The BBC broadcasting through the Iron Curtain

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It is the 90th anniversary of the BBC World Service. Broadcasting to countries behind the Iron Curtain without a free or independent media between 1947 and 1991 was arguably the service’s finest hour. The corporation was on the front line of the information war as the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent Bridget Kendall recalls. Programmes such as the German Service’s Letters Without Signatures created a sense of community among isolated East Germans who could not air their views publicly at home. Meanwhile, Peter Udell, the former controller of European Services, had the challenge of trying to overcome the Soviet censors. Produced and presented by Josephine McDermott. Archive recordings of former employees in the BBC Oral History Collection were used courtesy of Sussex University. (Photo: A West Berlin policeman looks at an East German watchtower at night, 1961. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Josephine
0:10.4	McDermott.
0:13.1	To mark the 90th anniversary of the BBC World Service, we're going back to possibly the
0:18.1	service's finest hour, when between 1947 and 1991, it broadcast to countries behind the
0:25.8	Iron Curtain that did not have a free or independent media.
0:30.8	Through archive recordings of people who worked at the BBC, you'll hear about clandestine
0:35.5	letter writing and the game of cat and mouse the BBC played with their sensors.
0:41.8	It's March 3, 1991, and the BBC's Moscow correspondent, Bridget Kendall, is in Latvia,
0:48.5	which was made part of the Soviet Union in 1940.
0:52.8	His neighbour, Lithuania, has already voted for independence from the Soviet Union and
0:57.5	now it's holding its own vote.
1:00.1	Bridget has just filed the result of the referendum to the BBC newsroom in London, using
1:05.0	the one telephone available.
1:07.2	She leaves the Parliament building in Riga and moves among a crowd of people who are singing
1:12.3	on the banks of the river.
1:14.2	The movement is known as the singing revolution.
1:18.0	Her job now is to count the number of people who have gathered.
1:21.6	She's doing this because she can't rely on the accuracy of the figures, the authorities
1:25.8	or the activists will give her.
1:28.0	A Latvian MP rushed out onto the stage and interrupted the singing and said something to them.
1:33.8	They all cheered and began chanting BBC, BBC, BBC.
1:38.3	So I didn't know what had been said, it had been a Latvian.
	...

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