"Politburo" versus the specter of communism, during the 1993 political crisis

In the wake of the founding of VID and the breakup of Vzgliad, the former Perestroika show’s various internal formats found their way to new projects led by the former hosts and frequent contributors. Vzgliad’s “talkshow” format was taken over by List’ev at Tema; the political roundtable became the centerpiece of Alexander Liubimov’s Red Square. Meanwhile, Vzgliad’s muckraking activist journalism became the core of Alexander Politkovsky’s Politbiuro [Politbureau]. Originally aired either weekly, or biweekly, or monthly between 1992 and October 1993 (and hosted by Politkovsky himself at least through September 1993), the show drew on Vladimir Mukusev’s and Alexander Politkovsky’s episodes at Vzgliad, which nearly always consisted of dark, emotionally intense reports on injustice, corruption and hardship, and thus felt like the very opposite of the chummy atmosphere cultivated by Vzgliad’s other lead hosts, List’ev and Liubimov.
The featured excerpt of Politbiuro gives a good sense of the aesthetics of this show. The first part is taken from the opening, a “report on past work” followed by the (allegedly) humorous cartoon segment, “PB news,” led by Politkovsky’s cartoon alterego, Dmitry Politbiurov. Missing from the excerpt is the subsequent centerpiece report from the field, in this case on the dire economic situation in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The report is followed by a live in-person chat in Alexander Politkovsky’s “kitchen” over tea, with a guest who is qualified to speak about the previous segment– in this case, the guest is an analyst from Yeltsin’s government. A small excerpt of the opening of the chat is given here. The rest of the show (not excerpted here) concludes with Politkovsky answering a few questions from the audience, asking for charity donations for specific individuals in need, and, finally, a performance of chastushki [limmericks]– in this episode, they are about the recently concluded referendum, the political impasse, and the crushing poverty of regular Russian cityfolk.
Through its look and feel, Politbiuro carries on the traditions of glasnost’ activist journalism into the post-Soviet era, as well as late Soviet assumptions about achieving live authenticity on the TV screen, but also fuses these traditions with typical post-Soviet ironic play with Soviet memes. The effect of this fusion is the image of Politkovsky as the only functional political institution in the country, a politburo of one. This one man has an entire slate of ongoing projects for fighting corruption and injustice, he engages in thorny political issues through private, heart-to-heart kitchen table conversations, but he does all of this with a humble demeanor, dressed as an intelligent, slumping over the table, speaking quietly and sometimes stumbling over his words, never presenting himself as a populist leader of men, and generally defining the post-Soviet political project as an ironic putdown of all sorts of Soviet official aesthetic grandiosity.