The phrase "From the Soviet Information Bureau …", uttered by Yuri Levitan, accompanied the entire course of the Great Patriotic War, raising the spirit of soldiers and inspiring hope for ordinary people. Hitler’s personal enemy, the simple Soviet announcer Yuri Levitan is an example of the height of the human spirit and modesty.
Great Radio Speaker Biography
Levitan Yuri Borisovich, (the Jewish name is Yudko Berkovich), was born on September 19, 1914 in a small village in the Vladimir region in a family of ordinary Jews. His father worked in a sewing workshop, and his mother ran a household. Since childhood, Yuri, who dreamed of becoming a great actor, immediately after graduation, tries to enter the Moscow Theater School, but because of his loud voice and peculiar manner of conversation, entrance examinations fail. Frustrated by the impossibility of realizing his dream, the young man almost returned to his homeland, but by chance he gets into the broadcasting committee.
Over the next three years, Yuri carries out various small assignments of his colleagues in the workshop, and at night he intensively trains announcer's speech. After the entrant announcer was entrusted with reading the news feed in 1934, his head was heard by the head of the Soviet state, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Since that day, only radio speaker Yuri Levitan began to voice all important state information, after which his voice became recognizable in all corners of the country.
Work during the war years
In wartime, not a single news bulletin could do without his participation, but since it became unsafe to broadcast radio broadcasts in Moscow, Yuri Borisovich was secretly sent to Yekaterinburg. The existence of a basement shelter-studio, in which Levitan had to work, became known only after many years. From 1943 until the end of the war, Yuri Levitan worked at the Samara Military Radio Center. The famous announcer announced the end of the Great Patriotic War when he was in Moscow.
Throughout his life, Yuri Levitan has voiced more than 3, 000 news reports, including famous reports covering Stalin’s illness and death, space flight and other significant events. For his work, the announcer was awarded the Order of the Red Star and presented to the title of Honored People's Artist of the Soviet Union.
