A 1988 celebration of a year of the late- and post-Soviet youth program “Vzgliad,” where several sketch comedy artists parody and recapitulate its casual, sincere, and freewheeling style of television programming.

A press conference held by the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP in Russian), the group of hardline government officials who attempted a coup d’état overthrowing Mikhail Gorbachev. This press conference, held on 20 August 1991, shows the coup coming apart at the seams.

Clips of “Vzgliad”'s reports during the attempted anti-Gorbachev coup of August 1991. These include the hosts’ holing up in the seat of Russia’s new parliament, the White House alongside its defenders and celebrities, including the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007).

“Prozhektor perestroiki” (Perestroika's Spotlight), a glasnost-era televised investigative journalism project, seeks to uncover the causes of a three-hour line for luxury clothes at the recently opened Luxe Fashion Center, which come down to intractable issues of supply and demand in the USSR.

An excerpt from Stanislav Govorukhin's (1936-2018) influential documentary on late perestroika malaise and the ways out of it.