''600 Seconds'' (russian: 600 секунд; 1987 to 1993) was an immensely popular TV news program that aired in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and briefly in

post-Soviet The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. It was a nightly broadcast from

Leningrad TV 5TV is a television channel based in St. Petersburg, Russia. Alexey Brodskiy serves as the director general, with Ljubov Sovershaeva serving as the general producer. History Channel 5 succeeded the nationwide Leningrad TV channel dating back t ...

with

anchor An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...

Alexander Nevzorov Alexander Glebovich Nevzorov (russian: Алекса́ндр Гле́бович Невзо́ров; born on 3 August 1958) is a Russian (since 2022, also Ukrainian) television journalist, film director and a former member of the Russian State ...

." Hip, Hot and Hyper: Soviet TV Cuts Loose"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', September 7, 1989 The program of the ''

glasnost ''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, ...

'' period was distinguished by its fast tempo and the display of the countdown from 600 to zero. The anchor Nevzorov used the broadcast in order to criticize corrupt Soviet officials and promote preserving the Soviet Union (in the Baltic States, he is known as a fierce opponent of the national independence movements). Later – during the early

Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...

years – the broadcast became a mouthpiece of Russian Nationalist opposition to Yeltsin's policies and was banned twice – definitively after Yeltsin's victory in his conflict with the rebel parliament. The

Letter of Forty-Two The Letter of Forty-Two (russian: Письмо́ сорока́ двух) was an open letter signed by forty-two Russian Intellectual, literati, aimed at Russian society, the president and government, in reaction to the 1993 Russian constitutional c ...

called for it to be cancelled.

References

1980s Soviet television series 1990s Russian television series Russian television news shows {{Russia-tv-prog-stub