The regime in the Kremlin does not like to hear and read contradiction, and Russia’s critical artists feel. Says Vladimir Kaminer.
With a little nostalgia, cultural workers remember the former “vegetarian” times when the Russian state only pursued the artists formally and half -heartedly. Two years in prison for a short scandalous appearance in the church for Pussy Riot would cause an incredulous shaking of the head today. Not lifelong? Only two years for a public insult to the President? Unimaginable.
At that time, the “measly” two years in prison were a scandal, the world public protested loudly against the judgment – and insisted on the freedom of art. Prominent colleagues, Madonna and Bono, asked the Russian government to leave the artists immediately. “Saint mother Maria, please take the Putin away,” Pussy Riot sang at the altar at the time, the whole world listened to them, only Maria ignored her request.
Ten years after the fateful appearance in the church, Putin’s regime began an open war against Ukraine, and the power of the state security apparatus, especially the “E” department – the Center for Extremism – has risen immeasurably. Young officers stand in line to work there, the number of applicants is large, after all, it is about a fine work: to combat these cultural workers, these art extremists, unarmed intelligenzija, who does not shoot back, only runs away and is poorly hidden. Except for those who hold thickness with the regime.
The latter are not a slight prey for the “E” department: musicians, journalists, actors, writers – especially writers who publish their “extremism” on paper, black and white: So there is always a evidence. The more desperate you write against the war and denounce the criminal regime in the Kremlin, the easier the work of the department “E”. It grows, becomes bigger and according to it and accordingly needs more and more “extremists” to justify your own existence.
The laws are tightened week after week. Always new, non-existent organizations at all are classified as extremist: an “international LGBT movement”, an “international movement of the Satanists”, an “international movement Child Free”. Those artists who have not left the country and still work in Russia have to be careful. Because it is a very thin ice on which you move, a wrong movement, a wrong word: you are already a satanist without noticing anything.
The artists try to secure themselves as well as possible. The ballet dancers in the Bolschoi end the season with the patriotic propaganda opera “Semjon Kotko”. With their singing they blame “the nationalist regime in Kyiv”. The “glorious Russian army” is also sung. The ballet dancers try not to jump too high and not to spread their legs too extremely, for fear of being counted as the “international LGBT movement”. Or maybe to the extremists. You can never be careful enough.
