The Russian Federation Radio Live — Free Online Stations

Few countries have asked as much of radio as Russia. It had to reach villages across eleven time zones, speak to dozens of nations in their own languages and carry the voice of the state into every home. Even today, with podcasts and streaming everywhere, more than half of Russians still listen to the radio regularly. That long habit is why so many people search for Russian radio live or want to listen to Russian radio online.

7 May 1895: Radio Day

Russia celebrates its own Radio Day every 7 May. On that date in 1895, the physicist Alexander Popov demonstrated a receiver to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society in St Petersburg, an instrument designed to register electrical oscillations such as those produced by thunderstorms. Who truly invented radio is still debated between nations, but in Russia the date became a national celebration, first marked in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and on a grand scale in 1945, for the fiftieth anniversary.

From a laboratory in Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow

The first, irregular broadcasts began in 1919 from a radio laboratory in Nizhny Novgorod, followed from 1920 by experimental stations in Moscow, Kazan and other cities. In 1922 a powerful station named after the Comintern opened in Moscow, and it inspired a mass movement of radio amateurs who built their own receivers. Regular broadcasting began on 23 November 1924, when the first issue of a radio newspaper went on air.

A loudspeaker in every home

Soviet radio grew in an unusual way. Instead of relying only on receivers, the state built wired networks that carried a central programme to simple loudspeakers in apartments, offices and factories. For millions of families, the radio was a small box on the kitchen wall that could be turned up or down but not retuned. By the 1970s broadcasting covered the entire country, in more than sixty languages of the peoples of the USSR and some seventy foreign languages for listeners abroad.

Voices that a nation remembers

Soviet radio created announcers whose voices became part of history. During the Second World War, the bulletins read from Moscow were for many families the only news from the front, and the most famous of those voices, Yuri Levitan, became a national symbol. Radio drama, children's programmes and concerts of classical music filled the rest of the day.

The 1990s: the dial opens

The first private radio stations appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 1990s, and within a few years the FM band in large cities was full of music, talk and news stations competing for advertisers. Today more than three thousand broadcasting licences have been issued across the country, alongside national public networks such as Radio Mayak.

A medium that moves to the phone

Younger listeners aged 18 to 24 are moving towards podcasts and the internet, and listening through smartphones is growing quickly. Yet radio keeps a strong place in cars, at work and in regions where it remains the simplest link with the rest of the country.

Listening from abroad

For learners of Russian, a national news channel is a valuable daily lesson, and music stations open a window on Russian pop, rock and the classical repertoire. Availability of individual streams abroad can vary. Below you can play the Russian radio stations online we index, free in your browser.