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The democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989 came to a stunning and
violent end on Christmas Day in Romania with the execution of President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena. One of the first to learn was Gerd Kallhardt, a translator of the dictator's speeches for Munich-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. As the broadcasts streamed in from Bucharest, Kallhardt and a colleague tried to come to grips
with the news. "We looked at each other and said: 'What happens now? Communism is dead. There is no more use for the radio,'" Kallhardt recalled several years later. That sentiment reverberated more loudly at the end of 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. A triumphal period for the U.S.-funded stations like RFE/RL and the Voice of America soon gave way to uncertainty and what looked like the death knell for a number of language services. Barely one year after the Soviet disintegration, the U.S. government moved to cut RFE/RL's roughly $220 million budget by two-thirds.