Boris Belitzky Archives - Richard Dimbleby: Broadcaster

From Russia with Dimbleby

Until the death of Stalin in 1953 the cold war numbed broadcasting relations between the Soviet Union and Great Britain. British camera teams were not allowed to enter Russia. Correspondents were denied visas. Broadcasts in the BBC’s European Service were systematically jammed. There were none of the normal interchanges of musical programmes or sporting events between broadcasting organisations.

In 1956 a slight thaw began. The Russians sent an engineer to observe the BBC’s experimental colour television demonstrations at Alexandra Palace. When Khrushchev and Bulganin came to visit Sir Anthony Eden in April of that year the idea of cultural exchanges was mooted. As a first step they invited an official delegation from the BBC to come and inspect radio and television in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev.

By the end of April, even before Bulganin and Khrushchev had sailed back to Russia, seven of us representing BBC Sound and Television, Engineering and Programmes, External Services and News, had flown to Moscow, just in time to see the famous May Day parade through Red Square. Anatol Goldberg, the Programme Organiser of the BBC’s Russian section, was able to interpret for us. The Russians also provided as a guide and interpreter Boris Belitzky, who was one of the regular broadcasters in Moscow Radio’s English service. Belitzky had lived in New York as a boy and spoke excellent English. He left us on May Day to give the English language radio commentary on the parade. The Russian television service was also developing, and the parade was televised for the first time that year, with two outside broadcast units on opposite sides of Red Square. The broadcast was technically impressive, though the cameras were badly placed.

We had many discussions with the Russians, seeking ways of opening up broadcasting relationships without the sacrifice of principle on matters such as censorship, and without involving either of us in carrying the other’s propaganda. The discussions tended to founder when we brought up the question of jamming. Russians love metaphors and elaborate figures of speech, and so at one of their many hospitable occasions the Director of External Services, J. B. Clark, made a glowing speech about the beautiful garden which lay ahead, ‘but the gates of the garden have their hinges and locks corroded by jamming’. The Soviet Deputy Minister of Communications quickly replied, ‘The gates must be open, but the key to the gates must be in the pocket of the master of the garden’.

Nevertheless Frank Gillard, who was representing Sound Programmes, and I, representing Television, did return with one positive achievement. We had got the names of two broadcasters speaking excellent English who would be prepared to take part (in sound only) in hook-up discussions of current affairs, subject to official permission. One was Yuri Fokin, soon to become Head of News of Moscow Radio. The other was Boris Belitzky. This represented substantial progress, for the Russians at that time had no tradition of unscripted discussion at all. Moreover we returned with their telephone numbers, and had learned that the telephone appeared to pierce the Iron Curtain fairly easily. We also broached the question of a possible television hook-up as soon as the links across Europe could be established. At that time the Russians had not yet even linked Moscow with Leningrad.

Belitzky had welcomed the idea of contributing in sound only to Panorama. He knew Dimbleby well by voice and reputation. As soon as the Russians launched their first Sputnik I telephoned Moscow and in the next Panorama Belitzky’s voice took part in the studio discussion of the possibility of the space age.

Dimbleby and Belitzky in front of a brightly painted mural.

Dimbleby, Balfour and Belitzky in front of a brightly painted mural.

Dimbleby holds up a small model of Sputnik

Brussels International Exhibition, 1958, with Boris Belitzky, Sir John Balfour, U.K. Commissioner-General, Model Sputnik III. Soviet cameras, a Flemish outside broadcast, the Eurovision link, standards conversion and photographed off the television screen.

In 1958 the television hook-up with Moscow moved one stage closer. At the International Exhibition at Brussels the Soviet Pavilion was equipped with closed circuit television. With the aid of a Flemish outside broadcast unit and the Eurovision link Dimbleby was able to introduce a BBC programme with the words ‘I am speaking to you direct from a studio of Radio Moscow’. He liked dramatic openings and this was literally true, for Radio Moscow had provided the television studio and cameras in the Soviet Pavilion.

