This year our country celebrated the 67th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. But to this day, new unknown pages of the past, stories and legends about the exploits of soldiers, officers and commanders, military journalists, and the media, are emerging for our descendants.
They say that during the war, Adolf Hitler declared enemy number one a person who did not command a front, an army, a regiment, or even a company. He did not serve in the army, did not destroy a single fascist. Who is this mysterious person?
Hitler declared All-Union Radio announcer Yuri Levitan as enemy number one. The information war was very important.
"Attention! Moscow speaks! Citizens Soviet Union! Today at 4 o’clock in the morning, without presenting any claims to the Soviet Union, without declaring war, German troops attacked our country.” Levitan's voice with these words went around multimillion-dollar feature films and documentaries.
Already on June 24, 1941, by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Soviet Information Bureau was created, which was intended to cover in the press and on the radio international events on the fronts and the life of the country.
Information about events at the front was covered by Yuri Levitan.
Yuri Borisovich Levitan was born on September 19, 1914 in the village of Bessonovka, Belgorod region. From the age of 17 he worked at Moscow radio. For more than 50 years, the announcer of the All-Union Radio broadcast the most important information messages. He had government awards.
Even at the age of 12, Levitan had a bass that adults were amazed at. In the yard they gave him the nickname “Yurka the Trumpet.”
They say that mothers from the windows asked him to call their children who had gone on a spree. And his voice was heard for several blocks.
People believed Levitanov's bass, the information transmitted by the Soviet Information Bureau, from the very first days of the war, that the enemy was defeated at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, etc.
In Berlin they quickly realized that radio was as terrible an information weapon as military Katyushas. Adolf Hitler did not speak Russian, but when he heard Levitan’s voice, he realized what a terrible force a person with such a voice represented, and ordered: “Destroy!”
The announcer was officially recognized as enemy number one of the Nazi Reich. A reward of 250 thousand marks was placed on Levitan's head.
At the beginning of July, a sabotage group was sent to the Soviet rear with the goal of getting to Moscow, entering the Moscow radio premises and destroying radio announcer Levitan.
Soldiers of the Zagorsk fighter battalion and detachment people's militia intercepted and neutralized the sabotage group.
Hitler’s “propagandist” Goebbels also understood the danger of Soviet radio. A plan was drawn up to destroy Moscow radio. The first flight to Moscow took place a month after the start of the war - July 22, 1941. Hitler's aces had bombs weighing from 100 to 500 kg on board. The Moscow map identified objects to be destroyed first: the Kremlin, the mausoleum, Grand Theatre, power plants and radio committee.
A German pilot dropped a 200-kilogram landmine on the building from which the “main mouthpiece of Moscow” was broadcasting. But it didn't explode. After the work of sappers, an inscription was found on the body of the bomb: German, made by the anti-fascists who made it: “We help as much as we can.”
This bomb was intended specifically for Yuri Levitan.
The hunt for Levitan began. Already in August 1941, the announcer was evacuated to Sverdlovsk. The most powerful radio station was located there. From there, Sovinformburo reports were broadcast throughout the Soviet Union.
Hitler did not know where Yuri Levitan was. He gave the order to the intelligence services to find and kidnap enemy number 1.
The kidnapping did not take place. Levitan was guarded daily by NKVD officers.
In March 1943, Levitan was secretly transferred to Kuibyshev.
And the order to defeat Nazi Germany he was already reading from Moscow.
Yuri Borisovich Levitan was not only Hitler’s personal enemy number one, but also the voice of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the victory of our first cosmonauts, Komsomol construction projects, etc.
Based on materials from Bolshoi Soviet Encyclopedia and the magazine “Secrets of the 20th Century” prepared
PERSONAL ENEMY OF THE FURER.
ABOUT There have always been legends about it. Red-haired bespectacled man with thick lenses and short stature. The man for whom the German leadership offered 200 thousand marks. A person who was one of the first to receive the Order of Victory.
And this despite the fact that he did not participate in hostilities. Personal enemy of Hitler and Goebbels. The first announcer in the Soviet Union to become an Honored and then People's Artist.
It was he who announced the beginning of the war to the whole country; he broadcast from " Soviet information bureau". It was he who told the world that “The Great Patriotic War, waged by the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders, was victoriously completed.” Yuri Levitan is the great voice of the era.
