Who Watches the Watchmen?

First broadcast in 2012, The Dark Side of the Moon nevertheless chooses 2011 as its setting.  This could simply be an artifact of the production process, but the year 2011 could not be more significant for a Russian police drama.  On March 1 of that year, a federal government implemented a sweeping reform of the Russian policing systems,  aimed at, among other things,  addressing corruption, clarifying the rights of detainees, and improving the force's image.  Not only was the system completely federalized, its very name was changed, from "militia" ("militsiia") to "police" ("politisiia").  Solovyov is specifically a police officer, so the action has to take place after March 1.  The change in nomenclature helps intensify the alienation effect of the hero's travel to 1979, since he has to get used to being a militiaman again (even if he could not have been "police" for more than a few months before the show started).  Even without the 2011 reform, the contrasts with the 1979 militia would have been stark.  Adding in the reform might make the show feel more contemporary to 2012 viewers, who have just gotten used to the new name. More important, however, is that starting out in post-reform Moscow further historicizes the police.  As much as the proponents of strict law and order might prefer to act as though police bodies were eternal, apolitical entities that simply enforce the laws of the land, the dual settings of The Dark Side of the Moon remind us (and--perhaps--Solovyov) just how historically and politically contingent police activity actually is.

When one of Solovyov's cases involves black marketeers illegally trading in Western rock records, Solovyov's knowledge of Pink Floyd allows him to pose as a buyer, just as his fluency in English (a rarity in 1979) helps him communicate with an American journalist accused of spying.  In the first case, both Solovyov and the contemporary viewer cannot be expected to see these activities as truly criminal, but Solovyov seems to have no compunction about simply doing his job (to be fair, he's also trying to solve a murder). In the second, the journalist does turn out to be involved in espionage, so simple patriotism is enough of a justification, but the question still remains: in stopping the spy, what, exactly, is Solovyov defending?  Particularly in 1979, the year that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan?[1] Or, on a far more prosaic note, in Episode 6 , as part of a murder investigation, he confronts a saleswoman in an electronics store about her illegal purchase of...Polish lipstick. She bursts into tears, and begs him not to send her to prison.  He doesn't, but  the question remains:  if Solovyov could put a woman in prison for buying imported cosmetics from a Polish visitor, is there any justice in his work?

Solovyov's double-consciousness as Time Crasher creates as many problems as it solves.  Early on, we see that the 1979 Solovyov accidentally causes the scar that will set the adult Red, his antagonist in both time periods, on the path that leads to their time loop.  Solovyov, with his foreknowledge and confusion, inadvertently ruins his parents marriage.  But the pleasures of the show are based precisely on the viewers' privileged twenty-first-century position as they gaze upon (or, in Solovyov's case, act upon) a nostalgia-tinged late Soviet Moscow.  If Solovyov turns out to be culpable for much of what happens in his own twisted timeline, what does that say about the viewers?

When Solovyov returns to 1979, he is back in the seemingly-innocent world of his childhood, both discovering and ensuring that it is actually not all that innocent.  The Seventies are a popular destination for Time Crashers, but for a very different type of story than the adventures that heroes encounter when traveling back to World War II (the most popular destination of all). Heroism in the 1970s is hard to find, and that may well be the attraction. This is the height of what the perestroika era called the "Period of Stagnation," now viewed through rose-tinted glasses as a time of enviable stability.  And, indeed, The Dark Side of the Moon, by placing Solovyov right before the invasion of Afghanistan, lets the viewers visit the Soviet Union during peak Stagnation.  Meanwhile, the contemporary viewer turns out to be living in the last days of true Putinist stability (while the series was produced, Putin and Medvedev announced their plan for Putin's return to the presidency; the economy was plummeting, and Russia was about to experiencer a wave of protests unlike anything it had seen in years).

The plot of The Dark Side of the Moon brings together two eras that were already linked discursively, and, thanks to Solovyov's interference,  draws them into something approaching quantum entanglement. Just as Solovyov is obliged to rethink his parents' marriage and his place in their family, the viewers are confronted with the inconsistencies in their own nostalgia:  they may appreciate the 1970s law and order, but what about the time spent chasing down purveyors of Pink Floyd (a group now so beloved and mainstream that its most famous album is used as the series' title)?   

The Soviet nostalgia encouraged by the early Putin years was a libidinal investment on the population's part, focused on most of the citizens' childhood or youth.  The end of the first season of The Dark Side of the Moon shows what happens when historical passions turn incestuous.  It is not just Solovyov's family that has been irrevocably broken, but, thanks to his own actions in 1979, when Solovyov wakes up again in 2011, he is in a completely new world: one in which the Soviet Union still exists.  For many, this would be the perfect nostalgic wish-fulfillment, but the second season might make them reconsider.  Life might not be better on the dark side of the moon.

Notes

[1] Solovyov's foreknowledge of the invasion becomes a plot point in Episode 6 (?), when he wins a large amount of money betting that the Taraki government in Afghanistan will be toppled.  This event occurred on September 16;  the invasion itself took place on December 24, after the events of Season 1.