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Cold War Social Sciences beyond Academia? Radio Free Europe and the Transnational Circulation of Cold War Knowledge during the “CIA Years,” 1950–1971

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Abstract

This chapter explores how and why Radio Free Europe (RFE), often thought of as a “propaganda” radio institution in the Cold War, became a significant center for research at the intersection of Eastern and Central Eastern area studies, the social sciences, propaganda, and mass media. Despite the fact that RFE was secretly and largely financed by the CIA from 1949 until 1971, in its epistemic role, RFE established a strong reputation among Western specialists working on the “Communist world” in academia, media, intelligence services, and governments. Applying insights from the history of knowledge, I argue that we must include non-academic actors such as media institutions in our studies when we examine the transnational and transsystemic dimensions of Cold War Social Science.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A. Ross Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 42.

  2. 2.

    Richard H. Cummings focuses in his book on the fund-raising campaign Crusade for Freedom that served as the cover for the CIA funding especially in the first years of RFE. Id., Radio Free Europe’s “Crusade for Freedom:” Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950–1960 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2010).

  3. 3.

    Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 203.

  4. 4.

    Ralph E. Walter to William P. Durkee, Attachment to Letter, January 4, 1973, 2, 4, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Corporate Records, Alphabetical File, Box 178, Folder 6: Effectiveness 1953–74, Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.

  5. 5.

    Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 2000).

  6. 6.

    This chapter is an outline of my ongoing PhD dissertation project at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. Here, I explore in much greater detail the epistemic practices at RFE and the subsequent transnational circulation of RFE’s Cold War Knowledge.

  7. 7.

    Philipp Sarasin, “Was ist Wissensgeschichte?,” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur (IASL) 36, no. 1 (2011): 159–172; Peter Burke, What Is the History of Knowledge? (Cambridge, UK/Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2015); Simone Lässig, “The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda,” Bulletin of the GHI 59 (Fall 2016): 29–58; Daniel Speich Chassé, “The History of Knowledge: Limits and Potentials of a New Approach,” History of Knowledge (blog), April 3, 2017, https://historyofknowledge.net/2017/04/03/the-history-of-knowledge-limits-and-potentials-of-a-new-approach/, accessed August 23, 2020; Lorraine Daston, “The History of Science and the History of Knowledge,” KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 1, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 131–154.

  8. 8.

    Sarasin, “Was ist Wissensgeschichte?”

  9. 9.

    Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion, 5th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2012).

  10. 10.

    Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); see also Christopher Simpson, Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: The New Press, 1999).

  11. 11.

    Anne Kwaschik, Der Griff nach dem Weltwissen. Zur Genealogie von Area Studies im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 185–190.

  12. 12.

    Benno Nietzel, “Propaganda, Psychological Warfare and Communication Research in the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War,” History of the Human Sciences 29, no. 4–5 (October 1, 2016): esp. 61–64; See also the recent book on the think tank RAND corporation by Christan Dayé, Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

  13. 13.

    Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 12.

  14. 14.

    Richard H. Cummings, Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950–1989 (Jefferson/London: McFarland, 2009), 5.

  15. 15.

    Sig Mickelson, America’s Other Voice (New York, NY: Praeger, 1983), 2.

  16. 16.

    Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 59.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 59.

  18. 18.

    The first name was ‘National Committee for a Free Europe’ (NCFE), but it was soon renamed the Free Europe Committee (FEC) on March 5, 1954. In the literature, many authors use FEC and NCFE synonymously. In this chapter, I will only use FEC. For a more extensive treatment, including the other activities of the FEC beyond radio broadcasting, see the edited volume by Katalin Kádár Lynn, ed., The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare: Cold War Organizations Sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe/Free Europe Committee (Saint Helena, CA: Helena History Press, 2013).

  19. 19.

    Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom. The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 12.

  20. 20.

    Quoted in Allan Andrew Michie, Voices Through the Iron Curtain. The Radio Free Europe Story (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1963), 12–13.

  21. 21.

    See Giles Scott-Smith, “The Free Europe University in Strasbourg: U.S. State-Private Networks and Academic ‘Rollback,’” Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 2 (April 2014): 77–107, quotes on 85.

  22. 22.

    See, for instance, Free Europe Committee, Biographies of 15 Leading Czechoslovak Communists (New York: Free Europe Press, 1954); Free Europe Committee, Europe: Nine Panel Studies by Experts from Central and Eastern Europe: An Examination of the Post Liberation Problem of the Position of Central and Eastern European Nations in a Free European Community (New York: Praeger, 1954); The Research Staff of Free Europe Press and Free Europe Committee, Satellite Agriculture in Crisis: A Study of Land Policy in the Soviet Sphere (New York: Praeger, 1954); Free Europe Press, Czechoslovak Section, Trends in the Czechoslovak Economy in 1954 (New York: Free Europe Committee, 1955).

