Putin’s Playlist
One of the biggest casualties of politics is culture. With each new war nowadays emerges a new informal decree of what’s socially acceptable and what is not. Or even degenerate, a term Nazis used to describe artists who didn’t fit into their Aryan cultural narrative of “purity”. It’s hardly a German invention. It was a mainstay of every major political shift in history, with the 12th century cathedral in Cordoba as a perfect example, an amalgam of a mosque and a church where one culture absorbed the other without completely outshining it. During the Byzantine period, the Athenian Parthenon was used as a church. In my hometown, tombstones from old Ottoman cemeteries were upcycled as a building material for new apartment buildings after WW2. It’s the natural course of history.
How a culture treats its predecessor is usually a good indicator of its values and beliefs. The last big shift was Erdogan’s decision to reverse the decision that secularised Hagia Sophia by turning it into a place of cultural heritage instead of a place of worship. He was showing in which direction his politics is heading, conservative pre-Ataturkian principles. It turned out to be the tip of the wave of European right-wing populism that ponedered to resentments of people who felt marginalised by globalisation and threatened by liberalism that granted visibility and protection to sexual minorities, abortion rights etc.
In the aftermath of wars that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia the very same thing happened. A purge of school curriculums and cultural institutions from anything belonging to the heritage of the agressors. It was almost pathetic in its predictability. Overnight, reading lists and certain authors were censored, artists punished for not participating in the political blitzkrieg against of Us against Them.
But it was a mistake since it lacked fundamental understanding of the cultural paradigm. It no longer really mattered since we were already on the brink of an age where students preferred watching Jackson’s movie trilogy to Tolkien’s printed original. Censoring a book doesn’t really matter since with everything the media is throwing at us few would bother to read it anyway. But we’re lagging behind the rest of the world in many convictions.
Enthusiastic critics of modern degenerate art don’t really get even its supporters are sometimes too busy to care. Which is why no one has anything to gain but artists lose their reputation and livelihood in the process. Some of them have to flee and rebuild their careers. Some of them never make it and resort to jobs that have nothing to do with the work for which they are still appreciated. Some re-claim their reputation at home but rarely on time. What all these people have in common is that their legacy is held hostage by daily politics, the temporarity of which is in direct contrast to the eternal appeal of truly authentic art.
Censorship can be imposed or voluntary. It’s a means to an end. A political statement that may or may not achieve its goal. Even when it involves culture it doesn’t change its ideological pattern too much. Art is treated like a big bowl of salad from which those in charge pick and choose whatever fits into their own narrative.
There are those who willingly participate in this, like Peter Handke or Leni Riefenstahl, or get pushed into someone else’s propaganda, like Nietsche with his Übermensch. On the other hand, there are examples of Richard Wagner whose aesthetics appealed so much to Adolf Hitler that he made it instrumental to his concept of a racially pure society superior to all others.
All this makes Ukrainian culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko’s recent essay in The Guardian so surprising. Its title perfectly sums up what he wants us to do: As Ukraine’s culture minister, I’m asking you to boycott Tchaikovsky until this war is over. So we fall back again into a pattern we’ve seen before. With the difference that now an even broader spectrum of people jumped on this bandwagon of canceling history: statues of Christopher Columbus were vandalized in Boston and Richmond after the murder of George Floyd. As if we were still in the middle of the cold war and not in the 21st century.
This is indeed a cultural cold war that erupted from social media into the streets where dozens of passionate enthusiasts were convinced their actions would trigger a systemic change. The first thing that came to my mind when I see a toppled bronze statue isn’t America but Iraq.
I was puzzled because Americans want us to believe they do things differently and they’re so much better than Middle-Eastern dictatorships. When in fact they turned out to be just as brainwashed as everyone else. People like Tkachenko should choose their words much more carefully because their wish might come true and colossally backfire.
What Putin is doing in Russia is clearly an unprovoked invasion and bloodshed of incredible proportions. He deliberately pulled something that’s a political equivalent of a severe midlife crisis. The average guy gets a convertible or starts an affair. Dictators do it by starting wars or silencing their own designated scapegoats.
