Joe Adamov

Joe Adamov, Name in Russian: Иосиф Адамов (Yosif Adamov) (7 January 1920 - December 2005) was a journalist and presenter on Radio Moscow and its successor the Voice of Russia for over sixty years. Although of Armenian descent, he was born in Batumi, Georgia. During most of his career he was a resident of Moscow, Russia. His death was reported on Voice of Russia's English-language news bulletins on December 12, 2005, although neither these bulletins nor the obituary on their website gave an exact date of death.

An expert English-speaker who spoke with a neutral American accent, Joe Adamov joined Radio Moscow as an announcer in 1942. Among English-speaking listeners he is best known as the presenter of the programme Moscow Mailbag which answered questions from listeners on all aspects of the USSR and Russia. During the Cold War the programme, like all other Radio Moscow output, was carefully studied by Western governments, a fact of which the Soviet authorities were well aware. Joe Adamov presented Moscow Mailbag from 1957 until shortly before his death when ill-health forced him to relinquish the role permanently. The programme remains on the air with different presenters.

In his capacities as a Radio Moscow journalist and presenter of Moscow Mailbag, Adamov conducted interviews with many western politicians and journalists, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Cronkite and Larry King.

Joe Adamov was also the official Soviet translator at the trial of Gary Powers, shot down in a U-2 spy plane in 1960.

The signature poem of Moscow Mailbag was:


 * You can't do better
 * than send us that letter
 * and in it tell Joe
 * what you think of his show