Radio and development of the soviet space. Aabout Stephen Lovell's book «Russia in the microphone age. A history of soviet radio, 1919-1970». Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2015. XI + 237 p.

This article, which includes a literature review and some aspects of an essayistic style, discusses the role of radio in the life of the Soviet society between the 1920s and 1960s. The article focuses on Stephen Lovell's book that associates a significant part of Sovie t history with the 'microphone age', that is, the time when radio dominated the media communication. It is emphasized that Lovell was t he first to apply a comprehensive approach to the history of Soviet radio. Apart from the traditional aspects such as the history of institutions and technologies, the book covers social and cultural aspects in the history of radio, including the impact it had on the Soviet society. Among the many topics discussed in Lovell's book, the author of this article has chosen to con centrate on the role radio played in promotion of the Bolshevik ideology and in the Bolshevik government's efforts to control media communication in the country. Wit h this historiographic approach we are able to draw more general conclusions about the government-media relationship. The most significant processes in this respect were the changing balance between the wired and wireless broadcasting, the evolution of amateur radio, individualization of radio consumption, and the increasing competition in this medium, which was inevitable. Wired broadcasting was particularly characteristic of Soviet radio due to the country's vast territory and the comparatively low level of radio consumption among the population. This type of broadcasting was the most convenient for the authoritarian state since it allowed the government to monopolize information. Wired broadcasting made the boundaries of the Soviet space particularly clear and in fact denied the trans-border potential of the radio as a technology. Isolationalism upheld by the state also led to marginalization of amateur radio in the Soviet society. However, it was impossible to provide full coverage of the territory, which necessitated the expansion of wireless technologies in the post-war period. Development of radio resulted in individualization of radio consumption, expansion of the information flow, growing popularity of overseas-based Russian-language radio stations, and the significant breach of the state monopoly on information. It should be noted that theoretically radio contributed to the realization of certain Soviet ideolegemes such as formation of the 'new man' and bridging the 'divide' between the city and the village. In practice, however, radio served the propagandist purposes of the Soviet project. As Soviet experience showed, the possibility of fulfilling these tasks depended not only on the quality of managerial decision-making but mostly on the logic of the development of the medium itself. The author consequently comes to the conclusion that the authoritarian government could use technical media for their political ends.

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