Cinema and spectator in ‘perestroika’ era: changing of horizon of viewers’ expectations during the 1980s and the 1990s

The paper is devoted to the transformation of viewers’ perception in the USSR and early Russia during the 1980s and 1990s. Through collecting and analyzing letters by spectators discovered in the archives and published in the revue Sovetskiy Ekran, the research is aimed at considering the norms and categories of film interpretation, as well as at understanding changes in historical reception during these times. The author pays attention to the complicated processes of popular cinema legitimation in the Soviet Union during the transformation of the whole Soviet film industry. Thus, the shift to the market system in the Soviet film industry revealed that filmmakers were not ready to work in a market-driven film economy oriented to the audience. Due to the censorship annulment and the leveling of erotic taboo in the Soviet cinema, a naked body became almost the main way to attract viewers. However, the aesthetic tradition of nudity had not yet developed in the Soviet cinema, as well as a spectator had no experience in watching, evaluating and discussing erotic episodes in cinema. As a result, a viewer used the ‘Soviet’ optics of interpretation, relying on the educational discourse of art and mimetic function of cinema.