The truth is that the past decade's policies of appeasement and détente have had their predictably corrosive effect on VOA and RFE/RL, to such an extent that one towering figure — Alexander Solzhenitsyn — has written, "The Russianization of the Voice of America ... seems to go out of its way to repel the thoughtful Russian listener from any understanding of America, to alienate his sympathies and even to shock and distress him."
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Solzhenitsyn chronicles the effeteness, timorousness, and simple thoughtlessness that have come to characterize the programming of these stations (which Ossos is pleased to style "the injection of a free press into lands in which there otherwise is none").
VOA reports on beer bottle collectors and ocean cruises, sports news and rock stars — anything, in short, save that which the Russian people need desperately to hear — uncensored Soviet news and history, reports of anti-Communist developments around the world, readings from the banned writings of dissidents, Eastern Orthodox religious services.
VOA has become so toothless that, as even Osnos remarks, the Soviets no longer bother jamming it.
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty have not fared much better. These have always been favorite targets of the fashionable left, and when their CIA funding was publicized in 1971, the resultant hubbub came perilously close to pulling their plugs for good.
In 1972, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William J. Fulbright called for their termination. "These radios should ... take their rightful place in the graveyard of cold war relics," he declared. Editorial support flowed, inter alia, from Pravda, which counseled that "Washington would be sensible if it followed Senator Fulbright's advice."
The upshot was that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were allowed to survive, but only under crippling new guidelines. In December 1977, these were discussed by Vladimir Bukovsky in Kontinent, the Soviet dissident journal. Imprisoned for years in a Communist "psychiatric hospital" for having dared oppose the Kremlin junta, Bukovsky is a special friend of RFE/RL. He listened to Radio Liberty on a hand-made radio while in jail. Yet, upon reading RFE/RL's
policy manual, he felt compelled to write: "I am struck by the fear of life and spontaneity apparent in every single line of this document. Information is treated as if it were a strong drug ... that must be received in homeopathie doses."
He offered many examples. For example, the new regulations require "confirmation by two independent sources before use of any underground document (samizdat) or secret bit of information that reaches the West. "I have difficulties imagining how this would work in practice. If, for instance, a certain report is smuggled out of a concentration camp at a risk to
one's liberty, how will RL. find an independent source? Call the camp director?"
Osnos mentions a Soviet official who went unknown — despite having received a high state honor — until he was interviewed by VOA. The point was that the radio stations have vast audiences. But those who read between the lines will wonder: Why was a high Communist
official being interviewed in the first place?
The answer may be unwelcome. Another Kontinent contributor, Victor Sokolov, laments "RL tries the patience of its listeners with broadcasts of a frankly Marxist inclination."
Can this be? VOA or RFE/RL beaming Marxist-tinted programs? Sadly, it's true. Shortly before Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito died a few months ago, VOA was reporting as "joyful news" the fact that thousands of Yugoslavs were joining the Communist party! If it looks, sounds, and smells like propaganda ... one wonders just what is going on.
I have challenged Osnos's analysis, but I join wholeheartedly in his sentiments. RFL/RE and VOA are potentially immense and effective weapons. But we have come to use them against ourselves.
It is time to shake these stations out of their appeasement torpor, and to begin spending the funds, building the new transmitters, and hiring the talented émigré writers — in short, it is time to turn these stations once again into the freedom-fighting Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Europe they once were.
Jeff Jacoby is a Greater Clevelander.