This book—the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings—challenges the idea that mass culture in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. The book follows the history of Central Television in the Soviet Union from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, the book shows that Central Television's most popular shows were experimental and creative, la ... More This book—the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings—challenges the idea that mass culture in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. The book follows the history of Central Television in the Soviet Union from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, the book shows that Central Television's most popular shows were experimental and creative, laying the groundwork for Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the post-Soviet media system. It shows that the highly televisual Putin era represents the culmination of a long Soviet—now Russian—“era of television” that began in the late 1950s.