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On May 1, 1951, respected Czech journalist and first RFE Czechoslovak Service Director Ferdinand Peroutka began the first official transmission from Radio Free Europe (RFE) headquarters in Munich, saying, “This…

RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service was expelled from Uzbekistan in 2005 by then-President Islam Karimov. Only months before, Uzbek security service forces opened fire at peaceful protesters in the southeastern city of…

In early 2015, as a step toward preserving Chechnya’s literary heritage, the North Caucasus service launched an online library available for free to users with both text and audio versions of classics…

In this recording from May 1968, RFE/RL’s Georgian Service interviewed General Giorgi Kvinitadze, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Independent Republic of Georgia, two years before the General’s death.

On August 19, 1991, a military coup was attempted in Moscow. Instead of reporting on the event, Soviet television broadcast the ballet, Swan Lake.

RFE/RL broadcasts daily from Prague-Hagibor, a site connected for more than a century with offering help and hope to people in need.

“American journalists are reporting from Moscow that a catastrophe has taken place at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant not far from Kyiv” – these were the words with which RFE/RL’s…

The data graphics below demonstrate Radio Free Europe’s weekly audience reach from 1963 to 1989 in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Audience reach for other foreign broadcasters is shown.

RFE/RL journalists, often at great personal risk, work to spread knowledge and combat lies to ensure that people even in the world’s most oppressed nations have access to the truth. 

‘Four of our employees are injured, our building is damaged, but RFE/RL will continue to be heard.’