Historical Archives
Corporate And Broadcast Archives
Collecting information for RFE broadcasts in MunichRFE/RL's corporate and broadcast archives were donated to the Hoover Institution and are available at the Hoover Archives (RFE/RL Collection). The corporate archives include records of the Free Europe Committee and its non-Radio activities. RFE/RL retains copyright but encourages wide use of the materials.
RFE/RL provided copies of its broadcast archives to partner European archive institutions to make them more easily available to users. The National Digital Archives of Poland and Polish Radio, the Hungarian National Szechenyi Library, the Czechoslovak Documentation Center at the National Museum, the National Archives of Estonia, and the National Archives of Latvia have copies of the respective country broadcast archives.
The Inner Asian Uralic National Resource Center of Indiana University maintains an audio archive of selected RFE/RL interviews and stringer reports from the early to mid-'90s in Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek.
Research Archive
The archives of the RFE/RL Research Institute and its successor, the Open Media Research Institute, are in the custody of the Open Society Archive in Budapest.
Retained Records
RFE/RL retained its historical personnel and security records. These records remain closed.
Contacts
Contact information may be found on the linked pages of the archive institutions listed above. Requests for copyright permission involving materials in RFE/RL archival collections should be addressed to:
- Martins Zvaners, RFE/RL Deputy Director of Media and Public Affairs (Washington, D.C.)
- E-mail: zvanersm@rferl.org
Other Sources and Links
Open Society Archives
The audio archives of RFE/RL's Russian Service (1953-1995), decrypted Free Europe Committee telex messages (1960-1964), and seven other RFE/RL research collections totaling more than 103,000 items, have been posted to Open Society Archives Digital Repository.
Radio Liberty Oral History Project (Columbia Univeristy)
In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, in 1965 Radio Liberty and the Institute for the Study of the U.S.S.R. in Munich collected memoirs of participants in the events of 1917. The material presents a broad political, social, economic and cultural panorama of Russia at that time.
CWIHP RFE/RL Documents Collection
A collection of declassified U.S. government documents related to the early history of RFE and RL.
Books About RFE/RL
Read about RFE, RL, and the impact of their broadcasts to the countries of the Warsaw Pact and the former Soviet Union.
RFE/RL Language Services and Broadcast languages
A list of dates for every service and language that RFE/RL has ever broadcast in throughout its history.
Andrzej Borzym's RFE/RL History
Andrzej Borzym’s web site devoted to RFE Polish Service and general RFE/RL history (English version).
Cold War Broadcasting Research Group
A public forum to facilitate communication among scholars, archivists, and others working on Cold War Broadcasting history, esp. RFE and RL.
Cold War Radios
Periodic postings on stories and other events from RFE/RL's history written by Richard Cummings, former RFE/RL Director of Security.
RFE Romanian Service Archive
“Historical Archive of Radio Free Europe," in Romanian, with selected audio and transcriptions of historic RFE Romanian Service programs.