ÌÇÐÄVlog

It is hard to recall in this sophisticated era of political spin-doctordom how crudely administered were the lies that sustained the Soviet Union and its satellites during the time of communism. For more than half a century, a nuclear-armed world power persuaded the world of its invincibility and of the solidity of its pretended internal support before suddenly imploding, the whole complicated structure of propaganda and incompetence collapsing in the twinkling of an eye. Throughout this long grey era, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty persistently attacked the Soviet empire from just outside its borders. In retrospect they can be seen to have made a significant contribution to the liberating of the satellite countries from the mendacious system to which they seemed irreversibly chained.

The late George Urban was director of Radio Free Europe in the 1980s and broadcast also for the BBC Overseas Service; completing this book in 1997 was his last achievement before his premature death. The book examines the tactics of the radio station in the battles of the cold war, which entailed countering not only the machinations of international communism with its unnumbered tentacles and undercover agencies but also that army of western intellectuals for whom communism did not seem as terrible as it did to those who actually had to experience it. Indeed, so effective was the propaganda that it was possible to visit the satellites, see the monstrous thing itself, and yet not quite realise how appalling it really was, so well contrived was its plausibility. The task of RFE was to unmask communism so thoroughly among those who endured it as well as those who travelled in companionable fellowship with it as to guarantee its eventual collapse. We are fortunate to have lived long enough to benefit ourselves from the unmasking and to witness the outcome.

Urban's book provides a well-documented account of the role of RFE, including a lengthy self-critical post mortem on the station's one great controversial debacle - its broadcasts before and during the 1956 Hungarian revolution, when it was accused of inciting the insurrection that was so cruelly put down by Soviet tanks within a few weeks. RFE was accused at that time and for many years thereafter of interfering in the internal affairs of the countries to which it broadcast.

But alas, when the Berlin wall came down, the US Senate short-sightedly claimed as part of the immediate peace dividend saving the cost of running both RFE and Radio Liberty. The two stations were given the new status of being parts of the international broadcasting system of the United States, alongside the Voice of America, their teeth effectively drawn; the new leaders of the liberated satellites lost access to one of the few sources of information that they trusted. So Urban's account really does bring this story to its conclusion. How useful it would be in the Balkan arena if it existed today.

Anthony Smith is president, Magdalen College, Oxford.