Uncensored?: Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the USSR: History, Irony, and Nostalgia in Leonid Parfenov's TV Project Namedni: 1961-1991

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the USSR: History, Irony, and Nostalgia in Leonid Parfenov's TV Project Namedni: 1961-1991 Elena Prokhorova, University of Richmond Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one .45 caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition ; four days concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing: antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair a nylon stockings. Shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. -Maj. T. j. "King" Kong, Dr. Stral1ge/ove, or: How I Leamed to Stop Worryil1g al1d Love the Bomb I think that the only "color" to which a journalist has the right is irony. - Leonid Parfenov, "Nasha istoriia bogata." Interview to Notes of the Fatherlal1d, Issue 5,2004. Like Dr. Stral1ge/ove's "survival kit," the tagline of Leonid Parfenov's historical show Like Yesterday: 1961- 1991, Our Era (Namedl1i: 1961-1991, l1asha era) is designed for a serious task but promises pleasure: "events, people, phenomena that determined our way of life; everything without which it is impossible to imagine, let alone understand, us." The weekly program premiered on NTV in 1997 and quickly became one of the highest-rated shows and most coveted advertising spots on Russian television. Parfenov is a celebrated and by now notorious figure in post-Soviet television . He is also a trend-setter: many young television anchors and journalists style themselves "after" Parfenov. Among the many semi-ironic and semi-nostalgic postscripts to Soviet culture that appeared in the 1990s, Parfenov 's programs stand out for their quality, professionalism, and auteurist Uncensored? Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia. Olga Mesropova and Seth Graham, eds. Bloomington, IN: Siavica Publishers, 2008,159- 73. 160 ELENA PROKHOROVA touchl Parfenov made his name with a series of popular TV cycles and documentaries , among them Songs about Main Things (ORT, 1996-98; with Konstantin Ernst), Seventeen Moments of Spring: Twenty Five Years Later (1998), The Age of Nabokov (NTV, 1999), Living Pushkin (NTV, 1999), Russian Empire (NTV, 2000-01), as well as the sequel Like Yesterday: 1992- 1999 and an analytical current-events program titled simply Namedni. Through a variety of topics Parfenov maintains his trademark style, especially a combination of intellectual involvement with the theme and emotional detachment from it-the latter quality being objectionable to many critics. Whether dealing with Russian or Soviet history, "sacred cows" of Russian culture, or Soviet hit songs and films-cult (and often kitschy) material-Parfenov walks the thin line between critical and ironic commentary, on the one hand, and moments of pure nostalgia, on the other. Named"i is part of Parfenov's larger cycle, The Most Recent History. The titles already contain in a nutshell all the tensions and paradoxes of Russia's relationship with its Soviet past, from its ongoing attempts to create a new national identity to the media's role in this process. The word Namedni suggests an informal, perhaps even populist invitation to survey a recent history that is intimately linked to the present. The familiarity of the audience with the material and the implied lack of distance guarantees the viewer the dual pleasure of irony and nostalgia. Yet both "our era" and "the most recent history " introduce a larger historical frame into the domesticated picture. The historical dimension implies objectivity, authenticity, factual accuracy, and educational potential. Last but not least, the show's broadcast on Russian television 's most commercial channel evokes a host of familiar questions about the possibility of television history2 and the postmodern nature of such projects. The "us" in the tagline claims to erase the border between the host and the audience, between viewers with lived experience of the last thirty years of the USSR and those who, in the words of a young viewer, watch the show as a "general ed" course, similar to "History for six-graders.,,3 Indeed, "the most recent history" (noveishaia istoriia) both reproduces Soviet textbook periodization and redefines it: the canonical meaning of noveishaia refers to the entire twentieth century, whereas the cycle narrows it down to the last three Soviet decades. In this meaning, the Russian term is close to "post1 Parfenov began his television career at the ATV ("Authorial Television") channel in 1988. The first version of Namedni aired...