Jacoby

Jacoby, Susan. Moscow Conversations. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972. 


"Moscow is one of the easiest places in the world for a journalist to become dishonest with himself and his readers."  15


"Dishonesty becomes a part of journalism in Moscow when correspondents fail to tell their readers about these inhibitions and the profound effect they have on a reporter's perceptions of Russian life. The reluctance of the Moscow press corps to write about its working conditions is less a conspiracy of silence than a product of frustrated resignations; an abnormal situation begins to seem quite normal after only a few months of life in Russia."  15


"Foreign correspondents do not travel as much as they would like to, partly because editors at home demand a steady flow of political news from the capital and partly because each trip involves endless bureacratic snags. A correspondent must obtain special permission from the press departmente of the Soveit Foreign Ministry if he wishes to travel outside a twenty-five mile radius of Moscow and even for some points inside the circle" 19


"THe dissenters are a small, diverse collection of people who disagree strongly on long-range goals for Russia; their main area of agreement is their determination to make the Soviet authorities observe their own laws. Their chief activity is publicizing official actions against other dissenters; they view the publicity as an important guarantee that no one will quietly  disappear into prison or exile, as in the Stalin years. The dissenters naturally need foreign journalists to transmit the news of their activities to the outside world. Stories about Soviet political dissent published in foreign newspapers ensure that many Russians also hear the news." 22-23


"Some journalists are happy to consider dissidents friends as well as news sources; relationships with dissenters involve somewhat less strain and prestense than relationships with ther Russians. The skepticism about absolute truth that is characteristic of most truly educated minds in the west is completely foreign to the majority of Russians; only with a few of the dissidents did I find a common approach to intellectual questions that had nothing to do with politics."  23


"Khrushchev abolished formal censorship of correspondents outgoing news dispatches in 1961. Foreign journalists are now free to transmit their articles by telephone, Telex or cable without prior approval of a Soviet official. The authorities now attempt to censor news dispatches indirectly, through post-publication earnings, KGB harassment and the ultimate sanction of expulsion from the country. Officials in the press deparment in Soviet embassies throughout the world read articles that appear in newspapers and magazines with Moscow correspondents. If an article is both highly important and abrasive, a correspondent may receive an officialwarning from the press department in Moscow within two or three days of publication." 23


"Soviet officials are clearly furious about being unable to prevent contacts between foreign correspondents and political dissidents. The press department has established a pattern of harrassing and trying to get rid of correspondents who see dissidents frequently." 23


"Four foreign journalists were expelled from the Soviet Union during 1970; three of them had been particularly active in gathering news about political dissent and relaying it to other correspondents. Because it is difficult to arrange meetings and also because only the most urgent news is relayed over tapped phone lines, it is impractical for every correspondent to track down rach piece of dissident news himself. One or two correspondents usually meet with a dissenter and pass the news on to the rest of the Moscow press corps. Unfortunately, many spineless Moscow correspondents are only too happy to acquire the news of political dissent from their colleagues but are unwilling to incur official displeasure by meeting dissidents themselves." 23-24


26-most of the sources are intellectuals 


"The reluctance to talk about Stalin today is deep and wide-spread, even amonf people who recognize the dimensions of spread, even among people who recognize the dimensions of the tragedy that befell their country under his dictatorship. Admissions of Stalin's evil, which meant the death and imprisonment of millions of Russians are not forthcoming from most Soviet citizens who grew up during that period. To acknowledge the full extent of the tragedy would be to admit complicity in horrors too great for most people even to think about: The refusal of many middle-aged Germans to admit they knew about the Nazi concentration camps is a similar reaction." 42


"Stalin was never fully toppled from his pedestal, even when Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign was at its height. Too many officials still in power had been the executors of Stalin's policies; indeed, many Western analysts believe Khrushchev's seriousness about de-Stalinization was the major gavtor that led to his loss of support within the Party Central Committee. After Khrushchev's partial cleansing operation, the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership said in effect, 'Enough is enough,' and clamped hte lid back on the sewer. " 42


"I never met a student in any part of the Societ Union who did not listen to the VOA. Although reception is hampered by jamming, Russians patiently persevere. For obvious reasons, English language broadcasts are interfered with less than Russian language runs. Many students also listened to the BBC, saying they preferred its news broadcasts because the reports were less slanted by American government propaganda. (I prefereed the BBC for the same reason in Moscow.) The student consensus, however, was that the VOA offered better music than the BBC." 94

"The girls said they did not believe everything in Soviet newspapers 'any more than you believe everything in yours.' Tanya's favorite paper was Komsomolskaya pravda, the organ of the Komsomol Central Committee.