Richard Dimbleby and Boris Belitzky, meeting face to face for the first time, then toured the Soviet Pavilion and talked to an attractive interpreter, Maya Malisheva, who displayed fur coats and Russian food delicacies, including one item that intrigued Dimbleby – porridge for dessert. It was a highly complicated programme for the BBC producer, Derek Burrell-Davis, for he was dealing with a Russian outside broadcast unit, a Flemish outside broadcast unit, and a Russian telecine machine, and the technical crews had no common language.

British viewers and television critics were fascinated by their first live view of Soviet activity. The ‘Guardian’ television critic commented: ‘A complicated broadcast which was well handled by Derek Burrell-Davis, the British producer, and by Richard Dimbleby, who had abandoned his baronial manner very successfully under the shadow of Lenin, and who did not forget to remind us, as the camera passed finally from sucking pig, salmon, chickens, sturgeons, mutton chops and porridge-for-dessert to a last glimpse of Sputnik III, that “there is always something like that looking down on you”.’

I was interested to note the next evening in Brussels that Flemish television repeated exactly the same programme for Belgian viewers, with one of their own commentators taking Dimbleby’s place, and a Flemish-speaking Russian instead of Belitzky. But they stuck entirely to the shape of the programme carefully prepared by Dimbleby and Burrell-Davis and did not even bother to issue another camera script to the technical crew. The Dimbleby moves and the Dimbleby questions could not be improved upon.

Peter Dimmock wrote to the Russian authorities warmly thanking them for their co-operation and hoping for further opportunities for the outside broadcast units of the two countries to work together in the future.

Other BBC visitors travelled to Moscow. Aubrey Singer went in search of scientific programme material, Peter Dimmock to arrange film of the USA/USSR athletics match. Dimmock reported that the Russians were hoping to create a television link with Prague via Warsaw in order to be able to receive the 1960 Olympic Games live from Rome. We continued to work for a live hook-up from Moscow. At the same time discussions went on from time to time to try to abolish jamming. Dimmock reported that the Russians were beginning to favour ITV on the film coverage of sport, because, as ITV did not broadcast to Russia, there were no complications over jamming.

In February 1960 the Soviet Union ceased its jamming of the BBC’s European programmes, and this obstacle seemed out of the way. Early the next year ATV proudly announced that they were going to achieve the first television link-up from Moscow to Britain, by live coverage of the British Trade Exhibition, due to open in Moscow on 17 May 1961, and even took advertising space in British newspapers and periodicals to publish the announcement in Russian.

An airport. Overlaid it the caption THIS BROADCAST IS DIRECT FROM MOSCOW

After all the BBC’s pioneering work on Eurovision, and its long negotiations with the Russians, this was too clear a challenge to be ignored. The BBC countered with an offer to relay the morning May Day parade from Moscow that year and, because 1 May fell on a Monday, to broadcast that evening a special edition of Panorama from Moscow. Richard Dimbleby would do both programmes. The Russian authorities agreed. Peter Dimmock and Tony Bridgewater, then the senior engineer on the outside broadcasting side, went to Moscow, and with generous help from the Russians and the Finns worked out a method of getting the Moscow pictures across the Baltic from Tallin to Helsinki, and so down the Eurovision link through Scandinavia to Britain. Paul Fox flew to Moscow to prepare the Panorama programme, Noble Wilson to arrange the relay of the May Day Parade. Paul Fox recalls:

Filled with doubts, I arrived in Moscow to arrange the Panorama side of things. Already installed in the National Hotel was Noble Wilson. And as we looked at our plans for this first-timer from Russia, something far bigger overtook us. A friend – an American correspondent – phoned us with the news that something was on: he couldn’t tell what. And even as we puzzled it out, the loudspeakers blared into action: ‘The Soviet Union has today launched the first man into space’.

Major Yuri Gagarin was circling the globe. And soon afterwards came the news that he was safely back – with Moscow getting ready for the hero’s welcome of all time.

Here we were, two television producers, sitting in on the most spectacular story for many a year, with not a hope of televising a second of it to the rest of Europe. What an anticlimax the May Day parade would be – we thought – when the Gagarin home-coming and parade was what everyone wanted to see. But was it really hopeless? Could not the much planned television link-up for May Day be brought forward by seventeen days? It might be and it was.

