On October 16, 1962, the Mayak radio station first broadcast the call sign for a new daily youth program, “Youth.” The call sign was based on a musical phrase from a popular early 1960s hit, “Songs of Troubled Youth” by Alexandra Pakhmutova. And so it went…
Today's youth can't even imagine the information and entertainment vacuum that reigned in the country back then. Not every Soviet family owned a television set, barely larger than a teacup, back then, a television was considered no less prestigious than a car. And, as a rule, in small villages and hamlets, everyone had just one television. For example, in one village in Kuban, where, including my two grandparents, a total of 12,000 people lived, the television was installed in the so-called “red corner” in one of the train station's rooms. And we boys would run there twice a day to watch the latest episodes of hit movies of the time, like “His Excellency's Adjutant” or “Four Tankmen and a Dog.”
The radio was a different matter. A huge, by today's standards, vacuum-tube radio. On the front, a dial with numerous notches and black tuning knobs the size of cookies. On top, as usual, a record player. A set of 10-12 records, all of which had been listened to over and over again. But most importantly, while the parents were at work, you could listen to “Mayak.” And while the newspapers constantly harped on the same old stories: space exploration, industrial successes and achievements, reports on the milk yields achieved by the leading collective and state farms (while butter was impossible to find in the store), and criticism of “decaying capitalism coupled with the sharks of imperialism, constantly sharpening their teeth and ready to devour the USSR, guts and all,” the radio was considered a respite.
This doesn't mean there was no censorship on the radio. It was certainly present on the airwaves, but there was a greater sense of “freethinking” and a desire to make the lives of the country's youth truly youthful, rather than shrouded in ideological swaddling, with only one goal ahead—communism. I especially enjoyed the music program “Field Post of Youth,” where, in addition to “mandatory” fare like “A Soldier Walks Through the City” and “I Served My First Day Today,” as well as songs for commanders and their wives like “Here's Someone Coming Down the Hill,” new releases from the youth subculture occasionally made their way through. They were like shards of bottle glass, sparkling brightly when the sunlight hit them. There weren't many of these “diamonds,” but they did pop up…
Back then, in the Russian hinterland, we didn't yet know that the remarkable Soviet bard Yuri Vizbor was at the forefront of “Yunost.” He, along with Ada Yakusheva, was one of the initiators of the idea of Soviet youth getting their own radio station. And could we have later imagined that the artist who starred in Martin Bormann's “Seventeen Moments of Spring” was the very person to whom we owe the “early” establishment of our own radio station?
Although, let's face it, the plans and ideas to launch something “youth-focused” came to the Komsomol leaders on the eve of the World Festival of Youth and Students, which the then Soviet capital hosted for the first time in 1957. A special youth broadcasting department was even created to cover the festival. But it only lifted the “iron curtain” a crack. It took another five long years for “Yunost” to appear on the air.
Many of today's veterans of the Russian pop scene owe their baptism of fire to Yunost. Fans of the “new wave” were first introduced to the work of Andrei Mironov and Muslim Magomayev, Zhanna Bichevskaya and Maya Kristalinskaya, Oleg Dal and Alla Pugacheva, and other performers who were clearly distrusted by other radio stations on the special program “Yunost Debuts.” “So what if your last name is Pugacheva! There are so many of you across the country, both up-and-coming and talented, there aren't enough airtimes for everyone!”
Aspiring poets, composers, and bards were treated similarly on “adult” radio stations. And they eagerly embraced the youth wave, where they were welcome, just as established authors and performers were. With Yunost travel permits, Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov, Iosif Kobzon and Elena Kamburova, Yan Frenkel and Igor Shaferan traveled throughout Soviet cities and villages as part of traveling crews.
Without a doubt, a glorious page in Yunost's history is its 10-year sponsorship of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) construction project, undoubtedly the Komsomol-youth “construction project of the century.” It was the station's reporters who accompanied the first teams to the Far East and Lake Baikal; I believe there were also mobile newsrooms back then, from which we could learn where and who was hammering in the next “golden spike” on the construction site.
If we look at the current life of “Yunost,” today's youth will find much that is useful and interesting. But why bother? Just turn on the radio and listen. Today, “Yunost” broadcasts in more than 60 regions of Russia. And for us, the generation of the 1960s, it will forever remain a beloved little sister…