Yurka Trumpet
Yuri Levitan spent his entire childhood in Vladimir. His father Boris Samoilovich was a tailor. They say it's very good. But in 1929 he was deprived of the right to vote (they were called “disenfranchised”) for “using hired labor” and miraculously avoided imprisonment. Boris Samoilovich wanted his son to become an engineer. Yura dreamed of a career as an opera singer. Because of his loud voice, they called him Yurka Truba, and none of the neighbors doubted that Levi-tan the younger would be an artist.
After the 9th grade, the boy simply ran away from home and came to Moscow on a freight train to enroll at the Institute of Cinematography. He was not accepted there because of his nondescript appearance and Vladimir appearance. It’s a shame to return home with nothing. Yuri wanders around Moscow, unloads wagons, and reaches almost despair when an announcement about a broadcasting competition catches his eye. He knew nothing about this profession, but someone said that he was almost an artist, and Yuri came to the competition. “You have a Volga dialect, a regional dialect, not a Moscow style, who will accept you?!” - the secretary tried to reason with him, looking with hostility at the lanky boy in bicycle glasses, rubber slippers and a faded T-shirt. But she was still included in the competition list - one of... nine hundred.
He was accepted, but for another six months Levitan was listed as an electrician's assistant and lived in a music closet among records. And he fights with the tide.
Favorite voice of the leaders
Outstanding announcers and artists of that time, Vasily Kachalov and Mikhail Lebedev, became the teachers of 17-year-old Levitan. Teacher of speech technique and voice production - Elizaveta Yuzvitskaya. Soon there is no trace left of the Volga dialect. A thin, bespectacled man from the provinces mints the text in Moscow. They say that even when visiting his homeland, Levitan did not allow himself to relax - he spoke correctly and with the intonation of an announcer.
Yuri conducted his first broadcasts on the night air, replacing his more eminent colleagues. Stalin, who often worked at night, heard him and recommended Levitan to read his reports. The mission is honorable, but dangerous: for any mistake you can end up in a camp for about ten years. And if they remember the “disenfranchised” dad! But God had mercy: since 1934, all of Stalin’s reports on air were voiced by Levitan. Later, Nikita Khrushchev “communicated” with the people in Levitan’s voice. Once, at some party plenum, Nikita Sergeevich said this: “I, of course, am not as popular as Levitan, but today you will have to listen to a report performed by me.”
Victory according to Levitan
Contrary to popular belief, it was not Levitan who was the first to declare war, but Foreign Minister Molotov. Levitan then simply repeated it. But in their memoirs, Zhukov, Rokossovsky, and other marshals for some reason wrote that Yuri Levitan announced the beginning of the war. Then they sometimes asked him about this, but invariably received the answer: “I know. But what, should I now give a public refutation?!” So this championship remained with Levitan.
And every day of the war for millions of people in the Soviet Union began with reports from the Sovinformburo. From Levitan's voice. At first these were bleak messages: retreat, capture of thousands of soldiers, fierce battles, abandoned cities. Talking is painful and difficult. The pauses are getting longer, and the messages are becoming more alarming. In Moscow, the distant roar of guns can already be heard. “You can see the Kremlin through binoculars,” he said! Berlin radio. How long-awaited the news of the first victory was for everyone! And the first fireworks! Yuri Levitan recalled: “They hand me a package, I’m running down the corridor, a minute and a half left. I turned on the microphone and restrainedly: “Moscow is speaking.” Order..." I think: what kind of order is this, what is it about? I draw out the words. I glanced at the first paragraphs and suddenly I see that our troops have liberated Oryol and Belgorod. Do you understand my state? There will be fireworks!"
Very quickly the people renamed Levitan Salutan, and when he was rushing to work, the boys shouted after him: “Salute when?” And even a joke appeared. They ask Stalin, when will victory be? The leader thought and replied: “When Levitan says, then there will be victory.”
The Fuhrer's personal enemy
From the first days of the war, Yuri Levitan became an enemy of Germany and a personal enemy of Hitler. 200 thousand marks were promised to the one who would deliver Levitan alive to Berlin. Without doubting the victory of Germany at the beginning of the war, Hitler really wanted the world to learn about it from the lips of Levitan. When the Nazis realized that they would not be able to kidnap announcer No. 1 of the Soviet Union, they decided to destroy him. In the summer of 1941, a half-ton bomb fell into the courtyard of the Radio Committee, and German radio hastened to report: “The Bolshevik radio center has been destroyed! Levitan has been killed!” But the Nazis were in a hurry: the bomb fell into a sewer hatch and did not explode. Less than half an hour passed before Levitan’s voice sounded on the air.
