In 2001, Radek Schovánek and Kateřina Volková at the Czechoslovak Documentation Centre digitized the audio recordings of Radio Free Europe (RFE) that were preserved in its archives. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the radio station's launch, they compiled a selection of contemporary songs broadcast to Czechoslovakia in the 1950s on a CD for their friends. The Radio Free Europe Orchestra was directed by composer and musician Josef Stelibský from 1951 to 1954. These were original compositions, but often used well-known melodies of folk or building songs. Despite communist interference, it was not only these music programmes of Radio Free Europe that were very popular behind the Iron Curtain.
The lyricists mocked the communist regime and its Soviet model, ridiculed the party leaders and gave hope to the listeners in Czechoslovakia. They parodied the campaign against the American mandolin (Mandelinka) and described various contemporary events such as the famous Freedom Train (Mr. Konvalinka), the arrest of Rudolf Slánský and the party purges (The Cage Has Fallen / Novák, the Good Party Man / Prehmaty justice), the deaths of Stalin and Gottwald (Fakír - Stalin is calling / Stalin is dead / Progressive Faust), Beria's execution (Guess, Hadači / Away with the Ministers), Rudolf Barák's ascension to the head of the Ministry of the Interior (Fízlové) or XX. Congress of the CPSU with its condemnation of Stalin's cult (Stalin - Khrushchev). The selection includes the original jingle of the broadcast from the early 1950s and a clip from its cancellation. The CD, the cover of which was created by Jiří Gruntorád, was donated by Radek Schovánek to the collections of the Museum of Memory of the XXth Century in 2021.
