Listyev's Russian Liberals on "Chas Pik"

On 1 March 1995, Vladislav Listyev, the most important figure in post-Soviet television, was murdered in the lobby of his apartment building. The hired gunmen were never caught, the murder remains unsolved as of this writing, and the Russian public sphere is awash in accusations of who is to blame for the crime. Was Listyev killed because he was a stalwart liberal warrior who refused to bend to the will of the oligarchs, President Boris Yeltsin, or other corrupt actors? Or, was he killed as a result of sketchy financial dealings gone astray? Whatever the truth might be, at the time of his death, Listyev was a household name in Russia, both as a TV personality and as a producer. Famous since his work on the perestroika-era youth program Vzgliad, between 1990 and 1995 Listyev gained fame for shows like Pole chudes (Field of Wonders) and Tema (Theme). He also co-founded the media holding ViD, and, as of January 1995, served as the head of ORT (formerly Soviet Central Television and the future Channel 1).

At the time of his death, Listyev was the host of the evening program Chas Pik (Rush Hour), where he interviewed politicians, writers, artists, filmmakers, and various other celebrities. The excerpt in this artifact is taken from an episode of the show that aired after Listyev’s death. Following an introduction by Andrei Makarevich (1953-), a famous rock star and a friend of Listyev and ViD, the episode proceeds through a series of clips featuring the “best of Listyev.” These clips deliberately reconstruct the kind of public speech that Listyev saw as important, and are thus useful for understanding post-Soviet ideology as it took shape on Russian television.

Every guest on this episode of Chas Pik expresses the anti-Soviet consensus that we generally associate with the “liberal” or “democratic” political camp represented by former Vzgliad hosts like Listyev. Within that consensus, however, factions begin to emerge, from the radical libertarianism of writer Aleksandr Kabakov (1943-2020), to the reflective Soviet nostalgia of singer Aleksandr Gradsky (1949-2021), to the patriotic pining of film director Nikita Mikhalkov (1945-). For all three guests, and for most other invitees of Chas Pik, the post-Soviet 1990s appear as a time of evident hardship and unquestionable opportunity.

With his business success, his sincere-seeming on-air presence, his easygoing humor, and his incredible capacity to appropriate Western formats and styles—in this case, the suspenders of CNN’s Larry King (1933-2021)—Listyev embodied the best that this era had to offer in the imagination of post-Soviet “democrats” who were the target audience of shows like Chas Pik. For this political community, Listyev’s death marked the first tragic act in the subsequent waning of free political expression on post-Soviet mass media, which culminated in the hostile takeover of the channel NTV in 2001.