When Russia launched a full-scale Ukrainian invasion in the winter of 2022, the rock group BI-2 was on a country-wide tour. The group, which has been the preservation of the Russian music scene for more than twenty years, is known for its rebellious and literary nostalgia, which is often known for its song marches. In March in a concert in Yekaterinburg, two fronts of their fifties, Shura and Lyova, declared “no to war”. Iz We thought we could affect the process, Ly Lyova said.
A few weeks later, in Siberian city Omsk, Shura and Lyova entered the concert hall with capital “Z ,, and the symbol of Vladimir Putin and invasion support was hung on the wall behind the stage. “This sucks,” Lyova remembered. The musicians poured a black cloth on the poster, but the director of the place asked them to download it. Regional Government officials warned that the concert will not take place if they do not comply. The event was canceled fifteen minutes before the show time.
Other places began to cancel the shows of BI-2. Someone was suddenly renewed. Another said that this reorganized the Pandemic period restrictions. Concert venues accused local authorities; Local officials drew attention to officials in Moscow. The musicians had connections in the government – at some point, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova expressed their support – but they could not watch the person or office with the authority to remove the shadow ban. Igor Rubinstein, the media manager of the band, would say to me, “Not every human being ‘, try this other man.’ Nobody wanted to take responsibility. “
BI-2 members soon learned that they entered the list of unwanted artists circulating between regional administrations and cultural departments. “Officially, these lists are not available,” he said, a concert supporter who was forced to remove from the series of a rock festival that summer. “There is no legal basis.” On the contrary, they continued and served as “indicators of unwanted”. A producer announced that he saw a color -coded list (black, yellow and red) with dozens of musicians and other artists. “A trainee seemed ready,” the producer said. In some cases, the name and surname were mixed; Other entrances listed the group members who left their groups years ago. “Everything wouldn’t look too bad,” the producer said to me. “But the consequences were as serious as it was.”
BI-2 faced the expectation of a few million dollars of loss of income and was close to bankruptcy. He could not pay group roads and technicians. He had to go back on the tour. Rubinstein said, “Finally, all roads have led to an office,” he said.
This office belonged to Sergei Novikov, the head of the official business title under the direction of Putin. Novikov with a soft, childish face and brown hair wave in his forties, a soft, childish face and one side. He started his government career as a loyal assistant to Sergei Kiriyenko, who was appointed as the first Deputy Chief of General Staff in 2016 and assumed the responsibility of domestic politics and state ideology. The invasion saw that Kiriyenko has received the portfolio of the new annexed regions of Russia. A source told MeduzaA independent Russian news site dating back to abroad made it the “presidency of Donbas” – in the room of Russia’s war targets into the east of Ukraine. Novikov, Meduza“Cinema, Theater and Music Chief Censorship”.
Novikov is known to be the lover of classical music. He plays the cello and directed several operas with a “Rusalka” production in 2016, a girl who has screened Novikov as an allegory of abortion, and the story of his daughter protected. (“Love, betrayal, repentance – these are the themes that everyone can understand. Konuş He heard that Novikov wanted to take over as the director of the Bolshoi Theater one day.
Meanwhile, Novikov’s war -time tasks involved the arrangement of a television pilot’s scenario to soften the indirect gay identity of one of the characters. Novikov also insisted on changing the character’s name; The authors of the show were unintentionally the same name and Ratorramic – Sergei Vladilenvich – as Novikov’s boss Kiriyenko. Novikov also found time for more ambitious efforts. According to the internal Kremlin documents obtained by the center of the researcher, the researcher suggested to make a Marvel -style action film based on the life of a particularly vicious Russian commander in Donbas. Novikov also had an idea for a series of comedy among the staff of a hotel in Donetsk, an Eastern Ukrainian city that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. Meduza “A governing style of art criticism. . . . “ I am in the summit, so I understand what is good and what is bad. ‘”
A director told me about a one -hour presentation of Novikov’s Moscow Theater to élite members, while showing slides with the flight time of the missiles. NATO It is called public support for Moscow’s bases and Putin and a special military operation in Ukraine. The director said, “Keep your opinion to yourself. Nobody wants it. “The organizer said,” Like many people in ruling people, he allowed him to remove the mask of war. “
Shura and Lyova held a meeting with Novikov. “We wanted to eliminate the uncertainty, Ly Lyova said. Gura went alone to see Novikov in his office in the presidential management building. A few hours later, he called Lyova. “His empty eyes were like looking without any emotion or empathy, Ly Lyova Shah remembered him. Shahura said that Novikov was disgusted with him and carried himself somehow. Sand– A Jackass. “Well, do you want to play concerts in Russia again?” Novikov asked. He presented a bail menu: “Go and take the stage in Donbas or visit hospitals with War injured.”
