110 years ago the number one broadcaster of the USSR, Yuri Levitan, was born. Photo: Fedor Kislov/TASS
The voice of this native of Vladimir informed the country of the Soviets about the end of the Great Patriotic War and the beginning of the space age. Yuri Levitan 90 years ago began to tell the Soviet people about the main events of the time.
KP asked his great-grandson, Arthur Levitan, and his student, Central Television announcer Anna Shatilova, to tell him about the USSR’s number one announcer.
Arthur Levitan has been collecting evidence about his great-great-grandfather for many years. Photo: Yuri Mashkov/TASS
STALIN’S VOICE
Arthur Levitan has been collecting evidence about his great-great-grandfather for many years.
– When did Stalin listen to Levitan?
– January 25, 1934. The leader was preparing a report for the 17th Congress of the CPSU(b) in the evening. And I heard a “technical broadcast” on the radio. There was a dictation from the Pravda newspaper editorial. My great-grandfather was not even 20 years old at the time. He was listed as an intern. He was only trusted to read the evening news. And then this Stalinist report was brought to the Radio Committee in a sealed envelope and he read it for several hours. And he never lost his way.
– Was Stalin so impressed?
– Well, I couldn’t know what a provincial inmate was reading. that he came to Moscow “to become an artist”, did not pass and was ready to return to Vladimir, but accidentally stumbled upon an audition advertisement on the radio. As a result, Stalin liked this “trumpet voice” and what he read without a single mistake. And that same night he called the head of the radio committee, Maltsev. And he said that it was Levitan who read his report.
– What did Levitan report on the air later?
– About the rescue of the crew of the icebreaker “Chelyuskin”, about Chkalov’s flight through the North Pole to America, about Papanin’s Arctic expedition.
– Did your great-grandfather personally communicate with Stalin before 1941?
– As far as I know, before the war, no. But it is known that Stalin gave instructions that all his orders and instructions be voiced by this particular announcer.
– A legend circulates on the Internet that Stalin and Levitan met in the Kremlin in July 1941. And supposedly before the meeting, the head of the NKVD, Beria, ordered Levitan to briefly answer all the leader’s questions: only “yes or no”.
– Yes, my great-grandfather knew Stalin. I do not know the details of such meetings. And this is the first time I have heard of you talking about “Beria’s instructions.”
– But it was precisely thanks to Stalin’s location that Levitan was able to solve the housing problem in Moscow?
– In the center, including the Kremlin, there were several radio studios and radio committee rooms. Great-grandfather lived there. Yes, then he got an apartment on Gorky Street, at number 8.
– Did your great-grandfather announce the start of the war to the country?
– No. Viacheslav Molotov. He was the first to go to the radio committee on June 22, 1941 and read the appeal. And Levitan then repeated this message several times on air throughout the day.
– Didn’t your great-grandfather stay in Moscow?
– In 1941 he was evacuated to Sverdlovsk. And from there I read the Sovinformburo reports.
Radio host Yuri Levitan, 1980. Photo: Igor Zotin/TASS Photo Chronicle
HITLER’S ENEMY
– Did Hitler know Levitan’s role, do they say he even considered him his “personal enemy”?
– I know Hitler’s attitude from several sources. The Radio Committee was bombed more than once. The first bomb that arrived there did not explode. Then there was shelling, when there was an explosion literally behind the wall: Levitan read the message until the end of the broadcast and then was evacuated. It was in Shabolovka.
– How many messages did you transmit during the war, how many hours a day did you work?
– Read more than a thousand reports (according to official data, about 2 thousand – Ed.). The remaining reports were broadcast by other broadcasters. He also got up at night: reports could come at any time of the day.
– Was it Levitan who announced the end of the war?
– On May 9, Levitan was urgently summoned to the Kremlin studio. The leaders said that he was the one who had to end this war. His colleagues were jealous of him. He later said that he was jealous of himself. But when he tried to enter the Kremlin studio through Red Square, there was already a dense crowd in the square. And Levitan, in order not to be late, ran to the back studio. There he managed to read Stalin’s order to win the war live.
– The information office reports that Levitan read during the war and has not survived?
– My great-grandfather re-recorded these reports in the 1960s. Most of the documentaries, the voice-over of Stalin’s orders; He later reread all this, 20 years after the war.
– How did Levitan accept Stalin’s death?
– He read the message about his death on March 5, 1953. I know he was very worried. It was a great loss for him. But there are no details in the family legends.
SPACE AND CINEMA
– Did Levitan also inform the country about man’s entry into space?
– Yes, and then they were friends with Gagarin. We talk often. Levitan was a frequent guest in Gagarin’s family. Their names were: Yuri one and Yuri two.
-Have you seen how Yuri Levitan is portrayed in the movies?
– Khabensky was supposed to play him in the TV series “Moscow Speaks”, but I don’t know how it ended. The directors ask me for permission to use my great-grandfather’s voice or make adjustments to his biography or some stories. But I haven’t seen anything worthy of Levitan yet.
– Have you communicated with Levitan’s beloved daughter, Natalya, your grandmother?
– No. They didn’t want to communicate with me. My father Boris studied at MGIMO. I saw my father twice when I was a child, until I was five years old. And the last time was when I buried him in 2013. My dad divorced my mom when I wasn’t even a year old. And my father Boris went to live with his mother, my grandmother Natalia. My mother and I lived separately from them. They never helped us in any way; we lived alone.
