The End of the Cold War and Radio Liberty Research Beyond Moscow: Personal Reflections

• In Event: Studying, Writing, and Building the "End of History": Sovietologists after the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Abstract

This presentation is based on Vera Tolz's recollections of being first an analyst and then head of Radio Liberty Research Department in Munich, Germany, between 1985 and 1994. The US state-funded international broadcasters aimed at citizens of the Soviet bloc, Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, were organisations directly reflecting the fluctuations of the political dynamics of the Cold War. In the presentation, a particular consideration will be given to the fact that Radio Liberty research department was one of very few places in the West where the multi-ethnonational nature of the USSR was carefully studied and where expertise, based on the relevant linguistic knowledge, was available on all the Union republics of the Soviet Union. The presentation will argue that at already at the end of the Cold War, staff at Radio Liberty research had been acutely aware of the issues some of which became topical among universities-based scholars only post-1991: (a) the appropriateness of ethnonational versus pan-Soviet/transnational perspectives on the studied phenomena; (b) the relationship between 'Russia' and other republics of the Soviet Union; and (c) the extent to which Soviet developments should be studied in the context of global trends, rather than being perceived as sui-generis. The presentation will explain how, within Radio Liberty Research, the debates around these issues at times became conflictual, because of the divergent views of the heterogeneous research department staff, which broadly consisted of three groups: US and British citizens who learned about Soviet history, politics and society through their university education; emigres from the USSR whose native language was Russian and who saw themselves as culturally Russian; and US and UK citizens, born in the West, yet having family roots in the non-Russian areas of the USSR and possessing the relevant linguistic knowledge because of this family background.

Author

• Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevich, U of Manchester (UK)