Oskar Rabin- Unofficial painter

on Hope against Hope: "He felt that one of its greatest strengths was its recognition that what happened under Stalin was not a passing aberration--the product of one man's insanity--but a national sickness that permitted the Stalinist terrror to develop and may appear in mutant forms for generations to come." 171

"Realism is a word that loses its meaning in such an ideological context. If a painter chooses to depict a shabby apartment or a drunk, he is being a "critical realist" rather a Socialist realist, and the authorities frown on critical realism. In the Soviet Union, realism refers to reality as Soviet ideologues think it should be--not to a reality that an individual artist might perceive." 173

"Soviet papers--like books, magazines, canned food labels and every other form of printed material--are subject to official censorship. The existence of censorship does not, however, mean that every statement in every newspaper represent the official policy of the Soviet government. Pravda, the organ of the Party Central Committee, and to a slightly lesser extent Ivestia, the government newspaper, are forums for top-level statements on foreign and domestic policy. To use a favorite phrase of Stalin's, 'it is not by accident' that articles appear in Pravda and Ivestia. Columns by important political commentators sometimes reflect the official government position on important matters."  213

"Ideas for articles are initiated by party authorities, editors, reporters, outside specialists and sometimes by readers. Letters-to-the-editor columns are extremely important in Soviet newspapers; they provide what is essentially the only public forum for complaints about the way various institutions are run." 216

"Government offices often take percautions to prevent their typewriters from being stolen or used for nefarious purposes. At Vera's newspaper, every typewriter had to be locked away before the staff went home at night."234

Dmitri-college student
"At the same time all of this was rumbling around in my head, One Day came out. I thought things might have changed enough so there was actually a possibility of publishing honest writing." 237

"Dmitri's attitude toward the official writers is, quite simply that they are prostitutes. It is an attitude shared by all committted samizdatchiki and political dissidents." 242

Lovell, "How Russia Learned to Listen"

Lovell, Stephen. "How Russia Learned to Listen." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 3 (2011): 591-615.

In February 1919, the inventor M. A. Bonch-Bruevich was 

picked up in Moscow as he uttered the famous phrase “Hello, this is the 

Nizhnii Novgorod Radio Laboratory speaking”: here was the first occasion in 

Russian history that the human voice had been transmitted over the airwaves. 

In June 1921, loudspeakers were set up in Moscow to broadcast a “spoken 

newspaper.” In September 1922 came the first radio concert, and in the fall of 

1924 the start of regular programming under the auspices of a newly created 

broadcasting company that was soon renamed Radioperedacha. On the 

eighth anniversary of the revolution, in November 1925, came Russia’s first 

ever outside broadcast—suitably enough, from Red Square.5 

Used by Bolsheviks:

In theory, radio was a boon to the Bolsheviks on several grounds. First, 

it made possible the almost instantaneous dissemination of politicized 

information over huge distances. Second, it held out huge promise as a 

collective organizer: even the most charismatic and resonant orator could 

not hope to reach more than a few thousand people at once, but radio had 

every prospect of creating an audience of several million. Third, radio was the 

epitome of modernity: it would accelerate progress from darkness to light, 

from ignorance to enlightenment. The bearded muzhik in headphones was 

one of the iconic images of the 1920s. (592)

Yet, while all societies were feeling their way into the new medium, they 

varied greatly in the speed with which they adopted broadcasting. Soviet 

Russia, as a poor country recovering from the devastation of civil war, was 

bound to fall behind. Before long, the Party was nervously commissioning 

reports on the progress of broadcasting technology in the bourgeois world 

and on the construction of new radio stations in sensitive areas such as Poland 

and eastern Germany.1 (595)

hese young, working-class radio enthusiasts were also regularly portrayed 

as enthusiastic participants in cultural construction. It was thanks to the efforts 

of radioliubiteli that even the most benighted villages might discover the magic 

of the speakerless voice and lose their attachment to the priest or the bottle. In 

one characteristic story, a priest from the Chuvash Republic was fined 250 rubles 

for agitating against the radio and opposing the attaching of an antenna to his 

belltower.32 Radio formed the auditory component of the campaign against old 

peasant ways (Figure 2).33 (599)

