Poland's War on Radio Free Europe, 1950-1989 - (Cold War International History Project) by Pawel Machcewicz (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

For the Soviet bloc the struggle against foreign radio was a principal front in the Cold War. Poland's War on Radio Free Europe, 1950-1989, tells how Poland conducted this fight, a key part of the wider effort to control the flow of information and ideas.

This is the first book in English to use the unique documents of Communist foreign intelligence operations so widely, and it also employes propaganda materials and personal interviews with RFE people and with party and security functionaries. The English translation reflects further discoveries of documentation since the original publication in Polish in 2007.

Review Quotes

"A fascinating and dramatic account of an important and often quirky instutition, and of the Polish regime's decades-long campaign to neutralize its impact."--Robert L. Hutchings, University of Texas at Austin

"In this widely researched, skillful book, Pawel Machcewicz begins to tease apart the different strands of Poland's RFE story...Poland's War on Radio Free Europe will be of great use to experts and graduate students."--Andrea Orzoff, Slavic Review

"The revised and expanded translation of his 2007 Polish-language monograph contributes to the growing body of literature about Cold War broadcasting and surveillance alike . . . [The Polish sources'] keystone role in Machcewicz's account, and the author's extensive verbatim citations from them, render an entirely new chapter of RFE's history accessible far beyond Poland."--Yuliya Komska, H-Net Reviews

"The work excels in its use of forensic research in Polish secret service archives. It illuminates the world-view of the Polish regime and its secret services."--A. Ross Johnson, former director, Radio Free Europe

About the Author

Pawel Machcewicz is Professor of Humanities at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the author of Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956. He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1994 and in 2007.