Russian Blog
This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.
Russian Television
By Vlada 14 March 09
More info from a Russian teacher in London, or things you may want to know but will not learn in a Russian course
In Soviet times, TV was boring beyond belief. The choice was usually between Brezhnev (or another ancient leader) painfully reading some party report, a concert of classical music (not that I don’t like classical music but you can have too much of a good thing, believe me!), a documentary about a Soviet farm with lots of statistics and happy farmers reading reports written for them, and a chess lesson. All news was good news: we lived in a country of blissfully happy people, where there were plenty of good guys as role models. When a popular movie was shown, it was a big event and the streets of cities became empty. Cartoons for children were an enormous treat and missing them was a big disappointment. Performances of foreign pop stars were shown twice a year: at about 3 am on New Year’s night (a good incentive for staying awake) and on Easter night, to stop young people from going to church!
So why do so many Russian people remember old time telly with nostalgia? Partly, of course, because everything always seems better in the good old days. But partly for good, practical reasons.
I did watch a lot of Russian telly recently (I was stuck in Moscow ill) and the picture is not really very inspiring. If you come to Russia without knowing much about it and watch telly all day, you’ll get the idea that the whole country is populated by complete bastards. Here is what happens through the day to an average screen character: in the morning TV series he nicks somebody’s money or cheats on his wife, or even worse, kills somebody. At lunchtime his offence will be discussed in detail in a TV trial (or several trials!), with witnesses, in the presence of a jury and judge (all actors, pretending to be real people) and he will be sentenced to a couple of years in prison or a large fine. Towards evening, our character will find himself in a talk show revealing his dark side, falling out with friends and family, confessing to seducing stepdaughters, mothers-in-law, poisoning the neighbour’s dogs, stealing and cheating. In between those programmes, on the news, the character (this time somebody real, unfortunately) will be shown covering his face to hide from journalists who are trying to find out more about his crimes and who are eagerly reporting to the public what awful things he has done. And finally, at night – an official horror movie, just to finish you off and guarantee nightmares. TV is dominated by crime stories, police and hospital dramas, TV trials and scandalous talk shows.
As a result, TV of course has become more interesting, but at the expense of being human… It’s probably normal for commercial TV because no one would watch a boring story about the life of a normal family! But people miss the “gentleness” of the old Soviet TV where it was prohibited to kill anyone in children’s cartoons or make the bad guys the main characters of films. They also miss the impeccable Russian language which was insisted upon for television, as well as the ban on swearing, sex and violence.
I, of course, miss the language most! You could learn perfect Russian from any TV programme and be sure that the presenters would always get even the most complicated language points right. TV was the model to follow. You could get your advanced Russian lessons from it (although you would be bored to death by the content!) In my memory, there was only one scandal with swearing when during a crucial football match a well known sports commentator used a four letter word in the heat of excitement, live on air. The whole country talked about it the next day. Naturally the episode wasn’t commented on officially and was censored. The presenter was severely reprimanded.
Now I switch on the telly and (being a Russian teacher) I want to correct mistakes all the time, give everyone bad marks and send them home to do their Russian homework properly! But maybe it’s good that people on the telly now speak any way they like – it’s more realistic, although no longer a decent role model.
Another thing is that TV has become very globalised. You can find exactly the same shows on Russian TV now as you see in the UK: “Dancing with the Stars”, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, “Changing Rooms”, “What not to Wear”, etc. The only difference is the language and of course some cultural peculiarities. In the “Millionaire”, for example, people gamble without even thinking for a second about it, and hardly ever win anything. “Dancing on Ice” went mad and every channel seems to have its own version running throughout the year: Russians love skating.
All this said, there are of course good quality programmes too: interesting journalistic investigations and documentaries, funny shows, some interesting series. But according to a recent poll, most people prefer to watch old Soviet movies. Perhaps we are just a nostalgic nation…