How many radios; 

From 1925 

onward, the Soviet state at various levels began to set up thousands of radio 

diffusion exchanges, which received programs from Moscow or one of the 

other broadcasting centers and then sent them over a system of wires to 

dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of networked speakers. By November 

1928, the Nizhnii Novgorod Agitprop Department was noting the spread 

of wired transmission through the city and the advantages of this method 

for turning radio into a mass phenomenon. By that time, 7.2 kilometers of 

cable had been laid, 5 loudspeakers had been set up on the streets, and about 

40 in the “Red corners” of clubs and workplaces. As of 1 October 1928, 

the city of Nizhnii Novgorod and its surrounding worker settlements had 

eight relay networks with a total of 343 receiver points (tochki ). By contrast, 

the total number of receivers for personal use was 4,667. Yet the proportion 

would soon be altered by the First Five-Year Plan. The number of tochki in 

Nizhnii Novgorod region was reported to have risen almost ten times between 

October 1929 and October 1931 (from just over 4,500 to nearly 44,000), 

and the number of wired relay networks from 32 to 115 over the same period. 

On average there was 1 tochka for every 35 families across the region (even 

if the distribution was very uneven: in the backward Chuvash Autonomous 

Republic, the average was 1 for every 79 families).44 (601-602)

collective:

he Soviet case was very different. In the prewar USSR, listening was 

above all a collective activity. It took place in village reading rooms, in workers’ 

clubs, in army barracks, or on city streets and squares. In its early days, radio 

can best be understood as a technologically extended branch of agitation. 

That, in large part, was how it was seen by the Bolsheviks themselves.(602)

Nowhere did this broadcasting extravaganza mean more than in Moscow 

itself. The still-novel technologies of sound transmission and amplification 

meant above all that these events could be immediate and meaningful to the 

vast majority of Muscovites who were not in earshot. For those very close to 

events, eight large loudspeakers ensured that the speeches could be heard all 

over Red Square. Loudspeakers were also set up in some squares and a few 

large residential buildings. The other important listening places were worker 

clubs. (For the ambience of such venues, see Figure 3.) The Moscow trade 

unions claimed that more than 30,000 workers had been brought together 

in these venues to listen to a revolutionary program that included the operas 

Carmen and Rusalka, a speech by Kamenev, a trade union concert, and formal 

greetings from Red Square. As many as 5,000 workers might assemble in 

and around the larger central clubs to listen. An observer noted that listeners 

fulfilled Kamenev’s request to respect the memory of the victims of the 1905 

revolution by getting to their feet when the Internationale was played.50 

The main Bolshevik festivals—May Day and Revolution Day—became 

fixed points in the radio calendar in the interwar period. From 1 May 1928, 

the radio team had its own special box on Red Square so that it could provide 

live commentary.51 The atmosphere of such occasions is well captured by Dziga 

Vertov’s Entuziazm (Enthusiasm [1930]), which shows the continuing close 

link between broadcasting and face-to-face agitation by constantly switching 

the camera between the two, and by the surviving sound recordings of holiday 

regularly punctuated by hurrahs, salutes, songs, and sheer background hum.52 

broadcasts in the 1930s, where the presenters’ high-flown commentary is 

At less ceremonial times, listening facilities were valued by the authorities 

as a symbol of public order. A trade union report of June 1927 noted that 

the Danilov market urgently needed loudspeakers to counter its accordions, 

dancing, bazaar, and general squalidness.53 Loudspeakers in public spaces 

warned listeners to beware of pickpockets.54 (604)

Between the early 1940s and the mid-1950s, radio enjoyed a golden 

age. Its importance was recognized by the establishment of an annual Radio 

Day (7 May) that was first celebrated in 1945—only two days before Victory 

Day itself. The Party launched a radiofication drive as part of the postwar 

reconstruction campaign, and the results were impressive. Perhaps most 

important of all, broadcasters gained a crucial new technology: mobile and 

relatively user-friendly recording technology. This meant that radio lost most 

of its “live” quality and became a much safer medium for the regime. On 

the one hand, of course, the reliance on recorded programming meant that 

ideological orthodoxy could be pursued with even greater rigor. But on the 

other hand, it allowed broadcasters in less politicized fields to pursue program 

making without fearing so constantly for their careers or their lives; after all, 

they had never been free from the demands of ideological orthodoxy—it is just 

that those demands had been more arbitrary and inscrutable in the 1930s. In 

the late 1940s, Soviet broadcasting settled into a routine of expertly produced 

literary and children’s programs, abundant music, opera and theater, and 

relentless “good news” journalism featuring the ordinary man. (614)

