In the war years radio programs lasted half an hour or even 10 to
15 minutes and came on the air several times a day.
“During the war,” the Voice of Russia’s veteran announcer Joe Adamov recalls,
“we used to read the reports of the Information Bureau, when we were already
advancing, and in those reports there were not only the names of the cities
that the Red Army took, but the names of 20-30 villages. We had an Afro-American
working for us, Williana Burroughs. She spoke very bad Russian, and she
used to break her tongue trying to pronounce the names of these Russian
villages.
Incidentally, Mrs.Burroughs was a member of the Communist Party of the
United States. She sympathized with us and stayed here for the duration
of the war voluntarily and shared with us all the hardships and even the
workers’ food cards that we had.”
Gradually, as the Soviet troops won back the enemy-occupied territories,
the audience of Radio Moscow expanded to include more countries. In April
1942 Radio Moscow reported the victory in the Battle of Moscow in Japanese.
In the course of 1942 it launched broadcasts in Urdu, Hindi and Hindustani.
In August 1943, after the victorious Battle of Kursk and in the early days
of Soviet offensive on the Dnieper, Radio Moscow started broadcasting in
Arabic, and in autumn 1943 – in Danish. Nadezhda Snezhko was on the very
first radio team that organized broadcasts to Denmark.
“Those were the days I’ll never forget - October 1943, when we started
broadcasting to Denmark,” Nadezhda Snezhko recalls. “It was drizzling outside
but our hearts danced with joy. At last we were able to address our Danish
friends, the heroic Resistance fighters, who fought so bravely. We put
all our hearts into that program, which went on the air October 13th. We
hoped we would be heard and so we were.
After the war Nadezhda Snezhko received high awards from King Hokon VII
of Norway in appreciation for the programs she had written in the years
of the war.
One of the most popular programs in German were “Letters Home”, which featured
letters home by Nazi soldiers. This was one of the most successful actions
by Radio Moscow. In the last years of the war each program began with the
names and home addresses of the Nazis captured by Soviet forces.
Radio Moscow broadcast to Germany and its allies, the occupied territories
and countries of anti-Hitler coalition.
As it became known later, occupied countries in Europe issued secret bulletins
of Radio Moscow programs. In the crucial days of the Battle of Stalingrad
at the end of 1942 the editors’ office of an Indian newspaper answered
regular phone calls as to the news of Radio Moscow. And when finally the
voice on the phone was told that Stalingrad had held out, it said with
relief: “Now we can rest at last.” That was the well-known Indian politician
and Soviet Union sympathizer Javaharlal Nehru.
One of Radio Moscow’s Swedish service’s announcers in the war years was
Annemur Dallan. Her husband, Randulf Dallan, left for Spain in the 1930s
to fight in the civil war and had been considered missing every since.
It was known that he had been taken prisoner and sentenced to death. Annemur
was totally unaware that her husband had been set free and went to Britain,
where he joined the Norwegian army. And one day he happened to tune in
to Radio Moscow and recognized his wife’s voice. He had difficulty passing
the information of himself to Moscow. And they met eventually, when the
war was over…
The role of Radio Moscow increased immensely in the war years. For people
in many countries of the world radio broadcasts from Moscow became an important,
and in some cases, the only channel through which they could get information
on the developments at the fronts. By that time Radio Moscow had been broadcasting
in twenty-nine foreign languages. Regular guests to the studios were members
of the anti-fascist movement – the French and Italian Communist leaders
Moris Torez and Palmiro Togliatti, the fiery Spanish revolutionary Dolores
Ibarruri, and prominent writers and scientists. The announcers, translators
and correspondents worked non-stop for hours on end.
“We worked nights, because when it was night or early morning time in Russia,
it was late afternoon in America,” the Voice of Russia veteran host and
announcer Joe Adamov recalls. “Once I was summoned to the radio at daytime.
I hadn’t had enough sleep and as I began to read a commentary at night
I dropped off. My head fell to the side, which made me start and by some
miracle I picked up reading without even breaking the sequence.”
The Radio Moscow staff worked day and night. In 1945 the Red Army crossed
the German border to continue fighting the enemy on its territory.
The voice of Yuri Levitan reading bulletins from the fronts and orders
by the Red Army’s high command was easily recognized throughout the country.
The most important news was first read by Levitan. On one occasion, however,
the honour of reading a fresh report on the liberation of the Polish capital
Warsaw by the Red Army fell on a young announcer of the Polish service
Leizor Sigan. Like Joe Adamov, Sigan is a living legend of the Voice of
Russia’s foreign service.
“It was January 17th 1945, the day Warsaw was liberated from the Nazis,”
Leizor Sigan recalls. “I was on the night shift and all of a sudden I get
summoned to the seniours and they hand me an order of the Commander-in-Chief
to be read immediately. That was the one occasion, I think, when a newly
issued order of the Commander-in-Chief was read by an announcer other than
Levitan. Yuri Levitan made a joke of it saying that I had outsmarted him.
News of the capture of Berlin and the subsequent surrender of Nazi Germany
and the Victory Day was broadcast by Radio Moscow in twenty-nine foreign
languages.
Along with working in the studios many Radio Moscow employees fought on
the fronts, were members of guerrilla units and toiled on plants and factories.
V-Day celebrations bring together radio veterans every year and the memorable
plaque on the second floor of the Voice of Russia’s headquarters at Pyatnitskaya
Street bears the names of twelve journalists and correspondents who fell
as heroes on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. “Glory to the Heroes!”
reads the inscription on the plaque.
|
