The challenge of flow: state socialist television between revolutionary time and everyday time

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing literature on diverse television cultures globally and historically by examining selected aspects of television cultures in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Being part of a political, economic and cultural system that self-consciously set out to develop an alternative form of modern society, state socialist television offers a particularly apposite case study of alternative forms of modern television. State socialist television was inevitably drawn into the Cold War contest between two rival visions of modernity and modern life: one premised on liberal democracy and the market economy, the other on communist rule and the planned economy. As a result, its formats, content and uses were different from those familiar from western television histories. The analysis, based on 70 life-story interviews, schedule analysis and archival sources, focuses on the temporal structures of television and on the challenges posed by television's ability to offer an instantaneous connection to the unfolding present. We argue that the nature of television temporality had ambiguous consequences for the communist project, allowing citizens of state socialist countries to disconnect from communist ideals while at the same time synchronizing their daily life with the ongoing march towards the radiant communist future.

“Images from beyond the Eastern Border”: Socialist Television in Finland, 1963 to 1988

“…Socialist television featured many of the same genres as television in Western Europe, although it developed distinctive programming trends, such as favoring the historical adventure serial (Imre 2016). Likewise, Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable (2016) note that state socialist television resembled television elsewhere in Europe in many respects. In both contexts, television was closely associated with the private sphere of the home, and television schedules were designed to follow the patterns of work and leisure.…”

“…Unlike Western European television though, socialist television was organized around “revolutionary time,” assuming a teleological progress toward Communism. Thus, socialist television constructed an annual calendar of festivities “designed to commemorate the revolutionary achievements of the past and anticipate the fulfillment of communist ideals in the future” (Mihelj and Huxtable 2016, 343). Christine E. Evans (2016, 13) argues that Soviet Central Television promoted a “festive understanding of the medium,” offering a calendar of holiday programming that sought to disrupt domestic routines.…”

“…Likewise, the prime-time schedules of Tallinn and Vyborg television consisted mostly of news, films, entertainment, and music, making them unremarkable for Katso ’s readers. While the program listings featured recognizable Finnish television genres, serials and religious programs were absent, as socialist television did not use the latter to mark Sundays or religious holidays (Mihelj and Huxtable 2016, 341–42). On the other hand, Tallinn television offered more varied morning and daytime programming than Finnish television, which only broadcast a small number of children’s and school television programs in the morning.…”

Remembering socialist entertainment: Romanian television, gestures and intimacy

“…Similar changes were under way elsewhere in the region at the time. The substitution of religious celebrations with secular holidays was a characteristic shared by state socialist countries globally and formed, as Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable (2016) underscore, ‘part of a transnationally shared sense of the passage of time’ (pp. 343–344) in the state socialist world.…”

The moral economy of home construction in late socialist Yugoslavia

“…In addition to framing construction in moral terms, home building was conditioned by the particular temporalities of late socialism (Verdery 1996 ; Hanson 1997 ; Mihelj and Huxtable 2016 ). Home builders spoke about the ‘spirit of the time’ which they felt was encouraging to home builders.…”