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Foreign Radios. Broadcasting and Jamming.
Radio Liberty. Cold War.
Foreign Radios. Broadcasting and Jamming.
Radio Liberty. Cold War
Excerpts from
My Fifteen Years at IKI, the Space Research Institute:
Position-Sensitive Detectors and Energetic Neutral Atoms Behind the Iron Curtain
Interstellar Trail Press, 2022. ISBN 979-8985668704
detailed book content paperback Kindle book preview
Chapter 6. Boundary conditions of Life and Work
The free spirit in the ether (pp. 129ff)
The above-mentioned Western radio played an important role in the Cold War struggle between the free world and the dark forces of Communism. It kept free spirits alive in totalitarian Marxist hell.
The information brought by the radio mitigated, in part, fabrications in Pravda, other newspapers and magazines, radio, and television programs. Being continuously exposed to the output of the agitation and propaganda arms of the Communist Party led to the development of abilities to identify falsehoods. Therefore, it is so easy now to spot tendentious misrepresentations, a rampant bias of the "narratives," and outright lies in the dominating left-wing media in the United States. Europe is no different in this respect.
Today, the most influential American newspapers play the role of the Democratic Party press, the giant tech firms control the distribution of the news and manipulate and filter them, and the media, in general, turned hard left. [21] The term "mainstream [media]" has lost its meaning. My past experience makes it possible to read fake news stories in self-described newspapers of record and watch television networks and cable channels that are brimming with self-importance and still be able to figure out, despite distortions, what is really happening in the country and the world. Perhaps minute details are lost, but certainly the main story comes across.
Even in the closed society of the Soviet Union, there were ways of obtaining some banned information despite all restrictions, censorship, unending deceit, and brainwashing. Thinking rationally, testing hypotheses, and relying on experimental facts and observations, which is the basis of the practice of physics, supported the development of independent points of view. Common sense contributed mightily as well. The Western radio helped the cause of freedom in an important way, despite relentless attempts to block transmissions.
Seventy years ago, the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow wrote that the Kremlin began "the extensive program of jamming" Russian-language broadcasts by the Western radio in the spring of 1949. [22] A contemporary CIA report pointed out that jamming of Russian-language programs from Madrid in Spain was conducted as early as 1946. Then, "[b]eginning on 24 April 1949, a new period of particularly intensive jamming of [Voice of America] VOA Russian-language frequencies began." [23]
Full-scale warfare in the ether had erupted.
The Marxist state could not tolerate independent sources of information
and disapproved of the subjects who listened to foreign radio. Fortunately,
the punishment usually was moderate and did not lead to imprisonment for
this widespread practice. Already in the mid-1950s, a CIA report described
that "listening to foreign broadcasts by the Soviet populace is generally done
on the sly and while the individuals are alone. Home listening, within the
strict family circle also seems to be a normal practice. Not knowing who
can be trusted or who is sufficiently reliable, the families are careful not to
create suspicion among their neighbors." [24]
Broadcasting and jamming
Several countries, a coalition of the willing, would broadcast to the
communist world behind the Iron Curtain in many languages. The most
prominent government stations included Voice of America, the U.K.'s
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), West Germany's Deutsche Welle
(German Wave), and Israel's Kol Israel (Voice of Israel).
In addition, two formally nongovernment sister stations, Radio Free
Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL), were particularly active in highlighting
the failures and crimes of the regimes. Originally, the Central Intelligence
Agency funded RFE and RL in secret. Later, in 1971, the U.S. Government
began open funding of the stations by Congressional appropriations. In turn,
the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China broadcast numerous
communist radio programs to various countries across the globe.
In the mid-1980s, Voice of America provided "nearly 270 frequency
hours daily into the Soviet Union and Eastern Block countries. Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast more than 100 frequency hours." [25] In
addition, Voice of Israel beamed more than 50 hours into the Soviet Union
each day.
Initially, in the 1940s and 1950s, some broadcasting was in the medium
frequencies but then shifted almost exclusively to high frequencies or short
waves. The most common wavelengths were at the 13 m range (frequency
band at 23 MHz), 19 m (19 MHz), 25 m (12 MHz), 31 m (9.5 MHz), 41 m
(7 MHz), and 49 m (6 MHz). Broadcasts at the shortest wavelengths, 13 m,
16 m, and 19 m, became active only in the 1970s and 1980s as it was difficult
earlier to find radio sets in the Soviet block capable of reception in
those ranges.
The Soviet state invested huge resources in jamming foreign radios, which with
time became a major and expensive undertaking. It combined local transmitters
that emitted ground-wave (or direct-wave) countersignals in the area of jamming
and distant transmitters relying on sky-wave propagation of their emissions.
The latter signal propagation relied on reflection of radio waves from the ionosphere,
a layer of the ionized upper atmosphere at altitudes of a few hundred kilometers
above the ground. The conditions in the ionosphere and the corresponding quality
of radio transmissions depended on the time of the year, time of the day,
geographical latitude, and solar activity. Specialists noted that “[l]ocal jamming
is very cost-effective in areas that are large population centers such as major cities.
