As Timothy Garton Ash points out in his foreword, this book is “a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of communism and the Cold War” (p. xv). The book is indeed valuable as far as it goes. Garton Ash is right in asserting that it contains “important general lessons for those seeking to impart reliable information to people living in unfree countries” (p. xvi).
The extent to which foreign radio broadcasts influenced the internal political and social evolution of the Soviet Union and East European countries is impossible to know with certainty. What is known is that the radio services had millions of listeners who were willing to endure the rasping noise of jamming and the threat of reprisals. What is also certain is that the Communist regimes were sufficiently worried about the radios’ impact on citizens to devote huge resources to electronic jamming, to extensive attacks in...