Television in the Soviet Union was owned, controlled and censored by the state. The body governing television in the era of the Soviet Union was the Gosteleradio committee, which was responsible for both the Soviet Central Television and the All-Union Radio.

Soviet television production was classified into central (Soviet Central Television), republican, and regional broadcasting.

On 1 October 1934, Soviet first television receivers were produced. The B-2 had a 3×4-centimetre (1¼×1½-inch) screen and a mechanical raster scan in 30 lines at 12.5 frames per second. On 15 November 1934, Moscow had its first television broadcast, of a concert. On 15 October 1935, the first broadcast of a film was made.

After the television laboratory was established at the Moscow radio station, the first Soviet cartoons were made. In 1936, 300 television broadcasts with a total duration of 200 hours were produced.

In 1938, television broadcasting began in Moscow and Leningrad under the auspices of the All-Union Committee for Radiofication and Radio Broadcasting at the USSR Sovnarkom (Всесоюзный комитет по радиофикации и радиовещанию при СНК СССР).

On 9 March 1938, a first experimental studio television program was broadcast, from Shabolovka tower, in Moscow. Three weeks later, the first full film, The Great Citizen (Великий гражданин), was broadcast. On 7 June 1938, a television broadcast was tried in Leningrad.^{[citation needed]}

Between 1937 and 1939 an experimental network of cable television, called Broadcasting Television Node (Телевизионный Трансляционный Узел), was mounted inside a house, located at Petrovsky Bouleward,17, Moscow. Technicians of VNII of Television, Leningrad and TsNII of Communication, Moscow developed the cable distribution system of radio programms and TV signal for high rank Soviet military commanders as well as Communist Party members. The system included up to 30 ATP-1 (АТП-1) TV receivers.

On March 10, 1939, the first documentary film was shown on television in Moscow.