Context: Between 1982 and 1985, Soviet citizens saw Swan Lake repeatedly on their screens to signal the deaths of General Secretaries Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko before official announcements were made. The most famous instance occurred during the August 1991 attempted coup by hardline communists against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. As tanks rolled into Moscow, state television went black and played a loop of the ballet instead of regular programming
Best_Drummer_6291 on
It’s a shame that high-quality ballet broadcasts are no longer shown in Russia. Well, I hope there’s a room for improvement in this area.
CptKeyes123 on
Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy’s novel, has a plot point about this. NATO intelligence starts panicking when they see this.
3 Comments
Context: Between 1982 and 1985, Soviet citizens saw Swan Lake repeatedly on their screens to signal the deaths of General Secretaries Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko before official announcements were made. The most famous instance occurred during the August 1991 attempted coup by hardline communists against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. As tanks rolled into Moscow, state television went black and played a loop of the ballet instead of regular programming
It’s a shame that high-quality ballet broadcasts are no longer shown in Russia. Well, I hope there’s a room for improvement in this area.
Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy’s novel, has a plot point about this. NATO intelligence starts panicking when they see this.