Loudspeakers were installed at the front line. Levitan's voice announced: "Every seven seconds one German soldier dies at the front." And after that, a tango melody sounded over the trenches. And our troops went on a counteroffensive. And Levitan began to receive letters from the front. The soldiers wrote: "Let's go forward. Take care of your voice, you will have more work." Levitan's baritone was compared to volleys of Katyusha rockets, to metal covered with velvet, called an alarm voice...
After the war, Levitan became known throughout the world. After all, he reported the first artificial satellite planet Earth - about the beginning space age. He spoke about the launching of the world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker, Lenin. About the first man's flight into space. Experts calculated that Levitan spoke 108 words per minute, and not a word more. Yuri Levitan broadcast to the entire planet with such masterfully controlled speed. And throughout his life he conducted more than 60 thousand radio broadcasts.
Source: "Interesting newspaper. Mysteries of civilization" No. 2 2010,
http://mysite.e-stile.ru/articlecomment3/2/32/
Gagarin suggested to Levitan: “Let you be Yura No. 1, and I will be No. 2.”
The most enduring legend about him still lives: Hitler promised to pay 250 thousand marks for the head of Yuri Levitan - so Yuri Borisovich got him with his victorious voice. Information also leaked that a group of saboteurs had been prepared to be sent to Moscow to kidnap Levitan, and in case of a misfire, bring his head. It turned out the other way around: the Fuhrer’s skull was delivered to Moscow, and Yuri Levitan announced the victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany...
Lost children ran to the voice
We met with him several times. And always - in the House of Cinema on Vorovskogo Street (now Povarskaya). Then, in the late 50s, foreign films were shown there on Thursdays, and Levitan tried not to miss them. He was youthful, quite tall, and had voluminous black curly hair that made him look even taller.
Veteran announcer National artist The USSR favored the aspiring journalist and eagerly talked about himself. Of course, I asked about how he chose such a rare profession at that time and how he managed to achieve his dream.
But it turns out there was no such dream. It all happened by chance. I came from my native Vladimir with a friend to enter the film institute - I wanted to become an artist. A seventeen-year-old boy in a fashionable striped T-shirt with laces on the chest and very shabby trousers. But what a voice it was! Young Levitan knew very well about his capabilities, since in his native yard the mothers of children often turned to him, desperate to find them. Levitan used his voice to call the lost ones, and they returned home. For which Yuri was given the nickname - Trumpet. He wasn't offended.
But neither Levitan nor his comrade were allowed into the institute. They explained: they say that the appearance of both is not suitable for the acting profession. The boys rushed to film colleges. But even there they were rejected under a different pretext - because of a specific provincial dialect. I had to return to my native land.
But it turned out for the better, because at home I came across an advertisement for the recruitment of announcers for Moscow radio. And again Levitan went to the capital. IN admissions committee the great artist Vasily Kachalov was seated. Before Levitan even had time to close his mouth, Kachalov proclaimed: “You are accepted!”
Prolonged milking
They were not allowed to the microphone right away: months were spent preparing for the profession - only after that they were enrolled in the group of trainees. And being an intern is already a victory! True, at first the quick young man was used in the role of “bring and serve”: to run for sandwiches or pick up a reel of recording from a neighboring studio. He remembered the first time he was entrusted with a microphone. Responsible task: announce a musical number live. All over the country!
Then things moved quickly. Reading news releases, reports about the achievements of Soviet miners, steelworkers, grain growers... Then they began to trust Levitan to put gramophone records on the air himself. It was here that Yuri received his only reprimand. One day a young man rushed out of the studio on some business, having put on a record with the folk song “In the evening a girl milked a cow,” and... forgot! I rushed back, and there was an angry boss: the song had been spinning in one place for several minutes - the needle had jammed. The comrades were choking with laughter: when, Yura, will the girl finish milking? But the mistake did not ruin his career.
