What would Lenin think of 1987’s Soviet Union, the Observer of 25 October 1987 wondered, as the 70th anniversary of the storming of the Winter Palace approached, and what would he think of what was on TV?
Perestroika and glasnost had started to unknit Soviet certainties, leaving a society in flux. New enthusiasms included hard rock, horse racing and ballroom dancing, Lacoste sweaters and Pepsi. The influx of visitors for the 1980 Moscow Olympics and a market in ‘much-thumbed western magazines’ had excited new desires, but the average monthly salary of 200 roubles (less than £200) meant most of this remained out of reach for almost all.
Drug use was rising as sugar and yeast shortages inhibiting vodka production and Gorbachev’s introduction of anti-alcohol legislation slashed state production. ‘Wild concoctions of pills’, glue sniffing and Kazakh or Uzbek heroin were popular but so was ‘samagon’ (home-brewed moonshine) and worse: ‘eau de cologne (rationed to two small bottles per person at perfume counters, when available) and mixtures using boot polish and toothpaste’.
A deep dive into the TV schedules showed ‘surprising freshness’ – a nicer surprise than the exploding sets that had killed more than 1,000 viewers in five years. Some looked familiar: the 90 Minutes breakfast TV show featured ‘lively news snippets, surprisingly raucous rock music, weather forecasts and cartoons’ and Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff was serialised weekly, titled The Lads on the Roadside. A reviewer commented that it portrayed life ‘in the grip of unemployment, which destroys interest in life, cripples love and destroys the elderly’. More particular delights, included ‘Sobriety – the norm of life’ a tea-drinking session in the Central Writers Club, Children’s Songs from Georgia and the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
If the USSR was not experiencing ‘the heroic future Lenin would have liked to see’, none of these cultural shifts, the writers concluded, showed a hunger for radical change; rather ‘solid self-confidence, an ability to muddle through and a massive pride in survival’.