I was in my Lime Grove office on the evening of 19 April when Paul Fox came through on the telephone from Moscow to say he thought he had managed to get the programme through to Helsinki in time for the broadcast of Gagarin’s return to Moscow Airport the very next morning. I immediately announced to the press, and we began trailing heavily on both sound and television the news that we hoped to cover the Gagarin reception – the first man to travel in space, and the first live television pictures from Moscow. It could only be a hope, for official Soviet approval had not yet been given, and we had had no chance to test reception conditions.

I quickly telephoned Dimbleby, who dropped his other commitments to come in the next morning. I also corralled Anatol Goldberg from the BBC’s Russian Service, and at 10.30 a.m. on Friday 14 April we opened transmission.

Dimbleby explained, as he enjoyed explaining technicalities in layman’s language, the complications of getting pictures along the route from Moscow to London. We showed what little news film had come in from Russia, and Dimbleby and Goldberg talked in the studio for a quarter of an hour as we anxiously waited for pictures on the studio monitor. At 10.46 a.m. they miraculously came through, and television was now stretching from Moscow to Londonderry.

The pictures were remarkably good, but the sound was confused. Sometimes we heard a man in Helsinki, sometimes Boris Belitsky. Dimbleby thrived on confusions of that kind, and Gagarin’s walk across the apron of Moscow Airport to receive the bearhug embrace of Khrushchev needed no words of commentary.

Dimbleby had been there to open yet another chapter in television’s unfolding story. A few days later he flew off to broadcast in quick succession the May Day parade, Panorama’s special edition from Moscow, and the Queen’s State visit to Italy.

Moscow – May 1961

It was 27 April 1961: four days before the first live television relay to Western Europe of the celebrated May Day Parade from Red Square, Moscow. Quite apart from the technical and political problems which had kept many of us active for months beforehand, this was as difficult and delicate a commentary as any that Richard had faced in his broadcasting career. It became all the more of a challenge when we learned that as a result of meetings in London it had been agreed that his commentary on the parade was to be shared with Boris Belitzky of Moscow Radio.

Richard was not pleased with the decision, but his irritation only showed itself in the extra colourful and pithy comments on life in general and Soviet waiters in particular during the two and a half hours that it took them to serve us dinner. He understood full well the pressures at work, and as on so many occasions, quietly stifled thoughts of self. He also knew and liked Belitzky. However, although it had been decided in principle that he and Boris should share the commentary, there was no ruling on how this was to be done. We had our views; the Soviet Television authorities were bound to have theirs; just twenty-four hours before transmission we met to talk about it in an office on the first floor of the barrack-like Television Centre.

The Chairman of the meeting was Konstantin Kuzakov, the Director of Television. With him was Yuri Fokin, the Head of News and principal commentator, and a number of others. But the focus was on just two men: Dimbleby and Belitzky. The latter, feeling slightly uncomfortable, a radio man directed to work in the relatively unfamiliar medium of television on a programme of considerable political importance; the former, shadow-boxing gently as the pleasantries were exchanged, sniffing the political air, sizing up the problem. And the rest of us sat around them like so many seconds out of the ring.

MOCKBA MAY 1961 caption superimposed on a night-time shot of the Kremlin

Dimbleby in front of St Basil's Cathedral

The May Day parade from Moscow, with Dimbleby in front of St Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, and Marshal Malinovsky, Minister of Defence, taking the salute with Khrushchev and Gagarin

The meeting ground on in the way that meetings do in Moscow, until Kuzakov said that he was sure the best thing would be if the two commentators went to another office and settled the matter by themselves. Richard, with a quick ‘Don’t worry’ look at me, got up and said, ‘Splendid idea – come on, Boris, or we won’t get any lunch’.