Levitan's fate was decided in one night. He was assigned to read proofs of Pravda for stenographers of regional publishing houses on the night broadcast, and a technical one at that. They listened to the text and passed it on to local printing houses. And one day the leader of the peoples, who, as is known, was vigilant at night, heard this broadcast. Yuri Borisovich remembered that day - January 25, 1934. Stalin really liked the announcer’s voice, and he demanded that this particular person read out the next day full text his report at the XVII Bolshevik Congress. Almost five hours of continuous reading - and not a single hesitation, slip of the tongue, or hesitation. Stalin ordered that Levitan henceforth read all important state documents.
Transformation into a balding blond
Early in the morning of June 22, 1941, Levitan was called to work. Nothing was explained. I drove and realized: something terrible had happened. There is silence in the studio. People stood in groups and if they spoke, they spoke only in a low voice. After Foreign Minister Molotov spoke, the text of his speech was repeated by Levitan.
In August 1941, the country's main radio studio was taken to Sverdlovsk - and not so much for security reasons, but out of technical necessity: all the city radio towers, except Shukhovskaya, were dismantled, since they served as excellent reference points for enemy pilots. At the new base, if the country's main announcer was allowed out into the streets, it was only under guard. Information has emerged that Levitan has become the target of a secret hunt: German intelligence was tasked with capturing Levitan alive. Ours did everything to misinform the enemies about what Levitan looks like. He was described as a short, plump, balding blond with gray eyes (in fact, the announcer was the complete opposite). Work in the Urals continued until August 1943, when Levitan was transported to Kuibyshev, now Samara.
To sow in Soviet army panic, fascist propagandists tried to fake his voice. On the German wave they reported victories of German weapons...
"Moscow speaks"
On May 9, 1945, on the Spasskaya Tower at 21:55, the voice of Yuri Levitan sounded over the entire country: “Attention! Moscow speaks! All the radio stations of the Soviet Union are working..." Then we all know and remember: the words about the Victory - long-awaited to the point of tears, and Levitan spoke about it in such a way that everyone was overwhelmed by a hot wave of jubilation...
And what about Yuri Borisovich’s home? He married his girlfriend, an institute student foreign languages, they had a daughter, Natasha. But my husband lived more at work than at home. As a result, the couple divorced, although they remained friends. Even on New Year Yuri Borisovich went to his ex-wife's new family. And in 2006, an accident happened to the announcer’s daughter Natasha, which was discussed for a long time in Moscow. A mentally ill adult son, who abused a woman for a long time, killed her...
CALL TO DESCENDANT
Arthur Levitan: Stalin saved my great-grandfather from execution
Now I am the only direct descendant of Yuri Levitan, my great-grandfather,” Arthur Levitan told KP. - Mom told me a lot about Yuri Borisovich.
Everybody knows tragic story about your grandmother's death. There were rumors that they could have killed her in order to take possession of the announcer's secret archive, and make her mentally ill son, your father, the criminal...
No. The investigation proved that it was Boris who killed his mother. One hundred percent. I now have part of my great-grandfather’s archive: his diaries, notes, photographs. Perhaps someday I will write a book based on the archive.
Has a big name helped you in life?
On television, when I started doing it, yes. And in other matters, including computer ones, I achieved everything myself (Arthur is a six-time world champion in programming. - Ed.). Back in the 11th grade of school, I opened my own design computer studio, and my company is still operating. But now I'm more interested in television. At first he worked there as a designer, and now he has become a news anchor on one of the TV channels.
That is, they actually followed in the footsteps of their great-grandfather?
Yes. Moreover, until recently I bore my mother’s surname - Sudarikov. But just recently, about six months ago, he took his great-grandfather’s surname - Levitan.
For example, few people know that Stalin literally saved Yuri Borisovich from death. After the war, the purge began, Stalin was provided with lists: who was to be shot, who was to be exiled. On one of the lists was Yuri Borisovich at number 116. Usually Stalin waved without reading it and sent it. But this time he decided to honor the names. I saw the name Levitan. I called those who made the lists: they say, why is he here? “There are suspicions that he is working for the West. Besides, he’s a Jew!” - they answered the leader. “Even though he is a Jew, he is my Jew,” said Stalin and crossed off Yuri Borisovich’s name from the list. By the way, Levitan did not know about this. This became known after his death from declassified Stalinist archives.
