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18 “Western Voices”
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18 “WESTERN VOICES” I remember, as if it were yesterday, how enthusiastic many of us were. In a state where all information was subjected to heavy censorship, we consumed Svoboda [Radio Liberty] broadcasts like oxygen in a room with no air. — , in JRL no. , May , Zapadniye golosa (Western voices), as they were called, were the forbidden foreign broadcasts that Soviet citizens listened to clandestinely on their shortwave radios, straining, above the din of Soviet jammers, to hear the news and commentary from Radio Liberty, BBC, the Voice of America (VOA), the Deutsche Welle, Kol Israel, and other international broadcasters. For those who could not travel beyond the Soviet bloc, foreign radio was their link to the outside world, breaking the Soviet information monopoly and allowing listeners to hear news and views that differed from those of the communist media. Why shortwave rather than the medium wave (AM) or FM broadcasts that Americans listen to at home? The answer is simply that medium wave and FM do not carry well over long distances, and shortwave was therefore necessary to reach the Soviet Union from Western transmitters. In fact, the Russians pioneered shortwave when Lenin used it in to address listeners in the far corners of Russia .1 For that reason, Soviet-produced radios, even inexpensive ones, had shortwave bands, which were needed, as they still are today in Russia, to receive broadcasts over its vast expanse. For Soviet dissidents and human rights activists, foreign radio broadcasts provided an almost secure flow of information and encouragement from the West. The human-rightniks felt more secure knowing that reports of human rights violations were being smuggled to the West and transmitted back to the Soviet Union by foreign broadcasts. Moreover, they received moral support by learning through the radios that there were other protesters in the Soviet Union. And it was not only the dissidents and human rights activists who listened. At times of international tension or some interesting event that was not covered by the Soviet media, everyone seemed to be listening to the foreign radios. I recall being in the Moscow office of a high official of the Foreign Ministry, who had on his desk a Soviet-made VEF radio . Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ), . with the antenna pulled out to receive shortwave broadcasts. The Soviet Union also monitored foreign broadcasts and distributed to high-level officials a daily digest of their contents. To counter foreign broadcasts deemed unacceptable, the Soviet Union built a vast network of jammers, which emitted noise, music, or voice on frequencies used by Western broadcasters and which made listening difficult if not impossible. The jamming was massive, and its total power was estimated at three times that of all the Western radios combined. Jammers were more effective in large cities, where they were concentrated, but less so in smaller cities and rural areas. Nevertheless , it was possible to hear Western broadcasts in the heart of Moscow, as I confirmed many times during a tour of duty at the American Embassy in –. If a listener had a decent radio, knew something about antennas, and was determined to learn what was being said in the West, it was indeed possible to hear Western broadcasts despite the jamming. Moreover, some of those who were able to hear the broadcasts recorded them and passed copies to their friends in a distribution called magnitizdat. BBC began broadcasting to the Soviet Union in , VOA in , and Radio Liberation (later Radio Liberty) in , only five days before Stalin died. But Soviet jamming began as early as , targeted on different radios at different times, and continued, with some pauses, until . Radio Liberty was always jammed but interference with the other radios was suspended during times of détente and reinstated during times of tension. One of the Soviet listeners to Radio Liberty, BBC, and Voice of America was none other than Mikhail Gorbachev, who while being held incommunicado at his Crimean dacha during the attempted coup of Soviet hard-liners in August , learned from Western broadcasts that the coup had failed and that he could return to Moscow.2 “It would not have escaped Gorbachev’s notice,” wrote Michael Nelson ,“that if he had not ended the jamming of Western Radios in . . . he might not have learned what was happening. If it had not been for the Radios, his resolve might not have been strengthened. He might have signed...