Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Revolution as Memory: The “History Boom” on Late Socialist Television

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Media and the Cold War in the 1980s

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ((PSHM))

Abstract

Historical events and narratives, especially those linked to foundational myths of the communist revolution, were among the central themes of state socialist media and culture, and they assumed a particularly prominent role in the last two decades of the Cold War. As this chapter shows, the “history boom” in late socialist media was stimulated by domestic developments, but also formed part of a transnational growth of popular historical fiction that spanned the Cold War divide, stimulated by new forms of popular cultural expression and the challenge of “postmemory” (Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 2012) linked with the coming of age of the first postwar generation. To demonstrate this, the chapter examines historical serial fiction and its reception in two state socialist countries—Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

This research is based on the project “Screening Socialism: Popular Television and Everyday Life in Socialist Eastern Europe,” funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2013-025). We would like to express thanks to Mike Pickering, Ann Gray, and the participants of the COST workshop “The Audiovisual Production of Transcultural Memory in Europe” in September 2015 in Dubrovnik, Croatia, for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Balina, M., and E. Dobrenko, eds. 2011. Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style. London: Anthem Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, T., S. Boyd-Bowman, C. Mercer, and J. Woollacott, eds. 1981. Popular Television and Film. London: British Film Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borisova, N. 1976. “Pamiat nashego detstva” [Memory of Our Childhood]. Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 6: 33–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creeber, G. 2004. Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen. London: British Film Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dillon, R. 2010. History on British Television: Constructing Nation, Nationality and Collective Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edgerton, G. R. 2001. “Introduction: Television as Historian.” In Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age, edited by G. R. Edgerton and P. Rollins, 1–17. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorsuch, A. E., and D. P. Koenker, eds. 2013. The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray, A., and E. Bell. 2013. History on Television. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hérnandez Corchete, S. 2008. La historia contada en televisión. El documental televisivo de divulgación histórica en España [Historical Narratives of Television: Television Documentary and Representations of History in Spain]. Barcelona: Gedisa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, M. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jakiša, M., and N. Gilić. 2015. Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, Film and Visual Culture. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jambrešić Kirin, R. 2006. “Politika sjećanja na Drugi svjetski rat u doba medijske reprodukcije socijalističke kulture” [The Politics of World War Two Memory in the Era of Media Reproduction of Socialist Culture]. In Devijacije i promašaji [Deviations and Failures], edited by L. Č. Feldman and I. Prica, 149–178. Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaes, A. 1989. From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaganovsky, L. 2013. “Postmemory, Countermemory: Soviet Cinema of the 1960s.” In The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker, 235–250. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kansteiner, W. 2006. In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics After Auschwitz. Athens: Ohio University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keightley, E., and M. Pickering. 2012. The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keilbach, J. 2010. Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen. Zur Darstellung des Nationalsozialismus im bundesdeutschen Fernsehen [Images of History and Witnesses. On the Depiction of National Socialism on West German Television]. Münster, Hamburg, Berlin, and London: Lit Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirschenbaum, L. 2006. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klumbytė, N., and G. Sharafutdinova. 2013. Introduction to Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–1985, edited by N. Klumbytė and G. Sharafutdinova. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kommunist. 1975. TsK KPSS prinial postanovlenie ‘O 70-letii revoliutsii 1905–1907 godov v Rossii’ [The Central Committee of the CPSU has adopted the resolution ‘On the 70th Anniversary of the 1905–1907 revolution in Russia’] 2: 3–6.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lovell, S. 2013. “In Search of an Ending: Seventeen Moments of Spring and the Seventies.” In The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker, 303–321. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mares’ev, A. 1979. “Malaia Zemlia. Podvig” [Little Land. A Great Feat]. Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 7: 10.

    Google Scholar 

  • McArthur, C. 1978. Television and History. London: British Film Institute Educational Advisory Service.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mihelj, S. 2012. “Television Entertainment in Socialist Eastern Europe: Between Cold War Politics and Global Developments.” In Popular Television in Eastern Europe During and Since Socialism, edited by A. Imre, T. Havens, and K. Lustyk. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. “The Politics of Privatization: Television Entertainment and the Yugoslav Sixties.” In The Socialist Sixties Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by A. E. Gorsuch and D. P. Koenker, 251–267. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mihelj, S., and S. Huxtable. 2017. “Television and the Shaping of Transnational Memories.” Image & Narrative 18, no. 1: 33–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2018. From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mikhailov, V. 1980. “Mech i vesy” [Sword and Scales]. Sovetskoe radio i televidenie 2: 27–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Postman, N. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prokhorova, E. 2003. “Fragmented Mythologies: Soviet TV Mini-Series of the 1970s.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh. Accessed on 2 July 2015. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/8019/.

  • Raleigh, D. J. 2012. Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • RTZ. 1982. Narodna revolucija u igranim programima Televizije Zagreb: Rezultati istraživanja javnog mnijenja in pregled sadržaja [People’s Revolution in Drama Programs on Television Zagreb: Results of Popular Opinion Research and Content Analysis]. Zagreb: Radio-televizija Zagreb, Centar za studij programa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shlapentokh V. 1988. Soviet Ideologies in the Period of Glasnost: Responses to Brezhnev’s Stagnation. New York: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanković, P. 2015. “1970s Partisan Epics as Western Films: The Question of Genre and Myth in Yugoslav Partisan Film.” In Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, Film and Visual Culture, edited by M. Jakiša and N. Gilić, 245–264. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Studio. 1975. “Pišite i crtajte kresove” [Write and Draw the Bonfires], no. 611: 7.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1976. “Klinci za klice” [Kids for kids], no. 621: 2–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thornham, S., and T. Purvis. 2005. Television Drama: Theories and Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tumarkin, N. 1994. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • TV Novosti. 1974. “Petorica za specijalne zadatke” [The Five for Special Tasks], 6 December, 5.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1975a. “Otpisani” [The Outcasts], 3 January, 3.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1975b. “Na kraju serije” [At the End of the Series], 28 March, 2.

    Google Scholar 

  • TV Revija. 1975. “Junaci Gorskog Kotara” [Heroes of Gorski Kotar], 1 October, 2–3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weiner, A. 1996. “The Making of a Dominant Myth: The Second World War and the Construction of Political Identities Within the Soviet Polity.” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (October): 638–660.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Youngblood, D. 2006. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

    Sabina Mihelj & Simon Huxtable

Authors
  1. Sabina Mihelj
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simon Huxtable
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sabina Mihelj .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Volda University College, Volda, Norway

    Henrik G. Bastiansen

  2. New York University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Martin Klimke

  3. Volda University College, Volda, Norway

    Rolf Werenskjold

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Mihelj, S., Huxtable, S. (2019). Revolution as Memory: The “History Boom” on Late Socialist Television. In: Bastiansen, H.G., Klimke, M., Werenskjold, R. (eds) Media and the Cold War in the 1980s. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_12

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98382-0_12

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98381-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98382-0

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation