Between Truth and Time

The first full-length, archive-based history of Soviet Central Televisions production and programming in the decades before perestroika In the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings, Evans challenges the idea that Soviet mass culture in the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, Evans shows that Soviet Central Televisions most popular shows were experimental and creative, laying the groundwork for Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms and the post-Soviet media system.