News

On 22 February, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Petras Vaitiekūnas will symbolically hand over the recordings of the Lithuanian programmes on the Voice of America (VOA) radio to the Lithuanian Central State Archive.

At the end of 2007, the Government of the United States of America handed over to the Lithuanian diplomatic representation in Washington 776 audio tapes from the VOA with recordings of Lithuanian programmes.

The VOA is a U.S. radio station that has been broadcasting since 1942. During the Second World War, the station broadcasted programmes in 27 languages. Today the VOA broadcasts news, educational and cultural programmes to approximately 155 million listeners. 

In 1951–2004, the VOA also broadcasted programmes in Lithuanian. The first programme was broadcasted on 16 February 1951 from a studio in New York. Later, the office moved to Washington. At the beginning, Lithuanian programmes lasted 15 minutes. Eventually, two half-an-hour evening programmes and a fifteen-minute morning programme were broadcasted. 

The VOA Lithuanian programme which was broadcast for 53 years was an important source of information and democratic ideas for Lithuania that was then behind the iron curtain. In the Soviet period, special radio jamming of the VOA broadcast was aimed at preventing people in Lithuania from listening to the programmes that encouraged free thought.  

Gradually, broadcasting in many Eastern European national languages, in particular in the languages of those countries where there was no threat to democracy and freedom of the press, was terminated. The last programme in Lithuanian on the VOA was broadcast on 27 February 2004.

Lithuanian programmes were prepared by such radio programme editors as Dr. Konstantinas Jurgėla, Povilas Labanauskas, Vytautas Dambrava, Antanas Vaičiulaitis, Antanas Dambriūnas, Alfonsas Petrutis, Jurgis Blekaitis, Virginija Vengrienė, Jolanta Raslavičiūtė, Romas Sakadolskis, Jurgis Bradūnas, Linas Rimkus, Romas Kasparas, etc.

Among others, John A. Cloud, the US ambassador to Lithuania, Vidas Grigoraitis, Director of the Lithuanian Archives Department, Dalius Žižys, Director of the Lithuanian Central State Archive, and Romas Sakadolskis, a long-time employee of the VOA, will participate in the event on 22 February.

Notice to media representatives: media representatives interested in covering the event in detail are kindly requested to register by e-mail media@urm.lt or telephone 236 2445. The event will be held on 22 February at 13:00 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (J. Tumo-Vaižganto St. 2).