In the Levitan archive that I got, there are many photographs of Yuri Borisovich with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. My great-grandfather often came home to visit the Gagarins. One day, the cosmonaut’s wife called from the kitchen: “Yura, come have dinner.” Two Yuras came running. And then Yuri Alekseevich said to Levitan: “Yuri Borisovich, let you be Yura number one, and I will be Yura number two.” So they agreed and were friends until the last days.
MEMORIES OF ANNOUNCERS
Anna SHATILOVA: Everyone went to him to borrow money
We have been friends with Yuri Borisovich since 1959,” famous TV announcer Anna Shatilova told KP. - For me, he was the god of the profession! I looked at him with admiration. At first I was shy, but he was so easy to communicate with that I endeared myself to her.
And when my college friend was getting married, I asked Yuri Borisovich to become a witness at this wedding. You can imagine, he agreed! I was a witness from the bride's side, and he was a witness from the groom's side. At the wedding, the guests were simply stunned...
Yuri Borisovich earned good money and easily lent money. After his departure, daughter Natasha discovered a large list of debtors. One of our famous announcers (I won’t name the last name), as it turned out, borrowed a large amount of money from him and did not pay it back. And we even wrote her a letter: they say, she needs to return it. I don’t know if she returned it...
By the way, in life Levitan spoke quietly, without that announcer-like metal in his voice.
Evgeniy SUSLOV: Yuri Borisovich advised not to imitate him
I personally knew Yuri Borisovich since 1962. But I always followed his example. As a boy I learned to copy his voice - I have the same loud bass by nature. And such an incident arose. At a television and radio announcer competition, I spoke in Levitan’s voice. The jury included Yuri Borisovich himself, Valentina Leontyeva, Anna Shilova and Nina Vladimirovna Kondratova, who said teasingly to Levitan: “Well, Yuri Borisovich, you can retire. There is already a contender for your place.” He reacted a little painfully - he was not offended, but thoughtful. I was accepted. And then Levitan gave me advice: “Zhenya, please don’t imitate anymore. Why do you need to be the second Levitan, be yourself!” And I began to develop my own style.
BUT THERE WAS ANOTHER CASE
Decided I was crazy
One day Levitan ended up in the hospital with a heart attack. And in the morning it was necessary to read the new Resolution of the Central Committee. The State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company came to pick up the patient for recording. But the doctor was adamant: “You won’t get him there alive!”
Levitan himself recalled: “And now it’s six in the morning. Call signs of Moscow. Naturally, I'm not sleeping. My heart sank - something was about to happen. And suddenly... I hear my own voice reading the new Resolution of the Central Committee. There is no doubt - it's me. All is mine. And the timbre, and the intonation, and the pauses, and even my breath. I'm going crazy? Or has already left. At worst - auditory hallucinations.
What happened? At night, an emergency call was announced on the radio. The bosses knew that they, too, would be blamed. Someone remembered that at one acting gathering, a puny Jew, a recent graduate of GITIS, made parodies, including me. One to one. But no one knows his name. There is only a description of appearance. They immediately woke up the rector of GITIS... He - his subordinates. We figured it out. In general, at about four o’clock two security officers showed up at the young actor’s home. The guy, of course, got scared - he was thrown into the car and onto the radio. They gave me the text and locked me in the announcer's room so that I could master the text. About forty minutes later they took him into the studio, and he read the entire resolution through a microphone. This was later a famous pop artist, an unsurpassed master of parodies, Gennady Dudnik. Later we met him, and I gave him a signet with the inscription: “For saving the announcer.”
How Levitan got rid of the Vladimir okanya and why he stayed for the second year at school
Little-known and legendary facts from the Vladimir childhood of the “main voice of the USSR”
The future classic of correct Russian speech was originally called not Yuri Borisovich, but Yudka Berkovich; his birth certificate, signed by the public rabbi of Vladimir, is kept in the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve. The future “voice of Victory” was born on October 2, 1914 in the family of tailor Berka (Boris) Shmulevich Levitan in a rented apartment in the house of merchant Varvara Koziorova on Bolshaya Moskovskaya, 46. He lived on Muromskaya Street, near which there was, as it were, a tiny Jewish settlement - practically just one yard (read more)
In May 1945, many important documents were discovered in Adolf Hitler's bunker that helped shed light on many of the events of World War II. Among the papers was the “Wanted List of the USSR” with the names and personal data of persons to be destroyed. Special files were compiled by the Nazis for citizens of other states. This information was not actually a secret. The Fuhrer openly named the names of those whose words or actions seemed offensive or humiliating to him. He pronounced their names during public speaking and willingly shared them with journalists.
