"There is a custom in Rus'..."

Author and presenter Vladimir Tolts

"There is a custom in Rus'..."

Vladimir Tolts: The Motherland hears. She hears, especially in our time, different things. And in Soviet times there was a saying:

There is a custom in Rus'
Listen to the BBC at night.

Today's program from a series about the history of foreign radio broadcasting to the USSR and Eastern European countries is dedicated to the work of the BBC.

My guest in the studio is Frank Williams, director of marketing at RFE-RS Corporation. In the past, Frank worked for many years from 1977 to 1089 and in 1995-2001 at the British Broadcasting Corporation, and at one time was even deputy director of the BBC Russian Service.

Tell me, when you were broadcasting to the Soviet Union, did you imagine how many people were listening to you? In general, how did you imagine your audience?

Frank Williams: We had a very vague idea of ​​the audience. The fact is that during the year we received two or three letters a year at most. The main source was the research department of Radio Liberty in Paris at that time. We read Gene Part's reports and he visited us. We had a research department, but the information was very scarce. Sometimes we traveled to the Soviet Union to meet with listeners or listen to our programs. These were the years of jamming. So it was quite a gloomy impression, because the first five seconds were audible, even less - the first two or three seconds you could hear the call signs, “London speaking” and then the “zh-zh-zh” starts.

And when we met with the relatives of our colleagues and asked questions: well, how did you hear? The answer was always: I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t hear anything at all. If we were sitting at their place in the evening and I said: "Excuse me, I have to go back to the hotel, I have to listen to the BBC." They said: “No need, sit, no need to leave.” "I have to listen." They said, "I haven't heard anything."

From time to time we actually received some echoes from people who came to London. There were rare delegations then; delegations of writers or musicians sometimes came to see us. Because, unlike Radio Liberty, it was possible for certain people to appear in the BBC studio and give interviews. They always asked very careful, general questions. But we didn’t have such an accurate idea of ​​how many were listening to us.

Vladimir Tolts: Tell me, Frank, when you worked for the BBC, were you aware of some special broadcasting strategy aimed at the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe? What goals did you set for yourself while hosting these programs? What populations were you targeting with your message? And what results did you achieve?

Frank Williams: Formally, our task was to broadcast in the interests of Great Britain. What is broadcasting for the UK? Those who financed us, the Foreign Office, the British Foreign Office, the Foreign Office never gave a definition. They believed that the people working for the BBC were wise enough to determine for themselves what Britain's interests and national interests were. We were given to understand that, in principle, the Foreign Office wanted to influence the Soviet Politburo. That they wanted those who ruled the Soviet Union - the Politburo, the Central Committee, the Central Committee apparatus, those who stood at the top of Soviet society - to understand the interests of Great Britain, what London thought on this or that issue.

We broadcasters thought it was absolutely stupid. Because broadcasting to the Politburo in the hope that they will somehow change their policies is absolutely useless. They can read in the newspapers to understand what London thinks, they still receive recordings of our programs. They are not our listeners.

We wanted to work for the listeners. Who did we mean when we broadcast? Any person, when he sits at the microphone, has someone in front of his eyes. In principle, we broadcast, that is, me and my colleagues, my colleagues were mainly from the Soviet Union, this was the third wave of emigration, these were people from St. Petersburg, from Moscow mainly, these were very well educated people, these were very intelligent people, and we broadcast to those whom we knew - these are, in principle, the intelligentsia.

And I, as the head of that part of the service that dealt with culture, religion, science, all programs not related to politics, of course, we gave our listeners the diet that we ourselves would like to receive if we were in the Soviet Union. It was like an extension of the university for me. These were quite highbrow programs for quite highbrow people.

What are the results? For us, the results were absolute; we received quite noble and grateful responses from a certain contingent of listeners. We knew that these people we were broadcasting to would respond and respond positively. How others would react, we had no idea. Of course, like Seva Novgorodtsev, who did his own program about pop music every week, he set his own goals, he worked for the pop music industry. And he consciously sets this goal for himself - to broadcast, to be popular among pete fans.

