| In
1921, the first powerful radio station was set up to broadcast
every day for a few hours. The new program was called "Spoken
Newspaper of the Russian Telegraph Agency", and featured mostly
news and propaganda material. In 1922 the station had the most
powerful transmitter in the world. In 1925, the USSR started the
world's first short wave station in Moscow. |
| Because
radio receivers were still very expensive and unavailable for
private use, sets of loudspeakers were installed in places of
public gathering to make the spoken newspaper available to the
people. |
| As
radio use increased, the government did its best to secure the
authority over radio development in the country.
Foreign broadcasts were often jammed. |
| Russian workers listening to the
radio, circa 1931 |
|
In the former Soviet Union household goods came in second place.
Priority was given to production for military applications.
After the death of Stalin, in 1953, a cautious start was made
with making better household goods. The centrally planned
economy was not really focused on consumers; functionality was
more important than design; in general these designs were rather
boring or blatant copies of designs from the West. That was
the case with a radio like the Zvezda 54: a copy of the French
Excelsior 52. Also, there was hardly any competition. Radios of
the same "brand" were made by |
