Early “Vzgliad” parodies itself

Authorized by official perestroika ideologist Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (1923-2005), and produced at the Molodezhka (Youth Desk) at Gosteleradio SSSR (the State Committee of Television and Radio Broadcasting), 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 illicit foreign radio broadcasts. Vzgliad was one of several shows targeting this demographic: others included Till 16 and Older, which first aired in 1983, and The 12th Floor, which debuted in 1985 and was hosted by Molodezhka’s head, Eduard Sagalayev.

In retrospect, viewers recall Vzgliad as a harbinger of perestroika for its opposition to the stuffy and censorious feel of late Brezhnev-era broadcasting, including Central Television’s flagship news program, Vremia (Time). 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 distinguished this perestroika-era television show was its combination of newscasting and journalism with entertainment, which helped attract viewers through a sincere, intentionally amateurish, freewheeling aesthetic.

The clip above 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 (1958-), Alexander Liubimov (1962-), and Vladislav Listyev (1956-1995) constantly interrupt one another, move from segment to segment according to an impulsive logic known seemingly only to them, and watch music videos that only they want to see. The sketch ends with the hosts calling themselves “normal guys” who are ready to host just about anyone (“famous writers, poets, drug addicts, psychopaths and various other people who do nothing in particular”) and converse with them on just about any subject (“unkept promises, unbuilt projects, famine”). They also use their informal network of friendly insiders (svoi, Alexei Yurchak) to procure rare goods like T-shirts from the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

By 1989, Liubimov would declare his show’s credo to be “pluralism.” In the clip excerpted above, we can an expression of this pluralism in parodic form, not merely as a freedom of political speech, but a freedom of informal socialization, to be enjoyed both by the elites and by their urbanized, educated mass audiences. As a political project, this type of pluralism played a key role in bringing together the coalition of August 1991, which then quickly withered away as Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) took power and unleashed a spate of radically capitalist economic reforms.