The surprising role played by YLE Radio's measuring station when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia.
Jeff: This week sees the 56th anniversary of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, which started on August 20th, 1968. As tanks rolled into Prague, concerning changes were noted in the radio broadcasts from that country, and among other places, these were carefully monitored by a small outpost of YLE Radio in Finland. Here’s Ray Robinson in Los Angeles to tell us more.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. There are painful memories to this day in the Czech Republic of the occasion in August 1968 when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin put an end to what was commonly known as the ‘Prague Spring’ – a period of political liberalization and democratic reforms that had been instituted by Czech President Alexander Dub?ek. The reforms had begun in the January of that year, and included such things as freedom of speech, freedom of the press for Czech newspapers, radio and TV, freedom of worship, and freedom of travel.
At the height of the Cold War, these reforms were not well received in Moscow, and the result was that a Warsaw Pact force of over 650,000 troops, accompanied by 4,600 tanks, were sent from Russia, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria to occupy the country, equipped with the most sophisticated weapons in the Soviet military catalog at that time.
Back in 2020, an article was published on Finnish Radio YLE’s website titled “What Connects the Finnish YLE Station and Prague?” The article was written in Finnish, and the English translation from Google was a bit stilted and awkward, so I’ve paraphrased it so we can now bring you the gist of the story. It involves YLE’s ‘measuring station’ in a quiet, wooded area of Laajasalo Island, Helsinki. In the same way that Staten Island is part of New York City, so Laajasalo Island forms part of eastern Helsinki.
The measuring station there was essentially a wooden house with sophisticated radio receivers and antennas, whose primary function was to measure the frequency of all Finnish broadcasting stations, and to alert any that might be drifting even slightly from their assigned channels. It was staffed by a team of experienced radio technicians, most of whom were also shortwave and medium wave DXers, who, once their main responsibilities had been discharged, delighted in being able to use the equipment for other ‘side interests’.
The article states that when Soviet tanks crossed the Czechoslovakian border a little after midnight on the morning of Wednesday, August 21, 1968, in a small wooden building in eastern Helsinki, the handsets were monitored with attentive ears. The Laajasalo measuring station was on standby, because something strange had been detected in the airwaves. The previous day there had been signs of unusual transmitter activity and preliminary test transmissions. Especially in Czechoslovakia's neighbor, Ukraine, it seemed that something was going on.
As events progressed on that Wednesday, no Czech shortwave transmitters could be heard. Further, it was observed that all Voice of America, BBC and Deutsche Welle programming in Czech was being jammed. And then, the occupiers' radio station, Radio Vltava, appeared on medium wave.
So in Laajasalo, they listened to the radio war. The occupation of Czechoslovakia was a major news story around the world, but it was a challenge to obtain reliable information about what was going on inside the country. Journalist Lieko Zachovalova reported for YLE from Prague. His struggle to get a telephone report out to the editorial office in Finland has gone down in the history of journalism.
The problem for all foreign correspondents working in Czechoslovakia was that international telephone calls were monitored and sometimes deliberately cut. For example, Zachovalova's first report had to be relayed to Finland via a Swiss call center, and it didn't make it into the news until day two of the occupation.
At YLE Radio's measuring station in Laajasalo, though, monitoring of Czechoslovakian airwaves worked flawlessly. Jarmo Sivusaari, the head of the station at the time, recalls that they had the best equipment available. But, listening to broadcasts inside occupied Czechoslovakia required not only good equipment but also amateur radio skills.
“Broadcasts could be heard well when you knew how to dig them out of the howl of the ether”, says Jorma Laiho, YLE's former technology director, who studied the history of the Laajasalo measuring station. According to Laiho, a classic disinformation operation was underway.
The occupiers tried their best to prevent Czechoslovak transmissions by destroying or jamming the transmitters. The central radio studios in Prague were taken over in just a few hours. And at the same time, the occupiers broadcast their own program, which they tried to disguise as originating locally by broadcasting it on a familiar domestic Czech wavelength. Laajasalo, however, noticed that the broadcast came from Ukraine.
