Control of Information Flow Out of The Eastern Bloc
Beginning in 1935, Joseph Stalin effectively sealed off outside access to the Soviet Socialist Republics (and until his death), effectively permitting no foreign travel inside the Soviet Union such that outsiders did not know of the political processes that had taken place therein. During this period, and even for 25 years after Stalin's death, the few diplomats and foreign correspondents that were permitted inside the Soviet Union were usually restricted to within a few miles of Moscow, their phones were tapped, their residences were restricted to foreigner-only locations and they were constantly followed by Soviet authorities. Dissenters who approached such foreigners were arrested. For many years after World War II, even the best informed foreigners did not know the number of arrest or executed Soviet citizens, or how poorly the Soviet economy had performed.
Similarly, the regimes in Romania carefully controlled foreign visitors in order to restrict the flow of information coming out of (and into) Romania. Accordingly, activities in Romania remained, until the late 1960s, largely unknown to the outside world. As a result, until 1990, very little information regarding labour camps and prisons in Romania appeared in the West. When such information appeared, it was usually in Romanian émigré publications. Romania's Securitate secret police were able to suppress information leaking to the west about resistance to the regime. Stalinist Albania, which had become increasingly paranoid and isolated after de-Stalinization and the death of Mao Zedong, restricted visitors to 6,000 per year, and segregated those few that traveled to Albania.
Read more about this topic: Eastern Bloc Media
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—Wanda Sparks, U.S. nurse. As quoted in the New York Times Magazine, p. 72 (November 7, 1993)
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