No matter what the group does, it must be open to the public. The Kremlin needed the image of BI-2, a popular rock band with millions of fans, and further supported the war effort for a real BI-2 concert for troops deployed in Donetsk. (In an interview MeduzaAnother musician who spoke against the war told the authorities that he should make a public donation to a NGO working in the occupied Ukraine. “Punishment is not that I have to help children,” he said. “Punishment is that I have to publish it on social media. The next thing he did, Lyova told me to buy a bottle of cognac to mek disinfecting ”.
For the next few months, Lyova was detained and questioned for hours every time he entered and exited Russia. Finally, at the end of 2022, he left the country for good. “People close to the state told me that time came,” Lyova said. Shura watched soon. They became a part of Russian artists who could not or could not host or host new censorship and state control climate. But more is left. “I knew I would soon find myself washing dishes in Europe,” a successful director said to me. Numerous cultural figures visited Novikov’s office or made agreements with the Kremlin to continue working. “Before the war, all kinds of artists’ fame, wealth, success, as a way to secure success, made a leading cultural critic in Moscow. “Now you just compromise to do your job.”
In Russia, state power and high culture have existed in a painful but seemingly meaningless symbiosis. Stalin is willing to be a hagiographic style, which has been in art forms such as music and painting. He was awarded with loyal practitioners with apartments and food parcels; The deviations from the official aesthetic line faced exclusion, public condemnation, arrest and even execution. Stalin, who personally approved most of his arrest lists, kept up with poetry and opera. Dmitri Shostakovich’s discontent for “MTSENSK Lady Macbeth” – “Muddle instead of Music” Pruva In a hit piece that was said to have been written by Stalin himself – he made Shostakovich into an annual terrorist and expected a close arrest that never arrived.
Putin’s power system sees as much less artistic or intellectual claims as any other sector: a sub -dominance that must submit to the needs and interests of the state. The cultural production economy of all kinds of artists usually have very few options; For example, public theaters in Russia rely on state financing for two -thirds or more of business budgets. “The theaters, large buildings and large organizations with large buildings and groups cannot be profitable,” the director told me. “If you want to perform almost everything, this means to face the dilemma of state financing immediately.”
It is easier to know what is not allowed these days. Among the subjects that are understood to be sensitive, according to an effective figure in the world of Moscow Museum, şey everything about the war – this war or in general is really war ”. (The exception is the heroic narratives of the Second World War that glorifies the Soviet victory.) In 2023, as part of the Kremlin’s effort to present the war in Ukraine on a wider struggle against Western degeneration against Western degeneration, the country’s high court identified the “International LGBT movement” as a “extremist organization”. Last year, the Duma has declared drug propaganda illegal-it means that any reference to the drugs has ended. “Nudity, the Orthodox Church,” said the museum source, continuing the list of things that seem to be banned. Beyond that, he’s blurred. Museum source, “somehow we think we should avoid the faint for morale,” he said.
In Moscow, the city’s cultural department is signed in all proposed exhibitions. The source of the museum told me about an exhibition that was not approved because it was accepted as “very depressing ıyla in the words of a municipal bureaucrat. In the end, the organizers of the exhibition were able to convince the city officials that the show was not a political risk, and ultimately continued. However, more cultural managers, suspicious ideas before reaching that stage Nix. The president of a regional cultural field, “We have no official censorship,” he said. “And this is true – there is no real code about you can or cannot.” Instead, he said, “We have censorship for ourselves.”
A gallerist in Moscow told me a exhibition that would include pictures of human -like puppets, and some limbs are missing. The artist did not want to imply anything about war or violence, but at the opening, the gallerist was rethinking. “Someone could see it as a statement about the war, Galler said Gallerist. “Or maybe someone would be triggered by this kind of content and complained to the authorities, accusing me of disturbing his feelings.” Days before the planned opening, the Galerist said: “Without a clear directive and therefore there is no definite idea of when you violate them, of course it is simpler to show something.”
