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Poland's War on Radio Free Europe, 1950–1989

Poland’s War on Radio Free Europe, 1950–1989 by Paweł Machcewicz

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Stanford University Press, 2014

ISBN

978-0-8047-9238-7
Poland’s War on Radio Free Europe, 1950–1989 by Paweł Machcewicz

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For the Soviet bloc, the struggle against foreign radio was one of the principal fronts 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, which largely determined the Communist regimes’ ability to command their societies and to meet their political and ideological goals,” according to Paweł Machcewicz.

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

Paweł Machcewicz is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, and director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. He was a Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center in 2013 and was a Cold War International History Project Scholar at the Center in 1994 and 2007.

About the Author

Paweł Machcewicz

Former Public Policy Scholar;
Professor, Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences
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Cold War International History Project

The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program.  Read more