Since the emergence of radio in the 1910s, Russians haven't just listened-they've listened passionately, forcefully, illegally. In the '50s, they reassembled shortwave radios to tune into Western broadcasts. In the '60s, they joined amateur radio clubs and spoke with their cohorts in the United States and Europe. They huddled by their radios for 40 years to hear Voice of America's Russian programming, trying to make out scraps of dialogue and musical fragments over the screeching white noise of Soviet interference. Some of them even risked their livelihoods to tell journalists from VOA-and Radio Liberty, another American-government-run station-the truth about government oppression.