Radio Free Europe in Paris: the Paradoxes of an Ethereal Opposition by Ioana Macrea-Toma Submitted to Central European University Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Constantin Iordachi Second Reader: Professor Istvan Rev CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2008 Statement of copyright: “Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any copies such made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author”. CEU eTD Collection i Abstract This paper explores, interprets and contributes to the studies regarding Radio Free Europe in a cold War context. By focusing on the Romanian Department of RFE and further on to Monica Lovinescu’s cultural broadcasts we intend to provide new insights about a type of cultural liberal advocacy framed by an international context and a local intellectual tradition. By resorting to communication theory, intellectual history and socio-history of intellectuals we will place Monica Lovinescu’s message within an intellectual historical interaction which is responsible for the establishment of a literary canon and for the present discourse about the past. A concentric contextualization will gradually introduce our case study, repositioning it into history after a classicized solemn locating it on a transcendental pedestal. The elements of novelty of our undertaking are multifold: it provides factual information about a phenomenon only personally evoked, it applies a complex set of theoretical methodologies and last, but not least, it uses a comparative comprehensive historical approach in order to discard ethical, Manichean or self-centered visions about the Communist period. CEU eTD Collection ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I. RADIO FREE EUROPE: THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS..........11 1. THE STATE OF AFFAIRS...........................................................................................13 2.“EFFECTS” PARADIGM .............................................................................................16 3. INTERACTIONIST PARADIGM....................................................................................18 4. INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF INTELLECTUALS .....................................22 5. COMBINING THREADS.............................................................................................25 CHAPTER II. RADIO FREE EUROPE WITHIN THE COLD WAR ....................27 1. ELITIST PEDAGOGY.................................................................................................29 2. EMERGENCE, STRUCTURE, EVOLUTION ...................................................................33 3. AUDIENCE’S IMAGE ABOUT RFE .............................................................................40 CHAPTER 3. THE ROMANIAN DEPARTMENT...................................................47 1. STATISTICS….........................................................................................................49 2. PROGRAMS .............................................................................................................53 3. ORIENTATIONS OF THE PERSONNEL .........................................................................60 4 REFLECTING/CONSTRUCTING DISSENT .....................................................................64 CHAPTER 4. ADVOCATING DEMOCRACY ON A CULTURAL BASIS............76 RADIO FREE EUROPE BETWEEN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL MILITANCY...............................................................................................................76 1. QUESTIONS: RESHAPING TOTALITARIAN PARADIGM ................................................78 2. DOUBLE EXILE…OR MORE.....................................................................................82 3. IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION ...................................................................................89 4. NATIONALISM - THE PROBLEM OF LOST TERRITORIES ..............................................92 5. CONSTANTIN NOICA’S CASE ...................................................................................94 6. SYNCHRONISM UNDER COMMUNISM ........................................................................97 7. EPILOGUE: RADICALIZATION OF BELLIGERENCE IN A REVIVALIST SCHEME ..............102 CONCLUSIONS: WHY DOES MONICA LOVINESCU MATTER .....................107 1. MUSEIFICATION....................................................................................................107 2. SALT IN FOOD.......................................................................................................112 BIBLIOGRAPHY: ....................................................................................................115 CEU eTD Collection iii Introduction Radio Free Europe holds a unique position in the annals of international broadcasting. Considered as “the most influential politically oriented radio station in history”1, it played several roles, as propagandistic instrument within the Cold War context, as informative alternative arena counterbalancing party-dominated press and, last but not least, as a subject of communication theory development. Moreover, Radio Free Europe is not only immanently promoted and consecrated as a liberating voice; it is also retroactively acknowledged as an important actor in the “crusade for freedom”, practically retaining at the moment an undisputedly respectable place within the wide range of actors and institutions which belong to communism. The societies from Eastern Europe Soviet Union exposed to international broadcast numbered almost 370 million people who fed daily on uncensored news in order to grasp worldwide events but mostly to deal with daily local realities, disasters or thorny issues. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty managed to combine the theoretical American message advocating democracy with the pragmatic goal of supplying an audience with reliable intra-national and inter- national based news. The target of our thesis will be that of analyzing how national-based departments within a Cold War institutional framework deal with the propagandistic and professional CEU eTD Collection informing task. Choosing as a case study the Romanian section, we shall try to answer the question of how is a Cold War ideology reframed or reflected by national exiled 1 Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: the Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000), p. ix. 1 editors and in what RFE’s role actually consist of when propagating freedom. Taking into account a cultural program which was highly appreciated by the Romanian audience and which enjoyed the status of a consecrating institution, we will argue that, despite the synchronizing appeals to opposition to communism, the Romanian cultural broadcasts lack the insight awareness of social dynamism, enforcing an elitist discourse and a vertical communication between intellectuals and the masses. In this way, advocating change along the rough lines of Cold War rhetoric leads to endorsing existing polarizations by means of the ethereal medium of radio endowed with a symbolic meta- capital. In order to understand the unintended consequences of such a liberal-conservative program, we shall pursue a concentric analysis, highlighting the institutional and intellectual peculiarities of Radio Free Europe and then of the Romanian Department. Airing news not about the country from which the broadcasts originated but about the countries that were the broadcast target makes Radio Free Europe special, all the more so since the United States had not shown interest before and during World War II– unlike the Bolshevik and Nazi regimes - in taking part in the global war of airwaves. Therefore, what distinguishes Radio Free Europe from Voice of America or BBC is that it is not national with a strong international content, but international with a local content. It does not only seek to provide neutral information in standardized journalistic style, but to act as “surrogate domestic broadcasters”2 while “keeping hope alive among the satellite countries of the USSR and improving the chances for a gradual change towards 3 CEU eTD Collection more open societies” . An inherent paradox of the whole diplomatic history of Cold War 2 Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War, Forward by Lech Walesa (London: Brassey’s, 1997), p. xiv. 3 This is Radio Free Europe’s aim as it is expressed in 1954 by Cord Meyer, chief of the International Organizations Division of CIA. See Michael Nelson, op. cit., p. 44. 2 arrangements would be that of focusing on containment initiatives as well as on coordinated campaigns to support underground resistance movements in countries behind the Iron Curtain. The propaganda broadcasting acquires the features of a contradictory strategy, aimed at raising people’s consciousness without fueling internal upheavals. The studies concerned with the history of Radio Free Europe as a whole collaterally touch upon the paradoxes of voicing freedom. In this respect, Radio Free Europe as an object