Somewhere in the Soviet archives there may be a recording of what Richard said to Boris and what Boris said to Richard, both surely conscious that they were not alone. Richard told me later that it was all very polite but formal. After about an hour, they came back to Kuzakov’s office and told us how they intended to ‘divide’ the parade between them. There were some parts which still worried me, but on the whole it seemed that honour on both sides had been satisfied.

Boris and Richard and I lunched together at the Braga restaurant, all of us, I think, relieved that official needs had been met. It was very much a working lunch, with Richard asking question after question. Boris was weak on some of the military details but knew the parade well and was able to provide a lot of information about the personalities taking part. He was altogether very helpful to Richard and told me privately that he had a great respect for him as a broadcaster.

Although Richard had managed to secure the commentary on most of the politically tricky parts of the parade, there was still one item which worried us. At a certain point, workers from a locomotive factory were due to march on with garlands and banners bearing such slogans as ‘Hands Off Cuba’ and ‘Down with American Imperialism’. And this part was to be covered by Boris.

That evening we checked circuits and lines and microphones, while Richard settled down to his homework. At 2.30 a m. he was still working on the names of the Soviet Praesidium, calling them out as John Drummond held up their photographs. It was like some weird Russian parlour game – goodness knows what a listening monitor may have made of that night’s tape!

After a very few hours’ sleep, we all gathered at the breakfast bar on our floor. Richard was cheerful, with an edge of determination glinting through the banter. As usual, we had an interminable wait for the lift – Richard said he was certain that waiting for lifts was the principal reason why Russians read Dostoyevsky novels. After a car ride down Gorki Street, and a brief argument with the police cordon, we reached our room on the top floor of GUM, which, as every tourist knows, is the biggest department store in Moscow, and which runs along one side of Red Square, opposite the Kremlin. It was not an ideal commentary position – the windows were narrow and restricted the view to left and right. But it was directly opposite the saluting base on Lenin’s tomb, and there was plenty of room for notes and scripts. It was also warm, comfortable and well equipped.

Richard and Boris were in a sort of commentary booth near the window, screened by drapes and glass from the rest of the room. Each had a monitor in front of him and there was an on/off switch for the microphones. From a control position I had talk-back to Richard and Boris as well as communication with London. But there was little I could do now – it was all up to Richard and the pictures from the Soviet cameras. I was still concerned about Boris and those slogans. Of course I needn’t have worried. I should have remembered that in 1945 it was Richard who made a Russian patrol in Berlin release him by persuading them that he was a son of Winston Churchill. Instead of stopping his commentary, Richard ‘missed the place’ and went straight on, translating the slogans without emphasis and attracting attention to more interesting things. Then he switched off the mike, turned to Boris and said, ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Boris, you were supposed to do that bit.’ Clearly, it wasn’t Boris’s fault.

Every instinct he had was at concert pitch that morning. Every word was carefully chosen and placed. I remember one particular moment when, at the end of the military parade, the ‘spontaneous demonstration’ of citizens of Moscow began. Across the square they came in their thousands, untidy and shuffling. It would have been all too easy to use the wrong verb: ‘shambling’ would have been too strong – ‘walking’ too weak. Richard used ‘ambling’ and somehow managed to make it sound as scruffy as it looked.

That evening we saw Richard off on the Comet back to London; but not to rest – by the very next morning he had to be in Naples to give a commentary on the arrival of Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the start of their State Visit to Italy. There was not even time to go home, so a room in one of the airport hotels had been booked to allow him to relax for a few hours: and so that he could watch his own Panorama he’d arranged for a television set to be specially installed. With his mind still echoing with the events of a memorable May Day, Richard began to concentrate on the next task ahead. There were also letters to be signed and private business to be discussed during these hours between flights. Yet he found time to telephone each of our families and assure them that all was well with us – but then Richard, always and instinctively, found time for kindness.

Tele-snap of Dimbleby in Red Square — In Red Square

Meet Major Gagarin

As a reciprocal gesture the Russians agreed to relay the Trooping the Colour, and Yuri Fokin came to London to speak the Russian commentary, following on headphones what Richard Dimbleby was saying. Dimbleby always briefed the European commentators carefully before any major event, and greatly eased their tasks for them. A month later Major Gagarin unexpectedly came to Britain to appear at the Soviet Exhibition at Earl’s Court.

