The Baltic Chain and Radio

Today Hong Kong is trying to "unshackle" itself from China. On August 23rd in 2019 supporters of their pro-democracy movement linked hands across the island, creating human chains on both sides of the city's harbor that they stretched for almost 25 miles.

These protests were inspired a a similar, but much larger historic protest, in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. On Aug. 23, 1989 approximately two million people joined hands forming a chain 419 miles long. (some estimates say 1.5 M) It stretched from Tallinn in Estonia, through the Latvia capital Riga, to Vilnius in Lithuania.

The protest was referred to as the "Baltic Chain" or the "Baltic Way" or even the "Chain of Freedom."  The Soviets called it "nationalist hysteria" driven by "extremist elements" promoting anti-socialist and anti-soviet agendas. Were outsiders were exploiting nationalism with the goal of independence? Well that last bit turned out to be true.

Coordinating two million people is no small feat. They disseminated information through regional organizations like the Latvian Popular Front, the Reform Movement of Lithuania, and the Popular Front of Estonia and via clandestine broadcast services, like Radio Free Europe, VOA and the BBC despite Soviet jamming efforts.

President Gerald Ford strongly supported funding for Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in speeches in 1974. These broadcasts were elevated to a new status in November of 1983 when they were incorporated into a separate Baltic radio division called the Baltic States Service of Radio Liberty. For more on that please read Jonathan Conde's 2018 masters thesis [LINK].

The Baltics had largely industrialized Post-WWII under the Soviets. They post 1968 moved directly into commercialism. In 1967 the Estonia Stereo was developed at Tallinn Radio-Electronics. It was the first stereophonic radio set in the whole USSR, [model Estonia-005] and it was manufactured at the Red RET plant in Tallinn between 1969 and 1973.  Between 1971 and 1972 car sales in Estonia quintupled. But the media was still strictly controlled, and the internet was decades away.  As Peeter Vihalemm wrote in his paper Media Use in Estonia, "During the period of glasnost, when the multi-party system did not yet exist and the underground centers were weak, the media was the main mechanism of mass mobilization " [LINK].

The Book Estonia Life Stories by by Tiina Kirss and Rutt Hinrikus gives the story of Asta Luksepp. 

"Before leaving I stopped by at home and adjusted the radio to the right wavelegnth for my mother.  We gathered at the market square in Elva... Our assigned place in the chain was between Nuia and Viljandi. We kept driving toward Latvia until it was 7 o'clock. We stopped the buses and joined other folks from Vorumaa. There were so many people that we could not fit in one line, so we formed parallel chains. We were all moved to tears. We had radios along, and thus could follow the orders coming from Tallinn."

So what radio stations broadcast the signals and the events? According to Peeter Vihalemm, most of them.  "...the two-million-person demonstration “Baltic chain”, organised on 23 August 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, was not only directly broadcast on all radio and TV channels in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but it was also organised and managed with the assistance of the media."  The weakness of the Soviets in this moment and the popularity of the independence movement is hard to overstate. The Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians expected reprisals and for the most part... they did not come, not that day anyway.

The reprisals came when Estonia made the big move for independence and started printing up their own Estonian Passports, then declared independence on August 20th 1991. Moscow sent in the tanks.  Thousands of citizens the Tallinn radio and TV tower to prevent it's use for Soviet propaganda. Radio operators jammed the elevator and threatened to turn on the oxygen-removing fire-suppression system on the soldiers. Bullet holes dating from the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 are still visible at the base of the tower.

While the people of Hong Hong fight their own fight, in Lithuania they commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Baltic Way with a radio art installation. It was conceived of by two young artists, Viaceslavas Mickevicius and Ieva Makauskaite who worked with Lithuanian national broadcaster LRT.
The radio installation, entitled "One Wave" is made up of more than 2,000 old radios that will play a trilingual song known to be the anthem of the Baltic Way entitled "The Baltics are waking up". According to EuroNews, Mickevicius, who was 5 years old in 1989, wondered how they managed to organise the protest. "It appeared that the main role was played by the radio. Special radio broadcasts helped to coordinate the rally," said Viaceslavas Mickevicius, one of the two artists.

Radio Azadliq means Radio Liberty

The word Azadliq (that is Azadlıq in cryllic) in the Azerbaijani language means Freedom or Liberty. There is a popular newspaper in Azerbaijan named Azadliq. In the city of Baku lies the biggest city-center square in the country, Azadliq square. [LINK] Prior to 1991, the square was named Lenin Square which leads to my third example: Radio Azadliq.

