The first "soap opera" demonstrated in the USSR is a means of mass destruction

Let's start, probably, with the definitions. The Soviet Union ceased its majestic existence in the notorious 1991. Hence, all the "soap operas", which were demonstrated before the signing of the Belovezhsky agreements, can fully belong to the category "Soap opera in the USSR".

What is a soap opera?

It's a long, soul-shattering, storytelling story with a consistent storyline, where each episode turns into one short series. The first "soap operas" in the US began to appear on the radio, and only then they won television screens. It has already become a well-known and generally accepted stamp that the name "soap opera" arose from the fact that the first sponsors and advertisers of these series were large corporations that produce hygiene items. Although there is another quite plausible prehistory of the comical name occurrence. "Soap operas" appeared in America in the pre-war period and were designed for housewives engaged in washing and cleaning. Their hands were in the soap, hence the name. And the company Procter & Gamble took advantage of this advertising niche later, with the exception of the first "soap opera" demonstrated in the USSR.

Start

Due to their specific audience, all "soap operas" are sentimental, if not tearful. Housewives of Balzac's age, require beauty and sincerity. At one point, the victim of Hollywood products fell and housewives of the USSR, in which, as you know, there was no sex, but that all-consuming love took place. However, this story began not with Hollywood, but with the Brazilian film production. The first demonstrated soap opera in the USSR, which inspired Soviet women to love this subgenre of cinematography, was an enthralling "Slave of Izaur."

This series succeeded in what many other reformers failed to do - a new word entered into Russian. If in the 1970s the USSR exported the word "dacha" to England, in the 1980s the world responded to us with a "hacienda". Almost all garden plots of six hundred square meters became "hacienda" overnight. The series was released in Brazil in 1976, and it came to the Soviet Union in 1988. On October 16 of that year the first soap opera in the USSR was launched on the blue screens of the Union. What kind of a year was that, what was happening in the country, that her citizens so eagerly immersed themselves in viewing the "Brazilian soap"?

USSR in 1988

On January 1, 1988, the second stage of perestroika began. The 2nd package of laws on economic reforms came into force. The war in Afghanistan was continuing, and my mothers were waiting for their sons to go home. Soon the withdrawal of troops began. There was the first public bandit "shooter", there were whole mafia clans. The state of people in the country changed from hysterical to depressive. Further, Nagorno-Karabakh and Nina Andreeva's letter "I can not give up the principles" that Soviet women are not ready to accept the processes of turning the country into a meeting place of Lyuberetskiy and Dolgoprudny. One can hardly be sure that the permission of the ideological department of the Central Committee of the CPSU to demonstrate in the country "Slave Izauri" was a refined response to a letter from Nina Andreeva, but there is some grain of truth in this. Women are always the nuclear electorate of any government, positioning on the idea of "there is no power, if it's not from God" or otherwise it could be expressed in such a way that the already existing authority has the right to continue its work, as it rules. Perestroika could destroy this female stratagem, as evidenced by a letter from Nina Andreeva, so serials were chosen as a means of mass destruction of the ripening discontent of women in the USSR.

Ideological tool

"Soap opera" in the USSR is a classic version of the channeling of discontent and direction of it into the illusory worlds of someone else's happiness. And most importantly, every evening. The Brazilian series of twenty years ago turned into an event that eclipsed almost all political. The grandmothers on the benches stopped discussing the rehabilitation of Bukharin and plunged into the washing of the bones of Izaura. A kind of anesthesia. The choice of the series, by the way, was very literate. Unlike non-spiritual American, "Slave Izaura" was filmed on the basis of the classic sentimental novel, had an originally constructed plot and a high quality of directing work. Very successful casting of actors. So, Leoncio turned out to be similar to Andrei Kharitonov, the actor who played the hero shortly before "The Slave of Izaura", in the film "The Star and Death of Joaquin Murieta", which immediately attracted to him women's hearts. In any case, the title "The first soap opera to be demonstrated in the USSR" deservedly went to the unforgettable "Slave Izaura"!

And it went and went

After the Soviet women appreciated the new pleasure they had given, the TV screen went out "Rich too cry" and "Simply Maria". And more and more foreign "soap operas". Then the era of the endless "Santa Barbara" began and the Soviet Union ended. By the way, it should be noted that before the series from the US for several years showed Latin American. Apparently, they were better placed on the mentality of the nation. It can not be said that these 3-4 years, when the heroes "How steel was tempered" and Lucelia Santos distracted the heroes from the Pavlovian reform , were absolutely bad. Evenings were busy watching endless episodes of all new TV series, "soap operas" of the 90s enjoyed great success, and in kitchens, no longer communal, began to criticize the government less.