India was an important partner of the Soviet Union in South-East Asia.
The then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the first among great power
leaders to visit the former British colony after it became independent.
The visit took place in 1955 several months after the Indian Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru visited Moscow. In both countries the visits drew mass
public approval at Soviet-Indian friendship. By that time Radio Moscow
had been broadcasting to India for more than ten years. But the service’s
heyday was yet to come. By the early 1960s Radio Moscow broadcast in four
national languages of India – Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil. For Hindustan,
a sort of linguistic Tower of Babylon, this proved insufficient.
In one decade the number of languages on the Indian Service grew from 4
to 12. Radio Moscow beat all records in the number of Indian territories
it broadcast to. In the late 1960s it made its programs accessible and
easy to understand for about 500 million Indians. The Indian Service of
Radio Moscow was the most numerous and employed many professional Indian
newsreaders. Though they found it difficult to adjust to the Moscow climate,
particularly in winter, the Indians never complained. Vitaly Mashanov,
an employee with Radio Moscow’s Indian service, recalls: “The Indians usually
came in wintertime. Delicate southern people, they arrived to rain and
cold, so we had to meet them with ear-flapped winter caps and warm overcoats.
We then got them accommodated. Indians are mostly vegetarians. And since
we experienced a shortage of vegetables in Moscow at that time, we helped
them to get food. So it was difficult for them but they managed. And by
the end of the 1960s we had a smoothly working amiable staff”.
Any country seeks friendly relations with the neighbors. When he visited
Afghanistan in 1955, Nikita Khrushchev received assurances of neutrality
and non-participation in any military blocs. The Soviet leader’s visit
to Afghanistan marked a turning point in the history of Radio Moscow. “The
intensive cooperation between the two countries began following Mr.Khrushchev’s
visit to Afghanistan in 1955”, said Pavel Kanashkin, a veteran staff member
of Radio Moscow’s Afghan Department. “The two sides also signed an agreement
on cultural cooperation, which allowed to organize the broadcasting to
Afghanistan. The broadcasts in Pushtu started in 1957 with 15-minute news
bulletins and reports on Soviet economy and culture. The broadcasting then
expanded to six hours a day. The radio practiced professional exchanges,
and the first announcers were AbdullatIf Djalali and Fakhim from Afghanistan,
who came to Moscow on a bilateral contract. Afghanistan showed a particular
interest in the Soviet Union, and many Soviet experts went to work there
too.
Cooperation and good-neighborly relations prevailed in programs to neighboring
countries of the Middle East, be it Afghanistan, Turkey or Iran. The mere
titles of the programs speak for themselves – “Friendship and Devotion”,
“A Radio Club of Soviet-Iranian Friendship Supporters”. The weekly programs
“Along the Soviet-Iranian Border” or “Along the Soviet-Afghan Border” were
dedicated to life in the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Asia that
bordered on Iran and Afghanistan. The feeling of closeness to one another
manifested itself in other, often unexpected ways. Veteran announcer Dagmara
Botvinova recalls an incident with her colleague of the Iranian service
Djamshid Keshavarz, a political ?migr?, who was forced to leave his country:
“Djamshid and I were once about to read the news in the live broadcasting
studio. Suddenly Djamshid, who always felt nostalgic for his remote homeland,
turned on the microphone and instead of “This is Moscow” said “This is
Tehran”. I froze. After a short pause Djamshid says with a nostalgic smile:
“Dear friends! Of course, “This is Moscow”. But I’m not wrong after all.
My thoughts and my heart are with you, the people of Tehran and other cities
of Iran. We are with you and you are in our hearts!” After this kind of
lyricism we read the news with a particular emotion and enthusiasm!”
Each Radio Moscow program with the participation of the Turkish author
Nazym Khikmet made a highlight. A talented poet, who shared Communist views
and spent 17 years in Turkish jails, Khikmet became a legend during his
lifetime. After emigrating to the Soviet Union, he worked for Radio Moscow.
The Turkish Service has preserved the recordings of his programs. Music
features were always very popular too. The most important thing was to
guess the listener’s taste. Indians, as it turned out, liked modern Soviet
music but were not very enthusiastic about the classics. Russian classical
music appealed to the Turkish listeners, who often asked for it in their
letters. And the Turks showed a lasting interest in the folk music of different
peoples of the Soviet Union.
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