Radio Azadliq is just another name for Radio Free Europe (RFE) or Radio Liberty. The station broadcasts programs in many languages: Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bosnian, Belarusian, Chechen, Crimean Tatar, Dari, English, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Tajik, Tatar, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek... Notice that Spanish, French and Italian aren't on there. RFE has always targeted Western Europe.

The division between the Russian sphere of influence and the West has a special relevance in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan first declared independence in 1918, breaking loose of the Russian empire in it's post WWI collapse. But Azerbaijan has oil. So after the rise of communism,under Lenin, Russia attacked, and an estimated 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died defending their 2-year old country. This soviet control remained status quo until 1991, when following Russia's economic collapse, Azerbaijan declared independence again. The Soviet response was more muted this time. They supported a military coup which installed a soviet-era former government. But Azerbaijan retained a somewhat independent-ish media until about 2007. More here.

In 2007 came the arrest of more than a dozen reporters critical of the regime. Newspapers were shut down, crushed by lawsuits. In 2008, the government of Azerbaijan  imposed a ban on all foreign media broadcasting in the country, including BBC, Evropa-Plus, Voice of America, and RFE, effective  January 1st, 2009. Radio Azadliq lost their 101.7 FM signal, more here. RFE continued on with a local office, but with content only available on shortwave, satellite or online.  More here and here.

Annually the regime created new restrictions on freedom of the press. They passed new laws banning photography without permission, anti-libel laws, bogus "hooliganism" rules. In 2011 at least 50 domestic and foreign journalists were harassed or attacked in 2011 in Azerbaijan. Then came the big 20014 crackdown.  The government has accused the station and its employees of espionage and of being a foreign-financed entity. The first charge is bogus, but the second charge is entirely true. Radio Free Europe has been financed by the American government since it was founded in 1953. The Baku office only opened in the 1990s.

The police raided the that same Baku office and seized computers, flash drives, documents and other materials, and then sealed the premises. A dozen employees of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Azerbaijan were arrested on December 27th and detained for up to 12 hours of questioning and/or torture. Officials even detained the station’s cleaning woman.

Afterward, Radio Azadliq stubbornly continued it's programming. The regime responded by blocking their website and and some social media platforms. In 2016 Radio Azadliq’s daily program Azadliq A-Live was been taken off air by Kanal-V, a satellite television channel is broadcast over the Turksat 1C 420 Satellite. No explanation was given. Now limited to Facebook and Youtube, Radio Azadliq still presses on. More here.

RADIO FREE EUROPE

This image is courtesy Thom over at the AFRTS Archive Blog.

With the recent tensions between the United States and The Russian Federation of late I though tit might be worth revisiting the existence of Radio Free Europe (aka Radio Liberty). The radio service was actually founded a noticeably after the end of WWII. It wasn't a tool of the West against the Nazis. It was used as a tool against the Communists during the cold war funded by the CIA. Germany surrendered in May of 1945, Japan in august of the same year.  There was quite a lull in hostilities before RFE began broadcasting propaganda in 1949.

Also note that RFE is still broadcasting today. They still maintain 20 local bureaus in countries throughout Europe, and a corporate office in Washington D.C. Their coverage area includes: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgzstan, Macedonia, Modolva, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Pretty much the only part of Western Europe they aren't in is Romania and Bulgaria. RFE was headquartered at in Munich, Germany, from 1949 to 1995. The address must have seemed less politically appealing after German reunification as the headquarters were moved to Prague in the Czech Republic.

Their broadcasts have not been static. They have expanded and contracted as European Communism ebbs and flows. The RFE ended broadcasts to Hungary in 1993 and stopped broadcasts to Poland in 1997.  In 2004 RFE they stopped broadcasting to Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania. But in that time they also added Kosovo and Macedonia. 

These days the  CIA is a few steps removed their programming department. The RFE answers to the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors. But back to their origins. They were founded by the National Committee for a Free Europe in 1949. They were later renamed the Free Europe Committee (FEC.) That committee was not comprised of the French underground. It was a public-private partnership of the CIA and certain corporations. The Wilson Center has more information on that here. But some names you might recognize form those early days include Frank Altschul, Frederic Dolbeare.  Dwight Eisenhower, Lucius D. Clay, Cecil B. DeMille, Charles Douglas Jackson, Allan Dulles and Henry Luce. More here.