Current visit of Russia's President Vladimir Putin to our country is of interest not only to political analysts but also to very ordinary senior citizen folks like me (who were in our teens in the golden '60s).
During that golden era, it was common to see portraits of celebrities from different countries, particulatly the US and Russia (known as USSR in those days). Alongside portraits of Mahaatma Gandhiji, Netaaji Subash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore etc. there used to be Kruschev, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr etc. adorning the walls.
We used to get very informative magazines such as SPAN (published by the US embassy in Delhi) and Soviet Land (Published by USSR Government in different languages). Although SPAN is still being published, it's editions and those of Soviet Land of those days were giving more importance to socioeconomic issues than political ones, unlike today. Soviet Land had regular columns for philatelists with latest stamp releases.
Government Radio Stations such as VOA and Radio Moscow used to broadcast programmes in different world languages including Hindi and Tamil. VOA used to have daily half hour program known as 'Tamizh maalai" meaning 'Tamil evening' and Radio Moscow used to broadcast for longer duration and began it's programs with a local presenter saying "Moscow vaanoliyin Tamizh oliparappu.." meaning 'This is the Tamil language programme beamed from Radio Moscow..." There were also other popular broadcasters such as BBC and Radio Beijing (known as 'Radio Peaking') that used to broadcast in Indian languages.
As Mary Hopkin sang, 'Those were the days...".
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