Early Vzgliad parodies itself

Authorized by official perestroika ideologist Aleksandr Nikolaevich Yakovlev, and produced at the Youth Desk (Molodezhka) at Gosteleradio SSSR, the TV show Vzgliad first aired on 2 October 1987. Slotted late at night, it was intended to attract a youth audience that would, ideally, choose it over foreign radio broadcasts. Vzgliad was one of several shows targeting this demographic: others included “Before 16 and Older,” first on the air in 1983, and “The 12th Floor [Dvenadtsatyi etazh],” which debuted in 1985 and was hosted by Molodezhka’s head, Eduard Sagalaev. In retrospect, viewers recall Vzgliad as a harbinger of perestroika for its opposition to the stuffy and censorious feel of late Brezhnev-era broadcasting, such as Central Television’s flagship news program, “Time [Vremia].” As scholars like Christine Evans have argued, Vzgliad’s seeming rebellion was, in fact, fully consistent with Youth Desk practices of the 1970s-1980s. What was different was that this perestroika-era television show combined entertainment, journalism, and newscasting, attracting viewers through its sincere, intentionally amateurish, freewheeling aesthetic. The present clip is from 30 October 1988, when the show celebrated its one-year anniversary on set by inviting several sketch comedy artists to parody Vzgliad’s broadcasts. The actors playing hosts Dmitry Zakharov, Alexander Liubimov, and Vladislav Listyev constantly interrupt one another, move from segment to segment according to an impulsive logic seemingly known only to them, watch music videos that only they want to see, and end the sketch with a conversation in which the hosts refer to themselves as “normal guys,” ready to host just about anyone (“famous writers, poets, drug addicts, psychopaths and various other people who do nothing in particular”), and speak with their guests just about anything (“unkept promises, unbuilt projects, famine”). They also use their informal friends network of svoi (Alexei Yurchak) to procure rare goods, such as t-shirts from the Seoul Olympic Games. By 1989, Liubimov will declare that his show’s “credo” is “pluralism.” On the excerpted clip, it is possible to see in parodic form what this idea of pluralism entails– namely, that it is not merely a matter of freedom of political speech, but a matter of freedom of informal socialization, to be enjoyed both by the elites and by their urbanized, educated mass audiences. This political project played a key role in bringing together the coalition of August 1991, which then quickly withered away as Boris Yeltsin took power and unleashed a spate of radical capitalist economic reforms.