Mikkonen, "Stealing the Monopoly of Knowledge: Soviet Reactions to U.S. Cold War Broadcasting"

Mikkonen, Simo. "Stealing the Monopoly of Knowledge: Soviet Reactions to U.S. Cold War Broadcasting." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11, no. 4 (2010): 771-805.

Immediately after World War II, U.S. authorities found themselves with very little information about conditions in the USSR. The United States, therefore, tried to reach across the Iron Curtain to increase its knowledge while avoiding direct military conflict and making an effort to cultivate indirect methods of getting at its adversary. Men like Allen Dulles, George Kennan, and General Lucius Clay were prone to believe that the communist system was vulnerable to aggressive forms of psychological warfare. It was in this context that Radio Free Europe in 1950 and Radio Liberation in 1953 (later known as Radio Liberty [RL]) came into existence.2 RL not only broadcast to the Soviet Union in Russian, but by 1954 it was using an arsenal of 17 Soviet languages in an attempt to appeal to non-Russian minorities. From the beginning, the ultimate objective of RL was to promote the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian government. It was an integral part of the U.S. Cold War strategy. (772)

The activities of RL, in contrast, were built around the specific use of Soviet émigrés; it spoke only to the Soviet people, using the Soviet experiences of the émigrés, and it dealt with Soviet internal affairs. Although it was an instrument of psychological warfare, RL likened itself to an alternative domestic service rather than a foreign broadcaster, attempting thus to insinuate voices from the West into the midst of the Soviet people. (773)

My first claims are, then, that foreign broadcasters had a significant audience and that there were people who considered it important to listen to foreign broadcasts. This article concentrates on the early days of RL, when foreign broadcasts in general were still a relatively new phenomenon, both for the Soviet authorities and for the intended audiences. Although the size and composition of RL’s audience from the 1970s onward have been studied, the first two decades of Cold War broadcasting to the Soviet Union have remained poorly covered by research so far.6 Yet these very decades are crucial for grasping the development of Soviet reactions as foreign broadcasts continued to increase and strengthen. (774-775)

The big picture, however, can be filled in by supplementing the available Soviet material with the rich offerings of the RFE/RL collection in the Hoover Institution Archives (HIA), which provide many details about radio listening in the Soviet Union.  Beyond this, RL focused much effort on the efficient gathering of current information for two primary purposes: first, to provide Soviet citizens with accurate and substantive facts about internal Soviet affairs absent in the Soviet media;11 and second, to determine what kind of audience listened to foreign broadcasts in the USSR.12 The scheme was conceived primarily by Max Ralis, a Moscow-born, multilingual son of a Menshevik émigré who had lived in Berlin and Paris and had fought with the French army before escaping from the Nazis over the Pyrenees to join the U.S. army as a volunteer. (776-777)

 the directorship of RL’s Audience Research Department (ARD), essentially his own creation. (777)

Material was obtained by ARD agents primarily from Soviet travelers to the West, using sophisticated interviewing techniques. The interviews were conducted informally and orally without recording equipment or note taking. Quite often the interviews were based on casual, although hardly accidental, conversations in restaurants, coffee shops, and even bars. ARD agents actively sought contact with travelers when they were alone. The reports were usually written up from memory immediately after the interviews; no systematic questionnaires were ever used. Ralis tried to maintain a high level of source criticism by carefully selecting his interviewers and estimating source credibility from the contexts in which interviews were carried out and from the reports themselves. Whenever Ralis had doubts about the credibility of a report, he would note this in the report. The informal conduct of the interviews was also necessary to get Soviet travelers to speak without arousing their suspicions. To offset the limitations created by the forced informality interviewers would develop their skills in memorizing essential facts. Ralis personally trained and selected interviewers from Soviet émigrés. These were former Soviet citizens, who in most cases had left the Soviet Union recently and knew the behavior and manners of speech of Soviet people.16 (777-778)

