“Attention! This is Moscow speaking!” – the famous lines from the Sovinformburo operational reports, even after almost 80 years, are read only with the intonation of the announcer Yuri Levitan. He was called the voice of Victory – it was Levitan who was entrusted to announce to the entire Soviet Union the capture of Berlin and the end of the Great Patriotic War. Not every Soviet citizen knew what he looked like, but everyone knew his voice, which was first heard 110 years ago in a tailor’s house in Vladimir. Levitan’s relatives and colleagues told Izvestia what Levitan, who existed on the verge of a myth, was really like.
A simple guy from Vladimir
Levitan got into radio by chance, when he and a friend went from Vladimir to Moscow to enroll in VGIK. He had been an artist since childhood, and spoke very loudly and clearly, for which he received the nickname Trumpet in childhood. However, even such a voice failed to impress the stern admissions committee of VGIK. Wandering the streets of Moscow, having not been accepted anywhere, they saw an advert for a school for announcers. Not yet knowing who announcers were, the friends ran to get a job there. There were no other options, and there was nothing to return to Vladimir with.
Night broadcast with Stalin
The first broadcast that Levitan was allowed to do while still an intern was reading the editorial of the newspaper Pravda. It was a night technical broadcast. A rather boring text that had to be pronounced syllable by syllable. But Joseph Stalin, who liked to work at night, turned on the radio and heard this voice, the announcer’s great-grandson Artur Levitan told Izvestia.
– Stalin immediately called Konstantin Maltsev at the Radio Committee and said that he wanted this voice to read his report on the radio the next day at the party congress. The head of state did not know that this was a young intern, who was 19 years old. Maltsev could not refuse. The next day they came to Levitan and took him to the radio room. He read for five hours without a single mistake, after which no one could call him Yura-Truba. Now Levitan was called YurBor, or Yuri Borisovich. In fact, that very night broadcast made him the main voice of the Kremlin, – noted Artur Levitan.
Levitan himself has repeatedly said that everything that happened was a simple coincidence. “But I don’t think it was a coincidence. His hard work and his desire to be on air would have been noticed sooner or later. His acting talent was haunting, and Levitan also loved to improvise,” added Izvestia’s source.