ON DECEMBER 25, 1991, Gorbachev appeared on snowy televisions in the homes of millions, gray faced against gray wallpaper, to resign as the leader of a state that no longer existed. He handed over the keys and a briefcase full of nuclear codes to Yeltsin, and the red flag was lowered. George Bush Sr. quickly got camera-ready on Christmas, addressing the American people, “During these last few months, you and I have witnessed one of the greatest dramas of the twentieth century.” The Soviet Union was over, but the year was ending on a cliffhanger. Cut to January 2, 1992: as the hangover of a momentous New Year’s was starting to loosen, families in Moscow gathered to watch episode 271 of a struggling American show, Santa Barbara, the first foreign soap opera to be televised in Russia. It was a repeat, to say the least; the season had been filmed and shown in the United States seven years earlier, but this time warp was not a surprise or a deterrent. The show, with two-thousand-plus episodes, would become the longest-running television series broadcast in Russia, ever. Santa Barbara, as a narrative form, distant location, and cloudless fantasy, became a craze of the highest proportions, spurring pop songs, pet names, even copycat architecture across the former USSR.