  23. 23.

    See Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 58–63.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 76–78, quote on 76.

  25. 25.

    Michie, Voices Through the Iron Curtain, 13–14.

  26. 26.

    Alan L. Heil Jr., Voice of America: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

  27. 27.

    Ioana Macrea-Toma, “Technologies of Truth,” Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (hereafter HU OSA), October 18, 2019, http://www.osaarchivum.org/blog/technologies-of-truth, accessed August 23, 2020.

  28. 28.

    Susan D. Haas, “Communities of Journalists and Journalism Practice at Radio Free Europe During the Cold War (1950–1995),” (PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2013), http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3609169, accessed August 23, 2020.

  29. 29.

    Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 44; see also Haas, “Communities of Journalists.”

  30. 30.

    Johanna Granville, “‘Caught with Jam on Our Fingers:’ Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,” Diplomatic History 29, no. 5 (2005): 811–839.

  31. 31.

    See Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 103–108.

  32. 32.

    Mickelson, America’s Other Voice, 116–117.

  33. 33.

    Haas, “Communities of Journalists,” 53, 129, 222–224.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 233–241.

  35. 35.

    Mickelson, America’s Other Voice, 117.

  36. 36.

    Haas, “Communities of Journalists,” 225–226.

  37. 37.

    Mickelson, America’s Other Voice, 118.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 118.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 119.

  40. 40.

    Michie, Voices Through the Iron Curtain, 92–93.

  41. 41.

    The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, has administered the records of the Research and Analysis Department of RFE since 1995, when RFE followed the invitation by Vaclav Havel to end its Cold War operation in Munich and move to the Czech capital Prague. RFE/RL still operates today from Prague.

  42. 42.

    See Simon Ottersbach, “‘To Teach the Communist Shrimp How to Whistle.’ Radio Free Europe in the Berlin Crisis” (Zulassungsarbeit = MA Thesis equivalent, Regensburg, Universität Regensburg, 2012), where I analyze the discourse in RFE’s research products on the Berlin Crisis surrounding the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

  43. 43.

    Dorothy Miller, “The ‘Voting by Feet’ against East German Communism” (Background Report, Munich, August 4, 1961), HU OSA 300-8-3-13244; Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: Publications Department: Background Reports; Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest (hereafter RFE/RL RI Pub.).

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 1–2.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 2.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 4.

  47. 47.

    Dorothy Miller, “Ulbricht’s Speech” (Background Report: Non Target Analysis, GDR, Munich, October 7, 1962), 1, 2, HU OSA 300-8-3-2540; RFE/RL RI Pub.

  48. 48.

    Dorothy Miller, “Walter Ulbricht Speaks Again” (Background Reports, Munich, September 13, 1962), 1, HU OSA 300–8-3-2544; RFE/RL RI Pub.

  49. 49.

    Dorothy Miller, “Ulbricht’s Problems with the Soviet–West German Treaty” (Background Report, Munich, August 20, 1970), 2, 3, HU OSA 300-8-3-7931; RFE/RL RI Pub.

  50. 50.

    See http://www.osaarchivum.org/digital-repository, accessed August 23, 2020.

  51. 51.

    See Kwaschik, Der Griff nach dem Weltwissen, 10–11, for a summary of the area studies-approach and discussion of area studies as a concept.

  52. 52.

    Miller, “Voting by Feet;” “The Communist Youth Movement in the Universities” (Information Item, Munich, August 12, 1955), HU OSA 300-1-2-60977, RFE/RL RI Pub.; A. Ross Johnson, “Polish Communist History and Factional Struggle” (Background Report, Munich, July 2, 1968), HU OSA 300-3-4640, RFE/RL RI Pub.; “Economic Reforms to Be Extended in Next 5-Year Plan” (Background Report, Munich, October 4, 1968), HU OSA 300-8-3-7588, RFE/RL RI Pub.; “Shortage of Manpower in Hungarian Agriculture” (Background Report, Munich, June 23, 1961), HU OSA 300-8-3-3414, RFE/RL RI Pub.

  53. 53.

    David C. Engerman, “Social Science in the Cold War,” Isis 101, no. 2 (2010): 393–400, quote on 394.

  54. 54.

    Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 5.

  55. 55.

    Antoni Marek, “Ever Increasing Disparity between Supply and Consumer Demand in Poland (1)” (Background Report, Munich, March 25, 1968), HU OSA 300-8-3-4628, RFE/RL RI Pub.; George R. Urban, “Crisis in Hungarian Agriculture” (Background Report, Munich, November 18, 1960), HU OSA 300-8-3-3353, RFE/RL RI Pub.; “Situation Report: Czechoslovakia, 8 August 1973” (Situation Report, Munich, August 8, 1973), HU OSA 300-8-47-63-27, RFE/RL RI Pub.

