The Glasnost Booth on the last October Revolution anniversary in the USSR

In late 1990, months after the election of the Congress of People’s Deputies, and a few months prior to the creation of the presidency of the RSFSR, the private media group ATV (the other rival to Vzgliad, also founded by a Youth Desk / Vzgliad alum, Kira Proshutinskaya) decided to contribute in its own way to the project of direct democracy, with the “People’s Voice” project. Under the leadership of Ivan Kononov, a temporary soundproof booth was installed on Red Square, with an active camera but one else present, into which any passerby could enter and say virtually anything. А very lightly edited set of recordings would then be aired on the show Press-Club, on Channel 1. The project came to be known as the “Glasnost’ Booth,” and continued existing off and on for the next few years, eventually going on tour to various cities in Russia and the Former Soviet Union. The clips shown here are taken from a show whose material was recorded on USSR’s last October Revolution anniversary, on Nov 7, 1991. It opens with Kononov himself performing as an amateur singer-songwriter– a late Soviet ‘semi-dissident’ intelligentsia genre. It then goes on to show ordinary citizens, standing in a huge line to air their thoughts on the holiday and on Russia’s future.

Kononov’s song is quite suspicious about the “painfully related, frightfully alien” “voice of the people” that he is about to record in the Glasnost’ booth. The “voice of the people” for its part seems to be experiencing equal anomie, with near universal melancholy about the state of everyday life in Russia and about the meaning of this holiday at this time (with the lone exception of an idealistic anti-GKChP activist). The other striking element of ths “voice of the people” is how remarkably depoliticized it is even in such an intensely political moment, even as various speakers attempt to formulate political speech. It just does not seem like there is a party of any sort that overlaps with ‘our’ voice, or shapes it in any way, nor is there much understanding of the mechanisms through which such an overlap can take place. Here, the monologue by the last visitor in the clip is particularly revealing– what he wants (a competition for the best party platform for Russia) is what is literally supposed to be happening in Russian public life at this time, but it seems to be entirely meaningless to the everyman/woman represented in this raw, direct way on this show.