September 4, 1975 saw the first broadcast of What? Where? When? At that stage it was a family quiz featuring two households, and it was hosted by Alexander Maslyakov. The project’s creator, Vladimir Voroshilov, soon abandoned the original format and gradually built the familiar structure: six players at the table, the spinning top, and the one-minute discussion that, the article notes, cameraman Alexander Fuks captured especially well.
By the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the show had become a major cultural phenomenon. Clubs of experts appeared at universities, factories, and book-lovers’ societies, while the program itself added musical breaks, the “black box,” and a fixed scoring system. On October 24, 1986, it switched to live broadcasting, which strengthened its appeal among the Soviet intelligentsia.
In 1989, Mariupol hosted the founding congress of the International Association of What? Where? When? Clubs, and the television project became a pillar of a broader movement. After moving to the Hunting Lodge in Neskuchny Garden, Voroshilov kept reshaping the show: in 1990, book prizes gave way to cash stakes, and the club began presenting itself as an intellectual casino.
After Voroshilov’s death in 2001, disputes followed over rights to the brand, along with a moratorium on the sport version of the game. Boris Kryuk became the new host, but the author argues that the television version gradually lost its former capacity for renewal. At the same time, sport What? Where? When? continued independently: world championships were held from 2002, with the last one taking place in 2019.
The article separately addresses the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on the community. The International Association of Intellectual Games issued an anti-war statement and permanently disqualified outspoken supporters of the war, Anatoly Wasserman and Maxim Potashyov. Since April 2022, the television program has been aired in recorded form, and some prominent players have left or been pushed out. Even so, the author concludes, the game itself continues to live on beyond television, in hundreds of tournaments and in an international community of participants.