The early 1930s was the time of profound economic recession in the
United States and Europe, but also the time of impressive-scale construction
in the Soviet Union. Radio Moscow broadcasts reports about the construction
of the city Komsomolsk-on-Amur and the Moscow Metro, about putting into
operation a huge hydro-electric power-station on the Dnieper river and
commissioning the first blast furnace in the Urals city of Magnitogorsk,
one of the world’s largest iron and steel works.
In 1933 Radio Moscow told its listeners about the developments in the country
in eight languages, in 1940 – in 14.
The fourth language of international broadcasting from Moscow was Spanish.
And, like Eleanor Iankowski  in
the English-language service, the Spanish service boasts a legendary figure
too. Luis Chekini, a young rail worker from Argentina, opened up broadcasting
in Spanish on August 1, 1932.
One after another, programs to Bulgaria, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and in
1940 to China went on the air. One of the founders of the foreign broadcasting
service, Stepan Kolmykov, wrote in his memoirs that he had the feeling
of being caught inside the Babylon Tower, for people around him spoke their
native languages between themselves.
By late 1939 Radio Moscow had launched its Finnish service. Saimi
Kuivala was posted to Radio Moscow as translator in autumn 1939. “In those
years”, Saimi Kuivala recalled, “Radio Moscow was quartered in a building
on Maly Putinkovsky Lane, in central Moscow. Before that I lived in a quiet
provincial Petrozavodsk, so when I found myself at the Radio House with
its long and wide corridors, the contrast was really stark. The job I had
to do was unusual and important. On the very first day I was taken to a
room that was actually a huge hall, with dozens of typists hammering away
at their type-writers as translators into different languages dictated
texts to them in a clearly pathetic manner and virtually shouting as if
trying to out-voice each other for some unknown reason.
In the second half of the 1930s everybody was increasingly more concerned
about the international situation in Europe. Radio Moscow broadcast comments
on the essence of Nazism, on Germany’s preparations for war.
But nor was Asia a quiet place to live in at the time. Japan and China
continued to be locked in a protracted war. In view of China’s international
isolation Chiang Kai-shek had to admit that no country in the world with
the exception of the USSR could help China. And the USSR did give them
assistance.
Radio Moscow launched its Chinese service in 1940, and it was one of the
first international radio broadcasters for Asia. Yury Kharin had been with
Radio Moscow’s Chinese service for many years, and this is the way he recalls
the first fellow-workers on the service staff.
“I am happy to have been able to learn about the first days of broadcasting
to China from the very same veterans who launched the service in 1940.
Tribute must be paid, of course, to our editor-in-chief Stepan Kolmykov,
who had found just the right people from among the Chinese who made their
home in Moscow at the time. The Chinese who were with Radio Moscow were
so hard-working, they could work round the clock with no lunch break at
all.
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