“Field of Wonders”: The post-Soviet people’s show

In late 1990, Alexander Liubimov (1962-), Vladislav Listyev (1956-1995), and much of the creative team behind the perestroika-era youth program Vzgliad decided to open a privately held media holding called ViD (standing for “Vzgliad and Others”). This holding privatized the production of Vzgliad and sold it back to Soviet Central Television alongside several entirely new shows. ViD’s most successful product was Kapital shou ‘Pole chudes’ (“Capital Show ‘Field of Wonders’”). Piloted in October 1990, Pole chudes would continue airing through ViD until December 2021, long past the 1995 assassination of Listyev and the discontinuation of the vast majority of ViD’s other projects (as of 2024, the show is still on, though no longer at ViD). Especially in the early 1990s, the show regularly secured the top TV ratings slot.

At its inception, Pole chudes and the game show Chto? Gde? Kogda? (What? Where? When?) were the only two programs on early post-Soviet television that flaunted money on set. Unlike its hifalutin rival, however, Pole chudes embedded the circulation of “capital” in a more down-to-earth aesthetic—no tuxedos or Imperial decor involved. It represented the post-Soviet economic transition not so much as a triumph of high-minded liberal capitalist values, but as a kind of holiday for regular folk.

Pole chudes’s gameplay was an intellectual competition of sorts, inspired by American predecessors like Wheel of Fortune (1975-) and, to a lesser extent, The Price Is Right (1972-). Unlike these shows, however, Pole chudes quickly transcended the original conceit of showing contestants guessing a word or phrase or haggling for the “right price.” Instead, participants from all walks of life, including visibly impoverished people hailing from just about anywhere in the Russian-speaking post-Soviet space, came to represent their far-flung regions and social classes on national television. They were competing not just for cash and prizes, but for the spontaneous attention of the game host. Once they had attracted his notice, contestants could try to convince him to modify the show’s rules, improvisationally and in real time—for instance, by extending a given contestant’s airtime well past that of others, or by doing something unusual himself.

The excerpted clip exemplifies this unusual dynamic. As the contestant, Sergei Kumov from Staryi Oskol (a city of 200,000 near Russia’s Western border), begins spinning the wheel, the host, Leonid Yakubovich (1945-)—still with the show today—visibly anticipates the coming monologue. Kumov continues to speak long after the wheel stops, giving Yakubovich a chance to think of a response. This contestant, as it turns out, has arrived with both a gift and a request. The gift is a series of poems about Pole chudes, which he immediately starts reciting. The request is a plea to hire him “part-time” to announce commercial breaks. Yakubovich goes along with the bit, promising Kumov a position on the show. Kumov’s poem is a silly ode to a stunt he once watched Yakubovich pull on TV. It elevates Yakubovich to the status of a folk hero who entertains through his willingness to put himself into absurd, vulnerable, unexpected, but always quite banal situations, which in their own way echo the chaotic experiences of the average post-Soviet Russian.

The playful populist relationship between Yakubovich and his audience stands in stark contrast to the lofty, liberal-democratic televised communities that Listyev and other Vzgliad alumini preferred to cultivate on their shows. It is perhaps for this reason that Pole chudes outlived all other ViD programming in subsequent decades. Unlike other shows on ViD, it not only did not resist, but actively helped forge a carnivalesque, depoliticized image of the post-Soviet Russian mass polity. In subsequent decades, this same apolitical mass willingly engaged the bread-and-circuses offered by mounting Russian authoritarianism.