I went to school in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the 1970s. This period in the Soviet Union is now commonly referred to as the “Era of Stagnation.” We felt its effects firsthand. We did not know what freedom of speech was. All media belonged to the state, and all were “party-affiliated.” Since there was only one party in the USSR, the Communist Party, all information was exclusively communist. Naturally, the media spoke only of the incredible successes of the working class and the over-fulfillment of party and government plans. We found this completely uninteresting, so we searched for alternative sources of information.
Radio broadcasting helped. Almost every home had a radio receiver capable of picking up various wave frequencies. That was when I first heard Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and the BBC. My father listened to these stations. Around the age of 14–15, I also began to listen to these “enemy voices,” as they were called at the time. I was primarily interested in the news reports about events that the Soviet press did not cover. And, of course, music. Western radio stations were one of the few sources of information about Western music, which was largely ignored in the USSR. Yes, even music was under ideological pressure.
Today, not everyone remembers, but back then, popular bands released new albums almost annually. It was an incredible time for the invention of new sounds — Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, 10cc, and many other artists who are now largely forgotten. But they were giants of their time. Thanks to musical radio programs, we were aware of what was happening.
The first broadcasts of the Russian Service of Radio Liberty, originally called “Radio Liberation,” went on air on March 1, 1953. On March 18 of the same year, the Turkestan editorial office was established, broadcasting in several languages, including Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, Karakalpak, and Uyghur. Initially, broadcasts in Kazakh, known as “Bostandyk Radiosy” (Radio Liberation), aired four times a week for five minutes each.
In the 1960s, the volume of Kazakh-language broadcasting increased to one hour per week, with a four-person team working on its production. By the late 1960s, the Turkestan editorial office was reorganized into “Northern” and “Southern” departments, with the Kazakh program included in the “Northern” department. Khasen Oraltai headed the Kazakh service.
In 1971, the Turkestan Editorial Office was further divided into three separate editorial teams: “Turkestan-1,” “Turkestan-2,” and “Turkestan-3,” with Kazakh-language broadcasts conducted through “Turkestan-3.” By 1975, broadcast time had increased to half an hour in the morning and evening.
Broadcasts were transmitted on shortwave from Munich. Radio Liberty had no correspondents within the Kazakh SSR. In the USSR, the station’s broadcasts were jammed until 1988. In the foothills of Almaty, towers that housed jamming equipment for these broadcasts still stand today.
In 1993, a Radio Liberty bureau was opened in Almaty, followed by a branch in Astana. However, after President Trump signed an executive order for the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, the future of these radio stations has been cast into doubt. Nonetheless, Kazakh Service Director Torokul Doorov wrote on Facebook that despite all developments, the editorial office would continue its work. Similarly, Venera Dzhumataeva, a representative of the Kyrgyz service, stated that they were continuing their operations for now.
Assessing the effectiveness of these radio stations is difficult. It is clear that in dictatorships that still exist in Central Asia, and under covert censorship, such activities can be beneficial. However, an analysis of the audience for the popular YouTube channel Azattyq using the Empty Subscriber calculator service revealed that out of 1.88 million subscribers, only 2% were active users. The remaining 98% constitute a “dead” subscriber base.
In Kazakhstan, for example, despite the prevailing belief in implicit censorship, access to information is virtually unrestricted. There is a different problem here — the overabundance of state-owned media. These media outlets often, as Elon Musk put it, “talk to themselves.”
I remember well how my mother asked me to listen to these radio broadcasts at low volume so that no one outside could hear. She was afraid that listening to “enemy voices” could lead to persecution. She remembered the repressions of the 1930s when her father was declared an “enemy of the people” and their family was exiled to Uzbekistan. The reason? He was a private entrepreneur and a rather successful one. But when she voiced her concerns, my father confidently replied, “It’s a different time now. They wouldn’t dare.”
It seems that these “enemy voices”, Radio Liberty and VOA, may be coming to an end. However, it is entirely possible that the battle for people’s minds is moving to a new stage, and radio broadcasting is simply outdated, with more modern technologies replacing traditional formats.