Yuri Levitan changed the fate of the famous TV presenter Anna Shatilova 65 years ago. Photo: Vladimir Gerdó/TASS
LEAVE PHYSICS!
Yuri Levitan changed the fate of the famous TV presenter Anna Shatilova 65 years ago.
– Was Levitan on the jury of the crazy contest in which you competed on the radio?
– Yes, in 1959 the selection took place in the Izvestia editorial club on Pushkinskaya Square. Out of half a thousand competitors, five of us managed to pass. The main radio and foreign broadcast announcers were on that commission. Yuri Borisovich was like a father to me. Do you know that it was Levitan who announced price reductions on matches, salt and bread? Everything important that happened in the country was Levitan’s voice.
– Do you know the legend “Levitan is Hitler’s main enemy”?
– The whole country said that Hitler knew that as long as Levitan was in the Union, that he read the reports of the Sovinformburo, the Soviets could not be defeated. And it was said that the Führer, when he wanted to take Moscow, dreamed of hanging Levitan first and Stalin second.
– What other rumors were there among the people about Levitan?
– That Levitan has no legs. And let them take him to the microphone. They also said that Levitan was very short. This is not true. When I met him, I saw that he was above average height. With beautiful hair, which was always combed. In all the photographs he wears tortoiseshell glasses. And for some reason I remember the silver frame. And a light gray suit. Always so thin and tall. We studied radio for a year and a half while I studied physics and mathematics, and he told me: Anya, what are you doing, are you transferring to the Faculty of Philology, do you want to be an announcer? The Russian language is very important.
– Did he speak out loud in life?
– He spoke very calmly in life. And the voice is so kind and soft. One day we met in an Armenian cafe in front of the Metropol. And that’s it, what, is Levitan? Few people knew his face…
A GENEROUS MAN WITHOUT WRINKLES
-What was special about his face?
– Levitan never had wrinkles. I asked him: how, how? And he said: Anya, this was given to me by my mother.
– What did he share?
– He was a generous man. And everyone at Gosteleradio knew that if there was no money, we had to go to Levitan, and he would definitely lend it to them. In one pocket he has money to borrow, in the other, money from those who paid the debt.
– What did you advise him?
– When in 1959, out of 500 people, five people passed, including Svetlana Morgunova and me, then there were no textbooks. And then they gave the five of us pamphlets: “The man in front of the microphone.” The main radio announcers advised how a person should behave in front of a microphone. Levitan’s advice was clear and understandable.
Announcer of All-Union Radio Yuri Borisovich Levitan. Photo: Evgeny Kassin, Vladimir Savostyanov/TASS
– Did he talk to you about the most important transmission of his life?
– I know that it was about a declaration of war in the summer of 1941 and a victory in May 1945. Although I did not speak with him personally on this topic. It was a great responsibility. I was still a child. And when he spent five hours reading Stalin’s report to Congress on the radio without a single mistake?!
– Did Levitan mention bugs in the air?
– No. Although Levitan was very angry at first, he is from Vladimir. But he overcame this problem. I know you spent a lot of time sleeping on the Radio Committee couches. And I learned as I went, when I would text messages to the older announcers who went on the air and read the news. And then he said to me: Anya, do you know what microphones there are? They were like the head of a newborn baby. Round and big.
– Under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, he was the number one announcer, but one day the situation changed…
– For a long time, all the most important events in the country were associated with Levitan’s voice. With a plus sign and a minus sign. We are used to the fact that Levitan’s voice always sounds. And suddenly one day I heard that it was not Levitan, but Ilya Prudovsky, who announced an important event. And I learned that “the peaceful life has begun.” And that they decided to “take Yuri Borisovich out of the air a little.” Although he continued reading the news, with Olga Vysotskaya. And he had to work on himself so that those notes, that beautiful voice that sounded during the war years, already in peacetime, had to be “muffled”, “dried” in some way. To make it sound “calm”.
– Did it work?
– Yuri Borisovich tried. But apparently the leadership decided that it was necessary to attract other voices. And at Levitan’s voice, the people immediately shuddered. And Yuri Borisovich was worried because he was in the editorial office, at work, and it was not he who read the important message, but someone else.
-Did you see him before he died?
– Once, Sergei Lapin, director of the State Radio and Television Company, transferred us radio announcers, in Ostankino, to a building that was quickly built for the 1980 Olympic Games. Then I, having worked as 6 am to 12 pm in the studio, I go down to the exit and see Levitan. He stood and chatted with the guards, and he loved communicating with people. She says: Oh, Anya, in two days I’m going to Belgorod, where I will meet the veterans of the Kursk battle, it’s great.
We hugged, I wished him a happy trip and two days later he died in Bessonovka of a heart attack.
– What, who did Levitan love?
– He loved his homeland, he loved his family very much. His daughter Natasha. And his grandson Borya always showed us his photo, he was very proud of him. It is fortunate that Yuri Borisovich did not live to see the tragedy that occurred in the family when his daughter died because of his grandson in 2006. Borya was accused of his mother’s death. Levitan simply would not have survived this. He was a very homely person. He adored both Borya and Natasha. And when he talked about them, he always had a smile on his face…
