Europe | Charlemagne

Russian culture wars take centre stage

An outbreak of competitive cultural toadying in Moscow

THE posters had been printed, and most of the tickets sold. The ballet, a celebration of the life of the gay dissident dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, promised to be a progressive production by the standards of the main stage of Russia’s famed Bolshoi Theatre: in videos of the rehearsal, male dancers can be seen twirling in high heels. But just days before the show was due to open in July, the Bolshoi’s director, Vladimir Urin, declared that the troupe was, apparently, not up to snuff and cancelled the premiere, replacing it with an old standby, “Don Quixote”.

Critics called it blatant censorship of the play’s homosexual themes. State media fuelled this speculation, citing anonymous sources that said the order had come directly from the minister of culture, Vladimir Medinsky, a nationalist enamoured of classicism and traditional values. Other powerful patrons of the Bolshoi, though, spoke out in support of the ballet. Mr Urin now promises that “Nureyev” will live to see the stage, perhaps as soon as December. No matter how the decisions were actually made, the scandal is instructive. As one Bolshoi insider confided, “What happens in the Bolshoi always reflects what’s happening in the country.”

In this case, the drama inside the Bolshoi does indeed mirror a larger one playing out in Russian politics. A presidential election looms in 2018. Kremlinologists expect Mr Putin to reshuffle his team and redefine his agenda in preparation for his fourth, and presumably final, act as president (unless he changes the constitution). While Mr Putin has kept mum about his plans, his lackeys are clamouring to secure their roles. The main division is not between the authorities and the opposition, argues Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank, but between “those who see Russia integrated into global modernity and those who see it at the head of the resistance to this modernity.”

Kirill Serebrennikov, the director of “Nureyev”, embodies the former camp. His own theatre, the Gogol Centre, is one of Moscow’s most avant-garde. Over the years, loyal crowds have lapped up experimental interpretations of Russian classics and striking new works. “Müller Machine”, a homage to the German playwright, Heiner Müller, featured a troupe of naked actors gyrating on stage. In the rest of Europe, Mr Serebrennikov is celebrated. His most recent film, “The Student”, won the François Chalais prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016; this year he took home the Europe Prize for New Theatrical Realities.

Yet he faces a different cultural landscape in Russia, where reactionaries have been in the ascendant in recent years (a phenomenon that “The Student” satirised). Mr Putin’s third presidential term began, in 2012, under the banner of a return to traditional conservative values. Harsh laws targeted “gay propaganda”; the Russian Orthodox church came to exert ever more influence over culture. Religious fanatics have attacked exhibitions deemed to be “offensive”. Late last year one such group splashed urine on an exhibition of the work of Jock Sturges, an American photographer who shoots nude portraits of parents and their children. “We don’t need European culture here,” one vandal shouted.

In May Mr Serebrennikov also found himself under attack. Officers from the Federal Security Service raided the Gogol Centre, searched his home and whisked him off for questioning. Russia’s anti-corruption Investigative Committee, a body that reports directly to the president, alleged that Mr Serebrennikov’s production company, Studio Seven, had embezzled some 200m roubles ($3.4m) of state funds between 2011 and 2014. The studio’s financial director and its accountant were arrested. Mr Serebrennikov has been called as a witness, and his foreign passport seized. During initial hearings, the prosecution even claimed that the studio had never actually staged a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for which it received public money. They argued that reams of reviews and a nomination for the Golden Mask, Russia’s leading theatrical award, were insufficient evidence of the show’s existence. Gogol himself could hardly have devised a more farcical plot.

If the point of the proceedings was to intimidate, it seems to have worked. Alla Shenderova, a theatre critic, says the case has generated “an atmosphere of fear and hysteria” among the intelligentsia. Even more established figures have expressed anxiety. At an awards ceremony Yevgeny Mironov, a respected director at Moscow’s Theatre of Nations, passed Mr Putin a letter of support for Mr Serebrennikov from cultural heavyweights. He argued that the prosecution could undermine the president’s forthcoming visit to France; Mr Putin, in earshot of reporters, agreed, calling those intimidating Mr Serebrennikov “idiots”.

The theatre of Russian politics

That points to another political reality: modern Russia is not a one-man show with Mr Putin singing, dancing and acting at its centre; nor is it his personal puppet theatre, where the marionettes move only at his will. There is little coherence within the system. Instead, it is made up of a chaotic matrix of clans and players pursuing often conflicting aims and aching to ingratiate themselves by correctly interpreting the signals from those higher up the ladder, even as they fear taking an inadvertent misstep.

That these theatrics should play out so prominently in the cultural arena is little surprise. As ever in Russia, aesthetics is politics. “Here they always set the dogs on those who think differently from the state,” says one “Nureyev” cast member. “But if you only ever watch ‘Swan Lake’, you’ll never move forward.” For the anti-modernisers, a bill full of classics would be welcome. The pressure on the Gogol Centre is their “latest attempt at self-affirmation,” writes Mr Baunov. As such, it is also “a battle for the future of Russia after Putin, its course, and their place in it”. To understand most clearly where Russia’s battle is heading, keep a close eye on the stage.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "A new government inspector"

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