Framing war, sport and politics : the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Moscow Olympics

246 Pages·2014·1.96 MB·English

by  Christopher G. Deal

This electronic thesis or dissertation has been
downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/

Framing war, sport and politics
the soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Moscow Olympics

Deal, Christopher Geoffrey

Awarding institution:
King's College London

The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it
may be published without proper acknowledgement.
END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
You are free to:
 Share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work

Under the following conditions:
 Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any
way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
 Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
 No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and
other rights are in no way affected by the above.

Take down policy

If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing

details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

D ownload date: 02. Apr. 2018
KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
DEPARTMENT OF WAR STUDIES

F W , S P :
RAMING AR PORT AND OLITICS
T S A M
HE OVIET INVASION OF FGHANISTAN AND THE OSCOW
O
LYMPICS

BY
CHRISTOPHER G. DEAL

Thesis for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
June 2014
ABSTRACT
This thesis explores the reporting of the Soviet international broadcaster Radio Moscow, and
how it represented to listeners worldwide the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the
subsequent US-led boycott campaign against the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. In doing so, it
builds on literature that has examined Cold War radio broadcasting, the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, and the politics surrounding the Moscow Olympic Games. Specifically, this thesis
sheds new light on the outputs of Soviet broadcasting, and on the ways the Soviet Union tried to
justify their actions and condemn the actions of the US to different audiences worldwide.
Using the BBC Monitoring Service material archived at Imperial War Museums, Duxford, and
applying the concept of frame analysis, this thesis concentrates on six key moments after the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the build-up to the Moscow Olympics. It provides not only
examples of how Radio Moscow reported specific events, but how the reporting evolved over
time. In addition, the use of transcripts from broadcasts to multiple target audiences provides
evidence of how Soviet broadcasting was adapted to appeal to different listeners worldwide,
allowing for a comparison of reporting between regions, as well as over time, and to build
understanding of how the Soviet Union viewed the world in 1980.
The thesis shows that Radio Moscow adapted its broadcasting to appeal to different audiences,
and it highlights key examples of how this was achieved. The case studies demonstrate a series
of particularly prominent frames used by Radio Moscow, to both suggest and create divisions
between groups and as a way of attempting to reinforce previous Soviet claims about the world.
The study also examines how these were localised to appeal to the targeted audience, for
example focusing on religion in broadcasts to the Middle East and specific world leaders in
broadcasts to North America and Europe. The thesis concludes by discussing what this radio
material demonstrates of the Soviet view of the world. In doing this, the thesis also highlights
the usefulness of the BBC Monitoring Service as a tool for researchers looking to further
explore radio broadcasting and alternative state-to-state diplomacy in detail.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... 6
ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................................... 7
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 9
1.1 BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................................. 10
1.2 AIMS OF THE THESIS .......................................................................................................................... 13
1.3 THESIS STRUCTURE ............................................................................................................................ 14
CHAPTER 2 HISTORICAL CONTEXT ....................................................................................................16
2.1 SHORTWAVE RADIO BROADCASTING AND THE COLD WAR ........................................................................ 16
2.2 COLD WAR RADIO ............................................................................................................................ 18
2.3 THE COLD WAR AND THE SOVIET INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN ................................................................... 24
2.4 THE 1980 OLYMPIC BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN ............................................................................................. 30
CHAPTER 3 METHODS AND CONCEPTS ............................................................................................35
3.1 THE BBC MONITORING SERVICE ARCHIVE ............................................................................................. 36
3.2 FRAME ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................... 41
3.2.1 Why Frame Analysis? ......................................................................................................... 42
3.2.2 Theories of Framing – the Broadcaster Perspective ........................................................... 43
3.2.3 Theories of Framing – the Receiver Perspective ................................................................. 45
3.2.4 Priming and Agenda Setting ............................................................................................... 46
3.2.5 Frame Analysis – Definition ................................................................................................ 48
3.3 FRAME ANALYSIS AND THE BBC MONITORING SERVICE ............................................................................ 49
3.4 OTHER SOURCES ............................................................................................................................... 52
3.5 TIME FRAMES .................................................................................................................................. 53
3.6 SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................... 56
CHAPTER 4 REPORTING THE SOVIET INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN AND EXPLAINING AWAY THE
WORLD REACTION ...............................................................................................................................59
4.1 THE INVASION AND THE RESPONSE ........................................................................................................ 59
3
4.2 FRAMING THE INVASION ..................................................................................................................... 61
4.2.1 The Death of Hafizullah Amin ............................................................................................. 61
4.2.2 Reporting the Reaction ....................................................................................................... 65
4.3 THE SPEECH ..................................................................................................................................... 70
4.3.1 SALT-2 and Grain ................................................................................................................ 70
4.3.2 Arming Pakistan, threatening the Olympics? ..................................................................... 78
4.3.3 Domestic Discontent, International Aggression, and the United Nations .......................... 82
4.4 FRAMES USED TO REPORT THE INITIAL EXCHANGES ................................................................................... 85
CHAPTER 5 BOYCOTT RUMOURS BECOME REALITY: HOW SOVIET RADIO FRAMED THE STATE OF
THE UNION ADDRESS ...........................................................................................................................88
