Radio Freedom Night: 34 years ago, the USSR stopped jamming Western propaganda

Sergey Baimukhametov

This happened after a special decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. A week later, on December 7, 1988, Soviet President Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and said:

“In the context of the Helsinki process, we are also considering removing interference from the transmissions of all foreign radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union”.

The bottom line is that many citizens of the USSR listened to Western radio broadcasts in Russian. There was even a witticism: "There is a custom in Rus' - to listen to the BBC at night". These transmissions were mercilessly blocked by extraneous noise. Special installations operated throughout the country, they were called jammers. There was a continuous howl in the ether, a rattle, as if an unclean force was rampant.

Yevgeny Savostyanov, in 1991-1994 the head of the Moscow Department of the Federal Counterintelligence Service (now the FSB), the former deputy head of the Yeltsin presidential administration (1996-1998), in his book "Democrat-Counterintelligence" recalls how in the old Soviet times in his family , in the circle of friends managed to catch the necessary radio waves:

“With the correct location of the antenna, it was always possible to catch the signal. So I had to crawl along the walls of the apartment with a wire-antenna... The farther from large industrial centers, the easier it is. In 1972, together with several fellow students from the Moscow Mining Institute, I enlisted to pan for gold in Chukotka. One of the first vivid impressions of the life of the mine: a father and son are sitting and having lunch in the dining room, and the radio receiver on their table broadcasts the Voice of America. Later, in the local radio room, I read the order on the regional communications center. It talked about the fact that the radio operator of some village included the transmission of the Voice of America in the local radio network, pointed out the inadmissibility of such actions, and generously handed out penalties. Apparently, only the fact that there is nowhere to send them further than Chukotka saved the perpetrators from big troubles. This is the "competition of ideologies".

Jammers "worked" for half a century, starting from the 30s, with the organization of interference to individual stations, for example, Vatican Radio. During the Patriotic War, all shortwave receivers were confiscated from the Soviet people. Since 1948, mass jamming has already begun. In January 1961, a special department was created in the Ministry of Communications - in pursuance of the Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On measures to strengthen the fight against enemy radio propaganda".

Foreign radio broadcasts ceased to be filled with extraneous noise when the policy of perestroika and glasnost, inextricably linked with the name of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, won in the USSR. That he specifically mentioned "interference removal" in his speech at the UN General Assembly is just a particular. But a particular of great significance, practical and symbolic.

That speech by President Gorbachev was a turning point in the life of a world in constant confrontation between the socialist and capitalist systems. It sounded unthinkable for the communist ideology of the words about the priority of universal values.

Here are just some of the theses:

- Today we have entered an era when progress will be based on universal interest;

- Further world progress is now possible only through the search for a universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order;

- Respect for the views and positions of others, tolerance, readiness to perceive something else not necessarily as bad or hostile, the ability to learn to live side by side, remaining different and not in everything agreeing with each other;

- It is about unity in diversity;

- We believe that the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the interpretation and application of human rights agreements should be mandatory for all states.

And one more thesis. Three years before Gorbachev's speech at the UN, in the summer of 1985, my good friend, the Volgograd writer Anatoly Danilchenko, brought me to Mamaev Kurgan. He showed the building near the memorial complex "To the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad." At that building, two guys were mounting something. “This is the jammer,” said Tolya. “And the guys are in American jeans,” I remarked. ("Branded" jeans at that time could only be "obtained" on the black market.) "That's the absurdity! Danilchenko responded. “They would make such jeans themselves - and no jammers are needed”.

And it is not at all strange, but quite natural, that three years later the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev spoke about the same thing at the UN General Assembly:

“Let everyone prove the advantages of their system, their way of life, their values - not only with words and propaganda, but with real deeds. This is a fair fight of ideologies”.

So jammers have gone down in history, and will become a separate article in the future Dictionary of Soviet Civilization.