Folding the Iron Curtain

For the first time in 35 years the more than 2,000 devices that are scattered across the enormous breadth of the Soviet Union to jam Western shortwave radio broadcasts have been turned off, making it possible for Soviet citizens to listen without interference to programs in a dozen languages from the U.S.-funded Radio Liberty. Simultaneously, broadcasts in nine languages to Eastern Europe by American-sponsored Radio Free Europe are suddenly being heard loud and clear--except in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, where jamming continues. The two facilities together broadcast for 1,600 hours a week and reach an estimated 55 million listeners. With jamming suspended, the opportunity to expand that audience will grow.

The lifting of the jamming is being interpreted as a good-will gesture on the eve of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s visit to the U.N. General Assembly session in New York and his planned meetings with President Reagan and President-elect George Bush. Clearly it is linked as well with Moscow’s interest in playing host to an international human-rights congress in 1991. The halt in the jamming, which extends to broadcasts from West Germany and Israel, is meant to and should be seen as a further sign of greater Soviet domestic openness. It also, of course, simply brings the Soviet Union into belated compliance with a number of international agreements concerning the free flow of information that it signed long ago.

Will this adherence to international obligations last? Jamming, which costs the Soviets an estimated $1.25 billion a year, can of course be resumed at any time. But it seems evident that the longer the open access to Western broadcasts is permitted to go on, the more politically costly it will prove to be to try to again restrict it. Gorbachev wants the Soviet people on his side as he pursues reformist policies. Allowing greater rights may help gain that support. Withdrawing a right once given is a sure way to lose it.

At the same time, the new climate puts an added responsibility on Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe to seek scrupulous accuracy in their news broadcasts and calm and reason in their commentary. Soviet airways are now suddenly a marketplace where customers are free to pick and choose among competing sources of information. The big winners almost certainly will be the broadcasters that listeners find to be the most credible.