Turning the pages back... August 21, 1954 (08/17/03)

Turning the pages back...

August 21, 1954

Forty-nine years ago, The Ukrainian Weekly reported that Radio Liberation, the anti-Communist station in Munich, Germany, went on the air in the Ukrainian language for the first time on August 16, 1954, with a warning to Ukrainian people that the Soviet regime is trying to prop itself up with appeals to Ukrainian national pride and the offer of a joint status of "elder brother" with the Great Russians.

An announcement of the opening of the broadcasts beamed to Ukraine was made on August 16 at the New York offices of the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism Inc. (ACLB), which provided technical and other support for Radio Liberation.

Following are excerpts from The Weekly's news story about this milestone event.

The opening script in Ukrainian laid stress on the assertion that the Ukrainian people, now cruelly oppressed by the Bolshevist dictatorship, will inevitably take their seat in the "circle of free peoples," and it called on them not to be flattered into "brotherhood" with a tyranny which crushed the democratic Ukrainian Republic and subjected the Ukrainians to bloody purges and decimating famines. It urged the Ukrainians to unite with the other Soviet peoples to struggle against the Soviet regime.

With the addition of Ukrainian, Radio Liberation now operates with nine area language desks. It went on the air on March 1, 1953, with only a Russian-language desk. In addition to Russian and Ukrainian, broadcasts are now transmitted regularly in Belorussian, Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaidjani, Tatar-Bashkir, four languages of Turkestan - Uzbek, Turkmen, Khirkiz and Kazakh - and seven languages of the North Caucasus - Aver, Karachai-Balkar, Chechen-Ingush, Cherkess, Ossetin, Kumik and Lesghin.

Radio Liberation has also undergone a marked expansion in its transmission facilities in the year and a half since it started, Admiral [Leslie C] Stevens [ACLB president] reported. It now has seven transmitters operating on from 10 to 15 different frequencies, and it now is on the air 24 hours a day.

The Soviets reacted from the first day to the broadcasts of Radio Liberation and have carried on a campaign of heavy jamming, Admiral Stevens said. He said reports to his committee indicated the jamming of Radio Liberation was even more intensive than that of other Western radios broadcasting to the Soviet Union. Admiral Stevens attributed this to the fact that Radio Liberation's programming is done by former Soviet citizens who know how to appeal most effectively to their compatriots behind the Iron Curtain. ...

Citing an attack on the American Committee recently in the Moscow newspaper, Pravda, allegedly written by a Ukrainian émigré, Josyp Krutij, who returned to the Soviet Union, Admiral Stevens expressed the opinion that this was inspired by Soviet fear of the effect of Radio Liberation's proposed broadcasts in Ukrainian. It is noteworthy, Admiral Stevens went on, that in the statement credited to Krutij the Soviet propaganda apparatus thought it necessary to discredit Ukrainian émigré organizations and individuals who have been cooperating with the American Committee by smearing them as spies and assassins who are helping the Americans to "enslave the Ukrainian people." This reflects the Kremlin's growing disquiet over American relations with the Soviet emigration, particularly the relations between the American Committee and the Ukrainian emigration, Admiral Stevens commented. ...

The keynote of the initial program in Ukrainian was struck in a script addressed to the Ukrainian youth, exhorting them not to be taken in by the current Soviet campaign to enlist the Ukrainian people as "elder brothers" supporting the grandiose imperialistic designs of the Soviet dictatorship. It reminded the Ukrainian people that they had been a major sufferer under the Bolsheviks, citing the crushing of the Ukrainian People's [National] Republic by the Red Army, the purges of the 1920s, the Kremlin-fostered famine of the 1930s which cost the lives of millions of Ukrainian peasants, and the terrifying purges of the 1930s. The Soviet phase of Ukrainian history has been one of travail, bloodshed and iron tyranny, affecting both [Communist] party members and non-party members alike.

The script went on to point out that the Communist dictatorship now offers the Ukrainians a new status - the status of "elder brother." The regime, is thus trying to bolster itself with appeals to Ukrainian national pride. "Now they say we are to be the 'elder brother,' " the script continued. "But brother in what? We know what Bolshevism has meant for us in the past. We know it cannot change. We are not to be flattered into so-called 'brotherhood' with any such tyranny. Brothers indeed we are - brothers with all the peoples of the USSR. But brothers united in struggle against that anti-people's tyranny ... Young Ukrainians, you know the nature of Bolshevism well. Stand firm in the struggle for freedom and true democracy - for our people and all peoples." ...

Source: "Anti-Communist 'Radio Liberation' Goes On Air In Ukrainian," The Ukrainian Weekly, August 21, 1954; reprinted in "The Ukrainian Weekly 2000," Volume I (1933-1969), Parsippany, N.J.: The Ukrainian Weekly, 2000.

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