Hello, Lenin?

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Soviet television lookedold-fashioned and seemed redundant, with the emerging post-Soviet televisualcultures turning their gazes to global sources of inspiration. The nextdecade affected Russia and Ukraine in very different ways. In Russia briefexposure to what was seen as “cheap mass-culture” left TV viewers andproducers disillusioned. With the change of attitude towards Western TV, theideas about Soviet TV changed, too. From a grey and unexciting model SovietTV had become a shining example of “high quality” and nostalgia-drivencontent set in for the next few years. In Ukraine, where no domestic TV hadexisted as such prior to 1991 and where Soviet TV was rapidly fading intothe past (and some-one else’s past, too), a decade of experimenting withprogramming had left the TV producers much more open to global televisionformats and Western ideas, developing programmes very different than theRussian ones.