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The website of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian service – bbcrussian.com – launched an archive of significant historical radio programmes from the past 45 years today.

Among the voices featured in the audio archive are Alexander Kerensky, Prime Minister during the 1917 Russian Revolution; Nobel Laureates for Literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky; one of Russia's great poets Anna Akhmatova; and Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva.

It also features former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and former Beatle Paul McCartney – both of whom took part in live phone-ins with audiences in the USSR in the Eighties.

The archive – which can be accessed through the radio page on bbcrussian.com – brings together more than 50 hours of audio from nearly half a century.

It is divided into sections on Culture, Society, Britain, History and Music.

The oldest recording in the archive is ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian's coverage of the funeral of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1965.

First recorded in 1982, author Alexander Solzhenitsyn reads his seminal work One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.

More recently, there are archive recordings of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was murdered in 2006 in Moscow.

There are also many recordings of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian commentator Anatoly Goldberg who, for many generations of listeners in the Soviet Union, was a household name.

Among the programmes, clips and speeches are old editions of iconic programmes like Sevaoborot – featuring legendary broadcaster Seva Novgorodsev – Citizen Of The World, and London A-Z.

Sarah Gibson, Head of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian, says: "The Russian service continues to take pride in the range of topical voices it puts on air.

"This archive will allow a new generation to hear some of the pivotal events and people which have appeared on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ in Russian, many of whom have had a profound impact on Russian life over the last century."

Now that the vintage programmes have been digitised, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian plans to donate the original tapes of its historical archive to the Hoover Institution in the United States.

Notes to Editors

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian is a multimedia broadcaster offering radio and online content to Russian-speaking audiences, with up-to-the-minute news, features and analysis.

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Russian radio programmes are streamed online via bbcrussian.com and are broadcast on shortwave, on medium wave in Moscow (1260 MW), St Petersburg (1260 MW) and Yekaterinburg (666 MW), and are available direct to home through Hotbird 2 satellite.

The 24/7 website bbcrussian.com offers news and information in text, audio and video.

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ World Service International Publicity