We, in turn, looked down on him a little. Let Seva broadcast to them, this is absolutely not our audience, we didn’t understand them, we didn’t really want to understand. Well, let him do it. Sometimes there were scandals surrounding Seva's programs. Because, despite his popularity, there were attacks on him in the Soviet press, sometimes these attacks had responses from our superiors, and there was a time when they generally wanted to ban Seva Nogorodtsev’s broadcasts, despite all their popularity in the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Tolts: This is how bizarre it all is: no one remembers the names of the official British “banners” Seva Novgorodtsev, who entered the Air Force in the same year as my interlocutor Frank Williams. Novgorodtsev is still known and appreciated in Russia. But today’s young Russians don’t really remember who the “peteushniks” for whom he “broadcast” (i.e., students of industrial and technical schools) are. You know, before I go any further with my questions, I must state that the goals of the British Foreign Office were not as stupid as they seemed at the time. The BBC - your predecessors - were actually listened to in the Politburo. Stalin received printouts of exactly what the BBC said, although not necessarily foreign services; domestic broadcasts or international broadcasts were translated for him in English. The Politburo, say, in Khrushchev’s time, namely all members of the Presidium of the Central Committee and some of the secretaries received printouts.

Towards the Air Force, this is my personal impression, as a person who has read many of these special closed letters with radio interceptions, there has always been a special attitude towards the Air Force, quite respectful. For example, when the Politburo learned from broadcasts that Leonard Shapiro’s book “History of the Communist Party” had been published in London, there was an immediate order to find out who Shapiro was. They found out that he was a native of Russia. And the book was one of the first, in a very limited edition, and was immediately translated for the same Politburo. (There were very few of them, about 30 people, but the circulation was about a hundred copies). And this attitude towards the Air Force can be traced in the future. For example, in the 80s, when Chebrikov, the chairman of the KGB, wrote a note on the restructuring of Soviet jamming, it was proposed that the BBC radio station not be jammed as not very harmful, but this, by the way, also applied to the Voice of America, and it was natural to concentrate, say, the power that was used on the Voice of America, on Radio Israel, on Liberty and Free Europe.

Tell me, this is a general question: were there any differences, were they explained to you, the differences in broadcasting to the Soviet bloc, to the USSR and to the rest of the world? For example, was British foreign broadcasting in English to the whole world fundamentally different from broadcasting to the communist camp?

Frank Williams: There was no such written explanation or even oral explanation. But we always considered ourselves, we lived a little apart from other services psychologically, geographically, and we set ourselves slightly different tasks. But this was unmotivated by any guidance from the authorities. If we worked differently, it would have been our own choice.

A lot in the Air Force depended on the people, on the personalities of those who worked there, on the personalities of the service leaders, and on the personalities of those who worked under them.

Under me, in my department we switched from a service that worked as a system for translating English texts, and we ourselves prepared texts in Russian. Before me, there was an opinion that former Soviets should not be allowed on the microphone, they should translate material written by the British so that the programs would be correct in tone and content. With me, we came to the conclusion that 99% of the texts that were broadcast were written by immigrants from the Soviet Union. We reached the point of absurdity at one fine moment, when a Moscow theater observer was translating notes from British theater critics. For what? Or, for a Soviet literary critic to have to translate material about Shakespeare or another writer, when he himself is absolutely capable of doing this. During my time in the 70s, we moved from a system of preventing people from the Soviet Union from accessing the microphone to the fact that we began to broadcast in the voices and words of those who left there. This distinguished us from other services, because other services continued to translate materials that were authorized from above, written in English. This is what my department was referring to.

In the current affairs department, analytical materials are still mostly translated from English. And there were people Maurice Laity, he had a rather sharp attitude towards the Soviet Union and there was Anatoly Maksimovich Goldberg, who wrote in Russian, but he also wrote in English, German and other languages, he had a softer attitude. “Discharge is needed,” if you remember. But in principle, those “political” materials were allowed from above. In my department, we did everything ourselves. This process was quite noticeable in the 70s.

And it was, I just remember when we organized the first in Russian on Saturdays called “Crop Rotation”. This was a program by Seva Novgorodtsev, we wanted to create the atmosphere of Moscow intelligent cuisine at midnight on Saturdays and create mini-chatter. There was a phenomenal scandal when they heard that Williams was ready to let Russians onto the microphone without text and without prior recording on Saturday nights. That the Russians are ready to express anything at all, to pronounce anything on the air. After all, the British Empire ended its life before that, and Britain did not collapse under pressure, under the influence of the statements of Russian emigrants or Soviet emigrants at the microphone.

This was quite strong in the 70s, when we came to this system. What did this mean? I think there was a greater psychological rapprochement with the Soviet people and the Soviet audience. If, indeed, there was some space, some distance between us and them, it was always felt in the assessments of the research department of Radio Liberty that Freedom is closer to the listeners, it is tougher, but closer. The BBC was more intelligent, softer, but at a distance, some distance from the listener.

