RFE/RL service hires Russian speakers only

by Yaro Bihun

WASHINGTON - Participating in a roundtable discussion about the future of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the Dirksen Senate Office Building June 19, RFE/RL President Kevin Klose said that in conjunction with the radio stations' recent move from Munich to Prague, RFE/RL had instituted new language requirements for central Asian services, which, unlike with other services, resulted in many personnel changes.

Mr. Klose stated:

"Many of our Central Asian services almost did not come en masse, because, going to Prague, I iterated several requirements, in the hopes that we would be able to conform our broadcasting to the needs of our listeners in Central Asia in a new way. Among the requirements we put in place was that to be a broadcaster for one of the central Asian services you had to be able to speak that language as it is spoken in that capital today. And that means that you have to deal with, in effect, what has been a Sovietized or Russified version of the local language. But that is what people speak, and we wanted to be relevant with the people to whom we broadcast.

"I also iterated that people coming to our Central Asian services must have a command of Russian, because there is a substantial amount of programming material available in the world, pouring out of sources that write and report only in Russian. And for our Central Asian services, most of those states there have substantial Russian-speaking populations and the lingua franca of the empire was Russian. Therefore, our services, it seems to me, must have access to get the best possible economical use of the taxpayers' money that we receive. So we made substantial hires in the central Asian Services."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 7, 1996, No. 27, Vol. LXIV

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