On Tuesday 11 July 1961, Dimbleby was at London Airport to describe his arrival. Gagarin was met by the Soviet Ambassador, the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, and a civil servant, the secretary to the Minister of Science, Lord Hailsham. Dimbleby was also the commentator later that day at a televised press conference from the Earl’s Court Exhibition, a curious affair at which much of the questioning was puerile, and some speakers from Eastern Europe insisted on reading out poems to the cosmonaut. Belitzky was again doing the translating, and Dimbleby complained on the air that he thought the arrangements at London Airport for greeting the first man to travel in space had been inadequate. A member of the Government and not a civil servant should have been there.

Dimbleby stands over Yuri Fokin who is wearing headphones and speaking into a lip mic — Yuri Fokin describing the Trooping the Colour

There was in fact a lively debate in Britain on the degree of welcome which should be extended to Gagarin, for this was a period of some political tension in Anglo-Soviet affairs. It was soon resolved by the Queen inviting Gagarin to one of her informal luncheon parties on the Friday of that week.

Meanwhile some newspapers charged that the BBC was departing from its charter by taking sides in a current controversy, and I told our press office to point out that Richard was expressing his own view, which he was perfectly entitled to do. The BBC as such was not, as alleged, taking an editorial line. The ‘Daily Herald’ and some others made out that the BBC was annoyed with Dimbleby and was publicly repudiating him. This in turn made the new Director-General, Hugh Carleton Greene, angry, and he took the trouble to telephone Dimbleby to assure him personally that the papers had got it all wrong. Dimbleby, who had at that time not met the new Director-General, much appreciated the telephone call.

Meanwhile we were trying to arrange a proper television interview at which Gagarin could be questioned. Paul Fox was handling the negotiations with Rogov of the Soviet Embassy. After several conversations on Thursday 13 July, the Russians agreed, provided that Yuri Fokin could be part of the panel, and that the general areas of questioning, though not specific questions, should be submitted in writing as soon as possible. This was accepted and we prepared announcements to say that a special programme ‘Meet Major Gagarin’ would be recorded at the Soviet Exhibition the next day and transmitted later that evening in place of a Burns and Allen programme. Richard Dimbleby would be the chairman, Tom Margerison, Science Editor of the ‘Sunday Times’ would be on the panel with Yuri Fokin, and Boris Belitzky would be the interpreter.

Meanwhile the British Government had changed its official attitude towards Gagarin. On that Thursday I went to a hastily arranged reception for him at the Hyde Park Hotel. The Prime Minister, Mr Macmillan, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, and the Minister of Science, Lord Hailsham, were all there.

Later that evening Lord Hailsham came to Lime Grove to appear on Gallery. While we were talking with him and Lady Hailsham after the programme Paul Fox phoned. He said that, despite the earlier agreement, Rogov had just been instructed to insist that unless every single question to be put to Gagarin was submitted in writing by 9.30 the next morning the programme was off. I told Fox that in that case the programme would have to be off. Distinguished broadcasters like Margerison and Dimbleby could never agree to submit all their questions in advance. Nor could the BBC. But I also told him to warn the Soviet Embassy that we would have to announce why the broadcast was cancelled. I also asked Fox to go round to the Soviet Embassy the next morning to try to get them to return to the earlier agreement.

Fox telephoned the next morning to say all was well. The Embassy had withdrawn its demand for written questions in advance. Gagarin with Belitzky as interpreter went to lunch at Buckingham Palace, and came straight on to the room in the Earl’s Court Exhibition where we had set up our cameras.

Gagarin entered accompanied by the Soviet Ambassador, who was in a bad temper, and General Kaminin, the Russian in charge of space experiments. There was also a large collection of very tough-looking security men. Dimbleby greeted them all courteously.