Policy
For obvious reasons, Hitler included in his “black list” a large number of political figures of that time. He considered Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and De Gaulle his personal enemies. Roosevelt did not want to become an ally of Hitler and publicly called him a “stupid gangster” who could only solve problems through force. After Germany attacked Poland, Churchill promised to imprison the Fuhrer in the Tower. Of course, the Fuhrer did not like such attacks.
In addition to the famous Marshal Zhukov and Field Marshal Montgomery, the card index also contained the names of less senior military personnel. For example, the hero of the Soviet Union Marinescu, who sank a huge number of enemy ships, as well as the virtuoso saboteur Ilya Starinov, Mikhail Borisov, who destroyed 7 enemy tanks with his own hands, the sniper Vasily Zaitsev, who was zealously hunted by fascist shooters, the leader of the partisans Dayan Murzin, who took captivity of General Müller himself.
Mikhail Koshkin, who designed the T-34 tank, managed to get on the list of Nazi enemies after his death. That is why the Kharkov cemetery, where his body rested, was destroyed by the Germans.
Wolf Messing fell out of favor with the Fuhrer after his prediction, in which the seer saw the death of the Nazi leader in the event of their invasion of the East.
Art
Servants of art were also included in the death list: poets, writers, actors. So Erich Maria Remarque became the personal enemy of the Fuhrer for his literary activities and anti-fascist statements. The German writer Feuchtwanger found himself unpopular after he visited the USSR in 1937 and wrote a book about it. Kiev resident Ilya Ehrenburg also came to Hitler's attention for his anti-fascist prose.
Soviet cartoonists Boris Efimov and Vladimir Galba, who ridiculed Hitler and his henchmen, were also among the Fuhrer’s dislikes. Hitler also did not like the artist Kharis Yakupov, a master of historical genre and portraiture.
Happy upcoming holiday - Victory Day!
Yuri Borisovich Levitan.
The current young generation probably does not know this legendary personality - the announcer of the All-Union Radio and Television, whose voice was compared to the division by the power of the front-line soldiers.
It was Hitler who promised 100 thousand marks for his head, and according to other sources – 250 thousand marks. A huge amount for those times. Hitler declared him enemy No. 1 and ordered him to be hanged first when Moscow was captured. Levitan was vigilantly guarded by NKVD agents to prevent an attempt on the “first voice of the country” by German intelligence services. His photo was not published anywhere; all information about him was classified.
In March 1971, Levitan (I don’t remember on what occasion) arrived in the city of Grodno (Belarus), where at that time I was serving in a border detachment. Local authorities organized a meeting of Levitan with war participants, representatives of organizations and enterprises of the city at the Palace of Culture. The unit commander sent me to this meeting with orders not to return without Levitan. As the person responsible for cultural, educational and patriotic work among border guards, I was instructed to organize a meeting between Yuri Borisovich and the unit’s personnel.
For about two hours, the crowded hall of the Palace of Culture listened with bated breath to Levitan's story, and he had a lot to tell about.
Yuri Borisovich was born in 1914 on October 2 into a Jewish family. His father was a tailor, and his mother was a housewife.
Because of his powerful voice, the guys gave him the nickname “trumpet.” Levitan recalled that when late in the evening it was necessary to gather the children who had been on a spree home, the mothers asked Yura to call their children. And Yura’s booming voice was heard throughout the area: “Gri-sha! Vasya! Mi-sha! .. Home!”
When he turned 17, he went to Moscow to study “to be an artist.” He was not accepted as an artist for his catty talk. Upset, he accidentally saw an advertisement for a group of radio announcers. Despite the huge competition, he was accepted as an intern with the condition that he would get rid of the “Volga dialect”. Lessons on speech techniques did him good and soon he was speaking without a hitch.
