for the Voice of America and other sources with the help of which the true information squeezed through, which showed a different point of view, which said that we are not alone and that something is happening in the country — because our mass media did not…
In an article for the Winter 1984/1985 issue of Foreign Affairs, “A Divided Europe: The Future of Yalta,” Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that “Yalta is unfinished business. Forty years after the fateful Crimean meeting of February 4-11, 1945, between the Allied Big Three of World War II, much of our current (1984/1985) preoccupation with Yalta focuses on its myth rather…
The audio report is in Polish and English. Link to audio. In 1987, the U.S. Department of State upgraded the status of the Consulate in Krakow, designating it as a Consulate General. On September 29, 1987, visiting U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush led a designation ceremony and spoke about the strength of U.S.-Polish ties, especially ties with Southern Poland.…