This book is a welcome, indeed indispensable source for research on the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe (RFE) and more generally a guide to Polish history and culture repressed between 1945 and 1989 by the Communist regime. It is the product of a decade of work by Lechosław Gawlikowski, who joined RFE in 1972, became deputy director of its Polish Service, and was responsible after 1995 for preservation of the radio's archives.
U.S. administrations from Harry Truman to George H. W. Bush viewed RFE and its companion outlet, Radio Liberty (RL), which were merged as RFE/RL in 1976, as a key instrument of U.S. soft power in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. (Before I became director of RFE, I worked there as an analyst of Poland.) RFE's influence derived from its empowered exile broadcasters, who spoke as sympathetic co-nationals to listeners behind the Iron Curtain about local...