Description
Book SynopsisWestern democracy is currently under attack by a resurgent Russia, weaponizing new technologies and social media. How to respond? During the Cold War, the West fought off similar Soviet propaganda assaults with shortwave radio broadcasts. Founded in 1949, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored information to the Soviet republics in their own languages. About one-third of Soviet urban adults listened to Western radio. The broadcasts played a key role in ending the Cold War and eroding the communist empire.
R. Eugene Parta was for many years the director of Soviet Area Audience Research at RFE/RL, charged among others with gathering listener feedback. In this book he relates a remarkable Cold War operation to assess the impact of Western radio broadcasts on Soviet listeners by using a novel survey research approach. Given the impossibility of interviewing Soviet citizens in their own country, it pioneered audacious interview methods in order to fly under the radar and talk to Soviets traveling abroad, ultimately creating a database of 51,000 interviews which offered unparalleled insights into the media habits and mindset of the Soviet public. By recounting how the “impossible” mission was carried out, Under the Radar also shows how the lessons of the past can help counter the threat from a once and current adversary.
Trade Review"Most of Radio Free Europe’s research efforts were geared toward learning how to build listener trust and how to counter propaganda. Today, there is no centralized research organization that combines quantitative media surveys with analytical research into the target country’s economic, political, and sociocultural life. Parta’s final peroration is a call for the creation of such an institution: one that could provide insights into digital audiences and offer counternarratives, especially in light of contemporary Russian propaganda and its role in fueling the war in Ukraine." https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911038 -- Ana Cohle * Technology and Culture *
"Stylishly written and fun to read, Parta’s book is ultimately more about people than policies or data. He describes his fellow employees and associates at the various contracting firms who conducted the actual interviews that provided raw data for statistical analyses. He elucidates how they worked and sometimes how they played, which gives the reader a sense of the personalities behind Cold War radio. These were not policy-formulating or policyimplementing automatons but real people with real virtues and failings." https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/25/4/261/118956/Cold-War-Radio-The-Russian-Broadcasts-of-the-Voice?redirectedFrom=fulltext -- Anatol Shmelev * Journal of Cold War Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Prelude: My Road to Radio Liberty (amabile)
First Movement (1965-1970): Early Years of Audience Research (andante)
Second Movement (1970-1980): First Steps in Audience Interviewing (accelerato)
Photo section.
Third Movement (1981-1985): Audience Research Breaks New Ground (sforzando)
Fourth Movement (1986-1990): Perestroika Changes the Game (fuocoso)
Fifth Movement (1991-1994): The Post-Soviet Transition (vittorioso, capriccioso, lamentoso)
Postlude: Past Successes and the Road Ahead (coda)
Appendix 1: Charts and Graphs referenced in text
Appendix 2: Vignettes: Max Ralis, Helmut Aigner, Christopher Geleklidis, Steen Sauerberg, Andrei Nazarov, Ivan Myhul, Viktor Nekrasov, Andrei Sinyavsky, Aleksandr Galich, Victor Grayevsky, Vladimir Shlapentokh, Boris Grushin, Yuri Levada, Irina Alberti
Appendix 3: Methodologies. MIT Simulation. Contribution of Ithiel de Sola Pool
Appendix 4: Excerpts from Questionnaires, BALEs, BGRs
Appendix 5: Subsequent careers of SAAOR/MOR Staffers
Bibliography
Index