Thus, instead of representing the views of average Soviet citizens, the material can provide only some isolated examples and views of some people toward Western broadcasters and RL in particular. But it is enough to indicate that quite a few privileged members of Soviet society did listen to foreign broadcasts. Reports were produced only in cases where someone provided information that was thought useful for RL. Therefore, the true number of interviews conducted can only be guessed. The annual number of reports, however, is easier to estimate: it ranged from 150– 200 reports per year in the early 1960s to 300–500 reports by the end of the 1960s.19 When interviewees felt confident enough, they often revealed facts about their radio listening habits, thus giving valuable information about how foreign radio broadcasts were perceived by Soviet citizens. (778)

As the Cold War quickly intensified, Soviet monitors found themselves in serious trouble: according to one estimate presented to the Central Committee in 1960, as many as 50–60 different radio stations were transmitting short-wave broadcasts to the Soviet Union.26 Even more worrying for the authorities was the fact that instead of short-wave receivers being located in the peripheral areas, 85 percent of them were situated in the European part of the USSR, where often foreign broadcasts, rather than Soviet ones, occurred by short-wave.27 Many Soviet citizens thus had the technical facilities for listening to foreign broadcasts if they so desired. (781)

With the number of foreign broadcasts rapidly growing, the authori- 

ties first chose to limit the languages to be jammed. Obviously, they con- 

centrated on jamming the most hostile broadcasts that used official Soviet 

languages; this was most persistently applied to RL and to a lesser extent 

to VOA, the BBC, Deutsche Welle (DW), Kol Israel, Radio Peking, and 

others. Thus Radio Madrid, Radio Paris, the BBC’s English Service, or DW 

in German would come through without interference. As early as 1958, the 

KGB had suggested ceasing the jamming of languages that were not generally 

spoken in the Soviet Union, referring to Spanish, English, Finnish, and other 

languages.35 Although these were important for a small minority of repatri- 

ates from abroad, or those who had otherwise mastered some foreign lan- 

guage, the authorities felt more threatened by broadcasts in Soviet languages.  (783) 

Music, popularity: The popularity of Western jazz and later pop music in the Soviet Union 

is well known. This development was largely thanks to Western broadcast- 

ers. Western governments did not, however, spend billions of dollars just to 

introduce Soviet citizens to the Beatles. Music was used to attract people to 

listen to more serious and ideological fare.39 Western broadcasters were able 

to use music much more flexibly than their Soviet counterparts. Besides its 

appeal, Western pop culture was important in that it undermined efforts to 

nurture Soviet culture, which the authorities considered to be healthier and 

more morally uplifting. Although an interest in foreign culture as such was 

not a harmful phenomenon, Soviet culture constituted an integral part of the 

socialist fabric, and a loss of interest in it was considered potentially danger- 

ous. Faced with a lack of resources, however, officials had to make qualitative 

choices, so they jammed mainly programs with a downright political con- 

tent. With regard to cultural programs, it is possible that they felt that the 

Soviet culture was superior to that of the West and believed that the people would feel the same. Nonetheless, jamming everything was no longer a viable solution.  (784-785) 

While the reception of RL, the most heavily jammed station, was re- 

portedly sometimes good, on the eve of ideologically or politically important 

occasions jamming rose to unprecedented levels, especially in bigger cities, 

as interviews with people from Leningrad, Gor´kii, or Iaroslavl´ seem to tes- 

tify.41 In all these places, audibility might have been good prior to such an 

event, but during it listening became impossible. Similarly, during and after 

the Cuban Missile Crisis in late 1962, jamming was intensified, making pre- 

viously clear signals inaudible.42 The Cuban crisis, however, was followed by 

a five-year period when the jamming of most foreign broadcasters ceased, 

only to intensify again with the Prague Spring in 1968. 

