Radio Moscow Crackling Late Into a Hot Spanish Night...

I was moved and very interested to see, thanks to Madrid Kid , that the 'Voice of Russia' the current successor to the old Radio Moscow has been reconnecting with some of its loyal listeners in Spain. This is a further example of a most welcome trend within Russia of acknowledging and embracing many diverse aspects of the Soviet times. Of course the important aspect of the Radio Moscow Spanish service was that it provided an important means by which the exiled anti-fascist and progressive forces could stay in direct contact with the Spanish people as Franco's oppressive regime ruthlessly squashed internal opposition to the fascist dictatorship. Voice of Russia came to Madrid on April 23 to pay recognition to a group of Spanish Civil War (1936-39) exiles who helped put together what would become the Spanish-language service at Radio Moscow. During an emotional ceremony that took place at Hotel Puerta de Toledo next to Madrid’s famous Toledo Gate, Leonard Kosichev, VOR’s deputy director for European programs, handed out medals issued by the Russian government. This was the first time that the Spaniards had been publicly honored for their contributions to Radio Moscow and their role in helping provide information to listeners in Spain during the Francisco Franco dictatorship. Among those distinguished were Eusebio Cimorra, depicted above , Pilar Villasante, Vicente Arana, and Agustin Masso, who all began working at Radio Moscow during the 1940s and 1950s. It is estimated that dozens of Spaniards found jobs at the Soviet shortwave radio station after fleeing the Franco regime.

Cimorra, who died in January at the age of 98, was perhaps the most popular Spanish announcer during his more than 30 years at Radio Moscow. Using the on-air pseudonym “Jorge Olivar,” Cimarro began working at the station in 1940. Before the Civil War, he was an influential publisher of the Spanish Communist Party’s newspaper Mundo Obrero. He returned to Spain after the transition to democracy in 1975 and had been recognized as one of the country’s leading "deans" of journalism. “My father always said that Radio Moscow gave him the opportunity to continue to fight against the dictatorship, a fight he began when he was a young journalist in Spain before the Civil War,” recalled Boris Cimorra who received the medal on behalf of his father from Kosichev (right, in photo above). “He decided to continue to fight for his ideals and principles because he was true to his faith. In the best of words, he was a communist who was an idealist, romanticist and intellectual,” said the son who also put in five years at Radio Moscow. Another earlier broadcaster on the Radio Moscow Spanish language service was Pilar Villasante, who also attended the gathering . Pilar came to Moscow as a child at the age of six. She was among the hundreds of Spanish children who were sent to the Soviet Union by their parents with the hope they would receive a better life there than in a fascist society. This massive evacuation began taking place toward the end of the Civil War when it became apparent the Republicans would be defeated. Although she was educated and grew up in Moscow, Villasante never forgot her mother language. She served as artistic director for the Spanish service at Radio Moscow, where she worked for 30 years before returning to Madrid in 1989. “I want to thank the Russian people, the Soviet people for taking us in, educating us and giving us the opportunity to work. I was especially lucky because I got to work for Radio Moscow,” she said.

Some readers of this blog will be delighted to know that they can relive those days of listening to Radio Moscow late into the night thanks to a series of recordings collected by Snithsonian/ Folkways. Perhaps the most evocative memory I have of listening to Radio Moscow was hearing its characteristic ‘Kremlin Bells’ chimes, on a freezing night in the bitter winter of 1981 / 1982 when I was working in Walsall in the West Midlands, I remember thinking that the amount of snow that was falling on us that particular January night was not dissimilar to what you might have expected in Russia. I also always found that Radio Moscow’s political line was so different from the BBC, at that time immersed in the jingoistic lunacy generated throughout Britain following the Falklands War. Furthermore it was actually almost a jolt to hear such anti-imperialist ideas pouring out of the radio from Moscow at this time, weirdly coming from an item of electrical equipment almost intrinsically linked with the drip-drip feed of pro-western and anti-Soviet propaganda, tuned as it was, and still is, normally to BBC Radio 4 , which I still have great time for since it does seem to have largely successfully resisted that vulgarization and dumbing down that characterizes so much of the media today .
Well done to the Voice of Russia for making that wonderful connection between the past and the present, and drawing attention to the role that radio can play in maintaining contact with ideas and information that may not easily be accessible otherwise.