Westerners who grew up during the Cold War may assume that Soviet television was gray and boring, merely a visual expression of the Communist Party line. Christine Evans offers a striking new perspective, demonstrating that the most popular and best-remembered programs on Soviet TV were exciting and experimental, reflecting important changes in the late Soviet political system that anticipated Mikhail Gorbachev's radical reforms.
Drawing on extensive archival research, interviews with former Soviet television executives, and archival footage of news shows, serial films, musical variety and game shows from the 1950s through the 1980s, Evans shows how television producers navigated between audience tastes and state imperatives, creating shows that emphasized competition, play, and new democratic-procedural rules of the game. Offering a compelling account of how late Soviet television shaped the post-Soviet Russian media system, Evans makes a major contribution to our understanding of late Soviet political and cultural life.
