Radio Moscow, the official international broadcasting station of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (after 1991 Russia) from 29 October 1929 to 21 December 1993, was easily heard throughout the shortwave bands during its hay day. It broadcast in dozens of languages for hundreds of hours per week. It ceased to exist on 22 December 1993 when the Voice of Russia took over the role as Russia’s official international broadcasting station.

I first heard Radio Moscow in 1969 and noticed it was all over the place on the band. In 1970, I sent a reception report to them and they sent the QSL card seen below. The program was about Soviet cosmonauts and was actually informative. I did not write to them again until 1979 after I read Sam Barto’s piece on receiving QSLs from USSR radio stations. In the piece, Sam noted that you could receive QSL cards from Radio Moscow with transmitter sites on them if you ask them when you send your reports. So I sent off a bunch of reports and many of the QSLs are seen below. There is some controversy about the accuracy of the transmitter sites, but they are still generally accepted by the DX community as good enough.

Most of the time, I just listened for the entertainment value, but I found many of their programs to be interesting and informative. My favorite program was Moscow Mailbag. Joe Adamov answered a question I had about the Soviet Union’s view on the situation in Korea. He also sent me a letter with his answer. Unfortunately, I lost it in one of my moves.

And who can forget Vladamir Posner?

Over the years, I received around 100 QSLs from them for over 50 transmitter sites, including medium wave. They even sent one for the reception of their English language service from a medium wave transmitter in Cuba on 600 kHz for a reception made in Utah.

If you have any comments about your experiences with Radio Moscow, please feel free to comment below. It would be fun to hear from you.