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	HU OSA 300-81-9
Fonds 300:	Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute
Subfonds 81:	Monitoring Unit
Series 9:	Video Recordings of Moscow Television Program

Date(s) 1985-1994 (predominant 1992-1994)

Extent and medium

1 Audio cassette, 0.02 linear meters
8 SDLT I, 0.27 linear meters
268 VHS, 7 linear meters

Administrative/Biographical history

• HU OSA 300-81C Monitoring Unit

Scope and content

The fonds consist of cca. 1500 hours of off-air recordings of Soviet and Russian television broadcasts. They include political, cultural, educational, military, sports and news programs, through which political changes in Russia reflected by the media in the late 80s and early 90s can be traced.
Of particular value are the political programs relating to "perestroika", such as the appointment of Mr. Gorbachev as General Secretary of CC CPSU (March 1985); a Communist Party Meeting Speech by Gorbachev (1986); the 20th Congress of the Soviet Komsomol, featuring a perestroika speech by Gorbachev (1987) and Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament in 1988.
The fonds also include footage related to various high priority political issues of the late 80s and early 90s, such as CIA agent Edward Lee Howard's request for political asylum in the USSR; a press conference given by ex-Radio Liberty employee Oleg Tumanov upon his return to the USSR; the freedom movements of the Baltic states in 1987; films and news about the "Soviet mission" in Afghanistan in 1988; a film about the lives of children in orphanages in the Moscow region in 1988. Also included is Yeltsin's speech in the House of Lords in 1992; a film about the war in the Caucasus made in 1992; a news broadcast on the programs of political parties in Russia in 1992; programs about alcoholism, drug addiction and crime in Russia and a film about the history of the first Soviet A-bomb.

Accruals Not expected

System of arrangement

• Arranged chronologically

Conditions governing reproduction

All copyrights are held by the producers.

Language/scripts of material Russian

Finding aids

• 269 containers | Digitized (MPEG2, MPEG4, JPEG stills) 8 containers

Related units of description

• HU OSA 300-80-2 New Code Subject Files, 1954-1994
• HU OSA 300-81-5 The Former Soviet Union Countries Media Digest Files, 1992-1995
• HU OSA 205-4-206 Russian Monitoring Archives, 1986-1999
• HU OSA 205-4-201 The Former Soviet Union Archives, 1975-1997

Note

There are 646 video cassettes in this series, 188 of which have been processed so far. The database will be updated as new materials are processed.

Date(s) of descriptions

Processed by Attila József Balázsi 2000-, described by Zsuzsanna Zádori October 2002.
Online version updated 19 April 2012