Moscow theatre director sparks row with claims of state censorship
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Version 0 of 1. A culture war between Russia’s artistic community, the Kremlin and a patriotic biker gang has broken out, after the leading star and director of a Moscow theatre accused the state of heading towards Stalin-era censorship. “I see how people are itching to change things and send us back to the past. And not just to the time of stagnation, but further back - to Stalin’s times,” said Konstantin Raikin, during an emotional speech to a gathering of theatrical professionals earlier this week. “Stop pretending that the authorities are the only bearers of morality. That’s not true,” he said. Raikin is the director of Moscow’s Satirikon theatre as well as its star actor, featuring in a number of leading roles including King Lear. He said the state was using informal influence to block stagings or plays it thought were inappropriate, or went against loosely defined traditional values. “We all came from the Soviet period. I remember that shameful idiotism! It’s the one reason I don’t want to be young again and return there … Underneath words about morals, the motherland and patriotism, there are usually very crude goals.” Raikin’s speech was met with lukewarm applause. There is artistic solidarity among Moscow’s theatre class, but many people are worried about offending the authorities, said Kirill Serebrennikov, director of the Gogol Centre, a Moscow theatre showing contemporary plays and often controversial updates of classics. “I know many of the heavyweights of the older generation called Raikin privately to offer their support, but didn’t want to say anything publicly. Everyone is scared of offending the officials, who you have to go to and beg for money from,” Serebrennikov told the Guardian. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, responded to Raikin’s criticism by denying the existence of censorship, but said that if the state funded theatre it was entitled to make some recommendations as to content. The speech, and Peskov’s response, kicked off a lively debate, and many theatre directors came out in public support of Raikin. The film director Andrei Zvyagintsev, whose bleak movie Leviathan was nominated for an Oscar last year, also intervened in the discussion. “It’s completely obvious that censorship has fully entered into the cultural life of the country,” Zyagintsev wrote in a newspaper column. “We say it’s censorship, they say it’s a state commission.” Zvyagintsev took issue with Peskov’s claim that if the state provided funding it had a right to give artistic direction: “They have forgotten – with amazing ease they have deleted from their minds – the simple and clear fact that it’s not their money, but ours. It belongs to all of us. The money they use to ‘commission’ their agitprop comes from the people.” Leviathan received funding from the culture ministry, but the culture minister Vladimir Medinsky later criticised it, and said that, while all flowers would be allowed to grow, “in future we will only water the ones we like”. Most theatres in Russia receive some level of funding from the state, and Serebrennikov said this has led those disbursing the money to start attaching informal conditions. “It should just be a simple, bureaucratic transactional process, but instead they are starting to say: ‘OK, we’ll look at what you do and decide.’ They have the fatal misconception that it’s their money but it’s not – it’s society’s money.” Serebrennikov said subsidies to his own theatre had been cut to a minimum, and nobody tried to influence him any more because they were aware it was pointless. For particularly controversial productions, the theatre orders security in case it is attacked by pro-Kremlin or pro-church youth groups. Last year, an opera director in Novosibirsk was put on trial after investigators said his staging of Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser was offensive to religious sensibilities. The director, Timofei Kulyabin, was acquitted, but the opera was removed from the repertoire and the theatre’s general director fired. Increasingly, there is interference in artistic life by groups who claim art or theatre offends their religious feelings or traditional values. Last month, a private gallery in Moscow closed an exhibition of an American photographer’s work after a protester threw urine at the images. After Peskov’s comments on Raikin, the leader of the Kremlin-friendly Night Wolves biker gang, Alexander Zaldostanov, waded into the debate to criticise the theatre director. Zaldostanov, better known by his biker name “the Surgeon”, said he would work to ensure the stage remained free of unwanted western influences. “The devil always tries to seduce you with freedom. And under the guise of freedom, these Raikins want to turn the country into a sewer, flowing with filth,” said Zaldostanov. For his trouble, Zaldostanov received a rare slapdown from the Kremlin, possibly keen to rein in its stormtroopers on this occasion. Putin’s spokesman Peskov said: “The main issue is Raikin’s huge talent, for which we have unlimited admiration. I think this motorcyclist was simply confused by a demon, and I hope he apologises.” Zaldostanov on Thursday denied he had been confused by a demon, and refused to apologise. |