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HU OSA 300-50-11
Fonds 300: Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute
Subfonds 50: Polish Unit
Series 11: Information Items

Date(s) 1970-1971

Extent and medium 2 Archival boxes, 0.25 linear meters

Scope and content

The series consists of transcripts and summaries of anonymized interviews and reports from 1970 and 1971. The Information Items (also Evaluation Items) from 1951 - 1956 are preserved in a microfilm format only; those from 1957 to 1969 are missing and were very probably destroyed pursuant to a decision of the management of the Radio.. Some of the individual documents were duplicated and interfiled within the Subject Files and the Biographical Files, respectively.
The reports, which were sent to the Munich headquarters from RFE’s Western European field bureaus, are based on interviews conducted with Polish immigrants and defectors in Western refugee camps and immigration offices or with Western travelers coming back from Poland, and also RFE correspondence with anonymous sources from the socialist countries. Once they reached the Polish Unit, the reports were carefully checked for accuracy and plausibility. Only those reports which passed the various filtering screening systems were recommended as subjects for producing radio programs.
The documents in this series give provide information on a great variety of topics relating to Poland, from the Communist Party to prison conditions, from military issues to defectors, from economic problems to the reception of and reaction to the RFE broadcasts.
From 1971 RFE made created a very similar types of documents under the name "Confidential Reports on Poland".

System of arrangement

Language/scripts of material English, Polish

Finding aids

Related units of description

Date(s) of descriptions

Arranged and described by Miklós Tamási, September 30, 2002
Online version updated 6 January 2012
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