5.1 THE UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION AND THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE OF FOREIGN MINISTERS ........................... 89
5.2 THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS – A DISASTER FOR CARTER? ............................................................... 94
5.3 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................... 113
CHAPTER 6 MUHAMMAD ALI, CYRUS VANCE, THE BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN AND KABUL .................. 116
6.1 RADIO MOSCOW, MUHAMMAD ALI AND CYRUS VANCE......................................................................... 117
6.2 OLYMPIC GAMES: LAKE PLACID VERSUS MOSCOW ................................................................................ 123
6.3 REPORTING ON AFGHANISTAN ........................................................................................................... 129
6.3.1 Before the Uprising ........................................................................................................... 129
6.3.2 Reporting the Uprising ..................................................................................................... 134
6.4 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................... 139
CHAPTER 7 ‘OURS WILL NOT GO!’ THE UNITED STATES BOYCOTT IS OFFICIAL ............................... 142
7.1 THE BRITISH BOYCOTT RESOLUTION ................................................................................................... 143
7.2 CARTER’S ANNOUNCEMENT .............................................................................................................. 147
7.3 THE SPEECH IN BOYCOTT CONTEXT ..................................................................................................... 151
7.4 EUROPE VOTES NO! ........................................................................................................................ 155
7.5 THE BOA VOTES TO ATTEND! ............................................................................................................ 157
7.6 AFGHANISTAN ................................................................................................................................ 160
7.6.1 Afghanistan and the Olympic Boycott .............................................................................. 160
7.6.2 Defending Soviet Actions in Afghanistan .......................................................................... 162
7.6.3 Attacking the US-led interference .................................................................................... 164
7.7 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................... 167
CHAPTER 8 DEADLINE DAY ............................................................................................................ 169
8.1 HOW DEADLINE DAY AFFECTED THE FRAMING OF THE BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN ............................................... 170
4
8.1.1 Building up to Deadline Day ............................................................................................. 170
8.1.2 The Deadline Passes…....................................................................................................... 176
8.2 AFGHANISTAN, THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE AND PEACE PROPOSALS ........................................................... 180
8.2.1 The Islamic Conference, Afghanistan and Foreign News Reporting ................................. 186
8.3 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................... 190
CHAPTER 9 RADIO MOSCOW REPORTS THE OLYMPICS .................................................................. 193
9.1 THE OLYMPIC GAMES ON THE HORIZON .............................................................................................. 194
9.2 THE GAMES BEGIN! ........................................................................................................................ 205
9.3 REPORTING AFGHANISTAN ................................................................................................................ 214
9.4 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................... 218
CHAPTER 10 RADIO MOSCOW, AFGHANISTAN, THE MOSCOW OLYMPICS AND THE WORLD ...... 221
10.1 FRAME ANALYSIS AND THE SOVIET VIEW OF THE WORLD IN 1980 ....................................................... 222
10.2 RADIO MOSCOW METHODS ......................................................................................................... 229
10.2.1 The Grey Area .............................................................................................................. 230
10.2.2 Selective Reporting ...................................................................................................... 230
10.2.3 Selective Sources .......................................................................................................... 231
10.2.4 Misrepresentation ....................................................................................................... 231
10.3 THE BBC MONITORING SERVICE ARCHIVE AND THE FUTURE ............................................................... 235
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................... 237
PRIMARY MATERIAL .................................................................................................................................. 237
Unpublished .................................................................................................................................... 237
Published......................................................................................................................................... 238
LATER WORKS ......................................................................................................................................... 241
Books .............................................................................................................................................. 241
Articles ............................................................................................................................................ 244
Theses ............................................................................................................................................. 245
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and The
Imperial War Museum, and I am grateful to both for their financial support and the
opportunities they have provided. I would like to thank my supervisors Peter Busch and
Suzanne Bardgett for their support and assistance throughout this research. I am grateful to both
Peter and Richard Golland for initiating this project and giving me the opportunity to carry it
out.
I have had a wonderful time using the BBC Monitoring Service archive over the past few years,
and my thanks go to the staff at IWM Duxford – Stephen Walton, Brenda Collings and Pam
Wright – for their help, advice, and welcome. This research would not be possible without the
work of the BBC Monitoring Service, and I thank the staff for their work both past and present.
I would also like to thank the archivists at the BBC Written Archives Centre for assisting in my
research, helping to find invaluable information on the service and its impact, and the team at
the Olympic research library at the University of East London for supplying so much assistance
when I first started.
I would like to thank the various conferences and organisations that have given me a chance to
present aspects of my research and for most importantly providing forums to discuss ideas. In
particular, the British Society of Sports Historians, the British International History Group, the
North American Society of Sports Historians, and the convenors of Radio: A Transnational
Conference 2013.
Finally, I must thank my friends and family for their understanding and support throughout, and
Katie in particular for listening and understanding my ideas, proof-reading my work, and
supplying lots of support throughout.
DECLARATION
The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived
from it may be published without proper acknowledgement.