It is not known what his fate would have been like if one night Stalin had not heard his voice on the radio - Levitan was reading some information from the newspaper Pravda. Stalin immediately demanded that his speech at the 17th Party Congress be read by this voice on the radio. Yuri Borisovich then read the text of Stalin’s report without a single mistake. From that moment on, he became the main announcer of the Soviet Union. He was only 19 years old then.
“Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours". Levitan's powerful voice gave these words enormous power and instilled confidence in our victory during the war.
After the performance at the Palace of Culture, I could not approach him - he was constantly surrounded by people. And finally, he and the woman from the regional party committee accompanying him went into a separate office. Plucking up courage, I immediately went in after them.
- Who are you visiting? - the lady from the regional committee asked sternly. – Yuri Borisovich is tired and needs to rest.
Here Yuri Borisovich stood up for me. He said that he respected people in green caps, cited the words of Zhukov, where the marshal said that he was always calm for those sections of the front where the border guards fought, and invited him to sit down. So the conversation began quietly.
I did not follow the commander’s order at that time - Levitan could not perform in our unit, because in two hours he was leaving for Moscow and the tickets had already been taken. But as a souvenir, he left me his autograph on the book “In the Battles for Belarus.”
During the war, Levitan read on the radio reports from the fronts and orders of Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin. Every resident of the country knew his voice. It was he who was entrusted with announcing the capture of Berlin and the Victory.
Before reading the message about the Victory, a curious incident occurred. This is how Yuri Borisovich recalled this incident.
In the evening he was summoned to the Kremlin and handed the Supreme Commander's order for Victory. There were 35 minutes left before the broadcast. “The radio studio from where such broadcasts were broadcast,” Levitan recalled, “was located not far from the Kremlin behind the GUM building. To get there, you had to cross Red Square. But before us is a sea of people. With the help of the police and soldiers, we took about five meters in battle, but nothing further. Comrades, I shout, let me through, we’re on business. And they answer us: “What else is there to do! Now Levitan will transmit the order of victory on the radio and there will be fireworks. Stand like everyone else, listen and watch!”
Wow advice... But what to do? And then it dawned on us: there is also a radio station in the Kremlin, we need to read from there! We run back, explain the situation to the commandant, and he gives the command to the guards not to stop the two people running along the Kremlin corridors. Here is the radio station. We tear off the wax seals from the package and reveal the text. The clock shows 21 hours 55 minutes."
At exactly 10 p.m. the whole country heard the good news.
"ATTENTION! MOSCOW SPEAKS! THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR WAGED BY THE SOVIET PEOPLE AGAINST THE GERMAN-FASCIST INVADERS HAS VICTORIOUSLY COMPLETED. FASCIST GERMANY IS COMPLETELY DESTROYED!"
“And then she came.
Unprecedentedly beautiful
Unheard of happy
In fireworks and flowers,
Just like in dreams -
Victory!
This morning sounded like songs
Over the country, over thousands of villages.
This morning Levitan's voice
He announced victory to the world."
Yuri Levitan often met with war veterans. He died at the next meeting with veterans. I came to the Prokhorovskoe field to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Prkhorovka. 40 years ago, in 1943, he read out the first order in the history of the war from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief on a victorious salute in honor of the liberation of the cities of Belgorod and Orel. And so he arrived in these places, arrived at the site of the feat which he solemnly reported on the radio 40 years ago.
Suddenly, Levitan grabbed his heart... The village hospital could not save him.
Yuri Levitan was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery - among the marshals of the Great Victory.
The photo shows Yuri Levitan's autograph.
Collage by Larisa Beschastnaya
About who had to resist Soviet front-line propagandists, our conversation with a researcher at the Institute general history RAS by Dmitry Surzhik.
Dmitry Surzhik: By the summer of 1941, there were 19 propaganda companies in the German armed forces (12 in the ground forces, 4 in the Luftwaffe and 3 in the Kriegsmarine), which included writers, artists, photographers, announcers, and projectionists. In addition, a special propaganda battalion was additionally created in each of the Wehrmacht army groups (North, Center, South). The total number of German army propagandists in Eastern Front was approaching 15 thousand by 1943. By 1941, the Wehrmacht psychological operations authorities had at their disposal 6 long-wave and 10 medium-wave lightweight motorized stations with a power of 20 kilowatts each. The installation and dismantling of such a station required only two hours. Despite the fact that during the retreat of the Red Army there was a clear directive to destroy radio stations first, the Wehrmacht managed to capture radio centers in Riga, Vilnius, Chisinau, Minsk, Lvov and Kiev without serious damage (with the exception of Kiev) and soon put them into operation. The broadcast was conducted in Russian, Belarusian, Polish languages and even in Yiddish (in the ghetto in Minsk) and with an appropriate selection of thematic content. As even participants in the partisan movement in Belarus admitted, in units that had radio stations, “they listened to Sovinformburo reports from Moscow, and music from Minsk.”
