U.S. international broadcasting platforms—Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, DC, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Munich and since 1995 in Prague—have been continually broadcasting to native Russian speakers in their own language from the Second World War through the Cold War into the post-Communist period, especially now with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As is the case today, the Cold War period was marked by high tensions between Washington and Moscow and creative programming by the VOA and RFE/RL. The two stations transmitted sophisticated, popular broadcasts into the Soviet Union featuring current news, opinion programs, music, and cultural personalities on a daily basis.
The two U.S. shortwave radios offered competing programing approaches during the Cold War, a duality that has now been reconstructed and detailed by scholar-practitioner Mark Pomar of the University of Texas in his new book, Cold War Radio: Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and...