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Soviet Union [USSR] Radio
Like other party-controlled media in the late 1980s, radio
broadcasts attempted to instill in the population a sense of duty
and loyalty to the party and state. Every day the government
broadcast an estimated 1,400 hours of radio programming to all
parts of the country, often in as many as 70 languages. The main
programming emanated from Moscow, where eight radio channels
broadcast 180 hours daily to audiences throughout the country.
Government domination of radio broadcasts was, however, not
complete. Since the onset of the post-World War II Cold War,
government programs have competed with broadcasts originating in
the West, which have been aimed across the country's borders with
the intention of providing independent information to the
population, particularly on topics that censors desperately tried
to ban. The government, until 1988, routinely jammed radio
broadcasts by American-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
the Voice of America, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and
Deutsche Welle, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)
Ministry of the Interior broadcast. An estimated 2 to 3 million
citizens regularly listened to these foreign broadcasts when the
authorities were not jamming them.
Data as of May 1989
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