Battleship Potemkin - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

About halfway through our Russian course someone had noticed in the local newspaper that the famous 1925 Eisenstein film 'Battleship Potemkin', was being shown a few evenings later in a nearby town. The film tells the story of the real-life events that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the eponymous battleship rebelled against their officers during the doomed Tsarist regime. A note on the announcement reminded potential customers that it was a silent film. Nevertheless we students unanimously decided that we ought to go and see it. We mentioned this to the school staff. They were completely taken aback and said they would have to refer the matter to the security people.

It seems there was some anguished discussion about whether, for security reasons, we should be allowed to go or not. The school staff thought we should go: the security people thought we should not. In the end we were given permission to go but told to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible and leave as soon as the film was over without getting involved in conversation with anyone. We went off in several cars and made our way to the hall in a splendid Council-run hospitality suite where the film was to be shown. We had dressed in sober suits and ties - that was the normal walking out dress for commissioned officers in the 1970s - but, in the circumstances, hardly inconspicuous.

There was very little activity as we arrived but we bought our tickets and moved inside. Then the awful truth dawned on us - the film show was being sponsored by the local Communist Party. Party apparatchiks were everywhere, they were definitely not dressed in three-piece suits or ties and they gave us some very strange looks. We decided not to inspect the reams of Communist literature on sale at a long table. There were only about a dozen people there to watch the film, in fact the Party officials easily outnumbered the public. We students sat together in an otherwise empty row in the auditorium and not a soul spoke to us or came anywhere near us. We certainly beat a hasty retreat as soon as the film was over.

The film for the most part made compelling viewing, irrespective of the storyline. Some of the filming techniques were quite remarkable and the famous, very long sequence called 'The Odessa Staircase', especially the part where the baby's pram falls interminably down the steps, was horrifying.

We had not been on the Russian Course for long when we realised that there was another, mysterious, part of North Luffenham that we were not supposed to speak about. It was called B Block. All the instructors there were RAF and British. We also knew that those of us earmarked for posting to 26 Signals Unit, but only those, would spend several weeks in B Block. Knowing nothing whatsoever about 'military intelligence' at that stage in my career, I assumed that in B Block we would learn advanced Russian technical vocabulary. When I once suggested that, in the Officers' Mess to a gathering of instructors, there was a deathly hush and I dropped the subject.

From time to time, when we were getting quite advanced in our studies, we were shown a variety of Russian films, some normal cinema films, others propaganda films about the Soviet Air Force. Many of the propaganda films had an English sound track dubbed onto the original Russian which entirely negated the only purpose we had for watching them.

On another occasion in the Officers' Mess bar, I complained that the extremely stilted English translation in the films of Soviet pilots' radio chat was totally unbelievable. "It would be much more useful," I opined innocently, "if someone recorded some real-life Soviet Air Force pilots talking on their radios. It must be easy enough to get recordings like that. Apart from making the films more interesting, it could be quite useful for intelligence purposes. We certainly used to listen to Soviet pilots when I flew on Victor tankers - but I didn't understand Russian then!"

There was an embarrassed silence from the staff who heard my remarks. Some months later, when I moved across to B Block, I had confirmation, not that I needed it, that there were plenty of real-life recordings of Soviet pilots talking on the air-to-ground radio but you needed a special security clearance even to acknowledge their existence, because it was "un-British to listen to other people's conversations". It dawned on me that probably the only people who didn't know it went on were the great British public. That was the moment when I realised that my posting to Berlin was not going to be as satisfying as I had thought. In the 21st Century everyone accepts that no electronic conversations are secure and, although it might be impolite, it isn't un-British to listen to them. It wasn't always like that!

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