After 65 Years The BBC Russian Service Ceases Broadcasts

On Saturday, March 26 the BBC Russian Service aired its last broadcast at 21:30 Moscow time. The BBC Russian Service ceased its radio broadcasts after 65 years on the air because of drastic budget cuts implemented by the British government. The BBC also stopped broadcasting to Russia in English on short and medium wave. A limited audio service with three Russian-language programs will continue on the Internet at http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/, but the Russian service will lose around half its staff.

The BBC started in 1946 and for the past 65 years since the beginning of the Cold War has reached millions of Soviet citizens despite the KGB’s efforts to jam it. Not surprisingly a Moscow Times editorial lamented the closure of the BBC Russian Service as the end of an era, “when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was exiled to a Black Sea island during a short-lived coup in 1991, the BBC Russian Service broadcasts on his pocket radio was the only way he got news.”

The BBC Russian Service is not the only one being axed as part of a money saving strategy by the British government. Five language services (Albanian, Macedonian, Serbian, English for Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa) are scheduled for total closure in a bid to save money. While seven additional language radio programs have been significantly cut – Azeri, Mandarin for Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese and Ukrainian.