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 kristin roth-ey and many Thaw-era student groups saw themselves in the kapustnik tradition. Although the kapustniki sometimes skirted the edge of political propriety, they were also encouraged by the Soviet regime,along with other forms of amateur performance (samodeiatel’nost’), as one solution to the youth recreation problem. Their success at the 1957 Youth Festival boosted their popularity even further. See L. P. Solntseva and M. V. Iunisov, eds., Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii (St. Petersburg: Izd. Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), especially M. V. Iunisov, “Studencheskii teatr estradnykh miniatur,”281–306. See also Iunisov’s interesting monograph that attempts to locate KVN within a rich tradition of student subculture, Mifopoetika studencheskogo smekha (STEM i KVN) (Moscow: Gos. institut iskusstvoznaniia , 1999). 47. E. V. Gal’perina et al., eds., KVN? KVN . . . KVN! (Moscow: Komitetpo radioveshchaniiu i televideniiu, 1966), 9. 48. Each of the people involved in these programs remembers the details a bit differently. (One says it was the seventh volume of Jack London, another, the third; someone recalls a primus stove instead of a samovar, and so on.) But there is general agreement on the main features of the program’s format. 49. VVV ’s creators flirted with the idea of offering more substantial prizes, but decided this would run counter to the spirit of the show and settled on funny, token ones. Contemporary Radio Moscow did offer prizes (including some expensive ones, such as cameras and watches) to international listeners to write-in quizzes, usually about Soviet history. U.S. State Department report, “The Soviet Bloc Exchanges in 1957” (January 1958), 12. 50. According to one of the ushers at the theater, the would-be contestants who came to the studio that evening were agitated because the prize was a comparatively luxurious one: a new bicycle. Kak eto bylo (The Way It Was) (ORT, 1998). 51. GARF, f. 6903, op. 1, d. 532, l. 5. Boretskii, who was in the fourth row of the audience, recalled a “huge crowd” of “construction workers . . . some sort of zeks (excons ) who, since it was a Saturday, were three sheets to the wind.” Boretskii, Gosteleradiofond interview. 52.Topaz, “VVV, ili bochka s porokhom.” 53.There are varying accounts of what happened to Bogoslovskii. One report has it that he hid in a wardrobe. My nachinaem KVN, 9. He remembers fleeing in a car with his cohost. N. Bogoslovskii, Chto bylo i chego ne bylo i koe-chto eshche (Moscow: Olma Press, 1999), 277. 54.The redaktsiia in charge of festival programming (and by extension,youth programming , as there was no youth-specific group then) was liquidated entirely. Sergei Muratov was not officially fired for the incident, but when asked for his resignation, he complied. 55. The missing element was a copy of a newspaper from December 31, 1956. Muratov was out of town at the time, but he recalls rejecting the idea for this contest because he knew it would be too simple, and also that the director of the Czech GGG had warned him about crowd-control problems with easy contests. Aksel’rod and Iakovlev approved the gotov sani letom idea at the last minute and only after another contest had fallen through, but they added the newspaper element to make it more difficult. Bogoslovskii forgot this element. Interview with Muratov; “KVN: Vzgliad cherez chetvert’ veka,” 86. 56. My nachinaem KVN, 9. playing for cultural authority  57. GARF, f. 6903, op. 1, d. 532, l. 15. The indispensable Sappak was watching, and he was among those who found the spectacle rather exciting. In Televidenie i my, he joked that those responsible should have been rewarded rather than punished. Sappak, Televidenie, 64. 58. GARF, f. 6903, op. 1, d. 532, l. 8. 59. Ibid., l. 26. 60.“‘Veselye voprosy’s pechal’nym otvetom,”published in Sem’ dnei in 1995.From the personal archive of Sergei Muratov. 61. GARF, f. 6903, op. 1, d. 532, l. 2 (italics mine). 62. According to contemporary codes of conduct, wearing work clothes anywhere outside of work was nekul’turno (uncultured). See Olga Vainshtein, “Female Fashion, Soviet Style: Bodies of Ideology,” in Russia—Women—Culture, ed. H. Goscilo and B. Holmgren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 66–67. I am arguing that the nature of Soviet media culture made broadcasting the violation of this work/ nonwork boundary even more transgressive. 63.“‘Veselye voprosy’s pechal’nym otvetom.” The Central Committee’s comments may have been motivated in part...

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