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Voice of Russia radio to launch a series of programmes on Russia’s 20th-century history

NEW DELHI, December 07, 21:02 /ITAR-TASS/. The Voice of Russia radio station is planning to launch a series of programs on Russian history in the 20th century in 2014, Irina Maksimenko, the head of the Voice of Russia’s India and Pakistan service, said. She opened the VIII All-Indian annual conference of the Voice of Russia listeners at the Russian center of science and culture in the Indian capital on Saturday.

The fifteen-minute-long programs will come on air in Hindi on the Fever FM radio station, the Voice of Russia’s Indian partner. The programs will also be broadcast on the Voice of Russia and on its official website in the Internet.

“We have also thought that politics and economy cannot exist without culture, which is an inseparable part of Russian-Indian relations and friendship between our countries,” Maksimenko went on to say.

More than a hundred representatives of the Voice of Russia listeners’ clubs from all parts of India are taking part in the conference.

“I have been listening to this radio station since 1965,” said the 65-year-old listener Nunu Debi from the Berma village, located in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

“At that time, we still received Soviet magazines. Now, we only have the Voice of Russia. We get together after work to listen to it. There are more than five thousand Voice of Russia listeners in our village,” the old lady went on to say.

Another listener, the 23-year-old Gautama Kashjapa, the youngest participant in the conference, said that the Voice of Russia club in his village located 82” kilometres away from the town of Patna, the capital of the State of Bihar, was the smallest in India. "It has only five listeners. But, all of them really love Russia. I teach them Russian, including with the help of Voice of Russia special programs for Russian learners. I inherited the Voice of Russia from my grandfather. He liked to listen to this radio and read Russian literature,” the young man said.

Andrei Bystritskiy, the Voice of Russia chairman, and Russian Ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin greeted the participants in the conference that will close on Sunday, December 8.

The first Moscow Radio (now Voice of Russia) listeners’ clubs started appearing in India in the 1960s when the radio station broadcast from Moscow in 12 languages. At present, India has more than 150 Voice of Russia listeners’ clubs which unite schoolchildren, students, farmers and financiers. The Voice of Russia’s female listeners have separate women clubs in India.

The Voice of Russia launched its broadcasts in India in May 1942.