Russian artists oppose Putin’s Ukraine war – culture

In the meantime, Russian children’s book authors have also raised their voices against the war, as have illustrators, publishers and teachers. In an open letter, they called on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government to end the war in Ukraine. “Children’s literature tells children about their future, it prepares them for a decent adult life,” the letter reads. “We cannot and will not tell them about the life you have in mind for them.” Russia has been drawn into a war that is robbing children of their future, they write.

The fact that they wrote about “war” at all and not about “special operations” is the first risk. The word “war” has been banned by the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor, leading to Kafkaesque disclaimers. On the page of the Russian channel Echo Moscowwho published the children’s book authors’ letter, said that Roskomnadzor did not consider the information about fighting in Ukrainian cities and the deaths of Ukrainian civilians “as a result of the actions of the Russian army” to be “not true”, nor did he consider the terms “attack” , “Invasion” or “War” – which of course the broadcaster just named.

The continent is experiencing a rupture of all certainties these days, the dawn of a new era that seems unprecedented, but with the shocking realization of one’s own vulnerability and the complete reorganization of all strategic, military, geopolitical options within hours, awakens memories. Perhaps February 24, the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine, will be looked back on as Europe’s 9/11.

All struggles over negotiating positions and substantive differences, such as NATO’s eastward expansion or Ukraine’s neutrality, seem outdated. If you factor in the propaganda keywords, the allegation of a Ukrainian “genocide” against the Russian-speaking population, the need to “denazify” a country whose president Zelensky is Jewish, you hear the Russian media repeatedly not as boycott, but as a “blockade” as in the past around Leningrad, and if one observes how Putin put the Russian nuclear weapons on alert on Sunday in the presence of his extremely depressed Defense Minister Shoigu and his chief of staff Gerasimov, then something bigger has long been at stake. In the lonely autumn of his rule, Russia’s President Putin rhetorically follows up on his country’s glorious victory over Nazi Germany, and no one can guarantee that his invocation of a final Russian struggle with hostile – this time: Western – powers will remain mere rhetoric.

This continental, yes, universal expansion of the war does not help the Ukrainians much at first. The more weapons the alarmed EU states send, including Germany, the greater the likelihood of haste and harshness on the Russian side. After the stumbled invasion, Russia’s army has little interest in conquest becoming even more difficult with an increasingly better-equipped opponent.

In the Age of Darkness

Russia’s state television presents military announcers who insist that avoiding civilian casualties is the top priority of the “special operation”, while presenters and experts are outraged that the Ukrainian regime is allegedly using its people as “human shields”. It is the anticipation of future horrors. Should pictures of women and children killed in Kiev or Cherson also reach Russia, then, according to this logic, the dead would not be the result of excessive Russian use of weapons, but the fault of criminal Ukrainian politics. The state media continues to talk about a “defense of the Donbass,” as if a Russian tank had never rolled beyond Luhansk and Donetsk.

And yet protests are growing in Russia, especially among those involved in culture. thousands Artists and architects, curators and gallery owners, art historians and photographers from all over the country have signed petitions, as have 250 Russian comedians – colleagues of the former comedian Zelensky, if you will. Her mission in life is to bring people closer to other perspectives and make them laugh. But war only arouses feelings of fear and powerlessness, “regardless of the perspective”.

The eternally dissident rock star Yuri Shevchuk called for peace. Violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov spoke out against the war, the Moscow Chekhov Theater and the general director of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin. Crime writer Boris Akunin wrote in the independent Internet platform Medusaa new, terrible age has dawned, terrible for the Ukrainians, terrible for the Russians, who are ruled by a “madman”, terrible even for those “who cheer”: “Putinland and Russia are not the same,” says Akunin: “But the world will no longer distinguish between the two.”

Garash, Moscow’s contemporary art museum, has announced that it will suspend operations and postpone all exhibitions until the end of the “human and political tragedy” in Ukraine. One does not want to support the “illusion of normality”. The “Garasch” belongs to Dasha Zhukova, the ex-wife of billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has just handed over the management of Chelsea FC.

In the Moscow art forum GES 2, a few hundred meters from the “Garasch” on the Moskva, the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson has prematurely ended his opening exhibition “Santa Barbara”. GES 2 was only opened in November – after a visit by Putin – with a gigantic investment in media and material.

Moscow bars like the “Strelka Bar”, clubs like “Powerhouse” and independent cultural institutions like “Bumashnaya Fabrika” no longer want to give concerts or donate their proceeds for the duration of the war. All events for the upcoming Maslenitsa festival have been canceled at the BDNKh exhibition center in the north of the city.

You can dismiss that as crocodile tears, as belated remorse on the part of cultural workers who didn’t prevent Putin and often made themselves comfortable. And of course the western-oriented, mobile, urban part of society speaks here, artists, the researchers who have built up relationships with western universities, theaters and museums over decades and who, in addition to all the horror about Russia’s attack on the neighboring country, are also directly affected .

Put on hold? That would be the worst

Anyone who lives in the provinces and has never had the opportunity to travel to London or Paris, who knows little about the state media, sees no reason for outrage.

Kremlin boarders like the director Nikita Mikhalkov have long since defamed the growing protest among cultural workers. According to Mikhalkov, his artist colleagues are not interested in the Ukraine at all, they “cry” for fear of sanctions, after all they own a house and yacht abroad, which reveals an interesting understanding of the income situation of Russian artists.

One thinks of Maxim Kantor’s clairvoyant book “Red Light” about the annexation of Crimea in 2014, in which a Russian writer whistles on television: “Today’s Russian intellectuals have to learn what truth is again. Truth means unity.”

How badly this unity is eroding, how deep the rift goes not only through Russia’s cultural community, but also through society, which was never prepared for a war against the neighbors and coffins with Russian soldiers, is likely to be one of the most important questions in the near future.

There are still no signs of distortions at the top, neither in the political nor in the business elite, let alone in the armed forces. However, when Yevgeny Roisman, ex-mayor of Yekaterinburg, describes the invasion of Ukraine as a “betrayal of one’s own people”, when not only the daughter of Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Elisaveta, but also the daughter of Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, Aischat , speak against the war, then this is not the beginning of the end of Putin’s rule, but still amazing.

Open detailed view

These are days of solidarity, but also of confessions. Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth has asked the theaters to include more Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian plays in their programmes. The outrage at Valery Gergiev, chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, who is close to Putin, continues. Although he had not yet commented on the war, his appearances at La Scala in Milan and in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie are still in question. The Mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, has already threatened consequences. Kirill Petrenko and Anna Netrebko, on the other hand, came forward with messages of peace.

And Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, wants to put projects with Russia on hold for the time being. As plausible as that sounds at first, for many Russian artists, the worst fears are likely to come true.