Hearted Youtube comments on The Icarus Project (@icarusproject) channel.
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@icarusproject Ohhh now you're asking someone who can drone on and on for ages! Here's one that instantly springs to mind: Radio Moscow had 24/7 English broadcasts all across the shortwave spectrum. If you had a good all-band receiver with a good antenna, you could listen to it, with a few retunes, all day. It had this slight hum behind it, like transformer interference at their end, which instantly identified it.
Well, the Soviets were well aware that listeners knew that, whatever they said about the USSR, it would always be received as propaganda. How could it be anything else? That's really what an External Service is *for*, after all! So they had this idea - Radio Station Peace and Progress. The tagline of this station was "The Voice of Soviet Public Opinion". It had one of the scariest interval signals (an "intsig" is the repeated tune played up to five minutes before the hour so you know what station you're listening to), comparable only with Radio Tirana from Albania in its terrifying quality! RSPP would pretend to gently "argue" with some of Radio Moscow's news items. So, Moscow would report that (for example) Brezhnev says they want the grain production in Kazakhstan to increase by 30% next year. RSPP would then "interview" some hapless Russian (who said two words in Russian before an English translation was blasted over the top of the voice!) and this translation would perhaps state: "I think that while Comrade Secretary Brezhnev is correct in pushing for 30%, we workers would prefer 35%, so that we have plenty to sell on the foreign market. This would enable us to import more consumer goods or vital supplies that our industry hasn't quite managed to produce yet". The last two words of the original Russian voice would be heard, then the presenter would say, for example: "Well, there you have it. The ordinary worker in the street feels we could increase productivity still further, giving the Soviet Union more of an edge, and a better bargaining tool". There might be a couple of these, as the RSPP programmes were quite short.
Interesting, you might think. BUT! Radio Moscow in English had just left that frequency, moments before RSPP started. Plus, the presenter (of you regularly listened to Moscow) was one of their own presenter family! And lastly, most tellingly, the transformer hum was present throughout the RSPP broadcast!
There you go. One right off the lid of my cap. Let me know if you're interested in more boring anecdotes! Stay well my friend!
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