The Problem of Personality on Soviet Television, 1950s-1960s

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the television personality on Soviet television in its early years in the 1950s and 1960s. Using primary source materials from Russian archives, articles from the professional press, and analysis of a number of television shows, the article argues that television’s appearance in Soviet everyday life brought about a key change in the form of mass communication from a Stalinist model that focused on the pre-prepared and based on written Russian to a more spontaneous model that was closer to everyday speech forms. Analysing the role of continuity announcers, programme hosts, and ordinary individuals on Soviet television, the article suggests that while early television professionals held high hopes for the possibility of television to democratise the post-Stalin Soviet Union, these hopes were in fact riven with contradictions.