Editorial of the “World”. “The total boycott of the Russian culture seems to me without a future.” Exiled in Vilnius, the bristler in Russian Marina DavyDova summarizes in Le Monde A feeling that wins the cultural circles as the war led by Russia in Ukraine intensifies. Since February 24 and the invasion of the chariots of Vladimir Putin, cancellations of works, concerts and operas, international competition and summons to position against the Kremlin Master multiply against Russian artists. Offensive sanctions, concomitant to economic retaliation measures applied to Russia. They do not only condemn the proven supports from Putin, like the conductor Valery Gergiev, whose commitments have been canceled, but would like to bring a whole culture on the pretext that it comes from an aggressor country .
This is the young pianist Alexander Malofeev, whose three concerts with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra were canceled even though the latter has publicly denounced the war. It is the middle of the Ukrainian cinema which, in an open letter, is insured that Russian directors, not necessarily supporting power but often funded by the state or oligarch, can continue to present their films in festivals or Rooms. These are two partitions of Tchaikovski withdrawn from a concert of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra or Kirill Sokolov’s film, No Looking Back, deprogrammed in extremis of the Glasgow Festival …
Climate of fear
Such an zeal queries. If it is legitimate to punish personalities who publicly or via their works manifested their support for Putin, taken and cause for his policy, penalize all artists does not make sense. It is ignore the climate of fear in which the artistic environment lives in Russia, where artists sign petitions against the war and fear for their safety and that of their families while continuing to play or work. Some have resigned to mark their opposition to Poulein politics. Others have chosen, like the Bolshoi Star Ballerina, Olga Smirnova, part join the Dutch National Ballet troop, in Amsterdam, to flee their country by “shame” of what it is suffering from Ukraine.
In France, large cultural institutions, open to the world, such as the Festival d’Avignon, which will schedule the new Kirill Serebrennikov, or the Cannes Film Festival, have clearly taken a position against the Systematic boycott of Russian artists so as not to bring a people the responsibility for the actions of its president. The Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, also recalled that there was no “boycott of Russian culture”. So many salutary attitudes in a moment when the temptation of erasure is seen by some as the right answer to the horrors suffered by the Ukrainian people. But the Russian culture is, as Marina Davydova recalls, an integral part of European culture.
We do not know when the time of peace comes, but in Ukraine as in Russia, the sound of bombs and warrior imprecations will eventually shut up. When the time of the discharge links will be possible, the culture will have a role to play. Today, the society of artists and works today assimilating them without distinction to the violence committed is a serious injury. Not just for Russian artists, but for all artists.