The reactions recorded by ARD suggest that jamming had little support 

among the people. Even those who in ARD reports seemed otherwise favor- 

able to Soviet policies were opposed on this particular matter. The appar- 

ent contradiction can be explained in part by the annoyance actually caused 

by jamming. Some party sympathizers reasoned that ordinary people could 

easily see through Western propaganda, and that jamming only made them 

more interested. Yet, despite temporary halts to jamming, Soviet citizens con- 

stantly had to live with it. Perhaps thus Soviet travelers were surprised to hear 

that the Americans were free to listen to Radio Moscow without jamming.49 (787)

How to avoid jamming: People also quickly learned to follow jamming patterns. RL, for exam- 

ple, constantly changed its broadcasting frequencies, forcing Soviet jamming 

staffs to make strenuous tuning efforts. Neighboring frequencies were also 

used with the goal of forcing the Soviets either to jam their own broadcasts 

or to give up jamming altogether.54 Sometimes the jammers were accidentally 

directed to the wrong stations, even to Radio Moscow. One interviewee told 

about an official who had been punished for making such a grave mistake.55 

Even if this particular case was untrue, it points out that he was aware that 

RL used frequencies neighboring those used by Radio Moscow. This was 

a major headache for Soviet authorities. It was mentioned in the Central 

Committee that this practice of RL caused “extreme difficulties for our own 

broadcasting.”56 (788)

Radio hams often spotted deficiencies in the jamming and discovered 

other limits to it, but they were not the only ones. According to several ARD 

reports, jamming concentrated on big cities, and people had learned to go 

to the countryside to listen to foreign broadcasts. Just some 40 miles outside 

Moscow, the audibility of RL was very good.57 Dachas also provided peaceful 

surroundings for radio listening, with no prying neighbors or building super- 

intendents. One wounded World War II veteran and active party member, 

according to his own account, drove 35 miles to his dacha every other day just 

to listen to foreign newscasts.58 The existence of such gaps was listed in reports 

to the Central Committee as well. The KGB reported that in the summer of 

1958 it had tested the audibility of several foreign broadcasts in numerous 

locations in the Soviet Union. Even in the outskirts of Moscow, as close as 

Izmailovo and Khovrino, which are just 6 and 11 miles respectively from the 

Kremlin, both VOA and RL could be picked up at least during certain times 

of the day. Farther away, audibility was naturally better.59  (788)

Circumventing jamming seems to have become almost a kind of hobby 

for some people; indeed it should be noted that listening to foreign broadcasts 

might not necessarily represent a political act but simply reflect a tempta- 

tion to “taste forbidden fruit.” Foreign radio listening was widespread among 

Soviet youth, especially high-school students, and it is easy to imagine that 

for them the thrill of thwarting the authorities and the opportunity to listen 

to Western music were more important than politics. With expensive radio 

sets often outside their reach, they set up “radio circles.” These legal recre- 

ational clubs became highly popular during the 1960s, but when the authori- 

ties found out that in them people learned not only how to build their own 

sets but also how to circumvent jamming, they secretly tried to prevent their 

further growth.62 There were cases, however, where even elementary-school 

children started to build their own sets to listen to Western broadcasts.63 (789)

Khurshchev: The problem for the authorities 

was not only that listeners were affected but that they spread the information 

they had heard. One obvious explanation for this might be the cessation of 

the jamming of most stations in 1963, which suggested to people that foreign 

broadcasts were now officially more acceptable. It is important, therefore, 

to keep in mind that Soviet policies concerning foreign broadcasts were not 

invariable but fluctuated over time. A more persistent specter haunting Soviet 

officials was the fear of an alternative worldview from abroad and the loss of 

their monopoly of information channels. 

By '65-it was a big deal. This was indeed an area where foreign broadcasts had 

a major impact: they both answered and added to the Soviet citizens’ tre- 

mendous thirst for knowledge. At RL, people had the impression that by the 

1960s people in the Soviet Union had become bolder with regard to foreign 

broadcasts, and the information obtained from them was effectively passed 

on by word of mouth. In Ralis’s opinion, people had initially dismissed for- 

eign broadcasts as “nonsense” (chepukha), even when agreeing with them, but 

by 1965 they were openly comparing what they had heard and venting their 

opinions about it, and they did not hide the fact that their source was foreign 

broadcasts when they passed on information. RL believed that most people 

were no longer ready to accept seriously what was offered to them by obliga- 

tory ideological education and party meetings, which were the traditional 

sources of information. Foreign broadcasts had increased people’s need to 

know and had helped produce more people who asked questions and were 

less afraid.66 Radio Liberty felt that, along with other foreign broadcasters, 

it had contributed to the change, although at the time it could hardly point 

to any tremendous changes. One case in which RL regarded itself as having 

played a big role was the dissemination of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1958) 

in the Soviet Union.67 At first, this novel was surrounded by official silence, 

and it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, but it became well 

known in the bigger cities and among students through the version of it 

read on RL and through samizdat versions, also distributed by RL. This was 

part of RL’s objective: to insinuate Western ideas among the Soviet populace. 

