international communications a topic of paramount interest. While the United States may not share the same unipolar dominance it once had in the immediate post-Cold War era, still, no country today has a stronger influence on global politics than the United States, making U.S. communication intended for domestic audiences abroad, such as deployed servicemen and women, that also regularly reaches foreign nationals.įacilitated in the 2020s by cutting edge fiber-optic and satellite communication infrastructure, the 21st century’s speed and breadth of global information-sharing poses opportunities, challenges, and threats never before imagined. federal government, that seek to inform or engage foreign civil publics and actors regarding the interests, behavior, and image of the United States. international communications encompass strategic efforts, funded or sponsored by the U.S. Through an analysis of recent media representations in which RFE figures, such as Cold Waves, this study also looks at how RFE shaped personal memories of communist times. At such critical historical moments, the connection became visible.

The rituals that developed around the secrecy which governed the listening process, the personal requests, attitudes, and opinions expressed in letters to RFE, and oral and written testimonies, coupled with the disproportionate and, at times, extreme reactions of the communist state, together reveal the carving out of individual spaces that allowed for the preservation of the “self” during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship.

The paper focuses on the circulation of knowledge, media confluences, and human agency. Drawing largely on the RFE archives at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) and the former secret police files at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), it investigates how radio waves mediated and channeled information while preparing people to embrace political and cultural change. This paper analyzes the role of RFE in everyday life in the strictly controlled Romanian communist state by looking at the broadcasts of RFE's Romanian Department, their audience, and their impact. During the communist era, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was Romania's favorite radio station.

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