JAMES CRITCHLOW

1926 - 2019

CRITCHLOW--James. Pioneer of Cold War Broadcasting, Dies at 92. James Critchlow, former senior US government insider of Soviet Affairs, with a specialty in Central Asia, died July 7 at his home in Newburyport, MA. A 1948 graduate of MIT, Critchlow studied Russian at Georgetown University in preparation for his role in establishing Radio Liberty, a radio station that would beam broadcasts from Germany to the Soviet Union. Shortly after his move to Munich with his wife Patricia Coe Critchlow, one of RL's first transmissions was the news of the death of Joseph Stalin. In 1962, he became Bureau Chief of the newly formed Paris office, returning to the US in 1965 to round out his two-decade career in Radio Liberty's New York headquarters as Director of Information. Critchlow's career with the US government continued in Washington DC, where he became the Chief of Soviet and Eastern European Research at the United States Information Agency. He concluded his government service as Planning and Research Officer at the Board for International Broadcasting which oversaw financing and operation of broadcasting stations formerly funded by the CIA. He spent a year in retirement as visiting professor at the University of Illinois. After Illinois, he settled in Newburyport, Massachusetts and became a Fellow of the Harvard University Russian Center (now Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies). In 1989, he became the recipient of a grant from the Kennan Institute, which afforded him the opportunity to continue his research on Uzbekistan. Critchlow was the author of two books, Nationalism in Uzbekistan and a memoir of his years at Radio Liberty, Radio Hole-in-the-Head. He leaves his wife Patty Patch Critchlow, his daughters Ann Onanian (Mark) and Jane Critchlow (Peter Barach), and his beloved granddaughter Alanna Onanian.