600 Seconds

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600 Seconds (Russian: 600 секунд; 1987 to 1993) was a popular TV news program that aired in the Soviet Union and briefly in post-Soviet Russia. It was a nightly broadcast from Leningrad TV (later Channel 5) with anchor Alexander Nevzorov.^[1]

The program of the glasnost period was distinguished by its fast tempo and the display of the countdown from 600 to zero.^[1] 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 Boris Yeltsin 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 called for the program to be cancelled.^[2]