Media Cultures of the Russian 1990s: Inventing the Post-Soviet Public Sphere

Examining Russian-language media from the “long 1990s”—the period beginning with Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness”) and ending with the election of President Vladimir Putin—Media Cultures of the Russian 1990s shows how post-Soviet civil society emerged simultaneously with the explosion of new media, especially a newly liberated television and internet. A brief and contested period of media independence ensued as explosive creativity collided with rank commercialism, journal...