The Czechoslovaks, on the other hand, established so-called free radio stations, whose transmission frequency and location constantly changed, so that the occupiers were not immediately able to silence them.
“The resistance via radio surprised the occupiers” Laiho says. For example, on August 25, four days after the invasion, almost 20 free stations were monitored in Laajasalo.
The jamming of free radio stations intensified on August 27. Väinö Lehtoranta, who worked at the measuring station, guessed that a train carrying jamming transmitters had arrived, enabling the occupiers not only to jam foreign shortwave broadcasts in Czech, but also to jam local medium wave stations as well. The last ‘free radio’ station went silent two days later.
During the eight-day radio war, the Laajasalo measuring station listened to what the people of Czechoslovakia and the country's reformist leader Alexander Dub?ek had to say. The messages also interested the Czechoslovak Embassy in Finland and indeed the President of Finland too.
To try to save face, the Soviets said they had been invited into Czechoslovakia by the Czechoslovak Communist Party. However, that was a lie, and no such invitation had ever been issued. In Finland, that lie was repeated by Soviet Ambassador Andrei Kovalev, but the Czechoslovak ambassador to Finland, Zdenek Urban, apparently visited the Laajasalo measuring station for himself to hear what was going on in his home country, and he used the information he heard there to refute the Russian claims of the invitation.
Jarmo Sivusaari, who worked at the measuring station, remembers the ambassador's visit. “He was at the station at least once and listened to the broadcasts for several hours.” Väinö Lehtoranta, the station's late employee, also wrote about the ambassador's visit. According to Lehtoranta, Urban's assistant brought beer as a thank you. It quickly became clear to Urban that Czechoslovakia had not asked for Soviet help. Soon President Kekkonen of Finland also knew about it.
Travel Report
So why decide to publish an article about all this some 52 years later in 2020? Well, this was all brought back to light when a historical document was discovered in the archives of YLE Radio. Jorma Laiho found the document, a Travel Report, which describes a visit to Czechoslovak National Radio three months after the occupation. The beginning of the nine-page report titled ‘Notes from the trip to Pilsen 27.11.-5.12.1968’ is a normal technical text.
But, then the content changes. The author relates in detail how the occupiers tried to silence the domestic radio stations and how the Czechoslovakians harassed them.
The travelers apparently met with three Czech sources who are identified in the report solely by their initials - Mr. Z., Mr. M., and Mr. P. - apparently all Czechoslovak radio staff.
They took the Finnish visitors to hidden studios, and to a radio station with the lights turned off, but with transmitters working at full power. Road signs had been removed everywhere to make things difficult for the Soviet troops.
The report describes how the technicians of the Krasov radio station were marched ominously to the side of an open cable trench and made to stand there. They thought they were going to be shot, but fortunately that particular situation was resolved through negotiation.
Pilsen radio continued to broadcast messages from the legitimate government, i.e. Dub?ek's reformists. According to the report, Czechoslovakia's regional radio stations had been allowed to continue to operate, to that point at least, from normal legal studio facilities using legal transmitters.
The travel report tells how the occupying troops were surprised by the impassioned resistance by the ordinary people of Czechoslovakia, and were confused by how reluctant the Czechoslovakian authorities were to cooperate. According to the report, broadcasting had a central position in leading passive resistance. "Because the first communications coming through the radio came from people who enjoyed the people's trust, the people took the radio as their 'common' leader," Mr. M. tells his Finnish colleague.
And there the article on the Finnish website ends. But it is a stark reminder in these days of reliance on webstreaming that in times of trouble, when phone lines can be cut and Internet access blocked, radio can still be a very resilient tool, with a potent voice that cannot easily be snuffed out. As for Alexander Dub?ek, he was reassigned in 1969 to a lowly position in the Czech Forestry Commission. The Czechs would have to wait another 20 years until real liberation came in the form of the Velvet Revolution in November 1989.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Ray Robinson/AWR/Wavescan)