How Do You Listen to Radio Moscow? Moscow's Broadcasters, ‘Third World’ Listeners, and the Space of the Airwaves in the Cold War

Abstract

In the first decades after the Second World War, just as decolonization launched dozens of new nations onto the world stage, transnational radio broadcasting underwent a period of explosive growth, accelerating competition for new audiences. Radio Moscow, the Soviet Union's main international service, was a heavyweight player in the drama over the airwaves, and prided itself not only on the raw power of its voice to reach every corner of the globe, but also on the nature of its programming as a socialist cultural form attuned to the interests of its audiences. This article offers an in-depth analysis of how Moscow's broadcasters envisioned the airwaves, themselves and their listeners — in particular, their listeners in the new nations of a rising ‘Third World’. It is story of personal ambitions and professionalization, of ideological commitments and superpower politics. It is also a story of the choices Radio Moscow made about language, style, content and voice, and the imaginative connections and even intimacy they projected. Moscow's broadcasters envisaged and promoted relationships with Third World listeners using a range of methods, the most important being a worldwide listener survey programme that ran from 1967 to 1982. Fascinatingly subjective, it offers a window on the broadcasters' imagination, the social space of the airwaves and on listenership.