The Wehrmacht managed to capture radio centers in Riga, Vilnius, Chisinau, Minsk, Lvov and Kyiv
What were the programs “filled with”?
Dmitry Surzhik: There were regional specifics. For example, within the framework of the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" there were several regional radio broadcasting centers (Lvov, Kyiv, Kharkov, Crimea). The Lviv center was characterized by the maximum “Ukrainization” of broadcasting - not only the language, but also the ideological coloring. Here, for a long time, there was a noticeable influence of Ukrainian organizations, especially the OUN-M, on the German propaganda authorities. The Kiev radio center, on the contrary, was as neutral as possible in color and was actually a mouthpiece for broadcasting instructions and statements of the German occupation authorities to the local population. The Kharkov radio center, which was responsible mainly for the eastern Ukrainian regions, was the most tendentious in terms of propaganda. Typical example An information message from the Kharkov occupation radio is quoted by the Soviet writer Alexander Fadeev in “Young Guard”: “The Red Army is defeated. Moscow is taken. Stalin fled beyond the Urals. The front is held by the Mongols hired by the British.”
Hitler declared Yuri Levitan a personal enemy. Did Stalin have enemies of this level?
Dmitry Surzhik: During the Second World War, the German radio station "Germany Speaks" broadcast from Bremen to Great Britain. The name of its main announcer was hidden for a long time under the pseudonym “Lord Haw-Haw.” This name became a collective name for a number of German propagandists, the most prominent of whom was William Joyce. He was one of the leaders of the British Union of Fascists, and in the spring of 1940 he fled to Germany. Knew the British mentality and realities of life well (not to mention English language- he spoke with features that revealed him as a representative of the upper classes).
Nazi Germany failed to find a similar radio propagandist for the Soviet Union. Goebbels had his own official spokesman, Hans Fritsche, but he spoke exclusively to the German public. His manner of speaking in a patter, completely deceitful in content, differed from the booming and stentorian bass of Yuri Levitan, who only read out reports, although truthful, but prepared in advance for him. The Nazis could not oppose Levitan's artistry, although they first tried to steal or destroy him, and then find a similar speaker.
Hitler's image was specially created. For example, architects, according to Goebbels' idea, were designing a cozy country house for the Fuhrer in the Alps. In 1938, journalists were invited there to write about the “hospitable, kind host,” who already had Kristallnacht and the Night of the Long Knives on his account. Are our propagandists involved in such projects?
Dmitry Surzhik: Joseph Stalin corresponded to the then idea of a “leader.” He mastered the art of creating and managing his own image. He knew how to charm not just simpletons, but - neither more nor less - the Western literary intelligentsia (Henri Barbusse, Lion Feuchtwanger). Used the image of a "father". When visiting factories, institutions, construction sites, he could show sincere interest in what was shown to him, which naturally supported the “fatherly” stereotype. A father who is interested in the affairs of a child is loved with all his soul.
Do propaganda fakes of World War II exist in the modern consciousness?
Dmitry Surzhik: Weight. They arose during the war and are still being discussed today. For example, when analyzing the Soviet foreign policy In the late 1930s, in relation to Romania, Finland and the Baltic states, some modern historians write about the “imperial aggression” of the Soviet Union. But they “turn a blind eye” to the status of Moldova, which has been under the occupation of Romania since 1918. To the persistent attempts of Finland (since the late 1930s) to limit the movement of the Soviet Baltic Fleet in the Gulf of Finland and the legal activities of Nazi stations in the country... To the attempts of the Baltic republics in 1940 to achieve a protectorate from Nazi Germany... The purpose of propaganda is to create an image of an aggressive USSR and glorify the nationalists supervised by Hitler’s secret services, and ultimately equalize the Stalinist and Nazi regimes and demand material compensation for the “Soviet occupation.”