The online cinema Okko has released the series Poluraspad, devoted to the Totsk military exercises of 1954. At that time, Soviet troops in the Orenburg Region detonated a nuclear bomb in order to study its effects under conditions approximating combat ones. The exercises, codenamed "Snowball," involved tens of thousands of soldiers; local residents were not informed of what was taking place.
The series unfolds across two time frames. In 1954, Boris Keller, a front-line journalist, learns of the command's plans and suspects that the population is being deliberately kept in the dark so that the effects of radiation can be studied on them. Thirty-five years later, at the height of perestroika, his daughter Nadezhda, also a journalist, begins an investigation of her own. By then her father has died of cancer, and many residents of the Orenburg Region link their serious illnesses and the deaths of many of their fellow countrymen to those exercises.
The series was directed by Maksim Sveshnikov, and written by Oleg Malovichko, known for the works Khrustalny and Nulevoy patsient. The leading roles are played by Anna Mikhalkova, Petar Zekavica and Filipp Yankovsky. As the critic of Lenta.ru notes, the series meticulously recreates the everyday life of the 1950s and 1980s, from interiors to costumes and hairstyles. At the same time, in his view, the characters' speech and actions do not always match the era depicted.
The phrase "Now are other times" recurs throughout the series, spoken by the characters both on the eve of the Thaw and at the height of perestroika. In the critic's observation, Poluraspad reveals little about the motivations of people of the past, but it serves as testimony to the present day, its anxieties and fears.
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