From Soviet Utopia to Putinist Telecracy: Aesthetics, Politics and Knowledge under the Sign of Television in Russia and Eastern Europe from the 1960s to the 2020s

The framework and starting point of the dissertation project is a media-theoretical finding, namely that the Soviet modernization narrative, which is based on the medium of the book, collapses when television, with its “electrified images”, becomes the leading mass medium in the socialist republics of Eastern Europe (Murašov). The mythological communication model, providing the basis for Soviet utopia, is disrupted by television, which does not set imaginary processes in motion but rather binds meanings back to the body, synesthetically reintegrates image and sound, and simulates reality (Adorno, Baudrillard, McLuhan).

Against the background of this media-theoretical horizon, the project investigates how literature, theater and film, with their stories and structures, observe the television medium. Following a diachronic timeline from the 1960s to the 2020s, materials from (underground) Russian culture are used to demonstrate

I) how television deconstructs Soviet utopia. The dramas of Aleksandr Vampilov Kladbishche slonov (Cemetery of Elephants, 1965) and Vladimir Sorokin’s S novym godom (Happy New Year, 1987) reveal a fundamental misunderstanding within official Soviet culture, namely the belief that television, as a “new art form” can be used to communicate Socialism as a “movement of the souls”.

II) how an archaic desire for consumption and mechanisms of coercion emerge from the deconstruction of the Soviet, growing into television institutions and giving rise to Putin’s television networks and money pipelines. This is evident in plays such as Rodion Beleckij’s Svobodnoe televidenie (STV), (The Free Television (STV), 1999) or Aleksandr Vartanov’s The Big Feast (Bol’shaja Zhrachka, 2002),written by authors who once worked for the famous TV shows that are thematized in the plays: Sam sebe rezhissër (SSR) (I am my own director, 1992-2019) and Okna (Windows, 2002-2005).

III) how television, as an institution and medium of power, deforms the political body in Putin’s Russia, leading to a kind of return of the “Leviathan”. It manifests in a desecularization of the political that goes hand in hand with excessive consumption and violence. The analysis here focuses on the play BerlusPutin (2013), staged by Varvara Faer at the Moscow-based teatr.doc, and Vladimir Sorokin’s theater novel Belyj kvadrat (White Square, 2017).