In the end both hurt themselves and those they supposedly care for due to a fleeting boost of self-confidence that cost them more than they originally bargained for. One can’t win by ostracising those that don’t participate in the cause. Anna Netrebko was replaced by the Ukrainian Liudmyla Monastyrska at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She has something in common with Peter Handke and Leni Riefenstahl: all three never renounced dictatorships they directly or indirectly supported.
It begs the question if artists can ever be regarded separately from their ideological beliefs. We are all shaped by those but most of us aren’t a celebrated soprano or a Nobel Prize winner. Public people rarely hide their opinions and that goes for the aforementioned three as well, either through words or works. And then there are bands like the Ukrainian Kalush Orchestra, incumbent winners of the Eurovision Song Contest.
They used the stage to predictably plead for help as if it were a political lifeboat and not an annual parade of entertaining kitsch. As much as I admire Zelensky’s determination and unshakeable confidence, I don’t approve of things like Tkachenko’s initiative because I’ve seen it happening, its dangerous consequences and ensuing witch hunts. Certain post-war authors were crucified by the media and populist politics that pulled the public that was vaguely familiar with their work at best along into it.
Russian gay people tell me they can’t get a date because even online dating has grown increasingly political and I guess you must be supporting the invasion by the very fact you’re Russian. Most people there just want to see a picture of your dick, but it seems Russians have to show their passport too. Ukrainians are using soft power to purge their own identity from its Russian parts, a culture with which they are historically intertwined.
It taints their international image as a courageous, unbreakable nation that’s ready to face any challenge even when it’s threatened by an enemy as strong as Vladimir Putin. And erodes the support of those that sincerely support their cause. Because great art belongs to all of us. It’s global heritage that happens to have a birth certificate. Appropriating, manipulating or canceling it is nothing but a violation and desacration of its true nature: a testament of unique beauty without an expiration date. Tkachenko continues:
Boycotting Russian culture is an important step. We’re not talking about cancelling Tchaikovsky, but rather about pausing performances of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion. Ukrainian cultural venues have already done this with him and other Russian composers. We’re calling on our allies to do the same.
Pleas like this won’t bring us any closer to liberation or reconciliation. People are rebellious by nature. It’s a bit like when parents tell their teenager smoking is bad for him, and he soon gets hooked. I certainly don’t intend to follow his instructions. There are many ways to contribute to the Ukrainian fight for survival of their people and their culture. I had the pleasure of meeting Kateryna Kalytko, a Ukrainian poet whose impressive work has recently changed its tone due to her experiences since she decided to stay in the country.
Just like Zelensky, she didn’t need a ride. What she needs is already there. Words, the ultimate and primary weapon of authors. And words are proverbially sharper than knives when they need to be. Her determination to contribute artistically and physically is impressive. The very capacity to concentrate on both is something to be admired. The Bosnian writer Faruk Šehić spent the war in the trenches, unprotected from the gore and cruelty that’s ubiqutous to the experience. I was spared of the horrors that must have influenced his work, making him one of the household names of our post-war literary scene. Which is why we need to try embracing artists from both sides of the conflict in Ukraine.
When everything comes to an end, they are the ones who tell the story and they should be granted the chance to do it. Nietsche died 50 years before Hitler came to power and yet the two are sometimes still synonymous. An unfair equation by all means. Tschaikovsky’s swans don’t carry bombs. We shouldn’t treat them like a threat, their feathers are too fragile to carry a political statement. Russian authors like Dostoevsky have a lot to say about human capacity for evil. It’s a universal message because art is the ultimate universal language, surviving when everything else starts dying.
A trusted witness to the greatest story of all. That hidden, indestructible part of us that can’t be defeated because it’s built on love and hope that in the end everything is going to be fine. The sun will set but it always has to rise. I’m trying to find something to rhyme with “rise”. Maybe “wise” is a good idea. For now more than ever is the time to act wise. It’s tough because it requires a selfless sacrifice. Like the horizon divides day and night, a line diving the wrong and the right.