6
ABBREVIATIONS
AFP Agence France-Presse
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BOA British Olympic Association
DD BBC Daily Digest
FBIS United States Foreign Broadcast Information Service
IOC International Olympic Committee
RFE Radio Free Europe (American Broadcaster)
RL Radio Liberty (American Broadcaster)
RM Radio Moscow (Soviet Broadcaster)
RPP Radio Peace & Progress (Soviet Broadcaster)
NOC National Olympic Committee
TASS Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union
SWB BBC Summary of World Broadcasts
VOA Radio Station: Voice of America (American Broadcaster)
WELLE Radio Station: Deutsche Welle

References for the BBC Monitoring Services archive at Duxford are given in the following
format (where information is available): Archive / Broadcast State / Targeted Broadcast Region
/ Box Number, Radio Station, Target Audience, Date of Broadcast, Time of Broadcast, Number
of Broadcast, Name of Broadcast, Transcript Page. All are from the archive Imperial War
Museum (IWM) and the state Soviet Union (SU).
e.g. IWM/SU/C/216 RM GBI 30th January 1980, 2000, 4, ‘Vantage Point’, p.5
Broadcast region abbreviations used:
B Soviet Union Home Services
C English Language Records
D Western Europe Records
E Eastern Europe Records
F Other – Arabic and Persian, and also language broadcasts to Afghanistan, states
in Africa and Turkey.
7
Target Audience abbreviations in footnotes:
Arabic Persia (Arabic Language Broadcast)
Bulg Bulgaria (Bulgarian Language Broadcast)
Czech Czechoslovakia (Czech Language Broadcast)
Eng Asia South East Asia (English Language Broadcast)
Eng Africa Africa (English Language Broadcast)
Finn Finland (Finnish Language Broadcast)
Fre Africa Africa (French Language Broadcast)
Fre Europe Europe (French Language Broadcast)
Fre Alg Algeria (French Language Broadcast)
GBI Great Britain & Ireland (English Language Broadcast)
Ger East Germany (German Language Broadcast)
Greek Greece (Greek Language Broadcast)
Home Soviet Union (Russian Language Broadcast)
Hung Hungary (Hungarian Language Broadcast)
Italian Italian (Italian Language Broadcast)
Mace Macedonia (Macedonian Language Broadcast)
N.Am North America (English Language Broadcast)
Polish Poland (Polish Language Broadcast)
Port Europe Portugal (Portuguese Language Broadcast)
Port Africa Africa (Portuguese Language Broadcast)
Serb Yugoslavia (Serb-Croat Language Broadcast)
Spain Spain (Spanish Language Broadcast)
Turkish Turkey (Turkish Language Broadcast)
WSE Worldwide (English Language Broadcast)
Romanian Romania (Romanian Language Broadcast)
Slovene Czechoslovakia (Slovene Language Broadcast)
Persian Persia (Persian Language Broadcast)
Pashto Afghanistan (Pashto Language Broadcast)
Shona Zimbabwe (Shona Language Broadcast)

8
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
‘Freedom of speech in general means nothing. When meant to relate to the media it must
be examined as whose freedom of speech? Freedom of speech for what interests? It is
those interests that are important – are they the people’s or not? There cannot be non-
selective media. The issue is: selectivity for whom?’
Vladimir Pozner, Radio Moscow North American Service, 23rd January 1980.1
This thesis examines how the Soviet Union international radio broadcaster, Radio Moscow,
reported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the resultant US-led campaign to boycott the
1980 Moscow Olympic Games, and explores how the focus of this reporting shifted depending
on the target audience. Using the Imperial War Museum’s BBC Monitoring Service archive, a
unique and vast unexplored collection of radio transcripts, it incorporates the concept of frame
analysis to investigate what Radio Moscow said, and why.2
This thesis uniquely focuses on the Soviet broadcasts that were targeted on different audiences
around the world. Despite Gary Rawnsley’s assertion that international radio broadcasting
‘helped to sustain [the Cold War] as an endemic state by perpetuating tensions, attitudes and
predispositions’, almost all research in the area has concentrated on broadcasts directed towards
the Warsaw Pact states from the West, such as the works by A. Ross Johnson, Arch Puddington
and Michael Nelson.3 There is a gap in the literature here that this thesis works towards bridging
– Simo Mikkonen has examined Soviet broadcasting in a book chapter, Barak Hazan has
incorporated some Soviet radio broadcasting into his book examining the Soviet propaganda
build up to the Moscow Olympics, and a journal article by Don Smith examined how

1 IWM/SU/C/216 RM N.Am 23rd Jan 1980, 0030, section 2
2 Imperial War Museums Duxford holds BBC Monitoring transcripts of numerous radio broadcasters
worldwide, including Soviet broadcasters, from 1939 to 1982. Furthermore, the archive contains material
derived from these transcripts – The Daily Digest and Summary of World Broadcasts (dates 30th August
1939 – 12th April 1947).
3 G. Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda (Macmillan Press Ltd, 1996). p.166, A. Ross Johnson
and R. Eugene Parta, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A
Collection of Documents (Central European University Press, 2010); A. Puddington, Broadcasting
Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (University Press, Kentucky,
2003); M. Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War
(Syracuse Press, 1997).