To Russia With Love

The Great Radio War

Authors: Christian Bauer. No genre - MDR /BR /arte /History TV /ERT /TSR /SBS-TV/ Duna TV/LRT/TVP - 2008 - 90 / 52 / 45 min

2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. "To Russia, With Love" tells the story of the Cold War from a most unusual perspective: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. A radio station for the countries behind the Iron Curtain. Conceived as a propaganda instrument and financed by the CIA, RFE over the years changed its face and provided the people under Soviet rule with information and news not available to them in any other form. Like any broadcaster in a democratic country. Today the radio station is seen as one of the most successful enterprises of the CIA. And some claim that the peaceful end of the cold war is largely due to RFE/RL's broadcasts.

"To Russia, With Love" takes us back to the time when World War III seemed imminent, shows the political machinations behind RFE and movingly captures the memories of its listeners. "Sometimes I'm looking at my kids and I'm trying to think how can I explain them what I went through, how it was", remembers one of the listeners, "and in all honesty, I'm happy. I'm happy that they cannot understand that! Because it means that they live in a world without this pressure, without this constraints of thinking about one thing and talking about another one."