Government attacks on independent media in the post-communist world are becoming commonplace. Some of these attacks have attracted widespread press coverage from around the world; others have passed by with little notice. Together, however, they provide unintended testimony to the power of the free media to undermine those who would keep their societies in what I call an "unfree" state. Recent attacks highlight the extreme fragility of free media in less-than-free societies. They call attention to the fact that the foundation of all freedoms is an unencumbered press, to which the peoples of Eastern Europe have so often been denied. They also point out the continuing, even growing, importance of international broadcasting to these countries.

No one can doubt the power of the free press. At the founding of the United States, Thomas Jefferson pointedly observed that if he had to choose between a free press and a free parliament, he would always choose the former. He was confident that a free press would eventually establish a free parliament, but he was uncertain whether a free parliament would ensure a free press.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, also discovered the power of the media. He tried to revamp the Soviet Union by allowing the media a greater range of freedoms under his policy of glasnost. But as he and the world soon discovered, the power of accurate information delivered in a timely fashion to those who needed it soon overwhelmed the barriers he had hoped to maintain. The destruction of communism and of the Soviet empire soon followed.

No one who lived through the last two decades can forget the excitement in Moscow that met the publication of the first truthful revelations about the Soviet past. Nor can anyone forget the even greater excitement people felt when they were able for the first time in their lives to read direct criticism of those still in power, forcing such political leaders to respond to the press. More importantly, the free flow of information empowered individuals to believe that they, and not some self-appointed rulers, should determine how to run their lives and whom to select to govern their countries. As Jefferson pointed out more than two centuries ago, the free press provided the basis for the emergence of all other freedoms.

But because of the obvious and demonstrated power of free media to transform unfree societies, too many people in both the post-Soviet states and in the West came to believe that nothing could prevent the domestic media from playing that role, that democracy was secure, and that the future was one of unalloyed brightness.

Departure from Utopia

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was among the first organizations to experience the consequences of this naive optimism. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people in the United States argued that RFE/RL had done its work and that it should take an honorable retirement. In 1994, the US Congress voted to end government funding of its radio stations by December 31, 1999. But RFE/RL is still here and is still very much needed. Government attacks on the media in the post-communist world highlight the extreme fragility of free media in unfree societies.

While the media are powerful, they are also in an extremely precarious position-and nowhere more so than in post-communist countries. To some degree, this is a vestige of historical political authoritarianism, but it also results from specific features of the post-communist transition, as well as from the nature of the media themselves. The resulting political milieu continues to cast a shadow not only on media freedom in these countries but on all the other freedoms on which a civil society is based.

Only now are we beginning to face up to the destructive heritage of communism and the post-communist transition, to the impact it had on the rulers and the ruled, and to the difficulties of escaping from that past.

Communist Habits

Several years ago, as the result of my work at the US Agency for International Development, I pointed out to an audience that many post-communist countries are trying to develop farming without farmers. But that observation pales in comparison to a parallel observation-these countries often are trying to institute democracy without democrats, capitalism without capital and rule of law, and free media without free audiences.

In most post-Soviet countries, many of the same people who are in power now were in power ten or more years ago. Some of them have transformed themselves completely-as one commentator noted, the road to Damascus has been very crowded lately-but most still reflect the expectations, styles, and approaches with which they grew up. And when politics becomes difficult, all too often these leaders have reverted to what they knew in the past rather than what they know to be beneficial for their developing economies and political systems.

The same pattern has held for those participating in the new and freer global economy. There are very good reasons to talk about nomenklatura capitalism: the ways in which those who used to control the Soviet economy have privatized it into their own hands and how such "modernizers" continue to depend on the special favor of the state rather than on the power of the marketplace to gain enormous and often unearned wealth.

But the problem of the Soviet legacy in the media is especially grave. Even where relatively free media have emerged, overcoming the Soviet-style training and expectations of journalists themselves, the media must still contend with the absence of a completely free readership or listenership. Because of their experiences in the Soviet era, most readers and listeners do not view the media the same way people in historically democratic countries do. They see the media simply as a weapon of the powerful rather than a source of truthful information. And they often see the media as being controlled by forces that wish to advance their own interests rather than the interests of freedom.

A poll taken in Moscow this past summer found that more than a third of the respondents were prepared to accept restrictions on the press in the name of the national interest. This outdated perspective of the past affords undue aid and comfort to those in power who are unhappy with criticism and who want to prevent a free press from holding them accountable for their actions.