Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program and the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at The Fletcher School for a conversation with public diplomacy expert Mark Pomar on his latest book Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (2022). The event is open to the public and will be chaired by Professor Tara Sonenshine. The book will be sold at the event by the Tufts Bookstore. Please make sure to register via myFletcher to participate in the event in person. Refreshments will be served.

Cold War Radio is a fascinating look at how the United States waged the Cold War through the international broadcasting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mark G. Pomar served in senior positions at VOA and RFE/RL from 1982 to 1993, during which time the Reagan and Bush administrations made VOA and RFE/RL an important part of their foreign policy.

VOA is America’s “national voice,” broadcasting in more than forty languages, and is charged with explaining U.S. government policies and telling America’s story with the aim of gaining the respect and goodwill of its target audience. During the Cold War, the VOA Russian Service broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

RFE/RL is a private corporation, funded until 1971 by the CIA and afterward through open congressional appropriations. It broadcast in more than twenty languages of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia and functioned as a “home service” located abroad. Its Russian Service broadcast news, feature programming, and op-eds that would have been part of daily political discourse if Russia had free media.

Pomar takes readers inside the two radio stations to show how the broadcasts were conceived and developed and the impact they had on international broadcasting, U.S.-Soviet relations, Russian political and cultural history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Pomar provides nuanced analysis of the broadcasts and sheds light on the multifaceted role the radios played during the Cold War, ranging from instruments of U.S. Cold War policy to repositories of independent Russian culture, literature, philosophy, religion, and the arts.

Cold War Radio breaks new ground as Pomar integrates his analysis of Cold War radio programming with the long-term aims of U.S. foreign policy, illuminating the role of radio in the peaceful end of the Cold War.

Mark G. Pomar is currently a Senior National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. From 1975 to 1982, Mark taught Russian Studies at the University of Vermont. From 1982 to 1993, Mark worked as Assistant Director of the Russian Service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Munich), Director of the USSR Division at the Voice of America, and the Executive Director of the Board for International Broadcasting, a U.S. federal agency that oversaw Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. From 1994 to 2008, Pomar was a senior executive and President of IREX, a large U.S. international nonprofit organization. From 2008 to 2017, Mark was the founding CEO and President of the U.S. Russia Foundation (USRF), a private U.S. foundation based in Moscow. Mark has a Ph.D. in Russian Studies from Columbia University and a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Tufts University.