What access did people in the Warsaw pact countries have to Western television and radio?
Upvote:1
When the Baltic states started to break out of the Soviet union it first started in Estonia because they could watch Finnish TV and Finnish and Estonian is linguistic close enough to be understandable.
Upvote:3
I think no one mentioned: In western Europe TV channels were in PAL system, while Eastern Europe mostly adopted a version of SECAM. There were differences in the audio system, too.
From late 80s, satellite programs also became available in Eastern Europe. All you needed a satellite antenna, and you could watch MTV Europe, sky channel, etc, but years before the collapse of Berlin wall satellite channels could be watched through local networks in Hungary.
Upvote:9
People in the German Democratic Republic could and did receive TV from the Federal Republic of Germany. Terrestrial reception of TV was limited in some parts of the GDR, notably the Dresden area. In the last years of the GDR there were even cases where Westfernsehen (western television) was provided by local cable providers. Obviously those were the regular western programming, not targeted broadcasts like those mentioned by Peter in his comment.
The GDR government tried to balance this with propaganda broadcasts towards their own citizens which aimed to discredit the Westfernsehen. They had some valid points, explaining how TV commercials don't represent "real life" in the West. Few GDR citizens believed everything their government said, but those TV shows injected some doubts.
So in the case of Germany:
- GDR citizens were allowed to watch FRG television.
- The GDR government was aware that this was a problem, but countermeasures like jamming were not practical.
- They tried to counter it in their own propaganda.
- In the end, Westfernsehen had a major role in how the Reunification did and did not work out (expectations of wealth, knowledge of each other).
Upvote:13
It varied from country to country. Deep inside the Soviet Union they could not watch Western TV and the only access was shortwave broadcasts. You could easily listen short-wave broadcasts in European languages. There were special broadcasts in Russian (Voice of America, Free Europe, German wave, BBC and few others). Very many people actually listened these broadcasts. Short wave radios were common.
Since 1970s these broadcasts were jammed but the jamming was never really effective (though it was a nuisance for the listeners). Listening these broadcasts was not a crime in the 1970s but actively spreading the information could be punished.
The situation closer to Western boundaries of the block was different: one could catch the TV broadcasts in many places (in Poland, for example German TV was possible to receive in many places), sometimes one had to use special antennas.
In the Western Ukraine, one could watch Polish TV in some places (and Polish TV was "Western" from the point of view of the Soviets: the censorship was very much weaker in Poland than in Soviet Union).
For this people built special antennas. These antennas were chased and removed by the authorities, but there was no punishment (at least I have never heard of someone punished for this). The antennas were removed on pretext that they spoil the look of the buildings. So people tried to hide them in the attics.
Reception in Lviv was poor and only available on hilltops. People would visit each other for an evening with Polish TV. Many people in Lviv knew enough of Polish language to watch TV and read newspapers.
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