Commentaries about Stalin’s victims, Voice of America

By Ted Lipien (Tadeusz Lipień)

In my Washington Examiner Christmas Day op-ed, and in my post about Polish artist, writer, and witness of genocide Józef Czapski, I write about Stalin’s victims and the Voice of America (VOA) in the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

I am an East European refugee from communism. Judging from what one can see online in various languages, I’ve concluded that recent and current VOA and USAGM officials either do not know or have forgotten what life was like for tens of millions of people living under communism and state-run socialist economies in the former Soviet Block. My observations are shared by many dissident journalists in China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Ethiopia, as well as political refugees and immigrants from these countries living in the U.S. … . That was absolutely not the case 40 years ago, when I was in charge of the VOA Polish Service broadcasting to Poland under the martial law, which was imposed by pro-Soviet Communists on December 13, 1981.

READ MORE: by Ted Lipien, Voice of America went from exposing the failures of communism to glorifying its dictators, Washington Examiner, December 25, 2021.

The unveiling of a plaque in Prague this week for renowned Polish artist and writer Józef Czapski, who in 1950 was censored by the Voice of America— an act condemned at the time by both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress — brought a small measure of historic justice for victims of communism. The ceremony in Prague (Czapski was born there in 1896) on December 21 took place exactly 68 years after VOA’s chief news writer and news director during WWII, American Communist Howard Fast, received the news from Moscow on December 21, 1953 that he had been awarded the Stalin Peace Prize.

READ MORE: Censored by Voice of America in 1950, re-interviewed in the 1980s, Józef Czapski gets a plaque in Prague by Ted Lipien, Voice of America — Hidden History (blog), December 21, 2021.

Photo/Graphic: In 2016, the Voice of America (VOA) produced the graphic to illustrate reports on Fidel Castro’s death. Thousands of victims of the Castro regimes were not acknowledged.