Radio Station Kosciuszko
코시우시코 방송국
Radio Station Kosciuszko was a Polish-language wartime radio service broadcasting from Moscow under Soviet auspices. On 29 July 1944, its broadcasts appealed to Warsaw's inhabitants to fight the Germans and support the advancing Red Army, shaping the political and military atmosphere before the Warsaw Uprising.
In depth
The 29 July 1944 broadcast
The broadcast was presented as an "Appeal to Warsaw." In the transcript recorded by the BBC Monitoring Service the following day, it said that Warsaw could hear the guns of the battle bringing liberation and urged decisive action against the Germans; it also described the Soviet-trained Polish Army and the People's Army as forming the Polish Armed Forces. It called on Warsaw's inhabitants to fight actively in the streets and workplaces to hasten liberation and save property and lives.
The appeal cannot be reduced to the single cause of the Warsaw Uprising. It was nevertheless a public call for armed action as Soviet forces approached the Vistula, and is evidence of the information environment and expectations surrounding the uprising.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) (identifies Radio Station Kosciuszko as a Moscow broadcast service and quotes its 29 July 1944 appeal to Warsaw)
- warsawuprising.org (reproduces the 29 July 1944 broadcast transcript from the BBC Monitoring Service, reprinted from Andrzej Pomian, The Warsaw Rising: A Selection of Documents, 1945)