Although RL naturally exaggerated its role in the overall process, it is quite 

evident that foreign broadcasts had played a part in the change of attitudes 

in the Soviet Union. 

Soviet radio is bad- In the late 1950s, the Central Committee had slowly been waking up to 

the dreadful situation concerning the audibility of Soviet broadcasts around 

the vast country. The first signs accidentally emerged in the context of other 

problems: for example, in a report of struggle against foreign propaganda in 

Ukraine. Reading between the lines of this 1958 report revealed that in south- 

ern and western Ukraine dozens of foreign broadcasts were audible, whereas 

the reception of broadcasts from Kiev was at times very poor. Furthermore, 

signals from Moscow were certainly not dependable everywhere, as Soviet 

jammers themselves impeded reception.78 Similar hints about problems in 

audibility due to lack of resources in local broadcasting poured in from other 

republics, too. This, however, was a mere prelude to coming revelations. (794)

Foreign broadcasts, especially newscasts, were thus closely followed by 

many people in the USSR, regular citizens and officials alike. News was al- 

legedly gathered from American sources, but not everything was repeated in 

Soviet newscasts because of censorship and other factors. The result was that 

the Soviet media constantly lagged behind in the up-to-date coverage of what 

was happening. An illustrative case was the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. 

For years, Soviet media pretended that nothing was wrong, while RL kept 

broadcasting news about the corrosion of relations. Many actually considered 

news of the Sino-Soviet split to be Western propaganda until the reality be- 

came clear to everyone. In the long run, cases like this, which indicated that 

the foreign broadcasters had been right, further eroded trust in the Soviet 

media and drove people to seek accurate news from foreign broadcasts. It is 

hardly surprising, then, that party officials were among the keenest listeners 

of foreign broadcasts.104 Foreign broadcasts had become a source that helped 

people fill in gaps in their knowledge. The situation was so dire that the au- 

thorities could no longer turn a blind eye but were forced to change their own 

programming in an attempt to hang on to their crumbling media monopoly. (801)

 why western was better: Apart from their greater willingness to answer to local 

needs, foreign broadcasters could also count on one permanent advantage: 

almost unlimited access to both Soviet and Western media, whereas Soviet 

newscasters could never make full use of Western sources. Indeed, before 

the late 1980s, Soviet journalists and news personnel had very limited scope 

to report even on Soviet affairs. They needed permits from their superiors, 

and there were censors who ensured that no unauthorized material went on 

the air. (802)

A 

bigger problem was the superior quality of American programs, acknowl- 

edged by ordinary Soviet citizens and the authorities alike. American exam- 

ples were adopted in improving newscasts, more music was introduced, and 

concessions were even made in offering pure entertainment programs with- 

out a direct educational or political purpose. Despite some genuine successes, 

however, foreign broadcasts maintained their popularity, and the only lasting 

policy Soviet authorities could come up with was jamming, which continued 

on and off throughout the Soviet era. (804)

why it was radical: 

he free flow of information seems to have been the biggest fear for the 

Soviet authorities in regard to foreign broadcasts. Even more alarming for the 

Soviet authorities than the dissemination of information about how to listen 

to foreign broadcasts was the fact that news people had heard from foreign 

broadcasts was passed on by word of mouth. Although there were hardly 

any clear indications of unrest being caused by foreign broadcasts within the 

Soviet Union, the authorities were still afraid of the possible consequences. 

However, many party members themselves ardently followed the same news- 

casts in pursuit of information. Although Soviet news services were slow and 

often concealed information, many journalists were assigned to follow for- 

eign broadcasts, not only to help the authorities rebut their arguments but 

simply to keep up with world affairs. Thus the foreign newscasts became an 

important source for average Soviet people and officials alike to keep abreast 

of events, both domestic and foreign. Following the title of its campaign in 

the late 1950s, RL, along with VOA and BBC, became the “guest in the liv- 

ing room,” thus making real the fears of the Soviet authorities.  (805)