Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia Measures to Implement the CC CPSU Decree, 'Measures to Vigorously Counteract Hostile Radio Propaganda Directed at the Soviet Population'

Communist Party of Estonia
Central Committee
[letterhead]
Nº 0168  Secret

31 [rest of date illegible, possible October]

40822

To the CPSU Central Committee

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia has initiated a number of measures to implement the CC CPSU decree of 19.VII.1960, “Measures to Vigorously Counteract Hostile Radio Propaganda Directed at the Soviet Population.”

Changes have been introduced in the programming of Estonian radio. The most popular local information programs are broadcast when Voice of America is being broadcast in Estonian: Ekho Dnya [Echo of the Day] at 2130, and the latest news and sports programs at 2300. Broadcasts of the 1^st Moscow program are rebroadcast through the 2^nd Estonian radio program in order to cover the Voice of America broadcasts in Russian and Ukrainian.

In order to increase the efficiency of counterpropaganda on the radio, the Estonian SSR Radio and Television Broadcasting Committee has established direct telegraph communications with the Information Department of All-Union Radio (until now such communications were only with the department for Broadcasts abroad). Estonian radio receives commentary by telegraph on questions of international life and materials about the latest news. However, it ought to be noted that these materials sometimes arrive late and their selection is arbitrary. The materials of All-Union Radio ought to be sent to the republic before they are put on the air in Moscow so that a local radio station has an opportunity to broadcast the latest news throughout the country right after the broadcasts from Moscow.

Steps are being taken to improve the ideological content of local counterpropaganda broadcasts; they are now being given a sharper and more combative character. Estonian radio is also resorting, when necessary, to polemics as the sharpest and most effective form of counterpropaganda to refute hostile statements of the foreign press and radio which distort reality. The majority of international commentators whose appearances are being organized three or four times a week in Ekho Dnya broadcasts are successfully accomplishing this task.

Estonian radio is organizing a series of special broadcasts in response to the provocative and slanderous statements of the foreign press and radio. For example, in refuting the mendacious articles of M. Torsen who arrived in the Estonian SSR last summer, which were published in the Swedish émigré newspaper Eesti Paevaleht, an Estonian radio correspondent was in the same places about which Torsen wrote and a special program was broadcast on the radio exposing the false concoction of the émigré newspaper.

The discussion held on 21 October of this year about the dreadful and disenfranchised status of Estonian emigrants in capitalist countries, especially in West Germany; a series of materials “the Hills of Kaleviliyva Accuse” (about the atrocities of the German fascist invaders and their accomplices hiding abroad, now caught in new crimes against humanity); materials about crimes during the years of the fascist occupation, and about the reactionary activity at the present time of Rebane, the Head of the Estonian émigré community in Britain—all this and others can be singled out as the sharpest counterpropaganda programs of Estonian radio. In addition, a series of reports about the achievements of the industry, agriculture, and culture of the Estonian SSR were broadcast to counterbalance the false propaganda of the foreign press and radio.

Material on the above subjects is broadcast in both programs for radio listeners in the republic and broadcasts abroad.

In order to react more quickly to [one or two words illegible] of the Voice of America, the main editor on duty at the [Committee for] Radio and Television Broadcasting of the Estonian SSR has been charged with the responsibility [one or two words illegible] keeping special track of the above broadcasts [one or two words illegible] in order to have an opportunity to daily broadcast by radio [one word illegible] the misleading reports of the Voice of America.

Secretary of the CC CP of Estonia

[signature]
L. lentsman