  56. 56.

    Simo Mikkonen, “Stealing the Monopoly of Knowledge? Soviet Reactions to U.S. Cold War Broadcasting,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11, no. 4 (2010): 771–805. Here, Mikkonen provides a more in-depth discussion of this perception of threat and the multi-faceted countermeasures by the Socialist regimes.

  57. 57.

    Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 184.

  58. 58.

    R. Eugene Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener: An Assessment of Radio Liberty and Western Broadcasting to the USSR During the Cold War: A Study Based on Audience Research Findings, 1970–1991 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2007).

  59. 59.

    Robert C. Sorensen, “Radio Free Europe and Its Audience-Publics,” The Midwest Sociologist 18 (1956): 16–19.

  60. 60.

    A. Ross Johnson, “To Monitor and Be Monitored,—Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the Cold War,” Wilson Center HAPP/CWIHP Occassional Paper (2017), esp. 4–5; https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/happ_occassional_paper_to_monitor_and_be_monitored.pdf, accessed August 23, 2020.

  61. 61.

    Rimantas Pleikys, Jamming (Vilnius: R. Pleikys, 1998); For an interesting discussion of the noise of jamming as a sign of the presence of the secret services in the airspace, see István Rév, “Just Noise?,” in Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, ed. A. Ross Johnson and R. Eugene Parta (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 239–258. See also Mikkonen, “Stealing the Monopoly of Knowledge.”

  62. 62.

    See Paweł Machcewicz, Poland’s War on Radio Free Europe, 1950–1989, trans. Maya Latynski (Washington, DC/Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2014).

  63. 63.

    A. Ross Johnson, in personal discussion with the author, October 2016.

  64. 64.

    Ibid.

  65. 65.

    See Cummings, Cold War Radio, 58–90.

  66. 66.

    Ernst Langendorf, “Report on Reactions to the Magazine ‘Hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang’” (Report, Munich, January 28, 1958), 1, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Corporate Records, Historical File (hereafter HIA RFE/RL Hist. File), Box 1700, Folder 10: Free Europe Committee Free Europe Press 1953–59, Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.

  67. 67.

    (Ralph) Walter to (William P.) Durkee, “Information Requested on ‘Osteuropäische Rundschau,’” Telex, January 4, 1973, HIA RFE/RL Hist. File, Box 1757, Folder 4: RFE General 1958–74.

  68. 68.

    Radio Free Europe, “Facts about Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Rumania” (Research Report, Munich, February 1969), HU OSA 300-7-5, Box 1: RFE/RL RI, US Office: Subject Files Relating to Eastern Europe: Europe, East–General, 1969–1973.

  69. 69.

    David Binder, “Embattled Radio Free Europe Defends Role,” The New York Times, March 15, 1971.

  70. 70.

    Free Europe Committee, “MUN-33 September Crypto Message” (Crypto Message, Munich, September 7, 1964), HU OSA 300-8-3-13244; RFE/RL RI Pub.

  71. 71.

    Machcewicz, Poland’s War on Radio Free Europe, 1950–1989.

  72. 72.

    Radio Free Europe Fund Inc., “Radio Free Europe in an Era of Negotiation – Some Independent Views” (Report, Munich, December 1971), quote on 1, HIA RFE/RL, Alphabetical File, Box 1850, Folder 4: Evidence of Public Support for RFE 1972.

  73. 73.

    Walter to Durkee, January 4, 1973, quote on 2.

  74. 74.

    See Anna Bischof, “Die Münchener ‘Stimme der Emigranten:’ Tschechische und slowakische Journalisten bei Radio Free Europe,” in Flüchtlinge und Asyl im Nachbarland: Die Tschechoslowakai und Deutschland 1933 bis 1989, ed. Detlef Brandes, Edita Ivaničková, and Jiří Pešek (Essen: Klartext, 2018), 201–203.

  75. 75.

    Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom, 38.

  76. 76.

    Alexander Badenoch, Andreas Fickers, and Christian Henrich-Franke, eds., Airy Curtains in the European Ether. Broadcasting and the Cold War (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2013).

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  1. International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Giessen, Germany

    Simon Ottersbach

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    Christian Dayé

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Ottersbach, S. (2021). Cold War Social Sciences beyond Academia? Radio Free Europe and the Transnational Circulation of Cold War Knowledge during the “CIA Years,” 1950–1971. In: Solovey, M., Dayé, C. (eds) Cold War Social Science. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70246-5_4

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