Everyday Uses of Western Radio in the Soviet Union

Two public memories of radio and surveillance in the Soviet Union still circulate widely in the former Soviet states. In the 1930s and 1940s, the story goes, radios had to be always turned on to demonstrate one's loyalty to the state--the Stalinist set, "radio tochka," could only pick up one, official, station. If listeners turned their radio off, they could be denounced to the secret police. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the post-Stalinist period of the "Thaw," transistor radios, often made by Soviet radio amateurs, would be taken to remote villages or deserted beaches, where government jamming of foreign stations was less effective. There, away from prying eyes of possible informers, listeners would try to tune in popular music or news coming from Radio Liberty or the BBC.

We know that Soviet dissidents enthusiastically supported and participated in Voice of America broadcasts. This paper will instead examine how ordinary people in the Soviet Union listened to unauthorized Western radio. It will focus on amateur operators who were often apolitical or even skeptical of Western reports, yet often rebroadcast Western music, along with forbidden songs by Soviet musicians, on their own radio sets and over unauthorized frequencies. The paper will argue that radio amateurs existed in but not of the system, violating some of its rules—many of their infractions would be illegal in a free market society as well—and ignoring others. Their view of Western society was formed more by rock music than by political commentary. Their practical politics points to a way of life that is skeptical both of free market ideologies and of state socialism. Their experience suggests that the concept of «resistance» may be inadequate for analyzing late Soviet history whereas economic categories such as class and piracy may become more useful.