Moscow Paper Hails Radio Liberty in Slap at Soviet Stations

WASHINGTON — Officials of the U.S. government-operated Radio Liberty said Friday that the station has received a favorable review in the Soviet press for the first time since it began 35 years ago to broadcast news and commentary to the Soviet Union in defiance of Moscow’s censors.

The Moscow News, a weekly newspaper that often expresses liberal opinions that are unusual in the official Soviet press, said this week that Radio Liberty’s coverage of the Armenian earthquake was far better than that of official Soviet radio stations.

Radio Liberty described the compliment as “a touch backhanded” because Moscow News praised the American station only to point up the inadequacies of the Soviet broadcasts.

When the Armenian earthquake struck Dec. 7, just a little more than a week after Soviet authorities ended their jamming of Radio Liberty, the U.S.-controlled station immediately canceled other programming and began a 24-hour-a-day broadcast of quake news, health and safety tips and listener call-ins. The reaction to the disaster was far more prompt than that of official Soviet media.

‘Most Efficient Manner’

“Radio Liberty changed its regular Russian-language broadcasts and in a most efficient manner put a major program on the air,” Moscow News said in its Sunday edition. “In addition, (Radio Liberty) offered to let its listeners from the disaster areas use its frequencies to search for relatives and friends.

“And what were our radio stations doing at this time?” the newspaper demanded. “They carried the usual programs of concerts and reports obviously prepared long before the disaster. What were they waiting for? Orders from above?”

The newspaper added, “We would like to hear first and in greatest detail from our own national sources and not from foreign ones about what happens in our country--and that applies especially in emergency situations.”

Radio Liberty, which broadcasts exclusively to the Soviet Union, and its sister station, Radio Free Europe, which broadcasts to Eastern Europe, went on the air 35 years ago from transmitters in Munich. Originally, the stations claimed to be supported by private contributions, though they were covertly financed by the CIA. After the CIA connection was revealed more than a decade ago, the stations were transferred to open U.S. government control under the Board for International Broadcasting.

‘Surrogate Services’

The board maintains that the stations are “surrogate home broadcasting services” that broadcast the kind of news and information that would be presented by the official radios of the target countries if they were free.

Until it abruptly stopped Nov. 29, the Soviet Union had continuously jammed Radio Liberty in an effort to prevent Soviet citizens from listening to the broadcasts. Despite the jamming, officials said that the programs often could be heard clearly in the countryside, though they were much more difficult to receive in major cities.