Is the Iron Curtain pierced by radio 1 That interesting
and not unimportant question is asked by a writer in Le Monde. He empha- sises the completeness of the literary isolation which the Kremlin succeeds in establishing by banning foreign, or at any rate Western, books and newspapers, and actively and menacingly discouraging all contacts between Russians and foreigners in Russia, but has reason for thinking that the B.B.C. and the " Voice of America " are listened to by considerable numbers of Russians. The late American Ambassador, Mr. Bedell Smith, apparently estimated the number of listeners at something like eight million, but that seems likely to be an exaggeration. But the fact that there are some listeners, and that they are not negligibly few, is proved by the steps the Soviet radio takes to counter, or, alternatively, to deride, the British and American broadcasts. What effect these broadcasts have on Russian listeners is, of course, another question. The writer in Le Monde quotes the case of two Soviet airmen who took oft from the Russian zone of Germany for Linz, in Austria, and explained that it was the " Voice of America " that had opened their eyes, which had been blinded by Soviet propaganda, and driven them to make for a free country. But it would take a good many swallows like this to make much of a summer. And these particular listeners were not in Russia.
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