Media : The King of Rock? In Russia, It’s Radio : Western-style stations broadcast Beatles, Genesis and Public Enemy. It’s a pre-MTV pop scene.

Balalaika players and opera singers--once sources of the main musical fare on the radio in the Russian capital--have been pushed aside by electric guitars, rap singers and rock ‘n’ roll.

At least seven Western-style music radio stations, with big-name partners in places like Los Angeles and Paris, are filling the city’s airwaves with everything from the Beatles to Genesis to Public Enemy. More stations are expected to start broadcasting this spring.

“The first pop station started broadcasting in Moscow two years ago and since then the radio business has been booming,” said Alexander Kasparov, the program director of Radio Maximum, a new Russian-American commercial rock ‘n’ roll radio station.

“It’s hip. It’s happening. It has the idea of newness and freshness. Maybe when MTV comes, it will push us aside, but at the moment, radio is the big thing.”

The emergence of music radio stations is one of the many ways that life in post-Communist Moscow is becoming more like life in major Western cities.

As recently as five years ago, someone who wanted to listen to popular Western music on radio in Moscow had to wait around for one of the rare contemporary music programs on a state-run station.

Rock ‘n’ roll, both home-grown and Western, was denounced by the Soviet authorities during the 1960s, 1970s and most of the 1980s. Oleg J. Vakulovsky, 31, the program director of a station called Radio Roks, has saved Soviet newspaper clippings from the early 1980s in which the CIA is accused of corrupting Soviet youth through Western rock music.

“When I was growing up, there was only one radio--state radio--and about the only so-called popular music it played was hymns to the Soviet army and Russian folk songs,” Vakulovsky recalled.

Like many Russians of his age, Kasparov, 30, grew up listening to the scratchy music programs on shortwave radio from Voice of America and BBC, or to poorly recorded cassettes from friends lucky enough to get hold of recordings from abroad.

“Before perestroika and even during the first years of perestroika , there was a strong taboo against foreign music,” said Kasparov, who has hosted rock and jazz music programs on state radio for 3 1/2 years. “Gradually, after 1985, state radio started playing foreign music.”

But those few Western songs that hit the Soviet airwaves were carefully selected by state radio’s music department.

“They were always very neutral,” Kasparov said. “The performers were usually unknown in the West or else bubble gum stars like (the Swedish group) Abba. It was boring.”

In contrast, the new radio stations seem to do everything possible to mimic their Western counterparts. Radio Roks broadcasts the American Top 40 every Sunday--thanks to Los Angeles-based Radio Express, which supplies the programming, and Pepsi Cola Co., which pays for the program in return for advertising time.

Europa Plus, a French-Russian joint venture that was the first Western-style station to start broadcasting in Moscow, has a giveaway contest reminiscent of American stations. Listeners send cards with their telephone numbers to the station, and each day, disc jockeys pick cards and call would-be winners. When the listeners name the current amount in the jackpot, they win it.

Radio Maximum promotes itself by hosting elaborate parties in Moscow. One such party was held in the Olympic velodrome and thousands of people--in micro-minis, torn jeans and head-to-toe Lycra--danced to booming “acid house” music until 5 a.m. The motif for another party sponsored by Radio Maximum this spring was inspired by a popular 20th-Century Soviet novel by Mikhail Bulgakov--Master and Margarita--which has a famous costume ball scene.

Radio Maximum also has a two-hour morning show in English to appeal to Moscow’s vast foreign community and to the advertisers who want to attract foreigners’ money. The show has international news, Moscow restaurant reviews and shopping tips. Since one of the partners in Radio Maximum is Los Angeles-based Westwood One, it even features American radio favorites like the Larry King Show.

But it’s the music, not the promotions, listeners say, that makes them tune in.

“I like it best when the disc jockeys don’t talk at all,” said Oleg Chernyayev, 23, a medical student and daily listener to the new rock radio stations.

Since the entertainment industry is in its fledgling stages here, program directors have no dependable studies to show them which music appeals to which age group, so designing “play lists” calls for a lot of guesswork. Unlike American stations, most of the Moscow stations play more oldies than new releases.

“Our music is for those who have something to remember but still have something to look forward to,” said Andrei Anissenko, the general director of Europa Plus, which plays Western easy-listening or pop--and no Russian music.

Although the Russian music industry has given birth to its own heavy metal, rap, rock ‘n’ roll and pop groups, most of the new stations prefer playing imported hits.

M Radio, another French-Russian joint venture, and SNC, a station that targets the teen-aged crowd and whose disc jockeys are famous for their casual style and off-color jokes, play more Russian rock than the other new stations. But even they play more Western songs.

“Most people here prefer Western music,” Kasparov said.

Radio Maximum, unlike most of its competition, plays mostly new releases. “Our listeners tune in because we have the newest music,” Kasparov commented. “And we broadcast on Western FM, so the quality is excellent.”

Many listeners say they now tune in almost exclusively to those radio stations--like Radio Maximum, Radio Roks and a few others--that broadcast on Western-style FM.

Some stations, like Europa Plus and M Radio, play on lower-frequency FM bands that can be picked up by Russian-made--but not foreign-made--receivers. Until the end of last year, no stations in Moscow broadcast on higher frequency, Western FM bands because Soviet-made radios cannot receive them.

Broadcasting on Western FM assures a select audience.

“To get us, you need a foreign boom box and to afford a foreign boom box, you need to be quite well off,” Kasparov said. “It’s these people that we are trying to interest.”

But Western FM may be available soon to a wider sector of the population. Vakulovsky said he is negotiating with Russian factories to start manufacturing radios that can receive it.

As the number of stations has increased, the competition has become more fierce. And station managers seem eager to cast aspersions on their colleagues.

Anissenko of Europa Plus, for instance, said he is sure that Radio Roks--which broadcasts from Oslo to four cities of the former Soviet Union via satellite--is funded with money from the now disgraced former Soviet Communist Party.

Vakulovsky, Radio Roks’ program director, criticized Europa Plus’s music selection and said it is popular only because it was the first all-music station and because it is broadcast on traditional Soviet frequencies.

Some station managers think rock radio here is headed for a shakeout.

“Now there are more and more commercial music stations,” Vakulovsky said. “I’d say the airwaves are over-saturated.”

Anissenko said: “Many of the other stations will soon go broke, but not Europa Plus--we’re here to stay.”

But listeners are of another opinion.

“I say, the more choice the better,” Chernyayev said. “The new radio stations are one thing that makes this place more like a normal country. I hope there are lots of new stations. We need a lot more to catch up with America.”