From the editors: Founded in 1949 during the Cold War, Radio Free Europe targeted Soviet satellite states, while Radio Liberty, established in 1951, focused on the different peoples of the Soviet Union. Initially funded covertly by the CIA until 1972, the two merged in 1976. RFE/RL was headquartered in Munich from 1949 to 1995, and then in Prague. The Soviet authorities jammed their signals until 1988. In 2025, the Trump administration decided to stop funding RFE/RL.
On July 4, 1950, Radio Free Europe transmitted its first program from Munich, Germany. It was 30 minutes in length and broadcast to Czechoslovakia.
One of the first programs informed listeners:
You are not forgotten.
This is the purpose of Radio Free Europe ... to remind you that you are not forgotten ... that you are not alone. To you, chained by tyranny, we will bring a consistent, reliable well of information. We will bring to you the voices of your friends and compatriots ... voices you already know ... voices you come to know. We will speak to you freely and without restraint ... we will speak as free men who believe there is but one foundation for peace ... the freedom of each person, the freedom of each nation to shape its own destiny. Thus, to speak for freedom, Americans and the democratic leaders exiled from Eastern Europe have united to bring you the voice of Radio Free Europe.
The Effectiveness of the Broadcasting
The effectiveness of RFE/RL can be best understood in the words and actions of some prominent political figures such as the former Foreign Minister of Estonia, Lennart Meri, who nominated RFE/RL for the Nobel Peace Prize on Jan. 29, 1991.
The collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union was hastened in August 1991, when government officials illegally attempted to oust Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. President Gorbachev publicly recognized the role played by the Radio Liberty in informing the Soviet people. He said he relied on its broadcasts for news while held under house arrest in his Black Sea vacation dacha during the attempted coup.
After this unsuccessful coup attempt, Russia’s first President Boris Yeltsin enthusiastically said:
During the 3-4 days of this takeover, Radio Liberty was one of the very few channels through which it was possible to send information to the whole world and, most important, to the whole of Russia, because now almost every family in Russia listens to Radio Liberty -- and that was very important.
A few weeks later he signed a Presidential Decree giving RFE/RL special status, which allowed it for the first time in its history to officially operate a news bureau in Moscow. Ten years later, Russian President Putin repealed this decree in October 2002, but RFE/RL continued to have a bureau in Russia until 2022.
On 20 March 1993, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was an invited guest at RFR/RL’s 40th anniversary celebration in Moscow of the first Radio Liberty broadcast, Gorbachev told the assembled audience of diplomats and journalists, “in the dark years” of Communist rule before my own perestroika (reconstruction) reform program began, Radio Liberty told the truth.”
Referring directly to RFE’s Polish language broadcasts, US President George Bush sent a message to the RFE/RL in May 1992 stating, in part:
During the most difficult days of the Cold War, including martial law in Poland and throughout the gallant Solidarity movement, RFE was a singular voice of hope for Pole’s—and others in Central and Eastern Europe—who sought information from and communication with the West. For four decades, RFE has been resolute in its service, unswerving in its loyalty to democratic values, and steadfast in its promise to be the voice of truth. Now RFE, together with all Americans and Poles, can rejoice that Poland is once again part of free Europe.
After RFE/RL moved from Munich to Prague in 1995 for budgetary reasons, President Vaclav Havel officially welcomed RFE/RL at the station’s inauguration on 8 September 1995, when he said, “I am not sure that I would not have been in prison for another couple of years were it not for a certain amount of publicity that I had because of these radio stations.”
On Feb. 28, 1997, a month after taking office, newly elected Bulgarian President Petr Stoyanov visited RFE/RL’s new headquarters. He praised the Radios’ role in the Cold War: “We still remember sometimes how, through the interference on the short-wave range, we searched for the radio station we needed, the radio station to give us courage to go through the hardships of everyday life under Communism, Radio Free Europe.”
On March 11, 1997, Romania’s President Emil Constantinescu visited RFE/RL in Prague and eloquently remarked to over 200 staff members, journalists, and the diplomatic community:
Communism could not exist, but by lies and lack of information. Communism could be torn apart, not by power of arms, but by power of words and especially of real beliefs. That is why Radio Free Europe has been much more important than the armies, the rockets, the most sophisticated equipment. The rockets that have destroyed Communism have been launched from RFE, and this was America’s most important investment against the Cold War.
When he was asked about the importance of Radio Free Europe, Lech Walesa, Poland’s first democratically-elected president, answered: “Would there be an earth without the sun?”
Richard H. Cummings was Director of Security in RFE/RL, 1980-1995.