Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 300-85-54

Title

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Broadcasts on Russian Samizdat

Date(s)

1970 - 1989

Description Level

Series

Context

Name of creator(s)

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Inc.

Archival history

In 1995, as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was shutting down in Munich, and got relocated to Prague (Czech Republic), the Archives of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty's Research Institute has been shipped to the newly established Open Society Archives at Central European University (OSA) in Budapest, Hungary. The shipment included over 6000 shelf-meters of material: over 40.000 books; East Europe’s largest periodicals’ collection; thousands of boxes and binders with paper documents; filing cabinets with manuscripts and records of RFE/RL; thousands of video cassettes and approximately 150 open-reel audio tapes with the legacy of the Soviet Samizdat Unit at RFE/RL.

Content and Structure

Scope and Content (Abstract)

The collection contains 69 radio programs that were produced and/or broadcast by RFE/RL’s Russian Service. The Collector of these recordings is Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Institute; Samizdat Archives of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute.

The Soviet samizdat sound collection consists of approximately 100 audio recordings produced and preserved at the Samizdat Unit of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in Munich, West Germany. The initial recordings consist of published and unpublished samizdat, created between 1970 and 1991.

Scope and Content (Narrative)

The Published Samizdat part (69 recordings), nearly 18 hours of sound recordings was created between 1970 and 1989. These are the audio master files of the Samizdat Archive (‘Archiv Samizdata’). They include recorded telephone conversations between RFE/RL staff in Europe and the US, and opposition members in the USSR. Some of the original tapes however were smuggled out from the Soviet Union and archived by RFE/RL. These recordings shed light on how the Samizdat Unit operated and how the Western human rights activists gathered information from behind the Iron Curtain.

Some sound recordings were transcribed, edited and printed as Russian Samizdat - their AS numbers correlate to the sound files’ AS numbers; while others were aired at RFE/RL within its Samizdat program series.

By publishing and broadcasting Russian-language interviews with civilians, scientists, writers, church people or immigrants, RFE/RL offered new perspectives on the details of Soviet life. These sound recordings reveal what was life like for political prisoners in forced labor camps; for dissidents in psychiatric hospitals; for Catholics or Jews wishing to practice their faith. For the first time OSA makes this sound collection – a unique source for everyone interested in the nuances of the Cold War history – available on-line.

Accruals

Not Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Languages

English, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian

Description Control

Archivist's note

Processed and described by Alexey Zelensky, Audio-visual Archivist, November, 2016. Revised by Zsuzsanna Zádori, July 2024.