the bbc, vladimir danchev and the kgb

Vladimir Danchev was a Soviet radio reporter who broadcast 'anti-soviet' reports on the Afghanistan invasion, referring to it as an 'occupation'. This is an account of the way Danchev came to the attention of the KGB, by one of his former colleagues. Original version available at http://vasilysweekend.rpod.ru/7451.html (Russian). The following translation is not exact and omits some parts of the original report.

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[Voice of Vassiliy Strelnikov] Vladimir Danchev worked as newsreader for Radio Moscow, English service. The radio put out hourly news casts and if I wasn’t in the office, I’d listen from home. If there were any mistakes, I’d ring the newsroom and alert the newsreader: ‘check the text, you may have made a mistake. Have another look’. Mostly my colleagues would thank me, because if the Radio controller caught any mistakes, the consequences might have been terrible. It was our kind of ‘newsreader solidarity’.

Vladimir Danchev had a very interesting background: he was half Bulgarian, half Russian, but came from Tashkent. He was a longstanding [Communist] Party man, hard working, member of the ‘DND’ (Voluntary People’s Friendship Group). Used to clean the streets, volunteered to work even on non-working days. A quiet man, intelligent, Pushkin-style.

1983. 3rd or 4th year of the Afghan occupation (of course we didn’t call it that then). Volodya Danchev was a newsreader, used to broadcast live in English.

What did broadcasting live mean? You came to the studio, a policeman stood at the door, you had to have a special pass to get to the microphone. The whole world heard you, so live broadcasts were taken very seriously.

There was also an Operator, normally a young girl who had no knowledge of English. And a Controller – normally students trying to earn a bit of extra money. The newsreader read the translation in English, the controller had the original in Russian. They followed your translation to make sure it corresponded to the original text...

If you’d been working for a number of years, the checks become more relaexed, the restrictions were weakened. So if you were a regular, they didn’t really bother to check up on you any more. The controller would come in and ask ‘So you’ll be ok without me? You’re alright with the text?’ ‘Of course I’m alright.’ ‘OK, then I’ll go and have a cup of tea.’

One day I’m at home, washing up while the broadcast is going out, listening to the radio in the background. VD reads the news. At that time, the Soviet-Afghan... occupation, as we now call it - then, it was barely covered in the news. No-one really talked about it, it was ‘an internal matter – and f*** the rest of the world’. So if there was any news about Afghanistan, it was normally towards the end of the programme, and always had a positive tone - something like ‘Soviet soldiers helped an Afghan farmer get things working again after his farm was destroyed by the enemy ’.

And suddenly I think I hear something on the radio ... something not quite right... or maybe I misheard. It sounded as though Volodya Danchev had said something like ‘Soviet occupants... burned down a village’. I didn’t know what to think. I waited till the end of the programme, then rang the studio. He came to the telephone.

‘Hi it’s Vasiliy – you might want to check your text again. I think there was something odd, maybe an error. You said something about Afghanistan, towards the end. You may have made a mistake’

‘OK, I’ll have a look, thanks’.

Next day I was in the office: ‘is everything ok,’ I asked him quietly, whispering, so no-one else heard, ‘did you check the text?’

‘All fine’ he said.

‘No-one heard?’

‘No-one heard’

‘So did you make a mistake?’

And then he said something very significant: ‘No, I read it as I should have done’

OK: so I must have heard it wrong.

But it turns out that I wasn’t the only person who heard him. And it turns out that Volodya Danchev didn’t make a mistake, but over the course of many different broadcasts, was changing the words from the original text. It happened several times. He was also called by other colleagues who heard the ‘mistakes’ – a highly respected colleague and fellow newsreader Maneskaya , and an editor, Murzin. ‘Look at the text, check what you said’ they suggested.

But VD was clearly carrying out some mission, regularly changing little words here and there.

There was no controller present. The boss heard nothing.

[Interviewer says]’Volodya was some kind of major dissident then’.

[Strelnikov]’And that was exactly what some people thought in a small town near London, called Caversham. In Caversham is the Queen’s Monitoring Service, the BBC. Every day – to this day – they listen to every international broadcast, in every language throughout the world. And naturally they listened to all of our output from Radio Moscow World Service, English language.

And they noticed that something odd was going on. ‘What is it’, wondered the British ‘a plot at the heart of Moscow radio, or professional suicide on the part of VD.’

But they were crafty: they just began listening more carefully to the broadcasts. And when they were sure, after several weeks of listening, that it was the work of just one newsreader; and they had collected enough audio material – because of course they were recording all the broadcasts themselves - to be completely certain, 100% certain, that this was being done by just one person at Moscow Radio – then on the 23 May, 1984, they went live with the news.

BBC World Service, first item of news:

‘Subversion, scandal. For the first time in history, on Moscow radio...’ and then they turned on the voice of Vladimir Danchev:

‘The Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan have burned down a local village’.

And the BBC put out that news as a major sensation, live on air.

And the next part of the story - early on a spring morning - involves the news monitor, who arrives at the office at 7 am. Remember – this was before the time of the internet, so it was all telefaxes. So the news monitor, exhausted, still half asleep, turns up , walks into his little office, to see what’s going on in the world, what’s on the news ... and nearly faints. On every telefax, from every news agency throughout the world, the first item of news is ‘Scandal... Moscow Radio saboteur. Dissident action or professional suicide. What can this bold radio-journalist expect to happen next.‘

We at Radio Moscow realised that we had been 'subverted' by the BBC.

...

[long passage about the KGB bringing people in for questioning etc]

“Danchev was obviously ‘disappeared’, and about a month later at an open party meeting, the head of foreign news, Evstafiev, with a smile, with pride, said to the hall ‘Comrades, the latest news from Tashkent!’ (Danchev had been exiled to Tashkent, admitted to psychiatric hospital) ‘Latest news from Tashkent, Comrades. Vladimir Danchev is undergoing treatment and has stopped recognising his father, his mother, and also his sister. That’s the news we have!’

Soviet Psychiatrists had performed their magic.

... Danchev was in the hospital for a long time. Exactly a year later, my colleagues and I from the Radio collective went off to Sofrina for volunteer work (‘subbotnik’). And we’re working away, and suddenly we see coming down the path Vladimir Danchev. He came up to us, and as if nothing had happened, said ‘Guys, I’ve missed you! I’m so glad to see you. Why don’t I run to the shop quickly and we’ll go to my room and have a drink. I’m so happy. How I’ve missed you.’

And in the same collective as me, as the subbotnikis from the radio, was our leader [‘brigadier’], Comrade ... I’m not going to name him, for good reason – but he was a convinced communist, believed in the whole ideology, although he was also a lover of rock music. Now he works for the BBC in London! [laughs] Anyway, he saw Danchev, turned his back, and said ‘Volodya, p*** off’. And Volodya understood him in his own way and said ‘OK, hang on, I’ll be 2 seconds’. And ran off to the shop.

Our brigadier turned to us and said ‘There must be no contact. This is a provocation’

Danchev came back with nuts, wine, vodka... ‘Come on guys, let’s go to my place, sit and chat’ At which our brigadier said ‘Do you understand, you f*ing idiot, how much suffering there’s been because of you, how much innocent people have suffered? Do you understand what the hell you’ve done?’

'No... what?’ said Volodya Danchev. ‘What have I done?’

‘Don't you understand what you’ve done?’

'I’ve done nothing. What have I done?'

I’ll end this story by saying that no-one knows where Volodya Danchev is now, what happened to him next, nor what was his fate.”