"Empire of Goodness": Media processing of the history of the USSR in Dmitry Kiselyov's TV versions

The article analyzes the specifics of the media image of the Soviet Union in Dmitry Kiselyov's TV documentaries USSR. Collapse (2011) and The Red Project (2022). The transformation of the images of Soviet history in the Russian media space is examined on the example of these TV films. The study showed that the content of the 2011 TV movie is in the tone of reflective nostalgia. Its content can be described using the concept of cultural trauma. The authors analyze possible reasons for the stagnation and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. However, most of the screen time is taken up by comments and opinions of eyewitnesses and direct participants of the events of the late Soviet period. Therefore, the 2011 TV movie does not pretend to make final assessments. Moreover, the film debunks a number of myths of the Perestroika period. In general, the image of the TV movie USSR. Collapse creates an image of the Soviet Union as a great state with a complex and ambiguous history, and its collapse is treated as a catastrophic event. The movie The Red Project revises the views on the Soviet Union and Soviet political leaders. The Soviet past is largely mythologized. The USSR is portrayed as a grandiose super project that had no analogues in world history. The image of Stalin is idealized, while the image of Gorbachev, on the contrary, is endowed with a lot of negative characteristics. Thus, in the 2022 TV movie the Soviet myth is re-occupied. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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