This is taken from The Times, January 9, 2009:

Vladimir Rubinstein: BBC Monitoring Service executive

Vladimir (Vova) Rubinstein was a pivotal figure in the BBC Monitoring Service, the organisation that, by listening to foreign radio broadcasts around the world, is a fundamental supplier of news to the Government and the media.

Nicknamed the “ears of Britain”, the Monitoring Service was set up in the dark days of the Second World War and refined during the Cold War. It was manned by an extraordinary collection of diverse and eccentric people, many of them intellectuals with origins overseas, among whom Rubinstein stood out, not only for his linguistic abilities, but also for his interpersonal skills and understanding of world affairs, derived largely from his own background with first-hand experience of the Russian Revolution, the rise of Nazism and the complexities of the founding of Israel. To many, he was the heart of the Monitoring Service, and continued to be so for years after his retirement.

Rubinstein was born in 1916 in Tallinn, Estonia, where his mother’s father, Joseph Sundeleivich — ignoring the family tendency to devote one’s life to revolutionary activism — had built up a successful department store, starting from nothing. Vladimir’s own father, Joseph Rubinstein, came not from Estonia but southern Ukraine; a doctor and later dentist, he was a relative of the Russian composer Anton Rubinstein.

While visiting Ukraine, the young Rubinstein and his parents became embroiled in the turbulent aftermath of the Russian Revolution: the return journey to Estonia, via Moscow, in 1920 took him and his mother nearly a year as they endured abandoned trains, packed cattle-trucks, food shortages and typhoid — as well as having to make many attempts at bribing and hoodwinking officials — before they finally escaped.

The rest of Rubinstein’s childhood was calmer. It was divided between Tallinn and Berlin, as his parents moved according to work opportunities and family needs. He was educated mainly in German schools, but the family were Russian-speakers; during a decade living in Berlin they devoured German culture, yet many of their close friends were Russian émigrés and he was an avid participant in a Russian Boy Scout troop, forging friendships that were to last a lifetime.

In 1933, however, with the rise of Hitler, things became destabilised once more and the Rubinsteins promptly left Germany for Palestine, again resorting to subterfuge and charm, this time to smuggle valuables (hidden in medical and musical instruments) past Customs officials. Adjusting to the startlingly different languages and culture of the Middle East, Rubinstein completed his last three years of schooling, then in 1936 left for England to study law at the LSE. When war broke out, he moved to the University of Cambridge, studying at Peterhouse. He graduated in 1940 and was taken on by the BBC.

The Monitoring Service began operations in a handful of wooden huts amid the pear orchards of rural Evesham, to the bemusement of the Worcestershire locals. A colourful cast of men and women — refugees, businessmen, lawyers, academics — from across Europe, plus English engineers and supervisors, worked day and night, pooling their knowledge to interpret what they heard from overseas. Some achieved eminence in other fields — the art historian Ernst Gombrich, the future publisher George Weidenfeld, the poet Geoffrey Grigson, to name just a few — but for the duration of the war all were committed to the vital work of monitoring. The close-knit family spirit extended to play as much as work, with partying, jokes and romance.

Their task was to listen to and translate radio broadcasts, primarily from Germany, but also from Russia, France and elsewhere. As opposed to spying, they picked up what was openly on the airwaves: mainly public programmes broadcast by governments for their own people, plus a few clandestine or personal broadcasts, all highly informative. Rubinstein was in demand for his fluent German and Russian (especially as he was not a German national) and developed a talent for disentangling related minority languages, such as the little-known Ruthenian. In July 1941 he monitored a key broadcast by Stalin in which it was made clear that Russia was not going to capitulate to the Germans — a gargantuan task thanks to poorquality sound, a glass of water that Stalin was drinking and, not least, the Russian dictator’s Georgian accent.

In 1943 the Monitoring Service moved to Caversham Park near Reading. After the war it transferred its focus to the Cold War, lifting a corner of the Iron Curtain: in crises such as the Russian invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, subtle details of radio broadcasts were often the only way to tell which side held the upper hand. By this time monitors had become experts on the normal scheduled broadcasts on certain frequencies so that a minor change in presenter, frequency or theme tune could hint at political change behind the scenes. Thence they would deduce what other stations to listen to for further clues.

By the time of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 such was the universal confidence in the BBC that President Khrushchev broadcast a message to President Kennedy on the Moscow Home Service, knowing that the BBC would inform Kennedy within minutes, and Kennedy did indeed respond at once, without waiting for official confirmation. Even today’s technological advances in reporting have not obviated the need for monitoring as critical locations are often inaccessible.

Rubinstein played a crucial part in creating this hugely important international operation. Abroad, he set up remote listening stations which provided both Britain and the US with vital information over many decades, while in the UK, in increasingly senior posts, he established systems and monitoring practices that have endured almost unchanged to this day. His managerial talents were second to none.

He was renowned among colleagues for his combination of extraordinary organisational skills and a mischievous yet considerate personal touch. They remember him as a human being with great humour and devotion to work, controlling and cajoling the most diverse collection of individuals, someone who would defuse tense situations with a joke and who created a family atmosphere.

Vladimir Rubinstein was appointed MBE in 1973 for his work with the Monitoring Service; he had long since developed a fierce love of his adopted country and community. He retired in 1977, going on to chair Civil Service appointments boards.

In 1980, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Monitoring Service, Rubinstein co-wrote Assigned to Listen, a collection of memoirs of Evesham days. During the last decade of his life he wrote the story of his own family, a revealing insight into far-off life and times entitled In the Hands of History, to be published next year.

He is survived by Vivyenne, his wife of 53 years, and two children.

Vladimir Rubinstein, MBE, BBC Monitoring Service executive, was born on November 19, 1916. He died on October 19, 2008, aged 91