by Matthew Boyd, Ph.D.

The 12th Floor: Authentic philosophical debate breaks through official narrative on a glasnost era talk show

In this lesson, we will examine the substantive philosophical discussions that arose on a popular youth talk show during the Soviet war in Afghanistan with the goal of using the ideological struggles of the past to better understand the current political moment. The often-times deep discussions that took place on the show, broadcast on national TV, broke through the official narrative despite heavy-handed control, revealing authentic and diverse public attitudes about social problems in the Soviet Union.

The program The 12th Floor serves as an illustration of the fact that, even before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was not a uniform attitude toward notions of Soviet citizenship. The inadvertent stresses put on the Soviet regime by the liberalization policies associated with glasnost’ and perestroika, including limited market reforms allowing for private ownership of some businesses, decentralized planning, and, most importantly, the introduction of a limited ability to fire workers, contradicted the absolute authority once claimed by the totalitarian bureaucracy. The Soviet system was dependent on a captive workforce, whose labor they could exploit with absolute efficiency.

Within that context there was no incentive to ever fire workers. This would hurt the party elites’ bottom line. Making this possible darkened the aura of legitimacy surrounding a regime that had formerly promised full employment while simultaneously reducing the amount of labor power at the bureaucracy’s disposal. Further, on its face, the simple concept of competition is conceptually impermissible within a governmental bureaucratic system that claims absolute authority. The fact of a competitor’s existence threatens the claim of totality an authoritarian system makes.

Discussion on the The 12th Floor

The popular, late-Soviet era talk show The 12th Floor provided a broadcast space where citizens could discuss these contradictions and the anxieties they felt in response. Named in reference to the show’s studio location within Central Television, The 12th Floor was a talk show that was designed to discuss hitherto forbidden topics, chosen in part with guidance from youth focus groups. On the program, groups of adults of differing ages and occupations discussed the social problems facing the Soviet Union with groups of youths separated by age and sex. The focus of this program was clumsily framed through the problem of “manhood” in the Soviet Union, but the topics that were under discussion ranged considerably. It covered youth attitudes toward group membership and conformity, the hesitance of the young to serve in the army for fear of being sent to Afghanistan, a generation gap in pop culture, and even fears that a repeat of Stalinism could emerge amid the ongoing process of democratization. The program was heavily and obviously edited with a frenetic jump-cut montage style meant to evoke the verisimilitude and frenetic energy of events happening chaotically in real-time. It probably owes a little to MTV hipness.

There was an obvious bias in favor of continued military intervention in Afghanistan. A group of WWII veterans and Afghan War veterans were allowed to browbeat the youth at length, insisting, interspersed with closeups of their uniforms and decorations, that if people really knew what was happening in Afghanistan, then they would believe in the Soviet cause there. A few of the veterans of that conflict cited how the doctrine of internationalism requiredthat they help the appreciative Afghan people by fighting the “dushman,” how the Soviet army would certainly destroy all the enemies instantly if they were only allowed to act, or reporting that mujahidin fighters were dressing as Russian soldiers and committing atrocities against civilian children.

The framing was, to say the least, heavy-handed. The show’s official messaging was that the real problem with the war effort was not widespread public disapproval, but this supposed “problem with Soviet manhood” ; the softness or selfishness of service-eligible youth. The youth commentary ripostes internationalism as a doctrine in this context and confronts the fact of the war directly. By contrast, the official line retreats further into the sentimental symbolism of service and manhood for their own sake.

The 12th Floor offers some striking insights into late-Soviet culture and society. First, despite the heavy editing, it documents the loss of effective centralized control of public narrative amid the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. But perhaps more interesting still is that it documents both an inter- and intra- generational heterogeneity of identity within Soviet society. These conversations were televised during glasnost’, but the experiences of the people in the program differed widely. Some were children, while others had fought in WWII, ranked highly in the party, or had themselves been victims of Stalinism. Democratic reforms allowed the fact that these differences existed to become visible.

Following a musical performance of the song “Sit po gorlo” by the New Wave band Televizor, a man-on-the-street style video is shown of various young people in punk attire as one of them gives remarks as voiceover.

“We want to put together something of our own, not looking to the West. We want to put together something that they understand, they understand specifically here, in this country. You have to support this development, and specifically on Russian soil… And then our youth won’t look at the West and say, ‘there, there, there, this that and the other,’ but be their own idols…The youth need new leaders, new leader that is a youth themselves, naturally. We must fight again for our future, so that it will be bright…Shock is necessary… You have to shock people.”