https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hut1TjqWs4
Delo Muryleva. Smert' za kvartiry (The Murylev case. Death for Apartments). First episode of the crime show Kriminal'naia Rossiia (NTV, 1995-2002, with various later versions on TVS, Pervyi kanal, and others)
Post-Soviet
1995
This is the first episode of Kriminal’naia Rossiia, a popular crime show that aired on the channel NTV between 1995-2002 and came to be seen as one of the main incarnations of 1990s chernukha (gore) on Russian TV. The show, which was loosely inspired by the American true crime series Cops, combined documentary footage with staged reconstructions, and was at various point criticized for its sensationalism and for the graphic nature of some of its scenes, including actual footage of decomposing or maimed bodies and detailed simulations of violent crimes. It covered cases of serial killers, like the infamous Chikatilo, “The Monster of Rostov,” as well as gang and drug-related violence. Its first episode, “The Murylev Case. Death for Apartments” is revealing of the ruthlessness and banalization of violence characterizing the new post-Soviet reality and is closely related to the new meaning attributed to private property in the context of this new reality. Murylev was the son of a Russian counter-intelligence agent in Germany and a former student at a Moscow medical institute who murdered several destitute homeowners (mostly unemployed alcoholics) after tricking them into transferring the property of their apartments to him under the promise of a later payment, with the goal of reselling said apartments for a profit. The show opens with a fairly nostalgic historical digression about the popular dream of a state-assigned home for all after the Russian Revolution and later on, under Khrushchev, explaining the unique situation of Soviet citizens who suddenly turned into homeowners after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. While following the investigation, the producers appear to try to strike a balance between showing a “normalized Russia,” where these crimes are routinely investigated and prosecuted, and seeing the case as a particularly brutal peak of the iceberg—for instance, when the detectives try to approach “likely victims” of these kinds of scams and the camera shows several homeless people who lost their homes as a result of privatization. Once he is caught and confesses, Murylev describes and shows in front of the cameras, in an absolutely matter-of-fact way, how he murdered his victims: strangling them with his bare hands or a wire, shooting them in their sleep, or simply letting them fall into a well (with a little help) after getting them drunk. In the close to the episode, the narrator relates a statement by Murylev that perfectly captures the darkest forms of social Darwinism pervading Russian society at this time. During questioning, Murylev famously claimed that his actions (as the commentator mockingly calls it, his “privatization method”) were justified, because by killing “drunks and degenerates” he was in fact freeing up living space that would then be transferred to “far more deserving people.” By doing so, he explained, he was acting like “Yeltsin’s orderly” (sanitar Yeltsina), “helping him purge” Russian society of its “marginal elements.”
Gamburg, David and Muryvlev, Aleksandr
NTV, June 24, 1995. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hut1TjqWs4