I would like to say one more thing about the 70s. Very much, as I have already said, very much depends on the individual. In the 70s, very good correspondents worked in Moscow. And I would like to mention the name of Kevin Ruane, who worked there then. And Kevin, indeed, these were years when people were psychologically persecuted, when people were imprisoned, and Ruane monitored this situation and gave a lot of information. If an ordinary BBC correspondent in any city, in any capital believed that foreign broadcasting is the third authority in importance. The first is British television, the second is English-language radio, the third is Bush House. Kevin Ruane's Bush House and Russian service always came first, and he was always ready to find and report on arrests, releases, and so on. Without him then it would have been a completely different atmosphere. And then the personality of the BBC journalist in Moscow played a phenomenal role.

Vladimir Tolts: You know, with all the distance from the listener that you noted, I personally believe that it was in those years that the BBC entered this context of Soviet life as a phenomenon of Russian culture. For me, there is a criterion that I personally developed, perhaps a subjective one, that if a phenomenon, a person, an institution ends up in folklore, it immediately turns into a phenomenon of national culture. I don’t know if there is folklore associated with the BBC in England, but in Russia, when the ditty appeared: “It is a custom in Rus' to listen to the BBC at night,” in Russia, when Galich sang: “Comrade Mr. Goldberg, say something,” it became for me personally indisputable that this is a serious phenomenon of Russian culture.

What you say about the transformation of shots at the microphone is very interesting. Listeners in Russia, and I, having already found ourselves abroad, noted how the vocabulary was changing, how the cultural content of what was pronounced by the Russian service into the microphone, how it, say, lexically became more and more close to the linguistic environment that existed in the USSR and, in part, more and more Soviet. What happens to this now after there is no Soviet Union, perestroika happened, and so on?

History does not stand in one place, it moves. Does the Air Force have any prospects? You, too, are no longer there, as an outside observer, who is the Air Force aimed at now in Russia, what are its prospects there, what is its mission there? In general, why do BBC broadcasts in Russian now?

Frank Williams: That's actually a question. In a way, I'm very glad that I don't work there anymore, because the Air Force's mission in such cases is quite difficult. Because the mission that we thought we were fulfilling, the educational mission, has already passed. And to be, let’s say, to be interesting as a voice from there, explaining what British culture is, what London and “Foggy Albion” are, anyone in Russia can now take a ticket, fly and watch.

I think that after all, what we had was a certain culture of speech and culture of communication with people. It was some kind of journalistic school, not just journalistic ethics, but intellectual behavior, social behavior. I think the BBC can still, not only has Russia changed, but Britain itself has changed a lot. And the functions of the Air Force within society have also changed very much.

But, of course, BBC journalism, because the BBC and all broadcasters to Russia had to change their functions and deliberately change their function within society. The BBC had to move from an educational mission to a more journalistic mission, not just to be exemplary as a journalist, to show how journalists should work, but at least to participate in the process of establishing journalism in Russia and journalistic ethics, and how journalism works, how journalism should work in Russia.

The thing is that after 1995 I was associated with the education of journalists in Russian regions and, indeed, the ethics of the Air Force and journalistic practice were quite important, both in the educational process of young Russian journalists. And I think that the Air Force and other organizations still have a role to play in this sense.

But, of course, the pathos that was there really was pathos. Indeed, the fact that you noticed that the BBC entered folklore and became folklore, for me this is a confirmation of what guided us when working with Soviet listeners - it was respect for those to whom we broadcast, to whom we spoke, it was complete respect. Yes, they live in such conditions, yes, they are cut off from sources of information, but this does not mean that they are some kind of dark, some kind of stupid, that they are some kind of second-class people living in hell. These were normal, good people who were, indeed, deprived of certain rights, certain conditions for a normal life. But we had complete respect. Working with such a contingent of people as I encountered in the Air Force, how can one not respect the Soviet scientific or creative intelligentsia or university intelligentsia? These were very educated, very good people. But this does not answer your question, unfortunately.

Vladimir Tolts: In general, well, the prospects are unclear. I can tell you as a consolation that just at the time you were working there, I remember that I found myself in a public canteen in Sevastopol and, while waiting for the line to come to distribute dishes, I tapped out the call sign of the Air Force on a blank tray. And in the queue several people looked at me at once and one twirled his finger near his head. Quite recently, while on a business trip, I repeated this number in another canteen in a provincial town. Nobody looked at me, and only the waitress, who had left, said: “Well, I’m going, I’m going.” - Times are changing.