Voices from the East: CIA sponsored Russian Language Broadcasting from Taiwan, Part Two, NTS and TsOPE ©

In part one, we looked at Radio Liberation / Radio Liberty broadcasts from Taiwan. Below is a look at two emigre organizations that also broadcsast via short-wave from Taiwan in Russian to the USSR

NTS and Radio Free Russia

The initials NTS stand Narodno Trudovoi Soyuz -- National Alliance of Russian Solidarists or National Labor Alliance” (In Russian: Национально Трудовой Союз, Народно-Трудовой Союз российских солидаристов—Narodno-Trudovoy Soyuz Rossiyskikh Solidaristov). The initials NTS were also used for two patrioticslogans “Nesem tiranam smert” (We are bringing death to tyrants) and “Nesem trudiashimsia svobodu” (We are bringing liberty to the workers). 

NTS was founded in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in 1928 (sometimes given at 1930) by a group of Russian exiles opposed to Soviet Communism. NTS settled in Germany after World War Two

In December 1950, NTS began broadcasting Radio Free Russia that was beamed at the Red Army in Eastern Germany from a station it owned and operated in the British Zone—the broadcast operation eventually moved into the U.S. Zone. The first transmitting station placed on a small truck was a small battery operated one of only 38 watts of power. There were no poles for the antennas, trees were used instead to string the wires.

At a radio conference in Europe in 1953, representatives of Nationalist China and NTS met for the first time. Reportedly, the Chinese Nationalists were, “Favorably impressed with the work of NTS” and even supplied and planned to continue to supply NTS with materials for broadcasting and publications.” 

Dr. Roman Redlich of NTS reportedly flew to Taiwan in late 1955 to establish his residence and work with the Chinese Nationalists in a “joint effort against Communism.” In 1957, NTS received permission from BCC to broadcast out of Taiwan to the Eastern USSR via the powerful short-wave transmitter. Eventually, it broadcast an average of ten hours daily.

Redlich was succeeded by veteran NTS member Gleb Rahr, who arrived in 1957 or 1958 and remained there until 1960, when he moved to Japan to teach Russian at the University of Tokyo. In 1963, he returned to NTS in Germany, where he worked until 1974 (possibly the date that Radio Free Russia ceased broadcasting) before working for Radio Liberty in Munich. Rahr then wrote and recorded religious programs for RFE/RL’s Russian Service until it moved to Prague in 1995. 

NTS stopped broadcasting from Taiwan in 1974.

TsOPE 

CIA’s created and controlled the Russian émigré organization “Central Association of Post-War Émigrés” (TsOPE – transliteration of ЦОПЭ - Центральное Объединение Послевоенных Эмигрантов)in November 1952. It was based in Munich, Germany.

TsOPE did not have its own radio station: it wrote scripts and  that were broadcast over other radio stations. At one point in the early Cold War, for example, TsOPE members wrote and produced a weekly half-hour show over Voice of America studios in Munich entitled "Life in the Free West through Our Eyes."  

Probably beginning in 1959, TsOPE also provided tapes and scripts for Russian-language broadcasts over BCC radio on Taiwan. As an example of the scope of the TsOPE broadcasts, during Fiscal Year 1961, TsOPE Munich radio section produced approximately 1,000 scripts and 48 15-minute taped programs, which were broadcast by the BCC. 

TsOPE broadcasts ceased in 1962.