Tuning In The Global Village : Frontier: C.I.S. : Instant Replay of Central Control? : Republics’ rigid Soviet programming is replaced by rigid nationalist agendas for a suspiciously familiar look.

The great Soviet propaganda machine has splintered. Kremlin censors have been sent into retirement. Onetime subject peoples have their own television networks that broadcast free of Moscow’s meddling.

So why does TV in the brand-new countries of the former Soviet Union often look so suspiciously familiar?

For decades, Moscow used television to unify its vast empire. From the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus Mountains to Central Asia and beyond, every family watched the same recitations of Communist Party decisions, documentaries on five-star factories and paeans to hero-farmers.

Even the entertainment--including a lot of World War II movies about Red Army heroism--carried a heavy dose of propaganda. Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reign brought a refreshing dose of video candor, but at the end, state-run Soviet television blatantly took the Kremlin’s side when reporting on regional disputes, inflaming separatist passions.

When the Soviet Union crumbled last fall, some thought the 15 republics might, at last, get something approaching the “objective” broadcasting that local activists and rulers routinely demanded. But although they have shaken off the Kremlin’s yoke, TV producers from Armenia to Uzbekistan find themselves submitting to whims of other masters--the leaders of their newly sovereign nations.

Veteran Communists well versed in techniques for exploiting the media have become leading politicians in most of the Commonwealth of Independent States, especially in Central Asia and Ukraine, and they have grabbed local TV and radio outlets as personal megaphones.

The nightly news on almost every republic’s national television channel usually leads with a report on the president’s activities. If the president has done nothing newsworthy, anchors may spin out a piece on a routine government briefing.

As they did in the Soviet period, broadcasters act as cheerleaders--nowadays for the newly independent states rather than for the Soviet socialist experiment.

“We’ve gone from one extreme to another,” Natalya Kaltchenko, an editor at Ukrainian Radio and Television, said. “Under the Soviet Union, we couldn’t show any of our national culture--now we show it all the time.”

Ukrainians even have a new phrase to describe the phenomenon-- sharovarshina, from the word for “wide pants,” part of traditional Ukrainian garb now in evidence during evening broadcasts of folk songs and dance.

Such depictions of national culture seem frozen in the 19th Century. Ukrainian rap--or modern dance, art or satire, for that matter--makes it to the screen rarely, if at all.

Because commercials are almost nonexistent, television stations in the Commonwealth republics rely on governments for the bulk of their funds, even in Russia where they have the freedom to go their own financial way if they can.

“Without government support, we would have closed down on the third day after the coup (of August, 1991),” said Viktor Oskolkov, director of programming for Ostankino, a Moscow-based network formed from the ruins of Soviet Central TV.

Ostankino broadcasts to nearly every former Soviet republic, and negotiations are under way to turn it into an international network supported by all members of the Commonwealth.

For now, however, Ostankino’s funds come from Russia alone. And, as a Russian proverb says, he who pays orders the music--even if the state’s techniques are not as ham-handed as they used to be.

“The government doesn’t pre-screen our programs,” Oskolkov said, “but it might sometimes request that you cover something. If you’re showing too little about the economic reforms, for example, they might tell you to broadcast more. . . . They won’t say you need to praise the reforms--how you present them is your responsibility.”

Oskolkov acknowledged that his reporters--aware that their own jobs depend on continued state funding--might be “subconsciously” inclined to tone down harsh criticism.

“You can’t even talk about independent stations when they live on the government budget,” said Lydia Polskaya, television critic for the Russian weekly newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta.

“Before, they suffered from strong control by the Communist Party Central Committee,” she added. “And now, well, I’m sure from time to time they still do things that the government requests. . . .”

Anxious to avoid seeming to favor officialdom, television in some republics bends over backward to appear objective. In Armenia, for example, government television gives President Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s opposition several hours of air time per week, according to Karl A. Yalanuzian, deputy director of state television and radio administration.