Sky-wave jamming is a cost-effective method of disrupting broadcast services over large areas.” {26]
<snip>
The Soviet Union has been developing the science and engineering of sky-wave propagation
for many years. This technology had another important application and formed the basis
of the over-the-horizon radars. Such radars, named Duga, operated at frequencies 5-28 MHz
(wavelength 11-60 m) and played a major national-security role, supporting early detection
of intercontinental ballistic missile launches.[28]
<snip>
Occasionally, the Soviet Union suspended jamming of Russian-language broadcasts of
Voice of America, BBC, and German Wave, notably from 1963-1968 and 1973-1980. Such
steps usually supported Soviet foreign policy objectives and refl ected international
developments. For example, the latter quiet period ended in 1980 with the rise of the
Solidarity trade union movement in Poland that threatened communist domination.
Whenever jamming of selected foreign radios ceased, the transmitters switched to
additional suppression of Radio Liberty and Voice of Israel.[30]
Some knowledge of foreign languages helped overcome jamming as well. Soviet authorities
interfered with Russian-language programs especially eff ectively in the capital of
the country. At the same time, one could often receive in Moscow the Voice of America
and BBC broadcasts in English with decent quality.
The political and cultural left had not overtaken these infl uential American and British
radio stations in the 1970s and 1980s. They then provided factual information, offered
a balanced view, and advocated causes of freedom, representative democracy, a market economy,
and human rights. In short, at that time the radios fought in the Cold War on behalf of the
free world.
<snip>
Today, in the words of Michael Pack, the former chief executive officer of the overseeing
U.S. Agency for the Global Media, USAGM, foreign broadcasting increasingly follows the
lead of the mainstream media that have transformed "away from the old standards and
objectivity and balance" and became "nakedly and unapologetically partisan and networks
like VOA follow their lead."[35] It is a true shame.
The left turn of the U.S. media is converting its dominating parts into an agitprop arm
of the Democratic Party marching toward Marxism. As a result, the media has lost much
of its credibility. A commentator in the largest national newspaper observed that
"[i]f the American media says in unison that something is the right thing to do, nearly
half the country [United States] takes that as proof it is the wrong thing to do."[36]
This development also inflicts irreparable damage to human rights worldwide and directly
harms those brave souls standing for freedom and against oppression in various parts of
the globe.
Freedom is not free.
<snip>
Fig. 6.12. Transmitters of Radio Liberty on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea
on the Costa Brava north of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, in the 1960s. The site
housed six transmitters with 250 kW power each. Four transmitters could also be
linked together to send a megawatt signal. Reflected from the ionosphere, skywave
signals effectively reached densely populated parts of the Soviet Union, with
Moscow being about 3,200 km (2,000 miles) away. In the late 1970s, "[d]espite
the severe jamming ... Radio Liberty listenership averaged 7.6 million people a
week" [134-1]. These antennas of Radio Liberty were demolished
on March 22, 2006. Photograph credit: RFE/RL, USAGM.
Fig. 6.13. Coverage of the Soviet Union by sky-wave signals of Radio Liberty’s transmitters at Lampertheim in West Germany (solid
contours), Playa de Pals in Spain (dashed contours), and on Taiwan (dot-filled regions). [135-1]
<snip>
Today, many pieces of art and memorials remind us of the countless victims of Marxism.
They dot the post-Communist space of the former Soviet republics and eastern European
countries (Fig. 6.14). The sculptures of the communist leaders, so much celebrated
by their radical Western friends and tolerated by sympathetic socialists and "balanced"
liberals, moved to the museums after the decades of the dominating presence in public
space (Fig. 6.15). No surprise that the lands and people liberated from the tyranny
appreciate freedom and celebrate those in the free world who had the moral clarity and
courage to call the Marxist regimes evil (Fig. 6.16).
<snip>
Keeping the spirit of freedom alive
After watching the nightly television news program Vremya with featured
"progressive" collaborators, or instead of watching this program, some Soviet subjects
turned to shortwave radios. They tried to catch glimpses of censored information about
events in the world, enjoy disapproved jazz music, and listen to the excerpts from
publications by Western scholars and Soviet dissidents about forbidden topics of history,
culture, and life. The Western radios fought a noble war in the ether, trying to reach
listeners against formidable jamming.
The United States government established Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in Munich,
the principal city of the American Zone of occupied Germany. The radios had their main
studios and production center in buildings on Oettingenstrasse 67 in a large public park,
the Englischer Garten (English Garden). This complex spread over almost 12 acres
and "was built at initial cost of $1.1 million on property acquired under a 30-year lease
in February 1951."[51] A senior RFE/RL radio executive described that this "sprawling
three-floor frame construction [was] designed in the shape of a wide hand with seven stubby
fingers, its palm backed up against a chain-link fence marking the boundary of the heavily
wooded English Garden"[52] (Fig. 6.17).
Radio Free Europe occupied these premises from the early days of 1953. Radio Liberty was
first located on the city’s outskirts in a building ...
essential library on Israel history
Recommended science and engineering books on astronautics, rocketry, and space technology
Recommended books on history of astronautics, rocketry, and space
