Regular broadcasting from Moscow in English began in December 1929.
One of the staff members, Lev Setyaev, has worked at the radio for many
years. He recalls: “In those days the English-language service was headed
by the British communist John Gibbons. And there were other journalists
too, who witnessed the birth of the foreign broadcasting service. These
include Doris Maxina, Lucy Pravdina, and Joe Adamov, who continues to work
at the Voice of Russia  now.
In 1930 the newly-formed service started to receive letters from its listeners,
and so a program, in which their questions were answered, was born.
At their request the listeners were sent postcards, stamps, newspapers
and books in English. We also ran radio quizzes, and the winners got a
set of the then popular illustrated magazine “USSR In Construction”.
In many letters of the late 30s the listeners marveled at a perfect English
the Radio Moscow announcers spoke. Many of the then radio news bulletins
and programs were translated by Eleanor Iankowski, the living legend of
the Voice of Russia. Born in New York in 1917, Eleanor was a daughter of
a Belorussian ?migr?, who came to live in the States in 1905. In 1936 the
family, consisting of Eleanor’s father, his American wife and four children,
returned to Russia. For Eleanor English was practically a mother tongue,
so she came to work for Radio Moscow as a translator, and has been working
for the company ever since.
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