The discussion went very well. Gagarin had great charm and answered easily. At the end, just as Dimbleby had been given a ‘Three minutes more’ sign by the floor manager, Fokin stepped in with a very long and heavily polemical statement only just in the form of a question. Gagarin gave an equally long political reply. Dimbleby wasn’t going to end on that note, so he quickly asked Gagarin what presents he was proposing to take back to Moscow. There was a hurried consultation with Belitzky, who replied, ‘Major Gagarin is going to take back toys for his children, souvenirs of London, and something for his wife which he will not disclose, in order that it may remain a secret.’ It was in fact a fur coat. After the interview the Ambassador, General Kaminin and the strong arm men had a long huddle with Gagarin before he was filmed for an ITN interview. Rogov said to Fox, ‘Ah well, we all have to compromise!’ Fox replied sharply, ‘What do you mean! We didn’t.’

The Most Disciplined Performer

The next morning the BBC carried this radio tribute in Today:

When I first joined Panorama seven years ago, I remember Richard Dimbleby telling me on location in some flooded British town that it was all very well to have a good degree and be bright, but what was really needed in television was discipline. And he was, in fact, the most disciplined performer I’ve ever seen. He approached his job like an artist or an engineer, and to watch him linking a show or doing a commentary on a big public event was to see technical perfection. He loved his work, not only television but all work. He loved being busy and he loved the challenge of complicated situations in which he’d be obliged to follow one set of events from a monitor screen, for example, with one eye whilst keeping pace with another set of events with the other. He was the only man in British television who became well known in America, because of his work on Telstar and Early Bird, and whenever I’ve been in New York with him, New Yorkers and especially policemen (for whom he seemed to have a predilection) would salute him at crossroads and say ‘Hullo, Richard!’.

I’ve often talked to other people in the BBC about what the qualities were in Dimbleby that created such an impact on viewers, mostly favourable but not always. And I think the secret was that he reflected many of the key qualities of the English. He was simple, and had a very straightforward and concrete approach to things and situations. He had a strong sentiment and a strong loyalty and I’d say probably did more than anyone else to show the place of the Royal Family in the Sixties. But since the last years of his life were overshadowed by cancer, what I recall most clearly about him was his courage under the strain of it all. I remember coming back with him from a filming outing in New York one afternoon late in autumn. We were much later than we’d expected, and Dimbleby was tired and in quite evident pain, but never during the preceding, extremely tiresome hours had he been impatient or tried to cry off the story. This is professionalism of a very high order and it’s this which will be remembered.

Messages of condolence flowed into the BBC from all over the world, especially from the Commonwealth and from countries with particular debts of gratitude to Dimbleby: Yugoslavia, Persia and Greece. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast special tributes.

The European Broadcasting Union said: ‘His death brings a sense of personal loss as much to us in Europe and beyond as it does to you who live in England.’

North German Radio said: ‘He stood for all the qualities which have made BBC Television an example of fearless yet thoroughly honest journalistic work.’

From Moscow Boris Belitzky telegraphed: ‘A great voice has gone off the air.’

Fred Friendly cabled from CBS News in New York: ‘Richard Dimbleby – BBC – was a dateline all in his own right like Coventry, Parliament, Trafalgar and Dunkirk. His voice, the voice of Britain, and that of Ed Murrow CBS were stilled the same year. These men often meant as much to citizens in each other’s countries as they did in their own. We at CBS News are additionally saddened by the death of another friend and colleague whose voice and whose truth all of us can so ill afford to lose.’

But perhaps the message that said most came in halting English from an Italian worker living in Germany:

As foreigner friend and fans’s programs of B.B.C. specially in ‘panorama’ I am really shocked about Mr Dimbley’s death, former broadcast man and director of ‘panorama’. His face was so familiar and friendly speaking that I really enjoyed so many times watching your program on panorama, so beautifully runned by him. In the same time this hour of sorrow for everybody’s feeling will you so kind to have my personal feeling of regret for all family’s B.B.C. for such big loss. I am very sorry if I am ask you for a favour and to send my feelings as unknown friend, to Mr Dimbley’s wife and my warm cuddle for his sons david and jonathan in this hour of big sorrow for them.

Thank you very much for all.

Yours faithfully
Filippo Palmerini