Radio Broadcasting Reaches More Villages

In September 1951, the Central Committee of the Romanian Worker Party and the Council of Ministers of the Romanian Popular Republic took the decision to expand the national radio network. Following the Soviet model, radio broadcasting and cinema were considered to be among the most important means of communication for raising the political and cultural awareness of the population. The radio in particular, “a newspaper without paper and without wires” in Lenin’s words, was considered an unparalleled agitator: one of the most effective means for raising the political conscience of the masses.

The daily newspaper România liberă (May 22, 1952) tells us that the introduction of radio in cities and communes around Sibiu began in 1951 and continued into 1952. By May 1952, eight cities and communes were already being radio connected, including Mediaş, Făgăraş, Sălişte, Poiana Sibiului, and Copșa Mică. This meant that the communes were equipped with central radio-amplification stations while the residents’ houses were provided with loudspeakers that would transmit a range of programs from both the central broadcasting service and locally-produced. But local councils were not always interested in getting involved and left this process to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, which is why both the written and the ‘filmed press’ (the newsreel) were called upon to extol the benefits of broadcasting and criticize the resistance found at the local level.

News in Pictures contributed to this campaign through a number of newsreels which included domestic stories which dramatized the introduction of these new forms of mass communication (and with them, modernity itself) into the homes of the new “working peasantry”. Take note of the editing, which creates a sense of spatial continuity between the public sphere where the amplifier is placed, with an image of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej on the wall above, and the domestic sphere with the family photo on the wall. (AB)