What TV shows did children grow up watching in the USSR?

As is well known, there was no Internet in the USSR. There were no social networks, YouTubes, or TikToks. And the main way of “acculturing” was television. Almost every family had a TV in the 70s and 80s. Favorite TV shows of Soviet children: “Morning Mail,” “Cartoons,” “Visiting a Fairy Tale,” children’s films (“The Adventures of Electronics,” “Guest from the Future,” etc.), “Good Night, Little Ones,” and others. Shows for young people and adults were also popular, such as “Time,” “Kinopanorama,” “Field of Miracles,” and “What? Where? When?”

1. “Morning Mail” is a morning music program that aired from 1964 to 1999. Music videos were shown based on requests from viewers.
2. “Cartoons” are daily broadcasts of cartoons from different countries of the world. The most popular cartoons in the USSR were Russian cartoons “Well, Just You Wait!”, “Aibolit”, “Gena the Crocodile and Cheburashka”.
3. “Visiting a Fairy Tale”. The first episode of the program was released in 1976. “Visiting a Fairy Tale” was broadcast on television during the school year, and went on vacation during the summer months. Different seasons of the program were broadcast on different days: Saturday, Friday and Sunday. At first, the program was broadcast weekly in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then it was limited to one episode every two weeks. The program began with a cartoon intro with Vladimir Dashkevich’s song “Come, Fairy Tale”, which had previously been heard in the films “A Drop in the Sea” (1973) and “There, on Unknown Paths…” (1982). The program’s host Valentina Mikhailovna Leontyeva (Aunt Valya) always greeted viewers with the address “Hello, dear children and respected adult comrades!” She also called for assistants – the fairy-tale librarian and Polina. The program showed children’s fairy tale films from different years, including Soviet films and films from other socialist countries. There were also premiere screenings of films and television films. Before the film screening, V. M. Leontyeva talked to the viewers and gave them information about the literary basis of the film. After the film, the viewers were asked to answer questions and send their drawings and crafts based on the fairy tale film.
4. “The Adventures of Electronic” is a children’s science fiction series that was popular in the 80s. It told the story of a robot named Electronic who dreamed of becoming a human.
5. “Kin-dza-dza” is a cult science fiction film that was released in 1986. It tells the story of two ordinary people who find themselves in a strange world.
6. “What? Where? When?” is an intellectual game that was created in 1975. Experts against TV viewers – the experts must answer a TV viewer’s question in a minute.

These are far from all the TV shows that were popular in the USSR. As children, we would take a newspaper with a weekly program guide and highlight children’s shows, films, and cartoons.