George R. Urban

Dr. George R. Urban Former director of Radio Free Europe and director of the Centre for Policy Studies. Hungarian by birth, George Urban was one of the leading organisers in the West of the democratic front against Cold War communism. Urban was known for his interviews (Raymond Aron, Arnold Toynbee and Arthur Koestler) which appeared in Melvin Lasky's Encounter. He also joined the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Geneva, running a series of European seminars on the subject of European unity, in which he was a passionate believer.

After the exposure of the CIA funding in 1968 Urban moved to Los Angeles as a senior research associate of the school of politics and international relations at the University of Southern California. Here, with Roger Swearingen, he founded the journal Studies in Comparative Communism.

Urban's interviews resulted in several books, including Can We Survive Our Future? (1972, with Michael Glenny), a symposium about the state of the planet, and Detente (1976), a series of discussions about East-West relations with experts such as Leopold Labedz, Sir William Hayter and Dean Rusk.

From 1983 to his retirement in 1986, Urban was in Munich as the director of Radio Free Europe, bringing fresh impetus to "the unmasking of communism". A member of the BBC European Service from 1947-60, a middle-ranking program executive with Radio Free Europe between 1961-65 and a Reagan appointed director of RFE in Munich 1982-85.

During the Reagan-Thatcher era, Urban was part of the inner circle of foreign policy advisers as a director of the International board of the Centre for Policy Studies and on the board of the Centre for Research into Communist Economies (CRCE) based in 57 Tufton Street.

'Diplomacy and Disillusion at the Court of Margaret Thatcher: An Insider's View' his memoir of Thatcher states he first met her in January 1981 (p16) with a group of 'academics': Sir Michael Howard, Douglas Johnson, Sir Lawrence Martin, Leonard Schapiro, Dennis Mack Smith and Esmond Wright were assembled to propare Thatcher to meet Reagan. Schapiro joins urban on the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies.

Further Reading

Giles Scott-Smith (2006) US Public Diplomacy and the New American Studies: No Logo

"The use of private organisations and citizens as interlocuters in contact with other nations had several advantages: It provided greater credibility and legitimacy; it appeared spontaneous and thus a reflection of a dynamic, committed domestic society; it was flexible, allowing for what George Urban referred to as the ‘privatisation of the Cold War’; and it conveyed domestic political advantages to those forces that could successfully mobilise the popular will behind their cause. In the conditions of the Cold War these factors led to the creation of a vast, dynamic network of state and private forces, both overt and covert, to promote the national interest."

• George Urban, "From Containment to Self-Containment: A conversation with George Kennan," Encounter (September 1976), p. 17.