“Of course our national station has to fulfill some orders from the government serving the interest of our leadership and Parliament,” said Suran Apikyen, an Armenian adviser in Moscow. “They try not to differ from the government’s point of view.”

In Estonia, a special team produces programs for the Russian-speaking third of the population. And in Lithuania, the state network is giving each party free air time before parliamentary elections Sunday.

“In theory, politicians don’t have the right to dictate conditions for our programs,” Broneus Levinskas, deputy director of Lithuanian Television, said. “But the leaders of our TV station must be very vigilant and fight against all attempts by the government to influence us.”

Even if Commonwealth governments gave their national stations more freedom, most are too poor to produce quality programming.

Turkmenistan, for instance, has trouble scraping up enough cash to pay for baby formula, let alone fund hard-hitting documentaries on such pressing problems as desertification or the Third World infant death rate.

Critic Polskaya said that Vesti, the Russian nightly news, suffers because “they simply don’t have the money, the cameras, the film or the strength to gather commentary from experts, so the reporters just comment themselves.”

A “total absence of gasoline” in Dushanbe, capital of the convulsed Central Asian state of Tajikistan, has badly hampered news gathering, according to Akhmadsho Komilov, director of Tajik People’s Television and Radio Co.

Financial and technical restraints limit the number of shows that networks can originate. Moscow-based TV news often tapes video footage from CNN or other Western outlets because it doesn’t have the money to send correspondents to hot spots as near as Yugoslavia.

Producing nightly news programs, occasional documentaries and Ed Sullivan-like shows eats up most stations’ budgets. To pad their 8-to-10-hour broadcast days, they run old Soviet movies dubbed into local languages.

Phil Donahue-style talk shows, focusing on political as well as social issues, earn high ratings everywhere. In Russia and Estonia, local takeoffs on “Wheel of Fortune” lure big audiences; there are also “Jeopardy”-style trivia contests and game shows that ask guests to do embarrassing stunts.

Some programs blur the boundaries between genres. For instance, “Adam’s Apple,” a show for men produced by St. Petersburg TV, may segue from an analysis of the news to a piece on scantily-clad modern dancers.

Watching news programs can make a viewer almost queasy, as jerky footage sometimes looks as if were shot by a drunken cameraman. And even poor footage may be reused for several nights in a row if nothing newer has been shot.

Viewers who want to see contemporary Western television must buy a cable connection from one of the 500 independent cable networks in what used to be the Soviet Union. An estimated 5 million people watch CNN, MTV and American films through small, wildcat networks that jury-rig antennas near satellite dishes.

Sometimes national television stations air thought-provoking, locally produced shows that thumb their noses at the old orthodoxies. Tajikistan TV, for example, has produced “The Broken Chain,” a twice-monthly analysis of the effects of the Soviet breakup. And Lithuanian television, which was once forced to run shows like “Marxist University,” now offers free air time to churches.

“We emphasize our national culture, our architecture and especially the rebirth of religion here,” Lithuania’s Levinskas said.

Some people, like Tamara Maximova, director of an independent television company in St. Petersburg, miss the days of soothing, if unrelenting, propaganda.

For more than a year, Maximova said, she has been bombarded with “black news” every time she turns on her TV set. If it’s not skyrocketing crime, it’s plummeting production, corrupt officials or ethnic wars.

“Before perestroika (in the late 1980s), everyone could report only good news about our country, and if there weren’t any positive developments, they’d invent them,” Maximova said. “Now, everything has been flipped around, and people only talk about bad things. It destroys the soul of our people.”

Determined to bring upbeat programs to Russian screens, Maximova and her husband, Vladimir, recently produced their own version of the boy-loves-tractor shows that were a Soviet staple.

Their documentary on Russian peasants trying now to become independent farmers generated thousands of letters from viewers who praised the show as “a breath of fresh air that gives hope in these nightmarish times,” she said.

Times Moscow bureau researchers Igor Romashkeivich and Beth Knobel contributed to this report.