Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television

Eurasia Past and Present

by Christine Elaine Evans

The first full-length, archive-based history of Soviet Central Television’s production and programming in the decades before perestroika

In the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings, Evans challenges the idea that Soviet mass culture in the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, Evans shows that Soviet Central Television’s most popular shows were experimental and creative, laying the groundwork for Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and the post-Soviet media system.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published August 23, 2016

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why are histories of television so consistently good? Between Truth and Time varies from other early television experiments as it's the story of good people fumbling through a bureaucracy headed by people who don't really understand television and aren't sure it should be too entertaining, lest it cause people to use their free time unwisely. Soviet television fun! It's like radio you can see, but not as entertaining as secret foreign radio! It's a guest in the home! And therefore, it must be polite. Polite and inviting. Ultimately, early Soviet television teetered between accidentally beguiling Soviet citizens into watching it too much and being so boring it was entirely unwatchable. How to schedule TV in a such a way that people might consistently see the evening programs they wanted to watch was a persistent early problem. How to make television seem spontaneous after the first attempts at spontaneous television led to unwashed citizens excitedly storming a game show. Musical television's attempt to maintain propriety in the face of popular music, and the festive annual music shows. And the serial miniseries, adapted for Soviet television and the curious choices made by Seventeen Moments of Spring, along with the perennial issue of boredom. Christine Elaine Evans clearly had to force herself to watch that show. Then the joy of KVN and the cheeky game show as sports match. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The deep analysis of how Soviet television creators wove past the ideology and their own traditions of, say, the newscaster entering the studio, sitting down, picking up his papers, and clearing his throat before the news began.