In Poland, as in other East European countries, RFE was influential because it was viewed not as a U.S.-sponsored broadcaster from abroad (which it was) but as a substitute home service, as "Warsaw Four" (since there were three official stations), and as "our Polish radio." RFE's role as the "fourth estate" in Communist-ruled Poland is stressed in an introduction by historian Paweł Machcewicz, author of Poland's War on Radio Free Europe, 1950–1989(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), which chronicles the Communist regime's obsession with and efforts to counter the broadcasts. (Before I became director of RFE, I worked there as an analyst of Poland.) RFE's influence derived from its empowered exile broadcasters, who spoke as sympathetic co-nationals to listeners behind the Iron Curtain about local issues and concerns banned from censored regime media. soft power in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Bush viewed RFE and its companion outlet, Radio Liberty (RL), which were merged as RFE/RL in 1976, as a key instrument of U.S. administrations from Harry Truman to George H. It is the product of a decade of work by Lechosław Gawlikowski, who joined RFE in 1972, became deputy director of its Polish Service, and was responsible after 1995 for preservation of the radio's archives. This book is a welcome, indeed indispensable source for research on the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe (RFE) and more generally a guide to Polish history and culture repressed between 19 by the Communist regime.
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