Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - The 1980s and The Fall of Communism

The 1980s and The Fall of Communism

Funding for RFE/RL increased during the Reagan Administration. President Ronald Reagan, a fervent opponent of Communism, urged the stations to be more critical of the communist regimes. This presented a challenge to RFE/RL's broadcast strategy, which had been very cautious since the controversy over its alleged role in the Hungarian Revolution.

During the Mikhail Gorbachev era in the Soviet Union, the radios worked hand in hand with Glasnost and benefited significantly from the Soviet regime's new openness. Gorbachev stopped the practice of jamming the radios' broadcasts, and dissident politicians and officials could be freely interviewed by the radios for the first time without fearing persecution or imprisonment. By 1990 Radio Liberty had become the most listened-to Western radio station broadcasting to the Soviet Union.

Its coverage of the 1991 August coup enriched sparse domestic coverage of the event and drew in a wide audience from throughout the region. The broadcasts allowed Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to stay in touch with the Russian people during this turbulent period. Boris Yeltsin later expressed his gratitude through a presidential decree allowing Radio Liberty to open a permanent bureau in Moscow.

RFE/RL also played a significant role in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which brought an end to the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Following the November 17 demonstrations and brutal crackdown by Czechoslovak riot police, RFE/RL's Czechoslovak service reported that a student, Martin Šmid, had been killed during the clashes. Although the report later turned out to be false – Šmid was alive and well – the story is credited by many sources with inspiring Czechoslovak citizens to join the subsequent (larger) demonstrations which eventually brought down the communist government.

Upon hearing about the story, RFE/RL did not run it immediately, but attempted to find a second corroborating source for the story, as per official RFE/RL policy. While a second source was never found, RFE/RL eventually decided to run the story of Šmid's death after it was reported by several major news organizations, including Reuters, the Associated Press, and the Voice of America.

In addition, Pavel Pechacek, the director of RFE/RL's Czechoslovak service at the time, was mistakenly granted a visa to enter the country by the Czechoslovak authorities prior to the demonstrations. He reported live from the demonstrations in Wenceslas Square, and was virtually the only reporter covering the events fully and openly in the Czech language for a Czech audience.

On January 31, 2004, RFE/RL launched broadcasts to the former Yugoslavia in Serbo-Croatian (Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin). In the late 1990s RFE/RL launched broadcast to Kosovo in Albanian and to Macedonia in Macedonian. In 1995, RFE/RL moved its headquarters from Munich to Prague. The Clinton Administration reduced funding significantly and placed the radios under the United States Information Agency's oversight.

RFE/RL ended broadcasts to Hungary in 1993 and stopped broadcasts to Poland in 1997. Broadcast to the Czech Republic proceed for three more years under the agreement with Czech Radio. In 2004 RFE/RL stopped broadcasting to Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Romania.