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National Languages and Soviet Television: A Statistical Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Henry Norr
Henry Norr*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

In the last two decades the Soviet Union has definitively entered the age of television. Although a Petersburg engineer allegedly “laid the foundation of television” (by designing the cathode ray tube!) as far back as the beginning of the century, and a Russian engineer in Uzbekistan reportedly transmitted the image of a human face in 1928, the Soviets lagged well behind the Western world in the development of the new medium through the 1950s. In 1960, however, the Central Committee of the Communist party declared that “television, along with the press and radio broadcasting, is called upon to play an important role in the education of Soviet people in the spirit of communist principles [ideinost'] and morality, of intransigence toward bourgeois ideology and morality, [and] in the mobilization of the workers …. “ Thereafter, Soviet television progressed at a rapid rate. Between 1961 and 1975, the number of television receivers in the country increased more than eleven-fold. The enormous Ostankino Center in Moscow was built to serve as the main production and transmission base, and a network of cables, relay stations and earth satellites was established to carry broadcasts to the far corners of the Union.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , spring 1985 , pp. 84 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

1 Cina, 31 May 1973, as cited in Katz, Zev, The Communications System in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 45, n. 11, tells of the Petersburg engineer Rozing. James Critchlow, “Broadcasting in the Uzbek S.S.R.,” Central Asian Review, vol. XV, no. 3 (1967): 261-62, reports the claim about 1928. Details of the history of Soviet television are in F. Gayle Durham (Hollander), Radio and Television in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); and Buton Paulu, Radio and Television Broadcasting in Eastern Europe (Minneapolis, 1974).Google Scholar

2 “O dal'neishem razvitii sovetskogo televideniia” (izlozhenie of the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 29 Jan. 1960). In O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i televidenii: sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow, 1972), p. 537. A similar resolution followed two years later (pp. 542-48).Google Scholar

3 Based on the 1961 figure in Mark Hopkins, Mass Media in the Soviet Union (New York, 1972), p. 250, and the 1975 total in Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1979 g. (Moscow, 1980), p. 352.Google Scholar

4 Televidenie: vchera, segodnia, zavtra, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1981): 55. Presumably the phrase means that 80% live in areas reached by at least some TV transmissions.Google Scholar

5 “Ekran druzhby,” Sovetskaia kultura, 12 May 1983.Google Scholar

6 Televidenie: vchera, p. 55.Google Scholar

7 Powell, David, “Television in the USSR,” Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3 (Fall 1975): 295, quoting the Soviet sociologist of media, B. Firsov.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Gordon, L. and Klopov, E., Man After Work (Moscow, 1975), pp. 120-24, 199–205, 263-64.Google Scholar

9 Mickiewicz, Ellen Propper, Media and the Russian Public (New York, 1981), p. 21.Google Scholar

10 Including the Hopkins, Mickiewicz, Paulu, and Powell works cited above.Google Scholar

11 See, for instance, the articles collected in Katz, Zev, Rogers, Rosemarie and Harned, Frederic C. (eds.), Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York, 1975), which include minimal data on the electronic media in the union republics; and Wasyl Veryha, Communication Media and Soviet Nationality Policy: Status of National Languages in Soviet T.V. Broadcasting (New York, 1972), which is discussed on p .89 of the present report.Google Scholar

12 Calculated from Vestnik Statistiki 7 (1980): 41, Table 1.Google Scholar

13 See the data in Durham (Hollander), op. cit., p. 104.Google Scholar

14 Paulu, , op. cit., p. 88.Google Scholar

15 Mickiewicz, , op. cit., pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

16 Sorokin, G., “What the Small Screen Needs.” In Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol. XXX, no. 8 (22 March 1978): 13. No doubt the majority of these “spontaneously” built stations were in the provinces of the RSFSR, but the data collected in Durham (Hollander), p. 104, suggest that Sorokin must also be referring to republican broadcasting.Google Scholar

17 Hopkins, , op. cit., p. 252. Cf. A. Yakovlev, “Television: Problems and Prospects.” In Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol XVII, no. 39, pp. 14-17: “The first thing to be done to improve television programming substantially is to centralize the preparation of features and documentaries” (p. 16).Google Scholar

18 Only in Moldavia is there no clearly defined republican channel; there, programs of local origin are interspersed with Central Television productions on two local channels.Google Scholar

19 Quoted in “Ekran druzhby,” Sovetskaia kultura, 12 May 1983.Google Scholar

20 Powell, , op. cit., pp. 292-93.Google Scholar

21 See note 11 above.Google Scholar

22 Solchanyk, Roman, “Russian Language and Soviet Politics,” Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIV, no. 1 (January 1982): 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Paulu, , op. cit., p. 75.Google Scholar

24 The article by Huddle, Frank Jr. on “Azerbaidzhan and the Azerbaidzhanis” in Katz, et al., Handbook, p. 200, no. 92, does mention, re TV in Baku, that, “With a special adapter it is now possible to listen in two languages. [sic — presumably he means that it is possible to make a choice!] This could be important in promoting future bilingualism.” Other authors in the Handbook, however, make no mention of such systems. Nor does Iu. D. Desheriev in his manual Zakonomernosti razvitiia literaturnykh iazykov narodov SSSR v sovetskuiu epokhu: Razvitie obshchestvennykh funktsii literaturnykh iazykov (Moscow, 1976), although he does mention the dubbing of the “most important” broadcasts of central radio and television in Georgia (p. 182).Google Scholar

Another circumstantial indication that bilingual transmissions are not a major factor on Soviet TV is the unique table on language use in the electronic media in the 1979 Estonian statistical yearbook (see my comment with Table 6). Had bilingual broadcasting been in widespread use, the pattern could not have been as reported there.Google Scholar

25 Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1961), p. 117.Google Scholar

26 Misiunas, Romuald J. and Taagepera, Rein, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence 1940-1980 (London, 1983), p. 209.Google Scholar

27 Sorokin, , op. cit. (note 16).Google Scholar

28 Solchanyk, , op. cit. (note 22), pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

29 Desheriev, , op. cit. (note 24), pp. 366, 385.Google Scholar

30 “Postizhenie,” Zhurnalist 9 (Sept. 1982): 40.Google Scholar

31 Karemiaz, Rut, “Kak tiazhelye pushki v boiu!” Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 7 (1967): p. 33.Google Scholar